Loose Change~ Montgomery De La Cruz / Zach Dempsey/Scott Reed

Part 3 Chapter 11a

When he saw her walking up, he jolted up straight in the driver's seat. It was her car, but he insisted on driving again. She didn't mind. She wasn't in the mood for driving lately.

"What was that?" she asked him as she entered onto the passenger seat.

He acted dumb. He blinked slowly, and seemed to not understand what she said.

"Hm?"

She frowned, confused as to why he was confused.

"What you swallowed," she clarified.

"Oh." He tapped his pocket. "Just some Advil. I've got a head ache."

Ophelia cringed. She was making him drive her around while he wasn't feeling well?

"Sorry," she told him, quickly. "Does it hurt bad?"

Justin shrugged it off. "Doesn't really matter. What about you? Are you okay?"

She wiped all her tears off already, but Justin could still see the redness in her eyes.

Ophelia hesitated. "I guess. It's my first time visiting her grave. I feel bad for not coming before."

Justin began their drive to school. She flinched when he merged into traffic. Boys did it so ungracefully.

"Don't feel bad, most people haven't gone at all."

She supposed that was true. Then again, most people didn't claim to have once been her best friend.

"Did you just sit there?" he asked. She had disappeared from his view for most of the time.

"No, I was talking to her."

Justin paused.

Ophelia saw his reaction and said quickly, "Obviously, not to her. I just pretended I was. It helped, kind of."

Justin sighed. "As long as it helped."

It did help, in a way. But at the same time, Ophelia felt more defeated than ever. Hannah could live with what Bryce had done. How could Ophelia expect to live with what Montgomery had done?

They came onto an empty backroad that would lead them to school.

Ophelia hesitated, wondering if sharing with Justin would make things easier. It had before. "It's kind of weird, though."

"What?"

"It's just, she had fourteen reasons why she wanted to kill herself. Thirteen, actually, since she was never upset with Clay. So she had thirteen reasons why life was fucking terrible, so she just ended it. Just because she wanted to."

Justin looked over. "I'm not following."

"That was too much. She thought it was too much to live."

"And?"

Ophelia hesitated. "And...I feel like I have a hell of a lot more than thirteen reasons."

The car jolted to s stop and Ophelia threw her hands out quickly to stop herself before flying forward and hitting the dashboard.

"What the fuck, Justin?"

There was nothing in front of them that Ophelia could see. She had been staring out the front window, and didn't see anything that would have made him stop like that.

"What are you doing?-"

She stopped suddenly as she looked over and caught his expression. His eyes were wide, and he looked panicked. And she swore she could see his hands trembling, but maybe that was just from the cold.