We both did really terrible jobs of sneaking glances at each other. I caught him almost as many times as he caught me. As for those butterflies in my stomach, I was going to have to get myself some DDT pretty soon, because this was getting old. It didn’t matter if I could see the crazy-soft skin beneath his neck in that shirt, or that his lashes looked thicker than normal, or that the crook of his arm was distractingly beautiful. He was a dick. So he had to be dead to me. Book the damn funeral, please.
Finally, the guys left to grab seconds, or dessert, or both. The moment they were gone, I calmed down. I hadn’t practiced nearly enough mindfulness today, apparently, because I’d been a little highly strung for a few minutes there.
A brief pause hung in the air, then Juliette and Lara turned on Niamh like hyenas.
“Oh my God, Darnell likes you,” Juliette said.
Niamh blinked. “No way.”
“Niamh, come on,” Lara said, tapping her lunch tray for emphasis. “The pheromones were so thick I could taste them seasoning my sandwich. Don’t play dumb. Ollie, Darnell was drooling, yes or no?”
Wow. Lara speaking to me like I was a fellow human being for once. Maybe I was growing on her. “I’m gonna go with a hard yes,” I said apologetically to Niamh.
“Guys, don’t. We’re friends.”
“What’s the problem?” Lara asked. “He’s hot as a soldering iron. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”
“You’ve already got Matt, let Niamh have a turn,” Juliette said.
Lara smirked. “I may have Matt, but Matt doesn’t have me. Although now you mention it, he and Darnell do have a bit of a spark. Think they’d be up for a ménage à trois?”
“Darnell might, if Niamh was the trois.”
Niamh moaned and tipped her head back. “They’ll be back soon. Don’t let them hear you.”
“Right, we need a plan of attack,” Juliette said.
Lara sniffed. “No, no we do not. We do not chase men. Men come to us, and we deign to pay them attention if we so choose.”
“Um, Lara, these aren’t men. These are boys. Different species, remember?”
“Same same, just smaller muscles.”
“And brains.”
I mean, I was sitting right here.
Niamh slammed her hands on the table, making the rest of us jump. “Stop. Don’t try to set me and Darnell up. I don’t want to get tied down here, okay? I can’t afford to get serious with anyone if I’m moving to New York.”
“Who said anything about getting serious?” Lara asked with a wicked smile. “And besides. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. If New York doesn’t work out, you’ll regret not keeping Darnell on your little line here.”
Niamh’s face went hard. I was pretty sure I knew why. She was remembering Lara’s comment about fasting from earlier. “And why wouldn’t New York work out?”
Juliette cleared her throat. I was with her. Could we make an excuse to escape before all hell broke loose? I tried to run through a list of possible reasons, but my mind inconveniently blanked.
“Not saying it won’t. It’s competitive, though, you know? The standards are high. Even perfect girls struggle to get casted.”
“Not that you’re not perfect,” Juliette jumped in hastily.
Lara shrugged. “Niamh’s gorgeous. Obviously. But it isn’t always enough, is it?”
“What else is there?” Niamh asked.
“Well, like I said, it’s competitive. For some of those girls, it’s, like, their lives. They devote everything to it.”
“I devote everything to it.”
“Kind of,” Lara said. “But, you know …”
“No.”
“Well, like, the kind of girls you’re competing with … they wouldn’t be eating mashed potatoes at lunch, put it that way.”
Damn. There it was. Juliette and I cringed. I felt the sting of that one like Lara had slapped me personally.
Niamh’s face reddened, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to cry. I got ready to rise up to hug her, or touch her arm, or shove Lara off her chair, I didn’t know. Then Niamh stood. “Just because you’re so insecure with yourself that you need to hook up with anything that moves for your validation, doesn’t mean you can take it out on me. There are more important things in life than guys, okay, Lara? And if you think you’re better than me because you can strut around in size-two jeans and make out with Renee for a group of immature guys to give them all blue balls over a faux-lesbian fantasy, then please. Don’t. It’s trashy, and me and Juliette are embarrassed for you.”
With that, Niamh stormed away, leaving her lunch tray behind. Juliette gave Lara a stricken glance. Lara waved a hand, bored. “Someone’s on her period,” she said.
“Jesus Christ,” Juliette muttered. She stacked Niamh’s lunch tray on top of her own and stood up. “I’m gonna go after her.”
“Walk, don’t run,” Lara said.
Part of me wanted to go after Niamh, too. God knew she hadn’t deserved those digs, and I wanted her to know I had her back. But something stopped me from leaving Lara. A little voice that said maybe Lara needed someone here, too. And that maybe, with all her thorns and brambles, Lara didn’t get much in the way of comfort.
I watched her closely as Juliette left us alone. It was like she’d forgotten I was still here. As she stared after Juliette, her stoic expression crumpled so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. Then she was back to looking amused and detached. She caught me staring at her, and raised her eyebrows at me in a challenge. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. Actually, that wasn’t true. I’d been about to say something, but she looked like she wanted to make me her next victim, and the courage had faded fast.
“Good.” She sat in silence for a moment, poking at her food with a fork, then grabbed her tray and left.
The guys returned looking bewildered. “Where’d everyone go?” Darnell asked.
Will wore a concerned expression, and held his lunch tray out toward the doorway Lara had stalked through. “Is she okay?” he asked.
And all at once, we were back at the lake. There, Will was always the first one to tell if someone wasn’t quite right, as well as the first one to try to fix it. That was how we’d met. It was one of the things I’d liked most about him. Where had that sweetness gone, and why was it coming out now, and over Lara of all things? Who was the real Will? He had so many masks I had no idea what his damn face looked like anymore.
“Actually, I’m going to check on her,” I said. “Can you get my tray for me? I need to try and catch up with her.”
Will nodded and gestured for me to go, and it was like we were on the same team again. Despite my best intentions re: switching off all affection, a little burst of happiness popped somewhere inside my chest. I kept it firmly off my face.
I found Lara near the lockers. She’d grabbed her books, and was hovering around in front of the classrooms, too early to go in. She saw me approaching from a mile away, and she shook her head in annoyance, turning her back on me to lean against the wall with her books clutched to her chest.
“Hey,” I said, slowing as I reached her.
“What?” she snapped.
I ignored the fact that she clearly didn’t want me here and joined her at the wall. We didn’t speak for a while, until I got the courage back up. “You can kiss whoever the fuck you want,” I said finally. “And it’s no one’s business but yours.”
She turned around, surprised. “You don’t think she actually got to me, do you?” she asked with a scoff. “Please. Like I give a crap what anyone thinks about what I do.”
The show was convincing. Except … “I think everyone cares what people think, a little. Even if they don’t want to.”
Suddenly, I was staring at her back again. “Well, you don’t know me very well, then.”
“Guess not. If you really don’t care, then I envy you.”
“Good. You should.”
“If you ever need to tal
k, though …”
“I don’t.”
“Good,” I said. Well, at least I tried. Maybe I was wrong. For all I knew, Lara hadn’t liked kissing that Renee girl the way I thought she had. It was possible I’d misread her expression at the lunch table just now. But if I hadn’t, then, well … lf I’d had no one to talk to when I was thinking about coming out, I would’ve gone crazy. I didn’t want anyone to go through that if I could help it. Not even Medusa’s distant relative over here.
I got halfway down the hallway when I looked back at Lara. Just in time to see her peeking right back at me.
10
Aunt Linda was taking bad turn after bad turn these days. She seemed to be living in a permanent bad turn, if you asked me. Not that anyone did. They’d stopped telling me things, too. Mostly, I just got ordered to babysit Crista and Dylan while the adults went to sort out adult things. I guessed they thought I couldn’t handle hearing what was going on. Or maybe they thought the less I knew, the less chance I’d accidentally let on to the kids how serious things were. Who knows? Either way, it didn’t matter how much I pressed my parents, they kept me firmly in the dark.
In a weird way, it was a good thing. If no one told me how bad things were, I could still kid myself it was temporary. Just a blip.
Anyway, with my newly contracted role as Crista and Dylan’s guardian from after school until bedtime, I didn’t have much chance to practice bass. Not seriously, anyway. And the guys in Absolution of the Chained were as serious as it came. The others didn’t make mistakes. They didn’t shame me if I slipped up in practice and threw everyone else off, but it was pretty obvious I was the only one who ever did. So I started ditching lunch altogether and holing up in the music room instead, repeating the trickier lines over and over until they became second nature.
One of these lunches in early October, I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t hear the door open. It wasn’t until I caught something move out of the corner of my eye that I noticed Will. Seeing someone at all, let alone Will, when I didn’t expect it gave me such a shock I jumped in my seat and swore.
Will raised his eyebrows, amused. “Sorry. I thought you heard me come in.”
Eurgh. He looked particularly good today, and the bar was set high to begin with. He wore this figure-hugging long-sleeved shirt that was somewhere between maroon and plum, with equally tight khaki chinos. On top of that, the sweet, musky smell of his cologne reached me from across the room. The same one he’d worn all summer. If only smells didn’t trigger memories, I might’ve been able to keep my feelings off my face.
I gave my head a little shake like I was an Etch A Sketch and—my face a blank slate again—returned to my bass playing. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Juliette told me you were here.”
That traitor. “I can’t imagine why she thought that’s something you should know.”
“I asked her where you’ve been. You disappeared.”
Just keep playing. The instrument is way more interesting than Will could ever be.
He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure if it had something to do with me. I can ask the guys to stay away from your table, if it helps.”
I stopped playing. “It has nothing to do with you,” I snapped. “I haven’t been able to practice at home, so I had to get it in somewhere.”
Will dragged over a chair from the wall and sat on it backward, folding his arms on the back. Right. He was settling in, then. Good thing he hadn’t asked for an invitation, because I wouldn’t have given one.
“How come you can’t practice at home?” he asked.
“Crista and Dylan are around every night. Don’t get a chance.”
His face went all soft. “How are they? I miss those kids.”
“They’re fine.” I started playing again. If anything would make it clear I was too busy to talk, this would.
“How’s your aunt?” he asked gently.
I didn’t expect it, but my throat closed over, and my heart started thudding like it was trying to break out of my chest. I could taste bile. My fingers stopped moving on the bass.
Will looked stricken. “Is she … ?”
“She’s alive,” I croaked.
Will studied me. He tended to hold stares a bit longer than most people to begin with, but now it was like he was afraid to blink. He seemed to be cataloguing every one of my skin cells. Like they were telling him what I wouldn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded like he meant it.
For a second I thought he was going to get up. To come over to me? Or to leave? He didn’t, though.
I wanted to thank him for caring. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t really told anyone else here about Aunt Linda, because I didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable. I wanted to ask him to hug me and convince me it’d be okay. “Be careful,” I said instead. “Someone might see you in here alone with me. Who knows what they’d think.”
Will shrugged one shoulder. “I doubt it. No one ever comes down here. We’ll be fine.”
Wrong answer. My skin prickled cold again, and I returned to the guitar.
Will sighed. “I can’t stand how things have been between us. I’m sorry for how I acted at the party that night. I am. Tell me how I can make it up to you and I’ll do it.” Honestly, if he thought I was still angry about the party, he was too far behind to get why I was pissed now. Besides, I shouldn’t have to ask him to stop being ashamed of me. If I had to beg for him to acknowledge me in the hallways, it wouldn’t mean shit if he eventually did. It had to come from him, or else what was the point?
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Whatever. I came here to practice, so I’m trying to focus on that.”
Will nodded carefully, and all at once I wanted to take it back. No. Don’t leave. Say something that’ll make me cave. Say something to convince me I shouldn’t be hurt anymore. “I’ll leave you to practice, then,” he said instead. My shoulders slumped. I shouldn’t have expected anything different. I’d insisted he go away, after all. “If you wanna practice at night anytime, though, bring the kids over. Kane still remembers them, and I’m sure he’d love to play with them. You can use our basement, or my room. You can be alone, if you want.”
That was surprising. “Thanks. Maybe.”
He offered me a sheepish smile, and closed the door behind him.
The next Monday, he showed up in Music Appreciation. As casual as anything, like he belonged in there.
Then he settled himself into a spare desk a couple of rows over from me, and, oh crap, he did belong in there. He must have transferred. What in the hell? Since when was he the type of guy to take a music class? My first reaction was to glower. How dare he come in here to ruin my class? If he acted up, I was going to corner him after the lesson and force him to transfer right back out again. This class was important to me. I wasn’t going to let him make it a joke.
I kept trying to catch his eye through the whole class, but he didn’t glance at me once. He kept his attention on the teacher and the textbook. No comments, no laughing, no wry looks around the classroom.
This was exactly the kind of joke the Great, Ethereal Being liked to play on me to keep things interesting. I could picture it up there with dozens of other mystical figures from every religion in existence, watching this on a magical television in the clouds, laughing themselves silly at the bewildered look on my face.
After an eternity the bell rang. I knew Will didn’t want me to speak to him where people could see, but I did not give one crap. I headed straight over to him and put a hand on his desk. “What’s going on?” I asked.
He blinked innocently. “Oh, hey, Ollie. I forgot you took this class.”
“You did not.”
Will grinned at me. Well, glad he found this so amusing. “The career counselor said I needed to ditch peer tutoring for a class with credit. I figured why not this? It’ll make me an all-rounder for college applications.”
I folded my arms, exasperated. “This class
isn’t an easy ride, you know. Can you even name one music period?”
He shook his head, sliding his textbook into his bag. “I figured if I got confused, I had a friend who’s pretty good at music who could help.”
“Oh, really? Who is it? I assume it’s someone you can be seen with?” I said coolly.
Will took a second to reply. “That’s right. Speaking of, Darnell wants to sit with you guys in the cafeteria today. He’s totally into Niamh, have you noticed? Are you hanging here to practice, or are you eating?”
“I was gonna eat, today.” Actually, I’d been planning on practicing, but surely that’s what he’d been hoping to hear. And I didn’t want to give him that. I glared at him, silently daring him to ask me to skip lunch so he didn’t have to worry about me addressing him at the table.
“Awesome. Let’s head over together, then.” He stood up, ready to go.
I paused. I understood what he’d said, but I didn’t trust it. A wild, paranoid part of me even wondered if there was a hidden camera somewhere. Before I remembered this was real life. “Um …”
“What?”
What, he asked. Like he hadn’t been so terrified of being seen near me last week he’d shoved me into a mop bucket.
Sure. I’d play along. “Okay. Let’s go,” I said.
The whole time I expected him to make an excuse to leave. Or tell me he was only kidding. Or inexplicably produce a mop bucket from thin air and throw it in front of me to slow me down while he escaped.
But he didn’t. He just walked with me all the way to the cafeteria, talking about his family, and the basketball team, and my friends back home. No one accused us of being in love. No black holes materialized to tear apart the fabric of the universe. We didn’t even trigger a natural disaster.
What the hell had sparked this sudden change?
“Ollie, your phone made a noise,” Crista called out from the living room.
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