“Space,” he agrees.
“I’ve got a list of constellations in here somewhere,” I say, flipping through my journal. “I messed up drawing Orion’s Belt, like, three times.”
He doesn’t laugh or even smile. He hasn’t smiled at all yet—his face is perpetually still and serious. “How do you mess up drawing Orion’s Belt?” he says. “It’s three dots.”
I grin. “I mislabeled them.” I find the right page and show him the list. The three-pointed Leo Minor buckles across the bottom right; Delphinus stretches across the top; Orion sprawls across the middle with my crossed-out mistakes above the belt.
“Hmm,” Valentine says dismissively, but his eyes linger on the page. After a second, I close my journal again, and without warning, he grabs it. With a pitiful little nff sound, he pulls hard, trying to wrest the book out of my hand.
“What are you doing?” I say, bemused. Whatever he wants with my journal, he’s never going to get it. I’ve seen celery with more defined muscles than this guy has.
He gives up, scowling. His hair falls over his forehead, and he pushes it back. “I feel like you’re hiding some sort of plan for world domination in there.”
I flip through it. “I do have a plan to buy an island someday. Does that count?” One of the kids at Pinnacle inspired that plan. She had a family island; her grandfather bought it and named it after himself, and he has a statue of himself at the highest point on the island. I can’t decide whether that makes me want to throw up or whether it’s my ultimate life goal.
Valentine gives me a pitying look. “How are you planning on purchasing an island?”
“I’m going to be a banker. And make bank.”
“You’re a math person?”
“Hey, no need to sound so skeptical.”
He shrugs. “That . . . may just be my voice.”
I laugh. “I feel you. According to some people, my voice is ‘scary upbeat.’ So. Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Meh. I’ve been uncomfortable since you decided to invade.”
It’s another shot of honesty, catching me off guard. “What? Why?”
He shrugs, staring out at the track. The sun glares off the numbers 1 through 6 painted on the lanes. After a long silence, he says, “I can’t believe people find this interaction game anything but stressful, though maybe that’s because I don’t like people.”
“But . . . is it that you don’t like people or that they stress you out? Because those are two very different—”
“Spare me the psychoanalysis, please.” I can practically see a shield folding over him.
“Hey, sorry,” I say. “I’m curious, is all.”
“Curious . . . about me,” he says, as if it’s inconceivable.
“Sure.”
“Why would you be curious about—” He sighs. “Forget it.” I can’t read his voice, which is almost impressive—I can get a lock on nine out of ten people I meet within five minutes.
It’s mostly practice. When you move a lot, you get used to people. Faces start to look the same. Their patterns are eerily similar on the surface, and lots of them are eerily similar down deep, too. You start letting go of people as soon as you find them, crossing them off as soon as you write them down. Picking them up like shiny objects and tossing them away like fool’s gold. Eventually, you start detesting yourself for doing that, seeing people that way. Mercenary.
Valentine, though—I get the feeling he’s something other than fool’s gold. He’s a fragment of something different. Topaz, or tiger’s eye, or petrified wood.
I tuck my journal back into my bag. “It’s fine not to be good with people.”
“I mean, it’s not like I’m envious. I’m perfectly fine.” He flicks his hair back. “Still, people like you are so lucky, and you don’t even realize it. It’s impossible to fake being good at socializing. I get trapped inside my thoughts. I get ensnared in here.” He knocks the side of his head with the heel of his palm. “And people only like people they can understand and people who’ll be nice and accommodate them, and I couldn’t care less about that.”
“Are you sure?”
“What?”
“You sure you don’t care? I’m just saying.”
He meets my gaze properly. His eyes lay me open with a demanding and invigorating edge. I hope that wasn’t going too far.
Eventually, he shakes his head. “Why am I telling you this? You don’t care.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“What?”
“I care.”
“Why? What, do you care because I’m here? Is that how your mind works, you just go around throwing your care at whatever’s within range?”
“Why not? Not like I’m going to run out.”
Valentine unleashes a mighty sigh. “Okay, Lucas. All right.”
In spite of the exasperated tone, the sound of him saying my name feels like a tiny acceptance. His voice hangs in the air a minute, bobbing in the wind. We both turn to our lunches, letting the silence settle.
“So,” I say after inhaling my sandwich, “you think you’ll go to Juniper’s party this weekend?”
“No. I’m sure I’ll be able to talk to her before then.”
“About what?”
He tightens his thin lips. “Something personal.”
“Ah,” I say. It makes sense, his being interested in Juniper. She was always a different kind of smart from Claire—the quiet, terrifying sort of smart. Seems like Valentine’s type.
Strangely, something near my heart feels deflated, but I keep my voice bright. “I could get you her number, dude. She texted me yesterday, asked if I could hook her up.”
“Hook her up?”
“With drinks. Liquor.”
“What? You’re responsible for all that?”
“Oh yeah. Dealing is kind of my bad hobby. I should’ve taken up, like, scrapbooking or something.”
“Is it profitable?”
“Yeah, that’s sort of the point.” I unzip the front pocket of my backpack and pull out a rubber-banded roll of tens and twenties. Valentine stares. Then he laughs a surprisingly clear, loud laugh. “What?” I say. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing’s funny. It’s just, no wonder you like everyone, when they’re throwing their money at you.”
“I’d like them anyway. Most people are harmless.”
He lets out a disgusted, mumbling noise. “If by ‘harmless’ you mean boring, hypocritical, and self-serving, then sure, they’re—”
“Dude. That’s really mean.”
His mouth snaps shut.
“Don’t give me that look,” I say, laughing. It’s like somebody smacked his whole family. “I mean, you don’t have to love everyone in the world, but you don’t have to be all, I detest humanity and all it stands for!”
“That isn’t what I said,” he squeaks, his ears flushing bright red. “All I ‘detest’ is when people are boring, hypocritical, and self-serving. Which seems to be a disproportionately high percent of the population. So—so there.”
I hold the question inside for a long second, but in the end, it trips off my tongue: “Does that include me?”
He stares at his knees for a long minute before mumbling, “We’ll see.”
That he doesn’t hate me yet is a tiny admission, one that makes me feel weirdly proud. I smile wide, fold my hands behind my head, and lean back on the hill with a contented sigh.
Valentine shoots me a look. His gaze is a laser-sharp ray, aimed down at me. He’s as narrow as a reed, and if I had to guess, barely five foot five. But with me lying here, and with the power of his colorless, unreadable eyes, he towers like a Titan.
When he looks away, he’s just a kid again. “You know, you’re interesting.”
“You say that like it’s a surprise.”
“It is a surprise. This doesn’t really happen, ever, but I am interested by you.” He thinks for a second and then says, “So you can cross that off your to-do list, I suppose.”
I grin, grabbing and throwing my journal at him, and he lets out a startled laugh, snatching the book out of the air. In retort, he throws it at my face. I don’t dodge fast enough. It smacks me right in the head, stars burst in my vision, and he yelps, “Oh my God! Are you all right?”
As the world comes back into sight, the mixture of horror and alarm on Valentine’s face emerges, and it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks. I lean back on the grass and howl with laughter. After a second, he starts laughing, too—nervously at first, then with something like relief. The clear sound fills up the air like light. Our laughter echoes off the brick face of the west wing. Off those rosebushes pruned and shivering in the shade. Off that vast bowl of the Kansas sky.
I ALWAYS HEAR PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT MONDAYS, but Tuesday is the true evil of the week. You still have the whole week ahead, and you’re already exhausted. During the dragging haze of fifth-period English on Tuesday, I’m so worn down, all I can do is write my first-act monologue on my desk, lazily drawing the words.
You tell me, “Don’t be ungrateful, Faina. Don’t be loud, Faina; don’t question, Faina; don’t ask for a thing, Faina! Don’t say a word, Faina!” Am I not allowed to speak, to ask? To grasp for more? Am I not allowed to yearn, to live, as my life trickles down like a bead of honey from a comb—it will fall soon, Father, don’t you see?
“Kat?” says Mr. García.
I flatten my hand over the writing. “Uh, what?” I try not to feel twenty-five pairs of eyes fixing on me.
“Prospero. Any idea what he might symbolize?”
Shit. The Tempest. Definitely didn’t read it. “Does it matter?” I say instinctively.
“Ha. Interesting question,” García says, resting his yardstick on his shoulder. “Does symbolism matter?”
He pauses for an overlong moment, as if he’s legitimately wondering whether it doesn’t matter and his whole job is a lie. Then he says, “Here’s the thing. When we look at symbols, we’re playing God. Symbolism gives us a bigger picture than just actions and events. That lens organizes stories and gives them resonance; it adds an order we never see in the chaos of the real world. As for The Tempest, symbolism matters especially with Prospero, who’s often read as . . .” He writes across the chalkboard, his handwriting freakishly close to Times New Roman. “Shakespeare’s mirror, guys. A shameless self-insertion, basically.”
He puts down the chalk and carefully brushes white dust off his jacket. “So, let’s turn to page thirty-six in the text . . .”
I go back to writing on my desk.
When the bell rings, García says, “Kat, could I see you for a second?”
The rest of the students mutter and snicker to one another. I shove through to the front, ignoring them. “Yeah?” I say, stopping before García’s desk as people file out.
“What class do you have next?” he asks, sitting down.
“Nothing. Free period.”
“Great, that’s great. Want to sit down?”
“Not . . . particularly?” I glance at the door. The last person out shuts it with a click.
“Suit yourself,” he says. “I wanted to ask if you’re doing okay.”
“Why would I not be okay?”
He shrugs. “There are lots of reasons you could be not okay, from personal issues to a problem with this class, which could explain why you haven’t turned in an assignment for three weeks now.”
Ah. So it’s about that. He could’ve just said so.
“So I’m failing, huh?” I say. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, first of all, start coming to class regularly,” he says. I’m surprised he hasn’t brought it up before now. García has this militant attendance policy for himself—he says that as long as one student shows up, he owes it to us to be there to teach, no exceptions.
It’s actually sort of gross. He was sick for maybe half of September and still didn’t miss class. Though, to be fair, he didn’t get anyone else sick. Probably because, in true germophobe fashion, he has, like, twelve things of hand sanitizer lined up on his desk.
He opens one of his drawers, thumbs through several binders with color-coded tabs, and unclips a sheet of paper. “I’ve got a makeup assignment here,” he says, handing me the sheet. “An essay on The Tempest. It’ll turn your last two zeroes into fifties. Won’t exactly get you an A, but it’ll help.”
I stuff the page into my backpack, looking at García skeptically. He has to know I haven’t read this play. He can’t be that idealistic.
He doesn’t say anything, so I assume we’re done. I half turn, but he says, “Kat, wait.”
I stop. “What?”
“I was serious, you know, asking if you were okay.” He folds his hands. “This isn’t just about the class. It’s barely November; the course is graded year-long. You can get your grade up by May. I know you can.”
Not the way you grade things, I want to say. The last essay I got back from the guy looked as if it took a bath in red ink.
“I’m serious,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of grades between now and then. You stay on top of things, do that makeup work, and you’ll be fine. That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“So . . .”
“It’s that alongside your missing assignments and—today excepted—your lack of class participation, I haven’t seen you smile or laugh or even talk to anyone in weeks. Here or at rehearsal.”
The accusation jolts me. “Um, okay, have you been keeping notes or something?” I say, knowing how defensive I sound. “What does it matter to you if I’m smiling? Am I, like, obliged to be happy?”
“No, of course not. But if there’s anything I can do to—”
“Can you please stop?” I make an exasperated motion. My backpack slips off my shoulder and smacks the tile. “Why is everyone so obsessed with evaluating me?”
García’s heavy eyebrows rise. My head pounds. It’s quiet.
It sinks in fast: I just yelled at a teacher. As my voice fades from the air, my instinct is to run, but my feet are iron, soldered to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I say hoarsely. “I shouldn’t have—”
García raises his hand, and I fall quiet. He wipes the chalk dust off his palms with a healthy glob of hand sanitizer. “May I say something?”
“Free country,” I mumble.
“You’re, what, sixteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen. Okay.” He nods toward a desk in the front row. “Want to sit?”
I sit, looking down at my hands. They’re green-white in the fluorescent light.
He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “So, Kat—and I’m not saying this is the case for you, but the main thing I remember from being your age was feeling trapped. There was so much I was ready to do. Move out, drive off, live alone.”
What he’s saying feels familiar, which is strange, since I hardly ever think about getting out of Paloma. It takes too much energy to want things like that, to think about the future as less than impossibly far away.
“They’ll let you go soon,” he says. “It’s less than two years before you’re through with Paloma High. And in the meantime . . . well, I’m not telling you to keep your chin up and put on a smile. I’m just saying, you’ve got a million possible futures waiting ahead. Maybe for now, you should focus on imagining what they might look like.”
My lips quiver. Then desperate words elbow their way out. “How am I supposed to focus on years from now? Half the time I barely have enough energy to hold on one more day.”
“So hold on one more day,” he says. “That’s all you need, is to wake up and say, one more. And once you make it through, you wake up the next morning, and you say it again. One more. You hold on for enough one-more-days, they’ll turn into months and years, and before you know it, you’ll have met so many wonderful people and discovered a million hidden things. All one day at a time.”
Without his glasses, García’s eyes are so dark, so compassionate,
it hurts to look at him. The conviction in his voice stirs something thick and forgotten in my chest. How can you promise that? I want to yell, but I don’t allow myself another outburst.
“I just scare people off,” I say quietly.
“Really?” García says. “Hate to break it to you, but the cast thinks you’re cool.”
“They what?”
“Emily was telling me after rehearsal the other day that you inspire her. She’s only a freshman, you know—she looks up to you.”
I nearly laugh. Kind, quiet Emily thinks I’m something to look up to? How does that make sense? “It’s a matter of time,” I say. “Some people might want to try talking to me or whatever, but they’ll realize I’m not worth it eventually.”
“Why do you think that?”
I open my mouth to tell him how Olivia and I have grown apart, but I stop. It wasn’t that Olivia called it quits—I’m the one who’s gotten sick of people. Not her. Ever since Mom left . . .
That’s it, I guess. She’s the one who didn’t think I was worth it. A cold, familiar hand presses down on my chest, just as painful after two and a half years. You’re someone even a mother couldn’t love.
I look up at García. I’ve been quiet a long time. “I don’t know why I think that—I just do.”
“Kat,” he says, his voice soft, “you do not deserve to be lonely.”
I grip the sides of the plastic chair so tightly, it hurts.
García studies me for a second, leans back, and puts his glasses on again. A long minute passes. Eventually, I pry myself from my seat, lift my backpack, and go for the door. In the threshold, I glance over my shoulder.
“I’ll see you at rehearsal,” he says.
“Yeah.” I hardly hear the word drip from my lips.
My feet wander. They take me down the hall. I find myself out in the courtyard, dazed, standing in the beating sun and the icy wind.
Standing there, I feel overwhelmingly alive.
AT THE END OF LUNCH ON THURSDAY, I HUSTLE INTO Mr. García’s room ten minutes early to set up for our presentation.
Matt’s already moving desks into clusters for stations. “Hey,” he says.
Seven Ways We Lie Page 13