“You’re going somewhere public, though, right?” Mom shouts after us once we’re already halfway down the walk.
I spin around so I’m walking backward. “Yes, Mom, don’t worry! We’re going to go make out somewhere super public!” I shout back at her.
She shakes her head at me, and I whirl back around to look at Grayson, whose cheeks are flushed so adorably pink, I could kiss them. When I showed my cousin Charlotte a picture of him online, she gave me pretend crap for dating another white guy, but if I only dated black guys, my pool of options would just be a puddle. There are two other black guys in my whole grade, and just sharing a skin color doesn’t make us magically fall in love.
“So, where are we going?” I ask, as I hear the door click shut behind us.
“It’s a surprise.”
My stomach grumbles with either excitement or hunger or both. “It’s somewhere to eat, though, right? I haven’t eaten supper.”
He laughs. “Yes. Do you need me to tell you where? I can tell—”
“No! No. Surprises are good.” I love surprises.
We’ve made it to the bus stop, and Grayson leans against the signpost, all cool and nonchalant. Tonight’s going to be epically awesome; I can already tell.
“So that was your mom?” Grayson asks, tilting his head toward our street.
“Yeah, sorry, she’s usually buried in a spreadsheet. Not sure what made her decide to surface tonight.”
“What does she do?”
I glance up at the bus sign, wondering which of the three listed buses we’re taking. “Marketing consultant. Runs her own business. She’s been working like twelve-hour days.”
“And your dad?”
I kick at the ground. “He . . . died when I was four.”
Grayson straightens so he’s no longer leaning against the signpost. “Oh, I’m sorry. That sucks.” Then he starts telling me about his grandpa who died a couple of years ago, and it must not occur to him that my siblings are too young to have been born before my bio dad died, because he doesn’t ask about them, so I don’t tell him about Stephen-the-Leaver at all.
Which is good, because Stephen-the-Leaver deserves to be left out of the story. He doesn’t belong in my story. Not anymore.
A bus pulls up, and it must be the right one because Grayson marches toward it, and I follow, and the strangeness of not mentioning stupid Stephen-the-Leaver follows both of us right onto the bus and settles onto the seat beside me. I shove it away and try to focus in on Grayson’s story, but the white couple seated across from us on the bus is fighting, and even though they’re doing it quietly, with looks and gestures instead of shouts and names, it’s super distracting.
No one else seems to notice. Grayson certainly doesn’t. He’s chattering away to me about—to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what. I thought he was talking about archery. That’s definitely where this story started, I’m sure of it. But he just mentioned his grandma’s house, and I can’t think how that relates.
“That’s so cool,” I say.
“I know, right?” he says, then we’re both quiet for a minute or two as the bus turns onto a main street.
The guy—across the aisle, not Grayson—shifts his body away from the girl. His black toque is pulled so low it covers his eyebrows, which almost makes him look angrier, as if his entire toque is one big, furrowed eyebrow. The girl thrusts the blanketed bundle in her arms at him, then drops a bottle unceremoniously into his lap.
“You feed him,” she says loudly.
Mom and Stephen-the-Leaver used to fight like that. Back when he was a person I mentioned when people asked me about my parents and not just a stupid nobody. If this couple splits up, maybe the guy won’t even seek custody of that baby. Then he won’t have to worry about feeding it.
Except it’s probably his real kid. So probably he will.
Worrying about this random couple when I’m on my very first date with Grayson is ridiculous.
I leap to my feet. “Let’s get off here.” I skip toward the door, where an elderly man has just disembarked. It’s already dark outside, but the glimmering streetlights call to me the same way the warring couple pushes me away.
“But wait—we’re not—” Grayson calls after me, but I’m already off the bus.
It’s been almost a week without fresh snow, and the snowbanks lining the street outside the bus are already grimy with dirt. I stand on the snowy, gray, business-lined sidewalk, and for one long heartbeat, I’m afraid that Grayson won’t follow me.
But then his adorable Boxer Boy self pops out the open bus door and onto the sidewalk beside me. His crinkled forehead is confused, not angry, which is a sudden relief even though it didn’t occur to me until precisely this minute that he might get mad.
“So,” he says, raising one eyebrow in a perfect arch, “you really needed a payday loan?”
I laugh as the bus pulls away with a groan and reveals all four corners of the intersection. Payday loans. Payday loans. Payday loans. Pawnshop.
“Come on, Boxer Boy,” I say, setting off down the street, “let’s have some fun.”
“Meg,” he calls after me, “your mittens!” He holds them out to me—my favorite fluffy white ones, with embroidered eyes and noses and a little flap of pink above the thumb for a tongue—and I suddenly realize how cold my hands are. I must have left them on the bus. I lose a lot of mittens.
“Oh my gosh, thank you! My hero,” I say as I pluck them out of his hand and slide them on.
Kat would probably smack me if she were here. She hates the idea of guys as superheroes and girls as helpless princesses. But Grayson did once call me “Flash,” so he obviously doesn’t think I’m a helpless princess. I spin around, imagining a superhero cape whipping out behind me—does the Flash even wear a cape? Who knows—as I march down the street and Grayson scurries to catch up to me.
We stop at the next light. Grayson looks at me with a sort of bewildered happiness in his wide eyes and half grin, and I hook my arm through his. Which brings us awfully close.
“So, um, where are we going?” he asks. I might be imagining it, but I swear I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face with each word.
“You talk as if I have a plan. Where do you want to go?”
His stomach rumbles with an answer loud enough for both of us to hear, and though his face blooms with red again, we both laugh.
“Clearly we’re both hungry,” I say.
“Well, I did make dinner reservations. But I don’t think we’re going to make it.” He gestures in the direction of the faraway restaurant district.
We stand awkwardly at the light for a moment, and then I grab his hand.
“I have an idea.” I pull him toward the other crosswalk, perpendicular or parallel or whatever to the way we were going. The orange hand is in its final seconds of blinking down, and we have to dart across the road. We make it not quite before the light changes, but before any cars start honking.
I guide Grayson inside the 7-Eleven across the street and ask the guy behind the counter for two hot dogs. They spin round and round at the back of their glass cage, shiny with sweat. The guy grunts as he fishes them out and tucks them inside their buns, on little cardboard serving trays.
“I’ve got this,” Grayson says, and he pays while I take the dogs over to the machine on the counter that boasts “Free Chili and Cheese” and load both of them up. The chili stutters out of the machine in gross regurgitated globs, but when I close my eyes, the smell is heavenly. I wonder if angels eat chili dogs. Might be dangerous in those white robes. Though in heaven, dry cleaning is probably free.
“You ready?” Grayson asks as he sidles up beside me, and I nod and hand him one of the heaping hot-dog mounds.
We eat outside, on a bench inside a bus shelter. The wall behind us is advertising some new tablet or phone, but the side walls are plain glass, giving us a clear view of the street. Snow has started trickling down—flickering down? Sprinkling down? Whatever it’s do
ing, it’s turning the trampled ground fresh and sparkling again.
“You know, I had this whole evening worked out,” Grayson says as he swallows down the last bite of his dog. “And for the record, sitting at a bus stop eating chili dogs wasn’t part of my grand romantic plan.”
“Is that bad?” I don’t really want to know the answer, but I can’t help but ask.
Thankfully, he laughs. “Are chili cheese dogs bad?” he says as if it’s an answer, not a question, then moves his hand from his lap to my knee and looks up at me as if to check that it’s okay. The chili dog turns over in my stomach.
“Grayson, do you like me?” I ask, because he still hasn’t actually answered my question.
His eyebrows rise and his forehead crinkles in that way that I love so much. His hand is still on my knee. Its warmth seeps through the fabric of my jeans. “I didn’t think you worried about things like that.”
“What, you think I go out with boys whether they like me or not?”
“No, that’s not what I . . . I just mean that you seem so confident.”
I don’t feel confident, but I like that he sees me that way. So I lean in and kiss him. His mouth is a flicker of heat escaping through a wall of ice. His breath swirls with my breath as our lips move in unison.
When I pull away, the air that rushes in to take the place of his breath is frigid.
“For the record,” he says as he touches my cheek with his slightly sticky hand, “I do like you. A lot.”
So I lean in and kiss him again.
CHAPTER 9
LEGENDS OF THE STONE
KittyKat: behind you
[]Sythlight: thx
MEGAdawn has logged on.
MEGAdawn: LOTSCON IS GOING TO BE IN TORONTO IN MARCH
[]Sythlight: Seriously? Sweet. I’ll have to get tickets.
KittyKat: that’s cool
[]Sythlight has entered the waterlands.
MEGAdawn: LUMBERLEGS IS GOING TO BE ON THE SAME GROUND IN THE SAME COUNTRY AS ME
KittyKat has entered the waterlands.
KittyKat: hey Meg, as long as you’re on, we should talk about our project.
MEGAdawn: CAN’T TALK NOW TOO EXCITED
MEGAdawn: THIS IS SUCH A GREAT WEEKEND
KittyKat: we need to soon
MEGAdawn: gah look we can talk about it at school then you can come over on Friday and we’ll work on it then
MEGAdawn: just
MEGAdawn: be sure to show up before 6
MEGAdawn: or after
MEGAdawn: just not at 6
MEGAdawn: stupid jerkface will be here
KittyKat: ok
MEGAdawn: ugh, now jerkface has made me grumpy
[]Sythlight: HEY MEG, DID YOU HEAR LOTSCON’S GOING TO BE IN TORONTO?
[]Sythlight has entered the greenlands.
MEGAdawn: OMG WHAT? THAT’S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
KittyKat: you guys are ridiculous. I’m logging off now.
KittyKat: bye
[]Sythlight: bye :)
KittyKat has logged off.
MEGAdawn: you going to go?
[]Sythlight: For sure. You thinking of flying out here for it?
MEGAdawn: I will hijack a plane if I have to.
[]Sythlight: She’s just kidding, NSA.
MEGAdawn: um right. plane hijacking is a bad idea. but we’ll find a way.
MEGAdawn: there’s no way we’re missing out
[]Sythlight: Well, I hope you do come. Both of you.
MEGAdawn: oh don’t you worry, we will. both of us.
KAT
AT LUNCH ON MONDAY, MEG MEETS ME AT MY LOCKER AS ALWAYS. “OKAY,” I say, “so I’ve been thinking about our project—”
“Hang on—that’s what you want to talk about after the most epic weekend ever? Why aren’t we talking about LotSCON? Aren’t you going to ask me about my date?”
I blink at her. “You told me about your date all weekend.”
She leans against the locker beside mine. “That wasn’t in person, though.”
“Fine. How was your date?”
She grins. “Glorious. Now come meet Grayson.” She slams my locker door, grabs the lock out of my hand, and snaps it shut.
Here’s the thing: we can’t avoid our science project forever. I can’t avoid testing people forever.
But here’s the other thing: I do want to meet Grayson. Even though it makes my stomach twist. “Okay, but then we should go work on our project.”
She scowls. “No way. You know how I feel about homework at lunch. We’re eating with Grayson and his posse.”
My stomach twists even further. It must be facing back to front.
Meg’s expression softens. “Look, we can eat in the stairwell instead of in the caf. Then you won’t have to be so on edge.”
I’m already on edge. We started a group project today in Ancient Civilizations, and Mr. Bates put me with these two guys, Eric and Sunil, who I’ve never spoken to in my life, and who only ever seem to talk about hockey. They want to write about the impact of the Neolithic Revolution, and I don’t even know if they can spell “Neolithic.” Or “Revolution,” for that matter.
One paleontologist . . . two spelling . . . three strangers . . .
“It’s just—our project—we really should—”
“Dude, what’s going to happen if we wait until tomorrow? It’s not like the entire universe is going to implode or get mad at us or something.”
“It might.”
“Yeah, well, some days the universe is just wrong. Besides, you’re coming over on Friday. We’ll get a ton done then. Now come on.” She loops her arm through mine, then pivots us around toward the back stairwell.
I sigh, giving in. “Will Grayson know to meet us out here?”
She stops abruptly. “Good point. I’ll text him.” She grabs her phone from her pocket and taps a quick message with her arm still looped through mine. Then she slips the phone away and drags us off down the hall, where we drop our backpacks in the corner of the stairwell and sit cross-legged on the beige concrete floor.
Meg starts babbling immediately about LotSCON and all the events they’ve announced. I’m not sure why she’s so excited, since it’s across the country and there’s no way we’ll be going. At least, I definitely won’t. I don’t do planes. But I guess it is kind of cool to have something so big happening in Canada. We get passed over so often.
I’ve just pulled out my lunch when the guy Meg’s pointed out to me in the cafeteria a few times peeks over the banister, then grins and waves at Meg. “It’s this one,” Grayson shouts over his broad, bony shoulder as he comes down the rest of the stairs. His boxers peek out of the top of his pants, just like Meg said—patterned with little skulls and crossbones.
Meg leaps to her feet and bounces over to him and kisses him. On the lips. Right there in the stairwell. This guy she barely even knew a week ago. They beam at each other.
A big, teddy-bear-like guy appears behind them at the bottom of the stairs, and it suddenly feels awkward to be sitting when they’re all standing, so I clamber to my feet and stumble over.
One first kiss . . . two pirates . . .
“Grayson, this is Kat. Kat, Grayson.” Meg wiggles her hips and shoulders in an excited little half dance.
Shaking hands would be weird, so I shove my hands in my pockets and nod at him.
“Hey.” He smiles pleasantly at Meg, then at me, and then gestures at the guy behind them. “This is my buddy Roman. The other guys already went to the caf.”
“Hi,” teddy-bear-Roman says, then nods at us. Then we’re all nodding at one another like some sort of bobblehead convention.
Five bobblehead . . . six eternity . . .
Grayson pulls a deck of cards out of his backpack. “You guys want to play euchre?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. A little too eagerly, maybe, but playing cards means we don’t have to talk. Playing cards means that if eating lunch with Grayson and his bobblehead friend turns i
nto a regular occurrence—which I suspect it will—I might actually be able to survive it.
“Great.” Grayson sits down in the corner of the stairwell and, as we join him, starts to shuffle and deal out the cards, all without saying another word.
I like him already.
MEG
SOMETIMES KAT AND I DO OUR HOMEWORK TOGETHER AFTER SCHOOL, BUT we spent all our after-school time this week finishing up the questionnaire for our science project and didn’t get to any of the other stuff. Which, I know, I know, is my own fault, since I refused to work on it during our lunch periods—a rule that I stand especially firm on now that Grayson and his buddies have been eating lunch with us. Alas, it does mean that now I’m stuck doing my math homework all on my own.
I wouldn’t even bother, except that my snitch of a math teacher, Mrs. Brown, called Mom and told her that I’m failing math and that it’s because I’m not doing my homework, and Mom told me I’m grounded if I don’t start doing it.
So I settle in at the kitchen table, all by my lonesome, and give my textbook a death glare. When it doesn’t disappear in a puff of smoke, I groan and drag the bloody thing across the table toward me so it’s right in front of my face. Then I flip to the page I have listed as homework in my planner. Graphs. Tiny little graphs. An entire page of them. I groan again.
“Calculate the slope,” the page demands.
A blur of black—a bird—swoops by the kitchen window. Probably forgot to set his alarm to head south for the winter. Kenzie’s pitchy squawking floats up the stairs. She’s singing along with the obnoxious melody of her show. If you can call it singing along when she clearly doesn’t know the words. Or the melody.
“I’m not stupid,” I mumble to myself. “I can do this.” Except what does “slope” even mean? I flip through my notes and find the definition a couple of pages back, wedged between a meaningless graph and a doodle of a cat. I can draw pretty adorable cats.
“Slope = rise over run,” my notes report. Great. Now what the hell is “rise” and what the hell is “run”?
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