by Sarah Sutton
“You know I’m your best friend, right? I’ve seen you throw up pizza, eat worms, and bawl your eyes out over cartoons. If I can’t tell when you’re lying, I think you’d have to fire me.” Elijah came up close behind me, something I could feel rather than see. I knew it a moment before he placed his hand on my shoulder, encouraging me to turn around. It was a sixth sense. “Talk to me, Beanie. What’s going on with you?”
My back pressed up against the edge of the counter, my body trapped between it and Elijah, only a handful of inches separating us. I could feel the body heat seeping from him, spreading to me and nearly making me shiver. And his eyes—those dark eyes—seemed even deeper in the low lighting, staring into mine.
“Why does it have to be something with me?” I demanded, glad that my voice sounded neutral. “Why don’t you assume that you’re the one who’s being weird?”
“I’m never the weird one,” he objected lightly, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers grazing my skin as he did so. A gesture so affectionate, so like what he’d done in the closet, that I jerked away from the touch as if it burned. He raised an eyebrow in response. “See, definitely not me. Did something happen that you’re not telling me? Did Jeremy do something?”
“Jeremy?” I scoffed, shaking my shoulders in hopes of shrugging off the heavy feeling. “Jeez, no. Well, except maybe act totally and completely unlike himself yesterday because somebody freaked him out. Seriously, couldn’t you have minded your own business?”
Elijah held out his palms. “Hey, don’t yell at me. I was just trying to look out for you. I did the big-brother talk thing.”
“You’ve never done it before.”
He rolled his eyes. “I do it for every guy, Beanie. The whole ‘be on your best behavior, treat her like a princess because she is’ spiel. Jeremy’s no different.”
I stared up at him, scanning his expression for a hint of deception, but found none. Honestly, it wasn’t that surprising. It was such an Elijah thing to do. Give boys a talking-to, taking over that brother role. But that wasn’t the part I wanted him to play. “‘Treat her like a princess’? Like you said before, I ate worms as a kid. Definitely not a princess.”
Elijah smiled a little as he stepped back, allowing more oxygen to pass between us, making my heart fall in response. No, oxygen is a good thing. Space is a good thing. “Princess of Worms. Fitting. Hey, what’s this all over the table?” He moved over to where I’d left my chair pushed out and picked up a shaker of blue glitter, rattling it slightly. “Are you redecorating your bedroom? Maybe you should be the Ice Princess or something edgy.”
I rubbed my arm, still trying to fight for mind over matter. “Ha-ha. No, these are for Mrs. Keller. For the dance.”
“Why are you decorating for the dance? Even I’m not that lame. For the extra credit?”
I tried to school my features. “Why would I need extra credit?”
Elijah sat down in my seat, brushing his fingers along my finished snowflakes, careful not to upset the drying glue. “I had to do your papier-mâché project for you. I’m going to say it’s no secret that you’re not doing the best in art.”
Yeah, I guess that was kind of obvious. And I could’ve told him how bad things were for me, how close to failing my grade was, but I just couldn’t. I sat down in the chair next to him, sighing. “This will boost my grade before the end of the semester, so that’s good. I have to do 150 of these things.”
“Well, where are the rest?”
“You’re looking at them,” I said, gesturing at my finished pile. “All seven of them.”
His eyes widened with something that looked like alarm. “And you have to get these done by next Saturday? You only have seven done?”
“Judgey much?”
Elijah scooted the chair closer to the edge of the table, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt. “Break out the Thai, Beanie. We’ve got some work to do.”
“Um, no. You can’t help me.” I snatched the scissors off the table as he made a grab for them, holding them hostage against my chest. “Mrs. Keller said no enlisting help.” Or, you know, something like that.
“You’re not enlisting. I’m offering.” Elijah saw that I didn’t plan on releasing my grip on the scissors. “C’mon, Remi. You need my help. No way you’re going to get all these finished by then. Not with your other homework and stuff. Let me help.” When I still didn’t relinquish the scissors, he added, “Let me help you, because I’d bet money on the fact that you haven’t started the sculpture assignment yet.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Of course he was right. The sculpture assignment. Why couldn’t Mrs. K let me just work on these stupid snowflakes instead of having to do both? Was she trying to get me to hate art? Trying to make me fail?
Her voice echoed in my ears, threatening me. Without cheating. But what counted as cheating, exactly? Elijah offering help was different than enlisting him, right? And he was right: if he helped, that’d give me more time in class to work on that other project.
“Just a few,” I said warningly, my fingers beginning to uncurl. Along with the fingers wrapped around my heart. “I mean it. And make them subpar.”
Elijah took the scissors from me, curling the edge of his paper and aligning it with the template. “Don’t worry. Glitter makes everything subpar.”
We spent the next hour working on the snowflakes, and in the time I would have been able to finish four, we were able to get nine done. I had sixteen snowflakes, glitter-fied and all. Empty Thai containers littered around the tabletop, chopsticks sticking out, as well as a couple of forks. While I liked to at least attempt chopsticks, Elijah started off with silverware.
Elijah scrubbed at the glitter trapped against his nails, frowning. “Ugh, this isn’t coming off anytime soon, is it?”
I leaned my elbow on the kitchen table, watching him while he was distracted. The memory of us going shopping surfaced, and I remembered him saying he couldn’t imagine me naked. I couldn’t ask for a clearer indication that he had zero feelings for me. But then again, at the time of that conversation, neither had I. Could one kiss really change someone’s feelings like this?
If I kissed him now, right here under the strain of the LED pendant lights, would it be the same? Would I feel the same?
Elijah happened to glance over during my mental struggle, but when his eyes caught mine, he didn’t speak. The crooked dip to his nose caught my eye, slightly off-center on his face, and I couldn’t stop looking at the actual curvature of it. That, and all the other little things that suddenly seemed new to me. Like the fact that one eye had probably a handful more lashes than the other, or one corner of his mouth pointed a bit sharper than the other, or how there was a freckle just underneath one eyebrow.
But those were just his looks, and I couldn’t help thinking about the deeper things, too. The way he touched his lips when he was nervous, or how if he laughed too loudly, he covered his mouth. Or when he was sculpting something with clay, entirely in the zone, he’d start to subconsciously smile, like he couldn’t help it.
Those were the kind of things that girlfriends noticed because they were close enough to. Not best friends. It felt strange, noticing these things now, and all I wanted to do was find more little things about him, to know every freckle and mark on his body personally.
Elijah’s lips spread into a wide grin as he sat back in his chair, and for a sharp, fearful moment, I thought I had spoken aloud. “Ha, you blinked. I win.”
“Congratulations,” I said, leaning back into my seat while swiping my shaking fingers over my eyes. “Thanks for helping me. I’ve got a good leg up.”
“Anytime, Bean. How’s Harmony?”
I peeked at him. “Harmony?”
“Your baby sister?” He chuckled. “Is she walking yet? I haven’t seen her in so long—I can’t even imagine those chubby legs holding her up.”
I shook my head, unable to keep the small smile off my face as I thought about her. “Not yet, bu
t they hope soon. I want to be able to see it.”
“Well, if you need someone to drive you to Biscayne Park on short notice, just text me. We’ll see those first steps if it’s the last thing we do.” Elijah was still picking at his fingernails, trying to scrub away the last speck of glitter. It was good that he wasn’t looking at me—he didn’t notice my staring. “You know, Sav agreed to do the double date thing. I texted Jer and he was thinking tomorrow could be a good day. We could all just come over and do some arts and crafts together.”
I was a bottle of mixed emotions; every time someone shook me, a new one surfaced. “This is news to me.”
“I thought Jeremy would’ve called you.”
A part of me really, really wanted to start gushing about Jeremy, but for the wrong reasons. But making Elijah jealous would be impossible. And my soul felt too weary to even try. “I’m sure he’ll mention it tomorrow.”
“Do I have to say again the part where we don’t keep secrets from each other?” Elijah asked, nudging his knee against mine underneath the table.
“We keep secrets,” I corrected him this time, laying my head against my folded arms. I could smell the cleaner Mom used on the wooden surface with my nose so close, and also the lingering smell of glue. “You have yours and I have mine and we don’t talk about them.”
Elijah didn’t answer, at least not right away. From the corner of my vision, through the little sliver open near the crook of my elbow, I saw him pull his chair closer to me. Our knees connected again, but this time he didn’t move his away, allowing it to rest against mine. I felt his fingers walk their way up my skin, a tickle of a touch, barely there.
“You can tell me your secrets if you want to,” he said quietly, his voice soothing and soft near my ear. “I’ll always want to keep them.”
And then Elijah pressed his lips against the back of my head, unwittingly kissing the spot where I’d hit the shelf.
“I should get home,” he said finally, pulling away from me and scooting his chair back. The pressure of his knee disappeared. “I’ve got to work on my sculpture for the contest. Do you want me to drive you in the morning?”
“No,” I said into my arms, hoping that my muffled voice would hide the sound of tears. “I’ll see you in homeroom.”
Before, I’d been holding onto the anger, but now the feeling deflated. I knew the anger wasn’t going to last long, and now that the strength of that emotion had fled, I felt empty. There were times between us that felt totally normal—like, almost the entire time we’d been cutting out snowflakes, things had felt normal. I hadn’t been staring at his mouth or imagining his body heat enveloping me into a hug. We joked like normal, laughed like normal. But the quiet moments between us had my heart aching, wanting.
“See you tomorrow,” Elijah said, and I saw from the corner of my eye the shadow of him rising to his feet. He pressed his hand once against the spot between my shoulder blades before walking off, his socks silent on the wooden floors. I counted each of my breaths as I waited for the sound of the door to open. It took seven slow inhales and exhales and then Elijah was gone, leaving me with a torrent of thoughts and a hurting heart.
Chapter Twelve
On my way out the door Wednesday morning, I saw Mr. Greybeck backing out of his driveway, tires slipping on the slush near the storm drain. Elijah must’ve already left to pick up Savannah, because his truck was gone.
I lifted my hand as Mr. Greybeck put the car into drive, but instead of continuing past me, his sedan slowed, and he rolled his window down. “Good morning, Remi,” he said tiredly, blinking sleep out of his brown eyes. “A bit chilly to be walking, isn’t it?”
“I take the bus,” I told him, gesturing with a gloved hand. “The stop is over on Custard Street.”
“Custard Street,” he echoed. “Well, why don’t you hop in and I’ll drive you? Koski’s just down the road from the school.”
Mr. Greybeck worked at a place called Koski Printing and Shipping Company, packaging items and doing other kinds of factory work. Mom used to work there too, before she went back to school for interior design.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind riding the bus.” Okay, that was kind of a lie, but I felt bad taking him up on his offer.
His lips twitched. “Please, I know a fib when I see one. I raised two teenagers, you know. Hop in—I even have heated seats.”
“Okay, fine, if you insist,” I relented, hearing the locks disengage as I rounded the car.
Mr. Greybeck handled things much, much differently than Mrs. Greybeck, at least from my outsider’s perspective. Though I hadn’t seen either of them all that much, Mr. Greybeck still tried to carry on a semblance of normal life. Picking up extra shifts, shoveling his driveway, all sorts of things he did before everything happened. The bags underneath his eyes were dark and bruise-like, but behind them was a person, a light. His son’s arrest didn’t end his world, but merely rocked it. And I couldn’t blame him. But after everything, he was still in there. I didn’t know if I could say the same thing about Mrs. Greybeck.
As I clicked my seatbelt into place, Mr. Greybeck started down the street, a soft sort of silence hanging in the front seat. A quiet jazz song filtered out of the stereo speakers and the smell of cloves tickled my nose. “Thank you for this, Mr. G.”
“How come Elijah doesn’t drive you? With him using Terrence’s truck, it makes sense that he would.”
“He picks up Savannah,” I said, glad that my voice remained neutral. The backpack in my lap was heavy, and I shifted it to my knees.
“And you don’t like her?”
I turned to squint at him. “Why would you say that?”
“I raised two teenagers,” he repeated, as if that answered everything.
My seat started to heat up, and with the warm air puffing in my face, I found myself needing to take my gloves off. “Savannah’s nice. I think. I just don’t know her very well, so I give them space.” Hopefully that was enough, because no way was I going to go into detail in this conversation with him.
Mr. Greybeck made a noise in his throat, a mmm sound. I could see the school’s roof come into view over the wintery tree line. “She’s threatened by you.”
Me, a threat to Savannah? I could’ve laughed at the idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I wished I were. A threat. If I were a threat, that would’ve meant I had a chance of winning over Elijah, of having him to myself.
“She’s not threatened,” I said. “We just don’t know each other very well.”
“Have you tried getting to know her better?”
Despite his prying, it actually felt kind of nice to talk about this with him. Maybe it was the steady timbre to his voice, slow and rich, like an audiobook. “No,” I said as he turned his sedan into the parking lot of the school, gripping my backpack strap. “I haven’t tried. But maybe I should.”
Elijah’s dad pulled right next to the curb of the school and pressed the unlock button. “I’ll try to persuade my son to drive you more often, though I’m not sure how effective that will be. He doesn’t listen to me much these days.”
“Really?” That seemed a little strange to me. Elijah was a goody two-shoes.
“I think it’s the stress of Terry getting to him,” he confessed, rubbing his hand over his peppery beard. “I try, you know. To talk to him, to live life the way we used to. But things are…different now. His mother hasn’t been able to get over it either, not really. They’re both convinced if they don’t talk about it, things will be fine. And it hit Elijah the hardest. He really looked up to Terry, you know. Elijah was Terry’s wingman for almost everything, and I worry about him.”
Again, the mention of Elijah’s brother made me feel tense, especially since it was coming from Mr. Greybeck. I couldn’t think of a good response, so I just sat there, watching his face shine blue in the dashboard lights.
“Although,” Mr. Greybeck went on, “it’s a good thing Elijah wasn’t his wingman for everythi
ng. Don’t you think?”
An image raced across my vision, nearly making me dizzy. Elijah with a ski mask on, fake gun in hand. Elijah in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs. The idea left me feeling off-kilter. “Yeah,” I responded, sounding dazed. “Definitely.”
I had been right last night: Jeremy broached the topic of a double date when he ambushed me at lunch.
A foot kicked my shin underneath the lunch table, effectively tearing me from the stew-and-brew glare I’d been shooting at my mashed potato casserole. “Ow,” I said immediately, locking eyes with Eloise, who sat across the table, on the other side of Elijah.
She was presumably the culprit, given how bug-eyed she looked. “Hottie incoming.”
It was dumb, so dumb and so obvious, but I couldn’t help it; my eyes lifted involuntarily to Elijah’s. My insides jolted in surprise to find him already watching me, expressionless. I knew this was hard for him, being in the lunchroom. Since everything that happened with Terry, I knew he liked to keep his head down, and being in the center of the lunchroom was so not inconspicuous. More than anything, I wanted to ask him if he was okay, if he wanted to go to the library to eat or something, but I didn’t open my mouth. Instead, I pulled away to figure out who exactly Eloise was talking about, and came face-to-face with a smiling Jeremy Rivera.
“Hey, sweet thang,” he said, leaning close to me and pressing both of his palms against the table. Jeremy bent his head down and pressed his soft lips to my cheek, quick enough for the cafeteria monitor to miss it, quick enough that I didn’t have time to dodge it. “I realized last night when I was thinking about you that I don’t have your cell number.”