I could just quit school and hit the road. The thought hit me the same way it always did—all of a sudden and hard enough to knock my thoughts right off the track. I sighed. I wanted a high school diploma. I was only sixteen years old. If I left, I’d be homeless. I had nowhere to go. Mom’s family was gone, long dead, and she’d blown through the small inheritance she’d gotten from them by purchasing our trailer—and thank goodness she’d done that—before buying more drugs and alcohol. At the very least, I had a roof over my head. I wasn’t homeless; I wasn’t on the streets.
I had to stay the course. Work this summer to save everything I could. When I wasn’t in school, I had more hours to earn. I took a deep breath. I needed to stay the course. Even if it was just in my head, a high school diploma was something I could earn, something I could know I had done. It would be a tangible sign of my having survived this.
I steeled my shoulders. I could do this. I had to somehow stay the course, stay focused, and not run from town like my life depended on it. I wasn’t in danger. Things were hard, but I was okay. I lifted my head and stared into the stacks. For just a second, goose bumps broke out all over my arms and then seemed to flee my skin just as fast.
What was that? I shuddered. Sometimes, I could downright spook myself. There was nothing in the stacks, nothing that should make me nervous, except maybe some old dusty books. I collected my stuff. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to get any work done.
Maybe it was going to be the kind of day where I didn’t really accomplish anything. Work was pretty mundane, all of the excitement of Ace being there the day before gone. Some nights dragged, and it was proving to be one of them.
But when I came outside, Tanner sat on the hood of his car, raising his eyebrows when he saw me approach. “Hey there.”
I shook my head. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
“Well, I thought I could pick you up. We’ll leave your car here, and then I’ll take you to meet the guys at a place where we sometimes hang out on the outskirts of town. Like maybe you could use some fun, and we can have dinner or whatever on the way over there.”
He threw in that last bit like it was an afterthought, when my sense that was always on alert about people pitying me recognized it as the truth. Tanner wanted to feed me. “I had a granola bar a few hours ago. I swear, I’m not starving.”
Tanner put out his hand, and before I could overthink it, I linked my fingers with his. “I’d be starving if that was all that I ate. Besides, it was hours ago, so surely you can eat again. We’re teenagers. Didn’t you hear, we’re supposed to have endless pits for stomachs?”
I laughed, despite the feeling that having to take charity always caused in me. “I thanked you for that coffee, right?”
“You did.” His smile fell. “I know we just met, but I feel like I’ve known you a long time. That’s never happened to me before. Does it happen to you?”
“No.” But I did feel that way…and also, I didn’t. “Somehow, it’s like I’ve known you, but you’re also brand spanking new and exciting. That makes me nervous, like you’re all about to pull the rug out from under me and I’ll regret not being more cautious.”
He took my other hand. “That’s not who we are. I mean…we’re fucked-up. We have secrets. Big ones. You don’t want to know them. And there might come a time you’ll wish you didn’t know us because we’re just so screwed up, but it won’t be because we did anything to hurt you. That’s not the kind of humans we are.”
That was a funny way to put it. I almost pointed that out—they all said they had secrets, and there was only so many times I could hear them mention it before I’d have to ask what they meant. Only I didn’t want this to end tonight. Reality was a cold, harsh master, and if I pushed this too far, I wouldn’t get to go have fun. It would end.
“Okay, I believe you. So…dinner and fun? It’s late. What is there to do this late at night? We’re not exactly in a city, where things are open.”
He grinned. “Come along, Maci. There is a lot going on. I love that you don’t know about it. How are you this person? How are you sheltered from the shit around here?”
“The thing about being who I am is people don’t really invite me to do things. So even though I live where I live, and my mother is sometimes a junkie” —I winced as I said the word. I almost never said it aloud. Thinking it was one thing, saying it to Tanner felt like more of a betrayal somehow— “I don’t have people to do things with. I’m just busy. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Like I’m so low, I’m untouchable.”
He squeezed my hands. “I’m touching you. Screw everyone in this town. They’re either total lunatics or morons. I can never decide which one. You know what? Never mind. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” He nodded toward my car. “We’ll come back for it.”
I let him lead me away because that was what I wanted to do. What he was describing was a night I’d never had. Sure, I used to watch movies at my best friend’s house, but I’d never been out to dinner, not even once. And I didn’t know what people did to have fun. Why shouldn’t I have one night like this? Why shouldn’t I take a break?
That thought jarred me. I really couldn’t. I had to be at school in the morning and go to work the next day. “How late will we be out? I have all the obvious things tomorrow. Class. Work. I can’t… I’m not great when I’m exhausted.” I was always a little tired. That was the status quo for me, but there was a line. If I crossed it, I fell apart. Wow. I was sixteen. I sounded so old to myself. Was I aging backward? Like would I actually have energy and fun when I was sixty, since I was so constantly tired at sixteen?
“Do you work every day? We had school today, but we’re off tomorrow for some teacher thing.”
I laughed, throwing my head back. “Can you believe I had no idea what day it was?”
“I can because I just saw you do it.” His smile was huge as he pulled the car out of the parking lot. I knew nothing about cars, but his was obviously new. It just started—like, it wasn’t a game to see if it would—and it smelled clean and fresh without any kind of air freshener anywhere. “Do you work tomorrow?”
“No, unfortunately. They won’t let me work all seven days. I do work some Sundays. When I do, then I’m off Monday. Then I do the rest of the week until Saturday. Or I don’t work Sundays and it all shits. It’s complicated.” Sometimes, I couldn’t even keep it straight.
He frowned, his eyebrows sloping down when he did. “Remind me to never complain about how busy I feel ever again.”
“We all have our own version of busy. What do you do that makes you feel that way?” I didn’t want him to think of me as being too much, as too stressed, and not enough fun. I read all the memes talking about not feeling that way, about self-empowerment, but I wasn’t exactly sure how that worked when I felt like too much even in my own head. Maybe I really was just that.
He side-eyed me. “I play baseball and soccer. I do it basically to pacify my father, who wants us to look like model citizens so we don’t get looked at too much. Like, if you fit in just enough, then no one notices that you really don’t.”