“Thanks,” says Quin, like it’s a compliment.
CHAPTER 64
Jackson is sitting on the floor leaning against my locker. There’s virtually nobody else here this early. (Mom drove.) I was planning to be safe inside math long before the bell. He must have suspected this, because here he is, looking like he slept here.
A few weeks ago, this would have had me blushing from the inside out. Now it just makes the cement block in my belly heavier and harder.
But still, that stupid butterfly keeps beating herself against the wall 150 times a minute. She doesn’t understand there’s no point. There never has been.
Not a butterfly. My stupid heart.
He messaged me last night. Said he would have told me himself but Quin beat him to it. Said it wasn’t final yet, so nobody was supposed to know. Said once you told people you weren’t coming back the next year, they kind of stopped bothering with you.
My responses were:
No problem
Got it
[insincere sad-face emoji]
The sad-face emoji is just a sad-face emoji. There’s not a special one for insincere sad face. Only I knew it was insincere.
He said other things, too, but none of them were “This sucks” or “I hate my parents” or “Let’s run away to Stockholm and watch them award the Nobel Prize in Physics.” None of them were the kinds of things I wished he would say.
I would be less disappointed if I thought he was more disappointed. What I felt like writing was:
Just go away already. You are a ten-second mirage in the four years I’m going to spend in this stupid school and it was easier before you. I’m going to go back to the short list of things I am good at, and you are not one of them.
But obviously I wasn’t going to send that, so I ended with a GIF of a cartoon cow shrugging its shoulders and went to bed.
And now he’s sitting against my locker where I can’t just cartoon cow him. He is all bent arms and legs. He looks like a lean letter M. If I sat like that, Maude and Mavis would fill all the space between my body and my knees. I’d be like a filled-in O on a standardized test.
I hover over him waiting to open my locker.
“My mom wanted me to give you these,” he says. He hands me a paper bag. “To thank you for taking care of Quinlan yesterday. She’s never done something like that before.” The bag is warm. Inside there are fresh blueberry scones.
They smell like waking up on top of a mountain in the springtime. I mean in a fancy lodge on a mountain, not actually outdoors where a grizzly could maul you and eat your scone. At least I understand how his mom feels about me: nice girl with a big appetite. “Tell her thanks.”
I wait patiently till he gets up and out of the way of my locker, unload my books, and wonder what I’m supposed to say next. Good luck in Amsterdam? I hope there are goede relokateun aadveusers there?
“This was supposed to be the last move until Quin graduates. That’s what they said when we left Cleveland. That’s what I thought.” I’m still waiting for him to say he’s going to fight it. I keep rearranging things in my locker. “But my dad says it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he adds.
My sarcastic sniff comes out accidentally. Come on. It’s not like your dad’s an ambassador.
We’re talking again, except that this talking feels worse than not talking. I need to make this casual. I need to prove that none of this bothers me. To convince myself, at least. I don’t feel like eating with all that dead weight in my belly, but I feel like looking like I can eat. I take a scone from the bag. “Amsterdam sounds cool. Plus you can add another souvenir to your collection.”
“I don’t have a souvenir collection.”
“Sure you do. On your bookshelf. You can get a wooden shoe or a Van Gogh key chain. I don’t know what else is there. Maybe The Hague has war criminal magnets!” I’m trying to make this better. Fun. Because now all the pressure is off. I swallow a bite of the scone, which mostly stays in my throat because of the whole insides-filled-with-cement thing.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Netherlands?”
All the pressure isn’t off. I can’t stand here with him and not feel disappointed and angry and embarrassed. I let that caterpillar of an idea in, the idea of Jackson and me, and she spun and emerged and grew and stretched out her wings, and then I killed her.
I start walking toward math and Jackson follows.
“So, are you ready for the formal this weekend? I heard there will be dance trophies, and you’ve been falling behind on trophies.” Not even a smile. “You going with Elliana? Sie ist probably a sehr gut danzer.” I hate saying her real name out loud.
“No.” He sounds surprised, like he can’t figure out where I’d get that idea. In my head, that’s where. “I’m just meeting some people there.”
“Cool. That’s a good way to do it,” I say. I bet there will be a line of girls in pretty dresses waiting for him like in an episode of The Bachelor. “Or maybe there’s a wistful poets meet-up at the snack table,” I try.
“Sure.” It’s not working. He’s not picking up his side. The hallways are starting to fill up. Lots of people nod or wave at Jackson as we make our way toward first period. We pass by Mena and Khloe, who raise their eyebrows curiously. They have no idea.
In a break in the crowd, Jackson reaches out for my arm. “Greer, can you just stop for a second?” He turns to face me and takes a big breath. “I never know what you’re—”
Griffin Townsend is walking past, and I see his eyes drop from my face to my chest, just for a second. I follow his line of sight and see that there’s a piece of scone on my sweatshirt. Mavis caught it.
I pick off the crumb, and it leaves a bright purple smear right at my nipple. I wipe again and the smudge gets bigger, streaking out across my breast. I look at my hand and see that violet has bled into the pads of my fingerprints.
There is now a bull’s-eye on one boob. A purple boob’s-eye. Like Barney the Dinosaur tried to feel me up. I rub with my sleeve, but it makes it worse.
I start to panic. I could run to the bathroom and try to scrub it out, but blueberry stains, and then I’d have a wet purple nipple. Kyle Tuck and his friends would think I was spontaneously lactating grape juice.
Can I call Mom and tell her to pick me up? And is “boob stain” an excused or unexcused absence? Can I hold a notebook in front of my chest for the entire day? I’ve done it before.
No, wait! My jacket! It’s going to be hot and weird to sit through class in a winter jacket, but I’ll tell people I’m cold.