By Your Side(18)

He cleared his throat and looked down at my feet and barely-there socks. “Yes.” In a surprise move, he reached around me, pulled the hood of the sweatshirt onto my head and tightened the strings so I could only see out a small opening. “That should help too.” There was a teasing sparkle in his eyes, one I’d never seen there before.

I laughed and shoved him, freeing myself from the hood.

A single overhead light clicked on. I hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten. We’d just spent the entire day in the library. Two more and this would be over.





CHAPTER 12


As much as I’d wanted to sleep on the couch in the break room, it was too cold. So here we were again, on the main floor in the library, surrounded by books. Dax had loaned me a pair of socks, as well as the sleeping bag, and I was on the ground, pulling those socks as high as possible.

“What did you do with my toothpaste?” he asked from the other side of the table. Ever since I hadn’t pulled the fire alarm an hour ago, Dax’s expression had seemed less guarded. Like maybe he trusted me a little more now. It was a good change. It felt like we had some sort of pact, like we were on the same team now, like we were in this together.

“Oh, it’s in the girls’ bathroom. I’ll go get it for you.”

I started to get up when he stopped me with, “It’s fine. I’ll get it.”

“You can’t go in the girls’ bathroom.”

“Why not?” He sounded amused.

“Because . . . because . . . huh, I guess you can. We can do whatever we want. We make our own rules here!” My voice echoed through the room. I wasn’t sure if it was my tiredness or boredom taking over, but I started to giggle and couldn’t stop.

“Should I be worried?”

“Nope,” I said through my laughter. “Go brush your teeth in the girls’ bathroom. Don’t mind me.”

Last time I’d gotten a case of uncontrollable laughter was a couple weeks ago when my brother and I ate a whole bowl of cookie dough while my mom was on a phone call. She’d come back to help us finish baking and all the dough was gone.

“You’re going to get sick. There was raw egg in that.”

I’d looked at my brother and it had probably been the sheer amount of sugar we’d just ingested, but we both started laughing. When my mom continued to be irritated, we only laughed more. Eventually we’d worn her down and she had joined in.

“You’re still laughing,” Dax said when he came back a few minutes later. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“I know.” I had pulled the cushions off several chairs and arranged them under the sleeping bag. I crawled inside and zipped it clear up to my chin. “But when I start, it’s hard to stop.”

“You do this a lot?”

“Just when I’m tired . . . or hyper . . . or happy. Oh, and sometimes when I’m nervous.”

He gave a single laugh. “So the answer is yes.”

“I guess so.” The laughing picked up again.

He stretched out on the other side of the table from me, wadding up a shirt and placing it under his head. “But eventually it stops?”

Usually by now, the person who was witnessing my laughing spell had already joined me. Dax wasn’t having it, though, which only made me laugh more. “We’re stuck in a library.”

“Good night.” He reached up to the table between us and turned out the light.

“You’re no fun.” My giggling worked its way down for the next several minutes and eventually stopped.

I tried to sleep, but instead lay staring at the ceiling. Maybe it was the memory I’d just had of my mom, or the darkness that now surrounded us, but worry inched its way into my mind and crawled around freely there, dispelling the levity of before. Worry about my parents trying to get ahold of me. Worry about my friends thinking I had ditched them. Worry that Avi really did like Jeff and she’d beat me to telling him at the bonfire. My brain wouldn’t shut off. I tried to distract myself by thinking of something I could talk to Dax about.

“What would your government consist of?” I asked.

“What?” Dax answered from the blackness.

“Aside from being able to brush your teeth in the girls’ bathroom. What are your rules in our fake world?”

“Rule one. No talking once the lights go out.”

I laughed. “I would veto that rule immediately.”

He made a breathy sound that could’ve been a laugh, but it also could’ve been a sigh.

“Because we’re co-rulers in the library world.” I turned onto my side, propping myself on my elbow, even though I couldn’t see him. His body made a darker shape twenty feet from me, and I tried to focus on that. “My first rule would be games. We have to play games.”

“Head games?”

I gave a single laugh. “You’re good at those, but no. Real games.”

“Like poker?”

“Yes, like poker.”

“You like games,” he said.

“Yes.” Especially games with lots of steps and instructions where I could concentrate on those and not let my head get the better of me. Just talking about rules right now was relaxing me. Structure sometimes helped me feel safe. “What about you? What do you like?”