Since She Went Away(3)

“Do you want a drink or something?” Jared asked. “I think we have some Cokes. Maybe my mom made iced tea.”

“I’m fine,” Tabitha said. She looked back at him, offering a smile that revealed a dimple on her left cheek.

Jared loved the smile—even though her teeth weren’t perfectly straight—and he loved the dimple. He liked to caress her cheeks when they were close, making out and kissing her lips, her ears, her neck, running his fingers over her soft skin because he’d never felt anything like it. But that answer to his question about the drink. I’m fine. Tabitha said it all the time about almost everything. He thought of it as her motto, her catch-all response to most questions, and Jared couldn’t help thinking of it as a line in the sand, something that always reminded him he’d know her some, but not as much as he wanted. He hoped—and kept hoping—that would change, that he’d hear that phrase less and less as time went by.

He’d only met her three weeks earlier on the icy January day she showed up at Brereton Jones High School in Hawks Mill, Kentucky. The semester had already started and, in homeroom that first day, Tabitha was escorted in by a guidance counselor. She carried no backpack or pens, no papers or books, and she looked tired, like someone who’d just come off a twelve-hour shift in a factory. Jared didn’t care. Tired or not, Tabitha was beautiful: almost as tall as he was, with fair freckled skin and green eyes. Her hair looked a little greasy that day, and she wore it back, but that only called more attention to her full lips, which Jared stared at while Tabitha explained to another girl that she’d just moved to Hawks Mill from Florida. They’d driven all night, she said, she and her dad. He’d just started a new job in town. . . .

But Jared didn’t care about the details. He wanted to—needed to—meet her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted anything—anyone—so much in his life. It felt like hunger, a physical craving.

And he did meet her that very first day during sixth period. Jared went to the library instead of the cafeteria, where he normally spent his study halls, goofing around with his friends, drinking Cokes and watching stupid videos on their phones. But he knew he had a math quiz that day, and he knew if he went to the cafeteria he’d fail.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about Tabitha since seeing her in homeroom. He’d spent the whole day hoping she’d end up in another one of his classes, and short of that, he hoped for a glimpse of her in the hallway. But those things didn’t happen, so when he walked into the library and saw her sitting alone at a table, reading—of all things—a book by Dean Koontz, his heart raced like a motorboat.

She liked Dean Koontz. Jared loved Dean Koontz. And she just so happened to be reading one of Jared’s favorites: Whispers.

Jared didn’t stop. He didn’t open his math book, and he didn’t sit at another table. He went right up to Tabitha and complimented her on her taste in books. He knew he was taking a risk, approaching the new, very pretty girl and striking up a conversation. Jared felt the same that day in the library as the time he first went off the high dive at the community pool. He remembered the slow climb up the ladder, the terrifying view of the blue water on all sides. He knew kids were lined up behind him, and to turn away or back down meant instant humiliation.

So he jumped.

And how good it felt—the free fall through the air, the glorious splash into the water. The bubbles streaming from his mouth as he sank, and then the steady rise back to daylight. The terror and the glory.

He jumped with Tabitha too. He didn’t think, didn’t turn around and walk away.

He jumped.

She looked up from Whispers and smiled, the dimple catching his eye. “I read this before, a few years ago. And then I found it on the shelf here. It’s one of my favorites, so I just started rereading it.”

“It’s one of my favorites too,” Jared said, slipping into a chair across from her. She hadn’t asked, and he didn’t care. He acted, his body taken over by some force that allowed him to behave like a confident, mature human being. They talked about other books they liked. And movies. And food.

He never even opened the math book. He later failed the quiz.

He didn’t care.

It all seemed to be leading to this moment in his room.

And so she stood before him, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with one hand as she studied the books on the shelf next to his desk. “You really do like Dean Koontz,” she said.

“He’s the man who brought us together.”

She turned and smiled again, then picked up the framed photograph on the top of the shelf. “Who’s this?” she asked. “Is this your dad and your brothers?”

“Half brothers. Yes, that’s them.”

“Your dad looks like you. I can see it in the eyes.”

“I guess so.” Jared didn’t want to talk about his dad. Not because his absence was particularly painful. It really wasn’t anymore. His dad had left when he was five, and he remembered that pain very well. It felt as if he cried for weeks, stumbling around with his vision blurred by tears, asking if Dad was ever going to come back. His mom put on her best face for him, but even then he could see how much it hurt her. At night, after she put him to bed, he’d hear her crying through the thin walls of the apartment they lived in back then. Nothing ever scared him as much as the sound of an adult crying. “I can never see those things,” he said to Tabitha.