Tease(14)

Or right now. I’m walking toward the doors just as he’s locking his bike, and he looks up.

“Hey,” I say, for lack of anything better.

“’Sup,” he says easily, but he goes back to fiddling with the bike. I’m frozen there, pinned to the sidewalk like a weed growing out of it. The clouds overhead are heavy and dark—it’s another hot, sticky day, the kind that makes you wish it would just rain already—and I feel pinned down by the humidity, by the fact that any movement will make me even sweatier than I already feel.

“So . . . ,” I say, staring at his back. There’s an old black JanSport at his feet and his copy of Hamlet is falling out of it. “You like the book?”

He turns back around, kind of squinting at me, confused.

I point awkwardly to his feet, the backpack. “Or, I mean, the play?”

“Oh, right,” he says. He grabs his bag and pulls the zipper closed, hiding the thing I was just pointing at. “Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”

I nod. God, I haven’t talked to anyone in a really long time. Not anyone my own age, anyway. And now I keep talking to Carmichael, of all people, like I can’t help myself. He’s so weird. And he really does scare me a little bit, with the tattoos and everything.

It’s just—he’s the only one who doesn’t give me that look. That You’re the one who killed Emma Putnam look.

I realize I’m still nodding and standing there, staring at him. Carmichael isn’t giving me the look, but he’s looking right at me, and I let out a short, self-conscious laugh. “Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know—I mean—” I turn toward the doors to the school, which feel really far away, and hold my hand out, gesturing. “You going in? I mean, of course you are, I just—should we go?”

“Well, we’ve already come this far,” he says. “Why not just enter the mouth of hell?”

I laugh again, almost a snort. “Yeah,” I say. I feel like I’m just making sounds at this point, not anything even remotely like conversation. I know Brielle would completely lose it if she saw me like this. She’d probably throw me back in the car and drive away, fast, to save us all from the embarrassment. I wish she could.

But Carmichael is still standing there, a little half-smile on his face. Finally, like an act of charity, he says, “I liked Catcher in the Rye better.”

“Oh,” I say. Then, before I can get my spaz under control, I add, “I hated that one.”

“Seriously?” he says, genuinely startled.

“Sorry,” I say again, wishing I’d just walked past him instead of getting myself into this mess of a conversation. “I mean, I can see why you’d like it—I mean, I can see why people like it, not just you—”

“But especially me, right?” he says.

“No! Not—I mean—ah, shit.”

I don’t realize I’ve said this last part out loud until Carmichael’s face breaks into a smile. A real one.

“You’re weird, you know that?” he asks me.

“Easy for you to say,” I reply, but I’m joking, and I’m smiling too. And this time it actually sounds like a joke, the way I mean it to sound.

“Yeah, I’m weird too,” he says. “That’s why they keep us separated from the general population, right?” Carmichael turns and I fall into step beside him, wondering if he even knows why I’m in summer school. Maybe not—maybe he spent last year in another country, and that’s why he’s here. Or maybe he doesn’t watch the news. Carmichael definitely seems too cool to pay attention to gossip. And lawsuits.

We’ve just stepped inside the half-lit hallway when I see Beth and Cherrie at a locker up ahead. At first glance you’d think they were just standing there, talking, but I know that locker. This whole hallway makes my stomach clench. In fact, the one not totally sucktastic thing about summer school has been that I can avoid this hall, and that even if I have to walk down it, I don’t have to see flowers and stuffed teddy bears and candles piled up on the floor next to locker 8043. All that stuff got cleaned up at the end of the year. And it’s still gone, but here are Beth and Cherrie, their heads bent toward each other, like they’re sharing a secret or praying or something. Beth’s shoulders rise and shudder in a big, weepy sigh. I’m not surprised, but I have to grind my teeth together to keep from yelling at them.

Beth and Cherrie weren’t nice to Emma either. They wanted to be friends with Brielle and me as much as anyone—more, even. They laughed when Brielle made jokes at Emma’s expense. They actually sent friend requests to Fat Beyotch before the page got shut down. And the whole thing on Valentine’s Day . . . I remember watching Beth roll her eyes that afternoon, when Emma sat down on the floor next to her locker, hugging her knees and crying. Megan Corley got down there with her and put an arm around Emma’s shoulders, but Beth had said something bitchy to try to suck up to me and Brielle.

And now she’s back at that damn locker, playing the distraught BFF. I watch as Cherrie pats Beth’s arm, and a loud snort escapes me despite my locked jaw.

Beside me, Carmichael kind of jumps. And I remember—everyone knows. And at the same time, no one knows anything.

“Sorry,” I say to him, again. “I just . . . Those girls are such freaking hypocrites.”