Tease(35)

And then I realize he’s probably talking about ninth grade, when everyone called him Bomb Boy for basically the whole year. I’d forgotten all about that until just this second, but of course, it makes sense. Someone said there’d been a bomb threat at school—turned out that wasn’t even true, but Carmichael was already into heavy metal and wearing black all the time, so the name stuck. I try to remember if I called him that. I’m sure I did.

I look toward the window, a few tables away, and notice a woman staring at me. At least, I think she was staring—she sort of glances away when I catch her eye, like she’d been staring right up until then.

Turning back to Carmichael I try to change the subject. “What’s that tattoo about, anyway?” I ask him, pointing to his wrist.

He turns his arm, looking at the infinity symbol like he’s just noticing it. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Well, it’s an infinity symbol.”

“I know,” I say. “But . . . why do you have it?” I wonder if this is too personal to ask or something. Too late now, though.

He shrugs. “I lost someone,” he says. “And I like to remind myself that forever doesn’t always mean forever. Or, you know, forever means different things.”

I nod, though I’m not really sure I know what he’s talking about exactly. “Like, gone but not forgotten?” I guess.

“Kind of, yeah,” he says.

“Was it—was it someone close to you? That you lost?”

“My grandma,” he says. “She was still pretty young, but she had a good life, you know, all that. But I miss her.”

I nod again. I love my grandmother, my mom’s mom, though I don’t get to see her very much. I start to tell Carmichael he was lucky to know his grandma so well, but I don’t know if that’s the wrong thing to say.

He leans back in his chair and gives me a little smile, and suddenly I feel a heat creeping up the back of my neck, like his gaze is a furnace. I grab my drink from the table, hurriedly pulling the rest of the coffee through the straw, making the last few ice cubes rattle. When the slurping sound gets really loud, Carmichael laughs.

“You’re weird,” he says.

Despite everything, I smile. “You’re always saying that, but in fact, you’re weird,” I say.

“Yeah, I know. Remember? That’s how I can tell you’re weird, too.”

He pushes out his chair and tosses his empty cup in the trash can behind us. As I get up to follow him out, I feel lighter. I’m still smiling a little, wondering if maybe I’ve found someone who really does understand. I mean, we have this dumb inside joke now, right? Maybe I’m not completely alone.

But just as we’re opening the door, I look back over at the woman who was staring at me before—and meet her eyes again. This time she doesn’t look away. I do; I swivel my head around and march out the door like nothing happened. But I saw that look. I can still feel it.

Bully.

“When you look back on it now, do you think maybe you and Brielle might have been kind of scary? That Emma might have been afraid of you?”

Therapist Teresa peers at me earnestly over her glasses, and I practically have to close my own eyes to keep from rolling them.

“Um, what?” I ask. “We didn’t scare her.”

“You don’t think so? It was kind of two against one, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I mean . . .” I pause. “You make it sound like we were, like, Chris Brown or something.”

She tilts her head to the side, asking a question without saying anything (for once).

“You know, the singer? Beat up Rihanna?”

“I know who you mean,” says Teresa, “I’m just not sure how that applies here.”

“Whatever, I just mean,” I say with a big sigh, “we didn’t, you know, beat Emma up. She didn’t have a black eye or whatever.”

“Yes,” Teresa agrees. “But you made her afraid, right? To go to her locker? To go to her car?”

“She did that to herself,” I say, crossing my arms. “And we weren’t the only ones! Everyone at school said stuff about her—they said stuff about a lot of people.” It’s freezing in here again, and I forgot my sweater.

Before coming over here I dropped Carmichael off at his bike and said I’d see him at school next week. But as soon as I was alone in the car, I remembered—Brielle will be at school. I’ll have someone to hang out with again. I figure they can’t keep us apart when we’re at Elmwood, even if we’re technically not supposed to talk. And besides, what am I going to do without her there? Where would I sit at lunch? Carmichael has his own friends. Brielle will totally burn me for hanging out with a Carless, and Carmichael’s friends would probably think I’m a bitch, just like everyone else.

Teresa is just quietly studying me, and it takes me a second to remember what I was saying.

“Look,” I say. Trying to explain the basic laws of high school to this woman—to any adult—is freaking exhausting. “Emma transferred to Elmwood two weeks into the year, slept with a bunch of guys before we even had winter break, and was constantly acting like a total freak. If she was worried about walking to her car, it wasn’t because of whatever me and Brielle might say. Everyone was saying it. Because of how she was. Because it was true.”