You Know Me Well(37)

“You. Yeah, you.”

I am not paying attention because I worry it will cost me too much. But when I feel a kick against my leg, I turn around and find Katie’s friend Lehna. Her angry friend Lehna. Her other two friends are behind her. I feel awful, but I’ve forgotten their names.

“Where the hell is she? What the hell have you done with her?”

I ignore Lehna and look over to see my mom is still talking to Brad. From the way she’s holding her purse, I think they’re discussing where she got it.

Lehna kicks me again. “Focus, fratboy,” she demands. “Katie has been acting weird ever since she met you. I want an explanation.”

Do I want Ryan to be here? Why isn’t Ryan here? Is he with Taylor?

Lehna is waving her hand in front of my face.

“Leave me alone,” I say, and start to push toward Wall Six.

“Not so fast,” Lehna says, grabbing my shirt. More people are watching us now.

Ryan is one of them.

Ryan.

I want him to look awful, but he doesn’t look awful at all.

He doesn’t look happy, either.

He looks checked out.

I cannot see him without it having an effect. I have never been able to look at him without having some kind of reaction. Happiness. Desire. Weakness.

Lehna is pulling harder.

I reach up and take her hand off my shirt.

“Don’t touch me!” she yells.

I don’t see Taylor. Ryan was talking to someone, but it wasn’t Taylor. It was Anna from school.

Of course. Taylor wouldn’t be here.

Taylor is still a secret. Because Ryan still has a secret.

I want to laugh. And at the same time, I start imagining punishment. It would be so easy. All I have to do is go up to him and kiss him. No. All I have to do is tell four gossipy people the truth. No. All I’d have to do is tell my mom, who will mention it to his mom. No. All I have to do is kiss him. All I want to do is kiss him.

Everyone will know. And if everyone knows, there will be no reason to hide. And if there’s no reason to hide, there will be no reason to be apart.

I think Lehna is screaming at me. But that doesn’t matter. I am walking his way and he is watching me walk over and I think, yes, I actually have the power here. All I have to do is kiss him in front of all these people. All I have to do is kiss him like it’s the most natural thing, like practice has made perfect.

I love that he has no idea. As I’m getting closer, he has no idea. He is pretending that he doesn’t feel anything. He is pretending that everything’s okay. He is pretending that it is no big deal for me to walk across a crowded room for him after crying all day.

I am going to do it. I am going to show him. I am going to show everyone, and then it will be all right.

No. Don’t.

That’s Katie’s voice. In my head. I stop, look around a second to find her. But she isn’t there. She isn’t one of the dozen people looking at me.

You found the weapon—now throw it away.

I am looking into Ryan’s eyes and I know I am going to take that public kiss, that kiss that would have changed everything, and I am going to fold it up until it is too small to ever be found again.

Our eyes meet for a second. He looks sorry. Not happy. Not desiring.

Sorry.

“Where’s Katie?” he asks.

And then Lehna is back in my face, back between me and Ryan. “You can’t just walk away! Answer me!”

“I don’t know where she is,” I tell him, I tell her, I tell everyone. I don’t mention that she was with me before. That’s not theirs.

Ryan still looks sorry. He asked me because he didn’t know what else to say. Now he’s trying to think of the next thing. And because I was thinking so hard about kissing him, now all I’m feeling is the act of not kissing him, of having him here, but not really.

All of a sudden it’s like the whole room is pressing on me. Lehna is angry and Ryan is blank and the constellations in Katie’s paintings are spelling out a warning. I feel the two men behind me, kissing over all those years, and I see Audra cross like a hurricane over to my mother, and see Brad blow away from her, chastised. People are looking at me, but nobody’s seeing me, and the pink walls are starting to waver in the corners of my vision, as if we’re trapped in some crowded ventricle, some noisy heart.

I need a new life, and I need it right away.

I don’t say goodbye to any of them. I push toward the valve, swim toward the door. I ignore every voice, every look, everything but my own thought to get out of here. I hit the sidewalk and turn left, go to the side of the gallery, the back of it. I sit down on the curb. I put my head down. I hold my head together.

There’s a burst of incandescence, a rainless bolt of lightning. I look up into it, and when the blindness shifts back to seeing, I find Garrison, the photographer from that night, smiling down at me.

“Sorry about that,” he says, lowering his camera. “But I couldn’t resist. Such beautiful desolation.”

“It’s not beautiful,” I tell him. “Desolation is not beautiful.”

“It is from the outside.”

“Well, I’m not on the outside.”

He sits down next to me on the curb. “You will be one day. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but someday you will be.”