You Know Me Well(44)

I know I should say I understand. I know I should understand. But there’s still a part of me that hates how easy it is for him to say these things. He wants to put it in perspective, but it’s all his perspective.

Also, I don’t want to be a best friend if I can’t also be a boy in his eyes. I don’t want to be a calendar if I’ll never get a date.

“Are you really going to read?” I ask him. “In public?”

He smiles. “You can be such an Oblivious Oliver. Like I said, you’ll just have to show up and see. Maybe you’re not the only one who can dance on the bar—so to speak.”

He’s got me, and he knows enough to leave before he loses me. The result is a locker-side muddle. I don’t have any desire to follow him into lunch, so I detour to the library again. I see Dave Hughes sitting at his table by himself. He spots me coming and clears a space.

“Are you always here at lunch?” I ask after I sit down.

“Nah. This is actually my study hall. I have third lunch.”

“Got it.”

I see he’s got the sports section on the table, and he nods that I can take it. Then he goes back to whatever he’s doing on his laptop.

About five minutes later, I hear something that sounds like a Pssst. I ignore it, but it happens again. I look up.

“Pssst.”

Dave’s eyes don’t leave his laptop, but he tells me, “It’s coming from a girl in the shelves over there.”

All I can see is a hand, its index finger indexing me to come over.

I don’t recognize the hand, but when I step into the shelf area, I recognize the face of Katie’s friend June.

“We never talked, we never saw each other, this never happened, okay?” she starts.

“Sure.”

“If Lehna catches me, it’ll be bad. She’s like that. But I’m not taking sides. I’m really not. I don’t want there to be sides, you know? It’s not like anyone asked me—it’s not like anyone said, ‘Hey, do you mind if we divide into sides?’ Because you know what sucks? Having friends who aren’t being good friends to each other. That really sucks. And I know I should be talking to Kate, but if I talk to Kate, that will be taking sides, so I’m going to talk to you instead, and if you end up talking to Kate, that’s not really my fault, is it?”

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

“Good. Because Kate needs to be careful. Very careful. Lehna’s really mad. And at first it was just Lehna being dramatic, but now the reason is serious, because Lehna thinks that Kate’s playing with Violet. Like, really playing with her. We all saw Violet at the art thing last night, and Violet was like, ‘What’s Kate’s deal?’ And Lehna was like, ‘What did she do to you?’ Violet said Kate stood her up and was being deluded—no, it wasn’t that. Not deluded. The word that means hard to get. She said Kate was being that, and while she understood everything was like, wow, sudden, she’s not going to wait around forever for Kate to focus. And Lehna—ohmygod, Lehna. Lehna was like, ‘She’s not worth it if she’s going to do that to you.’ And she’s right, right, because no one should treat you like that. But she’s also wrong, because it’s Kate we’re talking about, and we all know Kate’s only acting like this because she’s afraid. Or at least I think we all know that. It just stops being a good excuse after a while. And what I’m trying to say is, the time it stops being a good excuse? Well, that’s now. Lehna’s already sure of it. And Violet’s getting there. So you have to tell Kate to do something. Really do something.”

“But I have told her to do something. Just this morning.”

June locks me into a look there, and it’s like finding out that Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth because she can beam words directly into your mind. “Well, try harder,” she says. “We’re all going to the Exploratorium this afternoon—if you and Kate come, I can make sure Lehna’s distracted so Kate and Violet can talk alone. This is it—her last last chance. Give me your number.”

I tell June my number and she enters it into her phone. Then she calls me so I can have hers.

“There,” she says. “Remember: We never had this conversation.”

“You’re not taking sides.”

“Right. I just want all my friends to be happy. And sometimes you have to do that one friend at a time.”

*

I’m aware that I should contrive a reason for me and Katie to go to the Exploratorium—it’s a fun place, so it wouldn’t be too hard to say I need the pick-me-up that playing around at an interactive science museum can bring. And then, surprise!, we’ll bump into Violet there.

A trick. I could easily trick her into going.

But I don’t want our friendship to be like that.

So instead I sit down next to her at the start of math class and say, “I know where Violet’s going to be this afternoon, and I think we should go there.”

Kate sighs. “How do you know this information?”

“A little bird told me. And I’m not going to tell you anything more than that. I promised.”

Katie nods.

I go on. “Also, I found out Ryan’s going to be at Quinn’s poetry thing.” I tell her about the conversation Ryan and I had, and how weird it made me feel.