Call It What You Want(32)

There are so many things I want to say.

He didn’t do anything wrong.

He’s lonely.

He’s sad.

He’s living with the mindless body of his father.

But none of that means that Rob is innocent. He can be sad and guilty. I don’t know anything about investing, or what an internship—if that’s what it was—would entail. If Rob was working for his dad, would he have known? How could he not?

With the whole school against him, it’s hard to stand up for him. He barely stands up for himself. Drew was right: Rob did walk away from the table. Is that a sign of weakness or guilt? Or is that a boy so beaten down that he can’t take any more?

Drew’s words weigh all these thoughts down with another: Am I only giving Rob the benefit of the doubt because of the color of his skin?

“He can’t help that he’s a white kid,” Samantha says. She’s spooned a massive pile of guacamole onto her plate, and she’s now dipping her taco into it.

“No one says he has to help it,” says Drew. “I’m just saying being white cut him some slack. A lot of slack.”

This all feels so complicated suddenly. Drew’s not wrong. Consequences seem to fall all over the map. Look at Samantha. Look at Rob.

Look at me.

I love Rachel and I like Drew, but I don’t want to be at this dinner table.

My phone is sitting by my hand. I want to text Rob to see if he’s okay.

Rachel is watching me. “You like him,” she says quietly.

“What?” I snap my head up. “No. I don’t.”

“You’re not saying anything.”

I’m irritated. “I just said something.”

“You’re turning red.” I expect her tone to be teasing, but it’s not. She doesn’t like the idea. We’ve never really talked about Rob Lachlan, but I consider how she didn’t say anything when Drew was being so mean.

“You’re pretty red,” agrees my sister. She loads another taco with guacamole. I wonder what that’s going to look like when it comes up later.

Drew laughs. “Your dad would lock you up if you tried to date Rob Lachlan.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I snap. “And I don’t want to date him. He’s my math partner. He ran some drills with Samantha since she was home. The end.”

My voice is too loud, too tense. Silence falls over the whole table. Rachel and Drew exchange a look.

Forget this. I stand up. “I’m going to call Mom to come get me.”

“Maybe you could call Rob,” says Drew. Then he cracks up. “Maybe you two would make the perfect couple.”

Now that is a dig at me. I storm away from the table.

The fact that I was considering texting Rob doesn’t make me feel any better.

The air bites into my skin when I step out of the restaurant. Maybe Rob does deserve to be the senior class social pariah. He wasn’t exactly friendly and all-welcoming when he was popular. I can’t reconcile dude-bro jock Rob Lachlan with the boy who looked ready to cry in the middle of Taco Taco.

The door to the restaurant bursts open, and feet crunch across the gravel. I expect Rachel to be coming after me, especially when an arm falls across my shoulders, but it’s Samantha.

“Are you okay?” she says.

“It’s a weird night.”

“He was being kind of mean,” she says.

“No. He’s right.” I pause. “Maybe I am giving Rob a free pass. Maybe he did help to rip off the whole town.”

Samantha falls quiet for a minute. “Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“I remember when Dad came home that night. When Rob’s dad tried to kill himself. He was really upset.”

I nod. I remember that, too. We walk in silence for a few minutes.

“Everyone at school hates him,” I finally say. “Everyone thinks he had to be in on it.”

“People love finding the weak link that makes them feel superior. I see it in lacrosse all the time. Girl can’t keep up? Cut her down even more. If someone else is weak, it means you’ve got the advantage.”

Her voice is sad. We should be calling Mom, but we keep going, turning out of the parking lot to walk along the road.

“Do you think that would happen to you?” I say.

“Of course.” She kicks at road grit. “Hasn’t it happened to you?”

I frown. It’s the first time she’s asked me about cheating. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure she was aware of how things have changed for me. “Yeah.” I pause. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“Of course I noticed.” She hesitates, then blows out a long stream of steam into the air. “Megs—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

As soon as I say the words, I realize I’m lying. I actually want her to push.

She doesn’t. The silence swells between us. I need to break it.

“Do you want to end your pregnancy?” I ask her.

“I don’t want to talk about that.” She keeps her arm around me, and we keep walking. “You do like Rob, don’t you?”

“He’s … interesting.” I look over at her shadowed profile. “Do you think there’s a chance he really didn’t know what his dad was doing?”