Don’t Let Me Go(51)

Silence. Billy seemed to have lost the ability to communicate.

“But you’re definitely not an *.”

“Thanks,” Billy said.

“Later, mi amigo.”

“Thanks,” Billy said.

If there were any other words in the universe, they were unavailable to him in that moment.





Grace



It was already last period at Grace’s school, and getting closer and closer to the final bell. And the closer it got, the more Grace felt like maybe she was about to throw up. Her face felt hot, and it tingled, and her stomach was feeling rocky, like that time when she had the flu.

But she didn’t have the flu, not this time, and she knew it.

What she had was one of those situations where you get more and more nervous and upset, and then after a while you’re so upset that you think you might throw up.

But there was really nothing much worse than throwing up in class in the fourth grade, unless it was peeing your pants, but even peeing your pants might only have been more or less a tie with throwing up. It was that bad.

So Grace asked her teacher for a hall pass to go to the bathroom.

It took the teacher a long time to write it out.

“Oh my gosh, please hurry,” Grace said, “because I think I’m about to throw up.”

“Oh, dear,” her teacher, Mrs. Placer, said, handing her the pass. “Go to the nurse as soon as you’re done.”

Which was an odd thing to say, since it was last period, and almost time to go home, but Grace figured maybe Mrs. Placer wasn’t thinking clearly about that. Grown-ups say all kinds of odd things, all the time, so this was just one more to add to the ever-growing list.

“OK,” Grace said, and ran down the hall as fast as she could.

It’s almost always better to just say OK. It’s better than arguing with them, just about every time.

She stood in the girls’ room for a while, right at the door of a stall, but now that she was in a place where she could throw up if she needed to, it seemed like maybe she wouldn’t need to after all.

After a while some older girls came in, three of them, maybe from the sixth grade, and they stood close to each other and passed a cigarette around, and one of them looked at Grace over her shoulder, and it wasn’t a friendly look.

Grace hoped they weren’t about to rob her, because that can happen in the bathroom. Not that she had anything to steal. But kids got hurt, too, especially if they didn’t have anything to steal.

“Flu,” she said, thinking if they knew she might be about to throw up on them, and if they thought what she had might be catching, they’d keep away.

Just then the bell rang.

Grace sprinted for the back door.

Her mom was there. And so was Felipe. Just like the day before.

Grace’s mom took her by the hand, too hard, and marched off toward home with her. Grace glanced over her shoulder at Felipe, but, the minute she did, her mom pulled her around by the arm so she faced forward again.

“I’m going to get to tap dance at my school,” she told her mom. “It’s for an assembly. I’ll be dancing in front of almost the whole school. First through sixth grades.”

“When?” her mom asked, sounding like she was thinking about something else entirely, and glancing over her shoulder at Felipe.

Grace turned to see if he was still back there — which he was — but then her mom turned her back around again.

“It’ll be in three months,” she said.

“Good. That’s plenty of time to learn to tap dance, I guess.”

“I already know how to tap dance.”

“Since when?”

“You missed a lot of stuff, you know. You’ve been gone a while.”

“Hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been weeks.”

“It’s just been a few days.”

“Yeah, a few weeks’ worth of days.”

She expected her mom to maybe yell at her for saying all that. But nothing happened. Her mom just looked back over her shoulder at Felipe again.

“I have to tell Billy about the dancing at school,” Grace said.

“You’re not telling Billy anything.”

“But I have to.”

“But you can’t.”

“But I have to!” Grace shouted, finding a place in herself that just would not back down. Then she said something even braver. Possibly the bravest thing she’d ever said to her mom. “And I will!”

But nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention.

Grace’s mom stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and turned around and started yelling at Felipe.

“Why are you following us?” she yelled. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

Grace said, “He’s not, he just lives the same place we do,” and Felipe said, “I’m not, I’m just going home,” and they both said it at almost exactly the same time.

“Why did you even come down to her school in the first place?” Grace’s mom shouted.

And Felipe said, “In case there was no one there to pick her up.”

“But I was there.”

“In case you weren’t, though,” Felipe said.