I'll Stop the World (44)

“No—you’re—it’s fine,” Rose said, turning abruptly toward the refrigerator and trying to get her rapid breathing in order. “So, lemonade?” she said, her voice a little too bright.

“Let me go grab a new shirt and I’ll be right back. We’ve got a date with the air conditioner.”

Rose tried not to read anything into the word date, but she couldn’t help it; her stomach did a happy little cartwheel.

The window air conditioner was in the living room, but Rose sank into a chair at the table while Noah changed, sipping her glass of lemonade. Her heart pounded as she thought about what she’d say when he came back.

Noah, we’ve been friends for a long time.

Noah, is it just me, or have things felt a little different between us lately?

Noah, you know me better than anyone in the world.

Before she could come up with the perfect opening, Noah returned and plopped down across from her, picking up the glass of lemonade she’d poured for him and draining half of it in one gulp. When he put it down, he opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.

“Noah,” she said, “we need to—”

A crash sounded from outside. Rose sat up a little straighter in her chair, looking toward the window. “Did you hear that?”

“Mm-hmm.” He was already moving toward the back door. He swung it open, scanning the yard. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

Then they smelled the smoke.





MONDAY





Chapter Twenty-Five


ROSE

“He’s your what now?”

“My pen pal,” Rose repeated, taking a bite of her turkey and cheese sandwich.

“Since when do you have a pen pal?” Lisa asked. Her own sandwich sat on the cafeteria tray in front of her, still tightly bound in its plastic-wrap cocoon, untouched.

They were gathered around their usual lunch table, but the seating was a little off today. Shawn and Lisa still sat together, but Charlene had moved to the other side of the table for some reason. Since Steph and Noah also were seated together beside Charlene, Rose wound up in the seat next to Lisa, who had been acting weirdly moody all weekend.

“We’ve been writing each other for a while,” Rose said. They’d come up with the story together at Mrs. Hanley’s house the day before. Rose knew she’d need an excuse for spending all her time with a boy no one in town had ever heard of, especially the week before the debate. And it’s not like anyone had taken much interest in her life lately. It seemed plausible that she could have a pen pal no one knew about.

Sure enough, when she’d told her parents last night, neither had batted an eye. “That’s nice, dear,” her father had said, while Diane merely smiled, distracted by her phone call with Veronica.

“But I’ve literally never seen you writing letters,” Lisa protested. “Or getting any letters, for that matter.”

“I guess you just didn’t notice,” Rose said, feeling slightly guilty at the hurt expression that flickered across Lisa’s face. But this was how it had to be; the truth just wasn’t an option.

“I think it’s great,” Shawn said with one of his easy smiles, wolfing down half his sandwich in one bite. “Pen pals are fun. I had one for a while in middle school.”

“Wasn’t that the girl who made you the bracelet out of her own hair?” Noah asked.

“I’m sorry, she what?” Steph said as the rest of them dissolved into laughter.

“She was nice!” Shawn gasped through his laughter. “Just . . . a little weird, I guess.”

“But that’s the thing with pen pals, right?” Noah said. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, giving Rose a sideways glance as he did. “They can seem nice and normal and then, boom, envelope of human hair.”

“Justin isn’t like that,” Rose insisted. At least, she hoped not. She tried not to imagine what Noah would say if he found out that Justin claimed to be a time traveler from the future or, even worse, that she believed him.

“How do you know, though? It’s weird that he just showed up unannounced, right?” Noah said around bites of pepperoni pizza. “Shouldn’t he have at least checked with you first that this was a good time? I mean, he can’t even stay with you this week.”

“I told you, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Rose said. “I’d always told him he should come visit, and the opportunity came up all of a sudden, so he just got on a bus.”

Noah rolled his eyes and shoved another bite of pizza in his mouth, chomping unnecessarily aggressively.

He was acting weirdly annoyed, and Rose suspected she knew why. She’d known that asking her parents if a teenage boy they’d never met could stay with them, especially the week before the debate, would be a nonstarter, so she’d asked the one person she knew would never turn away a surprise houseguest: Noah’s grandmother.

As long as Rose had known her, Mrs. Hanley had always had a heart for strays, whether of the animal or human varieties. Every time Noah and Rose went over there, her home contained a rotating selection of dogs, cats, and people who needed a temporary place to stay. Since Noah’s grandfather had passed, she hadn’t taken in as many animals, but Rose knew she wouldn’t say no to a person.