I'll Stop the World (45)

Plus, she had an ulterior motive. If Justin stayed with Mrs. Hanley, he’d have a front-row seat to her garage, which they needed to investigate if they were going to figure out who had started the fire.

Not that she could tell her friends about that part of Justin’s “visit.” Part of her still felt crazy that she believed it. As far as they knew, he was just her pen pal, who had spontaneously traveled to see her from out of town.

At the end of the period, after dumping her tray, Rose automatically turned to head to her next class. A moment later, she heard someone calling her name. “Rose, hey, wait up!”

She turned to see Noah jogging up to join her and gave him an odd look. “What are you doing?”

“I’m walking to English,” he said, falling into step beside her.

“I mean, why aren’t you walking Steph to class first?” Even though Rose and Noah had AP English together, he’d been in the habit, since the beginning of the year, of detouring by the chorus room to drop Steph off. A tiny flutter of hope that maybe something had happened between the two of them, something that might lead to a breakup, sparked in Rose’s chest, but she quickly tamped it down. They’d been acting perfectly fine at lunch. Whatever had prompted the split from Noah’s routine, it wasn’t that.

Noah shrugged. “Just thought I’d walk with you today. That’s okay, right?”

Rose nodded, her eyes narrowing. Something was going on. “What’s up, Noah?”

“You’re asking me?” he said with raised eyebrows. “What’s going on with you?”

Now it was her turn to shrug. “Nothing.” She hoped he didn’t notice the slight quickening of her pulse. Of course he’d take an interest in her life now, when she couldn’t tell him the truth.

He stopped walking, forcing the sea of students to split and go around them, like a stream flowing around a rock. A few gave them dirty looks as they went by, and Rose heard at least a couple of racial slurs tossed anonymously into the air. They both tensed but otherwise ignored them, the result of years of practice.

Noah grabbed her wrist, spinning her to face him, his touch sending a light shiver rippling through her skin. “It’s not nothing, Rosie,” he said, keeping his voice low, his eyes searching hers. “You’re acting . . . different.”

She pulled her wrist away, moving down the hall again. “Am I? Or have you just not been paying attention?”

“Look, I know we haven’t been hanging out as much as we used to,” he said, falling back into step beside her, “but seriously, I’m worried about you. A secret pen pal none of us have ever heard of? That’s not you, Rose.”

“Maybe it is now.”

“Are . . . are you okay?” he asked, leaning closer to her and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Is something wrong? You can tell me, you know.”

Rose swallowed, but it did nothing to clear the lump that had risen in her throat. She wished, more than anything, that she could tell him. But she couldn’t, because it wasn’t her who had changed; it was them. Her and Noah, together. She wasn’t his priority anymore, and she couldn’t lean on him like she had. That just seemed like a good way to fall.

“I’m fine, Noah,” she said with a forced smile as they reached the door to their classroom. “Everything’s fine. I really didn’t mean to keep it a secret. Everyone’s just had so much going on that I guess it didn’t come up.”

“But—”

“Class is about to start,” she said, turning away from him to head to her desk. She dug her copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings out of her backpack and buried her nose in the pages, pretending she couldn’t feel his eyes still on her, couldn’t feel his questions burning into her skin. At the end of class, she was out the door before the bell finished ringing.





Chapter Twenty-Six


KARL

He wished his mom would stop wrapping his sandwiches in aluminum foil.

Karl perched on the back of the toilet, his backpack laid as flat as he could make it across his knees as a makeshift table, and hurried to unwrap his bologna-and-cheese before anyone else came into the bathroom. The foil scraped and squeaked, like some sort of nightmare bird squawking his presence to whomever might be within hearing distance.

He’d just gotten one triangle of his sandwich loose when the door to the bathroom slammed open and a pair of boys spilled inside, laughing and talking loudly. Karl ate as quietly as he could, surrounded by the sounds of urine hitting porcelain and water swirling down the drain.

A faucet turned on, and a familiar voice shouted, “Yo, careful!”

“Sorry,” another boy said, and Karl heard the water stop. “Did I mess you up? Did any of it wash off?”

“No, I think it’s okay,” Robbie Reynolds said.

Careful not to make any noise, Karl leaned forward, peering through the gap at the edge of the stall door.

Robbie had his sleeve pushed up to his elbow and was resting his wrist on the edge of one of the white sinks, a blue BIC pen clutched in his other hand. A wrinkled piece of paper was propped up by the faucets, and Robbie was in the process of carefully transferring whatever was written on it to his forearm.

The other kid—Steve Burks, Karl saw now; his sneaker print from last week was still etched in purple on Karl’s thigh—dried his hands on a paper towel while peering over Robbie’s shoulder. “You sure about these?”