I'll Stop the World (79)

Rose shook her head, her face feeling hot. “So according to your theory, everything—the whole world—is all about you. Your life. Your friends. Your family.”

“Not the actual world, but this world? Yeah, pretty much.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head. A muscle in his jaw twitched, like he was clenching his teeth.

Rage blurred Rose’s vision, buzzing along her skin. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but I had a whole life here before you showed up, Justin, and it had nothing to do with you. I have friends, family, people I care about, and who care about me.”

Justin made an exaggerated show of looking around. “Really? From where I sit, it seems like they don’t care that much. You say Noah is your best friend, but he bailed on you today, and hasn’t even been around the rest of the week. That Charlene girl barely said two words to you. You don’t know where your sister is most of the time. And you tell me your parents grounded you, yet here you are. Honestly, it seems to me like you only exist to help me, except not really since we’re not actually doing anything. You’re barely even a person without me.”

Hot tears pricked the backs of Rose’s eyes. She blinked rapidly, refusing to let him see her cry. “Get out,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

He hesitated a moment, seeming like he wanted to say something else, but then he just shrugged. “Fine.”

He unfolded himself from the passenger seat, slamming the door so hard the whole car shook. Rose kept waiting for him to turn around, to take back what he’d said, but he disappeared into the house without glancing back.





Chapter Forty-Six


ROSE

“Honey, Noah’s here to see you,” her father’s voice called through her bedroom door. “Can I tell him he can come up?”

Rose lifted her head from the tear-flecked purple flowers of her bedspread and wiped her eyes. Of course Noah would pick now to come over. She glanced at herself in her dresser mirror, and the face looking back at her wasn’t pretty. Puffy eyes; drippy, red-tipped nose; tangles of hair stuck to the sides of her face in a crusty glue of snot and tears. She sniffed, her voice coming out thick when she said, “Tell him I’m not here.”

“He’s in the kitchen.”

Rose drew in a deep breath, blinking a few times as if that would magically deflate her swollen eyes. “All right,” she said, defeated. “Give me a couple minutes, and then he can come up.”

“Oh, also, I noticed earlier that the car is making a weird noise.”

“Weirder than usual?” That car always sounded like it was on the verge of an asthma attack.

“Yeah. Going to get it checked out next week. Until then, just short distances, okay?”

“Fine,” she agreed numbly. Not like she had any real reason to drive anywhere anyway. As Justin had so kindly pointed out, no one wanted to be around her.

After a trip to the bathroom to scrub the grossness off her face and drag a brush through her hair—still not good, but better, she decided—she returned to her room to find Noah standing in the middle of the floor, twisting his fingers around a stubby pencil.

She pointed to the pencil. “Here to take notes?”

He gave her a little half smile. “I was doing homework when I saw you drive up. Guess I just forgot to put it down. Um, do you have my mom’s car keys?”

Of course. He was here for the keys. In her fog, she’d forgotten to return them. She picked them up from her nightstand, dropped them in his hand. “Sorry. Thanks for letting us borrow the car. See you later.”

“I don’t need to go right away.”

“You don’t have to stay. I know you’ve got better things to do.”

“No, I don’t.” His face turned serious, and he straightened his shoulders. “Look, I know we haven’t been exactly . . . us lately. But you know if something’s wrong, you can talk to me.”

Rose sighed, unable to meet his eyes. “It’s really not a big deal.”

“Is it that guy? Justin? Do I need to go beat him up?” Noah pounded his fist into his open palm, his eyes narrowed and his lower lip caught between his teeth in an exaggerated tough-guy expression.

Rose burst out laughing. “Like you’d ever hit anyone.”

He shrugged, dropping the act with a grin. “Naw, I guess not. But I could deliver a strongly worded complaint.”

“That’s more like it.”

The phone on her nightstand rang, but Rose ignored it. A second later, her dad’s voice called from downstairs, “Rose! Phone!”

“Who is it?”

“Justin.”

She hesitated for a second. “I’m not allowed to talk to him, remember?”

“Oh, right! I’ll tell him,” her dad said, oblivious.

Noah had been watching her closely, and now he took a step closer to her, causing her breath to catch in her chest. “Did he do something? You can tell me if he did. I’m just . . . worried about you, Rosie.” He got quiet toward the end, his eyes fixed on hers.

At that moment, Rose wanted to tell him everything. Not just about Justin and their fight and the impossible task they’d set for themselves, but about Lisa hiding something from her, about her conflicted thoughts about the campaign, about her jealousy toward Steph and her guilt about being jealous. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t just crying because it had hurt when Justin said that none of the people she cared about truly cared about her; she was crying because she was pretty sure he was right.