Shuffle, Repeat(31)

I know it would be gracious to accept his apology, but I feel hard and angry and nowhere near forgiveness. “I don’t know if sorry is enough. I don’t know if anything is enough.”

“I used to be a joiner,” he says. “At my old school.”

That’s new information. “What kind of joiner?”

“The kind who did all the same things as Oliver and Ainsley and everyone else.”

I blink. “Did you play sports?”

“No, but I hung out with the kids who did. The ones who were popular and partied a lot.”

“Did you…party?” He knows I don’t use that word as a verb.

“I had to. Back there, that was how you stayed on top. We didn’t have any Shauns bouncing from group to group. We didn’t even have any Olivers, who have an all-access pass by virtue of being at the top of the food chain. At my old school, you were either on the top or you were on the bottom. No middle ground.”

I stare at him, trying to picture Itch joining things, playing along. “But you hate that.”

“It used to be normal.” He stops, biting his lip.

I’ve never seen him do that before and—although I don’t know why—the hottest part of my anger melts away. “What happened?” I ask, because something had to have happened.

“It was my friend Xavier.” Itch takes a deep breath. “We called him X. Really funny guy. Smart, too. Played guitar. All the girls loved him.”

“He sounds like your worst nightmare.” I say it to lighten the mood, but I only earn the smallest lip twitch from Itch.

“It was a party after a football game. One of those parties like all the other parties, except this time X snagged something from his aunt’s medicine cabinet. I don’t even know what it was, but June—” He looks into my eyes. “Any other night, I probably would have taken some, too, because that’s the way it worked. If X was offering, you took it. But I had to get up early the next morning to drive my parents to the airport. I didn’t want to pass out and forget to show up or something, so I said no.”

“What happened?” I ask in a small voice.

“The same thing that always happened,” Itch says. “Everyone drank and got stupid and had a good time. Except in the middle of it all, X had a seizure and fell through a glass-topped coffee table.”

A gasp comes out of me before I can stop it.

“Everyone screamed. There was a lot of blood and he kept seizing, but we were all drunk. And scared, I think. Scared of our parents and the cops and getting busted. I tried to help stop the bleeding, but I wasn’t exactly sober, either, and someone finally called 911. It was—” He stops for a second, and I reach for his hands. I hold them between my own. “It was the worst night of my life.”

I wait, my heart aching for this part of Itch he’s never shared with me.

“X didn’t die. He’s back at school, but…” Itch swallows. “He doesn’t play guitar anymore. He says it gives him a headache, but I think he doesn’t remember how. I think it’s gone.” Itch removes his hands from between mine and cracks his knuckles. “I’m sure your friends are different. Ainsley seems nice. So does Oliver. It’s just me. I don’t want to hang with the kids at the top of the ladder because last time I did, I liked it.” He sighs. “I liked it too much.”

I had no idea that there was something more to Itch’s scorn. Something more like fear. “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry, too.” He lets me slide my arms around him, under his jacket so I can feel his rib cage. I squeeze, and after a few seconds, he reciprocates. “I’ll try, okay? I’ll try.”

“All right.” I listen to his heart beating beneath my ear. “I’ll try, too.”

? ? ?

Getting to North Hall sucks, because we have to walk down an outer corridor where the icy wind whips around us, but after we struggle to get the heavy double doors open, we’re greeted with a gush of warm radiator heat. I choose an empty section of wall to settle my back against, and slide down it until I’m sitting on the floor with my tray on my lap. Ainsley beams at me from nearby. “Lucky us, two days in a row!”

Oliver nudges me with his foot. “Hi, you guys.”

“Hey,” I say to him.

“Hey,” says Itch, sliding down the wall beside me.

We eat our lunches.





There’s a gift-wrapped cylinder on my seat when I open the passenger door. I start to hand it to Oliver, but he shakes his head. “Open it.”

I’m startled…and also inexplicably embarrassed. The week before winter break is the traditional time for kids at our school to exchange gifts, but it didn’t occur to me that Oliver would give me something. And it’s certainly not like I have anything for him.

“Really?” I ask. “Because I didn’t—”

Oliver grins at me. “Just open it.”

I run a finger down the taped seam between the two edges of green-and-red paper and get a flash image of Oliver hunched over the gift, trying to line up the wrapping. It opens to reveal…

“A water bottle?”

“Metal,” he says helpfully. “And it’s not actually for you.” I cock my head at him and he explains. “Lest you think otherwise, I am aware of your vast distaste for the plastic bottles all over my car.”