First & Then(63)

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?” His face never changed, but he tamped down the Community Chest cards with a little more force than was necessary.

“Maybe it’d be good for … closure. Or something.”

Foster just shook his head, and when he looked up, his eyes had this odd shine to them. “It’s kind of like an inside joke, Dev. You can’t really get it because you weren’t there. You can’t really understand.”

There was a pause. I cleared my throat. “Well … I wish I could.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You know what I mean.”

He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”





33


I wasn’t looking forward to school on Monday, but it came and went with little fanfare. I half expected Stanton Perkins to attempt an attack on either Foster or me, but I never even saw him.

I didn’t see Cas, either, or Lindsay or Ezra. After such a whirlwind of a weekend, school was actually a little anticlimactic. But blessedly so. I didn’t really want any confrontations. I just wanted to do calculus homework and write an essay on Chinua Achebe. To hide myself away in the study cave. I was for college now, remember? I would get into Reeding and someday when I was studying under those oak trees, all this would seem light-years away.

Miraculously, gym class on Tuesday was canceled, and we got a free period. I worked on my college essay in the library and sent up sincere thanks to whoever gave Mr. Sellers’ kid pinkeye.

It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I saw Lindsay. She flagged me down in the hall on my way to “office hours.” At least, she tried to flag me down.

“Devon!” She waved me over from where she stood at her locker. “Could we talk?”

I slowed a bit as I neared. I wanted to talk. I did. But then … I didn’t.

“Ah, sorry,” I said. “I gotta get to my tutoring thing.”

“Just for a second?”

“Super late!” I said, gesturing to my wrist to indicate a watch that wasn’t there.

And I powered to the English room, making it to the door just as Alex, my tutoree with the Gatsby essay, broke off from a nearby group of freshmen and jogged up. Excellent. A distraction from my sheer and utter cowardice.

“Hey. Got questions?”

“Not today. Look!” She flipped back the cover page of her essay. A big red 87% was marked at the top of the first page.

I deadpanned. “That’s not an A.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yeah. That’s great. Congratulations.”

“High fives for metaphorical shirts.”

I slapped her hand, and then she headed off down the hall to catch up with her friends.

I watched her go, and even knowing that I wasn’t really responsible for her grade, that I hadn’t done anything wholly remarkable, I still felt oddly gratified, like I myself had achieved something. Was this how teachers felt? Was this why they taught people? I had never given much thought to what it was like to be a teacher. If I had to summarize it before, I would’ve guessed that it probably sucked. Maybe your students don’t necessarily want to be there, or listen to you, or do your homework. But I guess you can teach someone something in spite of that. It must make it harder, but maybe that makes it feel better, somehow, when you actually succeed.

I was about to head into the classroom when someone called my name. Jordan appeared, cutting his way through the end-of-day crowd with Ezra in tow.

“Champ,” Jordan said. “Been looking for you.”

“What’s up?”

“I, uh, wanted to see if you had the notes for German today.”

“I take Spanish.”

“Ah.” Jordan bobbed his head and then said, “Well, that’s all. See you later.” And he walked away, leaving Ezra and me standing there.

I glanced at Ezra. He was glaring at Jordan’s retreating back.

“Uh,” he said after a moment. “So.”

“I sort of need to get to tutoring,” I said, but the English room was clearly empty.

“I just wanted to … So, about Homecoming—”

“Yeah, no, what a night. Cherished senior-class memories. Will scrapbook accordingly.”

“Listen, Dev…”

Nothing good ever started with listen. It was never “Listen, you just won twenty-five thousand dollars.” “Listen, I have a huge crush on you.” I think the general theory was that you had to tell the other person to listen because you were about to tell them something they didn’t want to hear. And I definitely didn’t want to hear the end of Ezra’s listen, because it was probably something along the lines of “I hope we can still be friends.”

Did I still want to be friends? What I really wanted was to kiss Ezra’s face off. And punch him in the arm. And then kiss his face off some more. That wasn’t quite an ideal friendship, was it? That one-sidedness. I didn’t want that. But I didn’t want to lose him, either. Maybe I could key in on that arm-punching inclination and eventually the kissing thing would subside. Maybe. But not today.

I cleared my throat. “You better hurry or you’ll be late for practice,” I said. “Got to set that good example, right? Team morale … and … whatnot.” I tried to smile and then retreated into the English room.