If I'm Being Honest(18)

She looks hopeful, and hurting. Like she’s putting on an enthusiastic face.

I watch her talk to Brendan, prodding his shoulder and craning over him to check out whatever he’s doing. While I can’t understand the conversation—even with my unnervingly excessive surveillance of Paige this week, I haven’t learned to lip-read—I catch one word that falls unmistakably from Paige’s mouth. Please. From her imploring expression and the way she waves in the direction of the door, I infer she’s trying to get Brendan to have lunch with her outside the robotics room. He gestures toward the computer, and Paige’s face falls. I instantly translate what I read in her expression. Worry.

Which is when it hits me. Worry, like in her essay. I am an idiot for not realizing the person she was writing about. The person she worries about often enough to feel like she’s losing herself. The person she watches get bullied with nothing she can do to help.

Nothing she can do. But maybe there’s something I can do.

She turns, and I don’t step away from the window in time. We lock eyes. Her expression hardens in surprise. Recognizing me, it fills with fury.

I know I have no chance of retreating and having the whole incident forgotten. I wait, and in seconds Paige charges out and faces me. “What the hell, Bright?” she spits. “You’re spying on me now?”

If only you knew. I remind myself not to go in a retaliatory, lute-smashing direction. I cannot be Kate right now. I need Paige’s forgiveness, not to mess things up worse. “It’s not what you think,” I finally say.

“Oh no? What is it, then?” she sneers. “Interested in joining the robotics team?”

“Of course not.” I feel my nose wrinkle and realize I probably don’t want to be denigrating robotics in front of Paige. I school my expression into understanding. “Not that I have a problem with the robotics team, I just—” I begin to recover.

“Cut the crap,” Paige interrupts. “‘Popular girls’”—she forms finger-quotes—“don’t care about robotics, and they certainly don’t spend school lunches following people like me. You’re up to something.”

“What would you know about popular girls?”

Paige’s eyes widen. She gives a bitter laugh. “Good one. That was funny”—her voice comes out heavy with sarcasm—“if characteristically mean.”

“No,” I say, conscious of how horribly this is going. “What I’m trying to say is not everyone who’s popular is just a one-dimensional, popular-girl stereotype. I’m not a one-dimensional, popular-girl stereotype.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Paige is stone-faced.

Finally, I feel anger flare up, and it’s out of my mouth faster than I can contain it. “Could you knock it off with the woman-scorned act for just, like, a couple minutes?” I hear myself say. Paige startles. “Look,” I go on. “I want to . . . I don’t know, fix things. I followed you here—” I notice Paige become smug, and I sigh. “Yes, okay? I followed you. I followed you because . . . I wanted to do something nice for you.”

Her eyes narrow. With confusion this time, not anger. It’s progress.

“I want to make things right,” I say. “After what happened at Skaˉra.”

Paige’s eyebrows rise. She gives an indignant huff of a chuckle. “Well, you can’t, Cameron. You can’t make it up to me. Not that it’s a gaping wound in my self-esteem, what you said to me. I’m just completely uninterested in forgiving you.”

I feel my heart plummet.

“There’s nothing you could do that I’d possibly be interested in,” Paige says, turning to leave.

“What about your brother?” I call to her.

Paige pauses. I can practically feel how much she wants to walk away warring with . . . what?

She rounds on me.

“What about him?” she finally says. “Why would you having anything to do with my brother ever be a good idea?”

“I remember your essay,” I say, the reply ready on my tongue. “He’s the person you worry about.” When Paige doesn’t say anything, I continue. “What if I apologized? You’re right to say I of all people have nothing to offer your brother. What if I could fix that? What if I went into the robotics room right now and apologized for the nickname I gave him?”

Paige’s eyes dart to the robotics room. I go on, unwilling to lose my focus.

“I might be ‘mean’”—I return the finger-quotes and earn the hint of a raised eyebrow—“but I’m not unobservant or unintelligent. Who’s to say if I went in there and apologized, Brendan wouldn’t . . .” I gesture to the robotics room. “Who knows? What if an apology gets him out here, having lunch with his friends instead of hiding in there?”

I probably come off desperate. But I don’t care, because I’ve got the wheels turning in Paige’s head.

I watch her consider. Her expression softens, her eyes moving from mine to the door. Her hard frown eases nearly imperceptibly. After a moment she purses her lips. Not in consternation—in what feels like grudging, reluctant agreement.

Hardened, her eyes return to mine.

“Fine,” she says.

“Really?” Until I hear it from Paige, I won’t accept I’ve actually found the answer to the problem I’ve wrestled with for the entire week. What I really don’t want is for Paige to decide in a couple of hours that it was a horrible plan for me to apologize to BB and I’m a horrible person for even having the idea.