Not If I See You First(29)

“When you’re done with my phone, bring it to me at the front office.”

Under the sound of two idiots laughing, the approaching footsteps are running now.

“Hey, look who we bumped into,” Isaac says to whoever’s coming. “It’s Parker Gruumph!”—Crash!

My hands fly up instinctively to protect my face as something bangs hard against the lockers… twice… three times.

“What the hell—” Crash! “Cut it out!” Crash!

I press back against the lockers and keep my forearms crossed in front of me, hands open to block my face, tucked down. There’s scuffling and squeaking shoes on concrete and more clattering metal.

“What’s the matter with you!” Gerald squawks, his voice moving down the hall like he’s being dragged away.

“Come on,” Jason says, grunting from exertion. All the sounds move away down the hall and around the corner.

Quack. It’s far away. I start walking toward it, one hand sliding along the lockers to keep me oriented. One set of footsteps returns.

“It’s me,” Jason calls. When he gets closer, he says, “Here’s your phone.”

I hold out my hand and the phone touches it. I quickly slip it into my bag.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Those guys are… they’re just jerks. It was Isaac—”

“I know who they are. We went to Marsh together.”

“Oh. Well, it’s over now. I don’t think they’ll bother you again.”

“Was bleeding involved?” I ask with my hopeful voice.

“No,” he says, chuckling. “That would lead to questions nobody wants to answer. Street justice is about bruises, not blood. Deterrence is more about threats than actual violence.”

“Sounded violent to me,” I say.

“Only as much as it needed to be.”

“Thanks for my phone.”

“No problem. Where are you going? I’ll walk with you.”

I unfold my cane and we head for the parking lot.

“I heard you work in the library after school,” he says. “I was coming to see you.”

“What about?”

“Oh, it hardly seems right to ask now, after I just saved you. It might bias your answer.”

My heart beats harder. It occurs to me that during the scuffle my heart rate didn’t go up much at all, but now…

“You want to ask me something?” I say. “About homework, or…? We don’t have any of the same classes.”

God, I can’t believe I said that.

“It’s okay, we can talk about it later, maybe tomorrow.”

No. Now. Right now.

“If it makes you feel better,” I say in my sorry-to-have-to-tell-you voice, “the only thing you saved me from was more inconvenience and exasperation. I was headed for the office. Mr. Sullivan would have sorted it out pretty quickly. Those *s can’t hurt me with their one-syllable words, and they weren’t actually going to bust out any real sticks and stones to break my bones.”

“Uh… okay…” he says, like I’d given him a math problem. “I was just wondering if you wanted to do something Saturday. Night, I mean. Well, afternoon and then… I’m working till five, but after that—”

“Sure,” I say. I swear my mouth said it before I even thought about it, all on its own. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, I can pick you up when I get off work—”

“Oh, I’ll be at the mall Saturday. I can just meet you there. Five o’clock, you said?”

“Perfect,” he says. We arrive at the parking lot. “My ride’s here. See you Saturday. Well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow, and Friday, then Saturday.”

“It’s a date,” I say. I feel a little corny but I don’t care.

Jason trots away as other footsteps approach from behind.

“Did I hear the word date?” Molly asks.

“You did. Because I said it. And yes, I just wanted to hear it out loud.”

“When?”

“Saturday night.”

“Cool,” she says, but she doesn’t mean it.

This could mean any number of things and my troll brain is going to run through the entire list of possibilities unless I stop it the only way I can.

“What?” I ask.

“What?”

“You said cool but you meant not cool.”

Silence.

“I hate it when I’m missing something,” I say. “How well do you know him?”

“Just a bit. He’s fine.”

I hear her sit down on the stairs. I join her.

“Do you like him?”

“No, he’s not my type.”

“What then?”

“I don’t think he’s your type either.”

I don’t like being pigeonholed, especially by people who barely know me. “What’s my type?”

“I don’t know,” she says quickly. “Forget it. He’s fine. I hope you have fun.”

“I can’t forget it. What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you’re… quick… and clever. But Jason… he’s… very literal.”