Not If I See You First(52)
“Unless I see you first,” I say, like a reflex. It surprises me. A lot of things I’m saying and doing lately are surprising me.
The door closes, the engine starts, the car backs up, and he drives away.
TWENTY-ONE
“Hey, Parker.”
I jump at Jason’s voice almost right next to me at my locker and my hands spring open and drop my bag. I hear the tumble of my stuff spilling out on the concrete. I’m willing to bet that includes the few loose tampons I have in there.
“You jumpy this morning?”
“No,” I say with my patient voice. I squat by my bag and turn it upright. “I pretty much always jump when someone sneaks up on me.” I sweep my hands and scoop everything into my bag.
“I didn’t—” he says, crouching next to me. “Oh… sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Do I have everything?”
A couple things land in my bag. “Now you do.”
“Thanks.” I stand up and close my locker.
“Hey, you talk to Coach Underhill yet?”
“We decided to give it a week to let everything else get sorted out. I’m meeting with him next Monday afternoon.”
“Cool. You ready to walk? I thought maybe somewhere besides the Bio Garden this time, but I guess it doesn’t matter much.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I promised Sarah yesterday I’d meet her this morning.”
“What, for homework, or…?”
“No, nothing for school. We just… sort of hang out together in the yard every morning.”
“You’ve been with me all this week.”
“I know, it’s just…” Okay, what do I say now?
A better question is how did I become this person? It’s time to start being myself. If he doesn’t like it, that’ll suck, but better to know sooner than later.
“It’ll take too long to explain now but Sarah and I sit outside and listen to people who want to talk, for advice about all kinds of stuff. Only we sort of got into a fight earlier this week… well, more like a misunderstanding… Okay, I was being an idiot. Then you asked me to walk at the same time so I went with you instead, but now Sarah and I have patched things up. Make sense?”
“Not really. I just thought we had this thing going with morning walks.”
“No, I mean yeah, it was nice, I just usually sit with Sarah. We can still have lunch today. What do you normally do here in the morning?”
“I’m not usually here. I came early Monday to talk to you and then we started our walks.”
He lets this hang there and I’m confused. Is he trying to guilt me, or get me to cancel on Sarah—like two days in a row constitutes a recurring date?
“Sorry, I didn’t know. I thought you were here anyway. I better get going.”
“It’s just, I had something to tell you.”
He doesn’t go on—I guess he wants me to ask. “What is it?”
“After school let out last year my family went beach camping in Baja. When I got back, Scott had changed to a different route. He didn’t really say why and it didn’t matter to me; I just liked that the new route was longer. I didn’t notice it Saturday night in the dark, but this morning I started running with him again and saw we go right by your house.”
“Oh. Have you…” I say. “I run in the morning too. You guys ever see me?”
“No. We pass by around quarter to six.”
“I leave at six. Usually, I mean. Not today.” After Monday and Tuesday were such a wobbly mess, I felt even worse this morning and skipped going out entirely.
“Okay. Maybe it’s not spying since we never see you, but it’s still creepy. I thought I should tell you.”
Wait… Scott started running by my house sometime in the middle of June?
“It’s not creepy,” I say, dizzy again. I have to swallow before I can continue. “He’s… he’s checking my route. You know, for any new stuff I might trip over.”
“Why would he need to?”
“Because my dad can’t anymore. Every night before bed my dad and I would take a little walk. He said it was the only exercise he got being a desk jockey all day but he was really checking my route for my run the next morning.”
“Wait… you actually run alone? No one’s with you?”
“I told you I don’t run with anybody—”
“I figured you had someone on a bike or something! That’s crazy—you can’t run by yourself!”
“Well, actually, I can, and I do. Every day.”
I feel a shiver, an actual shiver, across my shoulders and back. “Do you remember ever seeing a big van parked across the sidewalk near my house? Back toward the end of June?”
“I was still in Mexico. Why?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Silence.
“You don’t think it’s creepy, Scott running by your house every morning… what, three years after you broke up with him?”
“Two and a half,” I say, my voice quiet. “It’s not creepy. It’s…”
“It’s what?”
He says it like a challenge and it irks me, but I try to look at things from his side. Truth is one thing; it’s another to rub people’s noses in it.