Not If I See You First(57)
She doesn’t answer right away, and then she whispers hoarsely, “Please…”
I really wish I could see her face. “Just say it. What can I do?”
“Please go…”
“Go where? I—”
“Just go,” she says in a steadier voice. “Away. Anywhere that’s not here. Or didn’t you mean it when you said you’d do anything?”
Ouch. I want to make her understand how much this means to me, how hard it is for me to learn new places and people, and to trust them… but… that would be trying to make me feel better.
“If that’s what you want. I really am sorry.” I stand and retrace my steps to the door— “Wait,” Sheila says.
I stop. After a moment she says, “Left… more to the left.”
I course-correct and find the doorknob.
“I won’t keep bothering you about it,” I say. “I know what it’s like to have people constantly offer you help you don’t want. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
She doesn’t say anything. I open the door. I’m halfway through and she clears her throat.
“The only way the past three months makes any sense is if one of us was a heartless self-centered bitch. Right?”
I think for a moment, trying to decipher her words, her voice, what she’s really asking.
I get it. This is a bullet I can take for her. It almost makes me smile. Faith doesn’t want to talk about trains anymore; I wonder what she’d say about bullets.
“I’m definitely a Certified Heartless Self-Centered Bitch. But I can say from experience that acting like one sometimes isn’t the same as being one. So there’s hope.”
I hear her trying not to sneeze again, so I leave her be.
TWENTY-THREE
Sheila doesn’t bolt as soon as Aunt Celia’s car stops in the parking lot; she walks with me to my locker. We don’t talk, though. I’ve been up for at least an hour longer and ran my sprints, and she’s not really a morning person. She’s also not really a Parker person, so there’s that. One step at a time.
Faith gets to her locker at the same time and they talk, starting with Faith making some crack about how the smiley faces on my scarf are upside down and can’t Sheila take some responsibility for dressing me in the morning. It’s embroidered so I can tell which side is up but I just didn’t think about it today. I had a fifty-fifty chance and lost. I hope it’s not a sign.
Faith and Sheila are still talking clothes when Molly says, “Hey, you getting back on the horse today? Out in the quad with Sarah?”
“Definitely. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m afraid to show my face.”
“Like you care what anyone thinks.”
“Damn right.” I nod. “But the Doctor is definitely IN, and by that I mean Sarah. Her loudmouth bitch partner is still en route. What are you up to?”
“I’m going to check Lost and Found for a sweater I lost yesterday. It’s chilly out today.”
“Is it? You should take up running. It warms you up.”
“Funny. So I guess you ran this morning?”
“I did. It was great. It felt weird not running yesterday.”
“I bet a lot of things felt weird yesterday.”
“That’s true. I blame it all on the not running.”
“Not months of suppression and denial?”
“No, that know-it-all Gunderson doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about half the time. I’m going to run every morning and never miss a day again and have a wonderful life. I’m a new woman. You’ll see.”
“You’re an inspiration to us all.”
“Damn right.”
“If only your tone matched your words.”
“Still a work in progress.”
“Speaking of which, you talk to Jason?”
“Not yet. Someone switched off my phone yesterday—”
“That was Faith.”
“Oh, well, I had no missed calls or texts from him. I thought I’d have at least gotten a Where are you? at lunchtime but I guess he was still bent out of shape and figured me a no-show.”
“He knew where you were. Or at least that you probably weren’t at school. He saw our fun times yesterday morning.”
“He didn’t come over?” Or even text or call me later?
“I guess he decided to leave it to us.”
“That’s one way to look at it. Was Scott there?”
“I didn’t see him. I doubt he would have come over, though.”
I’m not so sure. Either way, I look into the future and see myself finding Jason at lunch to tell him we won’t be dating anymore. But I’m going to be nice about it. That’s my new plan. Honest but nicer.
“I don’t suppose you know what schoolwork we missed yesterday?” I ask.
“No. I was just going to pick it up as we go. I’m not too worried about it. Are you?”
“Not specifically, I just hate missing a day. It’s hard enough to keep up without needing to catch up. Mostly I worry about English, but I can crank up the speed on my text-to-speech… though Count of Monte Cristo will sound like it’s being read by the Chipmunks.”