The Love That Split the World(14)

“It’s fine,” I tell him. “Really, today was my last day. I don’t need this school anymore. Feel free to spill all over it.”

“But you’ve got it all over your hand too,” he says, and when he looks down to where my hand rests beside his, I feel my forehead and cheeks flushing. There are times I really appreciate my complexion, and this is one of them.

His gaze comes back to mine, and I straighten up, putting a more natural amount of space between us. “My friends are waiting for me,” I tell him. “I should get back.”

He nods. I hop down from the window, pulling the curtains back along their track to let the moonlight unfurl across the room. I look back at him and hesitate for a second. “Okay,” I say again, pulling at my ponytail, then head for the door.

“Hey,” he says, stopping me.

“Yeah?”

“Natalie—that’s your name?”

I nod. His face is etched with shadows, but I can still see the corners of his smile. “Natalie Cleary,” I say.

“Nice to meet you, Natalie Cleary,” he says.

“Nice to meet you too, . . . ?”

“Beau,” he tells me.

“Beau.”

He nods.

Beau.

“See you around.”



When I get back out to the parking lot, Matt Kincaid is saying the words “How ’bout Hooters?” and that’s how I know it’s time to go to bed.

“I think I’m just going to go home,” I say, and all four of them jump.

“Jesus, Natalie.” Rachel clutches her chest, and her eyelids flutter dramatically.

“Yeah, seriously, did you float here?” Derek says.

“Where were you?” Matt asks, and immediately I feel guilty. For hiding from them, for letting them look for me, and, if I’m being honest, for flirting with someone who isn’t him.

“At my locker.” I lift up my purse like it’s evidence.

“We went to your locker,” Rachel says, digging her hand into her hip. “You weren’t there, and by the way, you missed out on seeing the Band Room Ghost.”

“I stopped at the bathroom.” Now I’m outright lying, and I can tell by the arch in Megan’s thin blond eyebrows she knows it. That’s fine—I plan on telling her everything, but I’m not going to ruin everyone’s ghost story, and I’m not going to talk about boys with Matt Kincaid.

“We don’t have to go to Hooters,” he offers. “We could go to BW3’s.”

“What’s wrong with Hooters?” Rachel says.

“Literally everything,” I say.

She gives a harsh laugh. “You honestly think you’re too good to eat at Hooters.”

“Rachel, anything with functioning taste buds is too good to eat at Hooters,” I say. “Their food is gross, and I’m tired.”

“Or Barleycorn’s,” Matt suggests. “We haven’t been there in a while.” Matt was the type of boyfriend to accommodate me, or to at least stand by my side in public. The I don’t get why you couldn’t just go along with it/were offended by that/don’t want to do the things we used to do would always come later, when we were alone, but I got the feeling he genuinely wanted to understand.

“I’m suddenly feeling exhausted too,” Megan says.

“Let’s just go drink at Rachel’s,” Derek tosses out.

“I don’t really feel like drinking,” Matt says.

“Since when, man?” Derek says.

“You used to eat at Hooters,” Rachel says, still on me. “Before you went all uptight feminazi Ivy Leaguer.”

“And you used to wear blue mascara,” I throw back. “People grow up.”

“Yeah, you know, I remember that blue mascara. My slut sister got that for me—the one who works at Hooters.”

“Rachel,” I snap, “I don’t care if Janelle wants to work at Hooters. I don’t care if you and the rest of the world want to go spend your money on dried-out chicken and ketchup-based sauces. And least of all—less than almost anything else I can imagine—I don’t care how much sex your sister is or isn’t having. That’s kind of the deal with the whole uptight feminazi thing—we don’t care when other women want to wear stupid orange Soffe shorts with white tennis shoes and have a lot of sex, or when they want to wear habits and live in a convent, or if they want to walk around in pasties and never French kiss, so long as they’re allowed to do what they want. And right now, all I want is to go to bed. Okay?”

She crosses her arms and glowers silently, so I turn and stomp across the parking lot back to my car. I don’t know what’s come over her lately, but Rachel never lets anything I say go without a fight anymore.

“Call me later,” Megan shouts after me.

I climb into the Jeep and look back to where they’re standing under the bright white floodlight at the back of the lot a few rows over. “Tomorrow,” I call back.

Tonight I need to find answers.

I speed out of the parking lot, past Matt’s farm, past whitewashed churches, over dark narrow roads lined in lush foliage that roll and curve as determined by the buffalo herds that shaped them long ago. I think about Beau and his song, whose sounds I can’t remember but I can still feel.