We Are the Ants(58)

Relief flooded Audrey’s face when she saw me, and she started babbling the moment I sat down. “Your mom came to my house, looking for you. Did you talk to her? Are you all right? I told her you were probably fine, but she said you hadn’t come home in a couple of days and I hadn’t heard from you and you weren’t answering your phone. She was really worried.”

My eyeballs throbbed, and it hurt to smile, but I forced one for Audrey. “I’m good. She knows I’m okay.”

“Thank God.”

“Thanksgiving was kind of a mess at my house, and I lost my phone.” I hoped if I were vague, she’d drop it, but Audrey was tenacious.

“Diego called me, freaking out. He told me what happened, and he was scared he’d messed things up, but I thought maybe you’d . . . Jesus, Henry, I was worried sick.” She glanced around the room, but we were the only people in it other than Ms. Faraci, whose head was cocked to the side slightly. She appeared to be grading papers, but her pen hadn’t moved since I’d walked into class.

My cheeks burned as I wondered how much Diego had told Audrey. “I’m not going to hurt myself, Audrey. Everything’s just complicated.”

“You can’t disappear like that.”

“It’s not like the sluggers gave me a choice.”

Audrey fell silent while I stewed. I was tired of apologizing for things that were beyond my control. I didn’t ask to be abducted. I didn’t ask for Diego to kiss me. I didn’t deserve any of it. I only wanted to lie low until the end of the world.

“Diego really likes you, Henry. I knew he liked you.”

“Aren’t you smart?” A mob of students entered the classroom as the warning bell rang, and Marcus was among them. I tried to shush Audrey, but she wasn’t listening.

“Have you talked to him yet? He went crazy when you disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Marcus stood over my desk, flanked by Adrian and Jay. “Abducted again, Space Boy?” His red-rimmed eyes held no laughter. They were hollow. He was hollow.

I tried to ignore him, but Audrey snapped. “Thank God aliens never abducted you, Marcus. I’d hate for you to represent our entire f*cking species.”

“Is there a problem?” Ms. Faraci asked from the front of the room.

“Did you hear what she said to me?”

Ms. Faraci glanced from me to Audrey to Marcus and offered a shrug. “I did not, Mr. McCoy. But if I hear you call anyone Space Boy again, you’ll find yourself in Saturday detentions for the remainder of the year.”

? ? ?

It would have been best if I’d faced Diego at lunch and gotten it over with, but instead I hid in an empty classroom and watched him wait by my locker, pacing back and forth, checking his phone every few seconds. After ten minutes passed he punched the locker door and left.

Regardless of what he said, I doubt he believed my stories about the sluggers. Who would? Maybe it’s for the best that they abducted me before things between us got serious. There’s so much I don’t know about Diego. Jesse used to say I was oblivious to the world around me. I thought he was referring to things like poverty and hunger and wars in countries I didn’t know the names of, but now I think he was talking about himself. I didn’t know what had been going on with my own boyfriend, and we’d spent nearly every waking second together for more than a year. I’ve only known Diego for a few weeks.

Despite my brother hating me and my mom waiting to yell at me and the whole end-of-the-world thing, all I could think about was Diego. It was ridiculous. I hated movies and books where people ignored bullets whizzing by their heads and zombies chasing after them so that they could make out, but I finally understood. Kissing Diego dominated my every thought. I tried to think about something else, but I always returned to him, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Instead of going straight home, I took a detour to the beach and sat on the rickety staircase to watch the tide go out. The ocean retreated, exposing the bones of the shoreline. It was one of those days that was neither rainy nor sunny. A layer of clouds muddied the sky, bleeding the surrounding color, leaving everything monochrome and drab. If this was how dogs saw the world, it was no wonder they humped anything they could mount. It was probably the only thing that kept them from committing doggy suicide.

The steps creaked behind me, and I scooted to the side to let whoever it was pass, but they didn’t.

“I figured I’d find you here,” Diego said. “Also, I already tried everywhere else.”

Diego Vega was the person I most and least wanted to see. He sat down beside me, leaving space between us that hadn’t existed the last time we were together, and it was all I could do not to push him to the ground and kiss him until he knew I was sorry. He handed me my cell phone.

“Was it a dream?” I asked.

“Was what a dream?”

It was raining over the ocean, the wall of it so heavy that it appeared nothing existed beyond. The world consisted of only me and Diego and the beach. Maybe that’s all it ever was. “Thanksgiving? Your bedroom?”

Diego shook his head. “Was it them?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I asked. I begged them to send me back, but the sluggers aren’t keen on taking commands.” I wished I knew how to make Diego believe me; I wished the aliens had abducted him, too, so we could have watched the stars together. “Maybe it was for the best, though.”