A Danger to Herself and Others(36)

“You’ll get in,” I say confidently.

“Do you really think so?”

“I do.”

Agnes’s voice: When you say it, I actually believe it.

“Do you think that girl would let you use her phone again?” Lucy asks.

“I’m not sure.”

“Joaquin is going to check my email, to keep an eye out for the acceptance letter. He said he’d text that number to let me know.”

“I’ll ask her at lunch tomorrow.”

“Thanks. Sucks to be stuck at the stupid E.D. table.”

I open my eyes. “That’s what you have me for, right?”

Lucy may be the one of us who got away from this place today, but now that we’re both back inside, I’m the one with a link to the world outside. Or with access to the girl who has a link to the world outside.

I can’t make out much more than a lump on Lucy’s side of the room, but I imagine she’s nodding in agreement.

I’m not ready to go to sleep yet, so I keep talking. “Joaquin must’ve been happy to see you, huh?”

“He hugged me so hard I thought it’d crack a rib.” For once, I don’t roll my eyes. I actually want to hear more. Or maybe I just don’t want the room to go silent.

“How long have you guys been together?”

“Six months.”

“How did you meet?”

“At school. He was in my history class.”

“And he doesn’t mind? You being in here, I mean. He doesn’t mind waiting for you out there?”

I can hear Lucy’s sheets rustle. “If he loves me, he’ll wait. And if he doesn’t, I’ll find someone else who does.” She says it simply, like finding a new person to love is as easy as replacing a pair of shoes after you’ve worn down the sole. She sounds happy. She’s been outside, she nailed her audition, she has someone who will wait for her, someone she can reach out to from this miserable place, even if I’m the one doing the actual reaching.

I say, “Maybe I’ll text someone too.”

“Who? Your lawyer?”

I sigh. “Not my lawyer. He couldn’t keep me out of this place, so what good is he?”

“You could text your parents that you want another lawyer.”

“Sure,” I agree. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? To text my parents before I handed the phone back to QB yesterday. “But maybe I’d text Jonah.” I haven’t said his name out loud since they brought me here. “Jonah Wyatt.” I say it slowly, savoring each syllable. Lucy doesn’t know that I don’t have his number. For a few minutes, I allow myself to forget that I can’t reach him, with or without a phone.

“Who’s Jonah Wyatt? Your boyfriend?”

“Don’t you think if I had a boyfriend, I’d have told you about him by now?”

“Not necessarily.”

“You told me about Joaquin within seconds of meeting me.”

“Yeah, but you’re not like me.”

“What’s that mean?”

Lucy’s bed creaks as she sits up. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s just—I’ve always had a boyfriend. Before Joaquin there was Mikey, and before Mikey there was Pedro, and before Pedro—”

I sit up too. “Okay, I get it. You’re the type of girl who always has a boyfriend.” We had a few of those at school, girls who managed to meet boys despite our single-sex education. The guys would wait for them on the corner outside school, hands stuffed in their pockets, all bad posture and hunched shoulders, victims of growth spurts they hadn’t gotten used to yet. Those boys didn’t interest me. Sure, I’d gone to parties and dances, I’d flirted and been kissed, but until Jonah, I’d spent more time with adult men like my dad and his friends than I had with guys my own age.

“So who’s Jonah?” Lucy asks again.

“He’s this boy I was hooking up with over the summer.” I’ve never said that out loud either. I couldn’t, of course. What happened between us was a secret.

“But he wasn’t your boyfriend?”

After a moment, I answer, “It was complicated.” I like how mysterious it sounds.

“But you liked him?”

“Of course.” I wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble—keeping our relationship a secret, lying to my best friend—if I hadn’t cared about him, right?

“Did you looooove him?” Lucy sounds like the boy-crazy girl in an eighties’ movie.

“Shut up,” I say, though I like how it feels to let Lucy think I (sort of) have a boy on the outside too. I throw my pillow at her bed. It’s so light and thin it doesn’t even make it all the way across the room. At home, I have four pillows on my bed. All filled with (humanely sourced) goose down. Lucy leans over the edge of her bed and tosses the scrawny pillow back to me.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Take it as whatever you want it to be.”

“Hannah and Jonah, sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love. Then comes marriage—”

Now I lie back and cover my face with the pillow. “Make it stop!” I beg, my voice coming out all muffled. “This isn’t a slumber party, and we’re not in eighth grade!”