Afterparty(69)

How could I do that to him?

I text him: Still sorry. Could we please talk?

Dylan: Go away.

This is what I want to do at school: hide.

I want to find the Latimer equivalent of my closet and sit in there. I don’t want to face Dylan. When we accidentally catch each other’s eye, he looks at me and then, pointedly, looks away.

I like it down behind the stables, where it’s quiet, and there’s no one there, possibly because even when there’s no sun, the air smells ripe and horsey.

I don’t want to see Siobhan, hear from Siobhan, or talk to Siobhan.

And nobody else at school seems all that interested in talking with me, except for Kimmy. Who is kind of friend-like, but who more than kind of can’t stand not having any and all late-breaking Latimer news.

“You and Dylan,” she says as I’m heading away from the candy machines and toward the path into the woods. “What’s up with that?”

I say, “Nothing.”

“You’re not back with Jean-Luc, are you?”

“No! Could we please not talk about this?”

Kimmy says, “But you’re MIA. Literally. Siobhan is slamming things, so that’s getting annoying. And Dylan is total Dylan, only more so.”

“Don’t.”

“Damn! Kahane didn’t dump you did he, because if he did, after you gave up Jean-Luc for him—”

“Kimmy, it’s nothing like that! Could we please talk once I figure it out?”

She says, “I guess. But nobody knows where you are and I, like, miss you.”

? ? ?

Siobhan, tromping down the hill, says, “You have to stop hiding out.”

I have a slice of pizza and I’m sitting on a rock with my physics book.

I say, “Go away. I don’t forgive you.”

Siobhan says, “Fine. Because I’m not sorry.”

“How can you not be sorry? That was a complete and total setup with your signature on it.”

“You keep repeating yourself. You’re boring me to death. It was a game. Man of Mystery and International Girl of Intrigue.”

“How far back did you plan this?”

“You are so paranoid,” Siobhan sighs. “And Dylan is a jerk. Who cares if you kissed some guy you didn’t even know?”

“You were supposed to have my back, not stab me in it!”

“Well, this blows, doesn’t it?” she says “You totally f*ck up by not telling your stupid boyfriend what you said you were going to tell him, so why not blame your best friend?” She pulls some tall, dry grass out by the roots. “Are you just going to hide out back here forever or what?”

She reaches down. She says, “Come on, missy. Two weeks in time-out is plenty.”

It’s not completely clear who she thinks was in time-out, her or me.

“Crap,” Siobhan says, sitting down. “Bad Emma, bad Emma. Are you happy now? You have to cut it out.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d go away.”

And it gets worse. I stop at the caf for a root beer to wash down the awful pizza, and there’s Dylan, getting fries. He is as blank as a chunk of white ice, and as warm.

I say, “Hey.”

He says nothing.

Siobhan, sitting by the window with frozen yogurt, says, “Give it up, Kahane. Talk to the girl.”

Dylan takes the fries, slaps down a couple of dollars at the cash register, and leaves. He never once looks at me.

In English, I glance at Arif, who hasn’t said a word to me either, and he is not even slightly smiling back.

I say, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but aren’t you talking to me either?”

There’s a long pause during which he appears to be deciding if the degree of his not talking to me includes not answering direct questions. He says, “I know there are two sides to every story, but—”

“You can stop there. There’s one side, and FYI, it’s not my side. I don’t even have a side.”

“Really.” It’s as if Dylan has been tutoring him on expressionlessness. I figure, if I can push Arif over the edge to less-than-polite, I really have strayed beyond the bounds of the civilized world.

“Oh yeah, I’m Satan. It’s in my genes.”

“Don’t say that,” he says. Very sharply. “There are very few unforgivable things.”

I wonder how many of them I’ve managed to land on.

I text Dylan. “I get it. I can’t get any sorrier. You can stop now.”

He doesn’t reply.

At the food bank, Megan says, “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

She says, “It really is a shame Jews don’t have confession. Because you need absolution, and you need it fast.”

“How would I even know what Jews do and don’t have? My dad doesn’t even think I’m good enough to get any higher than a temple basement.”

I leave her there. Or try to. She trails me back into the powdered milk.

She says, “You know what delusional depressive thinking that is, right?”

“That’s me. Sad and delusional.”

“You know what I mean. There are pills for this.”

“My boyfriend dumped me because I suck. This isn’t a mental disorder.”