Lies You Never Told Me(24)

And then I come back to myself as Caleb and Irene come up behind me. “Hey. What’s the holdup, Jiménez?” Irene asks.

“Hey. Uh, this is Catherine. I was just trying to convince her to come with us instead of going to the rally.”

Irene gives her an appraising smirk. I feel unaccountably nervous. It’s not like I need my friends to approve of some girl I’ve got a crush on—but then, since they were right all along about Sasha, maybe I should wait for their thumbs-up.

Finally, Irene nods. “Come on, then.”

I feel myself relax. Catherine glances from Irene back to me, uncertain. Caleb holds up a package of Ding Dongs and shakes it enticingly.

“We’ve got snacks,” he says.

A shy smile unfolds over her face. She tucks her books under one arm.

“Okay,” she says. “Where are we going?”



* * *



? ? ?

Technically, the Lower Courtyard isn’t really a courtyard. It’s a spot under the social sciences wing that’s built over a dip in the landscape and supported by pillars, with an entrance to the ground floor that barely ever gets used. It’s functionally a shaded patio for smokers, skate punks, art freaks, and burnouts.

Over time the place has gotten decorated in a haphazard, communal kind of way. A handful of mismatched deck chairs sit at random angles to each other. Someone’s left a bucket of colored chalk down there, and the concrete is covered in smeared and faded scrawls. Smash the patriarchy! Mara + Colton 4Eva. Degroot suxxxxxxx! There’s a broken pogo stick leaning against the wall, and someone has wound chili-pepper-shaped string lights around two of the pillars, though the bulbs are all burned out.

Irene shakes her head at the chalk graffiti. “Amateurs.” She dumps out the bucket of chalk and picks up a pastel green, running it in quick graceful lines over the concrete. Caleb releases the armful of snacks onto a three-legged card table propped up with cinder blocks and picks up a bag of pretzels. I glance at Catherine; she’s smiling a little, looking around the Courtyard. A warm hum fills my chest.

“You’re new, right?” Irene asks, glancing up at Catherine as she draws. “Where’d you go last year?”

“Oh . . . last year I lived in Eureka. It’s in Northern California.” She scuffs her feet. I pull a pink plastic lawn chair out and gesture to it with mock gallantry, and she sits. I plop down next to her on an upended milk crate.

“Cool,” says Caleb. “I got a cousin in Eureka. Maddy Scott? You ever meet her? She’s a year behind us.”

Catherine shakes her head. “No, I don’t . . . I mean, we lived right outside Eureka. Kind of, uh, rural.”

“Rural Humboldt County. You must have some stories,” Caleb says. “I bet you got a contact high just walking down the street.”

Catherine’s eyes fall to her lap, where her fingers twist anxiously. I give Caleb a look, willing him to stop putting her on the spot.

“Anyway,” I say pointedly. “Hey, so, I’m halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Her face lights up a little. “Isn’t it amazing?”

“Yeah, except it’s more like One Hundred Years of Dudes with the Same Name. I can’t figure out who’s who.”

She grins. “I know, I had that problem too. I had to make a flow chart.”

“Whoa, whoa. Back up,” says Irene. “Gabe’s reading? A, like, book?”

“A, like, five-hundred-page book,” I say haughtily. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Uh huh,” Irene says. She looks up at Catherine. “Have you read Love in the Time of Cholera? I like that one even better.”

“No, but it’s on my list,” Catherine says. “Maybe I’ll pick it up over Christmas break.”

“You have to really savor it. It’s slow and dense and gorgeous.” Irene picks up a yellow piece of chalk and starts to color something in. “Why aren’t you in AP English with me? If you’re reading García Márquez you’re better qualified than, like, ninety percent of the idiots in there.”

I could kill both of my best friends right now. But Catherine just gives a little shrug. “My grades weren’t good enough last year. My mom died in the middle of the semester and I . . . I didn’t really recover very quickly.”

Irene stops what she’s doing and looks up. “That sucks, dude.” She pushes her cat-eye glasses up her nose. “My dad died when I was twelve. Car crash. The idiot was driving home drunk from a Longhorns game. It was totally his fault, so I couldn’t even be mad at someone else. I basically refused to leave the house all summer. These two were the only people who’d still talk to me after that.” She jerks her head at me and Caleb. “Everyone else was too weirded out.”

Catherine nods eagerly. “Yeah, I felt like such a . . . such a freak. Still do, kind of. Most people don’t get it.”

Okay . . . maybe I spoke too soon. Because the tension suddenly leaves Catherine’s jaw, and her eyes are round and earnest.

“Yeah, well, most people are morons.” Irene studies her, then starts to draw again. “That why you moved here?”

“Yeah. Dad thought we needed a change of scene.” She kicks her legs gently, brushing her hair to one side. “It’s okay here, I guess. But I miss the trees back home.”