Where the Staircase Ends(15)

God, she was such a bitch.

“I don’t want it,” I said, trying to knock it from her hands and push my way past her. She stepped in front of me again and shoved her lower lip out into a pout.

“Why are you wearing our gym uniform?” I asked her, scanning the navy blue shorts and gray-and-blue Morris High T-shirt. She shrugged and looked down at her ensemble, like she’d forgotten she was wearing it, then smiled and held up the flower again. Instead of offering it to me, she plucked one of the yellow petals and mouthed the words, he loves me. Then, he loves me not.

“Stop it,” I said, as a pile of petals fell to her feet. She pulled them off one at a time, each one fluttering to the ground like a snowflake. “Stop, you’re ruining it!”

When the flower was almost completely bare, she bent down and collected the pile of petals with a final, wicked grin.

He loves me, she mouthed.

“He doesn’t,” I said, but my voice was shaky and unsure.

I opened my mouth again to argue, but she tossed the pile of yellow flakes into my eyes, and I was racked with the same nauseating sensation I had the first time my hand made contact with one of the ghosts.

The petals fell all around me, thickening until there was nothing but a wall of yellow. Everything was blinding, like I’d stared too long at the sun, until finally it all fell away and pulled me down with it. Down, down, down until I was no longer on the steps, but somewhere else entirely.

“He doesn’t,” I managed to whisper one final time, but I knew it was useless. The ghost Sunny had faded with the wall of petals, revealing a Sunny from several weeks before.

Then the blackness set in, and I forgot where I had been only seconds before.




*




“He’s gone,” Sunny said, her eyes trailing towards the door leading to our high school’s gym. “You can stop running.”

We’d been sent outside to run laps for talking, but it was more of a reward than the punishment our gym teacher intended. Mr. Thomas was proof that you didn’t need much going on between the ears to teach a gym class. He only watched us long enough to make sure we started running, then left us unattended for the rest of the period under the assumption that we’d keep running even though he wasn’t there. Stupid.

I slowed my pace, my feet slapping against the black tarred surface until I finally came to a stop next to Sunny. My breath fought for space inside my lungs even though we’d barely run a full lap around the track, yet Sunny hardly seemed winded.

She flipped her hair behind her shoulder and gave me one of her impish smirks. “I hope you never get chased by a psychopath with a knife, because you suck at running.”


I gave her a playful shove and followed her to our usual spot on the bleachers. “Lucky for me knife chases aren’t a regular occurrence.” I pressed my hand against the metal bleachers to test the temperature. They were hot, but not too hot to sit on.

“You never know,” she said, plopping down next to me and angling her body toward the field where the soccer team practiced. “No offense, but you are definitely the slowest seal. And everyone knows the slowest seal gets eaten.”

“If it’s by one of them,” I inclined my head toward the field where the varsity soccer team was running drills, “I might not mind so much.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow at me and tipped her head back so the sun could warm her face. “And what would Logan say if he heard you talking like that, hmm?”

I shrugged and readjusted my gym shorts. The thick polyester had inched up my thigh and was giving me a wedgie. As usual, Sunny rolled the waistband of her shorts up so many times that the full length of her tanned legs was exposed. You could almost see her thong. I tugged my shorts down lower, trying to hide as much of my pale skin as possible.

“You guys are, like, official now, right?”

I didn’t need to look at her to know that she glared at me expectantly, but I didn’t feel much like answering. Answering made it real. Answering made it final. And I hadn’t decided whether or not I wanted him to be my boyfriend yet.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be with Logan. He was like one of those cardboard picture books with huge block letters and primary colored illustrations that needed no interpretation. He liked me, and it was a nice change from the enigma that was Justin Cobb. But no matter how much I wanted to say yes, I couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling I got in my gut whenever he said the word girlfriend, like the word was covered in rocks and once he attached it to me I would sink to the bottom of the ocean, drowning in the fact that he was not Justin Cobb.

Sunny ignored my silence and snapped the piece of gum she chewed in my direction.

“Look, now that you’ve got a boyfriend or whatever, I think it’s time I let you in on a secret. But you can’t get mad, okay? I mean, you kind of gave up your right to get mad once you started seeing Logan.”

The sun was bright in the afternoon sky, and I had to raise my hand over my eyes to block the glare so I could get a better look at Sunny. There was something in her eyes I didn’t like, something dark and threatening that only crossed her face when she wanted something.

“I’ve been watching Justin recently, you know, since you point him out all the time.” As she spoke her jaw worked feverishly at the piece of gum in her mouth, like she was sharpening her teeth on the pink gluey surface. “And I totally get why you’ve been obsessing over him. I mean he’s hot. Like, hot hot. Plus, he hangs out with all those guys at the water tower, and that’s kind of our scene, so it only makes sense that one of us starts dating him. I know you’re probably not completely over him yet, but now that you’re seeing Logan, it kind of makes him fair game. So I was thinking that maybe I could take a crack at him. You know, try to hang out with him or whatever.”