“I hate apricot,” I say, pushing the pale orange packet his way.
“Not a fan of blueberry,” he returns, pushing that packet my way. I alternate pushing the other three my way and his, creating an elaborate jam-packet design on the table. I can’t wait until the food gets here.
“This is uncomfortable,” Michael says.
I gather up all the jam packets and put them back. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, not that,” he says quickly. He shifts and there’s this ridiculous squeak of wet clothes against the plastic. “Wet jeans don’t feel that great.”
“We’ll dry out soon.”
Michael stares out the window. It’s still pouring.
“And then we’ll get soaked all over again,” he says.
“It’s not the end of the world.” I watch some poor woman get totally doused as she crosses the crosswalk. “I think it’s going to break the heat.”
“I’ll eat to that.”
We wait for Angie to bring us our food. After ten minutes or so, it comes. I zone out; I shove huge forkfuls into my mouth. Everything tastes amazing. Breakfast–what a concept. I’m halfway through my plate when I notice Michael staring. He’s barely made a dent in his meal, and I feel stupid.
“I just realized I’ve never seen you eat before,” he says.
“I can’t eat at school,” I say. “It’s too stress—”
I stop. Awkward.
“Actually, this is the first time I’ve had breakfast in a while, too.”
Michael looks at his plate. “Dad isn’t much of a cook. Neither am I. Neither was my mom for the most part, but she made awesome eggs-“
“So what do you eat? It’s the most important meal of the day.”
“Granola bars, cereal,” he says, and then he laughs. “What’s so funny?” I ask.
“This is a very involved conversation about food.” He leans back in his seat. “Yeah…my mom liked the idea of food better than actually making it. We were fast-foodies. It was her dirty little secret.”
I shrug. “So she didn’t like to cook. She wasn’t making a career out of it.”
“She liked to listen,” Michael says. “She made a career out of that. And it was a brilliant one. She was really good at what she did.”
“Yeah, she was.” I miss her. Just like that. I feel it. I miss her.
“So—when did you hear? I mean, when did you hear about …it happening?” he asks.
I can’t remember exactly how I heard. My parents. It was one of my parents. It wasn’t that long after. I take a sip of juice, buying time, hoping he can’t see it on my face. The diner’s phone rings, sparking a memory.
“The office called the week it happened,” I say. “We sent a card.”
“We got lots of cards,” Michael says, nodding. “She had this one patient, he had OCD, like, bad. He freaked when she died. He left all these messages at the office….”
He trails off and it gets quiet. A month ago I would have never pictured myself here in Val’s Diner with Michael. With no friends. And not feeling like it’s not that bad a thing—to be here with him. With no friends.
“I was at school,” he says suddenly. He runs the tines of his fork through the leftover egg yolk on the plate, drawing designs in all that sunny yellow. “I don’t know if you knew that. I got sent down to Holt’s office, and Dad was there. He was crying and I just didn’t get it. If you knew my dad, he’s really stoic, right? But he was crying and he told me, and I thought it was a joke until I saw it on the news. I didn’t think of her as…crushed until I saw the wreckage on TV. It was bad because I—” he shrugs and sets his fork down. “I thought I’d get to see her.”
“You wanted to?”
“Yeah.” His voice cracks. He presses his lips together tightly, and my gaze travels down to his hands. He’s clutching the edges of the table so hard his knuckles are white. I want more than anything to reach over and touch his hand, some small gesture that means it’s going to be okay, because that’s what I would want, if I was him. I’ve almost gathered the courage to do it when he takes a sharp breath in that startles me and keeps my hands at my side.
“Michael, I can’t—”
“No. You can’t.”
I can’t imagine how horrible that would be.
He swallows once, twice, three times, trying to keep it together. I want to ask him why he even brought it up if he can’t talk about it yet. And then his eyes get bright: He’s close to crying. I want to give him some privacy, but I can’t look away. I watch him clench his jaw, just fighting with himself to keep from letting the tears spill out. His mom dead in an overpass collapse—that’s a waste. That makes everything Kara and Anna are doing to me nothing. Or it should.
I don’t know what to do.
“The heat’s going to break,” I say feebly. I already said that. And then I do something really stupid and I say it again. “The heat’s going to—”
“Don’t.” He uncurls his fingers from their painful death grip on the table, takes a shaky breath in, and pushes his plate away. I wonder if a moment like this can be salvaged. After a long, long silence, he takes another shaky breath in and goes, “So what do your parents do?”
“They work at a call center in Colfer.” It’s a relief to be able to say something that doesn’t sound so stupid this time. “The commute’s a killer. I hardly ever see them, but they’re okay.”
He nods and looks out the window. The meal is over. I hail Angie, who brings us the bill. We both reach into our pockets at the same time. I hold my hand up.
“I’m paying.”
“No,” Michael says. “I’ve got it.”
It becomes a race of who can get into their drenched, stiff pocket first. I win. Michael’s got a whole wallet to contend with, but I deal in crumpled dollar bills. I hand them to Angie and tell her to take her tip out of the change. It’s still raining, not as hard as before but steady. I get to my feet, and Michael follows me out of the diner and back into it. I stretch my hands out and feel the rain against my palm.
“Well, you’ve been to Val’s,” I say. “Now you can say you’ve done everything, unless you haven’t done the bowling alley.”
“I haven’t done the bowling alley,” he mutters. His shoulders are hunched and he’s got his hands in his pocket. I can tell he feels bad about what happened, and I don’t want him to feel bad about what happened, so I keep my voice light.
“What about the pool hall?”
“Nope.”
“Arcade?”
“Not even once.”
I force a smile. “So what do you do?”
“Nothing. Now ask me why.”
I stop. He stops. He’s rigid, tense. I get it. He’s embarrassed, and everything about him is asking for a distraction. He’s chosen a fight. I should give him one as a favor, but there’s nothing between me and school without Michael there, and more than that, I don’t want to fight him. I just want to tell him how sorry I am.
But I swallow it and it settles in my stomach with the guilt that’s always there. We walk in silence after that, leaving the main street for the back roads. The rain turns to spit, and eventually we turn down Hutt Avenue, and I guess that’s it. We’ll end up at his place, and I don’t think he’ll be inviting me in.
I want him to invite me in.
I clear my throat. “Michael—”
“I don’t want to talk about me,” he says abruptly. He slows as we reach his place. The weather, the rain, it makes his house look emptier than it did before. Like, nothing about it looks remotely homey. But people live here. Michael lives here. That’s sad.
“I’m so sorry, Michael.”
He takes a step back. “What?”
The repeat is always the killer. Everything inside you goes into saying the word once, but sorry is the kind of word the person you say it to always wants to hear twice. “For what I did to you. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to—”
“Don’t.” He takes another step away from me and another, up the path. “I don’t want to hear it. You’re not sorry; you’re guilty. That’s why Liz didn’t forgive you. Because you just feel sorry for yourself.” My mouth drops open and he nods. “Yeah, she told me you apologized. Even she knew it. You don’t deserve it.”
“I knew she wouldn’t forgive me.”
He keeps moving away from me, digging into his pockets for his house key. “Then why did you even say it?”
“Because I meant it,” I say pathetically. “But I’m not a good person and I’ll never be a good person, so who cares if I meant it, right?”
“You finally get it,” he says. “If you really cared, then why didn’t you tell my mom what you did to Liz? Because you didn’t, did you?”
I shake my head. The thunder rolls, distant, the storm moving out or coming back in. I don’t know.
“And you didn’t tell her about what you did to me,” he says. “So what did you tell her about? How could she possibly have helped you if you just sat there and lied to her? You wasted her time.”
“I told her about Anna.”
“Coward,” he spits.
My eyes fill with tears. He takes another few steps to the front door. I bet he’s going to relish the weekend. There’ll be no stupid, crazy, needy, antacid-popping girl hanging off him in a building full of people who didn’t give him a chance because of some stupid, crazy, needy, antacid-popping girl.
“I shouldn’t have apologized to you,” I say.
He stops, but he doesn’t come back. “No, you should have. A long time ago.”
“Michael, I’m—”