A light in a window above me turns on, and I suck in a breath and crouch down against the block wall as if being smaller will hide me from the light.
A moment later he’s back. “Yeah,” he says. “Be there in a minute.”
And it’s like we’re in sixth grade again, and no time has passed, and we’re standing by our lockers planning what time we’re going to meet under the slide on the elementary school playground.
The phone goes dead. I keep it to my ear for a few seconds, and then lower it and put it in my pocket. Tiny bits of snow begin to float down, or maybe they were there for a while and I just noticed them. I shiver and do a mental count. Forty-one hours to go.
A few minutes later, carefully and almost silently, a figure emerges from the building, and Sawyer Angotti, the guy I’ve loved since first grade, comes over to me.
I stand up. Look up at him, at his sleepy eyes. He holds a finger to his lips, tugs my coat sleeve, and gestures to the far street, whose name I don’t know. We walk together without speaking. When we get to the sidewalk along the road, he just puts his hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “Oh, Jules,” he says, shaking his head. “What are you doing?” He gives me the half grin that almost kills me.
I swallow hard. Glad he’s not mad. “I had to come one last time to talk to you.”
He nods, resigned to listen. “All right, then. Go.”
I look down at the sidewalk. “Something bad is going to happen here,” I say, as painfully aware of his hands on my shoulders as I am of the fact that he’s not believing me, and for the millionth time I doubt myself and my own sanity. “I know when it’s going to happen now. Valentine’s night, 7:04 p.m.” I continue talking, staring blindly at his slipper shoes. “I know you don’t believe me, and it’s okay with me if the whole school thinks I’m insane. I just need to ask you to please be careful, and if there’s any way you can not be in the building or in this back parking lot at 7:04 p.m. on Saturday night, just even, you know, step outside the front door for a few minutes . . . please . . .” I bite my lip to stop my voice from pitching higher, into frantic mode. I can’t look him in the eye.
I hear him sigh, feel its weight in his hands on my shoulders. He rests his chin on my bowed head for a moment and pulls me closer, into him. And then he moves his face next to mine. He smells like a man now. I wonder how long it’s been since he smelled like a boy.
My eyes close, but all I can do is stand there numbly. I wasn’t expecting this response, and I don’t know what to do with my hands—they hang stiffly at my sides. I want to wrap my arms around him, hold him, but I don’t. I can’t.
As we stand there together, bodies nearer than they’ve ever been before, I wonder how many times I will regret not holding him.
Twenty-Nine
The saddest part, the part that makes the tears rush out of the corners of my eyes as I lie in bed an hour later, staring at the ceiling, is that he thinks listening to me is enough, and believing me is too much.
In school Friday I can’t help but look for him, and I find him looking for me, his melancholy eyes sending me a weird, pitying glance, like he’s trying to empathize, and it only frustrates me.
I get it now. He’s being Sawyer, the guy who is nice to the outcasts—one of my favorite things about him. That’s the kid, the guy, I’ve always loved. But I never, ever wanted to be the target. I wanted to be the partner. He believes he’s protecting me in a way, but it feels like he’s leading me on with his listening ear, trying to be there for an old friend who’s losing her marbles. He even sends me a text message. “You doing okay? We should talk at lunch. Under the slide? ”
And that about does me in. I can’t even answer it, because when he’s dead, I want this to be the only text in the thread on my phone.
Dear dog, I’m such a mess.
• • •
He finds me at the drinking fountain.
“Hey!” he says in a strangely cheerful voice. His smile isn’t the one from last night. It’s the volunteer smile, the good-student smile. The fake smile.
“Hi,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can. I bite my lip, wondering when, between two in the morning and now, things actually changed for him. When he became distant, nice-guy Sawyer, and if he regrets going down to meet me in the middle of the night when he might not have been thinking straight.
“You doing okay?”
I smile and nod. “Mm-hmm. You?”
“A little tired.” He laughs.
My heart is breaking. I don’t want to be in this conversation. I don’t want to be his animal shelter favorite. I’d rather be ignored than that. “Yeah,” I say. My laugh is hollow, and I wonder if he notices.
“Hey, about last night,” he says, lowering his voice considerably. “I probably can’t ever do that again, okay? So maybe don’t . . . come over. Anymore. It’s just a bad idea, you know? The family thing and all.” His face is strained, about to crack from the perma-smile. “I’d get in a lot of trouble if I got caught.”
“Sure, yeah,” I say. “Yeah, no, I won’t do that ever again. It was definitely a one time thing.” I turn my head, looking for a distraction so I can get out of here. “Just did it for old times’ sake, I guess. I don’t know. It was dumb.”
He relaxes a little, and the awkwardness, still there, has a veil over it now. “Okay, cool.” He shuffles his feet, suddenly at a loss for words. He points with his thumb down the hallway. “I’m supposed to be meeting . . . someone . . .”