“Just make it stop ringing, please,” I said.
She sighed, as if it was just such a hardship, then flipped open her phone, putting it to her ear. “Hey. No, just eating lunch with Ruby. What? Yes, she did say that,” she said, eyeing me. “I don’t know, she’s fickle. I’m not even trying to understand.”
I rolled my eyes, then looked over my shoulder at Nate again. He was still talking to Jake and didn’t see me this time, but as I scanned the rest of the courtyard, I did spot someone staring right at me. Gervais.
He was alone, sitting at the base of a tree, his backpack beside him, a milk carton in one hand. He was also chewing slowly, while keeping his eyes steady on me. Which was kind of creepy, I had to admit. Then again, Gervais had been acting sort of strange lately. Or stranger.
By this point, I’d gotten so used to his annoying car behavior that I hardly even noticed it anymore. In fact, as Nate and I had gotten closer, Gervais had almost become an afterthought. Which was probably why, at least at first, I didn’t realize when he suddenly began to change. But Nate did.
“How can you not have noticed he’s combing his hair now?” he’d asked me a couple of mornings earlier, after Gervais had already taken off and we were walking across the parking lot. “And he’s lost the headgear?”
“Because unlike some people,” I said, “I don’t spend a lot of time looking at Gervais?”
“Still, it’s kind of hard to miss,” he replied. “He looks like a totally different person.”
“Looks being the operative word.”
“He smells better, too,” Nate added. “He’s cut down considerably on the toxic emissions.”
“Why are we talking about this again?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “When someone starts to change, and it’s obvious, it’s sort of natural to wonder why. Right?”
I wasn’t wondering about Gervais, though. In fact, even if he got a total makeover and suddenly smelled like petunias, I couldn’t have cared less. Now, though, as I looked across the green at him, I had to admit that Nate was right—he did look different. The hair was combed, not to mention less greasy, and without the headgear his face looked completely changed. When he saw me looking at him, he flinched, then immediately ducked his head, sucking down the rest of his carton of milk. So weird, I thought.
“. . . no, I don’t,” Olivia was saying now as she took another sip of her smoothie. “Because shoes are not going to make you run faster, Laney. That’s all hype. What? Well, of course they’re going to tell you that. They get paid on commission!”
“Who does?” Nate said, sliding onto the bench beside me. Olivia, listening to Laney, raised her eyebrows at me.
“No idea,” I told him. “As you’ll notice, she’s not talking to me. She’s on the phone.”
“Ah, right,” he said. “You know, that’s really kind of rude.”
“Isn’t it?”
Olivia ignored us, picking up my chip bag and helping herself again. Then she offered it to Nate, who took a handful out, popping them into his mouth. “Those are mine,” I pointed out.
“Yeah?” Nate said. “They’re good.”
He smiled, then bumped me with his knee. Across the table, Olivia was still talking to Laney about shoes, her voice shifting in and out of lecture mode. Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning: there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.
At noon on Thanksgiving Day I was positioned in the foyer, ready to perform my assigned duty as door-opener and coat-taker. Just as the first car slowed and began to park in front of the house, though, I realized there was a hole in my sweater.
I took the stairs two at a time to my room, heading into the bathroom to my closet. When I pulled the door open, I jumped, startled. Cora was inside, sitting on the floor with Roscoe in her lap.
“Don’t say it,” she said, putting a hand up. “I know this looks crazy.”
“What are you doing?”
She sighed. “I just needed to take a time-out. A few deep breaths. A moment for myself.”
“In my closet,” I said, clarifying.
“I came to get Roscoe. You know how he gets when the oven is on.” She shot me a look. “But then, once I was in here, I began to understand why he likes it so much. It’s very soothing, actually.”
For the first time, Cora and Jamie were hosting Thanksgiving dinner, which meant that within moments, we’d be invaded by no less than fifteen Hunters. Personally, I was kind of curious to meet this extended tribe, but Cora, like Roscoe, was a nervous wreck.
“You were the one who suggested it,” Jamie had said to her the week before as she sat at the kitchen table in full stress mode, surrounded by cookbooks and copies of Cooking Light. “I never would have asked you to do this.”
“I was just being polite!” she said. “I didn’t think your mother would actually take me up on it.”
“They want to see the house.”
“Then they should come for drinks. Or appetizers. Or dessert. Something simple. Not on a major holiday, when I’m expected to provide a full meal!”