I found a spot on the top row of the bleachers, near the very edge. I stood when they stood. And clapped when they clapped. And watched what they watched. Which was Reid. Because he was good. Like, really, really good. He weaved between people, glancing up and to the side and down the field and moving his feet like he knew where the ball was at all times even though he wasn’t looking. Like he could sense it.
Like I could sense that thing, even without looking, the way I could feel it in my room, picture it in semisolid form, hovering. I never had to look. Just like Reid.
Reid kept his eyes on the open field as he dribbled around people. He took a shot on goal, and of course he scored. His mouth turned into this giant smile, and I felt the corners of my mouth turning up with his.
He scanned the crowd, which was on its feet. They sat as one, a rogue clap or cheer escaping, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his smile. So when he scanned a second time, he saw me, because I was the only one still standing. And then it occurred to me that I was the only one still standing, and I ached to sit, but I worried I was just doing it because everyone else was doing it, and I didn’t want to be like everyone else.
Reid’s smile, if possible, stretched wider, and then I had this horrifying thought. I shook my head, just a bit, and I thought, Please don’t wave. Then Reid raised his hand and waved. I quickly sat down. But people had noticed. People on the field followed his eyes into the sea of red, and they saw me. I knew they saw me, because I knew what the weight of eyes felt like.
It felt like knives.
At the sound of the final whistle, I ran down the steps of the bleachers, the sound of my feet hidden under the sound of everyone else’s feet. Reid was talking to the coach on the sideline, a bunch of players huddled around them. He was smiling. He caught my eye as I passed, and he smiled some more. I kept moving, but a soccer player in a scarlet shirt skipped off the field and ran up to me. Jason.
“Got yourself a boyfriend, Mallory?” Jason leaned close; warm smile, but his voice was ice.
“I don’t do boyfriends.” I yanked my arm back.
Jason reached his hand out and ran his fingers through the hair framing my face. “I’m a pretty good nonboyfriend.”
I swatted his arm away and jerked my neck back. Now others were noticing. The people surrounding us fell silent. “Don’t touch me,” I said.
Jason laughed, like we were joking around, even though I wasn’t and he knew it. He chucked me under the chin, like he thought I was cute. “I can’t help it.”
“Where’s your girlfriend?” I asked, scanning the crowd for Bree.
Jason laughed. “I don’t do girlfriends.”
Reid was walking toward us, his smile completely gone. Last thing I needed was a scene with the two of them. Again. Jason reached for my shoulder, the one with the bruises, and I jerked back. “Don’t fucking touch me.” I took off across the fields.
I saw Bree as I passed the baseball field behind the main building, sitting under the bleachers, not doing a very good job of hiding if that was her purpose. As I got closer, I noticed she wasn’t smoking or anything, she was laying on the ground, staring up through the slats of the bleachers, twirling a blade of grass above her face. Then I realized she was probably waiting for Jason. And I remembered the girl under my window the night before.
So I slowed down and walked toward her until she noticed me and propped herself onto her elbows. Her head was cocked to the side like she was trying to play it cool, but her hands were clenched, ripping up grass by her sides.
I stopped at the edge of the bleachers and said, “Jason’s a scumbag.”
She didn’t do anything for a long pause, then she let out an extra-loud laugh. She said “Jealous much?” and leaned back into the grass.
Someone had been in my room. The door was unlocked. Nothing inside was out of place, but there was a feeling that only a person could leave. Nothing specific, but something. Like when Bree left the sticky tack behind, or the scent of my grandma’s perfume, a reminder of what used to be. We leave footprints. When we leave.
When we die.
I sat on my desk chair and swiveled back and forth, the chair creaking under my movement. I was looking for anything out of place. Then I jumped up and stared back at my chair. It was warm. Worn. Someone had sat in it recently.
I sat back down and opened my desk drawers, and sure enough, everything was a little off. Papers were stacked too precisely. Pens were lined too neatly, where they had been scattered before.
My heart beat in my ears, like it was filling the room. Like when the feeling came at night. But underneath that, there was another noise. I strained to separate the two.
Knocking. Someone was knocking on my door.
I didn’t open it. “Who is it?” I called.
“Reid. Hurry up or I’m gonna get in trouble.”
I raced for the door and swung it open. Reid slipped inside and eased it quickly shut behind him. He hadn’t showered since the game. I took a step back.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know I reek. But I had to check on you.”
“Check on me?” I breathed through my mouth.
“Yeah. I saw you with . . . is Jason bothering you?”
I sucked in a long breath through my nose and looked up at Reid, who had creases in his forehead from worrying. Then I realized that feeling in my room when I first came in, it was gone. I couldn’t sense it, not even a little. All I could feel was Reid, and okay, he was kind of gross at the moment, but the room was just so decidedly him and nothing else, and it felt safe.
My eyes drifted back to my desk, to the papers stacked too neatly. I stepped closer to Reid, whose forehead creased even further.
“Someone was here,” I whispered.
“Who?” He looked around the room quickly, from the closed window to the closed door. “Who was here?”
“I don’t know. Everything’s just a little . . . off.”
Reid’s shoulders relaxed. “Happened to me when I first moved here. Every time I’d walk into my room it felt like someplace new. It’ll grow on you.”
“No. My door was open. Someone was in here. Who has keys?”
“Bree?” he said, looking at her empty bed.
But I had just seen her, and she’d clutched at the grass beside her when I passed. She was terrified of me. “Who else?”
Reid stepped closer and everything that wasn’t right about the room faded away. “The deans, I guess. And the housemaster for emergencies, I think.”
“I don’t think Ms. Perkins likes me.”
“She’d be risking her job. And for what? Why would she care? I mean, yeah, I’m nosy like that . . .” He grinned, like he thought he was making me feel better. He didn’t know about the red paint. Or Brian’s mom.
“And how else would you increase your social standing than with more secrets?”
He pressed his lips together. “I’m not like that.”
And then he was even closer and I meant to say something like everyone’s like that, or maybe roll my eyes at him, but I wondered how he had changed since his dad’s death—he had to be different, and not just his hair. So I moved my hand to his arm, which was hot and damp, and I said, “What are you like?” Bold, like he remembered me.
He looked down at my hand on his arm, and I was frozen again. Indecisive. And so was he because he left his arm exactly where it was. Neither of us pulling back, but neither moving closer.
“Come to breakfast with me tomorrow morning and you can see.”
“You can’t just tell me how you like your eggs cooked?”
“No, I mean off campus.”
And I realized he meant on a date. I didn’t respond, but he didn’t seem to notice, because that arm I’d been touching made its way to my side, and I didn’t think we were any closer, but we must’ve been because I swear I could feel his heart, beating hard, like he was still recovering from his game.
“The door,” I said, and I backed away, until all I felt was the empty space where he used to be.
Reid looked stunned, and he shook his head to get his bearings again. “What door?”