I’m not scared. I’m pissed. I don’t trust myself to talk to her. When I imagine it—when I think about the video, the implicit threat to my little sister, my fingers twitch convulsively. I want to grab Sasha by the shoulders, to shake her, to make clear what I will do to her if she comes near Vivi. And that would be trouble.
But I haven’t gotten any further messages from the mystery number . . . so I have to believe it was just a pathetic, fumbling attempt to get my attention. The death rattle of a bad relationship.
“Hey, man, there’s that girl.” Caleb’s voice interrupts my reverie.
I shake my head, look up at him. “Huh?”
He’s a full five inches taller than me; he can see over the crowd and down the hall more easily than I can. He nods to the left. “That girl. You know, the one you chased across the parking lot Monday.”
My head snaps to follow his gaze. There she is, curled protectively around a stack of books: Catherine. She strikes me the way she does every time—some camouflaged forest animal, quiet in the shadows, hard to make out but fascinating once seen.
I’ve been messaging with her all week now—mostly light, innocuous stuff. Videos of baby sloths, pictures of my food, dumb memes from Reddit. Anything I can think of to start a conversation. She’s mostly just responded with smiley faces, or vague, noncommittal words. Cute! LOL. But here and there we’ve had an actual exchange. When I sent a picture of Vivi hugging Rowdy around the neck, she said:
dollorous00: I don’t know if I’m more jealous of the dog or your sister. Pure love.
And another time:
daredevil_atx: Anyone ever tell you you look like Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones?
dollorous00: Ha . . . no? But thank you.
daredevil_atx: She’s my favorite. Though Sansa Stark’s pretty badass now that she’s dressing like a supervillain.
dollorous00: I HATE Sansa! She’s the WORST.
daredevil_atx: No spoilers! I’m behind by a season and I plan to binge watch the rest this weekend. You should come over and watch with me.
A suggestion that we should hang out was apparently too much too soon, though, because I haven’t heard from her since that one.
Now I stop in my tracks. “Hey, Catherine! Cat!”
It seems to take her a minute to register my voice. She blinks, then gives a little wave without slowing down.
But this time I’m not going to let her slip by me. I push my way across the hall. “Trust me, you can skip the pep rally. Spoiler alert: Waterloo High will Go-Fight-Win. Our opposition will be pushed Way, Way Back. We will score many goal units that way.”
In spite of herself, the corner of her mouth twitches up. “But how am I ever going to learn how to spell victory if I don’t go?”
“Wait, wait, is that a joke?” I feign incredulity. “School spirit is good on you. It really brings out your inner snark.”
She glances up and down the hall, stepping back as a guy in a red-and-blue clown wig walks between us, howling. “This is nuts. No one at my old school cared about football.”
“Must not have been in Texas, then,” I say. “This is pretty tame. Last year we fought our rivals from just outside Houston. There was livestock loose in the hallways. Seriously—their mascot’s a ram, and some dumbshit thought it was going to be a good idea to sacrifice a sheep . . .”
“Oh no . . .” She looks simultaneously horrified and amused.
“Don’t worry, it survived. It got loose, ate half the band’s sheet music, and took a crap on the Mustang mosaic in the middle of the cafeteria before the 4-H kids managed to wrangle it into submission. I hear it’s living in Tori Spencer’s backyard now. Keeps the grass trimmed.”
She laughs.
For that moment it’s like the crowd becomes so many cardboard cutouts around us. The chaos gets swallowed, and in its vacuum all I can hear is her laughter. It’s soft, musical, muted—a tune escaping from a mine, from somewhere deep and dark.
And then I come back to myself as Caleb and Irene come up behind me. “Hey. What’s the holdup, Jiménez?” Irene asks.
“Hey. Uh, this is Catherine. I was just trying to convince her to come with us instead of going to the rally.”
Irene gives her an appraising smirk. I feel unaccountably nervous. It’s not like I need my friends to approve of some girl I’ve got a crush on—but then, since they were right all along about Sasha, maybe I should wait for their thumbs-up.
Finally, Irene nods. “Come on, then.”
I feel myself relax. Catherine glances from Irene back to me, uncertain. Caleb holds up a package of Ding Dongs and shakes it enticingly.
“We’ve got snacks,” he says.
A shy smile unfolds over her face. She tucks her books under one arm.
“Okay,” she says. “Where are we going?”
* * *
? ? ?
Technically, the Lower Courtyard isn’t really a courtyard. It’s a spot under the social sciences wing that’s built over a dip in the landscape and supported by pillars, with an entrance to the ground floor that barely ever gets used. It’s functionally a shaded patio for smokers, skate punks, art freaks, and burnouts.
Over time the place has gotten decorated in a haphazard, communal kind of way. A handful of mismatched deck chairs sit at random angles to each other. Someone’s left a bucket of colored chalk down there, and the concrete is covered in smeared and faded scrawls. Smash the patriarchy! Mara + Colton 4Eva. Degroot suxxxxxxx! There’s a broken pogo stick leaning against the wall, and someone has wound chili-pepper-shaped string lights around two of the pillars, though the bulbs are all burned out.
Irene shakes her head at the chalk graffiti. “Amateurs.” She dumps out the bucket of chalk and picks up a pastel green, running it in quick graceful lines over the concrete. Caleb releases the armful of snacks onto a three-legged card table propped up with cinder blocks and picks up a bag of pretzels. I glance at Catherine; she’s smiling a little, looking around the Courtyard. A warm hum fills my chest.
“You’re new, right?” Irene asks, glancing up at Catherine as she draws. “Where’d you go last year?”
“Oh . . . last year I lived in Eureka. It’s in Northern California.” She scuffs her feet. I pull a pink plastic lawn chair out and gesture to it with mock gallantry, and she sits. I plop down next to her on an upended milk crate.
“Cool,” says Caleb. “I got a cousin in Eureka. Maddy Scott? You ever meet her? She’s a year behind us.”
Catherine shakes her head. “No, I don’t . . . I mean, we lived right outside Eureka. Kind of, uh, rural.”
“Rural Humboldt County. You must have some stories,” Caleb says. “I bet you got a contact high just walking down the street.”
Catherine’s eyes fall to her lap, where her fingers twist anxiously. I give Caleb a look, willing him to stop putting her on the spot.
“Anyway,” I say pointedly. “Hey, so, I’m halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
Her face lights up a little. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“Yeah, except it’s more like One Hundred Years of Dudes with the Same Name. I can’t figure out who’s who.”
She grins. “I know, I had that problem too. I had to make a flow chart.”
“Whoa, whoa. Back up,” says Irene. “Gabe’s reading? A, like, book?”
“A, like, five-hundred-page book,” I say haughtily. “It’s been known to happen.”
“Uh huh,” Irene says. She looks up at Catherine. “Have you read Love in the Time of Cholera? I like that one even better.”
“No, but it’s on my list,” Catherine says. “Maybe I’ll pick it up over Christmas break.”
“You have to really savor it. It’s slow and dense and gorgeous.” Irene picks up a yellow piece of chalk and starts to color something in. “Why aren’t you in AP English with me? If you’re reading García Márquez you’re better qualified than, like, ninety percent of the idiots in there.”