“What is that, like an after-school special?” The orange peel came off in one long spiral.
“Your girlfriend thinks I’m special, dude.” Fries were falling out of his mouth.
Lena looked at me. Girlfriend. We both heard him say it.
Is that what I am?
Is that what you want to be?
Are you asking me something?
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about it. Lena had felt like my girlfriend for a while now. When you considered everything we’d been through together, it was sort of a given. So I don’t know why I had never said it, and I don’t know why it was hard to say it now. But there was something about saying the words that made it more real.
I guess I am.
You don’t sound so sure.
I grabbed her other hand under the table and found her green eyes.
I’m sure, L.
Then I guess I’m your girlfriend.
Link was still talking. “You’ll think I’m special when Coach Cross is hangin’ all over me at the dance.”
Link got up and tossed his tray.
“Just don’t be thinking my girlfriend’s saving you a dance.” I tossed mine.
Lena’s eyes lit up. I was right; she not only wanted to be asked, she wanted to go. In that moment, I knew I didn’t care what was on her regular-high-school-girl to-do list. I was going to make sure she got to do everything on it.
“Are you guys goin’?”
I looked at her expectantly and she squeezed my hand.
“Yeah, I guess.”
This time she smiled for real. “And Link, how about I save you two dances? My boyfriend won’t mind.
He would never tell me who I can and can’t dance with.” I rolled my eyes.
Link put his fist up and I tapped my knuckles against his. “Yeah, I bet.”
The bell rang and lunch was over. Just like that, I not only had a date to the winter formal, I had a girlfriend. And not just a girlfriend, for the first time in my whole life, I had almost used the L word. In the middle of the cafeteria, in front of Link.
Talk about hot lunch.
12.13
Melting
I don’t see why she can’t meet you here. I was hopin’ to see Melchizedek’s niece all dolled up in her fancy dress.” I was standing in front of Amma so she could tie my bow tie. Amma was so short, she had to stand three stairs up from me to reach my collar. When I was a kid, she used to comb my hair and tie my necktie before we went to church on Sundays. She had always looked like she was so proud, and that’s how she was looking at me now.
“Sorry. No time for a photo session. I’m picking her up from her house. The guy is supposed to pick up the girl, remember?” That was a stretch, considering I was picking her up in the Beater. Link was catching a ride with Shawn. The guys on the team were still saving him a seat at their new lunch table, even though he usually sat with Lena and me.
Amma yanked on my tie and snorted a laugh. I don’t know what she thought was so funny, but it made me edgy.
“It’s too tight. I feel like it’s strangling me.” I tried to wedge a finger in between my neck and the collar of my rented jacket from Buck’s Tux, but I couldn’t.
“Isn’t the tie, it’s your nerves. You’ll do fine.” She surveyed me approvingly, like I imagined my mom would have if she’d been here. “Now, let me see those flowers.” I reached behind me for a small box, a red rose surrounded by white baby’s breath inside. They looked pretty ugly to me, but you couldn’t get much better from Gardens of Eden, the only place in Gatlin.
“About the sorriest flowers I’ve ever seen.” Amma took one look and tossed them into the wastebasket at the bottom of the stairs. She turned on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen.
“What did you do that for?”
She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a wrist corsage, small and delicate. White Confederate jasmine and wild rosemary, tied with a pale silver ribbon. Silver and white, the colors of the winter formal. It was perfect.
As much as I knew that Amma wasn’t crazy about my relationship with Lena, she had done this anyway. She’d done it for me. It was something my mom would have done. It was only since my mom had died that I realized how much I relied on Amma, how much I had always relied on her. She was the only thing that had kept me afloat. Without her, I probably would have drowned, like my dad.
“Everything means somethin’. Don’t try to change somethin’ wild into somethin’ tame.”
I held the corsage up to the kitchen lamp. I felt the length of the ribbon, carefully probing it with my fingers. Under the ribbon, there was a tiny bone.
“Amma!”
She shrugged. “What, are you gonna take issue with a teeny little graveyard bone like that? After all this time growin’ up in this house, after seein’ the things you’ve seen, where’s your sense? A little protection never hurt anybody—not even you, Ethan Wate.”
I sighed and put the corsage back in the box. “I love you, too, Amma.”