10
“So how do you know exactly where things belong?” Josh asked on the steps after school Wednesday afternoon. He was peeling an orange and a fine mist of citrus dusted the air around them.
She shrugged. “I just do.”
“So if I point to a person, any person, you’d be able to tell me where they belong?” Josh pointed to a redheaded junior sitting on his trombone case on the sidewalk, waiting for the late buses. “Tim Brown.”
Bay laughed. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Then how does it work?”
“I don’t know. It just comes to me. I walked into my friend Kennedy’s house for a play date in third grade, and her mother said Kennedy had to put away the laundry before we went to her room. While Kennedy argued with her mom, I just picked up the towels and went right to the linen closet upstairs. I knew where they belonged. That play date didn’t last long,” Bay said wryly. “With people, I can sometimes pinpoint where they’re supposed to be or who they’re supposed to be with. Sometimes it’s a very clear picture in my head. Dakota Olsen belongs at Princeton. I know it, just like that.” Bay snapped her fingers. “But with Tim Brown, I can’t see anything. It’s easier to tell where people don’t belong, because it’s an uneasy feeling, like when you lose your balance and you’re about to fall.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” Josh said, setting the orange peel in a neat pile beside him on the step, then breaking the orange in two. He gave her half, which she took like he was giving her gold.
“I’ve been this way all my life. It’s just who I am.”
“Do you know where I’m supposed to be? What I’m supposed to do with my life?”
She took a moment to answer, wondering if that was why he was here with her again today. “No.”
“I don’t either. And you know what? It’s nice to talk with someone who doesn’t have a clear opinion about where I’m going to college or where I’m going to work when I graduate.”
“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for.” She’d had people befriend her before, wanting her to tell their futures, or whatever it was they thought she did, but they’d always walked away disappointed.
“That’s okay,” Josh said. “I think I need to find them out myself anyway. I envy you, you know. Your contentment.”
She shook her head. “I’m not content.”
“No?”
“I know where I belong, that’s all.”
“That’s not content?” he asked.
“I guess it is. But, as my friend Phin pointed out, I’m not the only one who lives in my world, and I can’t convince everyone where they belong. I can’t make people believe anything they don’t want to believe. And that bothers me.” She looked at the orange in her hands. “It shouldn’t. But it does.”
Josh seemed to mull that over, maybe thinking of her note. He finally nodded as he ate a section of orange. This felt so weird and intimate, eating with him.
“Did you tell Phin thanks for me?” Josh asked.
“Not yet. I only see him at the bus stop, and my mom has been taking me to school lately. Why are you thanking him?” She finished her half of the orange and wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Have you seen the video?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll understand when you see it.” The late buses began to pull in. “I guess you don’t want a ride home?”
“No, thanks.” She stood and grabbed her backpack.
“I won’t be here tomorrow afternoon,” Josh said, eating the last of his half of the orange, then picking up the peel he’d set beside him. “I have a student council meeting.”
“That’s okay,” she said, winking against the sun now in her eyes. “I have to admit, I’m kind of confused why you’re out here at all.”
“I told you, I like talking to you. I don’t know why I waited so long.” He stood. “Do you want to come hang out at my house tonight? My parents aren’t home, but our housekeeper, Joanne, is there.”
Bay thought of how she had run through the woods only last week, just to spend a few moments watching him with his friends. She would never fit in there like that. “I don’t really know your friends that well.”
“Oh, they won’t be there tonight. That’s why I asked. My parents call on Wednesday evenings. It puts their minds at ease when they don’t hear a party going on in the background.”
“Don’t take this personally, but I don’t belong at your house.”
“Let’s go out then,” he said. “I mean, private. But not private. I can get some takeout and we can eat on the green downtown after dark.”
Keep her a secret, he meant.
But the strangest thing was, she didn’t mind. Because she wasn’t the secret. The fact that he felt happy about something was. And, for whatever reason, Josh wasn’t ready to let other people know it yet.
“Okay,” she said, for purely selfish reasons, ones that concerned eating with Josh and talking after dark, which she considered a date, even if he didn’t. Her breath quickened at the thought of something so simple, yet so incredibly wonderful. Eating and talking after dark. Maybe there would even be snow flurries tonight, like the image of how she first saw herself with him that would make things perfect, settled, real.
But then this simple, wonderful thing suddenly hit a snag. Because that’s when she remembered she was grounded.
But just as quickly, she decided it didn’t matter. Rules didn’t matter, she found herself thinking.
Not when they were wrong.
Right?