“Nice,” I said to Sawyer once Iceman was finally gone, rolling my eyes and throwing back the covers. I felt vulnerable and kind of gross, like whatever snow globe I’d spent the day inside had been unceremoniously shattered. For the first time since I’d gotten in Sawyer’s car this morning, it occurred to me that maybe I should have gone to school after all.
“What?” Sawyer frowned up at me, still lying on his back with one arm tucked up behind his head. “Don’t be upset. He didn’t know you were in here. It was an honest mistake.”
“He stayed and chatted for like twenty minutes!”
“He did not.” Sawyer smiled up at me, winning. Held a hand out for me to take. “Okay, he kind of did. I’m sorry, you’re right. I should have told him to get lost right away.”
I huffed out a noisy breath, but I took his hand anyway. Sawyer tugged until I was sitting down on the bed again, tucked against the angle of his body. I picked up the baggie that was nestled in the sheets. “How long will it take you to go through these?” I asked, counting them out with my index finger through the plastic. I was strangely curious about them—they looked so innocuous, like aspirin or Altoids or something—but at the same time just being in the same room with them made me nervous. I’d never seen Sawyer use. “Hm?” I prodded. “How long?”
Sawyer shrugged into the pillows like he didn’t want to answer. He was still holding on to my hand. “Long enough,” he said after a minute. I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
We came downstairs for food a little while later and found Iceman and Lou sacked out on the futon, Judge Judy blaring on the TV and the smell of weed thick in the air. “Sorry again!” Iceman called gracelessly. I cringed. “You want in on this?” he asked Sawyer, holding up the bowl. Then, to be polite I guess: “Reena?”
“Oh.” I shook my head before I even really thought about it, as instinctive as not taking candy from strangers. “Nah, I’m okay,” I said.
“You sure?”
I was. Sawyer wasn’t, though, so I settled myself in a beanbag chair in the corner while he smoked, watching a lady in a lime-green tube top argue for child support on Channel 5. “Don’t pee on Judge Judy’s leg and tell her it’s raining,” Lou said. Sawyer laughed.
I picked at my cuticles, bored and antsy. All of a sudden I was acutely aware of everything I’d blown off. I wasn’t somebody who skipped quizzes or didn’t show up for meetings, not ever. By the time Judge Judy awarded tube top lady her back payments, I could feel a full-on anxiety attack nipping at my heels.
I checked my watch—it was only two thirty. If I left right this minute, I could make my newspaper meeting, at least. Maybe catch Ms. Bowen before she left for the day and explain to her that I’d been sick but felt better now. I looked around for my backpack, trying to remember if I’d brought it upstairs when we came in, and my fidgeting caught Sawyer’s attention. “S’wrong?” he asked, already mellowing out. I wondered if hanging out with me all day was something he needed to mellow out from.
“I should go,” I murmured, trying to climb out of the beanbag as gracefully as possible. “It’s getting late.”
“What?” Sawyer frowned at me from where he was sprawled on the dingy carpet, ankles crossed and back against the arm of the futon. “Why, ’cause of the weed?”
Right away I blushed, glancing at Iceman and Lou. I didn’t want them to think I was some uptight killjoy—even if I kind of felt like one, like somebody who couldn’t enjoy something as ostensibly harmless as cutting one day of school. “No,” I said quickly, “it’s not that, I just—”
“It kind of seems like it’s that,” Sawyer interrupted.
“Okay, well,” I said, finally laying eyes on my backpack—it was right near the bottom of the staircase, where I’d dropped it before Sawyer and I stumbled up to his bedroom earlier. I got up and hefted it over my shoulder. “It’s not. I just skipped a lot of stuff today, is all. I’ll see you at work, okay?” I headed for the front door, backpack clutched close like the protective shell of a turtle. It felt like this day had turned around really fast.
Sawyer caught up with me on the tiny front stoop of the bungalow—a good thing, probably, since I’d realized as I crossed the threshold that I had no idea how I was getting home. “Reena,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Come on, don’t leave mad.”
“I’m not mad,” I said, and I wasn’t, really. I didn’t know exactly what I was. I couldn’t figure out how you could go from feeling so close to a person one minute to not being sure if you even knew them the next. “I honestly do need to go. I had a lot of fun today, seriously.”
Sawyer wrapped me up in a hug instead of answering, the blue T-shirt warm and soft against my cheek. I felt myself calm down some as soon as he touched me. Let myself sink into it. “Okay,” he said finally, mouth at my temple and not sounding entirely convinced. “I did, too.”