Suddenly, he dropped his bag off his shoulder. It hit the ground with a clank, and then he was crouching down beside it, reaching in and digging around. I heard objects bumping against each other as they were moved and redistributed, and it occurred to me that maybe I should be concerned about this. Finally, his hand stopped digging, and he sat back, slightly. I braced myself as he worked his hand out of the bag, bit by bit, and came up with… a pack of Kleenex. A small one, bent and wrinkled, and he pressed them against his chest—which was enormous, oh my God—smoothing them out, before pulling one free and handing it to me. I took it the same way I'd taken his hand—in disbelief, and very carefully.
"You can have the whole pack," he said. "If you want."
"That's okay." My voice sounded hoarse. "One is fine." I pressed it to my mouth, taking a breath through it. He put the pack by my foot anyway. "Thank you," I said.
"No problem."
He sat down on the grass beside his bag. Because I'd gone to that review session at lunch, I hadn't seen him all day, but he looked pretty much the same as always: jeans, T-shirt fraying at the hem, thick-soled black wingtips, earphones. Up close— or closer—I could also see he had a few freckles, and that his eyes were green, not brown. I could hear voices rising up from the courtyard; they sounded like they were floating over our heads.
"So, um," he said, "are you okay?"
I nodded, the response instant. "Yeah," I said. "I just felt sick all of a sudden, I don't know…"
"I saw what happened," he said.
"Oh," I said. I felt my face flush. So much for trying to save face. "Yeah. That was… pretty bad."
He shrugged. "Could have been worse."
"You think?"
"Sure." His voice was not rumbly like I would have guessed, but instead low and even. Almost soft.
"You could have punched her."
I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "I guess you're right."
"It's good you didn't, though. Wouldn't have been worth it."
"No?" I said, even though, truthfully, I hadn't even considered this.
"No. Not even if it felt good at the time," he said. "Trust me."
The weirdest thing of all was that I did. Trust him, that is. I looked down at the pack of tissues he'd given me, picking them up and taking out another one. Just as I did, I heard a buzzing from my bag. My phone.
I pulled it out, glancing at the caller ID. It was my mother, and I debated for a second whether I should pick up. I mean, it was weird enough to be sitting there with Owen without getting my mom involved.
Then again, it wasn't like I had that much to lose at this point, considering he'd already seen me vomit—twice, actually—and freak out in front of half the student body. We were kind of past formalities.
So I answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi, honey!" Her voice was loud, so much so that I wondered if Owen could hear it. I pressed the phone closer to my ear. "How was your day?"
By now, I'd detected the nervous shrillness that crept into her cadence when she was worried but pretending not to be. "It was fine," I said. "I'm fine. What's up?"
"Well," she said, "Whitney's still at the mall. She found some great sales, but then she missed the early movie. And she really wanted to see it, so she called to say she was staying later."
I switched the phone to my other ear as there was a burst of voices around the side of the building.
Owen glanced over at them, but a second later they moved on. "So she's not coming to pick me up?"
"Well, no, as it turns out," she replied. Of course Whitney would push the limits the very first day she got her freedom. And of course my mother would say oh, yes, stay later, that's fine, but then completely freak out. "But I can come get you," she said now, "or maybe you could get a ride with one of your friends?"
One of my friends. Yeah, right. I shook my head, then ran a hand through my hair. "Mom," I said, trying to keep my voice even, "it's just that it's kind of late, and—"
"Oh, it's fine! I'll come get you right now!" she said. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
She didn't want to come, and we both knew it. Whitney might call, or show up. Or, even worse, not show up. Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible.
"It's fine," I told her. "I'll get a ride."
"Are you sure?" she asked, but already, I could hear her relaxing, thinking that this problem, at least, was resolved.
"Yes. I'll call if I can't."
"Do that," she said. And then, just as I might have been getting angry, "Thank you, Annabel."
When I hung up, I just sat there, holding my phone in my hand. Once again, everything was revolving around Whitney. It might have been just a day to her, but this one had really sucked for me. And now, I was walking home.
I glanced back up at Owen. In the time I'd been contemplating this newest problem, he'd pulled out his iPod and was messing with it. "So you need a ride," he said, not looking at me.
"Oh, no," I said quickly, shaking my head. "It's just my sister… she's being a pain."
"Story of my life," he said. He hit one last button, then slid it back in his pocket and stood up, brushing off his jeans. Then he reached down, grabbing his bag, and hoisted it over his shoulder. "Come on."
I'd endured a lot of scrutiny since the beginning of the school year. It was nothing , however, compared to the looks Owen and I got as we walked up to the parking lot. Every person we passed stared, most of them openly, with a few bursting into whispers—"Oh my God, did you see that?"—before we were even out of earshot. Owen, however, didn't seem to notice as he led me to an old-style blue Land Cruiser with about twenty CDs in the passenger seat. He got behind the wheel, then cleared them out and reached across to open the door for me.
I got in, then reached down for the seat belt. I was just about to pull it across me when he said, "Hold on. That's sort of busted," and gestured for me to hand it to him. When I did, he pulled it over me—his hand at what struck me as a very formal and polite distance from my stomach—then yanked up the buckle from the seat, holding it at an angle and sliding the belt in. Then, from the pocket on his own door, he pulled out a small hammer.
I must have looked alarmed—girl 17, found dead in school parking lot—because he glanced at me and said, "It's the only way it works." He tapped the buckle with the hammer three times in the center, before pulling at the belt to make sure it was locked in. When it was, he stuck the hammer back in the pocket and cranked the engine.
"Wow," I said, reaching down and giving it a little tug. It didn't budge. "How do you get it off?"