Then she opened the e-mail and saw that it was long, and tears immediately formed in her eyes. Her mom was only wordy when she was apologizing. Julia skimmed the e-mail, looking only for that “no” she knew was in there. When she found it she wiped the tears from her eyes and slipped her phone into her bag, listening harder to the music. This was all she could handle right now. Just the world inside her earphones.
Skipping class and just doing laps around the school would probably get her caught. The school librarian was famously lax on almost every rule except for only allowing you in the library if you had a pass. She flirted with the idea of sitting in Dr. Hill’s office, since he was outside, but she wasn’t feeling particularly bold, so she decided to go hide out in the tree house. She was looking forward to the few hours of uninterrupted solitude on the floor among the pillows. But when she walked inside, she jumped at the sight of Mr. Marroney sitting at the counter, grading papers.
He was so hunched over the stack of papers that he almost looked humpbacked. A blue ballpoint pen rested in his hand, streaks of blue ink all along his forearm, like he’d been testing out the pen or had no idea how to use it. He turned around, sensing her presence.
Julia stood at the entrance, frozen. She saw his mustache move. For a second she didn’t even understand that he’d spoken, she just thought that was something his mustache did that she hadn’t ever noticed before.
“What?” Julia said, pulling an earphone out.
“I asked if you’re supposed to be in class.”
Julia shrugged. “Are you?”
Marroney chuckled and tried to cap his pen but ended up adding a blue streak to his hand and then dropping the pen through a crack between the floorboards. “This is my free period. I like coming up here to do my grading. I’ve heard that I have you to thank for this place.”
“Not really,” Julia said. She looked over her shoulder, wondering if anyone had seen her come out to the tree house. Then she set her bag down on the floor and nestled down by the pillows, out of view. “I’m just gonna hang out here for a while; please don’t get me in trouble.” She got ready to put her other earphone back in, maybe take a nap.
“I was just thinking,” Marroney said, swiveling on his stool to face her, “that you’ve been very distracted in class. Even more so than usual.”
“Oh, just the end of the year, you know,” she said with a shrug, hoping that was enough to get him to go. A couple weeks ago she would have done anything to keep him there and have more to tell Dave about afterward. But now she couldn’t see the point in laughing about it on her own. Music kept playing in one ear, a sad soundtrack that she wanted to envelop her.
Instead, Marroney crossed his arms in front of his chest and furrowed his brow at Julia, the way he did when anyone in class didn’t seem to understand his ill-conceived math jokes.
“I’ve been teaching long enough to know when a kid is distracted and when it’s something else. Are you okay?”
Julia’s instinct was to laugh. And for a second she even smiled, amused at the thought that the teacher she’d basically harassed was concerned for her well-being. Then the smiled faded and she found a knot rising in her throat because he cared enough to ask, though she’d pretty much made his life hell for a few weeks. Her mom didn’t give a damn but Marroney did. Julia tried to stifle the sob that she felt coming on, but was powerless against it. The last few days, she had felt completely abandoned. Dave felt like he’d just disappeared from her life, and as for her mom, Julia wasn’t even sure she had ever been there. But now, looking at Marroney, who seemed not frightened or uncomfortable with her breakdown, but concerned, Julia realized that if she was alone, it was her own damn fault. She’d closed herself off from everyone but Dave, and this was what she got for it.