He ignored my question and started casually toward the gym. I trotted after him, taking two steps for each of his, growing more anxious when the smile slid from his face. “You’re going to be in serious trouble if your mother discovers you bugged out on your shrink appointment.”
“First she’d have to care,” he grumbled. “She didn’t even notice that I paid your rent with my dad’s poker money . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed the rest, as if only just realizing he’d said it out loud.
My eyes flew open wide. “You did what?”
“It’s no big deal,” he said, tucking me under his arm as he walked. “Dad came home from his game last night drunk with a lot of cash. Vince’s dad lost big.” He arched a brow conspiratorially. “So I snuck a few hundred and gave it to my mom. I told her it was your rent payment. It should keep her off your mom’s back for a few days.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, J. What if you get in trouble?” His parents were our landlords, and ever since my dad left, they hated us. Probably because we always seemed to be late with the rent.
“It’s no big deal.”
He pasted on a paper-thin smile, but he was holding something back. I didn’t see any of the telltale signs that he and his dad might be fighting, but Jeremy’d always been good at concealing the occasional bruise.
My fingers fidgeted in my pockets, wanting to touch him but not wanting to pry. If he wouldn’t tell me, then touching him skin to skin was the only way to know for sure what he was feeling. But it felt wrong, like sneaking around in someone’s room, or taking something away from them that wasn’t mine to take. I’d feel his emotions, taste them like they were some tangible thing I’d consumed.
The first time I touched Jeremy, we were twelve. It was an accident, our fingers grazing as we both reached for the last cookie on the silver tray in Jeremy’s kitchen during our dads’ poker game. Up until that night, we hadn’t really spoken on those Friday nights when my dad dragged me to Belle Green with him so he could play cards with Mr. Fowler. I’d felt out of place in his house. It was filled with delicate and breakable things. Things I shouldn’t want to touch, but did, because they were so different from my own. But when I’d touched Jeremy, we felt the same. Alone. He was in his own house, in his own neighborhood, and still didn’t fit. I recognized that kind of loneliness, because it was mine too.
We split the last cookie that night, and everything else since. Being together didn’t get rid of the loneliness, but somehow, it made it sweeter, because we shared it.
I pulled my hands out of my pockets, and gently took his, letting a painful lump of his emotions swell in my throat. His depression tasted like a dry salt paste. It would have been choking and hard to breathe through if it weren’t muted by the antidepressants Dr. Matthews prescribed. Still, my eyes burned like I’d been crying, and I swallowed the knot until it was a clenched fist inside my chest. “What’s going on? You can tell me.”
Jeremy shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
But it wasn’t. It was strong, with a bitter after bite that I could feel trying to claw its way up. He was angry, and burying it deep. It seemed to burrow under my own skin.
“It’s something.”
He shrugged it off and didn’t look me in the eyes. “I got into it with my mom again this morning. That’s all.”
I gave his hand a squeeze. Whatever it was, he would tell me when he was ready. “I’ll pay you back the rent money, I promise. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
He squeezed back, and the brief pulse of affection was laced with doubt. I let go of his hand, and pushed my glasses up my nose, bringing his tight smile back in focus, knowing I’d seen him more clearly a moment ago and wishing I hadn’t.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” he said, as if he could see through me too.
We neared the gym, and the hall erupted with clapping hands and the steady stomp of feet against the bleachers. West River High’s varsity soccer team had made the championship playoffs. The athletes gathered by the trophy cabinet to check their reflections in the glass and worship at their own altar before rushing the gym floor. I skirted around the clog of blue uniforms, trying not to touch them.
“Heads up!”
I ducked and held my breath as a soccer ball soared low over Jeremy and smacked into the wall. The rebound caught the side of his head.
“Relax, man. It’s just Fowler.” Vince DiMorello recovered his lost ball and dribbled it back through the crowd.
“Do you mind?” I hollered.
“Blow me, Boswell,” Vince called back, following it up with the finger. I bit back a mouthful of choice insults that would have been completely wasted on Vince’s stunted vocabulary and pathetic IQ, and watched as a manicured hand smacked the back of Vince’s head. Hard. To anyone else, it might have seemed like a casual flirtation, but I knew this particular cheerleader, and the look on Emily Reinnert’s face wasn’t romantic.