I take the note from Miss Hooper and step gingerly toward the hall. The pain has lessened, but I can still feel each cut stretching my skin when I move. When I open the door, Adam is there, only this time I’m expecting it, so I don’t embarrass myself. He’s smiling brightly, but I don’t really know what he’s thinking, because you can’t always believe smiles.
“Hey,” he says. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here. Dr. Whitlock said you’ve been out the past couple of days. Were you sick?”
I nod.
The morning after the punishment I woke up to find a twenty-dollar bill beneath the conch on my dresser, which meant I was allowed to miss school and order pizza. Seeing the money, I had the usual conflicting feelings. Guilt that he’d be going to work while I stayed home. But relief too. If he was letting me miss school and order food, he couldn’t be too angry anymore.
“Feeling better?” Adam asks.
I nod again.
“I hope you didn’t take a bunch of pharmaceuticals. That stuff’s poison.”
“No…”
“Good. You ready?”
I nod and fall in step beside him, watching our feet. I’m wearing my bleached white sneakers. Today his shoes are red high-tops, like Superman’s boots.
“So do you like to draw?”
I nod, even though I don’t.
“Cool. You’ll have to show me your work sometime.”
This is what happens when I lie. Almost instantly I’m put in some situation where I have to tell more lies or I’ll get caught. We walk in silence, but it’s actually not that uncomfortable, because he doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t know what to say.
“I took Art my sophomore year,” he says a couple minutes later, as if there was never any lull. “I sucked.”
He smiles, and now I wish I had just told the truth, because then we could have had sucking at art in common. He launches into a story about how his friend Charlie was in his class and went insane during the third week of their hallway projects. The hallway project, Adam says, sucks.
“You have to draw these three-dimensional hallways using nothing but tiny squares.” He explains that it requires a lot of patience and Charlie has none. “He tore up his paper and threw all his markers on the floor. He’s kind of a giant first grader.” Adam laughs, but I’m just staring in awe, because I’d be way too afraid to do something like that.
“I know, right?” he says, as if I said that aloud. “He got two days of ISS. Personally, I’ve never even gotten a detention. And…” He looks at me pointedly. “I’ve never ignored a faculty member’s summons and hidden out in the school.” He might be joking, but I’m not sure. “I really should stop hanging out with delinquents.”
“Is…?” Adam watches me, his expression patient, as if he doesn’t mind waiting for me to finish my question. “Is Charlie your best friend?”
“You mean, do we wear matching friendship bracelets and have photos of each other in our lockers?” He smirks, so I guess I said something stupid. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ve known each other since kindergarten. It’s funny—he’d never gone to preschool or anything before, so that first day he was flipping out. He cried, like, all morning, till I gave him my cookies at lunch.” Adam grins. “We’ve seen each other practically every day since then. Well, except for when we went to different middle schools. But I don’t think I’ve ever labeled anyone as Best Friend. I just have a lot of friends.”
He shrugs as if having a lot of friends is no big deal at all.
JULIAN PAUSES OUTSIDE Dr. Whitlock’s office, one of his skinny arms dangling to his side while the other arm reaches across his chest to squeeze his bicep, like it’s sore. He’s not that small—about the size of any other freshman—but he seems smaller because he’s always bent like he’s ducking a low ceiling.
When he finally heads inside, I drop onto the couch, prepared for a good forty minutes of boredom. I’m not sure why Dr. Whitlock even has an aide. I deliver maybe one note per period. I can’t even do any filing, because everything’s confidential.
While I’m answering texts, I make out a voice on the other side of the door—just hers—which isn’t surprising since he’s so freakin quiet. But he wasn’t always. Back in elementary school, he was anything but.
A memory pops into my head—Julian giving me this construction-paper card on the last day of fifth grade. All the kindergartners made ones for their buddies, and they were all really proud when they handed them to us. It was pretty adorable, actually. I think I still have mine somewhere. I didn’t expect to see him again after that. Then two years later, I came home to find a little boy sitting in the center of our yellow couch, holding a stuffed dog under one arm. When he looked up, his enormous eyes were like glass, something reflective instead of animated.
“Julian?” I said.