“Right.” We stared at the stars a while longer before I shut off and dismantled the lights. I hated to lose the stars again, but I could turn these on whenever I needed them.
I drove Calvin home and we made out a little more in his driveway. Now that I’d started kissing Calvin, I never wanted to stop. But we had school the next day and I could see Mr. Frye’s shadow standing in front of the windows.
As Calvin opened the car door, I said, “Hey, so earlier, did you ask me to go to prom with you?”
Calvin stopped, turned to me, and smiled. “I guess I did. What do you say?”
“Can Lua come with us?”
“Definitely,” Calvin said. “But your lips belong to me.”
I smiled my best smile. “I’ll let you and Lua fight that one out.”
204,616 KM
LUA AND MS. NOVAK WOKE ME up on my birthday with a plate of flaming donuts. They sang “Happy Birthday” as loudly as they could, and when I blew out the eighteen candles, I wished I’d never told Dr. Sayegh about Calvin.
A week had passed and the cops still hadn’t arrested Coach Reevey. I hadn’t returned to Dr. Sayegh either, but it seemed she hadn’t followed through with calling the police. That’s what I’d wished for, anyway.
You’d think I would have wished for Tommy to return. It’s not that I didn’t want him back, but after it’d seemed like things couldn’t get any worse—my parents divorcing, Lua’s hand, Renny winding up paralyzed, the universe shrinking—they’d actually begun to get better. I’d begun to think my hard and forceful punishment was nearing its end.
Which was one of the many mistakes I’d made.
? ? ?
Ms. Fuentes was going over the answers to our homework in physics, and Calvin kept rubbing his knee against my leg. Since the night I’d shown him the stars, we hadn’t been able to stop touching each other.
“Wanna hang out tonight?” he whispered. I hadn’t told him it was my birthday.
“Sure.” I suspected Lua probably had something planned for dinner, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. I wanted to freeze the present so nothing else could change.
Calvin winked at me. “My dad’s working overnight.”
He let my imagination fill in the rest, and I conjured a million things we could do alone in his house, most of them involving a distinct lack of clothing.
I was about to tell him I couldn’t wait, when the classroom door swung open. Ms. Fuentes stopped speaking midsentence. Vice Principal Grady stood in the doorway, looking as severe and unhappy as usual. Seriously, I don’t think he’d cracked a smile in his entire life. I was willing to bet he hadn’t even laughed as a baby.
“Sorry to interrupt, Betsy,” he said, “but I need one of your students.” Grady waited until Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Calvin Frye? Gather your things and come with me.”
When Grady called Calvin’s name, he sat frozen for a second. He looked at me, then at Grady. My stomach knotted. The crease between Calvin’s eyes deepened. He had no idea what was happening, but I did.
“What’s going on?” Calvin asked.
“Just come with me, son,” Grady said. “I’ll explain everything in my office.”
“Don’t forget we have an exam tomorrow, Mr. Frye,” Fuentes said while Calvin collected his books and bag.
Vice Principal Grady cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable, like he’d cinched his tie too tight. “He might need to make up that exam another day, Betsy.”
“We’ll work it out,” she said. Even she was curious, and I hadn’t believed she’d cared about anything other than physics.
“I’ll text you about tonight,” Calvin said before he followed Grady into the hallway.
“Yeah. Great.” Though I had a feeling once Grady explained why he’d pulled him from class, Calvin would never text me again.
? ? ?
I suspected Priya ran an entire network of gossipy spies who fed her information like a CIA station agent. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d found a way to tap our phones.
“Oh. My. God. Did you hear?” Priya had barely waited for us to sit at our lunch table before running toward us and vomiting the latest scandalous news.
Dustin had asked me if I knew why Grady had called Calvin out of class on the way to the cafeteria, but I’d feigned ignorance. I mean, I thought I knew, but I could have been wrong. I prayed I was wrong. Maybe Calvin was being given a special award or maybe something had happened to his father. I felt like a shitty human being for hoping his father had gotten hurt at work, but I could live with that if it meant Calvin wouldn’t hate me.
Lua was working her way through a bowl of mac and cheese, holding her fork awkwardly because she couldn’t bend her index finger. It was like a crooked tree branch, gnarled and knotty.
“Let me guess,” she said. “They’ve cancelled the prom due to an outbreak of nobody-gives-a-shititis.”
I set my tray down next to Lua. I think she was still pissed at me for trying to force her to accept Trent’s help with her surgery, but living with her while my parents were with Renny had forced us to call a temporary truce.
“Does it have anything to do with Calvin?” Dustin asked.
Priya’s eyes grew wide. “How’d you know?”
“Vice Principal Grady pulled him out of physics.” Dustin had barely taken his seat before digging into his plate of green beans and meatloaf, which I suspected was just the recycled hamburgers they hadn’t sold from the prior week.
Lua was staring at me, expecting me to answer. “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m just as clueless as you are.” Obviously, she knew I was lying.
Priya rubbed her hands together. The only thing she loved more than cheerleading was dishing juicy gossip. It was like it was her birthday instead of mine.
“Well,” she said. “Calvin wasn’t the only person removed from class today.”
My stomach hurt so bad I couldn’t eat. The mashed potatoes cooled on my plate, but I didn’t care. They might as well have been drying concrete.
“Nishay heard from Darnell that Mr. Gugino pulled Trent Williams out of weight training. He didn’t even let him shower or change out of his gym clothes.”
Trent? Well, that didn’t make sense. Maybe I was wrong about why Calvin had been called out of class.
“I wonder why,” I said.
“Fuck Trent,” Lua said almost at the same time. “I hope someone breaks his fingers.”
“We get it, Lu,” I said. “He’s an asshole. But he also offered to pay for your operation, so let it go.”
Since the attack, Lua had begun to dress more subdued. Less rock star and more mopey-emo-teen. Lots of jeans and black T-shirts, which made it difficult to tell whether she was feeling more like a boy or a girl on any given day. I assumed girl that day because her shirt—black with a logo for a band called Slutever, which I was surprised no teacher had forced her to turn inside out—was torn at the neck to reveal cleavage.
“Offering to fix what he broke doesn’t absolve him of being a dick. In his case, it’s a terminal condition.” Lua folded her arms over her chest, daring me to argue, but I didn’t. Mostly because I wanted to survive lunch, but also because I didn’t want to have to sleep on her floor until my parents returned with Renny.