“You’re just fishing for more compliments now,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Fine, whatever. Did you see the dude with the nose situation who sat by me in homeroom?” I nodded slowly and swallowed. “That’s my friend Parker. He wants to ask you out, but he’s a big chickenshit, so here I am asking for your number for him.”
“You want my number?” I put my hands in my lap. Blood pounded in my temples. People who looked like Grant had never spoken to me without secretly planning to hurt me. For so many years I’d been on the wrong side of too many jokes, too many pranks, too many confrontations. I’d been knocked down a hundred times in a hundred different ways. “For your friend.”
“Yup,” he said.
“My dad’s, um, really strict,” I said. I thought of the look on his face at the diner when the old man had offered to lend him a rifle to use on my suitors. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He furrowed his brow and leaned forward on his elbows. For some reason, I felt compelled to go on. “It’s complicated … I’m complicated.” I pursed my lips tight and felt my nostrils flare. I was saying too much.
“Okay,” Grant said easily, leaning back in his chair. A moment of taut silence followed as those charcoal eyes flickered over my face. In them I saw curiosity, but not menace. I wondered if a boy like him could ever understand what it was like to be me. To know what it was like to view high school as something you needed to survive. Because that was all it was to me, a series of days to get through, boxes on a calendar to be crossed off. I had come to Lambertville with a plan: I would keep my head down and keep quiet. I would graduate. I would go to college as far from the South as I could. I would live.
“For the record”—Grant rubbed the back of his neck—“I told Parker this would go better if he came by himself. But he’s my buddy, you know? So I had to try. He’s a horse’s ass, though, and you probably think I am too now.”
“I don’t,” I said. I started to put my things away and realized my hands were shaking. I believed he was earnest, or at least I wanted to, but my fear had been carved into me over years and years, and it wasn’t going to be reasoned with or ignored. “It would have gone the same way if he’d come himself. I—I just can’t.”
A look crossed Grant’s face I couldn’t quite read. He slipped his hands in his pockets and stood. “Well, it was very nice meeting you, Amanda.”
“You too,” I said. My cheeks felt warm.
Grant gave me a small wave and walked away. He stopped after a few steps and turned.
“What book is that?” he said, nodding to the table.
“Sandman,” I said, putting a hand over it protectively. “It’s a comic book.”
“Is it good?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Cool,” Grant said, waving again and turning to leave. My hands stopped shaking and my breathing slowed, but for some reason I was afraid to consider, my heart wouldn’t stop racing.
3
Art class came last on Mondays and Tuesdays, and met in the music building at the edge of the school grounds. Outside, the withering heat hit me swiftly, my skin like shrink-wrap under a blow dryer.
“Around back,” a female voice called as I reached the shed-sized wooden building. I followed it, finding a girl alone in the grass. Oval sunglasses shielded her eyes and bright-red lipstick contrasted with her pale skin. Dark bristles grew on a third of her head while the other two-thirds sported a thick, wavy halo of hair.
“Art class?” she said. I nodded and looked around uneasily. She propped herself up on her elbows. “Teacher’s in Nashville. Her son fucked up his hand in a car accident.”
“Oh God.”
“Right? He’s a musician too. Was a musician. Hey, it’s hot as shit out here and you look like you’re about to have a heart attack. Why don’t you sit? Name’s Bee, by the way.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the office?”
“Jesus, no,” she said quickly. “They won’t hire a sub. They won’t hire a new teacher. They’ll put my fat ass in PE and move all the art funding to the athletic department like they do with everything. I’m gonna milk this shit for everything it’s worth.”
I nodded weakly and sat. The girl flopped back down with her arms spread wide.
“So you’re the new girl?”
“That obvious?” I said, pulling my knees close.
“Word gets around.” Sweat glistened on her arms and legs, her face pointed up at the sky.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, still barely moving.
“Sorry,” I said reflexively, then winced.
“You know you never told me your name, right?”
“Amanda,” I said quickly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Sure.” She fished in her battered old Silver Age X-Men lunch box and pulled out a joint. “Mind if I smoke?” She didn’t wait for an answer.
“So,” she said, blowing out a smoky speech bubble. The smell was like mulch after a heavy rainstorm, earthy and a little sour. “Where you from?”
“Smyrna,” I told her. “Dad moved here after the divorce.”
“Dads,” she observed. I didn’t have a response, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “You’re pretty cool, Amanda. I think we’re gonna be friends.”