Prom’s only a million months away.
“I’m tutoring him for math,” I say evenly.
“Is that right?” Dad’s already smirking. He knows. I’m screwed.
“All I know about the boy,” he continues, “is that he’s in Paul Andreotti’s class.” Right. Trigonometry. “I believe he’s retaking the course.”
In my father’s eyes, retaking a course is positively criminal.
“He works a lot,” I reply. “At Pav’s Place. He’s there twenty-five hours a week. So maybe math isn’t on his priority list.”
The smirk slips. “Hmm. That’s proactive; I’ll give him that.”
“Also”–why am I defending Marcos? We’ve shared one (pretty excellent) kiss. It’s not like we’re life partners– “his brother wants to join the military.” The perfect response that causes Dad to shake his head and Mom to say, “Wow, how about that?” No doubt it’ll cause them to murmur tonight in low voices, not quite arguing but neither conceding, hoping I confuse the sound with the distant waves.
“It sounds like you know him pretty well.” Of course my father manages to make an innocuous statement sound ominous. “Just…” His eyes shift left and then right. Oh, this is not good. Something super uncomfortable is about to be unleashed, like when he walked into my physics class last April to tell me my MRI results.
A cough, one ink-stained fist to his chest. “I know how kids these days think they know all about each other because of social media. Please don’t make bad decisions.”
So he heard about El Pueblo, too? Well, I’ve obviously lived to tell the tale. “Like what, Dad? Please elaborate.” If the man thinks he can smirk, then as version 2.0, I’ve perfected it.
For perhaps the first and only time in history, my dad’s cheeks flush. That doesn’t stop his eyes from latching onto mine with the steely resolve he reserves for kids that he’s about to send to Mr. Riley’s office. “Surely you remember health class?”
Oh, shit.
That’s what this is about.
My dry lips part and then close because what the hell do you say to that?
“Rich, I think you’re tired,” Mom interrupts. Bless her. Bless her so much. “You’ve graded too many exams today.”
Dad rises from the ottoman, ankles cracking the way mine do. “Be careful,” he says like it’s a mandate, his eyes carefully skirting away from me.
When I make it up to my room on creaking legs, I call Cassie. There’s no way I can miss hearing her reaction to this.
Hey, mates, you’ve reached Cass’s phone. Her recorded voice giggles. We were in her room when she recorded the message, experimenting with fake British accents. It was during our British-boy-bands-are-way-better-than-American-ones phase. Looks like I’ve got something better to do. Leave a message.
I call again. Hey, mates–
Four calls later, I bury the phone in a mound of pillows.
She’s asleep, she has poor service, she needs her rest so she can come home tomorrow; I know all of this, yet as soon as I turn off the lights, I can’t shut my eyes.
What if she changed her mind tonight?
She seemed happy enough, at least through her typed words, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t read Cassie the way I thought.
I watch each digit on my clock glow. 1:01. 1:02.
It’s the way we wait for Richard when a week passes without a word. Mom tries to examine every possible angle, printing out maps and smoothing them on the coffee table to mark what she’s inferred from news stories, while Dad and I have always retreated. A need-to-know policy only.
Otherwise, there’s too much awful possibility in every moment of silence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“DO YOU WANT to come with me?”
“Do I want to what?” Juliana’s still pissed from the last time we talked. That much is evident by the way she yanks thick strips of hair into a single braid. I wince at each tug.
“To Cassie’s. After school.”
She continues to braid with less force. “One of the guys owes me for covering his ass last week.” I suppose that’s her way of saying yes.
That’s how Juliana, Marcos, and I wind up taking a field trip.
“If Andreas cries to me one more time about the season ending too soon, he’s gonna get a punch to the nose,” Juliana calls over the rumble of the engine. She’d slid into the backseat as I wavered by the passenger-side door, uncertain about the politics of car seating arrangements with your (possible) boyfriend and his (definite) ex-girlfriend.
When Marcos doesn’t respond, she turns to me. “How’s your friend from the bonfire?”
“Emery?”
“Yeah, Galway Beach girl. She was funny.”
It figures that Juliana has known Emery for point-five seconds and already likes her better than she likes me.
“Ugh,” says Marcos. “Don’t bring up Galway Beach in my car.”
“What’s your problem?” She leans between our two seats. Marcos’s sharp avoidance of the Main Street pothole isn’t enough to shake her.
Marcos’s eyebrows are pinched together. His thumb taps rapidly against the wheel. “Did you forget Nelson’s?”
“What about Nelson’s?” Juliana says.
Nelson’s. The summer party Cassie had gone to, the one that made her warn me away from Marcos.
“What those idiots were saying?”
Juliana’s lips twist in contemplation.
“That guy?” Marcos tries again.
“Oh.” The two words make her cringe. “Yeah.”
“Then Cassie up and–” He stops short at that. “Sorry. Going too far.”
I know that Marcos punched a guy. I know that Cassie was shocked while Marcos viewed it as defending his best friend. Cassie having any kind of hand in this–now that’s new.
Juliana manages to slide up further so that her face is even with my shoulder. She looks at me, then seems to remember that I wasn’t there that night. Frankly, I’m starting to feel glad that Cassie didn’t invite me, either. “What Marcos is trying to say is that he was shocked when Cassie peaced out because our hero here decided to start an MMA career on the spot.”
Marcos exhales a short, quick breath. “Didn’t she drive you there?”
Juliana shrugs. “So?”