“Congrats,” Burke says.
I toss my phone onto the table, scowling. “You’re not allowed to leave until she says something,” I mumble, and his pierced eyebrows rise, like he’s trying to look innocent, as if that wasn’t the biggest lost cause of all lost causes.
A minute passes. Then my phone buzzes, skittering over to me like a hopeful pet. I snatch it up, sliding open her response. You beat me!! I’m on Canto 27. No spoilers, thanks.
Burke grabs my phone. I flail across the table, trying to snatch it back, but he holds it out of reach, crowing, “Two exclamation points! Not one, but two! Be still, your beating little heart!” and I say, “Shutupshutupshutup,” and wrench the phone out of his beefy fingers. “Shit, you are so embarrassing.”
As I settle back into my chair, I type, Spoiler, everybody’s already dead, and hit send.
Burke peers at the screen, squinting as he reads upside down. He doesn’t say anything, but when he flips his econ book open again, he’s wearing a private little smile, and I say, “The fuck are you smiling at?” and he says, “Just nice to see signs of life,” and I’m like, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” and he says, “Hey, cool it with the f-bombs—your little brother’s, like, twenty feet away,” and I sigh, ’cause he’s right, as always. I lower my head to the table, one finger resting against my phone, waiting to feel it the split second she answers.
IT’S A NEW FEELING, AVOIDING THE CAFETERIA DURING lunch on Tuesday. The rigid social structure of the caf makes it easy to navigate: the tables along the front wall are for football, lax, field hockey, and swimmers. The tables on the side wall belong to what douchebags refer to as the Lesser Sports: tennis, track, soccer, and cross-country. The tables in the middle have their own system, an unofficial order I still haven’t deciphered. Although I do know that Matt Jackson and Burke Fischer sit closest to the lunch line. It’s impossible to miss Burke, with the clothes he wears. Sometimes I get jealous of the guy—he seems so at home with his weirdness. I can’t help thinking that if I had his confidence, maybe I’d be out already.
Today, though, I don’t get the chance to see Burke sporting fluorescent pants or a suede cowboy jacket. I jog downstairs, head out the front door, and stride across the green.
Kansas can be beautiful. High’s a solid sixty degrees today, the sky cloudless. Whistling, I head down the gym pathway, which twines past the auditorium hill. I skip over the roots of the Climbing Tree—a huge oak the swim team climbs after every meet we win—and turn past the trailers. The tiny white huts are clustered at the bottom of the hill, set apart for specialized classes like AP Latin and Creative Writing. Valentine Simmons sits behind them on the hill, alone, his white-blond hair winking like a comet in the sun.
Nobody’s ever talked to me the way he did. I don’t care—a blunt interruption in the middle of my sentence. I don’t know what his deal is, but I’m curious to find out.
“Hey,” I call, jogging toward him with a lifted hand. As I approach, he gives me the appalled expression of someone who’s been interrupted mid-prayer. With a satisfied sigh, I plop down on the grass beside him, shrug off my backpack, and pull out my lunch. He doesn’t stop staring at me until I look back at him.
He’s dressed the same way as yesterday: brown corduroys, a knit sweater, a leather belt, and an accusatory expression. He looks normal, until you notice the Velcro sneakers and orange socks. It’s as if J. Crew handled everything above his ankles, and then a five-year-old took over.
“What are you doing?” Valentine asks.
“Sitting,” I say.
“Hilarious. Why are you here?”
“’Cause you said you ate here, and I thought it sounded nice, so I was like, hey, maybe he wouldn’t mind if I joined.”
“I mind,” he says.
“You do?” I unclip my water bottle from my backpack and take a few huge gulps, not breaking eye contact.
He looks away, letting out a sigh that’s way too dramatic to be real. “Fine.”
Smiling, I fish my journal out of my backpack, open it out of Valentine’s sight line, and cross off a few items from today’s to-do list.
? English quiz
? Hand in math homework
? Surprise lunch with Simmons
I shove my journal back in my bag. Valentine, eyes trained on the trailers, drinks his juice box mutinously. I didn’t even know it was possible to drink a juice box mutinously.
I let him have his little moment, and then I dive back in. “Your mom works in the guidance center, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is she the one with the huge earrings? Earrings lady is super nice. It’s got to be—”
“What were you writing?” he asks, destroying the only line of conversation I prepped.
“Hmm?”
“In that book.”
“Oh,” I say. “It’s got my to-do list.”
He tilts his face up, an angular receiver for the sunlight. He looses a soulful sigh.
“Why, what’d you expect?” I ask.