“No, yeah, I’m fine.” I swallow hard. “Look. We were cleaning up last night, five of us. It was me, my sister, and Lucas and Valentine Simmons and Matt Jackson. And we were . . . and we found your phone. When it rang.”
Staring into her eyes, I can pinpoint the exact second she realizes what I’m saying. Her face goes blank. My heart squeezes up tight, like a sponge, quits, and leaves me bloodless.
“Right,” she says. “My phone.” The words are so calm, it could be a recorded message. The number you have reached has been disconnected.
Juniper looks back at the book in her lap. I float in the silence, up toward her ceiling, this tacit admission loosing us from the gravity of the real world. This changes things, changes us. We’re going to carry this together now, until graduation and past.
“Five of you,” she whispers. “Oh God, that’s—this is bad. Did you say Valentine Simmons? And Matt? That’s not okay—he’s an utter douchebag. What am I going to—”
“It’s okay; he’s not an actual douche,” I say, struggling to sound encouraging. “I found out he’s, like . . . I don’t know . . . a crustacean? He’s got this hard shell, but he’s soft on the inside.”
Juniper stares up at me from her army of pillows. A disbelieving quiver in her lips gives her away. “A crustacean? I’m panicking here, and that’s the best you can do?”
The tension snaps. “Hey, that comparison was fine by my extremely low standards.”
Juniper tucks her hair behind her ear. “Okay. So. I . . . how did you find out?”
“Your phone was ringing, so I picked up and said one word, and he, like, exploded. He was all, Thank God, I was so worried, and he kept going on and on.” I bite my lip. “The others were in the room. I should’ve left when I recognized his voice. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. There’s no reason you should’ve known how to react.” She’s ashen-faced. “So. Did someone tell the school?”
“Most of us wanted to, but Valentine got all logic-y and talked us into staying quiet.”
The relief that spreads across her face is so instant, so full, I feel a weight lift off my own chest. “Oh, thank God,” she says. “I was sure someone would’ve talked.”
“Valentine made us promise to talk to you first.”
“I’ll make sure to thank him,” she says. “You can’t get David in trouble.”
“David,” I repeat, the name feeling alien on my tongue. “David? Sorry, Juni, but this is so frickin’ weird.”
Juniper chuckles. The seriousness in the air tilts, but it thuds back into place as her laugh fades. “How did this happen?” I ask. “You’re not even in his class.”
“Remember when I worked at Java Jamboree over the summer?”
“?’Course. Glorious weeks of free lattes.”
“Well, he came in for a straight week in June. Trying to work up the nerve to talk to me, he said.” Juni looks as if she’s trying to suppress a smile. It makes her eyes shine. “He’d just moved here, and on day five, he ordered some idiotically complicated coffee, then came back up to me. And I said, ‘Is something wrong with that?’ and he said, ‘No, I just wanted to say I’m glad I found the best coffee shop in this town. And the prettiest barista.’?”
“That was his line?”
“Yeah,” she says dryly. “Barely stammered it out, too. For a theater person, he’s pretty awful with lines.” She sighs. “Anyway, since he’s new this year, I didn’t know he was a teacher at the time. I mean, we knew there was some sort of age difference, but I kept putting it off, avoiding the subject whenever he tried to bring it up. The first time he told me where he worked, I couldn’t deal. I locked myself in my car. I couldn’t . . .” Her voice peters out.
She rubs her forearm. A stray bit of tape is tacked near her elbow, beside the puncture mark where the IV went in. I wait, not wanting to push her.
“So,” she says. “Start of school, I switched into AP to get out of his honors class. We didn’t see each other at school. Maybe two or three times, so it’s just our shit luck someone found out. And when he heard what the assembly was going to be about, he broke things off.” Her voice falters. “Right now we’re . . . I don’t know what we are anymore.”
Juniper sinks under her covers. I don’t move. I doubt I could if I tried.
“I don’t know.” She stares ahead at the mirror above her bureau. She looks like a specter, drained and pale. “I feel like I’ve been doing this forever, not five months. Not just covering it up; I mean needing him. Being in love with him is like this steady . . . like music playing in the background. All the time. Sometimes it’s comforting, and sometimes it drives me insane.”