She liked Dean Koontz. Jared loved Dean Koontz. And she just so happened to be reading one of Jared’s favorites: Whispers.
Jared didn’t stop. He didn’t open his math book, and he didn’t sit at another table. He went right up to Tabitha and complimented her on her taste in books. He knew he was taking a risk, approaching the new, very pretty girl and striking up a conversation. Jared felt the same that day in the library as the time he first went off the high dive at the community pool. He remembered the slow climb up the ladder, the terrifying view of the blue water on all sides. He knew kids were lined up behind him, and to turn away or back down meant instant humiliation.
So he jumped.
And how good it felt—the free fall through the air, the glorious splash into the water. The bubbles streaming from his mouth as he sank, and then the steady rise back to daylight. The terror and the glory.
He jumped with Tabitha too. He didn’t think, didn’t turn around and walk away.
He jumped.
She looked up from Whispers and smiled, the dimple catching his eye. “I read this before, a few years ago. And then I found it on the shelf here. It’s one of my favorites, so I just started rereading it.”
“It’s one of my favorites too,” Jared said, slipping into a chair across from her. She hadn’t asked, and he didn’t care. He acted, his body taken over by some force that allowed him to behave like a confident, mature human being. They talked about other books they liked. And movies. And food.
He never even opened the math book. He later failed the quiz.
He didn’t care.
It all seemed to be leading to this moment in his room.
And so she stood before him, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with one hand as she studied the books on the shelf next to his desk. “You really do like Dean Koontz,” she said.
“He’s the man who brought us together.”
She turned and smiled again, then picked up the framed photograph on the top of the shelf. “Who’s this?” she asked. “Is this your dad and your brothers?”
“Half brothers. Yes, that’s them.”
“Your dad looks like you. I can see it in the eyes.”
“I guess so.” Jared didn’t want to talk about his dad. Not because his absence was particularly painful. It really wasn’t anymore. His dad had left when he was five, and he remembered that pain very well. It felt as if he cried for weeks, stumbling around with his vision blurred by tears, asking if Dad was ever going to come back. His mom put on her best face for him, but even then he could see how much it hurt her. At night, after she put him to bed, he’d hear her crying through the thin walls of the apartment they lived in back then. Nothing ever scared him as much as the sound of an adult crying. “I can never see those things,” he said to Tabitha.
“Didn’t you say you don’t really know your half brothers?” Tabitha tapped the glass with the end of her finger.
“I visited a couple of years ago. Dad paid for the plane ticket, so I went.” Jared’s first plane ride. He loved the window seat, looking out and watching the huge patches of nothingness beneath the wings. So much room in the country, so many places to go. “It was weird. It felt like I was staying with strangers. I mean, his new wife is okay. Shelly. And the kids are good kids. I guess. But how much can you get to know people in a week? Dad . . . I barely remember him, and he doesn’t know me at all.”
Tabitha nodded. She placed the frame back in the exact spot she found it, as though she were handling a precious work of art.
Jared waited, hoping she’d signal a willingness to talk more about her own family. He didn’t want to press or push if she didn’t offer any signs, even though he wanted to ask almost as much as he wanted to do anything else. Almost. There were other things he wanted to do with Tabitha more.
But he didn’t know where Tabitha’s mother was. On the few occasions the subject came up, Tabitha was evasive, suggesting only that her parents were separated, and her mother lived in another part of the country. Tabitha didn’t seem to have much contact with her mother, if any. He wondered if her mother had problems, emotional or something else.
Jared knew only that Tabitha lived with her dad in Hawks Mill. Beyond that . . . not much. And most of his inquiries in those first few days they walked home from school together or hung out in study hall were met with some variation of the standard I’m fine. Since then, he’d kind of let the subject go, hoping that over time she’d open up more. But weren’t relationships supposed to work the other way? Wasn’t the guy supposed to be closed off and the girl the one who always wanted to talk about her feelings?