I put down my coffee and slide my arms around her waist, hugging her from behind. “I wish I could,” I say. “But I have to get to school. Trig test. Haven’t had much time to study.” The lie slides off my tongue. Talking means my mother asking a million questions I don’t know the answers to. And I don’t want to explain: I’ll never know the answers. Wil wants nothing more to do with me.
“Oh. God, you’d think they’d cancel all the tests after something like this.” Mom turns around and scrunches her nose. She yawns and switches off the stove. “All right, then. I’m going back to bed. Be careful out there,” she says.
“Got it.” I kiss her cheek and head upstairs again, her words ringing in my skull. Be careful out there. It’s been her sign-off for as long as I can remember. I think it’s supposed to make me feel safe or empowered or something. Grown men are being killed in their homes for no reason at all. But as long as I know to be careful out there.
At school, Wil is so close. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch the back of his neck, the place where his curls meet his collar. I could lean into him as he unearths his Spanish book from his locker. But I can’t ask him what I really need to know. What he meant when he said those things to me yesterday afternoon. Whether he meant them.
Leigh is quieter than usual, watching me watch Wil, doodling little hearts on her sketchpad; a drawing of me in a Superwoman cape with generous bazooms, as Minna would call them. But after third period, Leigh explodes.
“That’s it.” She slings her bag over her shoulder and points at the door with both hands, like a pissed-off flight attendant pointing out the emergency exits. “You need to get away from here for a period. Lunch at Nina’s. On me. Let’s go.”
Leigh is a respectable human being in most cases, and so she waits until we’re wedged into the window booth at Nina’s Diner with a platter of sweet potato fries and coffee before she says it: “Want to talk?”
“Nope.” I blink out the window. “I just—I can’t stop thinking about what happened in that house. What Wil saw, you know?”
“Channel 12 says he didn’t see anything.” Leigh tries to reassure me. “Says the guy had hit Wil’s dad in the back of the head and gotten the hell out of there by the time Wil made it to the kitchen—”
Tears fill my eyes. I feel sick. “I can’t. Can we talk about something else?”
Leigh jumps in without missing a beat. “So, I have three days to submit the final proposal for my senior art project, and I have no idea what I’m doing.” She arranges her fries in a greasy bouquet before cramming them in her mouth. “It’s, like, twenty-five percent of my grade.”
“You girls doing all right?” Leonard, the owner of the place, stops by our table and fills our coffee mugs. Leonard is in his mid-sixties, bald, with a potbelly that looks like it might topple over the rest of him any second now. There is no Nina, not anymore. Leonard told me that once, a million lives ago, he was engaged to a lady named Nina. When she left, she took almost all the money he’d saved up for his restaurant. He was forty-two by the time he’d resaved enough to open the 50s-style diner, and he was pissed. He named the place after her. A reminder that women were dangerous, he said.
“All good. Thanks, Leonard,” I manage.
“How’s Wil?” Leonard wipes his hands on his apron.
“Hanging in there,” I say, like I know. Wil and I came on our first real date here. We were freshmen, so we had to ride our bikes. We chatted with Leonard and played songs on the jukebox in the corner. It was just like every other afternoon we’d spent at Nina’s, except I was sweatier than usual. Before we left, Wil etched our initials into the table, next to the initials of other couples that probably didn’t exist anymore, either.
“Nice kid. Shame. People are animals.” Leonard goes back behind the counter and turns on the mini black-and-white television next to the waffle iron.
“As I was saying,” Leigh starts. “Senior project. I’ve narrowed it down to two options: spray-painting the underpass next to the Target, or going mainstream and actually asking permission to paint the exterior of the school. The wall facing the courtyard.”
“I like that idea. Giving back. Plus, a substantially lower chance that you’ll get arrested.”
“I don’t know.” She grins. “I kind of think showing up to art school with a record would be a badass move.” Her eyes snap to the door. “Uh-oh. Incoming.”
I follow her gaze to the street. Micah and his buddies are shoving one another through the door. They are laughing loud enough that everyone in the place turns. My chest caves. He’s flown under the radar for the last few days since the funeral. For me. I was stupid to think it could last.
When he sees us, he makes a dramatic show of meandering over to our booth. “Bridge! Hey, guys, you remember my big sister? The one who keeps me in line.” He slumps into the booth and throws his arm around my shoulder.
“You’re supposed to be in class, Micah.” I try to elbow him out of the booth. A low chorus of Ooooohs oozes from his crew. His eyes go wide for a second, and I catch a glimpse of the real Micah, before he goes back to being a Jerkwad Who Doesn’t Give a Shit.
“I’m a lifelong learner, Bridge,” he says. “My learning cannot be confined within classroom walls. Right, Lenny?” he calls.
Leonard glares at the boys from behind the counter and I want to evaporate.
Micah’s friends crowd around the table by the bathrooms.
“So, is this what you do now?” Leigh says under her breath. I stare out the window. “You sneak out of the house to go to bonfires? You sneak out of school to come here?”
“What?” I cry. “You snuck out?”
“Leigh. Not cool. I thought we had something special.” Micah slumps.
“We don’t. Which frees me up to inform your sister that you were drunk and hanging all over Emilie Simpson the night of the senior bonfire.”
I don’t scream, You went to the senior bonfire and hooked up with a girl in MY CLASS? But trust me, I want to.
“Emilie Simpson and me are none of your business,” Micah tells Leigh.
“Emilie Simpson and I, dumbass.” I glare at him.
“She’s cool,” Micah says lamely. He runs his fingers through his hair, which is every teenage boy’s insecurity tell. “She surfs and stuff.”
I roll my eyes at Leigh. “She’s not cool. She’s too old for you. And she almost failed junior year for skipping too much.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Bridge.” He says it loud enough for his boy gang to hear. “Besides, are you seriously pissed at me for drinking when you got busted for the same thing last year?”
“Back to Emilie Simpson,” Leigh continues. “Just make sure you wear a life jacket. Hers are not uncharted waters, my friend.”
“Oh my God. Leigh,” I moan. “He’s fifteen.”
“You can both die.” Micah shoves out of the booth. I watch him march back to his boys in a huff, the back of his neck flaming red. We redheads can’t hide it when we’re embarrassed or upset. It’s in our DNA—it’s the only way I know that he’s still in there.