The mumbling of cuss words starts as I make my way downstairs, but I stop dead in my tracks when someone knocks on the door. They knock again.
‘Mom.’ I figure it has to be her. I hope she hasn’t been knocking long. Maybe I should have left the bolt off the door. I ski across the laminate in my socks, undo the lock, face exploding into a smile.
But it’s not my mom.
‘You don’t go to Cardinal.’ Luke. I automatically take a step back and cower behind the sleeve of my sweater.
‘What?’
‘You said you went to the same school as me, but you don’t.’ He doesn’t sound angry, which I can’t make sense of, because now he knows I lied to him. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t have a cold the other day either.’ Twice. Now he knows I lied to him twice. ‘That was French you were speaking to me, right?’
‘Did you . . . check up on me?’ My teeth tear at skin on the side of my thumb.
‘No.’ He holds up his hands like I just fired warning shots. ‘Of course not. Not at all. See, I made friends with this guy called Simon.’ The dude from the party, the one with the horn-rimmed glasses who drives a Nissan. I knew his name was Simon. I hold off on sharing this revelation. Now is probably not the time to be awarding myself Brownie points. ‘He remembers you.’
‘Erm . . .’ I’m speechless because I’ve been caught lying, obviously, but also a little bit because I’ve been remembered by somebody other than my mom.
‘He says he remembers you collapsing in class.’
I clear my throat, stare at my feet and make my big toes touch. ‘Busted?’ I’m hoping I look as adorkable as he did when I found out he was faking knowing French.
‘Cute.’ He smirks. ‘Simon said that was four years ago.’
‘It’s more like three years, ten months, and eight days ago,’ I correct. Because that helps.
‘So it’s all true?’
I nod. Bite down on the side of my mouth until the sting brings tears to my eyes.
‘Okay,’ Luke says at last, but something else is on his mind. He starts fidgeting, shifting his weight from leg to leg and looking anywhere, everywhere, but at me.
‘What?’ I push as gently as possible.
‘Are you sick?’ he asks after a thousand awkward years have hobbled on by. Of all the ways I imagined my crazy coming to light, this wasn’t one of them. ‘I mean, you don’t have to answer that. I just have this hunch—’
‘Yes,’ I interject. ‘But I’m almost a hundred per cent certain it’s not what you’re thinking.’ Mental health is usually the last place people go when they think about someone being sick. That, and, well, I’m a tall skinny blonde with baby-blue doe eyes and have what my grandma used to call the sweetest smile.
I’ve heard You don’t look mentally ill at least a half a dozen times in the past four years, a couple of those times from my former friends. I blame the media, stereotyping ‘mentally ill’ and calling every murderer since Manson crazy. People always seem to be expecting wide eyes and a kitchen knife dripping with blood.
‘And what is it exactly that you think I’m thinking?’ he asks, and I have to catch myself from crashing to the floor. People rarely challenge me. Or maybe they would if I let people get close enough to try. His eyes slim to slits as he watches me. Suddenly I have no idea what is happening in his head.
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘You think maybe I could come in?’ He’s wearing boots today. No mismatched laces to melt my mind. I picture us sitting, drinking coffee, me being normal and not doing anything to embarrass myself. Mom would freak, in the best kind of way, if she came home to find me chatting with a boy. ‘I don’t have to,’ Luke says when the silence starts to stretch.
‘No,’ I squeak, then push my fingers to my lips and feel my cheeks being swallowed by fire. ‘I mean, yes, you can come in.’
My hand is shaking. I can barely keep Luke’s coffee in the cup as I take it over to the table. ‘You’re so nervous,’ he says when I set it down on the mat in front of him.
I shrink back inside my sweater. If he sees me squirm, he doesn’t mention it – doesn’t rush to rescind this line of conversation either. He still has those eyes, narrow and inquisitive, fixed on me. I wonder for a second if he’s been taking how-to-study-your-subject lessons from Dr Reeves.
I sit opposite him, feet on the chair, knees up to my neck, trying to shrink myself down as much as possible.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you,’ I say, desperately seeking to squash the suffocating silence.
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
I think maybe I want to tell him something, but I’m not sure what. There’s a pulse in my tongue. It feels kind of eager and unpredictable, like if I start speaking I won’t know when to stop.
I peek over my knee, look him in the eye, and he smiles a smile that could wipe winter out of existence.