“How do you know?”
“There’s an app that tells you the takeoff schedule.” He paused for a second and then asked, “Which plane do you want it to be?” He lay back flat on the Jeep hood and stared up at the sky. I did too. The ground was too lit up to see stars, but now that I knew what to look for, the sky was full of lights—plane lights, blinking and regular, full of people coming home and going away.
“Dublin.” I shivered. “I would love to see Ireland. What about you?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
“Yeah. I’ve sort of been obsessed with planes since I was little.”
“So you can recognize the different types of planes?”
He nodded and crossed his arms, squeezing them tight. I wondered if he was cold. “I know. It’s totally random. I mean, who sits around and watches planes?”
“I think it’s cool,” I said quickly. Because it was, sort of. And who was I to judge? My only hobby was starving, and look how that had turned out.
A light turned our way in the distance. “Oh! Here comes another plane!” I jumped off the hood and leaned against the concrete barrier. “Where is it going?”
Tristan checked his phone. “Either Paris or Detroit,” he said.
“I hope it’s Paris,” I said.
The plane was smaller than the last. “It’s Detroit,” Tristan said loudly, over the plane’s engine. “A Boeing 757. International flights are the ones with the big planes.”
Big or small, when its front wheel lifted off the ground, it looked impossibly massive. I stretched my arms in the sky and looked up at the dark night.
“Don’t you wish you could get on one of those planes right now?” Tristan said.
“Totally.” And I did. How great would it be to just hop on a plane and end up somewhere exciting and new—like Paris, or London, or Bangkok? Heck, I’d even take Miami.
“How does the eleven-fifty flight to Iceland sound?”
“Ha. I wish.” It was tempting. No more Esterfall. No more angst.
“Come on!” Tristan hopped off the car and held out his hand. “Let’s do it.” His eyes found mine and held them.
“Too bad I don’t have a passport,” I said.
“Ah, that is a problem.” He dropped his hand, but just for a second. “Let’s drive, then. Let’s just point my Jeep west and get out of here. Go to California or something. You’d never have to think about Wallingfield again.”
Looking at him standing there, ready to take my hand, I could picture us. I could hear the music playing, see the Jeep flying past mountains and ocean and fields of corn, and feel my feet out the window, the air rushing through my toes.
BEEP BEEP. My reminder on my phone went off. Nine thirty.
Reality called. “It’s time for my snack, Tristan.”
“If we go away, you could eat whenever you want. You wouldn’t have to be the anorexic girl ever again.”
It all sounded so lovely. Except for one thing. “Tristan, thousands of miles won’t stop me from counting calories in my head.”
“How do you know that?” he said. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” Sighing, I ate some granola, the chunks crunching loudly in my mouth. “Want some?” I asked.
Tristan shook his head. We got back on the hood of the car. Tristan took my hand and we lay there, side by side, staring at the night sky.
I didn’t know how long we lay there. It felt like hours. All I know is that I felt closer to him than I ever had to Charlie. And then, just when things felt really right, Tristan slid a little bit closer to me.
I dropped his hand.
“It’s late,” I said hurriedly, hopping off the hood.
“Wait.” He took my arm and gently pulled me toward him. He had long, beautiful eyelashes. I’d never noticed them before. He grazed my cheek with his pointer finger. “Thank you, Elizabeth Barnes,” he whispered, “for coming here with me.”
Gently, he ran one hand over my hair, and then it was like the Elizabeth I knew wasn’t in control, like a new version—Elizabeth 2.0—had taken over. This Elizabeth let her fingers drift up toward Tristan’s hair like girls did in the movies. When he moved his finger under her chin, lifted it up, leaned in, and kissed her, she kissed him back, no biggie.
But when his arms slipped down around her rib cage and his fingers rubbed over each individual rib, Version 2.0 disappeared like a ghost sucked into a vacuum.
I pulled away.
He took a deep breath. “I like you, Elizabeth.”
“I like you, too. But I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
“Is this about Charlie?”
“No. This is about me.”
“You sure?”
“I’m one hundred percent sure. I just—I think I need to focus on getting better.” I didn’t add that I also needed to be able to look at my body in the mirror before I let anybody else see it. “But I do like you,” I said. “Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” But the way he slid off the hood and stood with his back to me, studying the sky, indicated otherwise.
I slid off too. “You know, I’m not saying no forever. Just for right now.” I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“Okay.”
We climbed into the Jeep. He didn’t open my door this time.
He started the car and let it idle. The headlights illuminated a blue Nissan Sentra parked down the way a bit. Then, after a minute or two, he put his hand over mine.
“Your hand is freezing,” he said. “I’ll warm it up.”
I exhaled. “I’d like that.” By the time we got home, my fingers weren’t cold at all.
46
On Monday morning, I woke up at 4:59 a.m.
My alarm was set for 6:47, like it had been since sixth grade, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed for a few minutes, hoping I’d fall back asleep, but it was no use. I was up.
My worries followed me down the hall and into the shower. I’d missed weeks of classes and homework. Would I be completely lost? Was I going to fail everything? If I failed, how would I get into college? What if the teachers made me make up all the work I’d missed? How would I manage that? Midterms were last week; would I have to take them?
I needed a mantra. Or a song. The Kelly Clarkson song on my mix from Tristan came to mind. The song thrummed in my head. As I lathered up my shampoo I tried to sing, but I’d never had a good voice and I couldn’t remember all the words, so I ended up half humming, half rapping the same few words over and over as I shaved my legs and conditioned my hair.
The house was still dark when I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and padded back down the hall to my room.
“Good morning!”
I whipped around, almost losing my towel in the process. Mom was sitting on my bed in her cotton pajamas.
“Sorry, did I startle you?”
“Yeah, a little. What are you doing up?” I said, fumbling to cover myself.
Mom’s eyes flitted over me, starting at my shoulders and ending at my ankles. She cleared her throat. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh.” My hair dripped water onto the floor.
“What are you going to wear today?” she asked. My heart sank a little. She always asked me this, and I always disappointed her.