#famous(6)

I stuffed the bag of dirty T-shirts into my backpack and jogged to the back of the store. The door there opened onto an employee parking lot near the food court dumpsters. It was deserted. I’d never been so happy to park next to trash.

I got into my car and gripped the steering wheel until my hands stopped shaking. Thank god the middle schoolers hadn’t figured out where I was parked. I didn’t know how they would have, but I couldn’t work out how they’d found the right Burger Barn so fast, either.

My phone lit up again. I grabbed it, ready to turn the stupid thing off. This was too intense. I needed time to process what was going on.

Emma’s picture popped up, the one she’d put into my contacts a year ago, right after we first got together. She had on bright-red lipstick and was making an exaggerated, ducky pout. She thought it was a better picture of her than I did.

I decided to answer.

“Hey, Em.”

“Ohmygod, KYLE. I have been trying to call you ALL. DAY. Didn’t you get my messages?” She was talking fast, even for her. She sounded breathless.

“No, sorry. I was at work.”

“You saw Flit, though.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I saw it.” I squeezed my eyes shut, frowning. I still couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. It kinda hurt to try. I rolled down the car window; the air inside, still heated from the sunny day, suddenly felt claustrophobic. Even with the smells of rancid fryer grease and a thousand kinds of rotting vegetables, the outside air was better.

“Who is that girl anyway? I can’t believe she took that picture. Totally pathetic.”

I didn’t like Emma calling Rachel pathetic, but I didn’t know what to say. I guess it had been sorta weird. “She’s just some junior.”

“Isn’t that cute.”

Emma’s voice was low and monotone. I shouldn’t say any more about Rachel. Emma had always been kinda jealous.

“I guess.”

“Anyway, what are you doing right now?”

“I was gonna go home. We closed early. Ran out of food.”

“Really? I thought you guys had, like, five freezers full of stuff in back.”

“We do. Usually. A lot of middle school girls came by to get fries. I guess because of the picture?”

“Whoa.” Emma whistled. “They tracked you down? That’s insane. Are you okay? That almost sounds scary.”

“Yeah, kinda.” I exhaled. Emma had always been really good at hearing what I wasn’t saying. It was one of the things I liked best about her. Maybe it was ’cause we were both used to people not paying much attention to us. Emma’s dad was too busy marrying and divorcing new women every couple years to be around much. Her mom and stepdad seemed cool, but she always said they loved their kid, Nathan, more than they loved her.

My stuff was less drama. My brother, Carter, was the golden child with the grades and the ambition and the looks. I was like the knockoff version. The crappier mini-Carter that my parents had stopped paying attention to ages ago. At least I was taller.

“I’m just glad they don’t know what I drive. For a second I thought there might be a few camped out in the backseat.” I leaned over to make sure I wasn’t right, but it was empty.

“If you closed early you don’t have to go home right away, do you?”

“I dunno. Why?”

“Maybe you can come over. I was supposed to have dinner with my dad but he bailed at the last minute. Again. I guess Lindsay had some event, I don’t know.” Emma trailed off. She never said much about her dad’s current girlfriend. “Anyway my mom and Martin are out somewhere, and Nathan is over at a friend’s, so I don’t even have him to play video games with. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

I squeezed my eyes shut tight and leaned my forehead on the steering wheel.

Was she inviting me over because she wanted to get back together? Or was she just lonely, and curious about the flit, and she figured I’d answer? If I came, would it smooth things over, or would she think I was whipped? Emma wasn’t the kind of girl who would get back together with someone she thought she had on too short a leash.

Girls: I definitely need a translator.

“It’d be pretty hard for you to be pathetic,” I said. It was the least puppy-dog thing I could come up with that was still true.

“You’re sweet.”

“Just honest.”

“So are you coming over? I’ve got the whole place to myself, I think all night. Plus, if you go home there will probably be middle schoolers camped out at your house. And you just said you don’t have any more fries.”

I laughed.

“That’s an excellent point.” I tried not to think about how it might actually be an excellent point.

I couldn’t say yes until I knew what she wanted. If she was trying to push me into the friend zone, I should go home. It would be easier in the long run.

“Does this mean . . . I thought we were broken up?” It had only been a week since Emma had told me she “needed to just be alone for a while.” That put her two weeks ahead of schedule for “missing me so much,” if our last two breakups were any guide.

I know it’s pathetic that I didn’t just ditch her already, but there was something about Emma. She was really hot, obviously, but she was also good at reading people, at reading me. Like if I was down, or if I wanted to leave wherever we were, Emma always knew, sometimes even before I did. It was like she noticed me more than other people. And when no one was around, I’d catch glimpses of this side of her that was so . . . fragile. For most people she was on all the time, but when we were alone she was different. Smaller somehow, and sadder. It made me want to make her happier. And she had this way of looking at me sometimes that made me feel . . . I dunno, like something legit amazing. Emma made you want to be cool enough to hang out with Emma.