Unspeakable Things(12)
Ever since that bus ride, I’d been carrying my love for him around in my pocket. I should have handed it to him then and there in exchange for the gloves, but the briars and brickles of shame had been too sharp. By the time they receded, it felt stupid to bring it up. Then that faded, and all I could do was wait for an opening, some situation where he and I were hanging out and shooting love darts at each other.
When it arrived, I’d say, all joshing, Hey, you remember when you thought I needed gloves?
Yeah, he’d laugh. I’ve wanted to give you my paper airplane necklace ever since.
And our relationship would bloom from there.
Every day, I looked for this opening.
It could be tomorrow.
“Time to go,” Dad said, finally. His face was glistening. Me and Sephie’s pops and quarters were long gone and our stomachs were growling. We’d been sitting near the door, wishing Dad would take the hint and leave, but he’d kept up at that hot conversation with Bauer. We followed him outside.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Dad said when we finally slid inside the van, his voice full of bravado.
Except I could tell he was scared.
Mom wasn’t going to be happy that we were out so late on a school night and that Dad was driving drunk, but that wasn’t it. No, he looked jumping-ghost scared, and that made me uneasy.
It did even worse to Sephie. It must have. That’s the only explanation for why she broke the rule about inviting conversation with Dad when he’d been drinking. “Are you okay, Daddy?”
She hardly ever called him that anymore. I didn’t think he was going to respond, but he finally did, his voice all bluster.
“As okay as a man can be in a country where nothing’s sacred.”
I wondered what he meant. He and Bauer had talked about so many things. Well, I wasn’t going to ask, not with Dad in this mood. I glanced out the window, my hand to the glass. I imagined the sparkle of town lights were connected to my fingertips, that I could direct them like a conductor leads an orchestra. We never had picked up welding supplies.
When neither Sephie nor I asked a follow-up question, Dad grunted. “Bauer said they’re developing the lake property by our house and putting in new power lines to feed it. Will be all sorts of digging and construction in the area. Our property taxes are going to rocket through the roof.”
I nodded. That made sense. Dad was scared we wouldn’t have enough money. That’s why he’d been so unsettled.
But that didn’t explain why I felt so hunted all of a sudden.
CHAPTER 8
“Tomato soup. Grody.”
I shook my head. Heather Cawl would complain about winning the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. Tomato soup was fine by me, especially since it was served with grilled cheese and a side of apple pie. I’d saved up my last punch for this. A lunch card cost $8.50, eighty-five cents per meal, and I’d bought it with my babysitting money. I only ate hot lunch for my favorite meals. The rest of the time I brought a brown bag that smelled like old apple no matter what was packed inside of it.
“I’ll eat your tomato soup if you don’t want it.”
Heather turned to glare. I didn’t take it personally. I’d known her since half-day kindergarten. It was just her face. “I didn’t say I didn’t want it.”
I glanced around the cafeteria to find a seat. The air was noisy with the clinking of metal forks on plastic trays, barks of laughter, and hummering conversations. Because school was almost out for the summer, the teachers were not riding our nuts and shooing us out after our twenty minutes of designated eating time.
That meant there wasn’t a guaranteed spot for me to sit.
The only empty seat was next to Evie, who had also been in my grade since half-day kindergarten. Her left eye was brown, poop brown. If you saw a rock that color, you wouldn’t slow down to kick it. The other was as green as sea glass. My neck scar and her eyes should have brought us together, but they didn’t. If we hung out, we lost any edge our oddness gave us. One weirdo = quirky; two weirdos = weird.
Evie caught my eye. She didn’t smile, just glanced at the open spot to indicate I could have it if I needed it. I liked her for that. We both knew the score. No pretending we were going to be friends.
“Hey,” I said, sliding into the seat.
“Hey,” she said, a marker in one hand and a cheese sandwich in the other.
She was fox-faced up close. You forgot about that with her off-color eyes overshadowing everything. She had a pointy nose and little sharp teeth, though, and that’s something I should have remembered. “What’re you working on?”
She sliced off an end of that sandwich with her razor teeth, set the rest down, and held up the sheet of paper she’d been drawing on. We were at the misfit table, kids who smelled like farm, fat kids, circus freaks like me and Evie, some new kid, none of us interacting. For sure no one here I could confess my crush on Gabriel to.
I focused on Evie’s hand-drawn flyer, reading it out loud. “Playtime, every Saturday from eleven to two, Van der Queen Park.” She’d colored in the bubble letters and sketched two girls swinging. I winced. It was so childish. “You’re setting up playground get-togethers?”
She rolled her eyes and laid the flyer back on the table, drawing blue ribbons in the girls’ hair. “You haven’t heard?”