Part 9 (2/2)

I don't read, but I do like libraries. I like order, and libraries are all about order. Every book has a place. It's quiet, too: no music.

I watched Zach at the other end, framed between shelves, gathering up books left on desks, on couches, on the floor. Brandon helping. Though not really. He kept trying to talk. Zach would say ”yes” or ”no” or grunt. He likes quiet. He likes that I talk as little as he does.

My job was to scan the shelves for books in the wrong place. Of which there were many. I was doing fiction. Chantal, nonfiction. I looked for numbers where there should be letters; she looked for letters where there should be numbers.

”My cart's full,” she called out to me. ”Time for you to shelve them.”

Mine wasn't, but it wasn't far off. I wheeled it over to her. Hers was less full than mine. This meant she wanted to talk. Chantal is so afraid of silence she will even talk to pariahs like me.

We swapped carts. I pushed hers in the direction of fiction.

”Did you hear that Zach and Sarah split up?” Chantal asked, to stop me from going back to fiction.

I hadn't. I hoped it wasn't true. I looked over at him. He didn't look any different. Maybe it wasn't true. I looked at Chantal. She nodded. ”Happened yesterday.”

We were both staring at Zach. I was willing it not to be true. Him and Sarah being together was what made me and Zach possible.

”They'll be back together in seconds,” Chantal said.

I hoped she was right.

”Pity. He's gorgeous. But those two can't live without each other.”

Zach was on the ground reaching for a book under the couch. Tables and chairs obstructed my view, but I could see his legs, calf muscles clenching and unclenching, and the top of his head. Brandon was telling him something. I heard the words ”cla.s.s” and ”s.h.i.+t” and ”no.” Brandon liked to talk, I decided, as bad as Chantal.

”He's cute, isn't he?” Chantal said.

”Brandon?” I asked.

She laughed. ”No! Zach. I'd date him in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you?”

I wouldn't. I liked our secret. If he and Sarah really were broken up that meant our secret would be broken, too. I couldn't think of anything worse than Chantal and Brandon and the whole school knowing about us.

AFTER.

Halfway to school I turn around and head home. I was planning to go, but as I'm crossing Broadway I lose heart. The strength that's been holding me together slides away. I can't take another day of being stared at. Of listening to rumors and innuendo. Of Sarah interrogating me. Of cla.s.ses that I cannot follow. Of Zach everywhere and yet nowhere.

Of stupid talk about Erin.

I'm not sure I can ever go back to school.

Dad is flying out this morning on a.s.signment to Jamaica to stay in Ian Fleming's house. It's 8:15. His flight is at 9:00. Even with his love of close calls he should be gone by now.

I don't remember the last time I was alone in the apartment.

Every step I take toward home is lighter than the one before it.

I turn the corner and there's Dad getting into a cab.

I step back.

Just like Dad to be crazy late. How's he going to make it? Well, if-really, when-he misses the plane, surely they'll put him on a later one. It should still be ages before he turns up. But I want to throttle him. It feels like he did it on purpose to thwart me.

Once I'm sure the cab is gone, I climb the stairs to our apartment. The only time I like it is when it's empty. Especially after Dad has gone on one of his trips. He says he can't pack unless the apartment is neat, so he cleans and polishes and tidies. That's how he likes things: clean, s.h.i.+ning, orderly. As unlike the farm as possible.

It is the only thing we have in common.

I walk in and shut the door behind me. Lock it. The stupid girl next door has her music up loud.

I go directly to the brat's room. It's not clean or orderly. There are dolls and trucks everywhere. Though the brat calls them action figures. It drives him crazy when I call them dolls. So I do. It's what they are. Fake people that you can dress and play with and accessorize. What else would you call them?

I start with the toy boxes, going through each one. Then his chest of drawers.

And there it is, in the second drawer, underneath his pajamas.

Zach's sweater. I hug it. Press it to my nose.

It doesn't smell like Zach anymore. It smells like the brat.

Doesn't matter that I also have Zach's jersey, which reeks of him; I stole that. The sweater, Zach gave me. It's a direct connection between us.

I'm going to kill the idiot boy.

I take the sweater into my room and put it in the one place I know the brat will never go, even if he's stupid enough to brave my room again. I push back the cloth over my metal desk, lift up the lid, and put it inside.

AFTER.

When Brandon follows me after school he is much more stealthy than Sarah. Which isn't hard. For a while I don't notice him because I am lost in playing dodge the crowd, floating in the movement of air currents. Me and my backpack in s.p.a.ce, weaving around everyone, listening to the rhythms of feet on sidewalk. Forgetting anything that isn't weaving and dodging. For whole seconds at a time I am not thinking about Zach.

Part of me must sense Brandon following because I am jangled. I am off my game. I keep misjudging the distances-narrowly, the merest touch-the corner of someone's coat grazing my backpack, the clip of the back of a heel. Stupid. Annoying. Back I go to the start of the block.

It isn't till we're in Central Park that I spot him. If you can call it that. He wants me to see him.

I'm going through one of the stretch routines Zach taught me. My heel resting on a low fence, I lean forward till I feel it along my hamstrings. My skin p.r.i.c.kles, not from the stretch, from something else. I look up.

A couple are making out on a blanket under an elm tree. There's a family with four kids and one mother picnicking on a much larger blanket. The kids are laughing. The oldest, with braids, is tickling the youngest; the mother is moving the cake out of the way of the toddler's flailing feet.

Then there's Brandon sitting on the gra.s.s, staring at me, smirking. He stands up, walks toward me, sits on the fence.

”Stretching, huh,” he says, as if there's something sinister about it.

”What do you want?” I say, and immediately wish I hadn't. I should ignore him. He wants to get me riled. But I want to know why he's here. He doesn't like me. I don't like him. We have nothing to say to each other.

Half a dozen runners stride past. I watch them go. They're wearing the same shorts and T-s.h.i.+rts. Yellow and green. I wonder what kind of team they are because they're not runners. Their technique is all wrong. Barely lifted knees, arms swinging all over the place, heels pounding flat-footed.

Zach taught me to run more on my toes. To strike only lightly on my heel and have full flexion through the foot. It made me even faster.

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