Part 15 (1/2)
I told Leo.
”So do I. And we're not leaving.” He spoke as he dragged me along. I didn't know he took AP History.
”Can you slow down? My stride is about half the length of yours.”
”Sorry. I'm trying to get us out of the hallway before a monitor asks us where we're supposed to be.”
”Where are you supposed to be?”
”Auto shop,” he answered, glancing around a corner stealthily, then pulling me along again.
”Hey!” I whisper- yelled. ”I'm not a cavegirl.”
”Then good thing I didn't club you over the head.” He stopped in front of a metal door in the back of a locker section in a yet- to- be- redone part of the school.
”Are you about to take me into a janitor's closet?” I asked.
”Better.” He fi shed a key ring from out of his pocket and fl ipped through it until he found the one he was looking for.
”Is it the boiler room? Is this the part where we both fall asleep and Freddy comes after us? 'Cause I could so kick his a.s.s.”
-1- His key clicked open the lock, and he held open the door. ”After 0- you.”
1-
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I stepped into a small room, maybe ten feet square, piled fl oor to ceiling with books. A few old student desks balanced precariously in a corner. One naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling.
”What is this? And why do you have the key?” I asked, sliding into a lone desk chair.
”It's one of the En glish department storage closets. These are old cla.s.s sets of books that never get used anymore. I took the key last year out of a teacher's drawer and spent study hall trying doors until I found this place. No one ever comes in here.”
I stood up and ran my fi ngers across the book towers. Cla.s.sics like Moby d.i.c.k and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and an array of Shakespeare t.i.tles in tiny, hardbound books quivered at my touch.
”So do you want to tell me what you were running from?” Leo leaned against the closed door. He looked almost sinister in the weak, shadowed light, like a man in a dream you're not supposed to talk to but desperately want to touch.
I wondered what my face was saying now.
”Becca gave me something.” I cleared my throat, asking myself if I wanted to tell him about the list. He didn't prod, which made me trust him. And he didn't know Becca, which made me feel less guilty about sharing her secrets. Because now they were my secrets, too. ”It's a list of things she wants to do before she dies. We call it the f.u.c.k- It List.”
I laughed ner vous ly, but his stoic expression remained unchanged.
”And because she might, maybe, actually die, and she doesn't know if she'll get to do everything on the list, I said I'd help her.”
Leo asked, ”So, what, like bungee jumping and dropping acid and going on an African safari?”
”Are those things on your bucket list?” I cringed a little. They --1 sounded so unoriginal, and I hoped he was beyond that.
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”I don't have a bucket list. Nor do I feel the need to pay someone to drop me off a bridge. If I wanted to, I'd do it myself.”
”I hear that,” I concurred.
”So what, then?” he pressed.
”Just sort of random things that she wanted to do. Some are small, like eating a hot pepper.”
”Quite a goal,” he said, not exactly sarcastically but defi nitely unimpressed.
”f.u.c.k you. She started the list when she was twelve. And eating a hot pepper isn't that easy.”
”Sorry,” he said. ”What are some of the bigger ones?”
I didn't want to get into it, all of the s.e.xual requests and how Leo helped fulfi ll more than one of them, with him and by myself. ”Well, like today, I was helping her with number fourteen- telling off Lottie McDaniels. Only I f.u.c.ked it up and was a total c.u.n.t and said some- thing about her camel toe.” I shook the memory loose from my head.