Cornerstone (5 page)

I expect shock or dull recognition or maybe even a thinly veiled disgust on his face, although I’m hoping he’ll give me that smile he did before. What I get instead is a distant expression, like he’s concentrating on something another world away.

“Hi.” he says.

“Hi.” I reply, trying to make my voice sound as distant as his expression. If he thinks that blasting me with rumors will scare me off my library real estate, he’s going to find out something else about me too. I motion to my usual seat. “Is someone going to be sitting here?”

“Just you.” he says. My heart pirouettes against my will.

I drop onto the seat with a thud. I’m glad to get off my feet before I fall off them, but I make a point of not looking at him even once. I pull my books out of my backpack and get right down to trying to convince Garrett that I don’t care if he’s sitting across from me.

It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever tried to do. My fingers are stiff and my handwriting looks like it belongs to someone else. My back starts aching and my eyes go dry as if I’m not blinking enough. I make useless notes to distract myself from the insanely handsome boy sitting across from me.

“Can I talk to you?” he whispers. Oh God. Here we go. I pause my pen over the top of my notebook.

“Sure. What do you need?” I sound like a lawyer. He chuckles, laying down his book. “I don’t want to disrupt you or anything.”

“You know we’re in a library, right?”

His laugh is a cradle that bundles up my nerves and tries to rock them to sleep. I lay my pen down and push back my shoulders, knowing what is coming next. We might as well just get this over with.

“What do you want to know?” I ask.

“Know?” he asks, amused. “You mean I get to ask anything I want?”

My face, my voice, my heart, goes flat. “Sure.” I say.

“Ok.” He runs his hand through his hair. “What’s your favorite food?”

He must be dense. Or he thinks I am. I’m under his spotlight and he’s going to make me squirm. Got it. There’s a million twists on how this usually goes, but it always ends the same way. He’ll confirm all the rumors he heard at school and he’ll want me to say they’re not true. When I tell him it’s all true, he’ll ask the questions. They never change.
Why does your mom do that? Why don’t you ask her to stop? Is your couch really the only place to sit? Why doesn’t your dad do something?
When the inquisition is done, if he’s really into gory details, he might even ask to see the inside of my house. Of course, I’ll say no. And then, tomorrow or the day after, I’ll get the punishment, written across my locker or shouted at me in the hallways.

“I’ve got a thing for Mexican.” he says when I don’t answer him.

“Look,” I give him a bitter laugh. “Just ask me what you really want to know, okay? I’ll tell you everything, it’s fine. Whatever you heard today...what everyone says? It’s mostly true. My mom’s a hoarder. Our house is stuffed to the ceiling with paper. Paper, not rats. Not old garbage. Just enormous stacks, all the way up to the ceiling, of paper. I’m not overjoyed with it either, but that’s where I live. And my mom’s not insane. But she is my mom and I love her, so you better watch it if you’re going to say something about her.”

Garrett listens. When I take a breath, his blue eyes start swimming in my vision. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop it. He waits for my eyes to clear, tips his head to one side and grins the way my mother would after I survived a vaccination needle.

“What happens if I ask your favorite color?”

“I guess I didn’t understand the question.” I stammer. My face feels sunburned. His eyes are as vast and blue as if I am looking at the earth’s oceans from the moon. “Fajitas are good.”

“Just so you know,” he whispers as he leans across the table toward me. “
I know.
I know and I get it. I understand.”

“Okay.” I breathe. I drop back, my spine melting against my chair.

I shouldn’t feel like this. It’s dangerous. I know better than to believe what he’s saying. But knowing better does not feel nearly as strong as the wanting that pounds me with a runaway heartbeat. Looking into his eyes doesn’t help. I need to take a moment—to know what I know and to distance myself from what I want—so that I can make the right decision about what to do next.

The silence grows so loud between us that it is disturbing.

“You okay?” he asks. It is the perfect escape.

“I need to use the restroom.” I say, standing up and pushing my chair back with my legs. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be here.” he says as I escape down the aisle.

~ * * * ~

I splash water on my face. Why people do that, I don’t know. Now I’m confused
and
wet. I’d have to submerge my entire head in a bucket of ice to get anywhere close to the clarity I need right now. I pace the bathroom until it seems unreasonable to hide any longer.

He knows.

He says he gets it.

He understands.

What does any of that mean? Does it mean he really doesn’t care or that he’s willing to tolerate everything until he gets what he wants from me? That idea makes me want to gag. And he said he
understands.
How can he? Does he live in a dumpster too? Or is that him trying to be a hero? As in,
Just remember, I’m better than you, so I’ll overlook this.

Any of my theories could fit if his tone had even a tiny hint of sarcasm. But nothing about him felt unreal. I saw nothing in his eyes but my reflection. There’s no reason to doubt what he says...or maybe, it’s just that there is no way for me to want to. If I’m going to make a mistake, at least I’m going to do it with a boy who looks like a magazine ad. My stomach flips at the possibility.

I open the bathroom door and criss-cross my way back. I get one aisle away and hear it. There is a heated conversation going on at my table, loud enough for me to hear but not loud enough to bring Ms. Fisk shushing from the front desk. One voice is Garrett’s, still smooth, but stronger now, a silk sheet stretched over a hammer.

The second voice is easy to recognize when she hisses, “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. You know what she is!”

“What she
is
?” I am elated to hear the resentment in Garrett’s voice. “What exactly do you think
she
is, Jen?”

“She’s disgusting!” Jen explodes. “She lives in a rat trap with her crazy mother. Do you know what people are going to say if you go out with her?”

There is a smirk in his tone when he says, “They’re going to say,
I wish I’d asked her out first.
”

Oh my God oh my God oh my God. He’s talking about me.

Jen snorts. “No they’re not. They’re going to say you’re nuts too.”

“I don’t have a problem with that.” he says. “But I can see why you do. If you hadn’t spread it around that we were dating, you wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“I never told anyone we were dating.” she insists.

I am in love with how lame she sounds. I fight down a giggle.

“Yes you did.” His tone is softer and kinder than I would’ve been. “And I’m flattered, but I think we both know we’re not right for each other.”

“Oh, I can see that.” she huffs. “I understand why you and I aren’t right for each other. I do. It’s because you’re into slumming it.”

“We can stay friends, if you watch what you say right now.”

“Friends?” Her laugh is bitter. “No, we can’t just be friends. Where is she anyway? I have a few things to say to Little Miss Waste myself.”

I hear Jen take a couple steps down the aisle and I stumble backward, away from the shelf that hides me from the two of them. I’ve seen how brutal she can be. She’s going to try to drag me back and humiliate me in front of him. I have to get out of here.

I backtrack to the bathroom but instead of going in, I stick to the outer edge of the library’s maze. I slip past the circulation desk and go out the front doors without looking back.

When I hit the fresh air, I sprint through the parking lot to the tree line. Jen wins. I’m running away. I’d rather look like a coward than have her shred me in front of Garrett.

Once I hit the tree line, there is a bigger problem with my escape plan. Besides having left behind all of my books and homework, it is moonless and black in the woods and next to impossible to navigate the path. Especially without my flashlight.

I can’t stand around outside or keep creeping along the tree line, waiting for Jen to leave. I’d look even stupider if she caught me out here. And the worst would be if Garrett came out and saw me hovering among the trees like a complete loser. I have to go. Standing here can only make a bad thing worse. I take a deep breath and move into the trees.

The path is obscured within less than a second. I try to feel my way from tree to tree, shuffling my feet over the ground, but I trip over tree roots and stumble on uneven patches. It only takes me a couple of minutes of fumbling to realize I need to go back. There’s no way I can do this without a flashlight.

I turn around, and I’m lost.

I muddle back the few feet where the entrance to the path should be, but there is no opening. No light. I spin in a dizzying circle trying to locate any dim glow breaking through the trees, without luck. The trees close in on me and my heart accelerates.

I reach out with one hand and touch bark.

“I’m okay,” I whisper to myself. I feel better with my hand on something solid.

I reach out my other hand, swatting gently at the darkness for another trunk. My skin meets something nubby and soft instead. It has an undercurrent of warmth. I slide my fingertips slowly over the material, trying to place the texture. There is a hole. Before I can pull my hand away, I touch something soft and moist. Something that opens and exhales a hot, stale breath.

“Finally.” says the gravely voice of an unfamiliar man. His tone is as shallow as a grave. He locks a hand on my wrist. “I’m real sorry, baby. But I’ll make it quick if you just keep still.”

An adrenaline bomb explodes inside me. I fall back from the man, my feet pushing away instinctively against the ground. My wrist is wrenched from his grip as I stumble and land hard on my back. The ground pounds the air out of me. The tapping in my chest: long, short, long, short, long...speeds to a whir. My breath returns in one quick gasp and I’m on my feet again.

I feel the man’s rough skin as he grabs for me and misses. I’m close enough to smell him. It’s the stink of wet ground, rotting in the shade. He swings his arm, another miss, but it throws me off balance. I fall to the ground again, scuttling backward like a crab.

“Come ‘ere.” His voice is a rough whisper. “It won’t last long, I promise. It’ll be over before it hurts...”

Something pops inside me and my ears thrum with the sound of a vicious ocean swell. I am outside myself, and calm, just like I was with Regina. I still can’t see the man’s face but I can make out the hole he leaves in the darkness. He lunges at me and I duck away as if I’m a ninja. He swipes with an arm but I weave out of the way with amazing ease.

“Don’t make this thing any harder than it already is...” he grunts. I hear a thin scrape along the ground, the drag of metal against dirt. “Nobody’s gotta remember any of this.”

A thick sound cuts through the air, coming toward me. My eyes adjust to a blunt shadow overhead. I know I have to move and my body is trying to spring, but I hold it down, scared to do the wrong thing. Jumping might be the wrong move. If I...

It’s the split second that gets me hit. I throw my left arm up over my head in defense. Whatever is tearing through the air comes down on me, solid as the hull of a ship. The sickening crunch knocks me off my feet.

My arm is a thousand points of pain, all of them igniting as I hit the ground. A moan breaks free from my throat. The sound turns the man’s footsteps in my direction. He is coming for me, his metal weapon scraping over the raw ground behind him. I struggle to push myself onto my feet but my arm explodes in white hot needles.

“Oh God,” I drop back down in the dirt.

“Nalena!” Garrett’s voice spears through the dark like an arrow. The man’s footsteps halt.

“Here!” I croak.

And I pass out.

A bump jolts me awake with a groan on the front seat of Garrett’s car. I’m strapped in beside him and we’re tearing down Main. He takes a right at my street.

“Hey,” Garrett says, glancing at me. “How are you doing?”

“Where are you going?” My arm is full of white hot pain and I try not to moan.

“Don’t worry. I’m just picking up your mom and we’re going to the hospital.” he says.

“No.” I have to say it through clenched teeth. “Not home. Just take me to the hospital, okay?”

But it is too late. Garrett slows the car to a gentle halt in front of my apartment complex.

“I’ll be right back.” he says.

“Wait.” I say, but he’s out of the car and jogging up my front steps, banging on the middle black door, as if he’s been to my house a thousand times before. I move my good hand away from my jagged arm and shriek with pain before I can even reach for the door handle. I’m stuck.