Keep Holding On (7 page)

Sherae is on the warpath.

“He’s not getting away with this,” she promises at our daily meetup. I was too depressed to call her when I got home Friday night, so I told her about Matt when she called Saturday morning. She was way angrier about it than I was.

“Please don’t do anything,” I beg. “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

“Are you delusional? We already saw what happened. What happened was Matt Brennan being a scumbag.”

“But we don’t know why he didn’t show up yet.”

“Because he is a scumbag. That is why.”

“Maybe he—”

“No.”

“He could have—”

“No.”

“But—”

“He needs to apologize. I find it highly suspect that he hasn’t yet.”

“Just … I’ll take care of it.”

“Are you sure? Because I’m ready to rumble.”

“Yeah, Ponyboy. I picked up on that.”

Spontaneous eye contact with Julian Porter has only happened a few times at lunch. Usually, I’ll just sneak glances at him. Sometimes I can feel him looking at me. Or I’ll see him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but I’ll pretend that I don’t.

Attempting eye contact at lunch always involves a huge degree of risk. If I’m trying to look at Julian without looking like I’m actually looking and I accidentally look at someone else, there could be a problem. They could take it as an invitation to launch a verbal attack.

Tommy’s sitting alone again at his usual table. Apparently, having money isn’t always enough to avoid persecution. It’s amazing how two rejects like us can force everyone else to deal with having two less tables available. I guess we have some power in a warped way.

When I got to the cafeteria, I tried to anticipate where Warner and those guys would sit. Then I picked a table far from there. Most kids sit at the same table every day. But with Warner, it’s like this incessant game of musical tables we’re playing where he’s the only one having fun.

Of course Warner sits at the table behind mine. His friends immediately swoop in after him.

“What’s for lunch?” Warner asks from behind me. I don’t turn around. I know his question is meant for me. I’m reading. Which at lunch mostly consists of pretending to read. But I find that when I read or listen to music in here, people pretty much leave me alone.

I keep Pretend Reading.

“Lettuce sandwich again?” Warner inquires. “Ooh, or maybe you got the mayonnaise and mustard one this time! Aren’t those the
best
?”

“Maybe her mom wiped her butt and put that in a sandwich,” his friend says.

Warner’s whole table cracks up. I hear the slap of a high five.

My face burns. I stay as still as possible in Pretend Reading mode. If I make any kind of move like switching seats, they’ll know they’re getting to me. And that will just make it worse.

My lunch bag of sorry kitchen scraps remains unopened on the table. I can’t deal with it today. I’m just relieved that Julian’s sitting like five tables away. If he heard what Warner and his friend said to me, I would die.

I peek at Julian. He isn’t looking.

There’s a group of girls at the table in front of mine. They look so happy, talking and laughing like school’s the most comfortable place in the world. I know their names. I know the clubs they belong to and the instruments they play and the teams they’re on. But I can never really know them. Not anymore.

I tried to sit with them on the first day of school. They said all the seats were taken. I used to be really good friends with some of them. They’d come over to my house to play and I’d go over theirs. That was back in elementary school before mother started to change. Back when she was almost like a real mom.

Before we moved to our apartment, mother and I lived with Lewis in a big house like everyone else. Mother met Lewis when
I was two. He was a professor at the college near the bar and grill where she worked. He went there for lunch and always sat in mother’s section. His wife had divorced him and moved to France a few years before. His kids were in college. He had the whole house to himself.

Living with Lewis was nice. I had most of the same things other kids had. There was lots of room. There was always enough to eat. And I could have friends over without feeling like I had to hide anything. I even had a huge birthday party in third grade. My entire class came. Back then, it felt like I fit in. It felt like I had a place to belong.

Then Lewis got cancer.

He died when I was eleven. Lewis and mother weren’t married, so we had to move out. He left the house to his oldest son. Most of his savings went to his other kids and relatives. Lewis left mother some money, but he didn’t have much to leave and she used it up quickly. She didn’t want to move to another town. That’s when she found our apartment. That’s when people she thought were her friends started fading away. And that’s when I started lying.

Lying isn’t something I ever wanted to do. I lied because I had to. When mother stopped taking care of me, I made up this story about how she was in the hospital. Which somehow evolved into this whole big thing about how she might die. I was only trying to justify my humiliating clothes and lunches. The plan was to tell everyone she got better after a few weeks. But my friends found out I lied. One of them saw mother at the post office and told everyone. Sherae was the only one who didn’t hate me. People
started calling me a liar. Warner started making fun of my lunches. Carly started bullying me. And they never stopped.

The thing is, I don’t entirely regret that I lied. I’d rather have the whole school hate me than everyone know my truth.

The girls at the next table are laughing again. I refuse to open my flat lunch bag. Pretending I’m looking at the clock, I peek at Julian.

He’s looking right at me.

I look back at him.

He doesn’t look away.

He smiles at me.

I smile back.

And then a gob of something smacks into the back of my head.

The girls at the next table stare. Warner’s table is roaring with laughter.

No one comes over to help me.

More kids turn to look. It gets eerily quiet.

I do not want to know what’s in my hair.

I have to know what’s in my hair.

I reach back and tentatively touch the gob. It’s mashed potatoes.

Warner finds this to be hilarious.

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Julian saw the whole thing. He was looking right at me when it happened.

Julian Porter just saw me get smacked in the head with a gob of mashed potatoes.

There’s only one option.

I stand up, grab my things, and head for the door. Some mashed potatoes slide down my hair and hit the floor with a splat. Kids are giving me wide eyes and covering their smirks and gawking as I pass them.

I slam against the door to push it open. The monitor is yelling at me that I can’t leave. I want to yell back that he should do his job. Where was he when the mashed potatoes were flying?

But I don’t yell. I don’t say anything. I just leave. And I’m never going back.

Study hall is
a lot less interesting when you’re not making out with a hot boy. I thought about cutting. But where would I go?

I’m about to take out my physics worksheet when something outside catches my eye. These windows overlook the student parking lot. Carly and Audrey are messing around out there like they don’t even care that anyone could see. When I sneak out to hook up with Matt, I always use the side door by the gym. There aren’t any windows down there. And our place is so desolate that no one’s ever caught us. But Carly and Audrey are practically daring someone to catch them. Carly is sitting on Audrey’s hood. Audrey is telling a story with lots of animated hand motions.

It’s so weird that Audrey hangs out with Carly now. I’ve watched her go from a Pretty Perfect Popular girl to getting tangled up in this bad-girl phase. What would make a person trade in that life for this one?

I have a plan. It’s temporary, but it should let me avoid the cafeteria for the rest of the week. Instead of shuffling along with everyone going to lunch, I’m pretending that I have to get something from my locker. I keep pretending until the bell rings.

When the halls are almost empty, I take out my flat lunch bag. This is the tricky part. There’s usually a monitor standing just inside the cafeteria door trying to herd in loiterers. If he catches me darting for the stairway near the door, he’ll yell at me to come back. The dude knows who has lunch when.

I head toward the cafeteria. The monitor’s stationed at his spot by the door. There’s a loud banging noise from inside. Kids start yelling. He goes to investigate.

Now’s my chance.

I lunge for the stairway and fly downstairs. The girls’ room is near this end of the hall. Teachers down here have already started their next class. So the chances of getting caught in the hall are slim.

I slowly press the bathroom door open. I don’t hear anyone inside. I go in. Still no one. I quickly look under the stalls. They’re empty. I go inside the last stall, lock the door, and wait.

No one comes in.

Sitting on the toilet with my feet up, I uncrinkle my lunch bag as quietly as possible. If someone comes in, I’ll stop uncrinkling until they leave. I unpack my “lunch.” There wasn’t any bread to make a sandwich, so I just have a store-brand toaster pastry and some raisins. I gobble everything down.

My stomach growls for more.

I keep replaying yesterday’s cafeteria scene. How Julian was looking right at me when I snuck a look at him. How he didn’t look away. How he smiled at me.

How that gob of mashed potatoes splattered against my head.

I’ll never be able to face Julian again.

There’s a note in my locker before gym.

If he’s so sorry, why didn’t he call me back? Or write why he didn’t show up in his note? Plus, he’s obviously been avoiding me in the halls.

I shouldn’t meet up with him. But of course I will. I want to hear what he has to say. And I’m not about to randomly confront him or anything.

Matt can’t just throw away our entire relationship. You don’t feel one way about somebody and then feel a totally different way two seconds later. There has to be a good reason why he didn’t show up.