Not Anything (16 page)

at school the next day, i try to do anything but think. my
body aches. My head hurts. I can’t seem to drink enough bottled water. I’m completely incapable of putting any sentences together. When Mr. Murphy pulls me aside to talk after class, I can barely look him in the eye. I feel like if anyone can see what’s going on, it’ll be Mr. Murphy.

“Susie, I spoke to Danny’s mother this morning, and she’s extremely happy with his progress.” Mr. Murphy clears his throat and beams down at me. “So am I. You’ve done a really great job.”

“Thanks,” I say, but my head heats up. Ever since last night with Marc, all I can think about is Danny. I feel so guilty about Danny. I don’t deserve Mr. Murphy’s praise. I deserve a nice kick in the ass. “Is that it?” I don’t mean to be short with Mr. Murphy. I just want to stop talking about Danny.

“Actually, no.” Mr. Murphy shakes his head, surprised by my curtness. “I had a talk with Danny during our class earlier and we both agree that tutoring is no longer necessary. He thinks he can do it on his own.”

“On his own?” Tutoring time is the only time that Danny and I spend alone. If he doesn’t want me to tutor him anymore, does that mean he doesn’t want to see me anymore? Was Danny using Mr. Murphy to break up with me?

“I know,” Mr. Murphy says, mistaking my shock for disappointment. “But you’ve done a great job. I’m sure that I can find you someone else to tutor.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrug and look down at the carpet. The same piece of gum from early October stares back at me. The two-minute-warning bell rings, and students from his next period start flooding in. “I have to go.”

“Okay.” Mr. Murphy moves aside to let two students with ridiculously large backpacks pass. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, tomorrow,” I say, wondering how I can even think of tomorrow when I’m not sure if I can make it through today.

it gets worse from there. in driver’s ed, bobby and luis are
absent. “They’re at some geeky-ass bowling semifinals,” José tells me. “Oh,” José says, smiling at me, his eyes so red I can barely see his irises. “And watch out for Jessica. I hear she wants to kick your ass.”

“Huh?” Instinctively, my head swivels in Jessica’s direction. She’s standing on the opposite side of the paved driver’s range talking to Brianna Rivera, another bubble-headed cheerleader. She doesn’t look happy. She’s waving her arms around, and suddenly they both stop talking and look at me. Brianna shoots me the finger and Jessica gives me the dirtiest look I’ve had all year.

“What’d I do?” I ask José.

José chuckles and looks at me. “Shit. Are you kidding me?”

“What’d I do?” I repeat.

“Ask Tamara,” he says, walking away.

I sit down in our squad line, not really sure what to do. I wait for Coach Brown to come in, blow his whistle. Class doesn’t start until he hits the pavement. I look around and see Tamara in a corner talking to Stan Levy and some other kids. She whispers something in his ear, and then they both look at me. Tamara smiles, but her smile says,
screw you,
and after a few minutes, she starts talking to another group of kids. Again, they all stop to look at me. Tamara gives me the fake smile. Then a few minutes later, she walks off and hits another group. Something is definitely up.

When the late bell rings, Coach Brown pulls up in his golf cart. “Let’s go,” he screams. He looks around the class, and notices that it’s half empty.

“Where is everyone?” he asks Jessica, because she’s closest to him.

“At a nerd convention,” she replies, and he chuckles. She tosses her glossy black hair and smiles up at him. “The bowling geeks are bowling in a semifinal or something and the D.A.R.E. kids are on a field trip.”

“Oh,” Coach says. “Well, I’ll guess we’ll just pair up today, and each group will get a car. Get into your squads.”

We all line up in our squads. José first, Jessica behind him, Tamara behind her, and me in the back. Our line is filled with tons of tension, except for José, who appears to be finding the whole situation amusing because he keeps laughing and mumbling “catfight” underneath his breath.

“Shut up,” Jessica hisses before slapping him on the back of his head.

The coach works his way down the squad, breaking each squad into groups of two. When he gets to us, he puts José with Jessica. I get stuck with Tamara.

“Thank God,” Jessica snaps at the both of us and then runs to catch up with José, punching him in the arm when she gets next to him.

Tamara and I walk quietly to our car. She gets the driver’s seat. I get the passenger side with its funny emergency foot brake.

“So,” Tamara says, after she throws the car in drive, “some memorial service.” She gives me a sidelong glare that makes my body fill with dread. She knows.

Still I say, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tamara laughs, turning the steering wheel right and pulling to a stop at a fake stop sign. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” I tell her, making sure to keep my voice level. “I don’t.”

“Yes,” she says, not even bothering to look at me, “you do.”

We drive, passing fake stop sign after fake stop sign. Tamara stops for the pedestrian crosswalk, the blinking yellow light, the careful-orthey’ll-get-you intersection. She keeps her perfectly manicured nails at ten and two. At the parallel-parking station, I hit the emergency foot brake and the car comes to a crashing halt. I have to know.

“Who’d you tell?” My voice comes out in little gasps.

She laughs and hits my leg so hard that the emergency foot brake is released. “Everyone.”

“Even Danny?” I ask.

But she doesn’t reply. She gives me a wicked smile, but she doesn’t reply.

at lunch, i run to my spot and contemplate sitting there for
the rest of the day, possibly for the rest of my life. Today Marisol is eating lunch with Ryan. She didn’t even tell me that she was going to. I found out as I was passing the cafeteria. It doesn’t surprise me. Nothing else can surprise me today.

Danny finds me with my head shoved deeply into my hands, the uneaten contents of my bagged lunch spread out on the newly cut grass. I don’t look up to let him know that I know that he is there, because if I did then I am sure that he would see that I’ve been crying.

“You okay?” He sits down next to me.

“Yep.” I turn my face away, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. I can’t be any more obvious, I know. But I don’t really have a choice.

“You don’t look okay.”

“I am.”

“You’re crying,” he points out.

“I know.” I’m smart enough to know that there’s no point in denying it. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?”

“Danny,” I blurt out quickly, “are we—” I stop myself. I was going to ask,
Are we a couple?
Because if we’re not, then what I did last night with Marc can’t technically be considered cheating. Right? But if we
are
a couple…

“Are we what?” His voice drops. I wonder if he knows.
Can I still spin this?
I think. Then I wonder,
When did I become the type of girl that spins things?

“Why are you here?” I change tactics.

“I thought I’d find you here.” He picks at a blade of grass and breaks it apart in his fingers. “I thought maybe we could go back to my house. You know…” his voice trails off.

“You mean not go back to school?”

“Yeah,” he says after a while.

“Danny,” I push the breath from my lungs. Before I say yes to his house, I have to know. “Are we…together?”

He picks another blade of grass, twists it into a knot but doesn’t answer.

“Danny…”

“Yeah,” he says slowly.

“Oh.”

“Do you want to go back to my house?” he asks again. He stands, holds his hand out to me, doesn’t look me in the eyes.

“Yeah.” I take his hand. And then without another word, I follow him home.

as i enter danny’s home, i can’t help but think that besides
crossing the threshold of his door, I have crossed several other thresholds.

In the space of three months, I have become that girl who:

1. Skips school.
   
2. Gets drunk at her mother’s memorial service.
   
3. Makes out with the pothead next door.
   
4. Fights with her best friend.
   

The weird thing is that I’ve never felt so normal.

“Do you want something to drink?” Danny opens the refrigerator, turns an inquisitive eye toward me.

“No.” I lift up my water bottle. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” He reaches deep in the back and pulls out a long brown bottle with a silver label. “Bud Light,” he says, holding it out to me. “Take it.”

“I don’t drink,” I say, my heart pounding in my ears.

“Oh.” He gives me a funny look. “Okay.”

Danny puts the beer back in the refrigerator and grabs a Capri Sun. He sits on the counter and looks at me intently. “So…” he says, kicking the cabinets hard with his feet, “what’d you do last night?”

Even though I know that he knows, my mind tells me to act like he doesn’t. Or at least to act like I have no idea what he’s talking about. I know it’s crazy, but I feel trapped and I’m not sure why I let myself walk right into it.

Still, I struggle with what to tell him. At the very least, I should tell him about my mother’s memorial service. I should try to explain the story so that it works out in my favor and not in Tamara’s. Because that’s obviously how he heard, right?

Still for whatever reason, I say, “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”
he repeats.

“Nothing,”
I mumble, “that I want to talk about.”

“Okay.”
He hops off the counter and grabs my hand. “C’mon.”

“Where?” I ask, digging my heels into the tile.

“To my bedroom, where else?” he asks, shaking his head strangely.

“You’re acting weird,” I tell him, but I let him pull me along. I can’t seem to stop him.

“You’re going to call me weird when you can’t even tell me what you did last night?” He gives me a look that says,
You’re the weirdo.

“You know what?” I disengage my hand from his. I think I can still make a break for it, so I say, “I don’t feel well. I have a headache. I’m going to go back to school.” I turn quickly, grab my book bag off the counter, and head for the sliding glass door. Danny follows close behind, so I move faster.

“Why are you freaking out?” His voice is monotone, slightly bored.

“I’m not freaking out.” I fumble with the lock on the sliding door. “I just have a really bad headache.”

“Headache or hangover?” His voice catches speed. “Does Marc have a hangover, too?”

The question slams into me.

“What?” I ask against my better judgment. “What are you talking about?”

“Susie.” He pushes up behind me, places his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t lie to me.
Please.
”

I turn to face him. He’s standing so close. Our chests are pressed against one another. I can feel every breath he takes.

“Back up,” I say slowly.

He steps backward until he is sitting on his family room couch. I wait to speak, trying to judge what I should say. He sits with his head in his hands; his foot taps impatiently against the coffee table.

“Can I ask you a question?” The shift in his tone catches me off guard. He’s back in control. “Are we…together?” He asks.

“What?” It’s a question that apparently neither of us has the answer to.

“Are we together?” he repeats. “You asked me that earlier at the canal, and I want to know what you think.” He pauses. “I really do want to know what you think.”

“I don’t know what to think,” I tell him, rapping my head against the glass door. “I don’t.”

“I don’t either.” He looks away from me. I wonder if he’ll ever really look at me again.

“Then what difference does it make?” I say quietly.

“What difference do
I
make?” he shoots back. “To you?”

“Danny,” I whisper his name softly. “I…I like you. A lot.” Telling him that I like him is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to say, but I say it anyway because I understand that I might never have the opportunity to say it again.

“But, Susie, what difference does it make if you like me, if you can’t tell me anything? Why didn’t you tell me about your mom’s memorial service?” He takes a deep breath. “Why didn’t you at least tell me about Marc?”

How could I tell him about Marc? To tell him about Marc so that he would understand, I would have to tell how most of the time I walk around like I’m carrying twenty rocks on my shoulders. How sometimes the anxiety is so bad that I just want to disappear. That until I met him, I was able to push all these feelings away, hide behind my Blockbuster card, my silly little life where nothing ever changed. How can I tell him all that? I barely understand it myself.