~ * * * ~
I end up saying hardly anything at all in Principal VanWeider’s office. He knows me mostly from the destruction my nickname has done to his school, caused by my nickname. I’ve been in the Principal’s office several times, while he’s asked if I could identify who’s painted my nickname on the lockers or written things about me on the bathroom walls. I’ve never been able to help, but Principal VanWeider has always seemed genuinely upset that this is happening to me. The last time, when someone announced on the PA that there would be a paper drive and that the school could meet their goal with one stop at The Waste’s house, he even apologized for not being able to stop it himself.
I eat the whole sandwich and drink the water that Cora brings and the principal allows Garrett and Cora to explain most of what happened. Principal VanWeider listens without emotion and then he watches Cora’s recording off her cell phone, his eyebrows rising as he exhales, huh, a few different times.
“It certainly changes my opinion of the story I heard from Ms. Ballard and Ms. Runklan.” he says when he’s finished watching. “I’d like to keep your phone, Ms. Paguli, if that’s okay with you, so I can show it to the other parties involved, and their parents, if need be.”
“I’ll get it back, right?” Cora asks.
“Of course. I’ll be dealing with this matter immediately and I’ll have your phone back in your possession by lunch tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Cora says, but she keeps her arms folded tightly over her chest, rubbing her nose with two fingers, like she really wants her phone back now.
“Your sacrifice is noted and appreciated.” Principal VanWeider adds and Cora stops rubbing, straightening her shoulders with a grin. The principal leans back in his chair. “Part of the issue I have with this situation is that, while Simon Valley has a no-tolerance policy concerning actual fighting, I think that some of the students haven’t grasped that the policy extends to provocation of an incident as well.
“I must mention too that I’m particularly proud of how you handled yourself in this situation, Ms. Maxwell. I’m very impressed with how you were able to defend yourself without ever touching the other students. Their injuries were created as a direct consequence of their own actions. That is quite an honorable and skilled form of defense that you displayed.
“Since the nature in which this was originally presented to me is completely opposite of what you’ve shown me on tape, you can be certain that it will be dealt with in like fashion. Are you feeling any better now?”
“A little.” I say.
“Well, under these circumstances, I’m going to excuse you for the day. Do you have a way of getting home?”
“No.” I say.
“Sir,” Garrett says from behind me. “I’ve only got a Lit class and a study hall this afternoon and Ms. Kale can vouch for my being ahead in Lit. I could take Nalena home.”
I don’t bother to mention that my home has been temporarily relocated to Garrett’s house anyway. Principal VanWeider leans back in his office chair and drums his fingers thoughtfully on the desk before he says, “I suppose I don’t have a problem with that. You’re both excused for the remainder of the day.”
Cora slumps in her chair and says, “I wish I had a car.”
~ * * * ~
Garrett walks me back to my locker and takes my backpack from me once it’s filled.
“Can you talk to me yet?” he asks.
“Maybe. A little.” I say, fighting back a giggle that spins around my heart.
“Good. I think I can work with ‘a little’.” Garrett says. He takes my hand again and laces his fingers through mine in a way that reminds me of the shapes in the bottom of our tea mugs this morning.
“I wonder what’s going to happen to Jen and Regina.” I say as we reach the front doors. Garrett holds the door open with one arm so I can walk through.
“Yeah, about that,” he says. “How did you move like that? Are you some secret lethal weapon or something?”
“Hardly.” I say but Garrett stops walking, pulling me to a stop with him.
“How did you do it?”
I’m not sure what to tell him. The whir and the spinning rings that bust open and the protection bubble? Like all of that wouldn’t send him screaming away? Or maybe I could get myself a whole new nickname by telling him how I pop out of my body when it happens. I decide to play dumb instead.
“I don’t know how I do it.” I tell him.
“You’ve done it before?”
I feel like I’m gouging a hole in myself as I lie to him. “Oh, no. I meant, how I did it in the bathroom. Just lucky, I guess.”
“Hmm.” he hums like he doesn’t believe me and the gouge in me aches. He doesn’t drop my hand on the way to his car. He unlocks the passenger door and closes it once I’m in. I watch him walk around to his side and I notice the dents again that Kris’s body left in his hood. By the time Garrett slides into his seat, I’m wondering why he’s going to all this trouble—fighting Kris and messing up his car and wrecking his reputation in school over being seen with me. I can see how his reputation and his relationship to Kris might not mean so much, since graduation is right around the corner, but I can’t figure out why he’s not furious about his car. I’m still not sure why Garrett thinks of me as anything but The Waste. And why now. Even Cora has been careful, since I got my nickname, about how much she’s actually seen talking with me.
Garrett starts up the car and I ask, with as much indifference as I can, “Aren’t you hungry? Did you get lunch today?”
We pull out onto Main and he lets the steering wheel slide back from the turn before he answers. “I meant to apologize for not being there at lunch. I got a call from Sean and I had to go.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” I tell him, even though his wanting to apologize makes me happy. I know it’s none of my business why Sean called or why Garrett decided to meet him instead of having lunch with me. It’s also not my business why Garrett didn’t tell me he was leaving, even if he’d been waiting outside every class for me and holding my hand all day. My heart feels a little pinched, wanting to be the center of everything Garrett does, and knowing that I’m not. Maybe all this desperation I feel, to be considered central in his life, is because I can see how quickly he’s becoming the center of mine.
He steers the car down the street I usually take home from school, which is in the opposite direction of his house. All of my stuff is at the Reese’s, but maybe Garrett knows something I don’t. Maybe my mom has come to her senses and I’ll be back in my own bed tonight. Traveling down the main road toward my house makes me feel lonely. I’m not sure if I’m dreading going home because I don’t want Garrett to see the mess of it in broad daylight or if it is because he’ll leave me there and go home to his wild, bright, chaotic house across town.
“Are you taking me home? Is my mom done freaking out?” I ask. He laughs.
“No, I don’t think so. I think the plan is for you two to stay with us for a few more days, but we’re supposed to stop and pick up some paper.”
My throat cinches shut. No. It’s bad enough that my mom was up writing all night and that she left a stack of paper on the Reese’s otherwise uncluttered counter. The idea of her dragging all of our mess out into the open like this and making Garrett and his family deal with it, on top of taking us in as unexpected house guests, is mortifying.
“We really don’t have to pick up anything.” I tell him, but my voice is thin and shaky.
“It’s not a problem. She just wants a couple packs of paper.”
“We’ll be home in a day or two. She can live without it.” I say. This is almost a lie. I know my mom is probably pacing the Reese’s floor, waiting for it. She’s probably pushing back the side light curtain every few minutes, watching for Garrett’s car and assuring herself the paper is coming. It will only be worse if she’s already run out. Then she’ll look insane as she paces, mumbling all the names and plot lines over and over, so they ar
en’t lost before she can write them down.
I wish I could not care, but I can’t seem to help it. I sit beside Garrett, defeated, as he pulls into the parking lot of the office supply.
“I’m happy to do it for her.” he says as he cuts the engine.
We go in the door and it is like going into any place that feels like home but isn’t. I tell Garrett not to trip on the rug, where it bunches up by the sliding door.
Some places smell homey with the aroma of food or sexy with people’s perfumes or even hopeful with a mall-mixture of all the smells, but the office supply store has always been different. It smells clean and impersonal and detached which, depending on the day, can make me feel relieved or anxious, angry or comforted. Today, I walk in with Garrett and inhale the paper and plastic and feel everything I’ve ever felt about this place all at once.
“Hey stranger.” Buzz is standing behind the counter, in his usual, red smock with his price gun dangling from a pocket. “The sunshine just hasn’t been the same without you.”
“Hi Buzz.” I say and then, I blush with guilt because I’m wishing down deep that I didn’t know Buzz well enough to call him by his first name or to know I won’t have to get the paper off the shelf because it will already be waiting at the counter. I know what a lousy human being I am when Buzz smiles and puts out his hand to Garrett.
“Any friend of Nalena’s is a friend of mine. You can call me Buzz. Office supply’s number one guy and avid admirer of Ms. Nalena, here.” He says. Garrett shakes Buzz’s hand.
“Garrett Reese.” he says and then, out of nowhere, he says, “Nalena’s boyfriend.”
I almost drop right then. I picture myself crashing through the glass counter, my face pierced with fancy pens and paper clips. Garrett said he was my boyfriend. He actually said it, out loud, to the guy that feeds my mom’s paper habit. My boyfriend. Garrett. So handsome that he makes my eyes hurt. The paper store is suddenly filled with the most amazing scent I’ve ever smelled in my entire life—like papery, plastic-y, pools of ink, happiness. Did he mean it the way I want to believe it? Or is he saying he’s my friend that’s a boy. It sounded like boyfriend not boy friend...didn’t it? I leave my hand on the glass counter to steady myself.
“The usual.” Buzz says when he rings up the paper. He smiles at me widely. “Should I put it on your tab, mah lady?”
“No, I’ve got it.” Garrett says before I can answer. He opens his wallet and hands Buzz two bills. Buzz gives me an approving wink as he takes the money and he gives Garrett the receipt.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Reese.” Buzz says as he hands Garrett the usual three stacks. “Take good care of my girl, now.”
“Definitely.” Garrett says and my insides my heart bubbles up and spins, over and over again.
~ * * * ~
There is no one at Garrett’s house when we arrive.
“Where is everybody?” I ask, walking into the silent house behind him.
“My parents are working,” Garrett says, setting down our backpacks near the door. He carries the paper to the kitchen counter. “Iris is at daycare. Everybody else is at school. Maybe your mom’s running errands?”
I feel myself blush.
“Maybe.” I say. My mom only goes out when she has to and if there are too many things to do in a day, she’ll either come and go in short trips all day long or she’ll find a way not to go at all. I remember once that she got stuck in the welfare office, waiting to sign us up for a bridge card. She was about to walk out when they finally called her name. If they hadn’t called her name right then, I know my mom would’ve walked away from the state aid even though we were getting pretty desperate. It didn’t matter to her that the trust fund her parents had set up for us was just about gone. It mattered more that she wasn’t able to write.
“She probably left a note.” Garrett says and I relax when he sets down the paper and lifts an inked napkin off the counter, waving it in the air. “Yep, right here. She went out with my mom.”
“I thought your mom was at work.”
“I guess not.” he shrugs. “Maybe they went out to get their nails done.”
“Yeah right.” I say. I can just imagine my mom, her fingers stuck soaking while she tries to write her fragmented stories with her toes. That’s the only way my mom would ever tie up her own hands for that long, which is why I know that the nail boutique is the last place she’d ever be.
Garrett opens the fridge and pulls out two apples, some cheese sticks and a couple bottles of water.
“Looks like you’ve got an hour alone with me before everybody gets back.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Scared?”
“Of what?” I smirk when he hands me the water bottles.
“C’mon,” he says, looping my fingers with his. I follow him through the living room, past his couch that is still heaped with my comforter. The connection of our fingers sends sparks up my arm. We go out the French doors into the backyard. Garrett guides me across the lawn and up the steps of the gazebo. The koi pond has a tiny ledge waterfall on one side that streams beneath the gazebo’s wood floor, into another pool on the opposite side. We sit on the bench and I lean over out of one opening, watching the orange and white fish swim among the rocks below.
The faint trickle of the pond weaves into our silence, as we eat the apples and cheese. Usually a silence like this would feel like a scratchy sock but, with Garrett, it draws little of my attention. It feels like we are talking even though we aren’t, a communication traveling between us in soft, comfortable molecules. I let myself watch him when he looks away, tracing the shadow of his facial hair from the high edge of his jaw, below his cheekbones, until it parts around his mouth. I let my interest rest on his lips. I don’t know how long I am lost in studying them, their curve and color, but Garrett’s sudden grin throws my gaze up into his eyes and I turn what I assume is a purplish shade of humiliated.
“It’s good…when you look at me.” Garrett says. My eyes still fall into my lap. Garrett leans forward with his elbows on his knees and I feel his heat shift beside me, as if a hot wind has settled there. He drops his head, his hair hiding his profile. He pushes his thumbs against the sides of the water bottle in his hands and the plastic snaps into dents. Suddenly, Garrett gets to his feet.
“Come with me.” he says. “I want to show you something.”
He puts out a hand to me and I take it. I let him lead me down out of the gazebo and into the middle of the lawn.
“Do you think you can trust me yet?” he asks. I grin, looking around the yard for what he might want to show me.
“Sure.” I laugh and Garrett lunges straight for my throat.
Chapter 10
I don’t have time to think. All I do is react. And even that is out of my control.
Garrett’s hands are coming at my neck and the rings inside me spin wildly and explode open, deploying the protective bubble like an air bag. My feet move automatically in order to avoid Garrett’s attack, sliding to the side and my body follows in alignment, but fighting Garrett isn’t like fighting Jen and Regina. Garrett follows and adjusts too.
He dives and I move, in an intricate dance of speed, barely missing one another, although we do miss. His fingers are nearly in my hair but I am gone before he can close his hand on even one strand. We continue like this, our actions gaining in such speed that I am chased out of my own body to avoid the dizziness of movement within my own skin.
I stand outside myself, watching Garrett and I shift around one another like lightening-fast puzzle pieces, with my piece unwilling to align. As Garrett makes another grab for me, I duck. He follows into my crouch and grabs for my ankle, but I stay a centimeter out of his grasp.
“Don’t be scared!” Garrett shouts at me as he strikes out for my un-casted wrist. The thought hadn’t occurred to me until his words tether it in my head and I hesitate. I should be frightened. As I’m trying to decide whether to run or stay and fight, Garrett strikes again at my wrist. Instead of
letting my body stream out of his range this time, the split second doubt gives Garrett the advantage and his hand clamps down on my skin. In the second before hecatches me, the bubble sucks me back into myself and with Garrett hanging on, we both tumble to the ground in a heap.
I wrench his hand off and jump to my feet, but Garrett doesn’t move from the ground. He is panting, with a grin spread across his face.
“You never bring fear to a fight.” Garrett says. An impulse, rather than an instinct, is what raises my foot. I swing to kick him in the side but Garrett grabs the toe of my shoe in his palm and gives me a tiny push that knocks me backward onto the ground. I fall with a horrible grunt flat onto my back, the wind knocked out of my lungs. Garrett rolls onto his feet and smiles down on me. I catch my breath in a gasp and begin coughing as he rolls onto the balls of his feet beside me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching for me. I knock his hand away and narrow my eyes on him.
“What is wrong with you?” I cough. Garrett searches my face with open curiosity.
“You still don’t know, do you?” he asks. “You have no idea what you are.”
“I’m a girl. A girl you’re trying to fight...”
“No, Nalena.” he interrupts softly, his eyes wide with excitement. “You’re Contego. Like me. That’s what you are.”
~ * * * ~
Whatever a Contego is, it sounds like a disease.
I don’t let him help me up and he backs away from me, seeming to understand that I don’t really trust him anymore. He takes four steps back, offering a comfortable amount of space between us, as I dust myself off. Even so, I never completely take my eyes off of him, in case he decides to jump me again. His face is filled with concern that seems wildly out of place, considering that moments ago he was bent on attacking me. His fingers stay passively tucked in his front pockets.
“Do you understand why I did that?” he asks.
Cornerstone Page 11
