She stares at me, eyes wide and unblinking. I’m not sure if she’s furious or unbelieving.
Then she snaps.
“Well the last time you were in control you wound up in jail.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “That’s why we’re here in the first place.”
“That’s a low blow, Mom. This is nothing like that.”
She takes several deep breaths, like she’s trying to regain control or something.
“Look,” she finally says, “I’m trying my hardest to be here for you, but you need to meet me halfway.”
I snort. That implies that she’s meeting me halfway, too.
“I mean, you want to go to college, right? You want to have a good life? You can’t keep doing stupid things like this just because you need to feel free.”
She has no idea what it’s like to feel trapped. To feel like you have no choices, no options except ones that other people decide for you.
“I don’t think sneaking out for one stupid lunch is going to blacklist me from college.”
“Not this time, maybe,” she says. “But these things add up. One day you’ll look around and find your life in ruins.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that the only thing ruining my life right now is her. But I’m smart enough to know that’s not a comment I come back from saying. If I want to salvage my chances of keeping our deal in place, I have to play by her rules.
As much as it pains me to do it, I have to suck it up and apologize.
“I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea.” I glance over her shoulder and see Tru slipping out the front door. “It won’t happen again.”
A little of her steam dies down, and I know I made the right call. For once.
She turns to her friend. “I’m sorry, Gail, but I need to get my daughter back to school.”
“I understand. We’ll do this another time.”
But the moment we’re in the car and on our way back to school, the adrenaline wears off. As my breathing returns to normal and the reality of what happened—what almost happened—sets in.
If Mom had seen Tru with me, I would be beyond dead meat. I would never be allowed out of the house without a babysitter. All hope of convincing Mom to stick to the deal would be lost.
It was bad enough that I got caught. Getting caught with Tru would have been so much worse.
I shoot him a quick text to let him know that Mom is taking me back, just so he doesn’t think he needs to wait on me.
He replies with a string of emojis that I decipher to mean okay, see you back at school. I can’t help but smile at the memory of how much fun I’d had at lunch. I wish I could go back to before, to the way I felt before I saw Mom and I realized how close to disaster I just came.
To before I remembered that hanging out with Tru was a huge risk to my goal. The more time I spend with him, the greater the chance of getting caught. If I want Mom to stand by our deal, I need to stay on the straight and narrow.
No more Tru.
Mom pulls around to the student parking lot, probably trying to avoid making me walk in past the front office.
“Hey,” she says, looking at me with concern. “Are you okay?”
I snap myself out of the funk and put on the mask of a happy face.
“Yeah. Don’t want to be late for class,” I say, waggling my phone at her. Then, without waiting for a response, I open the door. Before I climb out, I turn back and say, “Thanks for the ride.”
Then I’m racing across campus. Trying to outrun the reality of how close I came to giving up the only thing I want for an afternoon of fun with a boy I barely know. Nothing is worth risking my ticket back home. Nothing, and no one.
The next morning, I wake up in a cold sweat. I was freaking out in my sleep and have come to a major realization. Mom was right. Not about everything—definitely not about moving us to Texas—but about these small decisions adding up and Tru being bad news. For me, anyway.
Less than two weeks with the guy and I almost let him ruin everything. It’s not his fault. Not entirely his fault, anyway. But he’s too charming for my own good. I should never have let him convince me to leave campus for lunch.
Luckily, Mom agreed that, since I hadn’t actually gotten in trouble at school, the deal is still in place. And for the sake of the plan, for the sake of keeping up my end of it, I have to stay away from Tru.
“Hey Mom?” I ask, knocking on her bedroom door and hoping she hasn’t left for work already.
She opens the door, still in her pajamas and halfway done with her hair and makeup. “Is something wrong?”
“Can you take me to school today?”
She scowls. “Did something happen with Tru?”
“No,” I half-lie, “I just want to go in early to work on a project.”
“Okay,” she says. “Give me five minutes.”
Tru knocks on the door while I’m waiting for her. I open it just enough to talk to him, but not so much that Mom will hear us.
“Hey, didn’t you say you wanted to go in early today?” he asks. He looks as charming as ever. Hair going every which way, untied tie hanging from the collar of his black and red plaid shirt, white tee, and red jeans.
We’re wearing the same black All Stars.
It takes epic restraint not to reach up and finger-comb his hair.
“Mom is taking me,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder. When he looks like he’s going to ask a question, I add, “She’s still freaking out about yesterday.”
“Got it,” he says. “Then I’ll catch you at lunch.”
He’s smiling as he jogs back to his house.
“Ready?” Mom asks, emerging from her bedroom fully dressed.
“Yep.” I grab my backpack off the stairs and sling it over my shoulder. “Do you think you can pick me up after, too?”
Mom looks at me with that Mom look. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“I’m sure,” I say.
I’m just doing whatever it takes to make sure we both go home at the end of the quarter.
I avoid Tru at lunch by staying in the cafeteria with the underclassmen, but I can’t avoid him all day. We have senior seminar together fourth period.
I contemplate playing sick, going to the nurse’s office and pleading cramps or stomach flu, but I figure missing class for any reason won’t go over well with Mom right now.
Instead, I wait until the bell is about to ring before entering the classroom.
Turns out, all that stress was for nothing because Tru isn’t even there. I take the seat closest to the door and let out a huge sigh of relief as the bell rings and there’s no sign of him.
Until the door opens.
“Sorry, Oliver,” Tru says. “Grandig wanted to see me after class.”
Oliver waves him off and starts talking about the various results of the personality tests. I tune him out as Tru sits next to me. All I can think about is how close he is and how much I hate having to avoid him.
How much I want to let him make me smile and laugh like always. And how much I can’t afford to.
“Hey, I missed you at lunch,” Tru whispers in my ear.
I knew this was coming. “Yeah, I had to look up some stuff in the library for my modern lit paper.”
“My condolences,” he teases. “Oh, hey, I’m parked in the front row today. First-class all the way.”
“Actually,” I say, feeling awful about pushing him away but knowing that I have to do it, “Mom still wants to play chauffeur for a while.”
“Bummer,” Tru says with a pout. “How long do you think the paranoia will last?”
I force a shrug. “No clue. I can never tell with her moods.”
I busy myself with doodling on my tablet. Trying not to react to every movement he makes.
“Hey,” he says, leaning even closer—so close I can feel the heat of his breath brush against my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
He hesitates for a second. “Are
we okay?”
“Of course,” I say. And I hope the lie sounds more believable to him.
He leans back in his chair and actually pays attention to Oliver for once. Has he realized that I’m putting distance between us? Or is he just interested in the test results?
I don’t know and, really, I shouldn’t care.
Whenever Tru couldn’t figure something out, his hands itched. Which probably explained why he always broke out in hives in math class.
Tonight his palms they felt like they were on fire.
Rather than scratch himself raw, he went for a walk. Slipped quietly down the stairs, through the house, and out the front door.
It was the first night where he felt like the end of summer might actually be in sight. He knew that the heat and humidity were far from over, but he could walk a few steps without breaking into a sweat, and that was progress.
He turned left and started down the sidewalk.
Something had changed with Sloane, and he couldn’t figure out why.
As he leaped over cracks, did flips off the neighbors’ retaining wall, and jumped up to grab low-hanging branches, he mentally ran through the film from the last couple of days.
He’d thought they were making progress. They had shared secrets. He had told her things he’d never told anyone. She was the first person, besides his mother, who ever knew what went on between him and his dad.
Telling her had been…terrifying. But also liberating.
He hadn’t been lying when he said just telling her helped. It felt like a lead weight the size of an aircraft carrier had been lifted from his chest. He could breathe again.
When he’d convinced her to skip school yesterday for lunch at Abbey Road, he’d wanted more of that feeling. More breathing. More sharing. More everything.
But ever since then, she’d been different. Absent. She hadn’t been in their usual spot at lunch today. She’d been riding to and from NextGen with her mom. And he hadn’t seen her once between classes, despite waiting at her locker long past the tardy bell several times.
Something had definitely changed, and he didn’t think it was all her mom’s idea.
When he circled back around the block, he stopped in the shadows of the trees in front of her house. There was only one way to find out for sure.
He vaulted over her fence and made for the rain gutter in the corner of the house.
The ceilings of suburbia are so boring. Not a crack or a watermark in sight. And I should know. I’ve been lying on my bed, staring up at mine for the last hour and a half, trying to fall asleep. I finally give up, roll over, and grab my tablet off my nightstand. If I can’t sleep, I can at least get some Graphic Grrl sketches done. I’m still two cells from finishing this week’s strip and it’s already Friday night.
I’ve just finished the first one when I hear a scraping noise on the roof outside my window. A few seconds later, there is a familiar tap-tap-tap on the glass.
I’m out of bed like a shot and at the window before he can tap again.
I yank it open. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you avoiding me?”
Unlike last time, he actually seems sober. That’s an improvement.
“No,” I lie. “Is that why you’re on my roof?”
He shakes his head. “I think you are,” he says. “I think you’ve worked hard all day to avoid being with me, and I want to know why.”
“Tru, you’re imagining things,” I insist. “I’m not— What are you doing?”
He pushes my window farther open and lifts the blinds that hang halfway down the opening. When he starts to put one leg through, I push him back. Before he can ask questions, I shoo him away, then climb up on the box that acts as my ladder and out onto the roof.
Just to make sure Mom doesn’t overhear, I pull the window shut behind me.
“Sloane, what’s going on?” he asks as he twists around to sit on the roof. “Is this about your mom catching you off campus?”
I squat down next to him and let myself fall back onto my butt. I should have known that just ignoring him wouldn’t make him go away. In fact, it probably only made him want to talk to me more.
With Tru, I need to be direct. I owe him that much.
“We can’t hang out anymore,” I say bluntly.
To his credit, he just blinks and says, “Okay. Why not?”
I tilt my head back, stare up at the starry night sky.
“Yesterday, when my mom almost caught us out for lunch,” I explain, “I realized how close I came to blowing my chances of getting back to New York to finish my senior year at SODA.”
Tru nods, as if he suspected as much.
“You know she doesn’t…” I search for the right word choice. “Approve of you.”
He snorts. “She outright hates me.”
“No,” I argue. “She doesn’t even know you. She only knows what your mom has told her.”
“All good things, I’m sure.”
“I just…” There’s no nice way to say this, so I just have to blurt it out. “If Mom knew I’d been off campus with you, I would never be allowed out of my room.”
“With me?” he murmurs, all humor gone.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I can’t risk her deciding that my being friends with you is a deal breaker.”
I turn to look at him, but now he’s the one staring off into space.
“I can’t do anything to risk being stuck here,” I say. “Which means I can’t hang out with you.”
For the longest time, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even breathe for all I can tell.
But finally, after what feels like forever, he nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I get it.” He pushes to his feet and says again, “I get it.”
He starts for the edge of the roof. I can’t just let it end like this.
“I’m sorry, Tru.”
He glances back over his shoulder. “It was nice knowing you, Sloane Whitaker.”
Then he’s jumping off the corner of the roof, landing in our yard with a soft thud. A few seconds later, I see him climbing over the fence between our yards.
If this is the right thing to do, then why does it feel so wrong?
After the weekend I’ve had, I’m actually looking forward to school on Monday. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way in any of my previous dozen years of education. It’s a testament to the sad state of my life.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks, her voice gentle.
I give her a not-too-fake smile. “Yeah, actually.”
This time the silence on our drive is more comfortable, more…normal.
While she focuses on the road, I pull up my portfolio on my tablet and flip through the pages. I’m hyper-inspecting everything. The layouts. The labels. The art itself. Every nitpicky detail I can possibly study that might send up a red flag or give the scholarship committee a reason to put mine aside.
I am vaguely aware of cars zooming by. Traffic and concrete. Then trees. Then the brightly colored facade of NextGen.
Mom hits her brakes so hard that my tablet flies to the floor. Only my quick-reaction seat belt keeps me from slamming forehead-first into the dash.
“Mom, what the hell?”
She just stares straight ahead. Eyes wide, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
That should have been my first clue. She totally let my swear slip by unpunished.
“Mom, what?” I ask, starting to get a really bad feeling.
She doesn’t blink. Her voice is soft, weak, when she asks, “Sloane?”
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I turn to follow the direction of her stare.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
My heart thunders, pulse pounding in my ears, and I can’t breathe.
Instead of the regular glass and primary-colored metal panels, the entire front of NextGen has been transformed. Swathes of blood red plastic crisscross the building. From roof to foundati
on. Spelling out three words.
Art. Saves. Lives.
Oh my God.
Chapter Fourteen
“Sloane?” Mom repeats after several frozen seconds.
Her voice knocks my thoughts loose, and suddenly they are racing everywhere.
“Mom, no,” I say. “This wasn’t me.”
“It’s…” She shakes her head, can’t tear her gaze away from the school. “Exactly the same.”
“I know,” I whisper.
And it is. Every detail, from the shapes of the letters to the spacing between them to the faint translucency of the plastic. It’s as if someone took the exact plastic from The Incident and glued it up on the NextGen facade.
Mom closes her eyes, lowers her head. “Did you—”
“No!” I blurt. “God no, why would I? Mom, you have to believe me.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“All I want is to get back to New York,” I reason. “You know that. All I want is to keep to our deal and go home after this quarter. Why on earth would I do this”—I gesture at the school—“when it would only prolong my sentence?”
Mom turns, looks me in the eye. “Swear,” she says. “Swear to me on your art that you had nothing to do with this.”
“Mom, I swear.” I keep my gaze as steady as possible. “This wasn’t me.”
She studies me for a moment, considering, and then nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I echo.
“You may have done one stupid thing.” She pulls the car ahead into a visitor parking spot. “But I trust you not to lie to me.”
“Thank you,” I say.
Before I can get too relieved, she adds, “But know that if you break my trust this time, it might be impossible to get back.”
I’m not sure whether to be relieved or insulted, but at this point I will take what I can get. I had absolutely nothing to do with this recreation of The Incident. But I know that convincing anyone else—and most especially Principal Ben—will be practically impossible.
“Come on,” Mom says, grabbing her purse from the backseat. “Let’s go face this head on.”
Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru Page 14
