Ré gave her a look that sewed her lips shut. “You my parole officer or something?” he muttered. The first words Evie had heard him say since last night.
He grabbed a fork and started jabbing French fries, elbows on the tabletop. The muscles of his arm stood out with each jab, as if the fries needed fighting.
Alex quickly picked up his fork and followed suit. Sunny, as usual, was the only one without food in front of her. That X-ray skeleton on her tank top probably ate better meals than Sunny ever did, Evie thought bitterly. Then she stared down at her own plate, feeling defeated before she’d even begun.
17
R
Ré pushed his empty plate away. Under the table, his heel tapped the floor. Restless. Itching to get out of this booth and away from everyone. He turned his wrist on the table, checking his watch. He glanced around the dining room.
Where the fuck is Mark?
The room was jammed with kids, but no sign of the one he needed, or of Ivan, or any of their friends. Ré pulled his phone from his pocket, checking his messages for the millionth time. Nothing.
His foot began to tap again.
This wasn’t exactly how today was supposed to go, but he hadn’t had the balls to say no to Alex for longer than he liked to admit. Guilt is a powerful negotiator. And anyway, he was surprised that Alex had even asked him to come. They’d pretty much avoided each other since he’d told him about the night Shaun died.
Maybe Alex just needed the ride downtown—but even if that’s all the invitation really was, Ré owed him that much at least.
He wasn’t following the conversation, which seemed mostly to consist of Sunny’s voice, peppered with the occasional Alex. His eyes danced around the room, anxious. He chewed his bottom lip.
It was too weird, this new configuration. Ré was used to being on the edges of the group, not smack in the middle like this was some kind of messed-up double date. If it were just Sunny here, he could handle that. Even Sunny and Alex. He’d handled that for months. But there was something else now. There was Evie. And he didn’t even know what that was yet, except that it felt an awful lot like sitting two inches from a house on fire.
The springs in the seat below him squeaked in time with his bouncing leg.
Then a hand pressed down on his thigh, and the whole world fell off a cliff. For a split second he was scared the hand was Sunny’s, even though he could see hers on the table in front of him.
He looked down to his lap, then at Evie. Her eyes were red, like she’d been awake all night, or crying. Or both. She looked so bruised, he was suddenly ashamed that he’d tried so hard not to look at her before now.
“Please stop,” she said quietly.
He lowered his heel to the floor, flexing like it took all his strength to do it. A crush of words jumbled up in his throat. A thousand apologies for last night. A thousand more for today. He swallowed them all back. “Sorry,” he muttered.
She lifted her fingers, and it took everything, everything, to keep his own hand from darting under the table to make her stay. To thread their fingers together, to let her in.
And then Mark’s sister, Holly, walked through the front door, and Ré sprang up, tripping away from the flames.
“Hey!” he said.
Holly looked up in surprise. She was a small girl, with black, bobbed hair and dark eyeliner winged out at the corners of her eyes. He’d seen her around school and waiting tables at the Olympia, but she was two grades behind him, and they weren’t friends.
“Hey,” she said back. “Réal, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, hands slipping into his back pockets. She kept walking toward the back of the restaurant, and he sidestepped along beside her. “I’m looking for your brother, Mark?” he said. “I was supposed to meet him after school, but I got kinda sidetracked, and now he’s not answering my texts.”
She looked at him again, shrugging. “I haven’t seen him, but he usually comes by after six, if you feel like waiting.” She was tying a short black apron around her waist as she walked, obviously just starting her shift. “Or you could ask my mom,” she said, nodding at the other waitress.
“June’s your mom?” Ré asked, eyes wide.
Holly laughed. “Yeah, of course!” she said. “You didn’t know that?”
Réal looked at the older woman sliding plates from the pass-through window and loading up her arms like a pro. She did not look like a Midewikwe. Or at least, not what Ré had pictured a medicine woman to look like. She just looked like a middle-aged lady working in a diner. He wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad.
“Do you want me to pass on a message, if I see him?” Holly asked, drawing his attention back to her.
“Yeah,” he said. “Tell him to text me. I gotta head home for a bit, but if he could wait right here for me, I’ll be back. I really gotta see him tonight.”
Holly eyed him for a moment, then put her hand on his bare arm and gave it a squeeze. Nobody he didn’t already know real well ever touched him like that. For a small person, she was awfully bold.
“Okay, Réal,” she said, nodding once. “If I see him, I’ll tell him he’s got to wait.” Her tone was so serious, he almost laughed, but really he was glad.
“Thanks,” he said. He turned to go back to his table.
“Réal,” she said. “Be strong, whatever it is.”
He turned again, but she had already disappeared into the kitchen.
18
E
The walk to Nan’s took exactly ten minutes from Evie’s front yard, and the house looked just the same as it always had: two stories of chipped white paint behind a slanted, faded front porch. The snarled
