“Yes, ma’am. I understand why.”
I did understand why she’d said it to me. I just had no intention of following her order.
I slipped out the door, and only as I was jogging down the street did I realize I had skipped breakfast. But I just kept running.
When I got to Connor’s house, things only went from bad to worse.
His mom came to the door, then turned and walked away down the hall without saying a word to me. I had no idea what that meant. But she left the door standing wide open, so I came in and closed it behind me.
I walked up the stairs to Connor’s room. Slowly. Like I wasn’t sure what waited for me up there. Because, truthfully, I was less sure with every passing day.
I rapped on his closed bedroom door.
“What?” he said from inside. From the tone of his voice I gathered that, whatever it was, he didn’t want it.
“It’s me.”
No answer. I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Connor was sitting in the same chair he almost always sat in, but it wasn’t pulled over to the window. It was facing a blank corner of the room. He was literally making himself sit in the corner. It was very strange.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you made yourself go sit in the corner.”
“Well, there you go.”
He said nothing more, so I perched uncomfortably on the end of his bed. I stared at the back of his head as he sat perfectly still and said nothing at all. Just in that moment I saw Libby’s point about his dark cloud. You could almost see it. The rest of her observations could go take a hike as far as I was concerned.
The silence lasted for a minute or two, and seemed to get darker.
Then Connor spoke. His voice was quiet but hard edged.
“Why didn’t you tell me you broke up with her over me?”
For a moment I couldn’t find it inside myself to answer.
I’d told him about my disastrous picnic date the day before, when I’d come and sat with him just about all day, whether he wanted me to or not. But I’d left out what Libby had said about him. Of course I had. Who reports on a thing like that when they could just as easily keep it to themselves?
“Because I didn’t. It wasn’t about you.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard I’m holding you back. That you’d have lots of friends and girlfriends if you didn’t have me standing in your way.”
I lost it in that moment. It was a buildup of stress breaking free, I suppose. I raised my voice to him, which I don’t think I’d ever done before.
“Who are you talking to, Connor? Who are you hearing this from? You won’t even go out of the house. Where are you getting all this information?”
Then I stopped myself. Breathed. Tried to drop my shoulders. I was still staring at the back of his head. If it upset him to be yelled at, he was doing a good job of keeping it to himself.
“Somebody told my mom about it at the market yesterday. She didn’t say who. Might’ve been Libby’s mom. Or maybe everybody in town has heard all about it by now.”
So that explained why his mom had been acting strangely at the door.
I almost walked around and sat in front of him. Because it felt weird to explain a whole big thing to his back. But he hadn’t left much room in that corner, and I knew he probably didn’t want me to, so I didn’t.
“Look,” I said. “It went down like this. We were having a perfectly nice picnic. And then she said that stuff about you. And I told her we’d been best friends since we were three. And then she said something else. I don’t remember exactly what. And I told her I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted to talk about something else. At that point I wasn’t going to break up with her. I was just going to keep being friends with you, and she could keep her feelings about it to herself. But then later she went off on Mrs. Dinsmore, and wow, Connor. It was weird. It was ugly. She said the lady was a killer. That she killed two kids. And that’s when I realized she’s just not a very nice person. Libby, I mean. I just didn’t know it until we talked a little. She’s just kind of awful. But she was wrong, Connor. She was wrong.”
“About Mrs. Dinsmore? Or about me?”
“Both.”
“No,” he said. His voice sounded weirdly firm. “She was right about me. I’m just holding you back. I release you from this friendship, Lucas. Go have lots of friends and girlfriends.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I want you to.”
“No,” I said. “I’m staying right here.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Well.” I paused. And sighed. “You can call me any name you want. But I’m staying right here.”
I stayed there with him for most of the day, and I have to say it was just numbing. I don’t know any other word for it. We barely talked. The time crawled by. But I was afraid to leave him alone.
Then, sometime after lunch, I began to realize the hopelessness of my mission. I couldn’t watch him every minute. Nobody could. Even if I stayed through dinner and spent the night, he could do something stupid while I was sleeping. Hell, he could excuse
