“And?”
“And that, just now, was me tel ing the one person who doesn’t care what I am exactly what I am,” he says. “It’s—you know. You don’t like to say
‘coma.’ I don’t like being divided into little pieces of color. And I … let’s just say I understand what it’s like to be angry. But you … you’re so—”
He swal ows.
“Strong,” he says very softly. “I think you’re strong.”
“Strong?” My heart starts to pound, and he nods.
And then he says, “And sad. You’re … I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re drowning in it.”
I push away from the table and stand up so fast my chair fal s over as I rise. I grab it before it hits the ground, then slam it into the table as I grab my bag.
And then I pretty much race out of the cafeteria. I force myself not to run, but I’m moving fast and my eyes are stinging and I’m angry, I tel myself, I’m leaving because I’m angry.
But I’m not. I’m scared.
I’m scared because he saw me. Because he sees me.
“Abby!”
I hear him behind me, but I ignore him, cutting around a cluster of people waiting by the elevators and heading for the entrance.
When I get outside I force myself to stop. I know he isn’t going to fol ow me. I am not the kind of girl that guys chase, much less guys like Eli.
I’l find him on Monday and I’l just take him straight in to see Tess. No more talking to him.
“Abby,” he says right behind me, and to my embarrassment, I jump, I’m so startled.
“Do I look like I want to talk to you?” I say, trying to throw as much anger as I can into my voice, but he came out here, he came after me, and I don’t sound very angry at al .
I sound frightened.
“No,” he says. “But I—about what I said before, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t upset me.”
He looks at me then, and I can tel he knows I’m lying. Hel , I know I’m lying and doing a crappy job of it too.
“Okay, you did upset me,” I say. “I don’t want or need you feeling sorry for me.”
“I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do. Drowning in sadness? I look like that to you? Real y?”
“Yes.”
That’s it. One word. He doesn’t say it with any sort of force or anger or anything like that. He just says it like it’s true and I find myself spinning away from him again.
“No, wait,” he says, touching my arm, and I stil . “I wish … I see what you’re doing here. Every day you come and you hope and you—you’re so fierce. So determined. And I wish … I wish I could be like that.”
I force myself to look at him. To say something that makes this about him again because I can’t believe he sees things that aren’t grubby and awful in me. “So you could go home?”
“So I—so I could do a lot of things,” he says, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Do you … do you want me to meet you tomorrow?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“I know.”
“I come at night,” I tel him, and I’m not ashamed of having no life, I’m not. Except I haven’t ever been somewhere with a guy on a weekend night.
(Or day, for that matter.) “My parents come during the day and I come—they let you stay til eight, so I usual y come around seven.”
“Okay.”
“Oh.” I can’t help it. I didn’t think he’d agree. I thought he’d have plans.
But then, Eli is rapidly turning out to be a lot more complicated than I thought he was.
“So I’l meet you in the waiting room by—by where Tess is?” he says, and I nod, then turn around and walk off to the bike rack.
“See you,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him. Not only is Eli more complicated than I thought, he’s also a lot more interesting.
He’s …
No, I tel myself.
