Because maybe he wants to.
Oh, I hate my brain, but it won’t let go of that thought. That hope.
I look at Tess. “Can you see me there?” I ask her. “I’d pul my bike into the parking lot and people would faint in horror.”
“Did Tess ever go?” Eli says.
“Sure,” I tel him, careful not to look at him, to keep watching Tess. “She dated this one guy for a couple of weeks and he took her to some dinner they have. Remember that, Tess? Mom painted your fingernails for you, and Dad took about a hundred pictures. I can’t even remember the guy’s name. What was it?”
Nothing, and as I watch her, the silence stretches out, becomes uncomfortable. I glance at Eli and see him looking at me again. This time he looks upset. Almost angry.
Good. I’ve final y done it. Made him angry, and I bet he’s going to leave. I try to ignore the way my insides feel al hol owed out at the thought of not seeing him again, or worse, seeing him here and having him not talk to me, or worse stil , say hel o and move on like I’m nothing to him.
“Eli, what’s wrong with you?” I force myself to say. I try to sound like I’m pissed off, try to say it with chal enge in my voice, but it comes out quietly.
Sadly.
“You’re as bad as everyone who lives in Milford,” he says, and it’s so not what I’m expecting him to say—it’s so not true—that I’m too startled to react at al .
“Yeah,” he says when I don’t say anything. “You are. You—look, I don’t like Milford either, but you act like anyone who lives here is … I don’t know.
Evil or something. Like the fact that I go to Saint Andrew’s means you can’t ever possibly …”
He clears his throat. “Just because I—I can’t help that my parents have money, or that Clement does, any more than you can help that Tess is here.”
“You can’t compare those things! You—you’ve never had anything bad happen to you or—” I break off as I realize what I’ve said. How wrong I am.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m not a snob. Not like you think. I just … I don’t belong at Saint Andrew’s.”
“Why? It’s just a place, like here or—”
“Like here?”
“Okay,” he says, and gives me such a shy, tentative grin that my heart gives a sharp, painful y joyous kick- thump in my chest. “Not exactly like here. Here the gift shop doesn’t charge fifty bucks for a coffee mug with a motto on it.”
“I bet gum is cheaper, though.”
“Not when I was working,” he says, and now I smile at him. I can’t help it. He’s so … he should be il egal.
He real y should be. He’s got me thinking things and wanting things, and looking at him looking at me like he’s happy to be doing so, I can’t help myself.
I say, “Al right, if I do meet you for lunch tomorrow, what time should I meet you? And where?”
And I’m happy. That’s the worst part. I’m joyously, stupidly, overwhelmingly happy. I’m not thinking about Tess. I’m not thinking about what I learned when I fel for Jack.
I’m not thinking at al . I’m happy, and I don’t care.
to, wel , to do something other than visit Tess, I get caught. Or at least my guidance counselor, with his shiny, worn pants and constant cup of coffee in hand, sees me leaving and says, “Abby, do you have permission to leave early?”
“Of course,” I say, because even if I wasn’t planning on leaving, I would now because I don’t want to hear about how I can come see him if I want to “talk,” or worse, hear how Tess is “missed.” As if I don’t know that already.
As if I could ever forget.
“How’s Tess?” he cal s out as I’m getting on my bike. “Everyone misses her, you know.”
See?
“I know,” I say, and head to the ferry.
I don’t get nervous—okay, I don’t get real y nervous—until I’m off the ferry and in Milford and have biked by the hospital. Saint Andrew’s is close by, just a few orderly, overly manicured streets away, but I haven’t been anywhere in Milford in ages. Not since—wel , not since I came over here to visit Tess back when she was working at Organic Gourmet.
Back when I wanted—hoped—to see Jack. Even if he was watching Tess.
I turn onto the road that leads to Saint Andrew’s. It isn’t a long one, as the school starts almost right away, its old and clearly expensively kept brick buildings dotted al over the impossibly green lawn. I turn onto a narrow road, fol owing a neatly lettered sign that says PARKING.
There’s a bike rack at the far end of the parking lot, forlorn and rusty, and I leave my bike there, wondering if it’s stupid to lock it up. I mean, in Ferrisvil e, or maybe even at the hospital, someone might want to take it, but here? Here my bike looks even worse than the bike rack.
“Hey,” I hear, and look over, see Eli.
“Hey,” I say. He’d told me he’d meet me in the parking lot yesterday, but my heart’s kick-thudding inside my chest anyway, like I’m surprised.
