IT’S MLK WEEKEND, SO WE don’t get back to school until Tuesday. When I get there, Abby’s waiting in front of my locker. “Where have you been? I’ve been texting you all weekend. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“I was really worried about you. When your mom came out . . . your mom is actually kind of terrifying. I thought she was going to give me a Breathalyzer.”
Oh God. “Sorry,” I say. “They’re really intense about driving.” Abby steps aside, so I can twist in my locker combination.
“No, it was fine,” she says. “I just felt bad leaving you. And then when I didn’t hear back from you all weekend . . .”
I click the latch open. “They took my phone away. And my computer. And I’m grounded for two weeks.” I dig around for my French notebook. “So yeah.”
Abby’s face falls. “But what about the play?”
“No, that’s fine. They’re not messing with that.” I push my locker closed, and the latch clicks dully.
“Well, good,” she says. “But I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“What’s your fault?” Nick asks, falling into step with us on the way to English.
“Simon’s grounded,” she says.
“It’s not your fault at all,” I say. “I’m the one who got drunk and paraded it in front of my parents.”
“Not your best move,” says Nick. I look at him. Something’s different, and I can’t quite pin it down.
Then I realize: it’s the hands. They’re holding hands. My head snaps up to look at them, and they both smile self-consciously. Nick shrugs.
“Well well well,” I say. “I guess you guys didn’t miss me too much Friday night, after all.”
“Not really,” says Nick. Abby buries her face in his shoulder.
I pry the story out of Abby during small group conversation practice in French class.
“So how did it go down? Tell me everything. C’était un surprise,” I add as Madame Blanc makes her way up my row.
“C’était une surprise, Simon. Au féminin.” You have to love French teachers. They make such a big freaking deal about gender, but they always pronounce my name like Simone.
“Um, nous étions . . .” Abby smiles up at Madame Blanc, and then waits for her to move out of earshot. “Yeah, so we dropped you off, and I was kind of upset, because your mom seemed really mad, and I didn’t want her to think I would drink and drive.”
“She wouldn’t have let you drive home if she thought that.”
“Yeah, well,” Abby says, “I don’t know. Anyway, we left, but we ended up just parking in Nick’s driveway for a while, just in case you were able to talk your parents into letting you come back out.”
“Yeah, sorry. No dice.”
“Oh, I know,” she says. “I just felt weird leaving without you. We texted you, and then we waited for a little while.”
“Sorry,” I say again.
“No, it was fine,” Abby says, and then she breaks into a huge grin. “C’était magnifique.”
Lunch is actually amazing, because Morgan and Bram both had birthdays over the long weekend, and Leah’s very strict about everyone getting their own giant sheet cake. Which means two cakes, both chocolate.
Except I don’t know who brought the cakes today, because Leah never shows up for lunch at all. And now that I think about it, she wasn’t in English or French.
I reach into my back pocket automatically, but then I remember my phone is in custody. So, I lean over toward Anna, who’s wearing two party hats and eating a pile of straight-up icing. “Hey, where’s Leah?”
“Um,” says Anna, not meeting my eyes. “She’s here.”
“She’s at school?”
Anna shrugs.
I try not to worry about it, but I don’t see her all day, and then I don’t see her the next day either. Except Anna says she’s here. And her car’s in the parking lot, which makes it so much weirder. And her car’s still in the parking lot at seven, when we finally get out of rehearsal. I’m not sure what’s going on.
I just want to make contact. Maybe there are missed texts from her on my phone that I don’t even know about.
Or maybe not. I don’t know. It just sucks.
But on Thursday afternoon, in that narrow window between school and rehearsal, I finally see her stepping out of the bathroom near the atrium.
“Leah!” I run over to her and catch her in a hug. “Where have you been?”
She stiffens in my arms.
I step back. “Um, is everything okay?”
She looks at me with jagged eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she says. She tugs her shirt down and then folds her arms up under her chest.
“What?” I look at her. “Leah, what happened?”
“You tell me,” she says. “How was Friday? Did you, Nick, and Abby have fun?”
There’s this beat of silence.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I tell her. “I mean, I’m sorry.”
“You sound really sorry,” she says.
A couple of freshman girls scamper past us, shrieking and chasing each other and body slamming the door. We pause.
“Well, I am sorry,” I say, once the door shuts behind them. “I mean, if this is about Nick and Abby, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Right, this is all about Nick and Abby. I mean . . .” She laughs, shaking her head. “Whatever.”
“Well, what? Do you actually want to talk about it,” I ask, “or do you just want to be really sarcastic and not tell me what’s going on? Because if you’re just going to laugh at me—seriously—you’re going to have to wait in line.”
“Oh, poor Simon.”
“Okay, you know what? Forget it. I’m going to go to my fucking dress rehearsal now, and you can find me whenever you’re ready to not be an asshole.” I turn around and start walking, trying to ignore the lump rising in my throat.
“Awesome,” she says. “Have fun. Say hi to your BFF for me.”
“Leah.” I turn around. “Please. Just stop.”
She shakes her head slightly, and her lips are pulled in, and she’s blinking and blinking. “I mean, it’s cool. But next time you guys decide to all hang out without me,” she says, “text me some pictures or something. Just so I can pretend I still have friends.”
Then there’s this noise like an aborted sob, and she pushes past me, straight through the door. And all through rehearsal, all I can hear is that noise over and over again.