We don’t go to Starbucks. It’s packed with kids from school. So we’re walking, and Jesse has his cell phone out, having mapped another coffee shop. We’ve walked at least a mile, and he keeps apologizing. Well, mumbling that sounds apologetic, though I don’t catch actual words. He’s holding his phone aloft like a compass… or an excuse for not communicating.
“Just up here,” he says. “On the left.”
“Hopefully, it’s open,” I say, and I tell him about my own coffee-shop quest Saturday, making far too convoluted a story of it. That’s my way of coping with the awkward silence.
“There,” he says, with the relief of a sailor spotting land in a storm. “It’s open. Good.”
We go inside. Only a few tables are occupied, and I spot the perfect pair of comfy chairs in a corner. He sees it at the same moment and says, “Can you grab those while I get in line? Just tell me what you want.”
“I’ll buy my own.”
“My treat. Really. I told Mom I might be seeing you after school and she gave me —” He pulls a twenty from his pocket. Two more fall to the floor, and he scrambles to pick them up.
“Wow,” I say. “We can buy out the pastry counter with that.”
He gives a self-conscious laugh. “Yeah, really, huh? ’Cause I need sixty bucks to take you for a coffee.” He shakes his head. “They do that a lot. Shoving money at…” He trails off with another shake of his head. “Whatever.”
Shoving money at problems. As if that will cure what ails us. My dad’s the worst for it, depositing weekly money into my account, which I refuse to touch.
Sorry for screwing off when you needed me. Have some cash to make it better.
Even Mom makes sure my wallet is always full.
Do you need anything, Skye? Anything at all?
I want to tell Jesse that I understand. Maybe even explain about my parents. But that’s more of the awkward. Oversharing to fill the silence.
So I just say, “Can I get a caramel latte and a brownie?”
A wry smile. “Are you sure you don’t want ten?” He waves the cash.
“I’ll take the biggest latte they’ve got.”
His smile softens then, a real one for me as he nods and says, “Biggest latte. Biggest brownie. On me. Well, on my mom. Go grab those chairs before someone else does.”
Jesse hands me my latte and puts a plate with two brownies on the table, over on my side. I push it to the middle for us to share. He pushes it back again, and he’s watching me, waiting for me to smile, to make some sardonic comment. But I can’t. I’m struggling here, on this dangerous terrain.
Jesse is showing me glimpses of the guy I knew, reminders of what we had, and I’m too eager to see that. Too ready to jump at it. I’m terrified that if I do, I’ll show up in math class tomorrow and he’ll sit with his back to me, like this never happened.
I can’t handle that. I just can’t.
So I murmur a “Thanks,” and I know it’s not what he wants, but it’s all I’ve got.
I sip my drink, and he does the same, and I’m watching his hand around the cup, the curve of his fingers. I don’t recognize that hand. The soft fingers are gone. The chewed nails are gone. The Band-Aids are gone – I swear he always had one from some accident or other. It’s just a guy’s hand. Could be anybody’s.
“My mom says your gran had a stroke,” Jesse says. “How is she?”
“Okay.”
“We don’t hear…” He puts his cup down. “Stuff, you know. About you guys. Not much, anyway. I know your parents split. How’s your dad?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Alarm flashes across his face, and I know I’ve been too forthright. Too old-Skye.
“We don’t really communicate,” I say. “It’s just me, Mom and Gran. Which is fine.”
“And your mom…?” he asks carefully. “Did she… get better?”
I pick at my brownie. “It’s severe clinical depression. They can’t seem to find the right meds or maybe she’s not taking them or… I don’t know.”
I inhale sharply. “Mom’s doing her best. I understand that. We deal. We cope. Or we did until child services decided I wasn’t old enough to look after myself.” I roll my eyes. “Like you pass some magical age and then, poof, we can trust you not to die of starvation, playing video games 24/7. I did just fine when Gran had her first stroke, but no, that doesn’t count.”
I’m looking for agreement here. For a nod.
Instead, he’s staring at me, and then he says, “I didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“About your mom and your gran and your dad. Child services stepping in. I had no idea —”
“They didn’t step in, Jesse. They interfered. That’s why I’m here, with Mae, who thinks what I really need is to come back to Riverside, chin up. Tough through it. Which is working out so well.”
He just looks at me. And his expression…
I hate his expression. It’s horror, and it’s pity, and it’s everything I don’t want to see on anyone, but especially not Jesse.
“Are we actually going to talk about the fire?” I say. “That’s what you said.”
He straightens. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
“I already did. The fire and the stuff at Mae’s condo. Which is really just the fire. The condo stuff is silly.”
“Someone breaking into your home isn’t silly, Skye.”
“Breaking in to put mud on my boots and leave them in the hall? Spook me with Luka’s shirt in the closet? Take half my Hershey bar and smush it into the sofa? Who’d do that? It’s a waste of perfectly good chocolate.”
“Mud on your boots? Luka’s shirt in your closet?”
I shake my head. “Mae must have been storing Luka’s shirts in the closet, and one fell off the hanger and startled me. I found my boots in the hall, caked in mud, which means I obviously wore them and forgot, because no one is going to break in and muddy my boots. It’s crazy.”
“It is.”
I take a bite of the brownie. Swallow without remembering to chew, and then have to gag it down.
Achievement unlocked. Even Jesse agrees. You are officially losing your mind, Skye Gilchrist.
“I should speak to someone,” I say, picking at the brownie. “There’s a therapist I can call. She’s good. I’m obviously stressed and imagining things, and now I’m lumping that with the fire, which was a stupid prank.”
“If you tell me you didn’t leave those boots out or eat that candy bar, I believe you.”
“You just agreed it was crazy.”
He pulls back. “No, I meant it seems crazy. It makes no sense. But it has to, right? There’s a method to the madness. We just aren’t seeing it.”
He eases into his chair, settling into a look I know well. Jesse’s problem-solving mode.
“Are you sure Mae’s just storing the shirt?” he says. “It seems weird that she’d keep Luka’s stuff in your closet. Is there more there?”
“I didn’t look. Maybe she just kept that shirt. He wore it a lot – the Black Death tour one.”
His lips twitch in a smile. “I remember that. Even Jamil said it was cool. I was surprised he got the joke.” Jesse’s smile flickers, and then he tucks it away and says, “That was probably the most distinctive thing Luka wore. Are you sure it was even his?”
“What do you mean?”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, gaze distant as his brain works. “I bet it’d be easy to find one online. Whoever broke in could have bought and planted it. Left it half on the hanger, so it would eventually fall and you’d notice it.”
He leans back. “The boots. The shirt. The chocolate. All signs that someone else was there. But subtle. Signs no one else would recognize.”
He sits up quickly. “Exactly. Weird stuff you can’t prove. Mae might think you brought that shirt and forgot, like you forgot the boots and chocolate. Or that you’re coming up with wild tales to explain tracking mud through the apartment and getting chocolate on the couch. Like the Monty stories. Remember?”
Monty was the name I gave to a poltergeist who was very clearly responsible for every broken toy and missing juice box in our house. Hey, I was four. I had an imagination, and I wasn’t afraid to use it.
I pull my knees up. “Maybe I’m doing that again.”
“But you knew you were making it up with Monty, right?”
“Yes, but —”
“Stop making excuses, Skye. That’s not like you.”
He says it with this gesture, a flick of his fingers, dismissive.
That’s not like you.
He doesn’t mean it to hurt. It does. Because second-guessing myself is like me. It didn’t used to be, but it is now.
I’ll catch glimpses of my old self, when I’m backtalking Mae, or when I was standing up to those thugs Saturday. But they feel like characters in a story I’ve crafted. Roles I can play, the girl I want to be. But she’s the girl I was, too, which makes it worse.
Jesse says, That’s not like you, and I open my mouth to say “It is now.” Then I pause. Say those words, and it’s like admitting to my home-life problems. A cry for sympathy. For pity.
I pull my legs up. “I just don’t want to jump to crazy conclusions, okay?”
“And subconsciously inventing a poltergeist would be less crazy than thinking someone broke into your aunt’s condo? Someone is harassing you. Spooking you. Making sure you can’t prove the harassment. Is there anything that’s happened you can prove?”
“The fire.”
He reaches for his coffee. “Anything else?”
“What about the fire?” I ask him.
“Hmm?”
“I said I can prove the fire, and you grabbed your coffee.”
“I’m thirsty.”
I shimmy to the edge of my seat. “You’re thinking I need more evidence than just the fire. But I can prove the fire existed. So what you’re saying is…” I remember the lead in the box, the one that accused me. “Mr. Vaughn thinks I set it?”
“I never said —”
“Then tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you don’t have reason to believe he thinks I set the fire myself. Just like he thinks I sent that email.”
“What email?”
When I hesitate, he says, “I’m not the only one holding back here. The break-in. The fire. What else?”
I tell him about the petition and the email to Mr. Vaughn. I explain how the VP allegedly knew it came from me, and why it didn’t.
“That’s easy enough to prove,” Jesse says. “There’ll be a log showing you’ve never signed into your account before.”
“Unless whoever used it had done so before. That’s a start, though, especially if the person signed in from another source – laptop, phone, tablet. I also suggested Mr. Vaughan try to see if anyone noticed me at that terminal. He’s not interested in checking.”
“Because he isn’t punishing you, so he doesn’t need to justify his suspicions. Same as the fire. It’s like me with the fight —” He stops short and makes a face. “You know what I mean.”
“If it doesn’t result in disciplinary action, there’s nothing to argue. No chance to prove yourself.”
“Whoever’s doing this knows that. It’s all being set up carefully to look like you might be doing this stuff to yourself. Doing it to make people feel bad for you.”
“Or to make me seem crazy.”
He hesitates and nibbles his lip, as if pursuing a thought.
“Did you hear anything about a petition?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “If Lana had one, she’d have asked me to sign. Last week, she…” He makes a face. “Came around. Saying stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“That they shouldn’t have let you back in. That it’s not fair to me. That if I want to talk about it, she’s there. Anyway, if there was a petition, she’d have brought it to me. She’s been reaching out since I started at RivCol. Weirdly random stuff. She feels sorry for me, I guess.”
“Uh, no, I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason.”
His look is such utter incomprehension that I almost snort a laugh. But I keep my mouth shut. Yes, Lana Brighton has been a bitch to me, but I won’t be a bitch back by telling Jesse she’s obviously interested in him.
“Well, there is a petition,” I say. “I heard girls talking about it in the bathroom, and then…”
I trail off.
“And then what?”
I won’t tell him about the voices. I just won’t.
“Lana has been coming at me, too,” I say. “In a much less friendly way.”
“Which makes her a suspect.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Suspect? That sounds like —”
“Like someone is harassing you to the point of criminal activity? What else would you call it, Skye?”
My cell phone buzzes with a text. It’s Mae.
“Wow,” I say. “First time in a week she’s actually home before seven. Nice timing, Mae.” I shake my head. “She’s making dinner. Which is a little scary, considering what’s in her fridge. I need to go. Thanks for hearing me out on this. It was nice to have someone to talk to.”
“Here, take the brownies.”
He wraps them before I can protest. I put them in my pocket and start to leave. He grabs his backpack and follows me from the shop.
“You know I didn’t do this, right?” he says.
“I wouldn’t have been discussing it with you otherwise.”
“Then you trust me?”
It’s an odd question, and I reply with a sound he can take for agreement.
“Enough to give me your school log-in details?” he asks.
I look over at him.
“I want to know what’s going on with that,” he says.
“You’re going to figure out how to hack —”
“I already know,” he says. “Not for grades. Just… attendance and stuff. I don’t skip often, but when I do, I don’t want my parents getting a call. Like you said, we’re old enough to make our own choices, and sometimes I choose not to go to class. As I remember someone else doing a few times in middle school.”
He smiles, and I know he’s making light – just normal teen stuff, no big deal – but I have a feeling he’s doing more than skipping the occasional class.
“Give me your number,” I say, “and I’ll text you my account info.”