After three days, David is back. He’s sitting at our table, headphones on, eyes trained downward. When he was gone, I rejoined Annie and Violet at lunch. I listened to them brainstorm a new short list of guys who would be acceptable prom dates. I told Violet I liked her high-waisted jeans. I went to all my classes and to the newspaper meeting and then went home afterward and watched Netflix with a bowl of popcorn bigger than my head. I’ve eaten turkey and hummus on rye two times a day. I should win an Academy Award for Best Actress in a movie called Normal. No doubt I’d be the first half-Indian girl to win.
In the evenings, when my mom gets home from work, I’ve blasted my music in my room, the acoustic equivalent of a DO NOT ENTER sign.
I realize how much I’ve missed talking to David.
I approach him slowly. I feel awkward, like we’re strangers again. Like this is no longer our table. Could be I don’t know how to act around the only person in the whole wide world who would describe me as the prettiest girl in school. Not even my own mother would be so charitable. Pretty doesn’t just happen, Kit, my mother likes to say. You have to try.
“Hey,” I say, and sit down across from David. “How’re you holding up?”
He looks up, pops off his headphones. How did I forget about his great haircut and cool clothes? I may not be the prettiest girl in school, but there is no doubt he’s a really cute guy. Of course, he’s also the weirdest, which can make for some cognitive dissonance.
“Not great,” he says.
“I have something for you.” I slip the notebook out of my bag and slide it over. He makes no move to take it.
“Did you read it?” I notice that his eyes are on my clavicle, which is a part of my body I’ve never had occasion to think about until I met David. I resist the temptation to put my fingers on the freckles he drew. I considered ripping that page out—keeping it as a reminder that there was once someone who thought I was beautiful—but I realized it wasn’t mine to take.
“Some. Not all. I know I shouldn’t have, but I got curious and so I sort of flipped through. I’m sorry.” I have caught David’s honesty disease. I didn’t need to tell him the truth. I should have just said not really. That would have been close enough.
Turns out, though definitely strange and random, there was nothing too disturbing. He didn’t expose me. Instead, on a fresh sheet toward the back, there was a short list under the title Kit and D’s Accident Project:
Never talk about the AP at school.
Library?
Research car specs.
Calc.
Bad idea to help? Definition of friend zone?
This last one made me laugh out loud.
“I figured.” I wish he’d put the notebook away so we could pretend it never happened. I want us to go back to the way we used to be together. Comfortable. “I didn’t know if you’d sit with me today. After everything.”
“Well, you said only nice things about me.” I mean it to sound like a joke, but it falls flat. There are, of course, a lot of people in this room he didn’t say nice things about. I can’t imagine what that must be like—knowing everyone in school has read exactly what you think of them. It’s all very Harriet the Spy, except without the guaranteed children’s book happy ending. Of course I’ve had a million mean thoughts about my classmates, but they’ve mostly stayed safely locked inside my head. I excel at keeping things to myself. Another post-accident-acquired skill. “So where have you been?”
“Home.” David’s eyes meet mine. “Did I make you run away the other day? I don’t know what I said—”
“You? No, it wasn’t you. It was…that…place,” I say, and he nods like he understands, and maybe he does, but then again maybe he doesn’t. It’s hard to tell with him. Sometimes I think he is the only person who understands how to have an actual conversation with me these days, and then I think about his notebook, how different he is, and wonder if I’ve been imagining it all. If I’ve been so desperate for a real friend that I’ve created this other David in my mind who doesn’t exist.
“You’re fast, you know,” he says, and for the first time since I sit down, he smiles. He looks even better this way: happy. I don’t think I’m making him up. I really don’t. “I mean, I’ve never seen anyone run that fast.”
“Yeah, well.”
“You talk to your mom?” he asks, and I shake my head. “You will eventually. When you’re ready.”
His voice is certain, and I hang on to that. Because whenever I think of talking to my mom, the tears bubble up fast and the words get clogged in my throat. I have been ignoring her knocks on my bedroom door, her text messages, her calls. I look up at David, trying not to cry. I’ve been holding everything back. Boxing these feelings up, throwing a label on the outside, organized and sorted, like I can convince myself that they take up barely any space at all. Just a corner of a closet shelf.
You know what actresses actually are? Really good liars.
Before I have a chance to say anything, the entire football team approaches our table. A block of biceps and thick thighs, standing shoulder to shoulder. And then, like we are in a bad teen movie, Joe Mangino, a beefy guy with buck teeth, steps forward. He flips David’s lunch tray. An empty milk container goes flying onto the floor.
“Are you serious?” I ask, and stand up, though now that I’m on my feet I have no idea what I can do in the face of all these muscles. These guys are big and they are not my friends. I can’t just ask them to stop, like I did with Justin and Gabriel. Well, I can ask, but they’re not going to listen.
“Stay out of this, Kit. This little shit needs to die,” Sammy Metz says, who looks like—is—a linebacker. A giant oak of a boy. He’d look good next to Willow.
“Don’t you think that’s extreme?” David asks the question like he genuinely wants to know the answer. There isn’t an ounce of fear in his voice. So calm and collected it’s borderline creepy. Suddenly he seems less alien, more robot. “You want me to die? I’ve spent almost three days thinking about it, and I still can’t figure it out.”
“Not only do I want you to die,” Joe says, “I want it to hurt. Badly. I’m just deciding: Should I shove my boot down your stupid throat or should I feed you your own nuts?”
“You know, if you shove your boot in my face it’s unlikely to fit in my mouth. And I have no intention of eating my own testicles,” David says, and then turns his head away, as if he is no longer interested in the conversation. Takes a bite of apple, then puts it back on its plate. We watch him, and when he looks up again, he seems surprised we are all still here. “What do you want? Everyone’s watching. Obviously you can’t touch me right now.”
“We’re going to get you, Drucker. When you least expect it. We’re going to get you,” Joe says, again with the horrible clichés. Is that what he does on weekends? Watches bad movies and practices the resident jock’s lines in front of a mirror? Step one: Flip lunch tray. Step two: Make scary but generic threats. Step three: Take more steroids and grow even bigger breasts.
“Move it along, gentlemen,” Mrs. Rabin says, approaching the table and ushering the football guys away. She doesn’t ask David if he is okay, though. Instead she glares at him and shakes her head.
“What’s up with Mrs. Rabin?” I ask.
“What?”
“That look. What’d you do to piss her off?” David motions to his notebook.
“Uh-oh.” I wince. “Teachers too?”
“Yup.” David shrugs, up and down, like he’s being manipulated by an amateur puppeteer. His body language, I realize now, is as stilted as everything else about him. “Hope this doesn’t hurt my college recommendations.”
Later, in AP World History, Ms. Martel drones on about the impact of the Industrial Revolution: blah, blah manufacturing and steam engines and terrible factory conditions blah blah. I text David. We both have our laptops open so we can iMessage and look like we’re just taking notes.
He’s sitting three rows over and one ahead—I guess he’s been sitting there since September—and I study his profile. I like his lush eyelashes, and the slope of his cheeks and the way he cocks his head to the side and stares out the window.
Me: Are you scared?
David: Of what?
Me: The whole frickin’ football team!
David: No. Do you know what I am scared of, though? Sentient artificial intelligence. And global warming. In equal measure.
Me: They could kill you.
David: I know. If we create machines that can learn to feel the whole range of human emotions, we are all dead. And I think we’ve long passed the tipping point in global warming. I expect apocalyptic weather will soon become the norm.
Me: I meant the football team! Maybe you should tell someone. Like the principal.
David: Oh. On one hand they’ve made it clear they want me dead. On the other, I doubt they actually want to do the dirty work. Not to mention they’d have to dispose of my body. And all their prior threatening texts could be used as evidence against them by the police. They’re stupid, but not that stupid.
Me: ?
David: I think it highly unlikely that they’ll kill me.
Me: I didn’t mean it literally. I meant they could mess you up.
David: Again unlikely. Also, I know various forms of self-defense, including but not limited to kung fu and krav maga. They should be scared of me.
Me: Really?
David: Yup. But you know what I don’t understand?
Me: EVERYTHING.
David: That’s a joke, right?
Me: Yes, David, that was a joke.
David: Right. So what I don’t get is why everyone is mad at me, instead of realizing I’m the one who has been wronged here. Not a single person has come up to me and said, “I’m really sorry this happened to you.” Not one person.
Me: I’m really sorry this happened to you.
David: I’m being serious.
Me: So am I.
David: Thank you.
Me: You’re welcome. You really know krav maga?
David: Would I joke about something like that?