Miney wants to help but I don’t let her. I need to figure out how to do this on my own; I’m ready. It’s the least I can do for Kit. I’m pretty sure after today she will no longer want to kiss me, much less sit at our lunch table. I hold out hope for the slim possibility that this will be received as good news, that I will be hailed as a conquering hero for uncovering the truth. That’s what she wanted, right? For me to figure this all out?
I can’t trust my instincts. Trusting my instincts gets me stuck in a locker with someone else’s shit in my hair.
I arrive at McCormick’s fifteen minutes early and snag the same booth we ate in last time. I order two milk shakes, one for me and one for Kit, while I wait. If there is a multiverse, somewhere else, not here, instead of sitting and waiting for the horrible moment when I will tell Kit that the accident did not happen in the way she thinks it did—that it’s all lies—we would be kissing. Yes, we would be kissing, maybe even on a bed.
And then she is here. Her face is free of makeup and she’s wearing her K-charm necklace and that big man shirt she’s taken to donning twice weekly, and this way, without any attempt to hide the blue circles under her eyes, she seems even more essentially herself.
I decide I like her even better with her natural face. The red mummy dress last night was a little intimidating. Now she just looks like a girl. My favorite girl, maybe. But still just a girl.
“Wow,” I say, the words escaping before I have a chance to think them through.
“What?” she asks, and sits down across from me and reaches for her milk shake. Takes a sip from the outside of the glass and ends up with a white line above her lip that she wipes away with a napkin.
“You. I like you even with a milk mustache.”
“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” she says, and then, like magic, her brown cheeks get a pink glow. “Listen, your texts, I don’t know, freaked me out.”
“First, can I kiss you?” I ask, and she shrugs and I don’t know if that means yes or no. I decide to be brave and go for it. I switch to her side of the booth, and I put my hands on both sides of her face and I lean in slowly and touch my lips against hers. It’s different than last night. It’s soft and sweet—in both senses of the word—and too short, and when Kit pulls away she looks at me with wet eyes. She shakes her head.
“You’re the one who wanted to talk, remember?”
“Right,” I say. “Right. So the thing is…”
“What?” The way she’s sitting, it looks like Kit is bracing herself. Her hands are in front of her face, as if I’m going to sneak in an uppercut. Why would she think that? Or is she shielding herself from my lips? I have no read on the situation.
“I’ve done a lot of research, and I don’t think your dad was driving that car,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” Kit asks, and her voice is all growly and low.
“Well, I did the math and I studied the blood spatter and the photos and, well, everything, and given that his injuries were ultimately fatal, there’s no way he was driving that car. The newspaper never actually specified he was alone, and I’m pretty sure he was in the front passenger seat. So someone’s been lying to you and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you and please don’t hate me. All I wanted was to solve the equation for you.”
“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t smile or say thank you or slap me, all of which seemed like equally reasonable possibilities when I played this out in my head.
“Maybe he was having an affair, like your mom, and his, um, mistress was driving and that’s why no one told you?” I ask.
“What? My dad was not having an affair.” Her voice goes even quieter. Almost a whisper. Like she is water evaporating.
“There could be lots of explanations. But the how—that’s what you wanted to know, right? The how of it? It isn’t what we thought. And I know you don’t like open loops just like me and this is one hell of an open loop,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Actually, it’s not an open loop.” Still quiet. Too quiet.
“A woman was definitely driving. I can tell by the positioning of the seat that the driver couldn’t have been more than sixty-five inches tall, most likely sixty-four. Unless he was having an affair with a very short man.”
“My dad wasn’t having an affair!” she shouts, and just like that, everything changes. Kit is so loud the other people in the restaurant look over. “And my dad wasn’t gay, you dumbass!”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and hold up my hands much like she did earlier, when it looked like she thought I might hit her. I don’t understand what’s going on. We went from kissing to yelling in fewer than three minutes. I suspected she’d be mad, that I could be ruining things by telling the truth, because that seems to be my downfall—my genetic predilection toward honesty and disclosure. Still, I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought Kit was different from the other kids. That she didn’t hurl hurtful words—dumbass, idiot, retard—at me just because she could.
I was wrong, like usual.
But unlike usual, this feels devastating. Like recovering from this moment is impossible.
“I’m sorry,” I say for a third time. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, other than being too much myself. Kit drops her head onto the table and starts to sob. Her crying is gulpy and wet and unpleasant. I go to pet her hair—because even after all this, even after the dumbass, I still can’t help but want to touch her, but then I decide against it. She hates me, and maybe I hate her too.
My mind races. We will never eat sandwiches across a table from each other again. And when I think about that—the seventy-three school days left in which I will now be sitting by myself, how my world will now be Kit-less—my hands start to flap. I cover one with the other and feel relieved Kit’s face is down. I can’t let her see this version of me.
I recite pi silently so the balloon in my head doesn’t go loose again. I stare at the back of Kit’s neck. Study the curve of her hairline. Imagine drawing it in my mind. Imagine tracing it with my fingertip.
And I wait.