Playing with Fire

The worst part was I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong. I’d popped in to drop West’s wallet off and warn him that Karlie knew we were at the food truck the night before. I’d lied to my best friend to keep both our butts out of trouble.

I figured his mother dropped in unannounced, since he hadn’t mentioned it, and also because he looked like he was more than happy to fling himself off a cliff. I tried to make it as painless as possible, answering all of Caroline St. Claire’s questions. I even tried not to make a big fuss out of the ball cap incident, even though I could feel my anxiety sucking the air out of me, sinking its lethal teeth to the soft side of my throat.

Was it my scar that embarrassed him?

Was it my general Grace-ness? The broken ring and the cap and the long sleeves? My strangeness stuck out in Sheridan, Texas like a stripper in a nunnery.

Or was West simply in one of his dangerous moods, and I was just one of his many casualties?

Whatever it was, dwelling on it wasn’t going to give me any answers. West St. Claire didn’t deserve my sympathy, and that was that.

Easton killed the engine when we reached the truck, turning his face to me. “Westie likes you.”

“He’s got a weird way of showing it,” I managed to mutter, staring straight ahead.

“He does,” Easton agreed easily. “It’s uncharted territory for him. He either hates people or is indifferent to them. You confuse the heck out of him.”

“He confuses the heck out of me,” I retorted.

“You know what we need to do?”

“Kill him with fire?” I muttered.

Braun snickered, tilting his head as he examined me in a different way. Not just a sob story, but a fully formed person.

“Funny, he always goes for the agreeable ones. You’re a little fighter, aren’t you, Shaw?”

I rolled my eyes. I was getting tired of hearing how West always went for girls who were the exact opposite of me. I didn’t need the reminder.

“You were saying?” I prompted. “About us needing to do something?”

“Oh, yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “Press him where it hurts most.”

“And where would that be?” I finally turned to face him, too.

The grin on his face scared me.

“His heart.”

I’d seen West once on campus after the dinner. We’d ignored each other dutifully. He strode past me, remaining committed to his Grace Shaw Doesn’t Exist policy, while I pretended I hadn’t seen him either. He was quiet and curt on our two shifts together. I thought about confronting him, then figured if he was in no hurry to apologize, there was no desperate need for me to work things out either.

So, I gave West the cold shoulder right back.

It wasn’t like I had time to sit and ponder over boy stuff, anyway. The day after the dinner with Caroline St. Claire, the local news channel announced that Sheridan’s one and only bus station was going to close down by the end of the month.

Which meant potential caregivers for Grams would have to get here by car.

Which meant I had to pay them gas money, too.

Which was money I certainly didn’t have.

That was what I’d been focusing on to take my mind off of West: looking for loopholes and ways to hire a caregiver for Grams who’d be able to commute here as cheaply as possible.

I was hunched in front of my laptop in my room when Marla rapped on my door, sticking her face in the gap between the wood and the frame.

“Honey pie? Whatcha doing?”

I clicked on the X button on the website I was surfing—Care4You—and sat back.

She scrunched her nose. “No luck, huh?”

I cracked my knuckles, shaking my head. There was no point in lying. I supposed Marla knew it wasn’t easy to find her replacement, but I wasn’t ready for another Find a Nursing Home lecture.

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

She nodded, entering my room and closing the door behind her. Uh-huh. That couldn’t be good. Just when Grams was beginning to eat regularly again, after figuring out she couldn’t sneak cracklins to her room for eternity.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” She perched awkwardly on the edge of my bed.

“Yeah?”

“The old bat has been refusing to go out on our walks. She is not getting any physical activity. I think she is depressed.”

“Depressed?” I echoed.

“Ya know, down. Whatever those psychiatrist people call it. I don’t think it’s a phase. This rough patch is not going to go away, honey pie. I’ve seen this happenin’ over and over, taking care of folks her age. She needs to be medicated. Properly.”

No shit, I wanted to scream until my throat parched. I can’t drag her butt to the doctor’s office.

But I just smiled, as I always did, nodding.

“Thank you, Marla. I’ll handle it.”

A few days later, Professor McGraw called me into her office again.

“I’ll make it swift.” She breezed into the snug room, her signature scent of incense and honey wafting behind her. She took a seat in front of me, entwining her fingers together.

“I decided not to give you an extension on the performance part of your exam this semester, Miss Shaw. Which means, you’ll have to find a way to get into A Streetcar Named Desire and actually go onstage, or you will be failing my class this semester. Mr. Finlay is well aware of the situation. I’ve spoken to him, and he said he is looking forward to sorting this out with you. I’m sorry, Grace, but consider this a favor from me to you. You must face your fears and move forward. Getting on that stage will liberate you. Whatever happened to you …” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “You cannot let it define you. Or stop you. Not anymore. Anxiety is a hungry beast. Feed it, and it will grow. Starve it, and it will die. This is my final decision. I’m sorry.”

Later that day, I had a shift with West. Working alongside him wasn’t ideal, but in order to dodge shifts with him, I’d have to tell Karlie all about what had happened at dinner, and I wasn’t prepared to recite the humiliating scene aloud.

West had been acting weird throughout the shift. Glaring at me every so often, spacing out, opening his mouth to say something then thinking better of it. I stuck to silence, broken only by monosyllabic, work-related requests. Whenever there was a lull between human traffic, I got on my phone and looked for caregivers for Grams. There was also a typed-out message waiting to be sent to Cruz Finlay.