Contents 13 страница

“Tired, huh? ” I asked, feeling more than a little embarrassed. I’d been thinking about being closer to him and he’d probably only been thinking about being closer to his bed.

He nodded, and we walked in silence for a few minutes.

I don’t know if I was feeling superjilted by Marcus, or maybe it was the fact that I’d have to face Josh today, but the more I walked, the more agitated I became. I finally couldn’t hold back my thoughts any longer. “It’s just not fair, ” I said, “that your mom makes you work full time during your senior year. ”

“My mom’s not making me do anything, ” he said. “She’s just having a hard time. It’s only been a few weeks. ” Marcus, always the one to give people more credit than they deserved. Though considering I had been on the receiving end of that trait, I swallowed down my rebuttal.

When we opened the school doors, the jocks stood across the lobby as if they were there screening everyone coming in. It was a new group, and included only one of the guys who I’d seen bugging Marcus before. But Josh was with them. He was turned away, talking to another of the guys, but I would recognize his straight, confident posture anywhere.

Even the thought of Josh made my insides weak. Why had I let him do whatever he wanted, when he obviously didn’t give a crap about me? I’d done so well, putting him out of my mind when I didn’t have to see him, but now it was unavoidable. When other people from Josh’s group eyed me, I wondered how many of them knew.

Marcus noticeably stiffened beside me, too.

I hadn’t heard from Ethan after he’d invited me to that party. But he was with the group and broke away when he saw me.

I swallowed. Seeing Ethan with Josh, I couldn’t help but wonder. . . had he only invited me to a party because of something he’d heard about me? Something he’d heard from Josh?

He joined Marcus and me in step.

“Hi, Loann. How’s it going? ”

I forced a smile, wanting to give Ethan the benefit of the doubt. “I’m pretty good. All ready for senior year? ”

Ethan nodded and started jabbering on about his electives. Marcus didn’t even glance in Ethan’s direction.

When we reached our lockers, Ethan was just coming to the end of his story about rearranging his schedule.

“Well I’m glad it worked out, ” I said. “I guess I’ll see you around? ”

Ethan nodded, taking the hint and backing away. “Yeah, see you at lunch. ”

Marcus didn’t say a word to me as we arranged our new notebooks in our lockers. I didn’t know if he was jealous, or what, but it felt almost impossible to break the silence.

I decided to just address the issue head-on. “So it’s kinda weird, that Ethan guy following me around, huh? ”

“No, Loann. ” He sighed. “It’s not weird at all. ”

I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but it felt like a compliment. “Well, he’s totally not my type. ”

Marcus had such a complete nonreaction, I regretted trying to make him feel better. Why bother, if he was barely going to notice?

When the warning bell rang, I silently walked Marcus to his first class to make sure he didn’t nod off on the way. We didn’t meet up again until drama, which was right before lunch.

Everything looked exactly as it had last year: Shayleen at the front, with Deirdre a few seats behind now that they weren’t friends. Marcus in the back.

Deirdre gave me a wave when she spotted me, but she seemed involved conversing with another girl. I waved back and headed straight for the seat beside Marcus.

He was dozing on one arm. With nothing else to do, Ethan’s mention of lunch kept coming back to me. I’d avoided the cafeteria most of last year, and it sounded kind of nice to be wanted in there during my senior year.

The more I thought about it, were Ethan and Josh really even friends? Maybe Ethan really did like me. And even if I didn’t really like him, not in that way, I kind of wanted to know his motives.

“What do you think about eating in the cafeteria today? ” I whispered to Marcus.

“Hmm? ” His eyelashes fluttered, but he didn’t fully open his eyes. “I think I need to take a nap somewhere during lunch. ”

So it was settled. I was on my own.

* * *

The first face I saw when I walked into the cafeteria was Deirdre’s. Her table looked like the safest option, since I couldn’t imagine myself just plunking down with a group of senior guys. Then Ethan appeared in front of me, intercepting my path.

“Hey, Loann. We’re over here. ” He pointed to a table near the windows, a table I always remembered the popular seniors—my sister’s crowd—sitting at last year. I sized it up. Not only was Josh nowhere in sight, the table was not all guys. In fact, it was a mix of seniors, including some girls I recognized from last year’s art class. It really didn’t seem so bad.

Most of the people had bought their lunches already, and I followed Ethan toward them and sat down with my brown bag, feeling slightly embarrassed by it.

“Want to share my fries? ” Ethan asked, pushing the carton toward me.

I let out my breath. Just when I started to relax, though, I heard a familiar voice behind me. Ethan and I had sat facing the windows, with our backs to the rest of the cafeteria, so I didn’t notice Josh’s approach until I heard him.

“Hey, Ethan, ” Josh said, passing behind us and heading to the opposite end of the table. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Why don’t you slide down here? ” Josh didn’t acknowledge me at all.

I swallowed. I didn’t want anything to do with Josh anymore, but it hurt to feel so completely unimportant. A small part of me had held out hope that somehow I’d had it wrong—Josh hadn’t just used me and never called again. It had to have been something bigger than that—he’d had a family tragedy, or he’d had to leave the country, or something that I didn’t know the details of.

But clearly I couldn’t believe that now.

Ethan, to my surprise, didn’t say a word back to Josh. In fact, he didn’t respond at all, and I wondered what was going on here. There was obviously some kind of tension between them.

Before I finished that thought, someone sat down on my opposite side. I glanced over and saw Ron, the guy who hadn’t paid for his coffee at the Arts Club during the summer.

I reached for a French fry to be doing something with my hands, but I knocked Ethan’s hand in the process.

“So how’s it going, Loann? ” Ron asked. His face was close—too close—and I could smell his onion-y breath. His hand dropped under the table and onto my knee. I shut my eyes for a second, not wanting to believe that this was exactly what I thought it had been.

Josh had told all his friends what we had done. And now everyone wanted to help themselves to the easy girl who gives it all up on the first date.

When I opened my eyes, Josh’s jaw looked hardened, and he just stared at the three of us.

Ron’s hand slid up from my knee to my thigh. I jumped and then stood in one quick motion. The whole table looked over at my abrupt move.

“I, uh, remembered I have to see a teacher, ” I said, stepping over the bench and nearly toppling over in an attempt to get my other leg out quickly. Ethan murmured for me to wait up, and when I turned to go, there was Shayleen, right in my face.

“Oh. I was just coming to sit with you, ” she said, her voice all sweet, like it had been in the Arts Club that day over a month ago. There was a demand in her eyes, like she was daring me to leave. I was her “in” at this table.

But I couldn’t do it. Not for Shayleen, who’d been so incredibly mean to me last year; not for Ron, who I couldn’t stand the sight of; not even for Ethan, because I hated guys who seemed deceptively nice, and I had a strong feeling his intentions weren’t pure, either.

Without a word, I darted to the side of Shayleen and made a beeline for the cafeteria doors. As soon as I pushed through them, there on the other side stood Marcus.

“I was just coming to find you, ” he said, but I was willing to bet he had been at least five minutes from actually working up the nerve to open the doors.

Still, I was so happy to see him. And he was willing to miss out on sleep to make sure I was okay, which made me want to hug him and tell him how awesome he was. But I wasn’t about to get in the way of any more of his sleeping time. “Don’t worry, ” I said, leading the way down the hall. “It sucks in there just as much as it did last year. ” Even more, I added silently. “Come on. Let’s find you a place to get some rest. ”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

We ended up back in the school theater, but today, rather than wandering around backstage, we headed for the cushy auditorium seats, with only twenty minutes left of the lunch period.

“Mrs. Andersen caught me nodding off during English, ” he told me as we leaned back and put our feet up. Our only light was from the safety lights on the stage. “I’ve got to get some rest or they’re going to start calling my mom. ”

“Are you sure that’s such a bad thing? ”

He turned his head slightly away from me. He didn’t want to talk about it and I figured I should change the subject. I tried to think of a way to talk about what had happened in the cafeteria. I also wanted to tell Marcus about Josh, or at least give him some idea of what had happened, but when I started to say something, his eyes were closed and his mouth hung half-open.

He needed the sleep, so I quieted myself and leaned my head back. Closing my eyes, I attempted to have my own little nap, if nothing else to avoid thinking about all the things that had gone wrong already this year.

The bell woke us both with a start. I could barely make it to class before the second bell at the best of times, but being groggy, both of us stumbled between the seats toward the doors.

When I rushed into art class, I told Mr. Dewdney that I’d return the developing chemicals tomorrow, when I got a ride from my mom. He didn’t seem worried. And he even remembered my name!

Actually, he seemed so relaxed this year that I suspected he’d had a really great summer. Or he had a new lady in his life. He’d even dropped a few pounds.

For nearly five minutes after the bell, Mr. Dewdney just gazed from the front with a smile as people got reacquainted after the summer. Since I didn’t want to talk to Ethan again—or the girls who had been at our lunch table—I took a seat near the door and flipped through the portfolio I’d started working on. So far it was just a book, really, with a few of my favorite photos laid out haphazardly on each page. Now that I was flipping through, I was amazed at how many of the photos were of Claire. She was just so photogenic.

“All right, class, ” Mr. Dewdney finally said. Everyone quieted down quickly, as if showing their gratitude for the catch-up time. “As you know, senior year will have more of a focus on preparing portfolios. With this in mind, you can expect the year to be less structured. ”

Who was this man, and what had he done with my art teacher?

“We’re working on themes this year, people, and you may use any medium you like. ”

My hand shot up.

Without looking over at me, he said, “Yes, Loann. You may work with photography. ”

I grinned. Not only could I work on a portfolio to go with my college applications, I could use class hours and get teacher feedback on it.

I left class with an extra spring in my step. Marcus had three hours before his shift started, and I couldn’t wait to tell him all about my portfolio ideas. We were at the Arts Club before I realized I’d been doing all the talking and he hadn’t said a word. I quickly came to the grudging conclusion that hanging out was not what he needed most. I stopped and pointed him in the direction of his apartment.

“You need to get some sleep, ” I told him.

He shook his head. “I’ve got calc homework. I can’t believe they assigned homework on the first day. ” He sounded resigned. Like he expected to never sleep again.

I grabbed his backpack from his arm. He let it go without a fight. “Seriously, Marcus. Go home. I’ll figure something out for your homework. ”

He didn’t argue, and a moment later I found myself in the café alone, having no idea why I offered to do his homework. Math wasn’t exactly my strong suit. School wasn’t exactly my strong suit. I’d taken precalc last year, and was able to take an extra year of Spanish instead of math this year, but Marcus, he was good with numbers. I flipped open his book, hoping some of it might be review from last year.

It wasn’t. I didn’t understand it at all.

By the time Armando returned to relieve me, I rushed home with an idea. Claire kept almost everything she’d ever owned. I wondered if she might have kept her school books, too.

As soon as I walked in the door, Mom caught me midstep between the foyer and the stairs. It was like she knew exactly what I had planned. And somehow I didn’t think she’d understand why doing Marcus’s homework for him was okay.

“What? ” I asked, defensively.

“Claire comes into O’Hare Saturday, ” she said, surprising me. “Want to ride in with me to pick her up? ”

“Of course. Yeah, ” I said, but part of me had trouble believing it. At first the weeks without her had seemed so long, and it felt like her absence might go on forever. But now, I don’t know, it seemed like too short a time for her to be completely better. The clinic must know best, though, right?

As I headed for Claire’s room, I felt guilty about how much time I’d been spending in there. After that first time, it just got more and more comfortable. But would she even want me in there once she got back?

Sure enough, Claire still had her calculus binder in her closet, with all her other schoolbooks. She’d had the same teacher as Marcus, and apparently she’d used the same textbook.

I swiped the whole binder and tiptoed back to my room with it. When I was done with Marcus’s homework I shoved Claire’s notes under my bed, just in case I needed to help him out again.

* * *

The next morning, Mom drove me to school with the darkroom solutions. Two senior guys I didn’t even know followed me down the hall, and I felt defenseless with my arms full.

“Look, what do you guys want? ” I finally spun and confronted the two guys who were right on my heels. “Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m not looking for a date. ”

The guys looked at each other, then back at me, and my face heated to three hundred degrees. I totally had it wrong. They burst out laughing and walked right on by me.

There weren’t too many people within earshot, but unfortunately Shayleen was one of them. She whisked past me going the opposite direction.

“You really screwed things up, you know. ” She said it without even looking at me. “You were at their table. You could have been someone. ”

I watched her walk down the hall, wondering if I was supposed to feel some regret from her words. Instead I just felt sad for her.

I ended up bringing Claire’s binder to school, since Marcus couldn’t keep up with anything for the rest of the week. He napped while I worked on homework—his and mine—through the lunch hours. We barely spoke during the day.

“You can’t keep this up, Marcus. Seriously, ” I said on Friday.

“It’s the weekend, ” he said, like that made it all better. “And I have Sunday off. ”

It didn’t excite me at all that he had a day off like I thought it would. He would have to spend the whole day sleeping. He had no choice.

“Well I can’t keep doing your homework for you. I really think you’d get better marks, at least in English, by yourself, even if you are tired. ” I said it as a joke, but he didn’t take it that way.

“I never asked you to do my homework, Loann. ” He sounded grumpy, and I took immediate offense.

“I can’t believe you! Fine, do it yourself, then. ” I knew he had to go straight to work, so I spun toward the Arts Club. When I got through the doors, I glanced out the window and he was still standing in the place where I’d left him, his backpack at his feet. I could tell he was sorry, but he didn’t even seem to have the energy to come in and say it.

As much as I wanted to run back out and forgive him, I felt terribly conflicted. He couldn’t go on like this, and if his mom wasn’t going to think about what was best for him, someone had to.

Something needed to change with him. And soon.

* * *

Saturday morning on the three-hour drive to Chicago, Mom drove and I stared out the window, first at the miles of lonely, grassy farmland, and later at the complicated highway over-passes and crammed-in buildings of the city. I had to admit, something about the big city attracted me. Growing up, I had always assumed I would go to a small Wisconsin college, but my mind started to veer as we made our way from one highway interchange to the next. Chicago looked, well, exciting. I thought about Marcus. I’d miss him if I went off to college, but what difference did it make? I missed him now.

We waited in the arrivals terminal for half an hour before we saw Claire. Or should I say, before we recognized Claire. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there by the time we noticed her and her extra twenty-five pounds. I didn’t remember ever seeing her face so filled out. Mom had warned me repeatedly that the counselors instructed us not to make her feel self-conscious. I didn’t know where to look—not at her face, not at her body. Discreet wasn’t exactly my middle name, so I zoomed in on her bag.

“Wow, Claire, did you get a new suitcase? This is really nice! ”

“Loey! ” She threw her arms around me and gave me a big bear hug. It felt good to hug her now, not so bony. Just comfortable. Just Claire.

Before we could ask her any questions, she picked up her bags and started chattering, leading the way to the parking garage. “The campus. . . ” she described in no fewer than five hundred words, then a full outline of the beaches, the ocean, and her new friends. I had to wonder why she bothered coming home.

Even though I felt a little hurt, I couldn’t help smiling. It was great to have her home and, more important, back to her cheery, confident self.

“It was kind of like one big slumber party, ” she went on. “The girls and I, we’d tell our secrets until late at night. And the food, it really wasn’t that bad. Lots of fresh veggies. They keep a hired chef and everything. ”

Mom and I had yet to add a word to anything she said. Claire kept interjecting with the phrase “I’m okay now” every couple of sentences, and if it wasn’t for that, I might have actually believed that she was.

She brought back booklets galore with lists of foods and their caloric equivalents, macronutrient pyramids, and the healthy diet plan that she was supposed to adhere to. Mom went nuts in the kitchen. We ate so much chicken, I thought I might hatch something.

“Your sister has some permanent liver damage, ” Mom told me one morning in the kitchen before Claire was up. “She’ll have to be on a special diet for the rest of her life. We’ll have to be careful with what kinds of foods we give her. ”

I hadn’t realized the extent of how much her life would be different. How much our lives would be different. I guess I thought she’d just come home and eat normally again.

Something else irked me about Mom’s statement, though. Not because I didn’t care about my sister, but because of all she’d kept hidden from us before. What foods we “gave her” didn’t seem to have much bearing on what she had eaten before. One thing had changed since she left: I didn’t trust my sister anymore.

Claire went to regular doctor’s appointments because of her liver damage, and everyone was glad for that. I should have had confidence, like my parents, that with a doctor keeping up on her, Claire wouldn’t starve herself into oblivion again.

But I just didn’t completely believe it.

One afternoon I sat in the kitchen and watched her slice carrots into slats the width of paper. As she sheared, she told me more of her stories about her new friends, whom she kept up with through G-chat.

“Some of the girls have their own websites. And the chat rooms are really fun. Kind of like we never left. ”

As glad as I was to see Claire happy, her enthusiasm seemed a bit much. “So why did you? ” I murmured under my breath.

“Did you know, since I’m over eighteen, I’m legally an adult. Mom and Dad can’t tell me what to do, pry into my private stuff. You know, like medical records and stuff. ”

Why was she telling me this? Claire had been away for her eighteenth birthday. We’d sent her gifts and called, and she’d reassured us that they celebrated with her in California. She’d even said it had been the best birthday ever, which felt a bit off at the time. The same way her last sentence felt off.

“Claire, don’t you want to get better? ”

She cocked her head and stared at me, her gray eyes glazing over. “Of course I do, Loey. ”

Her whole attitude, her weirdness, made me angry. And driven. I cleaned every inch of the café in an effort to be the best employee in the history of the world. I stayed up late doing homework, right at the dining room table so Claire wouldn’t miss it. I left my college brochures on the coffee table, right under the TV remote.

I wanted to remind her of all we’d talked about on the phone while she was away. Of all she’d looked forward to coming home to and becoming.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

On Monday at lunchtime, there was an edge to Marcus’s voice. “You don’t have to sit in the auditorium and watch me sleep. ” His eyes were on Ethan, just down the hall.

I’d steered clear of Ethan and Ron since the cafeteria episode, plus avoided any of the gazes of other guys I thought could be friends with Josh, but Marcus was wide-awake enough today to realize something was up.

“Look. . . ” I searched for the words that would make sense without having to spell it all out, here in the middle of the hallway. “It’s just really not like that. ”

“What is it like? ” he asked, flipping open his math binder and thumbing through all the homework I’d done for him. “This was really cool of you, Loey. But seriously, I can’t have you doing stuff like this for me. First of all, I’m not that smart, and the teacher is bound to catch on. But also? You just shouldn’t have to cheat for me. You’re not a cheater. ”

Then Josh appeared, leaning against a locker to talk to Ethan. Not a cheater? No. I just sleep with my sister’s boyfriend when they were barely broken up. Claire seemed to have forgiven me, but I still just couldn’t forgive myself.

“So do you have a plan? ” I asked Marcus, as a distraction. I hoped he was finally ready to talk to his mom, tell her he couldn’t keep up with two jobs and school.

“I’m working on it, ” he said. “I’ve found this online-schooling program—”

“Um, what? ”

He kept flipping calc pages like he hadn’t heard me.

“You’re not seriously thinking of dropping out of school. ”

By the look on his face, he was.

I shook my head and shut my locker. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself, ” I said, and headed off to class.

I made a point of avoiding Marcus for the rest of the day. I had to show him I was serious—this was serious—before he did something stupid.

* * *

When Marcus didn’t show up at school the next day, I was livid. I called his house and e-mailed him, but got no response from either.

I spent the whole day stewing about it. At the Arts Club later that afternoon, I demanded an answer from Armando. “Did Marcus quit school? ”

Armando’s eyes widened. “No. Marcus good boy. He no quit school. ”

“Well, do you know if he’s sick? Because he wasn’t there today. ”

Armando didn’t have any answers for me. He looked almost as tired as his nephew, since he’d been filling all the daytime shifts since school started up.

* * *

At home, Claire followed me up the stairs and into my bedroom, not seeming to take the hint about my grumpy mood or my desire to be alone. I couldn’t exactly ask her to leave, when I knew she was still trying to adjust to being back.

“Body image” was still a major player in her vocabulary, as were “self-control, ” “support, ” and “encouragement. ” I tried to be positive, but then Claire seemed positive enough for the whole family. She spoke as though every experience had been full of perfect beauty and wonder. Today I just wasn’t in the mood for it.

I stared down at my art portfolio as she chattered on. The project was frustrating me to no end. Some of my pictures were good. Maybe even most of them. But they didn’t have a theme, like Mr. Dewdney had wanted.

“You should have seen the campus, Loey. You would’ve loved it! Sometimes we took long walks under the palm trees. Or we packed a picnic lunch and went out as a group. And of course the weather was nothing like this dreary mess. ” She paraded around my room waving her arms as though if we both tried really hard, we could see the palm trees growing in our front yard.

I was sick of her bragging. It was like she was trying to cover something up all the time.

“Now that you’re home, I guess you’ll be looking for a job, huh? ” In the past week, I had decided that too much free time had been a big part of Claire’s problem. I, for one, didn’t eat nearly as much junk now that I kept myself so busy between work, school, and college prep, and I was convinced that busyness would help any kind of food issue.

She studied her nails. “Actually, Dad got me a job over at Marvin’s. ”

“Marvin’s Gas? ” I asked, incredulous. “What about, like, the mall or something? ”

She looked away. “Uh, no. I didn’t try there. ” She went to her room and came back moments later with an armful of brown polyester. “This is my uniform? ” She spread it out on my bed. Her voice rose at the end, like it was a question. “I’ve never worn a uniform before. ”

I didn’t know what to say, what she wanted me to say. Was I supposed to rescue her from this? But that would be pretty difficult if she wasn’t at least trying to find something better herself.

“Don’t you want more than this? ” I asked.

That dazed look came over her again. “No. This’ll be fine. ” Then her face brightened. “I met the manager already. His name’s Ray. He’s kinda quiet, but really cute. ”

At first, I was surprised to hear her opening up to me about boys, but then I remembered: She had no one else.

Our role reversal took me by surprise. Where was Jasmine? Or her other friends? I was used to being the one left alone to figure things out on my own. I didn’t know how to be the advice-giver. Besides, I really needed to get to my homework. I opened a textbook to give her the hint.

“Do you know what was funny about the campus in San Diego? ” she asked.

I gave my head a quick shake as I buried it in my English binder. I knew what was coming. . . the wonderful ambiance, the support, and the love. I flipped pages of my textbook loudly, nearly tearing one.

“Most of the girls didn’t want to get better. ”

I held my page midflip. It was the first negative thing I’d heard out of Claire’s mouth since she’d been home.

She went on. “Maybe in short spurts they did. But then it always ended the same. ”

When she said, “always ended the same, ” part of me knew she was talking about herself, too. I stayed as still as the chair beneath me, thinking maybe if I didn’t move a muscle, she would continue.

“Sometimes, ” she added, “the girls would even try to outdo each other. ”

After several seconds of silence, I had to ask. “Outdo each other how? ”

Claire laughed. “Oh, nothing, Loey. It wasn’t so bad. ” She shook her head like she was just being silly.

I stared down at my homework, not reading a single word on the page. Pressing her to talk about her experience at the clinic may hinder her from moving on, the counselor from San Diego had told Mom.