"Hey," Liz snapped. "We thought he was a honeypot!"
"No." I shook my head. "We thought he was a boy." I gathered my things. "We thought he was worth it. And, you know what? He was."
"Yeah," Liz called after me. "Well, I never thought you were someone who'd choose a boy over her friends!"
"Hey, cool it," Macey said.
"Well, I never thought I had friends who'd make me choose!"
As I neared the door, I heard Liz start to speak, but Macey cut her off, saying, "Hey, genius girl, you don't have any idea what kinds of sacrifices she's willing to make for her friends."
"What are you—" Liz started, then her voice softened slightly as she asked, "Why? What do you know?"
When Macey spoke, she left no room for doubt. "Enough to say, back off."
The glass doors slid open and I darted through them just as Liz said, "Okay," but I couldn't stop moving, didn't dare break my pace until I reached the supply closet in the east corridor, where I slid aside a stack of long fluorescent light-bulbs, grabbed a flashlight from the top shelf, and found the loose stone that I had discovered one day during my seventh-grade year while looking for Onyx, Buckingham's cat.
The stone was cold beneath my hand when I pushed against it and felt the rush of air as the wall slid aside. A small sliver of light slipped beneath the door behind me, but it faded into nothing in the deep expanse of black.
An hour later I was standing in the shadows of Bellis Street, shivering in the dark.
What did I intend to accomplish by sneaking through a secret tunnel, climbing over a fence, and literally staking out Josh's house in the dark? I didn't have a clue. Instead, I just stood there like an idiot (and even an idiot who is very good at not being seen while standing around can feel pretty silly while doing it).
This is probably a pretty good time to point out that while it may appear that I was lurking—I wasn't. Lurking is what creepy guys with random facial hair and stains on their shirts do. Geniuses with three years of top secret spy training don't lurk—we surveil.
(Okay, I might have been lurking—a little.)
White eyelet curtains were pushed back from a kitchen window where Josh's mother was washing dishes. When Josh walked through the kitchen, his mother blew soapsuds at him, and he laughed. I thought about Bex, who was probably laughing right then, too. I thought about my mother, whose tears only came in secret. I thought about my life—the one I had and the one I wanted, so all I did was stand shivering in the cold, watching Josh laugh, as I started to cry.
But that's a girl's right—isn't it? To cry sometimes for no reason? Really, when you think about it, that ought to be in the Constitution. Maybe I'll break into the National Archives sometime and write that in. Bex would totally help me. Somehow, I don't think the Founding Fathers would mind.
Chapter Twenty-five
With finals and the stress that comes with them, I didn't really see Liz again until supper the following night when she brought her slice of pizza and came to sit beside me. "So, where did you go last night?" she asked. But before I could answer, she said, "To see Josh?"
I nodded.
"You didn't break up with him, did you?" She sounded genuinely concerned.
"No," I said, shocked.
"Good." Then she must have sensed my confusion because she said, "He's good to you, and you deserve that." She looked around the Grand Hall at the hundred other girls who were like us. "We all deserve that."
Yeah, I realized, I think we do.
I stole a glance at Bex who sat beside me, laughing. We all deserve laughter and love and the kinds of friends I had beside me, but as I watched her, I couldn't help but wonder if she'd still find life so funny if she knew all I knew. I wondered if our fathers' fates had been reversed, would our personalities have switched, too? Would I be the one standing in the Grand Hall allowing Anna Fetterman to demonstrate how she'd defended herself against a mob of twenty angry townspeople (because, by that time, the mob had grown considerably)? Would Bex, beautiful Bex, be a chameleon, then?
"Ms. Baxter!" I turned to see Professor Buckingham starting toward us. I felt my heart stop—literally. (It can do that—I know, I asked Liz.) She was walking toward us, bearing down like the force of nature she was.
Macey was across the table from me, and we glanced at each other—an unspoken dread lingering between us like the smell of olive oil and melting cheese, but beside me, Bex was unfazed, and I remembered the power of a secret.
As she drew near, I tried to read something in Buckingham's eyes, but they were as cold and blank as stone.
"Miss Baxter, I just had a phone call…" Buckingham started and then, ever so slightly, turned her gaze toward me. "…from your father." Air returned to my lungs. Blood started moving in my veins, and I'm pretty sure Buckingham gave something that resembled a wink in my direction. "He said to tell you hello."
My elbows fell to the table, and across from me, Macey mirrored my relief. It was over.
"Oh," Bex said, but she hadn't even stopped chewing. "That's nice."
She would never know how nice.
I glanced toward the head table, and Mom raised a glass in my direction. Beside me, Bex didn't breathe a sigh of relief. She didn't say a prayer. She didn't do any of the things I felt like doing, but that's okay, I guess. Her father was still on his high wire. It was just as well she'd never looked up.
Almost everyone had gone upstairs twenty minutes later when Bex and I started to leave.
"So, what do you want to do now?" Bex asked.