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“Did I hurt you?” he asks, eyes on my hands.
“No,” I say. “I’m . . .” I stop talking because I don’t know what I am.
“Good, because I wouldn’t do that—hurt someone, I mean.” His eyes have moved up to mine, and they’re so honest I have to wonder what mine look like to him.
“You or anybody else,” he adds.
“You can’t know that.” I say the first thing that comes to my mind, a reactionary cog setting another in motion. “It’s impossible to know what any one of us will do in a given situation. Especially intense ones.”
His friends are gathering at the end of the hall, looking back at us. The blond girl calls his name and he waves at them to go on, drawing a pout from her as the second-period bell rings. He walks with me to class like it’s a normal thing, and I let it feel that way too, for a moment.
“Alex Craft,” he says. “I think every situation with you is an intense one.”
I feel a smile on my face, muscles that haven’t twisted in that manner since I talked to him last shaking with the oddity of it. An answering smile echoes on Jack’s face, and I can see laugh lines forming around his lips, a life only starting but already well lived.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “I don’t want you to be upset about what that cop was saying, about the person who . . . well, you know. About there being a killer out there, and that they’ll do it again.”
I settle for smiling as we part instead of answering. Because the only words I have are:
The cop is right.
And it doesn’t upset me at all.
14. PEEKAY
“Best. Assembly. Ever,” Sara says as she gets in my passenger seat. Her basketball conditioning was canceled, so she’s bumming a ride—and probably dinner—off me. “People were either going to cry or start punching each other,” she says. “Loved it.”
“I felt bad for Alex,” I say.
“What’s her deal, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, flipping off the car full of junior boys who are riding my ass. “I’m not sure she so much has a deal as she just minds her own business.”
“Uh, yeah, small town. No such thing,” Sara says. “Take it from the lesbian contingent of one.”
“You’re not the only lesbian in town,” I tell her for the hundredth time.
“Do me a solid and let me know when you spot another one,” she says as I pull into my driveway. Sara cranes her head to look at the bell tower, as always. I’m so used to growing up next to the church I don’t even see it anymore, don’t think about the massive graveyard that I live next to, either. Giving people directions to my house has always been easy—drive out of town on the state route until you’re in the middle of nowhere and suddenly there’s a huge church. I live next to it. Easy to locate, sure. Easy to pretend not to be the preacher’s kid when you use the steeple as a navigational point? Not so much.
I grab the bag of bulletins from the backseat and we go inside. Mom and Dad are sitting at the dining room table, trying to look like they haven’t been waiting on me, which immediately sends out warning signals.
“What?” I ask before I even put the bulletins down.
“Sara,” Mom says, walking toward her for a hug. “Good to see you.”
Sara hugs her back but repeats my question when she steps away. “Yeah, sorry, Peekay’s parents, but definitely what?”
My dad doesn’t go in for a hug on either of us, but gives us both an awkward smile. “We heard you had an assembly today.”
Sara and I both make half-vomit noises. “Was there some kind of parental alert call system that kicked in?” I ask.
“Do I need to go?” Sara asks.
“No, it’s probably best if you hear this too,” my dad says as he ushers us into the living room, my mom following with glasses full of iced tea that have been poured for a while now because they’re sweating like crazy. Mom and Dad sit on the couch, Sara and I take the love seat, and we all look at each other.
“So what did you think about the assembly?” Mom finally asks.
“Uh . . .” I share a glance with Sara, who makes her eyes really big and takes a huge sip of iced tea. Lots of help there. “It was kind of scary, you know.”
