Mel’s phone buzzes. I assume it’s Jared texting back, but it’s not. “Steve’s shift doesn’t start until midnight,” Mel says, getting up. “I’m going to go see him. Get some smartness and squeezing.”
I get up and hug her. “I’d kill anybody who tried to hurt you,” I say.
She hugs me back. “Not if I was too busy killing them first.”
After she leaves, I press a number on my phone.
“Can you come over?” I say.
“Absolutely,” says Henna.
We sit on the edge of my bed in a surprisingly nice kind of silence.
“You’re not all right,” she finally says.
“No,” I say. “I said some things to Jared. He said some things to me.”
“Bad things?”
“End of friendship things.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Henna says. “I’m sure it isn’t–”
“Don’t pity me,” I nearly snap. “Jesus, why does everyone–?”
I stop because my eyes are filling up. Again. This is ridiculous.
“I think you’re wrong about that.” Henna puts a single finger on my chin and makes me turn my head to her. It’s kind of funny. We both smile, but mine doesn’t last. “I think you mistake care for pity,” she says. “We worry about you.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. We worry about Mel, too. And you worry about me and so does Mel. It’s care, Mike.
Who have we got to rely on except each other? For example, this isn’t pity.”
She kisses me. I’m so surprised I barely kiss her back.
“I don’t do pity kisses,” she says. “I don’t do pity anything. Pity is patronizing. Pity is an assumption of superiority.”
“That sounds like your dad.”
“It is my dad, but he’s right. He says kindness is better. Kindness is the most important thing of all.
Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle.”
“So you’re kissing me out of kindness?”
“No,” she says, frowning. “I’m kissing you because I’ve always wanted to, Mike. You never let me.”
“I never let you–?”
“We’re each other ’s questions, aren’t we? The question that never gets an answer.”
“What do you mean–?”
But she’s already kissing me again.
This time I’m definitely kissing her back.
No one’s home. My mom went to handle her lawyers and dropped Meredith off at a Saturday horseback-riding lesson (the first, it’s a new thing). Dad is at work or wherever. And Mel’s out with Steve. There’s no one in the house except for me and Henna.
Then she pulls my shirt off over my head, and there’s no one in the world except me and her.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH, in which Satchel and second indie kid Finn close nearly every fissure the Immortals have made; “I love you,” Finn says, before they close the final one in the basement of the school on the morning of graduation; Satchel realizes that Finn was her true love all along; they finally kiss, but then the Court of the Immortals emerges through the fissure; Satchel and Finn run out of the building, but the Prince of the Immortals kills second indie kid Finn; overcome with grief, Satchel is dragged back down under the school by the Prince to perform the final ceremony once and for all.
On graduation day, it’s about nine hundred degrees. So thank God we get to wear long black gowns and hats on the football field for a couple hours.
The last few days have been a blur, a tough, weird blur. I haven’t spoken to Jared, even though he’s called me and texted me a bunch of times, apologizing for saying what he said. I texted back saying I was sorry, too.