“I can’t take it.” I try to make it sound like he’s the unreasonable one for giving it to me.
“Why not?”
“You should sell it.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I won’t take it. Give it to someone else.”
“You need someplace to sit. I’m tired of you moving everything around and getting in my way whenever I’m working. Now you have a place to sit. So sit.” He motions me down into the chair with a tilt of his head and I sit and it feels more perfect than it did a few moments ago. He leans over me and places his hands on top of mine on the armrests and looks straight into my eyes, which flays me a little bit.
“It’s a chair. Stop overanalyzing it. I’m not selling it and I’m not giving it to someone else. I made it for you. It’s yours.” He pulls away and stands up straight. When his hands are gone from mine, I realize that it’s the first time he’s ever really touched me, and I wish he’d put them back. “Besides, it already has your name on it.”
“Where?”
“Look underneath. I was going to put it on the back where you could actually see it but it didn’t work.”
I slide down out of the chair and get as low as I can to the ground so I can twist my head around and see what he’s talking about. And I do and it’s unmistakable. There, on the underside of the seat, is an engraving of the sun.
I know at that moment what he’s given me and it’s not a chair. It’s an invitation, a welcome, the knowledge that I am accepted here. He hasn’t given me a place to sit. He’s given me a place to belong.
CHAPTER 22
Nastya
It amazes me how people are so afraid of what can happen in the dark, but they don’t give a second thought about their safety during the day; as if the sun offers some sort of ultimate protection from all the evil in the world. It doesn’t. All it does is whisper to you, lulling you with its warmth before it shoves you face down into the dirt. Daylight won’t protect you from anything. Bad things happen all the time; they don’t wait until after dinner.
***
I’ve never been to Josh’s house during the day. It looks different in the afternoon. I wouldn’t be here now if my car battery hadn’t been unjumpably dead when I left school today. I live close enough to the campus to walk, but I don’t walk anywhere in the afternoon. Mornings I can deal with, but there’s a period of hours in the afternoon when I hate being outside. Even nighttime doesn’t bother me so much. The dark doesn’t breed fear in me the way the daytime does. The afternoon sun has a way of following me, burning memories onto my back. Josh always offers me rides home from his house. He thinks it should make me nervous, running alone at night, and it does. I’m not stupid enough to think I’m ever safe outside, anywhere, at any time of day. It’s just that I’m more nervous during the daytime.
So now I’m here, on Josh Bennett’s couch at 3:15 in the afternoon, watching General Hospital. Josh spent the last commercial break patiently filling me in on as much of the past decade’s worth of storylines as he could in three and a half minutes while I ate as many Twizzlers as I could. When the commercials were over, he stopped abruptly and told me he’d tell me the rest during the next break. I don’t think I’ve spent much time actually watching the television. Mostly I’ve been looking at Josh and trying to figure out who the hell he is. I’ve developed a theory that, perhaps, Josh is really twins and there are two of him, because I’m convinced, from day to day, that he’s not the same person. It’s like that Christian Bale movie where the twin brothers share the same life and you never know which one you’re with. That’s how I feel with him.
I crumple up the empty cellophane wrapper and walk into the kitchen. “Where’s your trash?” With as much time as I spend at this house, I never actually come inside. We pretty much live in the garage.
“Under the sink,” he says, not looking away from the TV. “Do you ever eat anything other than sugar?”
I mentally tally what I’ve eaten today: two protein bars, two bags of peanut M&Ms (but they were the small bags so it’s really like eating only one), plus the recently consumed Twizzlers. “Sometimes,” I answer. Really, I wouldn’t even bother with the protein bars if I didn’t need them after working out. When I lived with my parents, we actually sat down and ate meals, real ones, like the way we eat at Drew’s on Sundays. Margot doesn’t cook, plus we always have to eat early so she can get to work and I’m usually not in the mood. Maybe when I’m eighty I’ll like eating dinner at four o’clock in the afternoon, but now, not so much.
I sit back down on the couch next to him and we watch the rest of the show. By four o’clock I know more than I ever cared to know about Quartermaines and Spencers. I shouldn’t mock. While I was stuck recovering all those months, I watched my share of bad soap operas. And bad game shows. And bad talk shows. I was an expert in all things daytime television. I just didn’t watch General Hospital. After today, I know enough that I can pretend like I did.
When it’s over, we climb into Josh’s truck so he can take me to buy a car battery. We have to stop back at the school parking lot on the way, because I know the make and model of my car but that’s the extent of my knowledge. Apparently that’s not enough information to tell me what kind of battery I need, so we have to detour back to campus. Josh looks at my car, writes something down and then takes my keys and pops the hood. I’m still holding onto my backpack with all my books, so I jump out to throw it in my car so I won’t have to keep carrying it. As soon as I do, I wish I wasn’t so lazy, because that’s when I see Tierney Lowell walking towards us in the parking lot. She’s not the only one. There are quite a few students exiting the building and I realize that it’s just after four and most of the practices and club meetings are finishing up. She’s the one I notice though, because for some reason she seems to hate me. OK, most of the girls don’t like me and I’m an easy target because of the clothes. I get that. But she shoots daggers at me like she just caught me feeding chocolate to her dog. Normally, that’s cool, because it’s all easily ignorable and I can avoid her without much effort. However, right now, I’m jumping out of Josh Bennett’s truck and he’s standing next to my car and in a minute we’ll be leaving together and that’s an act of exhibitionism I wasn’t planning to put on just yet.