“Okay, I’ll pick you up.”
“Sure,” I said, even though it hadn’t been a question.
“Great.” He smiled, his teeth sparkling white against bronze skin. “We’ll talk details later. Just tell Ryan you’re spoken for.”
He walked away, true to his word to be a gentleman. He hadn’t tried to touch me or hold my hand, much less kiss me again.
Be careful what you wish for, I thought.
Chapter 17
I’d meant to go to Vauxhall Hospital after school on Monday, long overdue for a visit to Demetria. Instead, I went home and cruised the social sites for Zander. Nothing. I wasn’t surprised. There was something more sophisticated about him and his friends—who I still didn’t know and who continued to ignore me in the halls—to think they’d be chatting online. Whispered confidences and smoky nights out seemed more their speed.
I thought about going to see Demetria on Tuesday instead, but Hannah asked me to do something. She and I had never hung out alone before and I didn’t want to say no. We ended up at TREND, where Liv convinced me to buy an outrageously expensive sweater for my date with Zander.
“He will not be able to resist you in that,” she said when I stepped out of the dressing room. I wouldn’t have given it a second glance—pale blue, hip length, fitting soft and snug over my few curves. It looked both innocent and touchable.
Liv’s manager rang me up—raving about Liv the whole time—then Hannah and I went next door for yogurt. It turned out we didn’t have much in common other than our friendship with Liv—she didn’t read much, I didn’t know the actors she talked about, and we had no classes together. I thought later that it was probably only seeing me with Zander that’d made her invite me out. She was far from the only girl at school with a crush on him.
He’d texted me about plans for Friday and sent a few other quick messages—“thinking of you” and “how’s your day, beautiful?” Cheesy stuff that still made me tingly inside. But we hadn’t done more than wave, smile, and say hey in the hallways and lunchroom at school.
I probably would have drifted through the whole week that way, mindlessly counting down the hours until Zander picked me up, if I hadn’t run into Nick Altos.
I’d stayed at school late to finish up a science project and was bundled up and headed out the door when I saw him sitting on the bottom step of the deserted staircase, his head in his hands.
“Nick?”
He looked up, startled. My chest squeezed when I saw his tear-stained face. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
“Hey,” I said sympathetically, walking over to him.
He sniffled. “You have a knack for finding me like this.”
I sat carefully and waited. When he didn’t speak, I prompted gently, “Want to talk about it?”
Nick shrugged jerkily, almost convulsive. “What’s there to talk about? It’s the same shit. My dad.” He paused, breathing deeply for control. “At first it sucked because … well, it just sucked. He was dead. I wasn’t going to see him again. That was bad, but it wasn’t so …” He stopped, his mouth quivering, and looked at his hands. “So personal.”
I kept my eyes averted. After a minute he continued, his voice harder, strained. “I went to his apartment. Just me. My mom didn’t want to go. I don’t blame her and I’m glad she wasn’t there. It would have just been harder …”
I thought of the picture next to the bed, knew already what Nick had found. The same kind of stuff I’d found cleaning out our apartment after Nan died. Photos, cards, years of memories that had meant enough to keep.
“… Father’s Day,” Nick was saying, his hands balled into fists. “Pictures of me dressed like him for Halloween. The letters he wrote were the worst. Four of them, stacked inside a drawer. All for me. All unsent.” Nick’s next words were partly strangled by emotion. “Telling me how sorry he was. How he was going to be better. You know that dad in commercials?” His voice rose, a little hysterical, but I let him go on, trying my best to squelch the guilt that kept rising like bile in my throat. “The throw-the-football-let’s-go-fishing guy? The one I never had? He wanted to be that guy,” he said, his hands still clenched, their knobby knuckle ridges white. “And now he never will.”
I didn’t reach for him or do anything but sit there quietly while he got it together. When he was calmer, I tried to reassure him, feeling like the biggest fraud in the world the whole time. He nodded, seeming embarrassed, and I thought: who the hell am I to comfort the kid whose dad I let die?
I went to see Demetria that afternoon.
Chapter 18
She trudged in, looking sloppy and disheveled, her belly rounder than I remembered, though it had to be my imagination. It hadn’t been that long since I saw her and it was way too early for her to be showing.
Sitting there, looking at Demetria and remembering the awful conversation with Nick, I couldn’t believe I’d let so many days go by without coming. What was I thinking, allowing my golden opportunity to tick away, minute by minute, like this? It made me angry with myself and determined to get it out there today, even if I had to ask her point-blank. Demetria would be released someday, maybe soon. I’d wasted so much time already.
I leaned in close, smelling the industrial clean of generic detergents wafting from her gown. “Demetria,” I said, speaking low, to be sure the nurse behind me wouldn’t hear. “I need to talk to you about your visions.”
It took a minute, but slowly her eyes drifted up, connecting with mine. I felt a surge of elation.
“There’s a reason I’ve been coming to see you so often,” I said urgently. “It’s not just because I needed someone to talk to. That was true, but really it’s that …” I paused, her eyes watching me as if through a steam-fogged mirror. Medicated? I didn’t know what they could give a pregnant girl, but she didn’t look all there. I willed myself to go slowly, though everything in me wanted to spill it all out. “I think you and I have the same”—don’t say problem—“ability.”
There was a flicker, a light breeze of recognition that stirred Demetria’s placid features. I leaned closer, my hands almost touching hers. She didn’t flinch.
“My mom could do it too,” I said. “I didn’t know her, but I’m sure of it. She was in a place just like this and I read her files. When she told them about it, they thought she was delusional.”