I shook my head and began striding toward the school. “My foster mom would have a litter of kittens if I ditched.”
He stepped in front of me. “Your foster mother need never know.” He pulled two pink slips of paper out of his back pocket. “These are dated and signed excuse slips from the nurse’s office. You can go to Art, then meet me by Door 6. We’ll slip out for a very leisurely lunch, return in time for English, and as far as anyone official is concerned, we were in the nurse’s office for second to sixth periods.”
“Exactly how are we supposed to get back into the school? The doors are locked from the outside, except the main entrance, and I hope you don’t think we’ll be able to make the security guard believe that the nurse’s office is located off-campus.” The Ingleside Home girls had taught me how to jimmy open locks, but it had been a long time since I’d practiced.
“Door 6 is unlocked, inside and out,” said Conn. “I’ve checked. It’s left that way for the maintenance workers. Come on, Darcy.” His voice grew alluring. “Please.”
Everything in the world suddenly distilled down to that word and this truth: he wanted me to come. Why didn’t matter. The wanting was enough.
“Fine,” I said. “But since you’ve already planned our escape route, I get to pick the destination.”
That’s how we ended up at a diner by the interstate. It wasn’t exotic or hip or filled with zippy roller-coaster rides or anything fun like that, but it was close enough to Lakebrook High that we’d easily make it back in time for English class.
As we slid into a booth, I said, “Did you get kicked out of your last school?”
He blinked, clearly surprised. “No.”
“Reform school,” I guessed again.
“What?”
“You used to go to a reform school.”
He laughed. “Of course not. What makes you say that?”
“Those pink slips from the nurse’s office. You must have stolen them. Plus, you knew Door 6 was unlocked from the outside, which I didn’t know after more than a year at Lakebrook High. There are at least thirty doors in that godforsaken school. Did you check every one? Did you transfer here to case the joint?” I began to tease. “Are you planning some big heist? There are diamonds in the principal’s office, aren’t there?”
He shook his head. “You couldn’t be farther from the truth. I attended a kind of … military academy. And I was an excellent student.”
That explained a few things. Conn’s clean-cut look. The athletic build. A certain amount of fearlessness.
The waitress came to take our order, and after we handed back our vinyl menus, Conn repeated, “Reform school. You really thought I was some kind of criminal?”
“Don’t take it personally. I’m the one with a DCFS file that says I’m violent, disobedient, and impertinent. Oh, and strange.”
His brows lifted. “Strange?”
“‘Eerie’ was the exact word.”
“That’s not the word I’d use.”
“Oh?” I asked while my courage was high. “And what’s that?”
He murmured it. “Ethereal.”
Such a beautiful word. It thrilled through my veins. Yet he had sounded so bitter. He fell silent, and seemed to regret having spoken.
“To be honest,” I said lightly, “I am kind of strange.” Somehow I began telling him exactly what I had been trying to forget for more than two weeks: that I thought I’d seen my hand vanish. What a ridiculous thing to imagine, right? I told it all as one big joke. I’d meant to make him laugh, because he laughed so rarely and when he did it could become a deep and free music that I couldn’t help longing to hear. But he stayed serious. Pensive. His gaze wavered over me.
The waitress came, plunked down pancakes and a carafe of coffee, and slouched away. I filled my cup and took a sip. The silence stretched. It occurred to me that Jims must have a heart of steel, to always try so hard to be funny. I cast around for some way out of the awkward silence. “Doesn’t your mom worry about you riding a motorcycle? I mean, it seems like something a mother would do.”
He seemed to consider his answer carefully. “No. She doesn’t. She’s … used to that sort of thing. My dad and I tinker around in the garage, rebuilding engines. Sometimes … sometimes my little sister sneaks in and plays with the parts.” Conn’s voice took on a dreamy quality, and I could hear, in every syllable, how much he loved his family. “We live in a big house—old, beautiful—and my mom always complains that we get grease everywhere. But part of her likes it, too, because it’s a reminder that we’re there.”
“That sounds … perfect.”
He looked at me. I hadn’t been able to keep the wistfulness out of my voice. “It is,” he said softly, and the sudden certainty that sharing this with me meant something to him pressed a finger right on my heart.
Then he asked, “What’s your foster mother like? The one you have now.”
I described my first meeting with Marsha, how I’d turned up at the DCFS-organized “date” at McDonalds to find that she had already ordered for both of us: two quarter pounders, large fries, and shakes. In my snottiest tone, I informed her I was a vegetarian. She chirped back that she’d eat both burgers then, and I could have the fries. And the shake, she added. I must love shakes. Everyone does.
Conn said, “You like Marsha, don’t you?”
I’d always thought that what you saw was what you got with her: someone cheerful and a bit goofy. Her hidden wad of cash did make me wonder, though, if she really was so simple, and if I knew her as well as I’d believed. But one thing was sure. “She’s got a good heart.”
He paused. “I think you do, too.”
I let that sink in like heat from the first sip of hot chocolate on a snowy day. And since I was thinking about sweet things, I asked, “Why does J. Alfred say, ‘Do I dare to eat a peach?’ The poem’s supposed to be about whether he’ll tell a girl he loves her, right? Not about fruit.”
Conn laid his hands on the table, and I noticed that his nails were cut to the quick, his knuckles nicked with tiny white scars. He folded his fingers, hiding them behind each other. “Peaches are messy,” he said. “Sticky. I suppose all his questions boil down to the same thing. ‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’ and ‘Do I dare to eat a peach?’ are the same as ‘Do I dare to tell her the truth?’ Because that question will change his world, and the consequences…”