“I’m older!”
“I can count to three hundred!”
“I can count to a bazillion!”
“A bazillion plus one!”
“Got it,” Oliver said, then smiled at them before taking his slice and heading back upstairs. “Enjoy your movie!” he called behind him, and I realized that the girls and I were watching the stairs even after he disappeared.
Nora turned to look at me. “Mommy says he spends too much time in his room.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “What do you think?”
“I think that he has the biggest room so he should spend the most time there.”
“That’s very sound logic.” I smiled down at her, then used the back of my hand to wipe some stray sauce off her cheek. “C’mon, let’s do what Oliver said and enjoy the movie.”
The kids enjoyed the rest of the movie.
I don’t remember anything that happened in it, though. I was too busy thinking about what Oliver was doing upstairs. Homework? Watching his own movies, ones that didn’t involve zany music and bright color explosions? I should have invited him to watch with us, I thought, then wondered what I would’ve done if he said yes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Drew and I stayed on campus the next day at lunch while Caro disappeared to Del Taco with three senior girls from the cheer squad. “Bring me a bean burrito!” Drew called after her as she ran down the hill toward the parking lot. “With red sauce!”
“Okay!” Caro yelled back, her voice disappearing into the breeze.
“She’s not going to remember,” I said to Drew as she disappeared. “She never remembers.”
“I’m forever hopeful,” he said. “That’s what friends do. They hope. They have faith in each other.”
“Well, I have faith that she’ll forget,” I said, hiking my backpack up onto my shoulders. “You have to be a realist with Caro.”
“I’m a hopeful realist,” Drew said. “I’m a healist! Like those guys on TV late at night that cure people of cancer.” He grinned down at me. Even when we were kids, Drew was always the tallest kid in our class and when he hit his growth spurt in eighth grade, he became the Beanstalk to our classroom of Jacks.
“Yeah, speaking of that, I saw Oliver last night,” I said.
Drew paused midstep. “What does being a healist—don’t steal that, by the way, I’m having it copyrighted even as we speak—have to do with Oliver?”
“Nothing, I was just trying to change the subject.” I tugged at his elbow to keep him moving. There are conversations you have to have face-to-face, but others that require perpetual motion. Shoes scuffing, the crunch of fallen leaves, blades of grass whispering together keeping the other person from looking into your eyes and realizing that you don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.
“So Oliver. Mr. Mystery,” Drew said. “Did you hear about the milk cartons the other day?”
“Dude, I was there with Caro. I saw the whole thing.”
“Sucks,” Drew said, scuffing the toe of his Vans along the cement walkway. “People are assholes. Milk-wasting assholes.”
“Yeah.” It was always a little easier to talk to Drew than it was to Caro. He gave people more space in between their words, let them figure out how to make their thoughts sound the same on the outside as they did on the inside. He was patient where Caro was urgent. Drew would remember to not only bring back the bean burrito, but extra packets of red sauce, too.
“I saw him yesterday morning, too,” I said. “He was in the car with his mom.”
Drew shuddered. “That’s my biggest nightmare right now, having my mom drive me to school.”
I glanced up. “Really?”
Drew tucked his thumbs into his backpack straps, now scuffing his shoes in rhythm with my steps. “She’s being super nicey-nice, handling me with extra care. Like I’m a live grenade or something.”
I didn’t say anything at first. I let him find the right words, the same as he does for me.
“I think they’re waiting for me to freak out or, I don’t know, have this crazy breakdown or something. My mom’s even reading this book right now, How to Talk to Your Teenager.”
We both rolled our eyes at the same time.
“Gross,” I said.
“Right? Like, if you want to talk to me, don’t read a book about it. Just talk to me. I’m a person.” Drew sighed and gave his shoe a final scuff. “Anyway, yeah, parents are weird. But Oliver.” He glanced down and waited for me to look up at him before wiggling an eyebrow.
“Stop it,” I said, laughing a little. “You know it creeps me out when you do that.”
Drew, of course, did it even more, and I shoved him away and tried to cover my eyes. “Stop!” I said. “Or I won’t share my sandwich with you and you’ll starve for the rest of the day!”
Drew stopped and flicked his hair out of his eyes. He always looks cool when he does that, even though I know he doesn’t mean to. “Why would I want your sandwich? Caro’s bringing me a delicious burrito from Del Taco.”
“Hope springs eternal,” I said as we wandered into the quad. There were scattered freshmen (most of them hung out near the cafeteria’s exit, like it was difficult for them to move too far away from the food) and a few juniors whose names I didn’t know, and then a figure sitting on a long cement-block wall under a tree, wearing headphones and eating something out of a brown paper bag, gazing off into the distance like he was at a museum and the rest of us were moving sculptures.