Page 17 of Eighteen (18)

“Well, thanks for the offer. I don’t get many.”

“Huh. Could’ve fooled me. Bowman gave you one yesterday. But maybe it was just crushed between all the kicks in the face, so you missed it?”

He looks over at me and then back to the road. A few seconds later we’re pulling into a parking space, tons of kids and cars all around us. We sit there in silence for a few moments, just the ticking of the engine after he turns it off. “I’ll take you home, too. And I sit on the wall at lunch.” He gets out of the car and I follow. We stare at each other over the hood for a few moments. “Don’t ditch me, Daydreams. I like you.”

And then he walks off.

“Hey, Sunday?” I call. He turns around, a huge shit-eating grin on his face as he walks backwards. “Did you see these guys in concert?” I ask, pulling on the shoulder of the My Chemical Romance t-shirt I’m wearing.

“What? You think I shop at Hot Topic or something? Where else would I get it?” He laughs and turns back around, a few other boys joining him as they walk onto campus.

No. He’s not a day late all. He’s most definitely right on time.

Day two of second semester goes pretty much like day one, except for the first-period smackdown by Bowman. Fowler doesn’t even bother showing for PE, so Mary and Josie and I walk our laps, slow as sloths, until the bell rings. I sit through economics thinking about how Sunday and I can be in the same grade and yet I have no classes with him.

At lunch I’m nervous. I’m not sure why—he told me to find him. Practically ordered me not to ditch him. But still, my stomach flutters like crazy when I approach the wall.

It’s not a wall. Well, it sorta is. It’s a circle, like some kind of giant brick fire pit, but it’s got benches and there’s no fire pit in the middle. And it’s not all filled with white kids, it just looks that way because everyone is dressed up grunge. Flannels, army jackets, combat boots, Chucks, Docs, ripped jeans, ripped shirts, tattoos, piercings, metal bands, pink hair, blue hair, black hair, black clothes, and lots of chains as jewelry.

We are Hot Topic.

I almost laugh at that.

But we are not all white. Every ethnicity here is represented because people—no matter where they are from, what color their skin, or any of those other bullshit identifiers—people congregate with their tribes.

These are my people. I knew the very first day last month that if I found friends in this school, this is where I’d find them.

Sunday greets me when I approach. Introduces me, includes me. Even puts his arm around me once. Fleetingly. I suspect it was some kind of secret signal to another guy that I’m not available. That even though he and I are not together, he’s claimed me.

I’m surprisingly OK with that.

But when the bell rings and he leans down to—I don’t know, kiss me?—I put my hand on his chest. “I like you,” I say. “But I’m not looking. So…”

“So?” he says.

“So if that’s what you’re after, I’m gonna disappoint you.”

He takes my backpack off my shoulder and says, “I’ll walk you to class.”

The rest of the day flies by with my head in a fog. What is he doing? Does he want to be friends? He wasn’t mad when I stopped his kiss. If he was going to kiss me. I think he was.

At the end of the day I grab Alesci’s jacket from my locker and head to the front of the school. Sunday is there, waiting right where Bowman picked me up yesterday.

“’Bout time,” he says, taking my backpack and giving the jacket a weird look. Please don’t ask me about it. Please, please, please. “Wanna come over? I got a couple hours before work.”

“Oh, I can’t,” I say. “I have night school down at Gilbert.”

“Need a ride?”

I nod, wincing at how dependent I am on people these days. When we get to his car, he opens my door for me. “Thank you,” I say.

He just smiles, gets in his side, and holds out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Your phone. So I can call you and give you my number.”

I fish around in my backpack for my phone and hand it to him. He doesn’t even remark on how old it is, how the screen is cracked, or how all the numbers are practically rubbed off on the outdated keys. He calls himself, then presses end, adds his name to my contacts, and hands it back.