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“Yeah. ”
I wait a beat.
“You didn’t tell your dad. ”
“I can’t, West. I thought about it, but I … What if he sees?”
It could happen any time. My dad could be sitting at his desk and type my name into a search engine, just because. Or somebody he works with could point him in that direction. A friend. One of my sisters. Anybody.
I close my eyes, because the humiliation of it, the shame of asking West to help me fix this thing—I can’t.
I can’t look at him at all.
“How much do you need?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars. I heard you … I heard sometimes you do that. ”
He sighs. “You have any income at all?”
“I get an allowance. ”
I open my eyes, but I can’t lift them above my shoes. My black flats are dusted with flour. It’s worked its way down into the buckle, and I doubt I would be able to clean it out, even if I wanted to.
“How long would it take you to pay me back?”
“I could pay you a hundred fifty a month. ” If I never buy anything or eat outside the dining hall.
West kicks my toe with his boot. Waits for me to look up. His eyes are still dead.
“I’m charging you interest. ”
“I would expect you to. ”
“I’ll have it on Tuesday. ”
And then there’s nothing left to say. He’s gone, empty, and I’m too full—like there aren’t any edges to me. It’s just pain and disappointment, all the way through.
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m … I’m going to head out. I have to write that paper. ”
He just grunts at me and weighs out dough. A thousand miles away.
I don’t see West on Friday, because he’s working at the restaurant, and we’re not friends.
I don’t go to the soccer party. Bridget just about breaks something trying to sell me on the idea, but I can’t. I tell her I have to study, and then I hide in the library and replay my conversation with West over and over again. I should never have asked him for the money. I don’t know who I should have asked, but not him. The look on his face … I can’t stop thinking about it.
I don’t see West on Saturday, because he’s working at the restaurant, and we’re not friends.
The next week is more of the same thing. On Tuesday he gives me the money, and he teaches me how to make lemon glaze for the muffins. Everything’s like normal, but there’s this thin coating of awkwardness ladled over our conversations, and when I’m not around him, it hardens and turns opaque.
I convert West’s cash into a money order and send it off to the Internet-reputation people, but I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never opened my mouth.
The next weekend I eat dinner with Bridget, and we walk to the Dairy Queen in town afterward, leaves crunching under our feet. I eat a hot-fudge brownie sundae so big that I have to lie down on the red lacquered bench afterward and unbutton the top of my jeans. Upside down, I look out the front window and down the street. I can just make out the chalkboard easel outside the Gilded Pear.
Nate took me to dinner there last year before the spring formal. West was our waiter. Every time he came to the table, it was more awkward than the last. By the time he brought the check, his conversation with Nate was so thickly laced with irony that I felt like they were performing a scene in a play.
The kind of play with sword fighting.
