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“I’ve got a meeting soon, but maybe you want some company? You could come with me. We’re just making posters for this march. The Student Government office has huge rolls of paper and giant markers, and we can decorate them however we want. And then after maybe we could grab dinner? Unless you’ve got homework.”
“I do,” she says, “but if I get home early enough I can do it before bed.”
“What time is bed?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“So if I get you back by seven, that should be enough time?”
“Yeah.”
“Unless you don’t want to hang out with a bunch of college students …”
A muscle twitches in her jaw. She looks so much like her brother, it wrenches my heart. “I’ll come.”
“Good.”
She drops back into the car.
I make a three-point turn in the driveway, and we’re off.
The farther we get from the apartment, the better I feel about the decision I’ve made. We go to my meeting, where she turns out to be surprisingly adept at making posters. I take her back to the house for dinner, introduce her to Bridget and Krishna in the kitchen, feed her some kind of curry thing that Krishna whipped up on a dare when Bridget bet him he didn’t know how to cook a meal. The mood is lighthearted, which I guess means Krish and Bridget are on again.
Bridget sends me a look that says, What do you think you’re doing?
I send her one back that means, We’ll talk later.
Krishna teases Frankie until she’s laughing so hard she falls out of the chair and makes her lip bleed.
When it gets dark, I drive her back to the farm. The farmhouse is blazing with light, the shapes of people visible through the curtains. She’s talked all afternoon about the sculptor, Laurie, and his wife, Rikki, who’s also an art professor. Frankie hangs out sometimes in Laurie’s shed while he works on his art. It’s clear they’ve got a bond going.
West must know it. He must have arranged it so Frankie has these adults to go to. He wouldn’t leave her unprotected and alone.
Except that she obviously needed someone today, and she didn’t call her brother.
“About the bus,” I say on an impulse. “You didn’t miss it, right? You just didn’t want to get on.”
She’s bent over in the seat, zipping her backpack.
“You don’t have to tell me what’s happening,” I say, “but if you want me to pick you up sometime, you can just text. We’ll hang out.”
Frankie lifts the pack onto her lap, compressing a strap in her hands. “You mean it?”
“Sure. I can’t be, like, your personal chauffeur, but if you’re having some kind of problem …”
She toys with the door handle. “I feel like a freak here.”
“How come?”
“The other kids … They’re just different than the kids back home. I don’t fit. And … there’s this kid on the bus. He looks at me. Says things.”
“Mean things?”
She nods. “About the way I look.”
Her body, I guess. Her breasts. Man, kids are mean. “Did you try telling the bus driver?”
“She wouldn’t do anything.”
