Chapter 17
Livi uses her thumbnail to scratch her name into the Styrofoam cup of her smoothie. It’s Five Dollar Friday at our local smoothie place, and we decided to order the large size for just five bucks instead of the usual ten. It was kind of a mistake because this thing is unbelievably huge.
“I thought I loved smoothies, but I’m not sure I love them this much,” I say, curling my lip as I stare at what’s left of mine.
“Why do they evenmakethem this big?” she says, but then she takes another sip. “Soo good… Maybe that’s why.”
I laugh and kick out my foot to make the porch swing sway a little harder. It’s Friday night and we’re officially two losers who have nothing better to do than get oversized smoothies and drink them on my front porch.
I heave a big, bored sigh.
“We need a car,” she says.
“Agreed.” I don’t earn enough money to buy my own car. But now that Grandpa won’t be driving his truck anymore, I keep thinking that maybe I could drive it from now on. I haven’t mentioned it to him yet because his blindness is still fresh and I know he hates admitting that he can’t do everything anymore. Giving up his truck would be a big loss for him. But maybe someday, I can use it on a regular basis and then I can say goodbye to the school bus.
“Thanks for hanging out with me even though I’m boring as hell,” I say with a little laugh.
“I’mthe boring one,” Livi says. “I don’t even know anything we could do, even if we had cars. It’s not like we have boyfriends or anything.” She stops talking abruptly. “Shit, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I shrug. “We never have boyfriends, Liv.”
“I know but…” she looks at me like I’m supposed to know what she’s talking about. When I don’t, she says it slowly. “The…Gavin thing…?”
“Oh,” I say with a snort. “He’s not a thing.”
In fact, he’s nothing.
He was a brief date so long ago that I’ve already forgotten about it. And then he was a promise that he quickly broke.
I grit my teeth and inhale through my nose, then slowly exhale. “Ugh, I haven’t even thought about him lately.”
“Really?” Livi sets her smoothie down on the porch. “I just figured you didn’t want to talk about him.”
“There’s nothing to talk about anymore. He promised to help me build the greenhouse and then he just kept bailing on me. Now he can go fall into a hole for all I care.”
That first week I’d had my hopes up. Every day I went to homeroom and asked if he could start construction after school. Every day he said no because he was busy, or worse—he said maybe. The maybes always turned into nos. I’m sure he has some pathetic excuse, but I never wanted to hear it. He’s just an asshole. I’ve made his life easier for him by just forgetting the whole freaking ordeal.
Now, I have a plan. I go to homeroom just before the bell rings. I sit in my chair and look straight ahead, and then I leave the second the dismissal bell rings. It’s a brilliant system. It lets me just pretend he doesn’t even exist anymore, which is good for my fragile heart.
“He hasn’t even been to school much lately,” I say, hating that I know that. He’s missed every Friday for the last three weeks, and even when he’s in school, I never see him at his lunch table anymore. Not that I’m looking.
“So, your greenhouse?” Livi says softly. “Is it over?”
“Yeah,” I say after a long moment. “I guess it is.”
