“I do not.” The words broke from me like birdshot from a gun.
Alberta’s eyes moved between both of mine. “Are you sure?”
Of course I was sure. I was sure.
Cole Whitehurst looked down his nose at me. He laughed at me — when he wasn’t pretending that I was invisible. He’d never once said thank you for the times I’d helped him and Ava. He couldn’t be bothered to help me in return.
I was not worth his time. His space. His anything. I wasn’t worth knowing.
“Idon’tlike him.”
Alberta narrowed her eyes at me, assessing me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Hmm… But do you want him to likeyou?”
Yes.
The word almost leapt from my mouth before I could catch it and lock it down. And nothing could have surprised me more. Why did I want Cole Whitehurst to like me?
“Well, I don’t want him todislikeme,” I hedged, chewing the corner of my lip. “I don’t want anyone to dislike me.”
Alberta gave me a mini eye roll. “You know what I mean. Do you want him to be…you know…into you?”
The question made me go prickly with heat all over.
“God, no,” I protested. “He’s almost twenty years old.”
Her eye roll this time was full-sized. “What does that matter? Are you telling me you wouldn’t want James McAvoy to be into you? He’s like 28.”
I should have leapt at the chance to talk about anyone other than Cole, but I felt like I needed to root out the doubt that Alberta’s questions had planted in me. Why did I want Cole to like me at all?
Turning in on the question felt like running a finger over an old bruise. The kind that is still tender, even when the purple mark has gone an ugly green. The wish that he would like me — accept me, approve of me, acknowledge me — felt ancient. Maybe I’d wanted it since the day I’d met him on his back porch, me with an earache and him with a bloody nose.
Was that why his smirks and his put-downs made me so angry?
If that was so, I really should be angry with myself. Because who could be so dumb? Cole Whitehurst?
I shook off the thought. “James McAvoy is a fantasy person. If he really was into a sixteen-year-old, the tabloids would go bananas calling him a perv.”
This made Alberta laugh again, so I took what advantage I could get. “And the exact same thing would be true for Cole Whitehurst. The only difference is that James McAvoy is probably a lot nicer.”
* * *
An hour later,I rode my bike back home with the December air stinging my nose and cheeks and making my eyes water. Mrs. Okeke had invited me to stay for dinner, but Mama didn’t like me riding back after dark.
“Riding a bike after dark in this town is like playing Russian Roulette,”she’d say every time I asked to stay late.“No one makes room for bikers and pedestrians. If you’re not on four wheels, you’re nobody.”
Maybe it was time to ask her again about getting my driver’s license. I was old enough, and I’d taken driver’s ed over the summer, but Mama hadn’t let me get it then, saying she didn’t want me to become a statistic.
A statistic for what I didn’t know.
I loved my bike, but it was beginning to feel a little childish. Alberta had gotten her license back in May, but Mama wouldn’t let me ride anywhere with her either. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like we had plans to go drinking or cruising around town looking for boys. I locked my bike up in the back shed, thinking it would just be nice to stay out past dark.
“Are you over your snit?” Cole Whitehurst’s voice cut through dusk’s shadows and launched me a foot into the air.
I spun around and found him on the back porch swing, as always, laughing at me.
“Didn’t mean to spook you.” He chuckled under his breath.
“You didn’t,” I lied, and this just made him laugh more.
