He puts down his pen before he answers me. “I went to an all-boys boarding school at the start of ninth grade. Fincher? It’s just outside Raddick. My dad and my older brothers went there.Everyonesmoked at Fincher. All my friends, the teachers. Students weren’t allowed to smoke on school property, but we would literally walk half a mile out to where the school’s sign was and smoke right in front of it. As long as we weren’tbehindit, we were fine.”
I laugh.
“The first time my roommate, Dean, offered me a cigarette, after I’d been there, like, two months, I tried it just to see what the fuss was about. It washorrible.Like, I-nearly-hacked-a-lung horrible.”
I giggle again.
“Then Dean got caught smoking in the locker room one time and wound up with an expulsion warning. I hid his last two packs in my suitcase, hoping it’d deter him.”
“Did it?”
Zach shakes his head. “He gave me this.” He leans forward to point out a tiny scar on the side of his right eye. The scar isn’t raised and it looks old, but I reach out to run my finger over it.
“Violent boy.” Zach tsks. “Anyway, I forgot all about the two packs and came home for spring break.” He drops his voice, like he doesn’t want his father to hear this part. “And then my parents sat me down and said they couldn’t afford another year of tuition for me at Fincher.”
He speaks louder again, but not quite as loud as when he started the story. “I was pretty devastated. I was making all these friends. My brothers had both gone to Fincher and graduated; it was supposed to be, like, a rite of passage for my family.”
“That sucks,” I say, and he nods. He rips open a bag of gummy bears and sets them between us.
“It does. But at least I had the one year.” He chews on a bear. “Kevin probably won’t even get that.” It’s the first tinge of real sadness (non-Lindsay-related, anyway) I’ve ever heard in Zach’s voice, and it makes something twitch in me, too. “Kevin might notneedthat, since he already curses like a sailor.”
I laugh, reaching for some gummies.
“Allmybad habits I learned at Fincher.” Zach picks up the pen and checks something off on his piece of paper. “Anyway, it’s spring break. Dad tells me I can’t go back the next September. I try to act cool about it, but I sit in my room, moping all week. And you know what I find? Two packs of cigarettes. I smoked both of them in a weekend.”
“Zach,”I scold, as if it’s happening now.
“I’m trying to quit, though. I’m way better than I used to be,” Zach says, looking proud. “Dad has promised to get me a Sonic CXX if I’m down to two a day by the time school starts in September.”
“That’s”—I pause, searching for the right word—“nonjudgmental of him.” I imagine the Cerebral Event—aka stroke—my mother would have if she ever caught me with a cigarette in hand.
“He’s worse thanme!” Zach laughs. “Or he was. But he finally stopped at the end of last year, all these years after he picked it up at Fincher.”
“Well, I hopeyoustop,” I say, unable to hide the disapproval in my voice.
“So what about you?” Zach asks. “What’syourvice?”
“Hmm,” I say with mock thoughtfulness. “I’m weirdly addicted to gummy bears. This is practically poaching.” I pop one into my mouth as I speak.
Zach smiles, but he appraises me seriously before saying, “You love your viola more than you do people.”
I’m so taken aback by it that it takes me a while to answer, and I remember that he said something similar at his house last week, too. “You’ve only seen me play once.”
“I know,” he says.
There’s a long pause before I say, “Well, maybe I just haven’t found the right person to love.”
Zach’s lips are tilted up at the corners. “Yet,” he says.
“Yet,” I say, and eat another gummy bear.
AFTER
January
After Caleb’s and my mother’s lights go out, I pull on my jeans, sweatshirt, coat, and boots, and then I grab my keys and quietly leave the house.
Bus Boy is not out front. The cigarette he dropped on the sidewalk this morning is gone, too. But maybe someone kicked it onto the grass, or a gust of wind blew it to another street. Maybe it never existed to begin with.
