Page 13 of Bent Heavens

“Torta. Pork, avocado, peppers. Smells good, huh?”

Liv nodded. The morsels had a clean, sharp aroma that sliced through the cafeteria’s meaty stink. She checked her usual table. Darla and Phil had moved on to feeding each other French fries, but Krista made eye contact, giving Liv an inquisitive, amused look. Liv replied with the mildest of head shakes—I’ll explain later—before Bruno reclaimed her attention.

“Where’s Doug?”

Liv frowned at him. “Doug?”

“He doesn’t eat with you? Oh, I guess that makes sense.”

“He’s never here at lunch. I guess he goes outside.”

“Tell him he can sit with me. I’m not picky.”

“I don’t really talk to him that much. But okay.” She tried to imagine actually extending this offer to Doug next Sunday. He’d be embarrassed at his unpopularity being called out and ridicule the idea. Still, it was rare to hear so friendly an entreaty. Liv softened her voice. “I told you in Baldwin’s class you were nice.”

“Baldwin’s class.” Bruno whistled. “I’ve been to a lot of schools, Liv Fleming, and I have never, ever seen a student take it to a teacher like that. One hour you’re rescuing Doug Monk, the next you pull that? Eres una chica loca.”

“Don’t get too excited. It was probably my last stand. I have to meet with Principal Gamble after school.”

“What’s your beef with Oliver!?”

Liv stabbed her salad like she might a sworn enemy, stuffed a forkful into her mouth, and chewed it while giving Bruno a flat look. She knew what was happening here. Bruno raised both hands guiltily. His hands were large, with long, articulate fingers. He noticed salsa on one of them and nibbled it off.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll admit I’ve heard some things. Okay, lots of things. But there are parts of it that just can’t be true.”

“So you want the news straight from the source.” She grabbed her tray and started to stand. “At least you’re upfront about it.”

Bruno rested one of his large hands on the edge of her tray.

“That’s not why I asked you to sit here. We don’t have to talk about it. Look, let’s draw up a formal agreement never to talk about it. It can just be this big, mysterious thing sitting between us for all of eternity.”

Liv laughed at the preposterous but flattering notion that this guy she barely knew was already planning for eternity, and that she was part of the plan. She glanced at her usual table, and this time it was Monica who had fixed her eyes on her—not a good sign. Monica had on her most unbothered expression, which meant that she was plenty bothered.

But it had been a hell of a first couple of days of school. Liv was aware that if there was a pecking order in her group, she was at the bottom of it, but she didn’t feel like thinking about it. She yielded to the gentle pressure of Bruno’s hand on her tray and sat. She stared down at her unappetizing food and pushed a sigh from her chest. If the sigh was deep enough, perhaps it would expel the toxins that made this topic so poisonous.

“What, exactly,” she asked, “did you hear?”

For the first time, Bruno looked less than confident. He winced, probably only now realizing the sorts of things he would need to say aloud, and exhaled in a blast, like this was hard on him, not her. That should have rankled Liv, but instead she hid a small smile.

“I heard your dad had some … strange experiences he worked into the play.”

“You could say that.”

Bruno put one of his sharp elbows on the table so he could face her more directly. “What I don’t get is that, from what I heard, everyone knew something was wrong with him. Not just the drama kids. People told me he was just talking about his Oliver! plans right in the middle of class. I don’t see how—”

“How no one did anything to stop it?”

Bruno gestured his confusion on this point. Liv had lost her appetite, but she picked up her knife just to have something to wield; it made her feel safer entering into this dialogue.

“I guess everyone had a clue. Just no one pulled it all together. I can’t blame anyone. My mom and I didn’t do any better. I heard things, for sure. How he was talking weird in class. How he’d stand up and just walk out of school. I know how it sounds. Like, how could we not have done something?”

“No, I get it,” Bruno said. “You only know how hard things are when they actually happen to you. Everything’s complicated. No matter what you do, it’s always going to hurt someone.”

It was the most sensitive statement Liv believed she’d heard spoken by a teenage boy. Everything’s complicated—was there a truer, more graceful summation of life? Liv nodded, noting she was being too enthusiastic but unable to restrain herself. Speaking honestly about her dad was the rarest of things.

“So then he disappeared for four days,” she said. “There were search parties and APBs. It was scary. But then he came back.”

“Naked in the park. Everyone mentions that.”