Page 7 of Bent Heavens

“It’s just…” She shrugged miserably. “I’m trying to make everyone happy, all right? Including myself. Including myself.”

He said nothing, keeping his eyes on his gorp, pouring from hand to bag.

She turned on a heel. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Hey,” Doug said.

She stopped. Sighed. Didn’t turn back. But she did lower the defensive set of her shoulders.

“I’ll track down Jackson at lunch,” Doug said. “Tell him sorry.”

Liv listened and waited.

“Little weirdo only did it because we asked,” he added.

Liv nodded at the stairs in front of her. “Let’s just try to get through this year with minimum catastrophes. It’s our last year, you know?”

“I wish it weren’t,” Doug said softly.

“Come on,” she said. “You hate school.”

“I know you want everything to change, Liv, but what comes after this? For me? I just wish … things could stay the same.”

Liv closed her eyes for a second, absorbing another small slash of pain. She’d been able to prod Doug on Sunday morning precisely because she’d been looking at his back, not his face, and the same thing held true here. With her back turned, a speck of truth could be set free.

“Things can’t.”

Silence from Doug. The rustle of gorp had stopped. She couldn’t even hear him breathe.

“Better get to class,” he said, and his lack of acknowledgment that no one would care if Doug Monk made it to class on time was the last jab of pain Liv could bear. She nodded, grateful for being granted release, and rushed up the stairs while wondering what would happen if she turned around. What would it look like to stare truth in the face after two years of avoiding it? Maybe it would feel like freedom, like destroying old traps instead of setting them, over and over, despite knowing there was nothing new to catch.

5.

Liv skidded into homeroom at the clang of the bell, earning applause from the teacher and hoots from her friends, quite the opposite reaction Doug would receive. She took the open seat, right in front, and was glad that the hour was taken up with first-day preliminaries: going over schedules, the year calendar, the sorts of things devoid of emotion.

She didn’t realize how much she’d been dreading second period until she sat down at a desk, this time way in back, to the confusion of Phil and Darla, and felt her muscles tighten against the chair. It was English, the class that should have been taught by her father, in the same room she’d visited so many times as a kid. The teacher who’d replaced Mr. Fleming, both as English teacher and drama coach, Ms. Baldwin, had made the room her own, but Liv couldn’t stop seeing the shelf behind Baldwin’s desk that had once held thirty-five copies of James Galvin’s Resurrection Update—the book that had meant so much to Lee Fleming, right up until the end.

The shelf didn’t even hold books anymore. It held idiotic troll dolls with multicolored hair. It shouldn’t have aggravated Liv, but it did. She had avoided exchanging a single word with Ms. Baldwin in the two years they’d shared the same building, even though the woman had done nothing worse than show an affinity for ugly dolls. Liv knew it wasn’t fair to Baldwin. It was only English.

Then Baldwin said the five words that earned any teacher ire: Get to know your neighbor. Next to the imbecilic Name Game, it was the most tedious of first-day time wasters, in which students were forced to pair off, interview a classmate, and then introduce that classmate aloud. Ridiculous, considering the size of the school and how long most of them had known one another. The shtick was likely for Baldwin’s benefit, another reason for Liv to resent it.

Mired in disgruntlement, Liv moved too slowly. Darla chose Phil, of course, and every teammate Liv could see quickly paired off. She was recalculating when a fist knock-knocked her desk. She looked to her right and found the wide, dazzling grin of a boy she’d never seen before. He was tall and long-limbed. What stuck out most was his obvious sense of style, a rare quality in high school boys. His clothing was probably secondhand but actually fit, and was tucked and rolled where most guys would have ends flapping and flopping.

“I’m Bruno!” he cried, as if they were long-lost companions.

The grin kept going. He had great teeth, their bright white set off against skin further darkened by actual stubble. Hair, indeed, looked to be his biggest struggle: It puffed from beneath his shirt cuffs, and a gallon of gel must have been used to sculpt that swoop on top of his head. Liv looked all right today—she’d gotten up early to tie her hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Bruno’s unguarded gaze, though, made her doubt.

“I’m Liv,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. Let’s buddy up.”

Buddy up? Liv threw out a desperate look for someone who might be less challenging than this guy, and, finding none, shrugged. Bruno scooted his desk; it bumper-carred against hers. Everyone else was doing the same, and the noise helped Liv relax. She took out a fresh notebook and inked on the first page BRUNO.

“Let’s see: I’m Bruno Mayorga, I’m seventeen, I was born in Nuevo León—that’s a Mexican state—but was still a baby when I came to Iowa. I only moved to Bloughton this summer, but I plan to work on the school paper, and do lots of drama, and also chorus, and hopefully a couple small groups. I’ll probably join the tennis team, even though I’m not very good, but I hear the team is terrible, so maybe I’ll actually get to play. I have three sisters named Mia, Elena, and Bianca, and three dogs. I’m into music, but that’s super boring. Why did I even mention that? Who’s not into music? Oh, my dad is still in Mexico. I basically don’t know him. I know you don’t really have a dad, too. I don’t mean to be awkward about that. Sorry if that’s awkward.”

Liv finished writing before exhaling.

“You’re an easy interview,” she said.