AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I swallow carefully. “Why don’t you come out of there and dry off? It’s cold.” I put on a fake voice, like I’m one of the old ladies from Carney. “You’ll catch your death.”
She looks a little less dire, her smile a little less like a rictus. “The water was hot before.”
I hold out a towel that’s lying on a bench nearby. It’s a sickly shade of magenta, covered with purple fish. I’m pretty sure it’s not hers.
She gets up slowly, stiffly, and comes out of the shower. I wrap her in the towel. For a moment my arms close around her. She leans into me and sighs.
We walk together across the hallway to her room. There she pulls away to sit on the bed, dripping onto her sheets. She looks curled in on herself, arms crossed over her chest.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to go stand in the stairway and you’re going to get dressed, and then we’re going to get out of here. I’ve got lots of untried schemes for walking out of Wallingford in the middle of the day; let’s try one. We can get some hot chocolate. Or tequila. And then we can come back and kill Greg Harmsford, something I personally have wanted to do for a while.”
Her fingers pull the towel tighter. She doesn’t smile. Instead she says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been handling this—the curse—very well.”
“No,” I rasp. Guilt is closing up my throat. “Don’t. You shouldn’t have to apologize. Not to me.”
“At first I thought I could just ignore it, and now—well—it’s like ignoring made the wound go septic. And then I said that if I came here and at least could see you, it would help. But it didn’t. Everything that I think will help just makes it worse.
“So I want to ask you to do something,” she says, looking at the floor, at a collection of textbooks that I’m pretty sure she’s not actually seeing. “And I understand it’s not fair, but it won’t cost you much, and it would mean everything to me. I want you to be my boyfriend.”
I start to say something, but she talks over me, already sure I’m going to say no.
“You don’t have to really like me. And it will just be for a little while.” She’s looking up at me now, her eyes hard. “You can pretend. I know you’re a good liar.”
I don’t even know how to protest. I’m scrambling. “You said that everything you think will help actually makes it worse. What if this makes it worse?”
“I don’t know,” she says, so low I can barely hear it.
It’s not real or right or fair, but I no longer have any idea what is. “Okay,” I say. “Okay. We can date. But we can’t—I mean, that’s all that can happen. I can’t live with you sitting on the floor of a shower in six months, regretting being with me.”
I am rewarded with her coming into my arms, her clothes damp and cold, her skin feverishly hot. I can see the relief in the sag of her shoulders, and when I put my arm around her, she leans against my chest, tucking her head under my chin.
“Hopefully…,” she says, a hitch in her voice like a swallowed sob. “Hopefully by then I won’t be thinking about you at all.”
She smiles up at me, and I am, for a long moment, unable to speak.
* * *
Boyfriends, even fake boyfriends, sit with their girlfriends at dinner. So I’m not surprised when Lila sets her tray down next to mine and touches me briefly on the shoulder. Daneca, however, bristles with curiosity. It’s clearly costing her something not to speak.
When the first person walks over and tosses an envelope into my bag, Lila smiles into her paper napkin.
“You’re a bookie? I thought you were the good brother,” she says.
“I’m good at what I do,” I say. “Virtue is its own revenge.”
“Its own reward,” says Daneca, rolling her eyes. “Virtue is its own reward.”
I grin. “That’s not the version I’ve heard.”
Sam plunks down his tray and grabs for the apple about to roll off it. “You know how Mr. Knight is getting a little bit on the senile side? Like walking past the classroom and having to double back, or putting on his sweater over a winter coat?”
I nod, although I haven’t had Mr. Knight for anything. I’ve just seen him in the halls. He looks like a typical ancient English professor—tweedy, with leather elbow pads and white nose hair.
“Well, today he came into class, and not only had he forgotten to zip up after a trip to the bathroom, he forgot to tuck his junk back in.”
“No way,” I say.
Lila starts to laugh.
