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I stare at her reflection in the mirror while she washes her hands, but of course, she refuses to look up.
I walk up behind her, brush some hair away from her neck, then lean down and kiss her exposed collarbone. She closes her eyes and leans into it for only a second before she turns to face me, placing both hands on my cheeks.
“Devon, Idolike you. This is hard for me. And you’re making it worse. Please…just stop.”
She looks pained this time, not snarky and unbothered like she did when we were talking about ghosts and egos and shit. For that reason, I don’t follow her when she leaves the bathroom. I don’t stay and watch her at track practice, even though I want to and even though I have a small argument with myself about whether or not I could get her naked in the back of my car again if I did.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up, though.
What I do instead over the next few days is what I’ve been doing for months—I watch her. It isn’t easy. I trace the freckles on the back of her neck in my mind and barely resist the urge to reach out and run my fingers through the curtain of dark hair running down her back.
I watch her cringe even when Darci puts her hands on her, and I remember how she melted so easily into mine.
And sometimes, she does meet my eyes, and there’s a flash of hurt and regret in them. I want to know which part she regrets.
I still want to know where she goes when she’s in her head.
And if she won’t tell me, I need to figure out a way to get her the fuck out of mine.
An entire week goes by just like this. I watch her while she works on her portfolio. I watch her draw a blindfolded girl with a fist full of roses and blood dripping from her hands, then crumple it up and throw it in the trash. I watch her draw more kids with no faces.
I watch her go to her other classes and wonder if I misjudged her. Maybe Ally isn’t like me, and I made it all up like Isaac said. Maybe she’s shallow, just like Darci, and there could never be any swimming.
I’ve just been distracted by her talent and those goddamn freckles and read too much into her quiet, mysterious persona, and when it looks like she goes somewhere in her head, she’s really nowhere because there’s nothing in there, either. I start to get angry and slam my locker shut. She looks at me from the corner of her eye but keeps walking toward the cafeteria.
And then, I watch her not go to lunch.
She goes through the line, stuffs a few things into her backpack, then doubles out the doors. She makes her way down the hallway and then slips into the men’s locker room. Rage boils up in my chest as I settle on the most obvious conclusion: she’s meeting up with some other guy. Probably someone popular—someone Darci and the rest of her shithead friends would approve of her sneaking around with, like Trevor.
I clench my fists at my sides and prepare myself to confront her for being a fucking liar—for disappointing me by being typical and predictable when I thought she was different.
But I should have known better. It’s official…nothing about Ally is predictable.
I watch as she looks for open lockers, pulling wallets from pants pockets, cell phones from bags, and removing the sim cards with a pin on her backpack before tossing them inside. From one, she pulls out an orange pill bottle. She reads the label, then shakes it once to see if it’s full before tossing it in the bag, too.
What…the fuck.
I take another step closer, trying to get a better look, but she hears it. I watch her freeze, glancing around the locker room for a few seconds before letting out a breath, throwing her bag over her shoulder, and bolting back into the hallway.
And then out the back door to the parking lot. What the hell is going on?
She walks to the bus stop just a block from the school, and I get in my car and wait to follow.
The bus I know stops at her neighborhood passes, and she doesn’t get on it.
A bus bound for downtown pulls up, and she does get on this one. I follow it for about fifteen minutes, including stopping time, before I see Ally hop off and disappear down an alley.
No.
I park in a handicapped spot and run to the alley where I last spotted her, but it’s empty. I race to the other side just in time to see her disappear inside a pawn shop.
Shortly after she does, the guy comes out from behind the counter. He crosses the store to the front door, flips off the 'open' sign, and turns the bolt lock. I watch Ally put what must be at least ten cell phones up on the counter and hand the man the bottle of pills.
The guy doesn’t look like he gives a shit at all where they came from. No, wait, let me try that again. He looks like he knowsexactlywhere they came from. He looks like he knows Ally, too. And he knew when he saw her that she was bringing him some stolen shit.
Damn. What happened to ethical business practices?
I watch him count out the bills from the register and hand them to her. She wads up the cash, puts it in her backpack, and leaves—even taking the time to flip the 'open' sign back on for her buddy in there. She walks to yet another bus stop, and this time, she does get on the bus that takes her to her neighborhood. Thatwill make it a bit easier because I can at least predict where she’s going.
