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“Ha ha,” I said, but I checked, just to make sure.
This time, when I walked in and saw Alison shelving DVDs in the media section, I immediately went over to say hi.
“I knew it,” she said as soon as she saw me. “Section six hundred thirty-six upstairs, animal husbandry. We definitely have books on cats. Unless you want one from the juvenile section? I’m not making fun—some of them are better because they boil it down to just the basics. And they have lots of pictures.”
“I think I can handle a grown-up book,” I said dryly. I could see Alison peering curiously behind me, so I gestured to Sam. “This is my neighbor, Sam. Sam, this is my friend, Alison.”
If I hesitated slightly over the wordfriend, I hoped neither noticed.
Sam lifted his hand in a wave, but Alison was already holding hers out to shake. “Hi, Sam,” she said. “I’ve seen you around.How’s the—” She stopped herself, making a gesture like she was zipping her lips. “Sorry. Don’t talk about patrons’ checkout history in front of other patrons! I swear, it’s like Library Science 101.”
“It’s okay,” he said, then turned to me. “Your friend helped me find that soldering book from before.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’ve been mispronouncing that word in my head this whole time. It really doesn’t rhyme withsmoldering, are you sure?”
The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “Pretty sure.”
“I was writing you a sonnet, but that’s really going to throw the whole rhyme scheme off.”
It was just a joke—obviously, I wasn’t writing anyone asonnet, I hadn’t written a poem since my sophomore year of high school, when my poem “Indiffernce,” typo and all, had been selected to be published in a Poetry.com anthology available to me and my loved ones for the low, low price of sixty bucks. I almost wished I had ordered a copy after all. The poem had featured a lot of winter imagery and had included the last lines:And as I sink down to my knees / I feel only indifference. I’d been very proud of them at the time.
But I realized after I said it what the whole joke had implied—that I was writing a poem for Sam, that I’d intended to use the wordsmoldering, presumably to describe him...
It was no wonder his cheeks looked a little pink.
Alison was giving me a knowing look of her own, and I knew trying to explain myself would only make things worse, so I tried to change the subject.
“So, cat books, upstairs?”
“Yup,” she said, giving me and Sam a wide smile. “And for avet, I recommend the Care Clinic on the corner of Preston and Crosby. If you let them know that she’s a stray or rescue, they’ll give you a discount on the standard initial shots.”
“I’m probably not going to take her in,” I said. “I just figured I’d read up on the subject.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I like to be informed.”
Alison made eye contact with Sam, standing behind me, and rolled her eyes a little. I turned around to see him grinning, and when I shot him a look of betrayal, he just shrugged. “She named the cat Lenore,” he said to Alison.
“Oh my god,” Alison said, “remember that diorama you made for ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’? You found a way to get the ticking noise and everything.”
“It was just an old kitchen timer,” I muttered.
“How long have you guys been friends?” Sam asked, glancing between the two of us.
That felt like a complicated question. Alison and I had met in fifth grade and become besties almost immediately, which led to three more years of trying to be in the same classes as much as possible, passing notes back and forth, and sleeping over at each other’s houses. Even after I’d moved with my mom and gone to a different high school, we’d stayed in touch for a couple years, until the Incident. So I guessed we were friends for about five years or so, and then maybe again now for a couple weeks, so how did you addthatup accurately? It was like a math word problem where any answer was wrong.
“Almost twenty years,” Alison said easily. “We met at the end of elementary school. I’d just moved here and all the other kidsmade fun of me because... well, a mix of things, including racism and a lack of appreciation for my taste in eyewear. Phoebe saw me sitting alone at lunch, and sat down next to me.”
“My old table was all Backstreet Boys fans,” I said. “I got tired of arguing that *NSYNC was better. It’s exhausting being so right all the time.”
“Uh-huh. Meanwhile, I didn’t listen to either band.”
“ ‘Being ignorant is not so much a shame,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘as being unwilling to learn.’ You let me play theNo Strings Attachedalbum for you.”
“Whatever,” Alison said, directing the conversation back to Sam again. “The point is, Phoebe was kind to me at a time when no one else was.”
My skin felt all prickly, and I could feel Sam’s attention on me. I hadn’t introduced him to Alison so she could serve as a character witness for me, but I was afraid that was what it looked like now.
