While I stare at her.
And think about how much I want to walk over and sit in the chair next to her, rest my hand on her thigh under the table, and slip my fingers between hers like they were less than twenty-four hours ago.
Pros and cons are weighed. Two minutes before the bell rings, I decide on the way out of the room I’ll stop and tell her.
When the time comes, I chicken out and walk past, sparing her a label she doesn’t deserve and leaving her with the potential she does.
Chapter Sixteen
Present,March 1987
Toby
Two days later,my willpower is fading. It takes everything in me not to follow Alice into the library during lunch.
Chapter Seventeen
Present,March 1987
Toby
By Thursdayit’s unbearable being in the same room with Alice and not being able to talk to her. I miss her and she’s sitting two tables away.
I’m still thinkingabout her when the sun goes down. Normally, I would go in my room and get started on my homework and draw until sleep makes the fight impossible, but I find myself on the fire escape instead, staring up at a starless, cloudy sky punctuated with a swelling full moon. The air is cold, I can see my breath and it makes me crave a cigarette. I guess I’ve turned into one of those people who doesn’t just smoke when they drink. Pulling my sweatshirt hood up and my sleeves down, I tuck my hands inside to keep them warm. That’s when I hear the door open and shut below me, footsteps, and singing. It’s Alice, I can see her through the metal slats that make up the floor of the fire escape. She isn’t singing every verse of the song, she’s picking and choosing and humming the rest.
When the song I’ve never heard dies out, I make my way down the ladder and sit on the second rung from the bottom, my feet resting on the platform. Alice is standing at the railing not far from me, her Walkman in her hand and headphones tucked into her hair at her ears. “Hi, Toby,” she says. A faint smile colors her lips and then it fades just as quickly as it arrived, and she takes the headphones off and sets them with the Walkman on a small table.
It startles me. “Hey. I didn’t think you could hear me.”
She turns toward the ladder. “I couldn’t. My music was turned up. I could feel the fire escape shudder when you walked on it and climbed down the ladder.”
“Oh, right.” Of course she could, that was stupid of me. “Is your brother home?” I ask to draw the attention away from me and my insensitivity.
“No, he’s begrudgingly having dinner with our mom. Trying to smooth things over for me, I think. Taber’s always been the unlikely peacemaker in our family. The Eliot family Gandhi…if Gandhi wore leather and eyeliner.” Even through the joke, she doesn’t crack a smile. It seems Alice harbors all of her negativity and saves it up only for her mom. Not that I can blame her after the argument I overheard a few weeks ago. She shakes her head. “Sorry, sore subject. Let’s talk about something else. Are the stars out tonight?” She’s sad and deflated and I hate it.
I lie without hesitation because I will do anything to lighten her mood. “They are and the moon is full.”
“I miss seeing the stars.” When I don’t answer because I don’t know what to say to make this better, she makes her way over to me. “What’s your last name, Toby?”
“Page,” I answer as her right knee bumps into my left.
“I thought so,” she says as her head tilts back like she’s looking at the sky.
I’m sitting too low to see her face, but there’s sadness all around her. I can feel it and I need to make it go away, but I don’t know how to do that. I can’t manage my own emotions, let alone someone else’s. “How did you know?”
Her head drops down to face mine and the corner of her mouth quirks up like something amuses her. “I heard some girls at school talking about you, theinfamousToby Page.”
I don’t even want to know what that means. “I should’ve told you we go to the same school,” I whisper.
“They were talking about you in Contemporary Living class. They said you had a nice ass and pretty eyes and that it’s a shame you’re such a dick. Though I got the impression that they didn’t really mind that part either. And yes, you should’ve told me we go to the same school. Why didn’t you?”
“It’s complicated, Alice.”
Ignoring my self-assessment, Alice counters my cryptic answer with another question to see where she stands. “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?” She’s not the type of girl to put up with bullshit, if she sensed I was that type of person she wouldn’t be standing here talking to me.
“Absolutely not.” My hand is shaking when I reach around the back of her leg that’s touching mine and run my hand up and down her calf to reassure her.
She holds up her palm facing me and I press mine to it, watching her fingers alternate between mine and dropping to secure them in place. “Then why?”
