I nodded. “Next week I turn seventeen. That’s one year closer to escape.”
“Well, that’s one way to look at a birthday.” He grinned.
“It’s the only way to look at it… when no one cares if you turn another year older.”
Keith tucked a pencil behind his ear, considering my dilemma. “Then make them care. Throw a party. Live it up.”
“With who, Keith? I don’t have a squad.”
“Okay, but you havesomefriends, right?”
“I suppose I know four or five people who don’t want me to die.”
“Well, there you go.” He slapped my shoulder. “That’s a start.”
And despite my melancholy over a deadbeat mother, I smiled. I loved talking to him. There was no coddling, no politically correct wording. Keith was brutally honest, and after a lifetime of walking on pins and needles, it was a refreshing change of pace.
The librarian cleared her voice loud enough for us to hear. She motioned for Keith to get off the table with the flick of her head. It surprised me that Miss Markel had allowed him to linger even this long, when even an overeager rustling of papers could bring her over in a frenzy of flaring nostrils.
“Keith,” I whispered. “You’d better get down before she sends you to detention.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Miss Markel wouldn’t dare.”
The fact that he was so sure of himself had me instantly intrigued. “And why not?”
Keith looked around before lowering his voice. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Sure.”
“Miss Markel is a former client of mine. Turns out she likes to let her hair down with a little of the devil’s lettuce, if you know what I mean.”
Miss Markel – a pothead? I didn’t believe him for a second. With her polo shirts and twisted buns, she was more straight-laced than me. I grinned. “You’re such a liar.”
“Believe what you will.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying is I have enough dirt on her that I could take a crap in the middle of the library and there’d be nothing she could do but hand me a roll of toilet paper.”
My mouth dropped open as I glanced between Keith and my one-time book-buying hero. Yet just the fact that he was still perched on the table as she wandered around the library was indication enough that there might be some truth to his claim. “How many more secrets do you have about our fine institution?”
His eyes sparkled with mischief. “Let’s put it this way – if the superintendent of schools tortured me for information, half the teaching staff would be gone.”
“Damn.” I giggled. “Where have I been all my life?”
Without skipping a beat, he answered, “Saying no.”
And with those two little words, Keith McKallister perfectly summed up my last two years. There was no way to defend myself because we both knew he was right. When ‘no’ had become my favorite word, I couldn’t say, but it was now my way of life. I’d even turned him down the first time he’d asked for my help. Had he not been persistent, I would have missed out on getting to know him, and that would have been the biggest mistake of my short life.
Perhaps he sensed my turmoil, and he backtracked. “I was kidding. Relax. Hey, you know what you need?”
“If you’re going to say I need to get laid, I’m going to blow my rape whistle… right here in the middle of the library.”
He lifted his arms. “Whoa that escalated quickly. No, I was going to say you need to get drunk – let the liquor take your mind off everything for a few hours.”
“Right, but then afterward, I’ll just be right back where I started.”
He scratched his head. “Huh. So that’s how addiction works? So simple.”
I laughed. “Yes, Keith. That’s how it works, and I don’t need to add that to my list of woes.”
“One drunken binge does not a habit make, Sam.”
