Sometimes Shiloh felt like she was disappointing Cary. Like, she was pretty sure he was usuallypretendingto be irritated with her. But underneath that, there were moments when he seemedactuallyirritated with her.
“Would you eat me”—Shiloh hooked a finger in a loop sewn into the pocket of Cary’s cargo pants—“if we were stranded on a mountain, and I died first?”
“Pass,” Cary said.
“Are you passing on eating me? Or passing on the question?”
“Both.”
“I would probably eat you,” she said. “Partly to stay alive. And partly as a way to keep you with me for the time that I had left.”
He frowned at her.
Shiloh poked him. “Come on. What would you do?”
“You’re dead?”
“Yeah, but I’m fresh. Half frozen.”
“No, I wouldn’t eat you. What would I have to live for?”
“A plane might see you the next day.”
“Pass,” he said.
She poked his thigh. “I guess the world will forget us both.”
Cary grabbed her wrist and held on to it for a second, away from his leg.
Five
before
This was how it went:
Cary and Shiloh rode to school together.
And when they got there, they stood with the same group of guys next to somebody’s locker. Unless Shiloh was irritated with one of them. Then she went and hung out with the girls from journalism. Or she went to the journalism room and worked—Shiloh was editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Sometimes she stood out on the school’s front steps with a group of sophomores and juniors, because she had a crush on one of them—Kurt. He lived in a nice neighborhood and was good at math.
Sometimes Shiloh had morning drama club. (With Cary.) Or morning science club. (Also with Cary.) And sometimes she had to get to school early because she hadn’t done her homework and she had morning detention.
Once school started, she’d go to first-hour journalism, and Cary would go to ROTC.
And then he’d come down to the journalism room, because they both had study hall there. With Mikey. And the three of them would fuck around in the darkroom. (Like, platonically. Obviously.) Or they’d fuck around in the computer lab. Or, if they were on deadline, they’d work.
And then blah blah blah class.
And then lunch with Cary and Mikey and a bunch of other journalism people. Shiloh got free lunch, but she shared it with a girl named Lisa, in exchange for Lisa buying them both ice cream cones every day for dessert.
Then more class. French. Literature with Cary. Yearbook.
Always something after school. Play practice. Newspaper stuff. Mikey started an Amnesty International chapter, and they all joined. They wrote letters to the president of Chile, asking him to free political prisoners. Cary had ROTC junk after school sometimes, so Shiloh found other things to do. She was helping the art teacher rebuild the school mascot, even though Shiloh wasn’t in art and she didn’t have any school spirit. Kurt, the junior she liked, was on the men’s volleyball team, so sometimes she went to the practices.
If Shiloh didn’t have anything else to do after school, she’d hang out by the flagpole and wait for Cary.
If she wanted to, she could walk home by herself. But she never did.
Six
