I shake my head. “I might not have heard, sorry. What happened?”
“Something with my feet, and I fell.” Jackson opens his lunch bag, avoiding the question. “Just all sorts of weird, unrelated things. My body hates me, I guess. I probably need more rest.”
“That’s annoying.” I flip through my folder, clearing out a handout advertising a college fair that happened yesterday. Jackson reaches for it and groans as he reads. “You missed that, too?” I ask.
“I was supposed to talk with a recruiter there…” Frustrated, hecrumples up the paper, tossing it into the nearby recycling bin. “Crap. Ellie, I totally forgot that it was this weekend. I can’t believe I forgot.”
“Well, don’t worry about the extra credit,” I say, holding up the history test I got back today with a large B+ scrawled across the top. “Turns out I don’t need it as much as I thought, so no worries.”
“It is a cool museum, though.” Jackson relaxes and takes a bite of his sandwich. “Maybe we can get to it some other time. I’d say this weekend, but it’s that big football game.”
“A Friday-night game?” This is feeling like a flimsy excuse not to go out. Jackson’s never expressed any interest in the football team before.
“Did you not get your spot on the—” he says, continuing with something I don’t catch.
“Spot for what?”
“On the bus,” he repeats. “B-u-s,” he signs.
I appreciate the clarification, but that wasn’t my question here. I scrunch up my face, confused. “And why would we need to take a bus? Where exactly is the game?”
“It’s a couple hours away. But it’s more of an event,” he explains. “For some old tradition, there’s always one away game that the school rents buses for and everyone books hotel rooms to make a night out of it. It’s about the parties and less about the football. My cousin already got a room to share.”
“Interesting.”
I don’t really care about football. Cody played at Brandview, and I went to almost all his games. Do I really want to take a bus and root for a school I don’t care about and a bunch of players I don’t know?
“Do you want to come?” Jackson asks.
I’d be happy to never sit through another football game again. But I should at least entertain the idea. “Are there still rooms available?”
“I’m not sure. You could always just crash with us.”
Hmm, and share a hotel room?With Jackson…and his cousin. What’s the vibe here?
I’m trying to be cautious, not ready to jump into something and get my heart broken again. And a weekend away somewhere feels like the catalyst to really jump-start something…which is kind of exciting? In a very,verynerve-racking way.
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
Jackson’s face drops at my disinterest. “Yeah, but also we could maybe just do something else on the next weekend or—”
I shrug, trying to seem indifferent, but seeing his disappointment might just convince me. “It seems like it could be fun. At least it’d get me out of the house for a night.”
“Exactly,” he says with a grin. “It’d be a fun time, I promise.”
Chapter Twenty
Jackson
Wednesday night, mycousin Anthony makes the thirty-minute drive to come over for a free homecooked dinner. He didn’t always have a car with him on campus, but now that he does, he’s here whenever my mom makes her classic eggplant parmesan, which is obviously much better than anything he can get at the University of Cincinnati dining hall.
He’s offered to take me driving before, and I’d never really considered it. But tonight, I hit him with a request across the dinner table. “Do you want to teach me how to drive?” I blurt out, surprising everyone, even me.
“Oh, now you want to learn?” Anthony laughs, then looks at my parents. “No one else wanted to be stuck in the car while he’s behind the wheel?”
“I didn’t know you were thinking about that,” my mom says. “Do you thinknowis the right time, with everything—”
“Now seems fine,” I say. I’ve tried the exercises, rolling my bodyand head around in specific movements to right the ear crystals, but nothing seems to happen. Regardless, I haven’t gotten that dizzy again and seem normal enough, although Idokeep bumping into all sorts of things. The little bruises on my body are multiplying.
