Chapter Twenty-three
Now, you may think that if you're a Gallagher Girl dating a boy from Roseville that the best thing in the world would be having Tina Walters come running up to you at breakfast, exclaiming, "Cammie, I talked to your mom, and she said we can all walk into town on Saturday!"
You may think that—but you'd be wrong.
Every moment I spent in town while it was swarming with Gallagher Girls was a moment they could see me with Josh, or Josh could see me with them. Still, I looked at Bex across the breakfast table, felt the sadness that I'd been carrying for days, and even though Liz whispered, "Cam, it's a big risk," I knew I had to go. I needed a few hours of forgetting.
Saturday morning, the suites were buzzing as girls collected their Christmas shopping lists and checked what movies were playing. (I'd already seen them both with Josh, of course.) Some of us rode into town in Gallagher Academy vans, but I chose to walk with the rest of the sophomores— amazed at how that familiar terrain looked by the light of day.
When we reached the edge of town, I started rubbing my temples. "Oh," I said, "my head is killing me. Does anybody have any aspirin?" My classmates checked their pockets and purses, but no one could find any little bottles of pills (probably because I'd stolen them all the night before).
"You guys go on without me," I said, when we reached the square. "I'm gonna run to the pharmacy." Not a lie.
"The movie's gonna start in ten minutes," Bex reminded me, but I was already walking away, calling after them, "I'll meet you in there."
As plans go, it was a pretty good one. I could spend two hours with Josh, then sneak into the back of the theater, say something about the movie on the way home, and they'd never know I hadn't been there all along.
The door dinged when I pushed inside. I'd never been to the pharmacy with Josh. It had always seemed better not to see him there. But he'd told me his dad was making him work on Saturdays, and having permission to be in town was too good an opportunity to pass up.
I walked to the counter and spoke to the woman behind it. "Hi. Is Josh here?"
"Well, hello, Cammie," a man said behind me. I turned to see Mr. Abrams walking my way. He was wearing a white smock with his name embroidered above the pocket. I felt like I was getting ready to have my teeth cleaned. "This is a nice surprise."
"Oh, hello, Mr. Abrams."
"Is this your first trip to our little store?"
"Yes, it is. It's …" I looked around at the long rows of cough syrups and greeting cards and bandages for every occasion. "…nice."
Mr. Abrams beamed. "Well, Josh just ran out to make a delivery. Ought to be right back, though. In the meantime, I want you to go over to the counter and order up any kind of ice cream you want—on the house. How's that sound?"
I glanced behind me to see an old-fashioned soda fountain stretching across the far wall. "That sounds great!" Totally not a lie.
Mr. Abrams smiled at me and started toward a set of narrow stairs, but before climbing, he turned and said, "Cammie, you come back any time."
He disappeared around a corner. I was almost sad to watch him go.
The ice-cream counter was smooth against my hands as I walked in front of the huge mirror that hung behind the bar. The woman from the counter followed me over and slipped on an apron as I climbed onto one of the old metal stools.
A sign above the bar read "Proudly serving Coca-Cola since 1942." There was a tall glass jar full of straws. The woman didn't bat an eye when I ordered a double chocolate sundae, and for the first time in weeks I felt almost normal. Outside it was November and cold, but the sun was beaming through the glass storefront, warming my skin as I ate my ice cream and fell into a dreamy, sugar-induced trance.
Then, I heard the jingling of the little brass bells above the door.
I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. The woman who'd been helping me pulled off her apron and headed toward the counter as I paused with a spoon halfway to my mouth and saw Anna Fetterman's reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
"Can you help me?" Anna said, once the clerk drew near. "I need to have my inhaler refilled."
"Sure, honey." The woman took the slip of paper from Anna's hand. "Let me go check on this. It'll just be a minute."
I was already off my stool and crouching behind an adult diapers display, when I realized that all I was really guilty of was eating a hot fudge sundae so soon after lunch, and let me tell you—Anna has seen me eat way more than that (a certain incident involving Doritos, squirty cheese, and the winter Olympics comes to mind), so I was just getting ready to go say hi, when I heard something that made me freeze.
The bells rang again, and I glanced through the shelves to see Dillon and a bunch of boys from the barn dance walk in. But they didn't walk down the aisles. No. They'd already found what they were looking for.
"Hey, don't I know you?" Dillon asked, but he wasn't talking to me. It was worse. He was talking to Anna, and he wasn't simply asking a question. His words were too sharp. His tone too predatory as he stepped closer to little Anna Fetterman and said, "No, wait, you don't go to my school." In the mirror above the bar I saw him crowd Anna against the shelves. "I bet you go to the Gallagher Academy."
Anna drew her purse to her chest as if he were going to grab it and run away. "What a nice purse," Dillon said. "Did your daddy buy you that purse?"
Anna's daddy is an eighth-grade biology teacher in Dayton, Ohio, but Dillon didn't know that and Anna couldn't tell him. She was clinging to her cover just as ardently as I was clinging to mine.
The boys around Dillon started to laugh. And just like that I remembered why Gallagher Girls and town boys aren't supposed to mix.
Anna stumbled backward, because, despite nearly three and a half years of P&E training, she could hardly swat a fly. The town was swarming with Gallagher Girls that afternoon, but Dillon and his friends had found Anna. It wasn't an accident. Anna was alone and weak, so obviously someone like Dillon would be there to try to thin her from the herd.
"I'm just here to …" Anna tried to speak, but her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"What's that?" Dillon asked. "I didn't hear you."
"I…" Anna stuttered.
I wanted to go to her, but I was frozen somehow— halfway between being her friend and being a homeschooled girl with a cat named Suzie. If I were one and not the other, I could have stopped it, but instead I told myself over and over, She'll be okay; she'll be okay; she'll be—
"What's the matter? Don't they teach you how to speak at the Gallagher Academy?" Dillon said, and I would have given anything for Anna to bite back in Arabic, or Japanese, or Farsi, but she just took another backward step. Her elbow knocked a box of Band-Aids, and it teetered on the edge of the shelf.
Anna inched toward the door and mumbled, "I'll come back for—"
But a couple of Dillon's friends stepped in front of her, surrounding her with a wall of crimson lettermen's jackets, and I couldn't see her anymore.
She'll be fine, I said again, willing it to be true. Which in a way it was, because just then the doorbells chimed, and in walked Macey McHenry.
"Hey, Anna." To my knowledge, Macey had never said more than two words to Anna Fetterman, but as she strolled through the door, her voice was light and free, and she sounded like the tiny girl's best friend in the world. "What's going on?"
The four boys parted around Anna, backing away; maybe because of the way Macey chomped her gum then blew a bubble that popped in Dillon's face; maybe because they'd never seen a girl so beautiful in person before. But Dillon didn't stray.
"Oh," he said smugly, looking Macey's amazing figure up and down. "She has a friend."
Anna looked at Macey as if she half suspected her classmate to say, Who me? I'm not her friend. But Macey only fingered the bottles on the shelves, handing Anna a bottle of vitamin C. "You should really take these."