Klein shrugs and leans back in his seat, slings his arm over the back of his chair. “I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking.”
The room rustles uncomfortably. In the front corner of the room, Lark Pearson does one of those awkwardly obvious cough-laughs. Directly in front of me, the back of Leo Watson’s neck turns red from the collar up, and next to me, Joey Thompson drops his pencil, which is quickly followed by his notebook. My eyes travel up to Jacobsen, who’s gripping the edge of his desk so tightly, his knuckles have turned white.
“And I’m just reminding you that this is a sensitive subject,” he says. “Honesty isn’t an excuse for you to shoot off at the mouth.”
His gaze flickers over me briefly, but it’s long enough for Klein to make the association.
For everyone to make the association.
Klein whips around in his seat to catch my eye, to silently mouth, Sorry, Legs, even though the whole class can see him and knows what he’s saying.
I look away instantly. He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.
No one is all bad or all good.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO PRETEND HOSEA ISN’T IN THE ROOM AS I dance.
Hard to forget that he’s behind the piano in the corner, that with a few piqué turns, I could be standing beside him. That a few seconds after that I could sink down into his lap, tuck that stray piece of hair behind his ear and feel his hands travel across the small of my back.
But it’s as if we have some kind of unspoken agreement. Our eyes can meet in the mirror but not across the room. A nod is okay, but never a smile.
We’ve been texting since the night we kissed. We exchanged numbers when he dropped me off at my car; he asked for mine first, said I should have his, too, in case I ever needed to talk. We only text every few days and never about anything important—usually it’s just about school or something funny that happened at ballet or to simply say hello—but I smile when my phone dings with a new message and a little thrill goes through me every time I see it’s from him.
Last night I locked myself in my bedroom and stood naked in front of my full-length mirror and pictured his arms wrapped around me from behind. Keeping me warm. Safe. I twisted and turned and stretched in slow motion as I wondered how he would see me. If my breasts are too small for him or if he likes my nearly nonexistent hips the way Chris did.
Ellie probably takes everything about him for granted. Like how it feels to run her fingers through his hair, or how his kisses are the perfect combination of soft and warm and wanting. I wouldn’t take him for granted if he were truly mine. Not a single part of him.
I think about Hosea much more than I should, but when I’m dancing, all I think about is Chris.
I stand in first position next to Ruthie as Marisa guides us through plié, demi, and grand. We bend at the knee, halfway and then deeper, lifting our heels and pushing down on the balls of our feet. Perfectly synchronized because these movements are ingrained in our memory. Plié is so soothing, so methodical; it’s easy to let my mind wander. To think about him.
I’ll never forget Donovan’s face the first time he caught us behind the store. There was an old picnic bench in back, to the right and down a few feet when you walked out the door. Chris and I would sit out there on his breaks, him puffing on a cigarette and me leaning in for the occasional drag. He would straddle the bench and sit close enough for his knees to touch the side of my leg. Sometimes he would rest his big hand on my thigh; squeeze my knee and tickle me until I begged him to stop, sprinkled tiny little kisses on his stubble-covered chin.
The day Donovan caught us, Chris was practically all over me as soon as we stepped outside. We didn’t even make it to the picnic table.
He pushed me up against the wall and shoved his tongue in my mouth and I thought it was sexy. It was the way high school girls kissed their boyfriends. It was passionate and it meant he really wanted me because he was brave enough to do it where someone could walk down the alley and see us.
He had just slipped his hand under my shirt when the back door to the store creaked open. I knew without looking that it was Donovan. Chris didn’t stop right away. He kept going, kept moving his hand beneath my shirt, kept pushing his tongue around in my mouth until I pulled away. I’d turned my head to look at Donovan and immediately wished I hadn’t. His face was a blend of confusion and horror and something else I couldn’t quite place at the time, but what I later recognized as unease.
“Oh, hey, man,” Chris said, looking over at the same time he disengaged his hand from under my shirt. “What’s up?”
“Someone needs to pay for gas.” Donovan’s voice cracked as he said this, and I couldn’t tell if he was more humiliated by the fact that it happened in front of Chris or that it happened right after he’d caught us in the middle of second base.
Chris made a little clicking sound from the side of his mouth and said, “Nice work. Thanks for keeping an eye out, man.”
He gave my waist a hard squeeze, patted Donovan on the shoulder before he walked back inside. Donovan stared at me for a long, heavy moment before he followed.
Maybe I should have apologized but it’s hard to say you’re sorry when you’re not sure why you’re saying it. Donovan looked so concerned, like I was in over my head or something. But Chris was my boyfriend. And they were friends. Donovan didn’t need to worry about me. Or maybe he was just worried that having Chris around was changing our friendship.
I readjusted my shirt and smoothed down my hair and when I went inside, the store was empty again. Chris was helping Donovan choose a comic book. Any comic he wanted, on the house.
We were silent the whole way home that day. Once, I glanced over and caught him smiling and I pretended it was because he was happy for Chris and me and not because of the X-Men comic tucked under his arm. We never spoke of the incident again, never even hinted at it, but it was clear something had changed between us.
After ballet I walk back to the dressing room alongside Ruthie. She dabs at her neck and chest with the sleeve of her shrug.
“What are you doing this weekend?” I ask.
Ruthie kind of laughs and when I look over, she’s rolling her eyes. “I’m on lockdown.”
Again? Ruthie is probably grounded more than anyone I know. It’s the status quo around Chez Pathman.
“What happened this time?” I stretch my arms above my head, roll my shoulders back as we walk down the corridor of exposed-brick walls. The windows to our left look out over the bustling city sidewalks below.
“A week of in-school suspension.” Ruthie folds her shrug into a tiny square as we’re walking, so it fits neatly into her palm. “Which is so not a big deal. I mean, I sit in a room alone and finish all my work before lunch and they act like it’s punishment.”
Lainie McBride has been walking behind us this whole time. You can always tell when she’s near; she’s basically allergic to the world, so she’s constantly sneezing or wheezing or popping an allergy pill. It’s disgusting.
She catches up to us, hovering over our shoulders, and sniffs right in my ear. “In trouble again, Pathman? Don’t they take that kind of thing into consideration for summer intensives?”
“Fuck off, McBride.” Ruthie’s eyes are the iciest shade of blue, probably similar to what they look like before her fists start talking. “It’s about the dancing. Which I guess you wouldn’t know, since you weren’t supposed to be here in the first place.”