Chapter 27: The Orange Juice

Wren

I started noticing it on Tuesday and by Thursday I could not pretend otherwise.

Tuesday on the bus Tyler said something behind me. I did not catch all of it but I heard my name, Cole shifted in his seat without looking at me and put his shoulder between

Tyler and my row. He did not make it obvious, he did not look at me when he did it. He just moved and then Tyler went quiet, that was the end of it.

Wednesday morning Jake came downstairs before me and finished three quarters of the orange juice the way he always did. When I got to the kitchen there was half a glass left sitting beside the carton.

I looked at it. Jake was eating cereal at the counter.

"I thought you always finished the juice," I said.

"Cole told me to leave some," he said. He said it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, like it had always been that way.

I poured my glass and said nothing.

Wednesday between second and third period I had been walking down the main hallway toward my next class, and Cole had been coming the other way.

He usually drifted toward the center. I stayed near the lockers. That was just how it worked but Wednesday he stayed to his side and I stayed to mine.

When we passed each other he looked at me directly for one second. He did not look away first, i was the one to look away first.

Any one of those things on its own was nothing. A coincidence, someone being decent on a random day. I knew that.

But I noticed patterns before I decided whether I wanted to. That was just the way my brain worked, it had always been that way.

So by Thursday I could not stop seeing it as a pattern.

I tried to be logical about it. I told myself I was reading into things because I was tired, lonely and living in a house that was not mine, with people I had not chosen.

That was a reasonable explanation, i used it for two days.

Then I stopped, because using it required me to pretend I was a neutral observer and I was not.

I had been in this house for a month. I had been making breakfast and listening to Jake try to explain fantasy football to me even though I knew nothing about it.

I had been watching Mia reenact dramatic scenes from books she had read and correct everyone's vocabulary at dinner. I had been leaving covered plates in the fridge for Cole's mom on late nights.

I had been sitting on the kitchen counter at midnight talking to no one in particular.

I had been writing about a girl in a house that was not hers, with a boy whose name I kept leaving blank.

I was not neutral, I had not been neutral in at least two weeks.

On Thursday night I opened my notebook to a blank page and I wrote about it.

I wrote the bus, the orange juice and the one second in the hallway when he looked at me and did not look away first. I wrote a full paragraph about what it might mean.

Then I crossed it out.

I pressed the pen hard across every line until the ink was thick over the words.

It did not help. I could still read every word through it, i knew I could. I had known before I started that I would still be able to read it. Pressing a line over something did not erase it. It only proved that the person drawing the line had been thinking hard enough about the thing to bother.

A light knock at the door. Two taps.

"Wren."

"Yeah."

"Do you want the last of the good cereal or can I have it."

Mia's voice. I almost laughed.

"Take it," I said.

"Okay." A short pause. "Are you okay in there."

"I am fine."

"You have been in there a while."

"I am writing."

"Is it going well."

I looked at the crossed-out paragraph. "It is complicated tonight."

"Good stories are always complicated," Mia said. "Goodnight, Wren."

"Goodnight, Mia."

Her footsteps went down the hall. A door opened and closed, then quiet.

I looked at the notebook.

He had left the orange juice. He had moved on the bus, He had looked at me in the hallway and not looked away first.

Those were facts. The question was what they added up to and whether I was the right person to do that calculation. I was not, i was too close to it. I had been too close for at least two weeks and I had only fully admitted that right now, sitting at my desk with a crossed-out paragraph in front of me.

I closed the notebook.

The paragraph was still inside it and readable. I had not crossed anything out. I had just made it slightly harder to look at.

That was the problem with lines. They never erased anything. They just sat over the words and told you that the person who drew them could not stop thinking about whatever was underneath.

I turned off the lamp, i got up once to get water. The hallway was dark and quiet. I passed Cole's door, no light under it. I went to the kitchen, filled a glass, and stood at the sink for a minute.

I thought about what it felt like to have someone leave orange juice in a carton without saying anything about it. I thought about what it felt like to walk down a hallway and have someone stay on their side.

It felt like being seen without being asked to explain it.

I had not felt that in a long time, i put the glass down and went back upstairs. At my door I stopped for a second, then I went in and got back into bed.

Tomorrow was a school day. The day after that was the game. Cole would play and the scouts would watch. Everything he had been working toward for three years would happen or it would not.

I would be there, i had not told him that i was going to be there.

I was not going to write about it again tonight. I was going to sleep, and in the morning I was going to make breakfast and see what happened next.

That was all I could do.

The crossed-out paragraph was still in the notebook on the desk.

I let my eyes close.