Chapter 10 The Dangerous Thing About Tuesday
PENNY POV
She read the note four times before she fell asleep last night.
She read it four more times this morning.
She knows this is a problem. She knows that a girl who is smart enough to skip a grade in math should be smart enough to understand that words on a sticky note from Jake Mercer do not mean what her chest keeps trying to make them mean. She knows the difference between a boy feeling guilty and a boy actually changing. She has read enough books to know that those are two completely different things.
She folds the note. She puts it in her pocket. She goes to school.
Tuesday is quiet.
No incidents. No Derek. No laughter followed her down any hallways. Penny moves through her classes like a ghost, and for once, the ghost thing works in her favor because invisible means untouchable and untouchable means she gets to think.
She thinks about the note.
She thinks about the back of it, specifically. The part he added this morning slid under her door before six because she heard him in the hallway and held completely still on her bed until his footsteps went away.
I'm going to do better.
She wants to believe that. She is annoyed at herself for how badly she wants to believe it. She has wanted to believe things before. She believed in the first year of high school that if she just stayed quiet long enough, the teasing would stop. She believed in her sophomore year that reporting it to her homeroom teacher would help. Neither of those things worked, and believing them cost her something each time.
Believing costs. She has a limited budget.
She gets through sixth period. She picks up Lily. She helps her practice her alphabet letters at the kitchen table, three times through, because Lily keeps replacing the letter Q with what she calls a better letter that she invented herself.
"There is no better letter," Penny tells her. "Q exists. We have to learn Q."
"Q is boring," Lily says.
"Q gives us the word quiet."
Lily thinks about this. "What else?"
"Queen. Question. Quilt."
Lily gasps. "QUILT. Like my dinosaur quilt?"
"Exactly like your dinosaur quilt."
Lily picks up her pencil with renewed purpose. She writes Q eleven times in a row, getting bigger and more confident each time, until the last one takes up half the page.
Penny looks at it. "Perfect," she says.
Lily beams like she invented the alphabet herself.
Jake comes in at five-forty.
He smells like grass and sweat and cold air, and he says "smells good" to the room in general, not to Penny specifically, not to Lily specifically, just to the room, and Penny says "ten minutes" to the pot without turning around.
She hears him ruffle Lily's hair. She hears Lily launch immediately into a story about Q. She hears Jake say "wait, she invented her own letter?" in a voice that is trying very hard not to laugh.
Penny stirs the pasta.
She tells herself this is fine. This is Tuesday. Tuesday is ordinary. She is going to eat dinner, help with homework, and go to her room and not think about sticky notes or the way his voice sounds when he talks to Lily like she is the most important person in any room.
They sit at the table. All three of them.
Lily tells a story about a boy named Tomás who ate an eraser at lunch. Not by accident. On purpose. He said it looked like a strawberry. Lily's commentary on this is lengthy and detailed and includes her personal theory on why some people make poor decisions under pressure.
Jake asks, very seriously, "Did it taste like a strawberry?"
Lily says, "Jake. It's an eraser."
"But did he say?"
Lily considers this. "I didn't ask."
"Big missed opportunity," Jake says.
Penny laughs.
She doesn't plan to. It just comes out, real and sudden, the kind of laugh she can't edit before it happens. She claps her hand over her mouth one second too late.
Jake looks at her.
She stops laughing.
He doesn't look away immediately. He looks at her for one extra beat, something quiet happening in his expression that she cannot name and refuses to investigate, and then Lily says something about the eraser boy again, and he looks back at his sister.
Penny picks up her fork.
Her face is warm.
After dinner, he washes, and she dries.
This happened accidentally the first week. He washed because the sink was on his side, and she dried because the dish rack was on hers, and now it is just the thing they do. No discussion. No assignment. Just a routine that built itself out of nothing.
She is very aware of how close they are standing.
She is very aware that she is aware of it.
He hands her a pot. Their fingers don't touch. She dries it and sets it on the rack. He washes a bowl. He hands it over. She dries it. The kitchen is quiet except for water running and the sound of Lily in the other room singing something that might be a song or might be completely made up; it is hard to tell with Lily.
"She's good today," Jake says. He means Lily.
"She had a very successful Q lesson," Penny says.
He smiles. She sees it in her peripheral vision and tells herself not to look directly at it. "You're good with her."
"She's easy to be good with."
"She's really not," he says. "She once refused to eat anything yellow for an entire month. I don't know if you know how many foods are yellow."
Penny almost laughs again. She keeps it controlled this time. Contained. She dries a spoon.
He hands her the last dish.
Their fingers touch.
Just for a second. Just the edge of her hand against his. He pulls back. She puts the dish on the rack. Neither of them says anything. The water is still running. She reaches past him to turn it off, and he steps to the side to let her, and for one moment, they are closer than they have been since the night in the kitchen with the tea.
She steps back.
She folds the dish towel.
"I read the note," she says. She doesn't know why she says it. She didn't plan to.
Jake goes still.
"Both sides," she says.
She puts the dish towel on the counter, and she turns to leave the kitchen, and she makes it exactly three steps before he says her name.
She stops. She doesn't turn around. This is becoming a pattern with them, and she hates it, and also, she cannot make herself turn around.
"I meant it," he says. "What I wrote."
She stands in the doorway.
"I know you did," she says.
"Then why does it feel like you don't believe me?"
She turns around at that. He is leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, not defensive, just braced, like he is ready for whatever she is about to say.
She looks at him for a long moment.
"Because meaning it and doing it are different things, Jake."
She goes to her room.
She closes the door. She sits on her bed. She picks up her phone because she needs something normal to look at.
She has a notification.
Not a text. Not an email.
A tagged post.
Her stomach drops before she even opens it. She opens it.
Someone has made a side-by-side image. On the left is the video still from the locker room. On the right is a photo she has never seen before, someone took it through the window of the Mercer house. Through the kitchen window.
It is her and Jake.
Standing at the sink.
Close.
The caption says: lol does he know what he's standing next to
It already has forty-seven likes.
Penny puts her phone face down on the mattress.
She sits in the quiet and breathes.
And then, slowly, she picks the phone back up.
She takes a screenshot.
She opens a new folder and labels it Evidence.
She is done surviving.
She is just not sure Jake is ready for what comes next.