Chapter 39 The Notebook Is Gone

Chapter 39 The Notebook Is Gone

Wren

I stayed on the couch and tried to make myself take up less space.

Cole's mom was standing in the entryway still in her jacket and her eyes were on Cole and I kept my own eyes on the open book in my lap even though I hadn't read a single word since she walked in. I turned a page so it looked like I was.

"Can we talk in the kitchen?" Cole said.

His mom glanced at me once, not unkindly, just the kind of look that takes note of something and moves on. "Sure," she said.

They went in. The kitchen door didn't close all the way.

I turned another page and told myself I was not going to listen. Then Cole's voice came through the gap, low and steady, and I stopped turning pages.

"It wasn't a big deal," he said. "Tyler made something out of nothing."

"The school didn't call it nothing," his mom said.

"Someone was getting messed with at lunch. I sat next to them, Tyler came over and made a scene about it. That's the whole story."

There was a pause. A chair moved.

"Someone being who," his mom said.

"Just someone from school."

"Cole."

"It's handled, Mom."

"You said that about the Tyler situation last month," she said. Her voice wasn't raised, just tired and careful, the voice of someone who had been holding things together alone for a long time. "I need you to tell me what actually happened."

"Someone in my year gets picked on a lot," Cole said. "It happened at lunch and I didn't walk away from it. That's it."

"Is this person okay?"

"They're fine."

"Are you going to tell me who it is?"

"No," he said. "It's not my thing to tell."

I set the book face-down on the cushion beside me.

I had sat on the other side of too many conversations where people decided my situation was theirs to share without asking me first. A teacher who mentioned my mom's work schedule in front of the class. A counselor who told a group of students I was on reduced lunch because she thought it would help them understand me better. I had stopped expecting people to keep things that belonged to me.

Cole had just called it not his thing to tell and he said it like it was simple, like it wasn't even a close decision.

I picked the book back up.

His mom asked a few more questions and I caught pieces of the answers through the gap.

"Is it going to happen again?" she asked.

"I don't know," Cole said.

"Cole."

"I can't control what other people do at school, Mom."

"I'm not asking about other people," she said. "I'm asking about you. Are you going to put yourself in the middle of something that becomes a problem for this family?"

There was a pause.

"I sat next to someone who was getting messed with," Cole said. "If that's a problem, then yeah, I'll probably do it again."

His mom was quiet for a moment. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"No," he said. "I promise."

Another pause, longer this time. "Is this person in our house?" she asked.

Cole didn't answer right away.

"Cole."

"Can we just leave it?" he said.

I heard the chair move again and I looked back at my book.

His mom asked a few more things after that and Cole answered them and eventually the kitchen went quiet. I went upstairs before anyone came back out, because I didn't want to be sitting there when his mom came through and looked at me again.

I sat on my bed for a while. Then I went back down because the dishes were still in the sink and I didn't like leaving them.

Cole was already in the kitchen.

He was putting leftovers into containers, moving the way he always did at home, quiet and efficient, nothing like the version of him that existed at school. I went to the sink and ran the water.

We didn't say anything for a while.

"You heard that," he said. Not a question.

"Some of it," I said.

He put a lid on a container. "I didn't say your name."

"I know." I kept my eyes on the dishes. "Thank you."

He put the container in the fridge and leaned against the counter. The kitchen was quiet and the light above the stove was the only one on because neither of us had turned on the main light and now it felt too late to do it.

"You don't have to keep doing things like that," I said.

"Like what."

"Covering for me. Sitting next to me at lunch. All of it."

"I know I don't have to," he said.

I turned off the tap and dried my hands. Cole was looking at the counter. I was looking at the dish towel in my hands.

"Why did you do it then," I said. "At lunch. Actually."

He was quiet for a second. "Because I was in that same cafeteria two months ago when Tyler dumped something on you and I stood there and laughed." He said it evenly, not like a confession, just like a fact he had been carrying for a while. "I'm not doing that again."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"That wasn't your fault," I said eventually.

"I laughed," he said. "That makes it my fault."

"People laugh because they don't know what else to do," I said.

"Maybe," he said. "Doesn't change it."

We were quiet again. I folded the dish towel and put it on the counter and I could hear the house settling the way old houses do late at night, small creaks and shifts from the walls.

"Your mom seems like a good person," I said.

"She is," he said.

"She looked tired."

"She's always tired," he said. "She won't admit it."

I nodded. I didn't have anything to add to that because I knew what it looked like when a parent worked too hard and came home tired and tried not to show it, and it didn't seem like the right thing to say out loud.

"Good night," I said.

"Good night," he said.

I started toward the doorway and then stopped. I didn't know why I stopped. I stood there with my hand on the door frame and looked back at him.

"For what it's worth," I said, "I don't think you're just tired of being cruel."

He looked at me. "What?"

"Nothing," I said. "Good night."

I went upstairs, changed, and checked my desk for my notebook because I always put it there before dinner and I always knew exactly where it was.

It wasn't there.

I checked the bed, the floor, the shelf above the desk, the side pocket of my school bag and I went through everything twice and stood in the middle of my room with a cold, still feeling spreading through my chest.

My notebook was gone.