She unwraps her burger and takes a bite, then sets it down again. Outside, the concrete tables are abandoned in the cold. The early-evening light is a crisp blue; Angel wonders if it might snow.
She thinks she can sense Lizette nearby, across the road, the street obscured by the big sign for Selmo’s Muffler Services, but the distance might as well be a thousand miles. The buildings of Espa?ola are low under the darkening sky, and everything is suffused with a sad, wintry desolation. Ache spreads behind Angel’s breastbone.
What if Lizette just sees Ryan as a loser and isn’t jealous at all? What if, after all, Lizette is completely indifferent? What if Ryan is the best she can ever do?
She hands Connor a fry, which he gums into oblivion before flinging it away. Ryan hands him another.
“Don’t give him no more. I don’t want him getting a taste for fat and salt.”
Angel takes another bite of her hamburger. Connor reaches up and bats it, and she swivels out of his reach. His dimpled chin shines with drool.
“Here, let me hold him.” Ryan places his burger on the wrapper and lifts Connor from her arms. “So you can eat.”
He bounces his leg and Connor laughs, and reaches up to grab a handful of Ryan’s patchy facial hair. Ryan laughs and gently pries away the hand. “You slimed me with French fry, little guy.”
Swallowing the last bite of her burger, Angel sees them as a stranger might: a family sitting together over a meal, a beautiful laughing baby and his two young parents. Too-young parents. Despair floods her. So as to crowd out the quivering nervousness in her stomach, she finishes her fries, then Connor’s, then starts in on his burger.
“So, what’re you going to do now?” Ryan asks. “When are you going back to your school?”
Angel doesn’t answer. With difficulty, she swallows. She’s beginning to feel sick.
“Seriously,” Ryan says, animated. “Did you ask if you can go back? Did you ever talk to the principal?”
“There’s no principal. It’s not that kind of school. There’s just the president. Eric Maxwell.”
“Well, talk to that guy, then. You have to. Get your mom and dad to. Like, when I skipped a grade, it wouldn’t have happened if my mom hadn’t driven the principal nuts. They want to keep parents happy.”
“You skipped a grade? So wait, how old are you?”
Ryan flushes. “I just turned fifteen.”
“God,” says Angel.
“Don’t worry, I’m legal to drive you guys on my learner’s, because he’s my immediate family.” Connor clenches Ryan’s nose and squeals. “You got me!” cries Ryan. To Angel: “He got me!”
Angel doesn’t even fake a smile. The fact that it didn’t occur to her to challenge her expulsion—didn’t occur to her mother or her father, either—is galling.
“Why don’t you just say you’re sorry you were chewing gum?” Ryan asks. “If it’ll get you back into the program. You don’t have to mean it. People say crap they don’t mean all the dang time. Like, on my application for media camp I said I had leadership qualities. I don’t actually have too many leadership qualities.”
Angel folds the burger wrapper carefully, matching up the corners, pressing the crease flat. “But then Brianna will think it’s okay to push people around. She’ll think it’s okay to sleep with my dad and the dads of all the other girls and to be mean to this one girl who’s got the hardest life of anyone. It’s messed up.” Ryan’s gaze is steady; he’s really listening. The intensity of his attention is making her talk more, and with this awareness, she falters. “I don’t want her to win.”
He keeps looking at her, though, with kind eyes, like those of some understanding, wise animal. “Win what, though? It’s not a war. It’s not a game. It’s your life.”