She removed her hand from my arm and sat at the edge of my desk, a look of deep concern creasing a line between her brows. “Is everything okay?”
I shrugged and hoisted my heavy backpack onto my shoulder. “Sure. Why?”
She didn't look like she believed me. Not at all. And she had every right not to.
“Well”—she wet her lips with her tongue, and the act stirred that stupid thing in my pants—“I know things have been difficult … different at home, what with your grandmother passing away earlier this year and you and your mom having to move and all. So … I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”
My fingers tapped erratically against the strap of my backpack at the mention of Gramma dying of cancer. Of moving from the house I’d grown up in to live in the nasty apartment building across from the train tracks. She hadn't mentioned Sully dying or Mom losing another handful of jobs, but I guessed she wouldn't have. She didn't know about that stuff, and I definitely didn't talk about it. But I thought about it now, tacking that stuff onto the long list of heartache I'd been dealt since Grampa had had a heart attack in front of me over two years ago.
So, no, I wasn't okay. Far from it. But I wasn't going to tell her that in the event that my not okayness could lead her back to Mom.
Mom had enough problems. She didn't need my teacher to be one of them.
“Really, I'm okay,” I lied.
She tipped her head and pulled her lips between her teeth. Mrs. Henderson was the prettiest teacher I'd ever had. I thought about her a lot, especially at night and in the shower. But when she pulled her lips into her mouth like that, she looked like the Crypt-Keeper, and I smirked and made a mental note to tell Billy.
“You'd tell me if things weren't okay, wouldn't you?”
No. “Yeah, sure.”
She didn't look like she believed me, but she relented with a nod anyway. “Okay. I'll see you tomorrow.” I hurried to the door, relieved to be released, but she wasn't finished. “Oh, and, Soldier?”
Come. On.
I noisily huffed out my agitation before glancing over my shoulder. “Huh?”
“If you ever need a break, if you can't handle the work and you just need to focus on yourself and how you're feeling, let me know, and we'll figure something out. Okay? Just … just let me know.”
An overwhelming rush to tell her everything whooshed through me like the trains that passed across the street from our crappy apartment. My eyes met hers as a painful ache pressed against my chest, making it hard to breathe, and I thought maybe she could see every truth I tried to hide behind my lies. I hoped she could. I hoped she’d help and rescue me in any way she knew how. But she didn’t. She just offered a sad smile and wished me a good night, and I turned away and hurried down the hallway while I thought about how not okay I was.
***
“She did not give you a free pass from doing homework ‘cause your frickin’ grandma died,” Billy said as we pushed our bikes down the dirt path, paved between the thick brush of trees.
I cracked a grin, thinking about Mrs. Henderson’s pretty lips and sad smile. “She definitely did.”
Billy scoffed. “Nobody gave a crap when my grandpa died.”
“You jerk,” I grumbled, shoving against his shoulder. “I cared.”
“Yeah, okay, but my teachers didn't care.”
I didn't say it, but Billy had also gotten two weeks off of school after the death of his grandfather. Mom hadn’t even had a funeral or anything after Gramma died, and she had seen no reason why I should have to take off from school if she didn't get to take off from work.
Maybe I do need a break. Maybe Mom does too.
I fantasized for a minute about taking a vacation. A real one, like the ones kids at school took. I had never been to Disney World or the Grand Canyon or New York City or anything like that, but maybe that was exactly what Mom and I needed. Maybe that was why everything sucked so much—we had never gone somewhere. We had never gotten away from this crappy town and had fun. But I also knew vacations and trips cost a lot of money, and Mom barely made enough to pay our rent. She'd laugh at me if I suggested going on a vacation.
Besides, Mom didn’t even like getting up from the couch. How would I get her to the friggin’ Magic Kingdom?
Billy and I continued our walk down the path, coming closer to The Pit—a clearing in the center of the unkempt woods near our high school. It was where a lot of the kids came to chill, make out, and whatever else they wanted to do without their parents hovering over them.
Not mine, of course, but everyone else's.
Teenage chatter broke through the trees, and we stepped into the flood of sunlight. There weren't a lot of kids there today. It was only Thursday. Come Friday or Saturday, the place would be crawling with half of the student body. But, like most nights, I just needed somewhere to hang for a while before heading back to the apartment, and other than Billy’s house, this was the only place to go.
“Hey, look, it's Levi,” Billy said, dropping his bike at the edge of The Pit.
I left mine beside his. “Yeah, so?”
“Got any money?”
I couldn't help but laugh at that. I hardly ever had money. “I spent all of my money on lunch.”
“Okay”—he shrugged and dug out a ten-dollar bill from his pocket—“no biggie.”
I followed Billy to where Levi—a guy too old to be hanging out with us—stood with his arm around a hot blonde girl I didn't recognize. The guy was nineteen, six years older than me, and I stood eye-level with him.
Gramma had always said I was big for my age. Or maybe it was just that everyone else was small.
“Hey, Levi,” Billy said, talking to him like they were pals but I knew better. “Do you have any of those … you know …”
Levi looked me over, his gaze meeting mine with a hardened edge I didn’t understand. What was his problem? I barely knew him, and we never spoke, so I couldn’t figure out why the hell he’d be looking at me like he couldn’t trust me. But then, he pulled his eyes away from me to give the girl a kiss on the temple. She didn’t seem to notice though. Her gaze was on me, just as his had been, but hers lacked the judgment his held. Instead, she looked hungry as she bit her lip.
I didn't think I liked it, but then again … I found I maybe liked it a lot.
She raked her eyes over me as she asked, “What’s your name?”
I watched Billy hand his ten dollars over to Levi with a heavy dose of confusion as I replied, “Uh … Soldier.”
She laughed like she thought I was kidding. “No. Are you serious?”
That was when I decided I didn’t like her at all as I glowered at her and her sarcastic grin. “Yeah. Why?”
“Just making sure.”
She looked over me from head to toe as she licked her lips—in a different way than Mrs. Henderson had—and there came that stirring again between my legs.
“How old are you, Soldier?” she asked me.
“Thirteen.”
“Hmm, too bad,” she replied with a pout of her pink lips. “You're a really big boy.”
No. I definitely didn’t like her.
I dragged my scrutinizing glare from her and back to my friend, who was now waiting as Levi removed a plastic baggie of little pink pills from his jacket pocket.