I am tempted to ask him exactly what the hell his deal is. Why my picture is hanging in his room and why there’s the tiniest, invisible hook of a smile on his lips right now and why he wastes his life locked up in this big, mad, beautiful house, so ferociously alone.
But what if he answered? What if, God forbid, he trusted me enough to tell me truth, and gave me some secret that would make the Innovative Solutions Consulting Group wet its collective pants? And what if—even worse—I was stupid enough to keep his secrets?
So I shrug, doing my best impression of Jasper, and leave him standing in the half-light with a tiny indentation in his left cheek which might, or might not, be a dimple.
I’m halfway down the county road that evening when the consequence finally catches up with me. It’s standing a couple of feet past the painted white line, where the asphalt sags into dandelions and gravel, with its thumb pointed at the sky.
I hit the brakes so hard I smell rubber. “Jasper?What the hell are you doing here?”
He yanks open the passenger door and slides onto the seat with his backpack cradled in his lap and his hair standing in frazzled curls. He slams the door in a way that tells me he’s progressed from sullen to pissed sometime in the last eight hours. “I might ask you the same thing, except you’d just bullshit me so I don’t know why I’d bother.”
A lot of good lies are wasted because people go belly-up at the first sign of trouble. I hold one hand up in a peacemaking gesture, speaking in the voice I learned from the high school guidance counselor. “Okay, I can see you’re upset.” （“Upset!”） “I don’t know what’s happened, but I—”
Jasper thumps the dashboard. “Let me tell you what happened, then. Today in fifth period I got called to the principal’s office.” This would not have been noteworthy for me, who spent at least thirty percent of my brief academic career in the principal’s office, but the only time Jasper’s ever been in trouble was when Mrs. Fulton accused him of cheating because he got a perfect score on her stupid math quiz. “But when I got there Mr. Jackson wasn’t behind his desk. Instead it was this uptight corporate bitch”—a rushing sound fills my skull, along with the syrupy smell of fake apples—“who told me she was worried about you, and hoped I could, and I’m quoting here, ‘remind you of your obligations.’ What kind of mafia bullshit is that? Since when do schools let strange adults talk to students alone? She locked the door, for fuck’s sake. And she had—she said she liked my videos.” His outrage wobbles, tilting toward simple fear. “I haven’t even posted that last one yet.”
I put the truck in gear and pull back onto the road. I should be inventing some comforting cover story, but there are exactly two thoughts in my brain, swelling like tumors: first, that Jasper swears with significantly more familiarity than I’d previously suspected, and second, that I am going to dismember Elizabeth Baine and leave her remains for the fucking crows.
“What did you say to her?”
I’m not looking at him, but I can feel the seismic roll of his eyes. “I said yes, ma’am, thank you and booked it as soon as the bell rang. I’m not stupid.”
“Good boy.” It occurs to me that he didn’t run to, say, Tractor Supply Company. “And did she tell you where to find me? Where I’m working?”
His second eye roll would probably register on the Richter scale. “Did you really think I didn’t know? One of those candlesticks had an S stamped on it, for the love of God. And you’re always texting people who aren’t me—why is there someone named Heathcliff in your contacts?—and you have like zero friends. So I called Tractor Supply a month ago and Lacey told me you hadn’t worked there since February. She says she’s praying for you, by the way.”
“Wow, okay. Wow.”
“Anyway I thought it was really dumb, but like, you seemed happy and at least you weren’t getting groped by Lance Wilson anymore.”
“Hey, how did you know—it was a mutual groping, for the record.”
“A good summary of every relationship you’ve ever had.”
I feel dimly that the ref should blow a whistle and call foul on that one, because it’s not so much a comeback as a disembowelment. I’m left scooping my guts off the floor, spluttering. “As if you have any idea—you don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“I am literally begging you not enlighten me. Jesus, Opal.” Jasper sags back against the seat with a middle-aged sigh, infinitely wearied. A half mile passes in near silence, except for the rattle of the engine and the wet whine of spring peepers through the window. “I kept waiting for you to tell me what was up.” Jasper says it to the roof, his neck draped over the headrest. “The night we got pizza. The day at the movies. I thought you were psyching yourself up for it, but you never did. Instead I had to hear it from a stranger in an ugly-ass pantsuit.”