thing that I lived through, instead of anticipating or keeping track of it.
"How was your first day back?" Hugh asked as we were driving home. He gave me the side eye. "You appear to be in one piece."
"Mostly. It went fine." I shoved my heavy backpack between my knees. In some convoluted logic, nearly all of my teachers had decided to assign homework. I thought we were supposed to be immune from that the first day.
"I'm glad," he said. "I worried all day about how it would go." This from the person who said I'd do fine.
I sat wordlessly for a moment, watching the blurry outline of trees and street signs through the car window, the shards of sunlight falling on the sidewalk.
"You know," I said, cautiously bringing up a touchy subject, "It's such a short drive, I could easily walk."
He paused for a second, eyes fixed on the road. "Claire wouldn't like that. I'm assuming that's why you're asking me, the pushover."
"You're not a pushover," I protested. "I'm asking you because she's hardly around, and you're here. And it's probably only a ten minute walk. The school is in the center of town, I wouldn't have to set foot on any back roads." I had laid out my whole case, and now I could only wait for him to deliberate on it.
Briefly, he took his right hand off of the steering wheel to pat me on the shoulder, managing a quick grin. "I'll talk to her about it."
He had finally shaved off the wiry beard he adopted when he opened the gallery last year. His face looked ten years younger, his childish, rounded cheeks making him boyish.
"When did you shave?" I asked.
"About two weeks ago," he said, looking perplexed. "Didn't you notice?"
"Of course I did," I said, trying to act as though I had been joking. But I hadn't noticed at all before now.
The Mazda pulled into our driveway, and Hugh parked in the garage behind the house. I went in through the back door as he fetched the mail, lobbing my backpack onto the table to await later attention.
I pulled out the makings for a sandwich from the fridge, taking the bag of bread off of the top. I was suddenly starving, as I hadn't eaten during my odd lunch break. I smeared mustard on bread, and I wondered again about Henry Rhodes, the odd newcomer who had caught the attention of Hawthorne.
It definitely seemed as though he had assimilated with the popular crowd quickly, but he seemed genuinely nice. And very hot, to be honest. Possibly the cutest boy in school. Which meant I never had a chance.
Not like I wanted a chance, I protested with myself. I had more important things to focus on. And every possibility remained that his friendliness could merely be an act, and beneath it lurked another carbon copy popular boy, who rated girls on websites online and took great pride in his gelled "just got out of bed this way" hair. It did look a little too perfectly tousled, now that I thought about it.
As I finished my sandwich, I went into the office, where the only computer I had access to in the house was located. Claire and Hugh both had laptops, but they wouldn't let me touch them. My potential for internet corruption was a great source of fear to Claire. Only last year did she get rid of the persnickety child filter, and only because her work website would no longer load.
I booted the computer out of sleep mode, and navigated to Jenna's fan page. It had become a wall of people posting monthly "I miss you's" and "Come back homes". But I noticed the posts had become much fewer in the last month. There was nothing new. I turned off the monitor, the sinking feeling only lasting for a moment. I was so used to it now I just brushed it off.
I went back in the kitchen and rinsed my sandwich plate off. A pile of dishes awaited me in the sink, so I began rinsing those off to pop in the dishwasher. I shook my head. A bowl with pools of running paint held Hugh's paintbrushes, a mess against the white porcelain. He used to scold me for the same thing when I did paint-by-number books.
I glanced out of the window above the sink as I washed. Startled, I nearly dropped the plate in my hands. Bright green eyes were watching me.
It was the weird girl