Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,95

he was these days, said, “Yeah, I think he got bitten by a zombie.” They walked down the hall and I followed, feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Was physics my first class? Hell, I didn’t even know my locker combination.

Spitzer said something about how he was going to quit track, and all the guys nodded except me. All I could think of was The Sergeant, stalking back and forth at tryouts and pumping his fist in the air when his son made the new school record. I said, “Your dad’s really going to love that.”

He stopped midstride and stared me up and down, frowning. “Then I guess I should be glad he’s been in the ground for nine years.”

What? His dad wasn’t dead. If his dad had been in the ground for nine years, who was that at tryouts last week, giving Sphincter the thumbs-up and the New School Record shoulder rub? I felt the back of my neck burning as they all stared at me. His dad was The Sergeant, the guy who kept his son in line. He went to all the track meets and brought his own stopwatch and gave Sphincter and everyone crap for just about everything from the condition of the track to the shade of blue the sky was. I mean, I wasn’t part of Spitzer’s life for very long after the Disney Trip Debacle, but I had heard enough to know that …

The trip. The trip I’d tried to prevent. The one I’d successfully delayed by taking the air out of the Spitzers’ tires the night before. Or had I? “There was an … accident on 95?” I muttered. “In Richmond?”

Spitzer glanced at the group and waved them on, then turned to me and pushed me up against the locker. Not hard, but he got in my face. “What the hell is up with you, man?” he hissed. “Do you want me to relive it? You know damn well what happened. Or did you forget coming to the hospital to visit me every day for three months when I was in la-la land?”

I swallowed, realizing I was about three minutes away from making him Sphincter the Non-Friend again. “No. Sorry, man.”

After that I walked aimlessly and silently down the hall alone, feeling like a zombie. Of course, if Sphincter’s Army sergeant of a dad had died long before, he wouldn’t feel pressured to be on the track team. He wouldn’t have to clip his hair and stop smoking and whatever it was his father valued. And he probably wouldn’t have felt the need to get the Touch of physical perfection that would grow tumors in his body that would kill him by the end of the year.

I was so deep in thought that when I felt someone brush up behind me and tickle the back of my neck, I turned, thinking, What now? At this point, anything seemed possible.

I was right. I almost broke down right there. My knees felt loose and wobbly, like twigs.

Because standing in front of me, smiling with angelic innocence, different yet wonderfully, miraculously, marvelously the same, was Taryn.

“Hey, you,” she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

I just stared at her, stiff. I couldn’t move. She was alive. Alive, and not only that, she knew me? Could it be that even though so much had changed, our relationship hadn’t?

“Why are you staring at me like I have two heads?” she asked. She wiped her mouth. “Is my lip gloss on my chin?”

“No, you’re … you’re fine. You’re here,” I said. And I reached out to touch her, slowly, like testing a fence to see if it’s electrified. Yes, real. The skin of her wrist was warm and smooth.

She studied me. “You don’t look so good.”

I might not have looked so good, but I felt great. “I love you,” I said, taking her by the shoulders. My eyes got all wet and bleary, and I rubbed the tears away to look at her again. I never wanted to stop looking at her.

Her eyes widened. She touched my cheek. “I love you, too. Hey, are you okay? You’re worrying me.”

I just grabbed her and pulled her to me, so close that I could feel her heartbeat and she giggled in my ear. “Yeah. I’m perfect.” We stayed that way for a long time, until the final bell rang overhead.

“We’re late!” she said, pulling away from me. “Baumgartner is going to maim us.”

Baumgartner. The physics teacher. I