What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,32
stay sick, wouldn’t I be crying too?”
Angie nodded.
“So, I’m not crying. After she takes you to school, your mom is coming right back here. And Rob is here. And I’m here. And we’ll take care of her.”
My sister’s gaze focused on Juliet. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
Mom cleared her throat. “Let’s give Allie some time alone with her friends. We’ll be back soon.”
When my sister was gone and the door closed, I asked Juliet, “Are you psychic or a sociopath? Nail polish?”
She looked at me as if I were the one who’d been body-snatched. “I’m logical, Allie. I figured that she would be here, and I figured she would be upset the first time she saw you.”
“You’re good.”
She didn’t respond. No, having performed a magic trick, Juliet then decided to disappear down a rabbit hole. Poof! How convenient! Yes, it seemed that she’d forgotten she had to be somewhere right at that moment, somewhere else. She started busily fussing with her hair and her jeans. If body language could be translated into speech, Juliet’s would have announced: Well, my work here is done. Attempting to muddy the brain of a drugged, post-surgical girl was my mission, and now I’m history.
She kissed me. Her “love you” was light, the drop of a leaf.
The door closed.
I waited for Rob to say something. Finally he did. Of course, they were the words every girl fantasizes when she wants to stab herself through her own heart. “Allie. I hate to do this.”
“Don’t then.”
“I have to.”
“Just don’t.”
“I don’t think I’m good enough for you, Allie. Not after what happened last night.”
“What really did happen?”
“I heard the car. And he was coming right at me. And I …”
“And you let me go. You dropped the rope to get away.”
He stared down at the floor and squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah. Which is why I can’t be with you. I don’t even have the right to be your friend.”
I forced myself to take a deep breath. “Everybody gets scared Rob. You acted out of instinct. You knew I could take care of myself.” The words sounded as if someone else were speaking them. I couldn’t tell if it was the drugs or the pain.
He shook his head, still avoiding my gaze. “I should have held on to you. No matter what. But I let go.”
“Well, I shouldn’t do Parkour if I can’t take care of myself,” I said quietly. Maybe it was the drugs, but I added the thing you should never say, even if you’re being tortured. “Don’t you want to be with me?”
Rob straightened and shrugged. Finally he looked me in the eye. “The question is, how could you want to be with me? Shh. Don’t answer.” He leaned over and kissed my hair. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I have a lot of thinking to do.”
Rob bit the inside of his cheek. “Okay. That makes sense,” he said. I watched him leave. The door closed behind him. We were no longer the tres compadres or even a Tribe of Two. I was alone: a Tribe of One, a single Dark Star.
Maybe it’s not possible to experience a broken heart when you’ve had a mutually exclusive relationship for less than thirty minutes. But that’s how it felt.
Still, I had pride. I used it like a fossil fuel. I ran on it. Every time I seemed certain to scream or wail or sob if Rob hadn’t called (not to mention Juliet, for whom I’d wrestled with the kind of feelings you have for freshwater sharks and Ebola virus), I topped off my pride tank and kept going. Like Juliet, I went on sabbatical. I vanished for the rest of the summer.
I’d left the proverbial balls in their courts. They had to make the first moves. I’d done what I could. Besides, I was the one with the freaking broken arm.
Another dull night.
Another sleepless day.
More pain in my arm. More painkillers to numb it.
If being in my room for basically eight weeks didn’t do much for my mood or sanity, it did do a great deal for my mind in other ways—good, bad, and pathetically useful. I became the living authority on Ellen and the newest incarnation of Oprah. I learned all the things even smart people will do to fawn on celebrities. I learned how dysfunctional families will rip each other to shreds for a piece of the limelight. On one show, a woman who’d married her daughter’s boyfriend revealed her pregnancy. How would