by kissing him on his neck, nibbling his ear like he'd done to me...
But I knew what would happen. Claudia would hunt me down and skin me alive. I had to leave. Should I wake him up and say goodbye? Give him a kiss on the cheek? What's the protocol for ducking out on your kinda-sorta-boyfriend in the wee hours of the morning after you went catatonic on your first date? Would he be worried if he woke up and I was gone?
I looked for a pen and paper, but I'd already seen that nothing was around. How was that possible? Did he not do homework? My room was covered in notebooks, pens, and pencils.
I opened his desk—and found a pile of pictures. Nate couldn't have been more than eleven in the one on top. He wore a baseball uniform, and his short but scruffy dark hair peeked out from under the hat's brim. With his freckles and huge gap-toothed grin, he was the poster child for All-American Boy. He faced the camera, but he was looking up at a woman behind him who had to be his mom. She was blond and beautiful, with freckles that matched her son's, eyes that gleamed with life, and a huge smile. She had her arms wrapped around Nate, and her head rested on his.
If Nate was eleven here, it had to be, what, months before the accident? Weeks?
I looked again at the grinning boy in the picture, then at the tortured DangerZone sprawled out on the bed. I wondered how different he would have been if the accident hadn't happened.
My heart broke for Nate. Of course he was tortured. Of course he smoked pot all the time and lost himself in music. How else could he deal with everything? I imagined my own mom in the hospital for five years, Karl off with some girlfriend and never around. That would be different, though, wouldn't it? Would Karl even get custody of me if that happened, or would I have to live with my dad? Either way, it was too awful to even think about. I felt so bad, I almost did jump into bed next to Nate and wrap my arms around him, not to start making out again, but just so he knew I cared.
I realized I could make a huge difference in Nate's life. We were together now. I could be his rock, the one person he could open up to about everything. I couldn't change what had happened, but if I tried hard enough, maybe I could change him. Get him a little closer to the guy that kid in the picture would have been by his junior year in high school.
It felt incredibly special that, of all the girls at Chrysella, I was the one Nate had chosen to let in. I would be there for him. I would help.
My phone chirped. It was Claudia. "Even as I speak, I'm training a cobra to find you at Nate's house and kill you."
"I'm leaving now. I swear."
I took a second to send Nate a text saying I had an amazing time, I had to take off, and he should call me later. I gave his cheek the softest kiss, then tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I didn't need to be so quiet. As I opened the door to slip out, I heard wild beeping from the media room and Thackery's sleep-deprived croak. "Starscream will bring you down, Autobots!"
So sad. I shook my head as I left, and drove to Claudia's as fast as I could.
She was waiting for me, of course. She stood on the porch and leaned on the rail, wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked, white flowy nightgown that billowed to her feet. It was a piece I knew for a fact she had never once slept in but that made her look incredibly dramatic, especially with her long black hair hanging loosely down her back. If she could have conjured up wind and a rainstorm to amplify the suffering she'd lived through by my hand, I knew she would have.
"Claudia, I am so, so sorry. I will never freak you out like that again."
"That's all you've got?"
"Pretty much. Except for the beer, the pot, the crazy making out, the Lord of the Flies mansion, the coma-mom—"
"That's it. Inside. Immediately. I need to hear everything."
We went into the living room and flopped onto the couch, each automatically pulling a quilt onto our lap. Claudia's mom