I’m realizing that if my mom is still up — hit with inspiration or just drifting through the house like she does sometimes — she could look out the window and see us together at any moment. And for some reason, I really, really don’t want that to happen.
It’s not that I’m not allowed to be out or that I’m not allowed around boys. It’s that she’ll ask me about it. And if I don’t talk to her about it, she’ll tell me to journal it. And if I do that, put this night down on paper, I might realize it wasn’t nearly as magical as I thought it was.
“Yeah,” Jake says, clearing his throat and looking down at his sneakers, “good night.”
With that, he turns to walk away. I open my mouth to take it back, to say something else, but I can’t. I’ve never really been that person, and I have the feeling this is the first time in my life that I’m really going to regret it.
That is, before Jake pauses, and my heart flips in my chest.
“Lara.” Jake turns around, reclaims the space in two quick steps, and stops, standing right in front of me. For a single, wild second, I think that he might be about to lean down and kiss me, but instead, he surprises me by asking, with a genuine note to his voice, “Do you want to hang out sometime? Before the state fair?”
And I surprise myself by answering immediately, excitement already building in my chest, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 4
JAKE
It’s been a month since homecoming, and I haven’t had the chance to see Lara since then.
Well, I haveseenher, passed her in the hallways at school, but after that night it was like we entered into an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t speak to each other around our peers. We even have a class together — fourth-period American Lit — but we’re never grouped up, and other than a few exchanged glances, we don’t even acknowledge one another.
Practice is grueling, with Coach pushing us harder and harder. His focus is usually on me, picking apart everything I do, his voice ringing through the rink starting to feel like the buzzer from that surgery board game. And I’m always, always messing up the operation.
When a week goes by without me getting a chance to talk to Lara, and it’s clear that we’re not going to break across our groups at school, I write my number on a sticky note, fold it, and slide it into her book when she leaves to go to the bathroom during American Lit. When she comes back, she doesn’t notice right away.
But that night, lying in bed with my math textbook open in front of me, I get a text message from her.
Lara:Maybe Connor should have watched this.
Lara:Video attachment
I tap on the attachment. It must be Lara’s living room, the TV right in the center of the shot. There are plants on either side of the screen, and there’s some sort of metal stick moving in the corner.
The program is a tree house competition, in which the contestants are building crazy structures. One has a slide, another has a working kitchen, and yet another has an escalator.
Laughing, I text her back.
Jake:Maybe they should focus on using a drill first.
Lara:I didn’t know you had such strong opinions about construction.
Jake:I didn’t know you watched competitive tree house building.
We text for long enough that I eventually roll over onto my back, holding the phone above my face, and the math textbook slides off the mattress and onto the floor beside my bed.
My room is a sanctuary in this house, fixed up by me and maintained how I like it. I built my bed to fit into the strange little alcove on the side of the room, and I installed several locks on the inside of the door that my dad doesn’t know about.
I’ve never had a reason to use them. But if I ever need them, I figure they’ll come in handy.
They mirror the locks I secretly installed on the inside of Shelby’s room, too. She never said anything to me about them, but she pocketed the key for the external lock I set up for her. I’ve noticed she locks it, too, which is a good idea since her piggy bank is in there, and I wouldn’t put it past our dad to steal from it if he runs out of money on a Friday night.
Lara sends another clip, then a laughing emoji when I ask about the metal stick in the corner of the video. She texts me a picture of what she swears will eventually be a sweater. Then she sends a picture of what her mom is making, but instead of just the project, the picture shows her mom right in the middle, holding up a square of knitting progress with pride on her face.
Eventually, I fall asleep, and in the morning, we go back to texting, her sending me a picture of her black coffee, me responding with gagging emojis.
I never struggle with what to say to her. We build up inside jokes and go back and forth. She sends me pictures of her dad mowing the lawn. I send a selfie of me in my hard hat, having given in to helping one day on the job, and it takes her a few minutes to reply.
Lara:I’m proud of you for protecting that brain.
