It might be a trick of the low corridor lights, but I swear I see Caz wince. “Sort of.”
“What’ssort of?”
“I—” His jaw clenches. “I mean, I still need to brainstorm and outline and … write it. But I will find a way to write it,” he adds quickly. “Promise. Trust me, Mom. I—I won’t let you down.”
There’s a long pause. “All right. Well, listen, my patient’s calling for me, but talk soon, okay? Andmake sure you focus on those essays.If you put in even half as much effort into them as you do memorizing those scripts, then—”
“I got it, Mom.”
Something like worry briefly pinches his features as he ends the call.
Then, as he spins to leave, he sees me squatting like a fugitive in the dark of the corridor, caught staring at him for the second time this evening.
“Oh,” he says, the same time I stand up and blurt out, “Sorry!” and the rest of our sentences spill over one another:
“I didn’t see—”
“I promise I wasn’t trying to—”
“It’s cool—”
“Just about to head in—”
“You’re Eliza, right? Eliza Lin?”
“Yes,” I say slowly, and even I can hear the wary edge in my voice. “Why?”
He raises a dark brow, all signs of worry now wiped clean from his face. Fast enough to make me wonder if I’d imagined them there in the first place. “Nothing. Just trying to be friendly.”
An innocuous reply. Perfectly reasonable.
And yet …
She still doesn’t have any friends here.
“Did you … hear what Mr. Lee said earlier?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to retract them. Erase them from existence completely. There are certain things you simply shouldn’t draw attention to, even if both parties are well aware of the issue. Like a bad acne flare-up. Or your homeroom teacher declaring you friendless in front of your entire class.
The fact that I don’t reallyneednew friends makes this no less embarrassing.
Caz considers the question for a second. Leans against the closest wall, so half his body is angled toward me. “Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah, I did.”
“Oh wow.”
“What?”
I let out a small, awkward laugh. “I was kind of expecting you to lie about it. You know. To spare my feelings or something.”
Instead of responding directly to that, he tilts his head and asks, his tone guarded, “Didyouhear me on the phone?”
“No,” I tell him without thinking, then cringe. “I mean—well—”
“Very nice of you to care about protectingmyfeelings,” he says, but there’s a curl of irony to his voice that makes me want to evaporate on the spot. And then an even more horrifying thought materializes: What if he thinks I’m a fan? Or a stalker? Another one of those wide-eyed, overenthusiastic classmates who follows him everywhere like a disciple, who was waiting out here just to get him all alone? I’ve witnessed it happen myself a dozen times before: students ducking behind literal bins or walls and springing on him the second he rounds the corner.
“I swear I didn’t mean to overhear anything,” I say frantically, holding up both hands. “I didn’t even know you’d come out here.”
He shrugs, his face impassive. “All right.”
“Really,”I say. “Swear on my heart.”
