“Well, don’t walk home again,” Pops said in that scolding voice. Scolding, and worried. Over the past few days, his comb-over had lost a few valiant soldier-strands desperately holding on to his scalp. Because of me? “I’m not trying to— What do teenagers say nowadays?” he asked my grandmother.
“Get all up in her biznez,” Nana said. Without cracking a smile.
“That’s right,” he replied. “We’re not trying to get all up in your biznez, Ali.”
Oh, wow. Okay. They were trying to relate to me right now. Had probably watched a news program about how to communicate with a teenager or something, and I’d bet they’d later spent hours in front of a computer screen, studying urban slang, muttering together as they deciphered words and discussed the best way to use them.
How…sweet.
Dang it! Their sweetness made me feel all kinds of guilty.
“Those woods are dangerous,” Pops continued. “Predators of the four-legged variety roam freely, and animal carcasses are found all the time.”
I recalled the Bride and Groom of Gore I’d seen. Or might not have seen. Whatever. They were predators of the two-legged variety, definitely, and I
Smiling, I traced my fingertip over the glass.
So badly I wanted her to appear. Just one more time. “I met this boy,” I told her photo. “I even talked to him a little without sounding completely idiotic. He’s beautiful and tough and…and I kind of…imagined kissing him.”
I knew she would have said something like:
And I would have laughed and told her that yes, he had, and that I’d liked it way more than a lot, and she would have said,
Make sure you pick someone really special. Someone you love, who loves you in return. Your virginity is a gift, and you can’t give it away twice. And, sweetheart, make sure you wait until you’re absolutely ready, and not just because you’re curious or because the boy will leave you for someone else if you don’t. Here’s a newsflash. If he’ll leave you over something like that, he’s using you and he’ll eventually leave you anyway.
In the next box, I found a journal, bound by scratched black leather. There wasn’t any writing on the outside, but I knew it had belonged to my mother because her perfume wafted from it. Were her secrets hidden on the inside? Reverently I cracked open the binding and read over the first page.
* * *
Will anything
Had I seen them, or had I imagined them?
Imagined, surely. Cole would never have stood outside my house, simply watching me. Plus, he didn’t know my address. I hadn’t even given it to Kat.
As lost in thought as I was, I didn’t remember to keep my head down and my gaze averted. At the back of the bus, I spotted Justin Silverstone, with his dark hair and puppy dog brown eyes.