Page 59 of Going the Distance
Right now, though, I felt like I could scream. Or cry. Maybe both.
“Elle? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I snapped. “God, Levi, why don’t you find somebody else to follow around like a lost puppy for a change?”
I regretted it as soon as I said it.
I had a flashback to Jon Fletcher’s party a while back, when Lee had said more or less the same thing to me, and how upset it had made me.
I didn’t mean it. I just needed to vent somehow, and Levi was just…justthere.
We’d both stopped walking, and I stared at the hurt look on his face for a fraction of a second; then I turned on my heel and stormed away before I could feel any worse about myself than I did right then.
I was starting to understand why Noah felt like punching walls and doors and lockers sometimes.
In our next class, I pretended not to even notice when Levi took a seat at the other end of the classroom instead of his usual one next to me. And when the bell rang, he left class first and didn’t wait for me.
First Noah, then Lee, and now Levi.
Was I going to push away every guy in my life that I cared about?
When lunch finally rolled around, I went to buy a sandwich and looked over at our lunch table.
There was Lee, sitting with his arm around Rachel. She was laughing at something Dixon had said, and Lee was talking over her head to Cam and Levi, and two of Rachel’s friends sat at the table, too. Warren and Oliver took a seat then, and they all stopped their conversations to say hi to them. Lisa sat down with her bagged lunch as I watched.
I stood watching them for a moment, wondering if they were waiting for me. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t there with them.
I stepped up to pay for my sandwich, and then stood looking around the rest of the cafeteria. There were so many people I would normally be happy to sit with and talk to, but none I felt like I could confide in, the way I would with Lee, or Cam, or Dixon—or Levi.
A few people looked my way and then turned to talk to their friends.
They probably weren’t talking about me, but…but what if they were? They’d been talking about me all week, so why stop now? Why wouldn’t they talk about me when I was standing here clutching my tuna sandwich and looking like a lost, lonely freshman on my first day?
I looked back at my friends at our lunch table, willing one of them to look over and see me, wave and gesture for me to hurry up already, to come sit with them.
They didn’t.
Rationally, I knew they just hadn’t noticed me yet. The same way I knew people probably weren’t talking about me, because the reality was that I was throwing myself a huge pity party. But it’s hard to be rational when it feels like you’re drowning.
I took a few shallow breaths, tossed my sandwich in the nearest trash can, and walked back out of the cafeteria.
• • •
Lee smiled easily at me as I dragged my feet over to where he’d parked his car this morning. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I got in the car and shut the door, waiting for him to get in, too.
He did, after what felt like five minutes waiting for him, and he frowned across at me. “What’s up with you today? You didn’t show up to lunch, didn’t talk to me in class, Levi said you yelled at him—”
“Lee, can we just go home? Please?”
There must’ve been something in my tone or my face that made him decide to give up trying, because he shook his head at me, sighing through his nose, totally exasperated, and threw the car into gear before pulling out of the parking lot.
The drive home was silent.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I wasn’t in the mood for anything.
I was overtired—I kept lying awake and playing back my last conversation with Noah, and all the times I thought he’d been hiding something from me, how I should’ve known something was going on. It made it impossible to concentrate—which only made me more stressed about the schoolwork I knew I needed to be focusing on. I was upset and wanted a hug, but I was so mad about everything and at everyone that I didn’t want to even give them the chance to ask me what was wrong.
