Page 39 of The Last to Let Go
“Oh. Right.” I try to laugh, but it sounds like this demented gurgling in my throat. “Let’s hope I am.”
“Hey, you never told me, where is this mysterious workplace, anyway?” she asks, a strange change of topic.
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Or you don’twantme to know it,” she counters, that edge back in her voice. “Is it classified information, or what? Top secret?”
“No, it’s not that. You can know. I only meant that it’s in my neighborhood, and I wouldn’t imagine you’d even know where it is.”
“Yet you’re still not telling me!” she says, her eyes wide, looking like they’re changing from blue to green to brown every time she raises her voice. “I thought we were finally getting to be friends?”
“Weare.”
“Well, this is the kind of basic information friends tend to know about each other. Where they live, where they work, hobbies, interests, et cetera,” she says.
“Why do you sound like you’re mad at me?”
“Because every time I see you, it’s like we’re starting from scratch. We have this big moment yesterday, and then you come in here acting like it’s the first time we’ve ever seen each other—it’s impossible to get to know you!” She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair, looking straight ahead.
It takes several seconds for her words to sink in, for me to understand what they mean. I’ve never had anyone want to know me so much that they would get mad about it.
“Okay, fine. I work at Jackie’s Coffee and Bakeshop. It’s over by Riverside Park. And I live in an apartment two blocks from there.”
“Fine. Thank you.” She unfolds her arms and pivots toward me once again. “And you’re right, I’m not sure where that is!” she shouts, though a smile brightens her eyes. “I live ten minutes north of here in one of those obnoxious subdivisions with big houses that all look alike! And I don’t have a job because I’m spoiled and my parents give me an allowance!” She pauses and takes a breath. “There, now wasn’t that fun?” she yells, throwing her arms up in the air.
I can’t stop myself from grinning. “You’re a little crazy, you know that?”
“Well, that’s the perfect amount, isn’t it?” she says.
“You’re the only person I know who can yell and laugh at the same time!”
“It’s only because you happen to be adorable and incredibly frustrating all at once!”
I open my mouth, not sure how to answer, but just at that moment Dr. Robinson appears in front of us. “Good morning, ladies.” She holds up a thick manila folder, bursting with photocopies, which I imagine can only be the test. Giving the folder a little shake, this delightful twinkle in her eye, she asks us, “So. Are we terrified yet?”
Hell, yes.
After the bell rings, and everyone is scrambling to leave, Dani waits for me by the door, and asks, “How did we do?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her as we exit the room and spill out into the noisy hallway. “At first I thought I did okay, but then after I handed my test in, I started thinking some of those were trick questions.”
“Yes, exactly!” she says, her voice carrying over the hallway chatter and the echo of lockers clanging. She walks next to me, her pace too leisurely for my comfort. “Like some of it was too logical? But then I started thinking maybethatwas the trick. To make us think that what we thought was right was too simple so we would change our answer to something more complicated, when really we had it right the first time. If that even makes sense.”
“Frighteningly, I completely followed that.”
“See? That’s why this works,” she tells me, waving her hand back and forth between the two of us. And she looks at me in this way, like she’s saying something more than what her words are telling me.
I can do nothing more than look down at my hands, studying my fingers like they’re foreign objects, the way they’re interlaced, squeezing together, twisting around one another, bone against bone.
“So, are you going to homecoming on Friday?” she asks.
I snort, thinking she has to be joking. “No, definitely not.”
“Perfect. Then, it’s settled. You’re coming out with us. Me and Tyler. Every year we go to this big party at the Spot. And usually my sister goes with us. But this is the first year she’s not here—she’s away at college—and we really need a third person. You in?”
“What’s the Spot?” I ask her.
Dani grabs my arm, making us both grind to a halt. “You’ve never been to the Spot? Okay, now youhaveto come,” she says, nudging me in the arm. “Every year they do this crazy alternative homecoming—I’m telling you, you haven’t lived until you’ve attended the Spot’s annual unhomecoming.”
