Page 28 of Save Us
But I still can’t shake off the queasy feeling.
It might have something to do with the fact that I’ve never lied to my sister like this before. Obviously, we have secrets from each other, but nothing on this scale. I’m going behind her back to meet a boy from her school—if she finds out that I’m doing the exact thing she warned me not to, she’ll never forgive me.
And she won’t care that Wren and I are nothing but friends—although I’m not sure that’s exactly the word for what we are. We text nearly every day, but I can count the times we’ve met in person on the fingers of one hand.
Or maybe I’m just nervous. What if I go to the wrong address, ring the wrong doorbell, or—worse still—nobody answers?
But the minute I turn onto the road Wren messaged me about, I spot a small moving van and a couple of guys heaving a sofa into a semidetached house. There are boxes stacked by the front door and on the garden path, so there’s no mistaking where I need to go. And every last doubt fades when Wren himself appears in the doorway to pick up one of the boxes. He’s wearing a sleeveless gray sports top, black jeans, and trainers. When he spots me at the edge of the road, he lifts a hand.
I walk the last little way, past the moving van and up the narrow path through the front garden up to the door, without taking my eyes off Wren—until I remember that I’m meant to be timing the route. I hastily glance at my watch.
“It’s only eight minutes from door to door,” I announce.
“Well, the maps app was clearly lying then,” Wren replies.
“Or it underestimated my superfast walking abilities.”
“Maybe it’s intended for old folks with Zimmer frames, so it adds ten minutes to every route?”
That makes me grin. Wren smiles back hesitantly and glances over his shoulder. Then he turns back to me.
“Come in.”
I take a step toward the house, but all the boxes immediately catch my eye, so I bend down and pick up one with his name on it in big black letters.
“I remember this street now,” I say, as Wren steps aside to let me in. He grabs another carton and walks upstairs without shutting the door. The white-painted steps creak as I follow him. They’re very narrow, and I have to watch where I’m putting my feet, which is anything but easy with this big box in my arms.
“Here we go,” says Wren, walking into the first room on the right. “Just put it down on the floor.”
It’s about as big as my bedroom. The walls are empty and yellowing, with a few visible cracks in the plaster that must have spread over the years. The bare floorboards are even creakier than the stairs. Every time you move, it must echo around the whole house.
“It’s…” Wren begins, and at first I think he’s hunting for the right word, but then he gives up and just shrugs.
“I think it’s cute. You could definitely do something great with it. That’s why I came over, isn’t it? I’m dressed for painting.” I gesture toward my gray joggers and loose, off-the-shoulder tee, where you can still see some of the varnish from the spice rack we did up for Dad for Christmas. My hair is in a ponytail, the end of which is tickling me between my shoulder blades.
“I’d love a bit of your optimism, please,” Wren says, looking pointedly around the room again. There’s already a bed frame in here, and a desk against the wall opposite it, beneath the window. I take the three steps over to look out.
“You’ve got a great view of the neighbors’ garden from here.” I grin over my shoulder at him. “If you ever get bored, you’ll be able to spy on them.”
“If I was that bored, I’d definitely come up with a few other things I’d rather do,” Wren says wryly.
The grin slips off my face as I think about what he might mean by “other things.” Suddenly, the images in my mind are anything but appropriate at this moment.
And to top it all off, I realize how red I’ve gone.
“I brought everything I could rustle up at home,” I say hastily, slipping my bag off my shoulder and onto the desk. One by one, I pull out masking tape and dust sheets in cloth and plastic. “Did you get the paint?”
“Yeah,” says Wren, pointing to the two tubs by the door. Then he comes over and picks up the tape.
I watch him unobtrusively from the side.
We haven’t known each other long, and he’s never told me so directly, but I can tell how hard this move is for him. Not just right now, but how he’s been over the weeks, whenever we’ve discussed it.
At first, we only kept in touch through his comments on my blog posts. Wren kept the promise he made at the charity gala and read it all. Suddenly, I was getting at least one new comment a day, even under my oldest posts. Some were only a few lines, while other times, he wrote whole essays on the way he’d never thought about how fat people are perceived, and how he’d never realized that it’s mainly the media that steer society in certain directions by what they print and the pictures they use. Some of his comments turned into conversations, starting onBellbirdand moving to private messages on Instagram. When we eventually exchanged numbers, we talked about everything under the sun. He told me what was going on at home, about his dad feeling so guilty that he can’t even look him or his mum in the eyes, about being afraid that he won’t be able to afford Oxford. I told him how hard I find it to get out of bed some mornings—not because I’m tired, but because I’m not up to facing the day—but that, ironically, those are the days when I write the most inspirational and optimistic posts.
It’s crazy the way you just click with some people. Even in the middle of the night, when the rest of the world is fast asleep.
“I think we should start by taping off the sockets,” I suggest after a while, gesturing to the roll in Wren’s hand.
