“Is tough supposed to be a synonym for bitch?” I asked.
He laughed and that hadn’t changed at all. It was one of those laughs that made you believe the joke was always on him. “Well, I was going to say angry but I suppose that’s kind of redundant, isn’t it? So what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since high school.”
“Oh, just paying a visit to my uncle. Just passing through.”
He raised his brow. “Just passing through and you’re applying for jobs at a coffee shop?”
Right. That whole thing.
I shrugged and looked around the store with a stupid smile stretched on my lips. “It’s nice here. I was surprised how much it’s changed.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s changed?” he questioned. His eyes were still clear and bright, jovial enough, but I detected something off-putting in his tone. He was testing me. And he was right to do it. We hadn’t exactly ended on good terms.
I punched his arm lightly with my free hand. So, so awkward. “You’re the one who’s changed, Camden. Wow.” I almost said “What happened to you?” but thought that was a bit patronizing. “What, uh, what’s new?”
He looked behind him at an empty table near the giggling tube-top girls who were now tight-lipped tube-top girls. They had been watching him with googly eyes and quickly averted them as soon as he looked their way.
Now, with his face coming back to mine, he looked hopeful. That was the look I recognized.
“Do you have to be somewhere? Do you want to catch up over some coffee?” he asked.
I almost said no. I almost told him I actually did have somewhere to be, even though I had nowhere to go and would just end up driving aimlessly for hours. But he smiled and the combination of those white teeth, the septum ring, and that messy hair made my heart beat against my chest, shrugging off the pills like a heavy coat.
So I said yes.
Then
The girl had somehow survived her first week of high school, though as she walked down the dust-heavy road that led to her uncle’s house, she felt that was as triumphant as surviving military boot camp. Already she’d earned the nicknames “Sir-Limps-A-Lot” (which didn’t make much sense considering her gender), “The Gimp,” and “Crippled Cow.” The cow part, of course, was for the fact that she’d gained a bit of weight since the accident. Something that was somewhat inevitable when you combined the burgeoning hormones of a thirteen-year-old and her limited ability.
To add insult to her injury, her uncle hadn’t been able to pick her up from school that Friday. To her, there was nothing as humiliating as walking along the side of a road. People had no choice but to stare at her as she went past, and she could almost hear what they were all thinking. “I wonder what happened to her. Why does she walk so funny? Why is she wearing jeans when it’s one hundred degrees outside?” She could see their curious stares as they drove past, see them forming the judgements in their heads.
She kept her head down as she walked, her eyes on the hot, rough pavement of the shoulder. Her pack began to pull on her back, weighed down with new books, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. A red car roared past, honking as it went, but she didn’t give them the satisfaction of her looking up.
“Hey, Ellie!” a voice called out from behind her. She stopped and turned, her blonde hair swirling around her face.
It was Camden McQueen, her only friend in this godforsaken town. She smiled as he trotted up to her, his figure tall and dark against the stark desert landscape.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked, his voice quietly hopeful against the sound of the cars. Even though he looked deeply disturbed with his long black hair, ghost-white face, thick glasses, and lips painted the color of tar, he was grinning at her, causing dimples to pop out on his gaunt cheeks. Looking contradictory was his game.
“If you want,” she said, sounding as blasé as possible. The truth was, she was thrilled. Not that she liked Camden in that way, after all he was her only friend and she wanted to keep it like that, but when he wasn’t in the deep boughs of manic depression, she enjoyed his company. She also felt like people never stared as much at her when she was with someone else, especially someone like Camden. He was the only person who had a worse week than she did.
“So how was your day?” he asked as they walked side by side.