“Then stay,” I say.
My heart pounds crazy hard, like, I can hear it in my ears. I’ve never said anything like that to a guy before. I wonder if he knows how bad I want to keep him here, just so I can look at him. His mop of chestnut hair has a hint of curl, and it’s pretty adorable the way it falls around his ears. In geometry, he used it to hide, but he’s not doing that now. He’s letting me see him.
“Okay.” It’s apparently that easy.
Before I can figure out where to go from here, Ryan bounds into the room, tossing his backpack onto the table with a thunk. He flings himself into the chair next to me, beaming, and then launches into a convoluted story about why he couldn’t get a burrito. I must admit, while I usually love Ryan’s stories, I’m not riveted by this one. It feels like he interrupted something, though maybe that’s just wishful thinking. At the end of the epic saga, I laugh because that’s what he expects of me. Shane goes back to reading.
The other four file in, some of them late, so it’s ten past before we’re all assembled. In Green World, there’s Kenneth, aka Kenny Wu, Gwen Reave, Tara Tanner, and Conrad Loudermilk—two freshmen, one senior, and one other. Conrad is in his twenties, but for reasons known only to him, he hasn’t gone off to college yet. Instead he putters around his mom’s house and hangs out with high school people when he’s not working at the local supermarket, the P&K. Which is like an A&P, I guess, only crappier.
Gwen is the senior, which means she has a car and the sense that she’s in charge, so she orders the pizzas—one cheese, one veggie, from Pizza the Action. The main thing you need to know about this town is, it’s a small place, so the biggest name restaurant we have in town is the Dairy Queen. The whole downtown can be traversed in five minutes on foot. There’s a strip mall toward the highway, but there’s nothing shiny in there, either, mostly low-rent shops and stuff like the dollar store, only it’s not even a national franchise; it’s called Bang for Your Buck.
Anyway.
Once Gwen gets off the phone, she calls the meeting to order while studying Shane through her bangs. I can tell she’s wondering who he is. I don’t clarify. It’s not like I own him.
But he does the talking. He cants his head at me and mumbles, “She invited me. I’m Shane Cavendish.”
He doesn’t even know my name, I realize. Smooth.
“Sage Czinski.”
Nobody ever spells my last name right from hearing it pronounced, and they rarely get it when reading off a list. It’s not that hard, really: suh-ZIN-skee. But I’m prepared for a career of correcting people as I go through life. My first name is kind of strange, too, but my dad always said that when I was born, he thought I had wise eyes for a baby, so that’s why he called me Sage.
“Good to have you, Shane.” Gwen sparkles at him. She’s pretty, with blond hair and blue eyes, and good teeth from three years of orthodontia.
I’m self-conscious about mine, as I have a slight overbite, and they’re a bit crooked. Not bad enough to merit braces, but not perfect. My canines are a little too long, too, which means I get vampire jokes at Halloween. Better than every day, I suppose.