Through to You (10 page)

“Oh, great,” she says sarcastically. “So that's how you justify it?”

I frown. “Justify what?”

“The fact that you're just leaving her!”

“I told you, I'm not leaving her. We drove separately.”

She turns and starts to walk toward the school, which makes me confused. “Hey,” I say, doubling my stride to catch up with her. “What are you doing?”

“Walking back to school.”

“It's too hot to walk back to school,” I say. “And besides, you said I could drive you.”

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind. I've decided I'm mad at you.”

“Really?” I step in front of her and block her path. Then I puff out my lip. “I'm too cute for you to be mad at.”

I see the determined look on her face falter just a little bit. And that's when I think maybe I have her. My phone buzzes with a text, and I grab it and look down. Braden.

Dad's home,
it says.
In bad shape.

I sigh. I know what that means. It means Braden wants me to go home and deal with it. But I'm in the middle of something. And so instead of responding like I usually do when Braden texts me the newest catastrophe, I just ignore it and slide my cell into my pocket.

“Who was that?” Harper asks.

“No one.”

She turns and starts to walk away again.

“Okay, okay,” I say, running to catch up. “It was my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah.”

She rolls her eyes. “Right.”

“What, you think it was some girl?”

“I don't care if it was.” She shrugs.

But I can tell she does care. This is crazy. I hardly know this girl. And yet she's somehow getting under my skin. I don't want her to think I was talking to another girl. Mostly I don't want her to leave.

“Here.” I hold my phone out to her as we walk.

“What?”

“Look in my phone. Go ahead. My brother's name is Braden. You'll see that the text came from him.”

“I'm not going to look in your phone,” she says. “That's ridiculous.”

I scroll through until I get to Braden's text, then hold it so Harper can see. She doesn't want to look, but it seems like she can't resist. She reads the text, her eyes moving slowly over the words.

“Where was your dad?” she asks softly.

“I don't know.”

She's still looking at the phone, and she licks her lips. “Why is he in bad shape?”

I shrug, not wanting to get into it. “He just is.”

She studies me for a moment, and I know it sounds odd, but it's almost like she's seeing me for the first time. It actually makes me a little uncomfortable, and for a moment I feel like I need to get out of here. But I know that if I walk away now,
I'm not going to get a second chance. This
is
my second chance, and Harper didn't even really want to give it to me. There's definitely not going to be a third.

“So,” I say, holding my breath. “You want to get out of here?”

“Where will we go?” she asks.

“I don't know,” I say honestly. “We could have another picnic.”

She grins, and then she says, “Are you going to kiss me again?”

The words coming out of her mouth are so unexpected that at first I'm a little shocked she's flirting with me. But then I can't think about anything but kissing her, and how it felt to hold her close to me.

“Maybe.”

She shakes her head. “Then I'm not going with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you're not going to kiss me, then what's the point of hanging out?”

I smile at her.

She smiles at me.

And then I grab her hand and take her to my truck.

I don't know why I forgave him. Okay, yes, I do. I forgave him because I wanted to, because I couldn't stand the thought of going another two weeks—no, another two
minutes—
without talking to him.

It was weird. When I was standing there in the stupid McDonald's parking lot, I was determined to stay away from him. I mean, I now had concrete proof he was bad news. He'd kissed me and then blown me off for two weeks—not a text, not a hello, nothing—and then I'd seen him with another girl. And if I knew anything about Sienna Malcolm, the two of them are definitely not just friends. I saw them making out in the hallway last year, the kind of making out that causes a teacher to come along and break it up.

But then Penn showed me that text message from his brother, and it was like . . . I don't know. Like I saw him as a person. A person who had more going on than I'd originally thought. And while it didn't make it okay that he'd blown me off, now it seemed less black and white.

So when he took my hand and brought me over to his truck, I let him.

“Are we skipping school again?” I ask. “Because I'm not sure if I should be skipping school again.”

“It's not skipping,” he says. “It's just . . . postponing.”

“What do you mean, ‘postponing'?”

“Well, think about it. Whatever you miss, you have to make up, right? Like, if you're not there for a test or something, then you have to make it up later. So you don't actually
skip
it. You just end up doing it later. So it's really just postponing.”

“That's the most ridiculous theory I've ever heard,” I say. “It's totally skipping, and you know it.”

“Postponing.”

“Skipping.”

“Semantics.”

“Ooh,” I tease. “The jock player knows more big words.”

“I'm full of surprises.” He turns the car on, and the air conditioner starts blasting. “So?” He turns and looks at me. “Where should we go? I'm fine going back to school if that's what you want to do. I don't want to corrupt you.”

“I don't let anyone corrupt me,” I say defiantly, even though that's pretty much exactly what I'm letting him do. I think
about it. I never got caught for skipping with him two weeks ago. But that was probably because they thought I was in the nurse's office. My first class after lunch is math, and Mr. Westwood is a stickler for attendance. If I get caught skipping class, they're probably going to call my mom, and it's probably going to become some big deal.

On the other hand, if I don't go with Penn, then I don't know when I'm going to see him again. Yes, he seems sincere. But what if he disappears again for two weeks like he did before? It's confusing.

I bite my lip and think about it.

And then I say, “Let's go somewhere.”

* * *

The Southboro Field Days are going on in the center of town, and so that's where Penn takes me. The SFDs used to have something to do with May Day, or Cinco de Mayo or something, but at some point over the years they just sort of morphed into a random event in May.

There are carnival games and rides and cotton candy and a psychic named Madame Sashi, who's definitely not psychic, because last year she told me I was going to move to India and work with aquatic animals. I tried to tell her that unless Ballard University decided to relocate to India, and unless working with aquatic animals was a new kind of choreography, she was wrong. But Madame Sashi didn't listen. In fact, she was kind of insistent. So insistent that when Anna asked her to refund my five dollars, her
assistant ushered us out of the tent and told us not to come back.

Anyway, today's the first day of the field days, and they just opened at noon. But even though the Southboro Field Days are kind of a big deal in our town, most people go at night, so there's hardly anyone here right now. It's mostly just moms with little kids. We walk around a bit, and then Penn buys me some fried dough.

“So are we going to talk about this?” I ask as we weave our way through the booths. I rip off a piece of fried dough and pop it into my mouth, letting the sweetness slide over my taste buds. Technically it's still spring, but it feels like summer, so I pull off my hoodie and tie it around my waist.

“About what?” Penn asks.

“About how you kissed me and then didn't call me for two weeks?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Something inside me feels like I'm owed more explanation.
But you aren't. You guys aren't even together. You hung out a little bit and then he kissed you. He didn't make you any promises. He didn't say he was going to call you.
That was all true. In fact, all he said when he left that night was “See you tomorrow,” and he
did
see me at school the next day. He hadn't said “
Talk
to you tomorrow” or “Text you later” or anything like that.

And it was just a kiss. Well, more like a make-out session. But still.

“Yeah,” I say. “But . . . why didn't you call me?”

He shrugs. “I had shit going on.” His eyes are dark, and his face takes on a blank expression. It's the same expression he had the other day when we ran into Jackson at the batting cages. I'm starting to realize it's the expression he gets when he shuts down and doesn't want to talk about something.

“Okay.” I eat another piece of fried dough, but this one somehow doesn't taste as sweet. I know I'm being crazy. I know I should just let it go. But I can't.

“Let me make it up to you,” Penn says, nodding toward one of the carnival booths. It's one of those games where you throw a baseball and try to knock over a pyramid of milk bottles. There are all different kinds of stuffed animal prizes hanging from the ceiling—pink puppies and yellow giraffes and baby-blue koala bears.

“You wanna play?” the red-haired kid running the game asks. He's wearing a striped porkpie hat and a neon-green shirt that says
CARNY
across the front. He tosses one of the baseballs up into the air and then catches it.

“Yeah.” Penn rummages around in his pocket.

“It's a dollar for one ball or three dollars for five,” the kid says.

“Just one.” Penn plunks a dollar down onto the wooden railing that goes around the perimeter of the booth. “That's all it's gonna take.”

“You have to knock down all three milk jugs,” the kid says doubtfully. “And you have to do it with one throw.”

“Yeah, I know how the game works,” Penn says.

The kid shrugs and hands Penn a baseball.

Penn squints at the pyramid of milk bottles, draws his throwing arm back, and lets loose. The ball hits right in the middle of the stack, and the bottle on top immediately clatters onto the wooden floor. The bottom right one falls next. And the last bottle totters for a second while we all stand there holding our breath. It balances on its edge, about to fall over, and then at the last second rights itself.

“Oooh,” the carnie says, snapping his fingers. “So close. I told ya you should've gotten those other balls.”

Penn doesn't say anything. He smiles at the kid, but I can tell he's not really amused.

“That's okay,” I say, trying to defuse the situation. “No big deal. I really don't have any place to put a giant unicorn anyway.” It's true. I've always thought stuffed animals were kind of stupid, even when I was at an age when stuffed animals were appropriate. I was never the kind of kid who had tons of them on her bed or anything like that. And besides, my room is a mess on its best day.

“Give me another ball,” Penn says, pulling out a fresh dollar. He slams it down onto the wooden railing instead of handing it to the kid, almost like he's making some kind of statement.

The kid looks at the dollar doubtfully. “You sure you don't want to do the five for three this time?”

“I'm sure,” Penn says.

The kid sighs like he's seen this all before, and then takes the money.

I figure Penn will take more time to set up his shot, but it's the opposite. It's like his body switches into autopilot, and he doesn't even think or aim or anything. He just throws the ball. A second later all three bottles go toppling to the ground.

I didn't realize I was so invested in what was about to happen, until I hear myself shout out, “Yes!”

Penn turns around and grins, then picks me up and twirls me around. His arms around my waist make me feel tiny, and the fact that he's picking me up like it's nothing is sexy.

Before he sets me down, he kisses me quickly on the lips. It's not as intense as it was when he kissed me at the park, but somehow it's better. He's doing it here, in public, where everyone can see. Not that anyone we know is at the field days. Everyone's in school. But still.

“What stuffed animal do you want?” the carny asks Penn.

Penn turns and looks at me, and I glance up at the prizes. There's a huge teddy bear that's pretty cute, and a medium-size spotted dog with floppy ears. “I'll take the dog,” I say.

The carny reaches up with this hook thing, pulls the dog down, and then hands it to me. I know I said I didn't want it, but suddenly I've never been so excited to have a stuffed animal in my life. I stroke its fur, wondering if it would be taking it too far to give my new dog a name. I always wanted a dog named Gizmo.

“I've never seen anyone win on their second try,” the carny
says to Penn. “Or even the third or fourth. You play ball?”

I expect Penn to stiffen like he does whenever anyone brings up baseball, but instead he just shrugs. “Used to.”

The carny nods, and then suddenly his eyes light up with recognition. “Hey, I know you,” he says. “You're Penn Mattingly!” A second later his excited expression turns to one of regret. “Dude, sorry about your arm. I think it's fucked up that Duke would just drop you like that. I'll bet if you hadn't gotten hurt, you would have gone pro.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Penn says, but he's already turning and walking away.

I run to catch up with him, trying not to drop my stuffed dog. It's not like it has a handle or anything, so I've got my arms around its middle, which definitely isn't conducive to maneuvering through a crowd.