Chapter 6
The Eastlake Branch library was quiet on Wednesday afternoons, which was exactly why they used it.
The study room in the back, glass walls, a whiteboard nobody ever used, a table big enough for four with room to spread out, was almost always available after three.
Then there was the librarian, Mr. Okafor, who would bend over backward for Cat.
If she said they needed extra time, he would make sure they got it.
If she said they needed an extension cord, he found one.
She didn’t bat her eyelashes or anything, she was just… nice. And bubbly.
Kayla got there first, which was her habit. She picked the chair facing the door, which was her father's habit, and she’d picked it up. She pulled out her history notes and her highlighters and arranged everything the way she liked, then she sat back and waited.
Cat came in two minutes later with her backpack hanging off one shoulder and a venti something from the coffee place down the block that was definitely not allowed in the study room and that she was definitely going to drink anyway.
“Don't,” Kayla said.
“It has a lid.”
“Mr. Okafor—”
“Loves me.” Cat dropped into the chair across from her. Kayla rolled her eyes. It was so true. Actually, all the teachers loved Cat, even when she hadn't done the reading, which was most of the time. “Also I have gum. Do you want gum?”
“I don't want gum. I want you to put the coffee on the floor.”
“It's not coffee, it's a caramel latte, and I’ll put it on the floor when it's empty.” Cat pulled out her history textbook and opened it to a page that was clearly not the right page. “Where are Bree and Mandy?”
“Coming.” Kayla checked her phone. No messages. “Probably.”
Cat looked at her over the top of her textbook. “You okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
“You're doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you arrange your highlighters by color and then rearrange them and then arrange them again.”
Kayla looked down. She had, in fact, rearranged her highlighters twice since Cat had sat down. She put them in a pile. “I'm fine.”
Cat looked at her for another second, with an expression that said she didn’t believe her, but she let it drop. Kayla appreciated it.
The door opened and Bree came in, backpack over both shoulders, hair in a ponytail that was slightly off-center in a way that suggested she hadn't looked in a mirror before she left the house.
Which was weird. Bree always looked in the mirror.
She had a whole system. She sat down next to Kayla, pulled out her textbook and said, “Sorry, the bus was slow,” in a voice that was even and normal and told Kayla absolutely nothing.
“Where's Mandy?” Cat asked.
“Right here,” Mandy said as she dropped into the last chair. She pulled her hair up into a knot, and looked around the table. “Okay. Chapter fourteen. The causes of World War One. Let's get this over with so we can talk about Connor.”
Kayla felt the heat move into her face before she could stop it. “We're not talking about Connor.”
“We're absolutely talking about Connor.” Mandy opened her textbook without looking at it. “He was watching you at lunch again.”
“He was not.”
“He was,” Bree said, and there was something almost relieved in her voice, like she was glad for something ordinary to talk about. “He sat at the table where he could see you from across the cafeteria and then pretended he wasn't looking every time you turned around.”
“That is not—” Kayla stopped. “How do you even know where he was sitting?”
“Because I was watching him watch you.” Bree smiled, and it was a real smile, the kind Kayla hadn't seen from her in a few days, and she felt something loosen in her chest at the sight of it. “He's so obvious.”
“He's really obvious,” Cat agreed solemnly. “It's actually kind of sweet. He's like a golden retriever who has no idea what to do with his feelings.”
“He's a junior,” Kayla said.
“That's the point,” Mandy said. “A junior. The baseball captain. Who cannot stop looking at you.” She leaned forward. “Kayla. This is a big deal.”
“My dad would disagree.”
“Your dad isn't here,” Cat said, and then immediately winced. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I just meant—”
“No, you're right.” Kayla shrugged, because it was true, and because she had learned a long time ago that flinching every time someone said something like that didn't help anything. “He's not here. But he will be eventually, and when he is, the existence of Connor will not go over well.”
“How do you know?” Bree asked. “Maybe he'd like Connor.”
“My dad,” Kayla said, with the patience of someone explaining something to a person who had never met Mason Gault, “once told a boy at Lisa's soccer game to tuck in his shirt. A boy he had never met. For no reason. Just because the shirt was untucked and it bothered him.” She looked around the table.
“Connor plays baseball. There are bats involved. My dad will not like Connor.”
The table dissolved. Even Bree laughed, properly laughed, and Cat nearly knocked over her illegal caramel latte, and Mandy put her forehead on the table and her shoulders shook, and for about thirty seconds the study room was loud enough that Mr. Okafor appeared at the glass wall with an expression of patient suffering and they all pressed their lips together and got it under control.
“Sorry,” Cat called through the glass, with her most winning smile.
Mr. Okafor pointed at the caramel latte.
Cat moved it to the floor.
He nodded and walked away.
“Okay,” Kayla said, when she trusted her voice. “Chapter fourteen. Can we please?”
They could, and they did, for about twenty minutes.
Cat read the wrong chapter and had to start over.
Bree's notes were better than anyone else's and she shared them without being asked, which was very Bree.
Mandy highlighted everything on the first two pages and then stopped highlighting anything, which meant she had stopped reading, which was very surprising.
Kayla worked through the chapter and took notes and answered Cat's questions and kept most of her attention on what was in front of her.
Most of it.
The rest of it watched Mandy.
Mandy was just performing. That was the only word for it. She’d been pretending to care about the Connor stuff; she hadn’t really been engaged. Her highlighter had been sitting uncapped on the table for ten minutes.
And she hadn't turned a page.
And once, just once, when there was a lull in the conversation, Kayla had seen her face go somewhere else entirely, somewhere far away and not good. Then she pulled it back and said something funny about the causes of World War One that made everyone laugh.
Then there was Bree. She was acting differently, too, but Bree wasn't performing.
Bree was just quieter, dimmer, like a light that was still on but had been turned down slightly.
She participated and she smiled and she shared her notes, but there was a quality of distraction underneath everything she did, a sense that part of her attention was somewhere else and couldn't quite be reached.
“Okay, I have a question,” Cat announced, pushing her textbook aside with the air of someone who had given history a fair chance and found it wanting. “And it is not about chapter fourteen.”
“Shocking,” Kayla said.
“If Connor asked you to the spring dance, what would you say?”
The study room went still.
“He's not going to ask me to the dance,” Kayla said.
“Hypothetically.”
“He's a junior. Juniors don't ask freshmen to dances.”
“They do when they're in love with them,” Cat said serenely.
“He's not in love with me. He doesn't even know me. He just—” Kayla stopped.
“Just what?” Mandy said, and there was a spark in it, something that was almost like her old self.
“He smiled at me,” Kayla said, which was not the whole truth but was enough of it. “Once. In the hallway. That's it. That is the entire situation.”
“What kind of smile?” Cat demanded.
“A normal smile.”
“Describe it.”
“Cat—”
“Kayla. Describe the smile.”
Kayla pressed her lips together. Around the table Bree and Mandy were both watching her with the same expression, waiting. Bree was leaning forward slightly. Even the dimness had lifted a little.
“It was—” Kayla exhaled. “It was slow. Okay? It started on one side and then it was… I don't know. It was a slow smile. And he looked right at me.”
The table erupted. Cat's hand hit the surface.
Bree covered her mouth. Mandy made a sound that was the realest sound she'd made all afternoon, genuine and bright and completely Mandy for about three seconds before something moved across her face like a cloud crossing the sun, and then she looked down at her textbook, and the highlighter was still sitting there uncapped, and the page still hadn't turned.
Nobody else noticed. They were all too busy reacting to the smile.
Kayla noticed.
She looked at Mandy for a moment, at the set of her shoulders, at the way she was gripping the edge of the textbook, at the smile she put back on when she looked up, which was good but not good enough, not for someone who had known her since first grade.
Kayla felt something settle into place with a quiet certainty that had nothing to do with Connor or the spring dance or chapter fourteen.
Something was wrong with Mandy. Not tired wrong. Not having-a-bad-week wrong.
Something was really wrong.
And whatever it was, Mandy was carrying it alone.
Mr. Okafor appeared at the glass wall again, this time with the expression of a man who was not entirely sorry to be delivering bad news. He opened the door. “Ladies. We're closing the study rooms in ten minutes.”
They packed up. Cat recapped the debate about Connor as she stuffed her textbook into her bag, and Bree said something about the dance that made Cat squeal quietly, and Mandy laughed… kind of.
They filed out into the main library. Mr. Okafor smiled at them as they passed. Cat thanked him for the room with the particular warmth she turned on librarians and teachers and anyone who had done her a favor, and he looked pleased despite himself.
Outside, the late afternoon light was going gold and the parking lot was mostly empty and the walk to the bus stop was three blocks.
Cat peeled off first, her mom was already waiting in a silver sedan at the curb.
She hugged all three of them and said, “Kayla. The smile. Do not forget the smile,” before she got into the car.
Bree's phone buzzed. She looked at it and something flickered across her face, quick and indistinct, and she said, “That's weird, Mom says she’s running late.” Bree looked up at Mandy and Kayla with a worried expression.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Mandy said. “Something probably came up.”
Kayla didn’t say anything. In all the time she’d known Bree’s mom, she’d never run late or forgotten anything. This was just plain weird.
“If you want, you can call your mom back and you can catch a ride with us,” Kayla offered. “My mom won’t mind.”
“No.” Bree shook her head. “Mom said she should be here in five minutes.”
It was still weird as far as Kayla was concerned. If she really thought about it, Mrs. Bowman was usually early.
“Okay.” Kayla smiled brightly. Trying to stay upbeat so that Bree wouldn’t look so worried. They all waited. Then they saw the blue Subaru pull into the parking lot. Bree let out a relieved breath. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” she said before hurrying over to her mom’s car.
That left the two of them in the parking lot outside the library in the gold afternoon light.
Mandy shouldered her backpack. “I'm sorry,” she said. “About the other day. In the hallway.”
“It's okay.”
“It wasn't.” She looked at Kayla steadily. “I was being awful and you didn't deserve it.”
“Mandy—”
“I just—” She stopped. Something moved in her eyes, something that was right there, right at the surface, and Kayla went very still the way she went still when she knew that pushing would close a door and waiting might open one.
She waited.
Mandy looked at the ground. Then back up. The thing in her eyes was still there but it was going back down, being pressed back below the surface. It was just like her mom did when dad was on a mission. But what had Mandy in such a twist?
“Mandy?” Kayla finally coaxed. She couldn’t stop herself.
“I'm fine,” Mandy said. “I promise.”
It was the same thing she'd said in the hallway.
“Okay,” Kayla said. Because pushing was not going to work, and she knew it. “Are you sure you don’t want my mom to give you a ride home?”
“It’s too far out of the way,” Mandy said for the last time. “The bus is fine.”
They said goodbye. Mandy walked to her bus stop. Kayla waited for her mom. She knew she was going to be another ten minutes because of Lisa’s play rehearsal.
She sat on the bench outside the library and stared at nothing while she waited, going over it all methodically, the way her father had taught her to go over things. No jumping to conclusions, just facts.
Mandy and Bree were distracted. No, that wasn’t right, Bree was distracted. Mandy was hiding something. She was worried. Mrs. Bowman wasn’t acting right. She’d actually been late, and in the five years Kayla had known her, that had never happened.
Cat was fine.
Mandy and Bree were both military brats like her. In fact, their fathers worked together.
That wasn’t much. But it felt like a whole lot.
There was a lacrosse game on Saturday. She’d see Bree and Mandy’s parents there. Maybe she’d see something more. Something that would explain the weirdness.
A horn honked.
She looked up. She’d missed the SUV pulling up in front of her. Lisa was waving from the backseat, her grin huge. Kayla jumped off the bench, grinning back. This is what mattered. Her family. But…
She couldn’t stop feeling like something was really wrong with her friends, and until she got that sorted, she wasn’t going to be able to truly enjoy the time she had with her family.
Dammit.