Sawyer
“Why’d you come to see me at work?”
We’re half a block down from the library, walking along with the sun shining at our backs, and Zelda is still grinning, her face wholly consumed with the expression.
“I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Did you get lonely?”
“Lonely for you.”
She laughs out loud. “Where’d you learn to be so charming?”
I give her a shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not usually this way.”
She gives me a look, then settles into a more leisurely pace. “You’ve been pretty charming since I’ve known you.”
“You haven’t known me for long.”
“Were you, like, Dr. Jekyll before we met?”
“I don’t get to spend much time with people…people that I like when I’m in the city.”
“Oh,” she says, her smile getting somehow wider. “But you like me?”
“I do.”
“Why?” She’s teasing, her eyes shining in the sun, but I take a minute to think about the question anyway. Zelda frowns with the pause. “You don’t have to answer if you can’t think of anything.”
It’s not that I can’t think of anything. It’s that the feeling she gives me when she’s around…
“I like that you’re doing something with your life.”
“Ha!” Zelda looks both ways before we cross onto the next block. “I’m not doing much of anything. I’m back in Greenville, living with my parents—”
“You’re getting a graduate degree.”
“An online graduate degree.”
“That’s more than most people have.”
She looks back at me, the corners of her mouth turning down. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it’s okay. It’s my own fault I don’t have a degree.”
“You could still go to school.”
I think of what Domino would say if I told him I had a school schedule that was going to take up most of my time, and it’s not pretty. “Maybe.”
“You could.” Zelda’s face is wide open with possibilities. “Was there something you wanted to go into aside from…security?”
She’s so gentle with the way she asks. I know she wants to know more about my job, but I don’t want to tell her. I put a hand to my chin, rubbing at the stubble there. “I haven’t thought much about it.”
“Really?”
“Did you think for a long time about becoming a librarian?” It’s my turn to tease, and the smile is immediately back on her face, along with something more rueful.
“Are you asking if I went to college with the express intention of becoming a librarian?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“No way. I went to college to get an English degree. Somewhere along the way, I thought it would be—” She shakes her head.
“I thought it would be cool to manage archiving important documents in a city somewhere, a big city, where everything is always happening.” A cloud moves across her face.
“But when I graduated I couldn’t…I couldn’t pull the trigger on moving away. ”
“Why not?” I’ll never forget, as long as I live, the intense relief I felt when I stepped off the train on the other side of the city from my dad’s house.
It didn’t matter that I had to live in apartment complexes with crumbling walls and shitty landlords, but Zelda—she’s different.
She’s not willing to leave everything behind.
Maybe she won’t want to leave me behind, either.
The thought floats forward from the back of my mind, but I let it go by the wayside. Once she finds out about me – the real me – she’s probably not going to want to have anything to do with me. She strikes me as that kind of person. A good person.
“You know,” she says, lamely. “It didn’t seem like the right time.” There’s more to this, but she focuses on me again. “There’s really nothing you wanted to do?”
“I was pretty focused on other things when I moved out of my dad’s house.”
“Wanted to be on your own?”
“Had to be.”
“Did you like it?”
I think about all the dishes I washed, my arms up to my elbows in scalding water, the boxes I hauled for fourteen-hour shifts. “It was better than what I was coming from.”
Zelda’s lips press into a thin line, but she doesn’t press me. “It’s not so bad living at my parents’ house.”
“I wouldn’t think so. It looks like a nice place.”
“They still worry so much.”
Still worry. Still worry, like they’ve been worrying for a long time. What could a person like Zelda ever make her parents’ worry about? “Still? Were you wild as a teenager?”
Color rises to her cheeks. “No. I really wasn’t. Not until…” Her voice trails off.
“Until what?”
“I dated a guy.”
Here it is.
“Let me guess—somebody really nice.”
“No. He wasn’t.”
“Did something happen?”
“Doesn’t something always happen?”
We’re talking about the high school version of Zelda, years ago, and still my stomach curdles at the thought of anything happening to her. I can’t find the words to ask her. I don’t know if I should ask her.
“He was into doing reckless stuff, and I couldn’t get enough of him. One night—” She takes a deep breath, then squares her shoulders. “One night he had this idea to go to a bonfire up in the hills. You know the place I’m talking about?”
I do. It’s outside Greenville, a place where teens go to start bonfires and drink without the cops showing up. It also happens to be next to an abandoned quarry.
“I don’t remember why, but he wanted to walk by the quarry. I’d had a couple beers to drink, so I wasn’t…I wasn’t thinking straight, and I convinced my best friend to go with me. My…former best friend, I guess. She and I don’t talk anymore.”
“What happened?”
“He was fooling around, getting close to the edge, and I was scared, trying to pull him back, but my balance wasn’t good. Ellie was in there with us, holding onto my arm, trying to get us both out of there, but—”
“Shit.”
“Ellie and I both fell, but she fell farther.”
“But you were okay?”
“I was. I broke my leg.”
“And Ellie?”
Zelda looks stricken, but she’s trying to cover it up.
I put my hand on her chin and make her look up at me. “What happened to your friend?”
“She died.” My stomach drops. “So I try to play it on the safe side.”
I can see why.
The feeling that hits me next is so powerful I almost have to stop walking, and it almost comes out of nowhere.
I’d pull her back from any cliff. I’d go over first, if it came to that.