Chapter 13 #3
Those were the magic words. The kid looked up at me.
“A lot of people here are really nice,” he agreed. “Have you met Grandy yet? He’s the guy who runs the gas station?”
“Um, yeah,” I said. “He seemed nice enough.”
That was the politest way I felt I could respond.
Grandy had, in fact, been nice when I had met him.
He’d just been weird. But something told me that mentioning this to the kid—Auguste—was a bad idea.
I certainly didn’t want to tell him what I thought of Grandy’s question about caterpillars and butterflies.
“Yeah,” Auguste said with a grin, “he’s a little odd. But he’s super nice. Promise.”
“Oh, yeah.” I waved him off. “He was really nice to me. But, yeah. He’s a little weird.”
Auguste chuckled.
“Yeah.” He nodded before looking down at his feet again.
Since he wasn’t watching me any longer, I took a second to glance down at his outfit again.
His jeans and tank top seemed normal, but the flowery scarf he’d chosen as a belt was obviously an item that he had found in his mother’s closet or something.
I’d seen plenty of people who experimented with clothes—shedding the idea of what is boys’ clothes and girls’ clothes—all over the country.
I’d never seen a teenage guy in a small southern town do it, though.
“I, uh, like your belt,” I said.
Compulsively, Auguste’s hand grabbed the tail of the scarf and twiddled it with his fingers, though his eyes stayed down.
“Thanks.”
That’s all he had to say about the scarf.
“So, uh,” I tried to think of a way to keep Auguste talking, “what exactly is this town’s deal?”
“What?”
“Like,” I said, trying to be careful with my words, “everything’s…so different…than everywhere else I’ve been. Maybe, since you’ve lived here forever, you can tell me about everything? Um, show me around?”
“Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess.” Auguste’s eyes were suddenly fixed on something at the end of the street by the post office. “I mean, I’m kind of busy today, but tomorrow?”
“Sure.” I smiled, relieved that Auguste hadn’t scoffed at my suggestion. “I really have nothing to do, so if you—”
“Hey,” he interjected, “I have to go. I’ll come by Jack’s tomorrow morning? We can walk around together?”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Sounds good. Auguste.”
“Cool.” Auguste was already in motion, ducking past me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I turned to watch Auguste hurry away from The Pueblo and me.
He walked down the side of the road towards the post office, his head down.
A frown formed on my face as I considered how quickly he had dashed away.
Even though he had agreed to show me around town and tell me a little bit about the place, it had seemed to make him nervous.
Maybe he didn’t intend to actually show up at Jack’s the next day at all?
Maybe he had just said that as a nice way to get out of talking to someone he thought was a weirdo?
My eyes trailed along the street, looking up towards the post office, and I finally spotted what had caught Auguste’s attention when we had been standing together.
The group of teenage boys from the clearing in the woods were walking down the street towards Auguste, laughing and joking.
I started to cringe, wondering what would happen when they passed Auguste on the street.
Would they shove him? Point at his scarf belt and laugh?
As the small group of boys drew closer to Auguste, he kept his head down, staring at the road beneath his feet.
However, the boys had already taken notice of Auguste and were getting closer and closer to him.
My whole body was tensing up, waiting to see what would happen.
I’ve never really had to consider what I would do if I saw someone being bullied.
Would I run for help? Jump in and help the bullied?
Would I run and pretend I hadn’t seen anything?
I didn’t have to think about it for long. As he made his way by Starbuck’s, Auguste started to pass the group of boys. My whole body was like a board as I waited for the inevitable. But something strange happened.
“Hey, Auggie!” One of the boys announced in the distance, raising his hand.
Auguste didn’t look up from the road beneath his feet, but he raised his hand to give the other kid a high-five.
The other two boys chimed in with ‘heys’ as well, and the group of boys passed Auguste without any issue.
I frowned to myself, not unhappy with what had happened, but confused by the nice display between the boys and Auguste.
Possibly was so weird.
But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
When I got back to Jack’s place, he was nowhere to be found, yet again.
I checked the floor by his bedroom door.
He hadn’t left me a note. I could hear him moving around in his room, so I almost knocked to make sure that he was okay.
That we were okay. Instead, I went up to my room and checked my phone.
No messages.
No calls.
No signal.
I climbed up and sat on my bed and stared out the window at Possibly.