Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
As soon as we enter Corner Books, the smell of paper and dust in the air, I’m hit with a wave of longing so big it overwhelms me.
Whenever I think of books, I think of Dad.
He read to me constantly when I was a kid.
I grew up surrounded, literally, by copies of his books, pages of manuscripts he was trying to finish.
And most of the books I’ve read in the past two years are from our Father-Daughter Book Club.
He feels close enough to touch when I’m around books, but then I go back into the real world, and he’s so far away again.
“So you’re a reader reader?” I ask Marcus, speaking over the lump in my throat.
“First, I don’t know what that means,” Marcus says. “Second, it’s not for me.”
“Who’s it for?”
He doesn’t answer because Stan, the eighty-year-old man who owns Corner Books, has spotted us.
“Ah, Marcus Riddick! Back so soon?”
“I can’t get enough.” Marcus grins as the man goes behind the counter and looks around for something.
“And with a different lady on your arm this time,” Stan says with a wink. I feel myself blush down to the tips of my toes. Of course the bookstore is somewhere Marcus brings girls on dates. I should have stayed in the truck.
Marcus is trying to rectify the situation with a “Zadie’s my…” at the same time that I’m saying, “We’re just…”
But both our voices fade when Stan pulls out a copy of Little Women. It’s a leather-bound version, elegant and classic. Clearly very expensive.
I gasp. “Oh my gosh.”
“What did I tell ya?” Stan says, talking to Marcus but grinning at me. “Works every time.”
But Marcus is opening the book, flipping to the last page. I see his face fall as he lands on it.
“Not it?” Stan asks.
“What are you looking for?” I ask as Marcus shakes his head.
“Every copy of Little Women in the state, it seems like,” Stan jokes. “Ah well. Not so lucky today, I guess.”
“I’ll take it anyway,” Marcus says, pulling out his phone to pay for the book.
“You don’t have to do that,” Stan says, waving his hand. “I’ll just return it. Say my customer wasn’t happy. No harm, no foul.”
But Marcus won’t hear of it, and somehow he gets Stan to charge him for the book, and we walk out with it.
“You don’t like it?” I ask once we enter the truck, and Marcus puts the book in his glove box. I take it out before he closes the compartment.
“It’s incredible,” I say, running my fingers over the binding. “I would have loved this as a kid.”
Marcus nods. “Yeah, she would too, but she’s looking for a specific one. It’s leather-bound and has gilded pages, and it’s been written in by my mom.”
I’m confused. “She?”
“My sister. Joey.”
I wait for him to explain. “My mom used to have a copy of the book as a kid—she mentioned it in one of her letters, and now Joey wants…”
“That exact copy,” I finish.
“Something like that. I’m running out of places I can even check for used copies.”
I bite my lip, not quite sure if I should say what I want to or not. But I can’t help myself. “I thought you weren’t in touch with your mom? I thought…I mean, Jason said…”
As soon as I reveal that I’ve ever asked Jason about Marcus, I want to kick myself.
“It must have come up,” I finish pathetically.
“We’re not in touch with my mom, but, um…Joey is.”
All the joking around I’ve come to expect from Marcus, the various unreadable expressions, it’s all gone, and instead, there’s a very clear look on his face that says closed for discussion.
“That’s great,” I say, because I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a parent who leaves you intentionally but still finds time to write. Even when my dad moved, I still saw him often, heard from him all the time. Him being gone now is not a choice.
We drive in silence and then Marcus is pulling up next to my car in the school parking lot.
“You said I said something,” he says, when he stops the truck.
“What?”
“In the dream, on the boat,” Marcus says. “You said you knew what I said. What did I say?”
Ugh, it’s the last thing I want to talk about right now.
“It’s fine, Marcus. We really don’t have to get into it. I’ve moved past it.”
“See, there you are again with one of those comments.”
I’m surprised by the passion in his voice. “What comments?”
“ ‘How could I forget’ and ‘I’ve moved past it’ and ‘You know what you said,’ ” Marcus says.
“Yes, well, all those things are true.”
“What the hell did I say?” he asks.
I sigh, trying to decide whether it’s more humiliating to talk about it or not talk about it. “You said you didn’t see what Jason saw in me. I believe your exact words were ‘Why would he be interested in her?’ ”
When you’d met me one time, and I’d stupidly poured my heart out to you, I almost add.
Marcus blinks, and I wait for a denial. But it never comes.
“That was only because…”
“Oh my God. So you admit it,” I say, vindicated but also weirdly hurt, despite knowing all along that Marcus sucks as a human being. “You think I’m not good enough for Jason.”
Marcus turns so he is more fully looking at me in his truck. “Why the fuck would you not be good enough for Jason?”
I cross my arms over my chest, embarrassed by the sudden impulse to cry. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“No, seriously,” Marcus insists. “Why the fuck would you not be good enough?” And I realize for the first time that he’s looking at me as though I have three heads.
“You’re smart and funny and beautiful as fuck.
You’re the person everybody in this school wants to be, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
When I asked why he was interested in you, I was asking because you’re not his usual type. ”
My mind is still stuck on the words “beautiful as fuck,” but with a concerted effort, I say something else.
“You said he was out of my league.”
“No,” Marcus says. “I said you were out of his league. Where the hell did you hear all this?”
“Word gets around, Marcus.”
“Whose word gets around? Give me a name.”
All my intel obviously comes from Amber, but I lie. “I don’t have a specific name. It just got back to me.”
Marcus looks furious now. “Why would you not come to me with that shit? Why wouldn’t you ask me straight out?”
“We barely know each other,” I point out.
“Ask me whatever else you want to know,” Marcus implores.
But my brain is acting like it’s been taken over by a swarm of bees and all I can hear is those words again.
He thinks I’m beautiful.
“Those are all my questions,” I say, undoing my seat belt. All my bark and bite are gone. “So, um, keep me posted if you hear or see anything suspicious. Like, with the Instagram bully.”
Marcus looks like he’s fighting a smile. “That’s their name? The Instagram bully?”
“What else am I supposed to call them?”
“I don’t know, the Ring Bandit, maybe?”
Despite myself, I laugh. “We are not calling anyone the Ring Bandit.” I push open the door of Marcus’s truck.
“Fine, I’ll ask around. Keep you informed if anyone has a push pin with your face on it.”
“Ha ha,” I say, sliding out of the truck. On the signboard in front of the school, the details of this week’s game are displayed for all to see. “You know, everyone is talking about you.”
“Who’s everyone?” he asks, with none of the panic I would have at such a statement. “Same person who told you I hate you?”
I roll my eyes. “No, everyone means the entire student body,” I say. “Rumor has it, you’re starting in the match on Friday, and I for one am excited to see it.”
Marcus groans and scrubs a palm over his face.
I laugh. “Who knew Marcus Riddick could be shy?”
He doesn’t deny this statement.
In fact, all he does is call out right before I shut the passenger door. “Hey, Cartwright?”
“Yes, Riddick?” I can’t help my smile.
“If I do some investigating for you, I need you to do something for me,” he says, and one of my eyebrows skirts up. What can Marcus Riddick possibly need from me?
“Okay?”
He looks out the window, in the direction of the soccer field the team just had practice on. “Don’t come on Friday night. To the game.”
That snaps me out of any haze I’ve been in, and I’m incredulous. “What? Why not?”
“Because it’s going to be a bloodbath, and I don’t want you to see me at that level of not caring.”
I know that he’s making reference to when I told him he didn’t care about anything, but I don’t quite understand why he is.
I want to delve into a speech about how not trying is an excuse to not fail, and honestly, it’s the saddest type of failure, but Marcus just agreed to do me a favor. And he knows too many of my secrets.
So I just say, voice steady, “Silvers are the defending champions, Marcus.”
“I know that,” he says, one hand on the wheel.
“Okay, well, you’re their interim leader. And Jason loves this team.”
“You’re telling me a lot about my own team,” he says, a small smile on his face. He rubs his chin. “I just think you should spare yourself the hassle this time. There’s no way…There’s just no way…” we win. I hear his unspoken words, and I want to tell him that it doesn’t matter.
I want to climb back into his truck and argue with him, but that seems a little much, so I just nod and shut the door. Head back to my own car.
And now, in addition to who my bully is, I also have questions about Marcus.
Why does he so badly want me not to see him play?
Maybe he’s going to throw the game. I don’t really know how you can do that with so many players on the pitch, but I’m sure it happens.
Maybe I should contact Coach Kyle or something.
I decide against doing that, and then, for reasons I don’t understand, I spend the entire evening searching for used bookstores near and far that carry copies of Little Women.
I do the same thing over the next couple of nights, and then on Thursday I compile a list and text it to Marcus.
I’ve never texted him before, even though his number is saved in my phone.
He doesn’t respond at all until the next day when I send an additional Good luck with the game!
!! just before last period. I hope, implied in all the superfluous punctuation is the fact that this game is a really freaking big deal, and even if they don’t win, he has to at least try, and I’m definitely going to be there and… and…
All he says is: You promised.
So.
I guess I really am not going to the game. It feels like he’s implying that he won’t help me figure out my Instagram nemesis’s identity if I go to the game. It’s very unfair.
The only silver lining is that Amber and Mo decide not to go as well, so I invite them over for a girls’ night.
(An actual girls’ night, meaning no Talon.) It’s a mini-intervention designed to ease some of whatever pressure has been causing their squabbling lately.
And I decide it’s working when I’m washing the mask off my face and listening to my best friends laughing together in my living room as they try to learn a TikTok dance.
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my pajama shorts, and I pull it out. There’s no live stream of the match, but I’ve been keeping up with the score online, holding my breath as the Silvers beat the Buffalos 3–1.
So it’s extremely surprising when my text is from none other than Marcus.
Thanks for the links. I’m going to check them out tonight.
I could act like a normal person and wait five minutes to text him back, but screw it, I don’t.
Me: You’re welcome.
Me: I saw you won. Congrats! Seems like you really didn’t care.
A few minutes go by before he texts back.
I’m not hiding in the bathroom, watching my phone screen, waiting for his response. But I’m also not not doing that.
Marcus: Yep, we did win. Thanks to astronomical levels of not giving a shit.
Translation: I tried really hard actually.
He texts again.
Headed to dreamland anytime soon?
Me: I think so.
His response: Maybe I’ll see you there.
Is he flirting with me?
There’s something different about texting Marcus now that I know he thinks I’m beautiful. But maybe he says it to girls all the time. Maybe he means beautiful, like, mind-wise. Which is also great.
Eventually, I just write back Maybe you will, and I hope it is true.