The Moment Before

Chapter Six

SIX

 

 

“Hey,” I say just like that. Hey. As if.

            “Brady,” he says, all startled and confused.

            His eyes are the usual bloodshot. He’s wearing a hoodie, shorts and running shoes. Dressed even less weather-appropriate than me.

            “What, were you thinking that Sabine drove this up here?”

            I don’t know what made me say that. I’m not usually so creepy. Connor straightens up, looks past me, then back at the car, then at the darkening sky. “It’s gonna dump any minute,” he says in his deep, honey-toned voice. Faulkner, I think. That’s probably what Faulkner sounds like.

            As if by magic, the first pellets of hail unload at his command. Inside my head Sabine says, What, you both too stupid to know when to get out of the rain? There’s not much else to do but climb in. Connor and me both, crawling over the moldy latte and the chem text and the notebooks.

            We sit there in silence as the shower of ice continues. He smells like boy. A faint scent of Axe mixed with mud. And because it’s Connor, there’s that whiff of weed. Me in the passenger seat, and him in the driver’s. As though we’re on a date. A couple of truants. All we need is a six of PBR. Into the growing awkward I say, “You don’t have, like, AAA or anything, do you?”

            “I didn’t know you had a license.”

            “Who says I do?”

            He nods. “I can get my stepdad’s truck. Pull this out.”

            “I sort of hoped for something like that. I, um, actually went to your house just now.”

            He turns his head now. Looks at me with squinched up forehead lines. “I heard about the whole art award thing.”

            Facebook, no doubt. The town crier. I shrug. And then I notice something glimmering in the little hoodie shadow against Connor Christopher’s face. A familiar trinket. A cross with a tiny sapphire in the middle, dangling from his earlobe.  Mutely, I point to it, and Connor reaches his thumb and fingers around it, rubbing it like a greedy person referring to money.

            “How’d you get that?”

            “She gave it to me.”

            Alliances and partnerships and secret handshakes – so many things happening under my nose. Why would my sister give Connor Christopher her earring?

            As if reading my face, he says, “It’s complicated.”

            “I’m beginning to think that I’m the one who died. And I’m in that limbo my grandparents always talk about, where nothing makes any sense at all.”   

            He says, “That why you’re not in school today?”

            “I overslept.”

            “Yeah. A lot of that going around I guess.”

            He doesn’t pursue. Doesn’t ask what I’m doing up here. A little sigh comes out my mouth. I feel my shoulders sink. Relaxation. Rest. It’s nice. So, into that space I throw a wrench. “Did you know Martha’s seeing Nick?”