Everneath. Part 11

But I was not expecting him to seek me out at lunch. I was sitting in my usual nook next to the drinking fountain when he turned the corner. He sat down on the floor against the opposite wall, facing me.

I stared hard at my knitting needles, their frantic pace nearly making them blur. What was he doing?

"Jules told me where you've been eating lunch," he said.

I nodded, but I didn't look up.

"Is this okay?" he asked.

I wanted to say no, but that answer would have required further explanation, and I didn't want that. So I nodded once.

We ate in silence. I worried about what we would say to each other, but it never came up. He didn't say another word.

When I got to Mrs. Stone's cla.s.sroom after school, Jack was already there. As I sat down, he stood.

"Mrs. Stone?"

"Yes, Mr. Caputo?"

"Do you mind if I close the door? Sometimes the commotion in the hallway is a bit distracting, for me at least, and I don't want my friends thinking they can come in here and bug me."

I looked up at Jack's face, and then at Mrs. Stone's. Jack always had a way of sounding like he was in charge of any situation.

"That's fine, Jack. I'm happy to see you so dedicated." Her eyes shifted to me as she said the word dedicated. "I hope you won't mind if I go in and out? In the course of my teacher duties?" she said with half a smile.

Jack shook his head. "No. That's fine."

"Thank you, Mr. Caputo."

Jack went to shut the door, then sat back down, and it hit me that maybe he was acting this way because of the encounter with Cole. Was I reading it right? He was protecting me. If Cole showed up again today, he'd have to go through Jack. It made my heart race.

We worked in silence for the first half hour, but I couldn't concentrate. Did I really think I could choose to Return and then just watch Jack from a distance? He wasn't going to allow it. This wasn't fair to him.

I turned toward him. "Jack, you really shouldn't be-"

"Shush. I'm trying to work," he growled. He kept his head down, but his lips turned up slightly.

A soft chuckle escaped me. The first in a hundred years. Jack stared at me, and I gasped.

"What'd you say?" he asked.

I shook my head, my mouth slightly open. I couldn't have just laughed. I didn't even have the ability anymore, did I?

"It sounded like a laugh."

"No," I said abruptly. "No. It's not funny."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you sure? Because it sounded almost as if you said something to me, and then I said something back that you found funny. And you giggled. I'm pretty sure that's what happened."

I took a few calming breaths. "No. That's impossible."

"Impossible that I said something funny?"

And there it was. I laughed again. "No. Impossible that I laughed."

His smile widened, and I laughed some more, at first because it was obviously not impossible, and then because I knew what it meant. I'd recovered enough to laugh.

Jack seemed amazed. "I think anything's possible, Becks."

And then the fleeting levity disappeared. He called me Becks. He believed anything was possible. I couldn't let him believe that. I was being selfish.

I didn't bother putting my books in my bag. I just grabbed them and took off. I could hear his footsteps behind me as I yanked the door open.

"I'll just follow you."

This made me freeze. "You don't know what you're saying."

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me around. "I let you go once, and you disappeared on me. Without a word. I'm not asking for it to be the same as it was, but I just want to know you again. Please. Can I know you again?"

I tried to wrench my hand free, and he let go of my wrist. "Becks, what happened to you? Do you even remember me?"

At that moment, I made a decision. Jack was grasping at the faint shadow of the life we'd had before, searching for a stronghold. I could see him doing it and I couldn't let him. I'd already hurt him enough. He said he'd moved on.

So I lied. The biggest lie ever.

"No." I looked at his eyes. "I don't remember anything."

He glanced away and nodded. "Okay. I get it." A ghost of a sad smile appeared on his lips, and my heart felt as if it were being choked. I fought to keep my hands at my sides. To keep them from pulling Jack to me. Placing them on either side of his face and forcing him to look at me again.

I shouldn't have come back, but looking at his face, I knew. Nothing could've kept me away. I was that selfish.

Last spring, he'd already left me before I left him. But all that mattered now was that neither of us deserved to go through it again. I had to keep him from getting close again.

Without glancing up, Jack turned and walked away. I let him go.

Then I remembered the last time I'd let that happen. And how it turned out.

LAST YEAR.

April. Two weeks before the Feed.

Jack and I stood in the parking lot of the school, oblivious to the people around us hoisting their bags onto the waiting buses. It was spring break, and the only people at the school were the ones leaving for football and cheerleading camps, and the ones saying good-bye to them.

"It's two weeks, Jack. I think we'll survive," I said.

Jack clenched both of my arms, his fingers digging in almost to the bone. His brother, Will, had shipped off for basic training right after Christmas, and Jack was having separation issues.

"I'm going to need those." I glanced at my arms.

"I don't think I should leave you." He paused. "Especially this week, of all weeks."

Jack was referring to the ongoing trial of Kevin Reid, the man accused of hitting my mother with his car. The defense was wrapping up, and a verdict would be coming in.

"It's okay, Jack. I'm not even paying attention to it."

"I know you are."

I extracted one of his hands and placed it on my cheek, leaning into it. "Two weeks."

Neither of us noticed somebody approaching. "Okay, lovebirds. The buses are waiting." Cole appeared beside us. His band had stayed on after Sundance. Apparently they were using a condo near the ski resort for songwriting. I'd run into him a few times since the night at Harry O's.

"Hey, Cole," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Max asked me to drop Meredith off." He tilted his head toward the bus carrying the cheerleading and pep squads. I didn't see Meredith, but I saw Lacey Greene watching us from one of the windows.

Lacey had spent the week leading up to football camp telling everyone who would listen "What happens at camp stays at camp," which made it sound like camp consisted of a c.r.a.ps table, tequila-lime shots, and tangled sheets.

I tried not to let it bother me that she would be staying on the same campus as Jack.

"That's nice of you," I said.

"It was on the way. I'm making some silk screens for T-shirts at the shop," Cole said, gesturing across the parking lot toward the GraphX Shop down the street.

"Making your own T-shirts? Don't you have people for that?" I asked. "Like professionals?"

"Well, I usually travel with an army of professional T-shirt makers, but today I thought I'd go it alone."

Jack didn't take his eyes off me as Cole spoke. I wasn't sure he was even listening, or aware Cole was there.

"What are the screens of?" I asked.

"Elvis Presley as a corpse. You wanna come look?" Cole gave me a grin as if he'd just asked if I wanted to see rainbows being made.

"You had me at 'corpse.'"

Jack chuckled. "Saying good-bye here. Remember?"

I turned to Jack, rose up on my tiptoes, and kissed his lips lightly. "Two weeks, Jack. It'll fly by."

I started to back up, but Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me close. "No you don't," he said. "The corpse can wait."

He gave me a kiss that was not quite appropriate for public view, and I would've been embarra.s.sed if I hadn't lost the ability to think straight. His arms reached around my back, and he pulled me in tight against him so that my feet were barely touching the ground. And things started disappearing around us, just like they did every time Jack kissed me.

He pulled back. "What were you saying about two weeks?"

"That it will feel like forever," I said, breathless.

"That's better." Jack lowered his head so his forehead was touching mine. "Miss you."

"Miss you too," I whispered.

Somehow, he finally let me go, and Cole-who had stepped away during our kiss-stood next to me as I watched the bus cough and choke its way up the hill and out of the parking lot. Before it disappeared completely, Cole tugged on my arm.

"Cheer up, Nik. You can help me splash some shirts." He released a breath of air on my face, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with a strange feeling of loss. I couldn't explain where it came from. It was as if an electrical pulse had charged the air and penetrated my skin, and I was left with the sense that something was slipping from my fingers, and I couldn't hold on to it. I clenched my car keys in my pocket, but that wasn't it. Then I jerked my head back toward the buses, and all I could think about was the way Lacey Greene had been staring at me, and how Jack was on a bus with her. And how she was equating camp to a weekend in Vegas.

"You okay?" Cole asked.

I tried to shake the feeling away. Jack was mine. There was nothing to worry about.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I turned to follow him toward GraphX. "You don't have to feel bad for me. I'm not lonely."

"Don't be silly. I don't feel bad for you. You'd be doing me a favor." As he spoke, he winked at me, and I couldn't help feeling a tingle.

"Where are your groupies?" I asked, referring to the constant entourage that usually surrounded him.

"They get in the way. Especially when I'm working with paint. Too many cooks, you know."

"Oh." I slowed down. "Maybe you'd rather-"

"You're not a groupie," he interrupted. He put his hand on my back and urged me forward. That strange feeling of loss wasn't as bad now.

The inside of the workshop smelled like fresh paint and developing chemicals. Paint spots dotted the floor and most of the walls. Two silk screens were drying on one of the industrial counters. The image on the screen was a haunting portrait of Elvis Presley, not necessarily dead, but not alive, either. The eye sockets were sunken and the cheeks hollow and ashen, the lips drawn back, exposing long teeth. Yet he cradled the microphone like a baby with one hand, and had just finished a strum on his guitar with the other. It was a beautiful rendition caught between life and death, trapped between this world and the next.

I fingered the silk screen carefully.

"Wow," I whispered. "This is amazing. Where did you find the original?"

"I drew it," he said offhandedly. He focused on the stack of T-shirts on the other counter, laying them out.

"Cole, you're messing with me! It's too..." I just shook my head as he turned to look at me. "No words."

He took a couple of steps closer to me. "I think that's the nicest review I've ever received."

And just like that, he was standing too close. I could see the glint of the iron ball on his tongue post, and before I knew it, I was staring at it.

He smiled and I quickly looked away.

"Okay, so, let's get started," I said, turning toward the T-shirts on the counter before Cole could see the pink on my cheeks.

We worked together in companionable silence for a while. I appreciated the delicate technique; the routine of the silk-screening process almost resembled an elegant dance.

"What are you going to do with the shirts?" I asked.

"We're selling them at the concert tonight."

"The Dead Elvises are playing tonight? Where?" I had only ever heard the band's CDs, since I never could afford a ticket during the festival.

"The Dead Goat Saloon, appropriately enough. We're trying out some new material." He paused as if a thought had just occurred to him. "You should come, Nik."