I mouthed back to him, “I-L-Y too.” Because I did.
Grabbing a seat at the back of the class next to Duckie’s empty desk, I tried to will time to move forward as quickly as possible. Not that I had anywhere to be.
I pulled the black envelope from my backpack and opened it, mentally preparing myself for whatever idiocy it contained. Inside was a black piece of paper. Written on it in messy silver swirls was simply, “Thanks for the apple. —Derek.”
Furrowing my brow, I read the note over again. Derek. The new guy. The one with the amazing eyes. How thoughtful of him. Or was it some kind of joke? Why the black stationery? I flipped the note over, searching for more words, but found nothing. So I sank down in my seat, fretting about why he’d left me a note over something as silly as an apple and not hearing a word that Ms. Naples had to say about economics. Duckie joined me after a few minutes, looking just as bored as I felt. I hid Derek’s note in my backpack, but I wasn’t sure why, exactly.
It felt like the entire world was staring at me during the next two classes. But I wasn’t sure if people were actually staring or if I just thought they were staring. By the time I got to lunch, my hands were shaking. I didn’t want to go home, but I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be anywhere, really.
When I got to the lunchroom, Duckie was waiting for me with an expectant look on his face. He wanted an apology, and he totally deserved one. The moment I reached him, I gave him a hug. “I’m sorry. I had a really bad night and I totally took it out on you.”
He hugged me back and when we parted, he wore a satisfied smile. “Just try to remember that I’m on your side, okay? I’m always on your side.”
“I will.” He walked me over to our usual spot before he went to grab our food. I tried to be as casual as possible about searching the crowd for Derek, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Duckie returned with two trays and set them on the table triumphantly. “It’s nacho day!”
In case it wasn’t obvious . . . Duckie really liked nachos.
Relieved that the tension between us had evaporated, I set Derek’s note in front of Duckie and said, “That new guy, Derek, left this on my locker.”
After reading it, he said, “That was nice.”
“Yeah, I guess. But what’s it mean?”
Through a mouthful of chips and cheese, he said, “Why does it have to mean anything? Maybe he was just being nice.”
“Why?” I looked at Duckie, and he sat there for a moment, looking at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, which was rare.
“Let’s ask him.” Duckie picked up the note and stood, then started walking toward Derek’s table.
I reached out with my right hand but missed grabbing his arm by seconds. “Duckie, don’t!”
Before I could say anything else, my best friend was standing in front of the new guy, smiling. “Hey.”
Derek looked a little more than surprised, which was a perfectly natural reaction to your first encounter with the Duckman. “Hey.”
“So Derek. Brooke and I were just discussing the nice thank-you note you left her.” Duckie tilted his head slightly just as I walked up behind him. I was hoping to drag him away before he did something stupid, but then he said, “What’s it mean?”
Too late, I guess.
Derek looked confused. “It means . . . thank you.”
“I’m sorry. He’s being stupid.” When Derek turned his blue eyes to me, my mouth went a little dry. It took me a moment to recover. “I heard you moved here a few weeks ago. From where?”
He shrugged. “A dumpy little town near Chicago. Are you new too? I hadn’t seen you around until yesterday.”
I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strand of my pink hair and wondered what he thought of it. The weird, skinny kid wearing leopard-patterned shoes and the pink-haired freak had just strolled into his world. Did he want us there? Did it matter if he didn’t? “No, I’ve been in this school system since kindergarten. I was just out for six weeks . . . for medical reasons.”
“Been there. Got the T-shirt.” A strange, almost knowing look crossed his face, and I wondered what it meant. Derek apparently inspired all sorts of questions in me.
Duckie had fallen silent, so I looked over at him. He was staring across the lunchroom at Tucker. I nudged him curiously. “What are you doing?”
“I’m willing him to talk to me. With my magical brain powers.”
Tucker was seriously cute, but it was almost a surprise that he was the object of my best friend’s affection. Tucker was everything that Duckie was not. He was straight As and student council. He was football team and track. Yeah, he might have been theater, but he was also yearbook committee.
I leaned closer and whispered, “Should I go ask him why he hasn’t talked to you yet?”
As the words left my mouth, he met my eyes with a silent Damn you because he knew full well that turnabout was fair play. He sighed, dramatically, which was the only way that Duckie ever sighed. “Okay, I’m going. But you are one sadistic person, you know that?”
As he walked toward Tucker, I said, “I-L-Y too, Duckie.”
Derek said, “You two a couple?”
I had to fight to suppress a laugh. “No.”
He nodded as if he understood. I hoped he did. There was nothing that I hated more than outing my best friend to people who didn’t know him. “His name is Duckie?”
“It’s his nickname. Kind of a long story, but we’re both pretty obsessed with this movie from the eighties called Pretty in Pink. His real name is Ronald, but no one but my parents and the old hag in the office really calls him that. Not even the teachers.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. It was okay. I knew we were weird. No need to remind me. “Is that why you dye your hair pink? Because of the movie?”
This was the part where he’d either decide that Duckie and I were interesting enough to continue speaking to in the future, or strange enough to be avoided from here on out. “No. I just did that to piss off my mom.”
He smiled at that. “What class do you have next?”
“Gym. You?”
“Chemistry.”
A weird silence fell between us. I swallowed hard, guessing our conversation was over. “Well, I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah. See ya.”
I spent the remainder of the school day thinking about that stupid thank-you note and wondering what it meant. There was no way it could have just meant “thank you.” Who sent thank-you cards anymore? It was bizarre.
After school, Duckie drove me twenty minutes to Dr. Daniels’s office. He pulled the Beast into a spot and put it in park before asking, “So should I go in with you or—”
“No.” The word had snapped out of my mouth like the crack of a whip. I immediately felt terrible for how it seemed to make Duckie feel. But he couldn’t go in with me. I didn’t want him to view me as someone’s crazy patient. It was bad enough that Dr. Daniels had stopped in my room at Kingsdale to introduce himself the day after Joy had offed herself. I didn’t talk much during that little visit. But he did. He told me that Joy had been a high-risk patient of his for a long time. He told me that suicide is contagious, but that he thought that I was stronger than Joy had been.