At lunch she saw God waving at her across the cafeteria—no, waving her toward a table that was already packed. Claire shook her head out of habit, even smiled, but God didn’t hesitate. He stood up and jogged over to her.
“Hey, I didn’t realize you had C lunch. Come sit with us.”
Claire opened her mouth to say something, come up with some excuse that would make it clear how much she didn’t want to join a table of people she didn’t know, thank you very much. But God was too quick again.
“What else are you going to do? Sit alone?”
“Well, yeah,” she finally said. “Exactly.”
God started laughing hard and loud.
“C’mon.”
And then he started walking back to the table.
Claire knew she could easily just walk to her normal spot in the corner, a sparse table of garden-variety introverts. People who barely made eye contact, let alone risked starting up an actual conversation. She’d have to force herself toward God’s table, and it would take every ounce of strength and determination she had. But the first step didn’t. And neither did the second. And soon she was following God. Just a girl walking across a cafeteria.
“This is Claire,” God said to the table, which greeted her collectively. Leg gave her a nod but went back to the animated discussion he was having with a girl sporting hair dyed such a deep blue it was almost black.
“You’re in my language arts class,” another girl said, pushing up her chunky glasses as she spoke. “Dr. Palmer. First period?”
Claire nodded, realizing that she was still standing, and suddenly her body wouldn’t work in that same effortless way it had only moments ago. She was so concerned with trying to make her body sit down, she completely forgot the girl talking, who was looking at her friends like, Does it speak?
“Yes,” Claire forced out. “Dr. Palmer.”
“Have you seen her YouTube channel?” Leg said, suddenly interested in the conversation. It drew the girl away enough that Claire could breathe for a second and when she did, something loosened inside her.
One more breath. A second. By the third, she could sit.
“Yeah, it’s all about, like, how she and her husband make ancient weaponry.”
“She’s so fucking cool,” the girl with the glasses said.
“Like, they’re building an actual trebuchet in their backyard,” Leg said, absolutely giddy to share this information. “I keep asking for an invite to her house, but you know . . . teacher-student boundaries and all that.”
They were still talking about Dr. Palmer when God reached over and got Claire’s attention.
“So, after school. You in?”
Before, in North Carolina, Derrick liked to give her hell about her social schedule—he annoyingly called it her calendar—but she’d had the same friends since kindergarten.
She went out all the time. Driving through the warm North Carolina summer nights with the windows down. Shouting lyrics to their favorite songs. It wasn’t every single night, the way Derrick would claim, but it was pretty close.
Sometimes it rose up and presented itself to her in the middle of the night. Everything she was missing. How she wouldn’t walk across the graduation stage between the two people she’d been stuck between for nearly seventeen years—Lona Cooper and Chad Dell. It used to annoy her whenever seating charts came out at the beginning of the year, but now it made her ache for home.
“And besides, you kind of owe Dark,” God said.
“What?”
Her voice shot up unexpectedly. God laughed again. She looked up and down the table, expecting to see Dark smiling sheepishly, in on whatever gag they were trying to pull. But he wasn’t at the table—had he been?
“The rent-a-cop got him. I don’t know if he’s suspended, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“That dude’s not even a rent-a-cop,” Leg said, momentarily looking up from his phone. “More like a layaway cop.”
Some people laughed, but not God.
“I guess you don’t touch cops,” he said. “No matter if they’re rented or not.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” Claire asked.
Before God could answer, the bell rang above them, and the entire cafeteria exploded with movement, every kid pushing away from their table to beat the rush into the hallways, which would soon be choked with bodies. God and Claire didn’t move.
“Here’s the thing about Dark,” he said carefully. “They’re always on him for something. Always.”
God didn’t give Claire a chance to respond. He stood up and gave her a weak smile. “Anyway, come skating with us. It will be fun, you know?”
And just before she agreed—just before he walked away—Claire noticed the briefest flicker of worry flash across God’s face.
Chapter Five
CLAIRE GOT ON THE BUS WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT, ignoring the look of concern from the driver. Her mind drifted toward a moment that now seemed more like dream than reality.
She’d accepted a social invitation.
If Claire was being totally honest, she hadn’t planned on actually going through with it. But God and Leg had been waiting for her after school with their phones out, ready for her number and address. The whole transaction had happened so quickly that, before she could stop herself, muscle memory had taken over, and she’d fired off a text. She’d given God her address.
And now she was kind of freaking out.
But this wasn’t like the storm that raged unpredictably and inconveniently. This was more of a dull dread that refused to leave her stomach. Normally, she could hide in the carriage house and simply wait for the sun to fall and to come up again—one more day. But as she was getting on the bus, God wagged his phone in front of her face—Leg laughing beside him—and reminded her, “We know where you live.”
She got off the bus and hurried back to the house.
Inside, Derrick was watching a skating video on his phone. He mumbled a distracted “hello,” as if he too had forgotten the need for daily—if not hourly, by the minute—check-ins. So, Claire went into the kitchen, dropped a piece of bread into the toaster, and leaned against the counter, trying to figure out how she would tell him that she was not only going out, but going out with a bunch of guys she’d just met the day before.
What could go wrong?
Her toast hadn’t even popped up when there was a hard knock on the door. For a brief moment, she lied to herself and said it must be Mark-O or maybe a Mormon missionary—somebody else. But then she heard the laughter. The jostling of bodies. And that strange, empty panic returned to her stomach.
When Derrick opened the door, God and Leg fell into the room, already mid-conversation, as if both she and Derrick were up to speed.
“Yeah, but that’s not the spirit of the award, man.” Leg turned to Claire and Derrick. “Right?”
Claire flushed and searched for something to say.
Thankfully, Derrick sat down and said, “What award? You up for the Nobel Prize, Leg?”
Leg lit up like a lightning strike. “Oh, hell no. Something way better. I’m trying to letter in prom.”
This time it was Claire and Derrick’s turn to laugh.