Roxie’s hands go to her hips, and her lips part as if to protest, but Sawyer ignores them both. He reaches out and strokes my shoulder. “How’s it going so far? You taking it easy?”
BFF Sarah rolls her eyes, mutters, “Whatever,” and walks out the door, then stands in the hallway waiting for Roxie.
“It’s good,” I say. My mouth has gone completely dry from the tension.
Finally Roxie turns and leaves, letting the door close hard behind her.
I press my lips together and form a smile. “That went well.”
“I don’t want to talk about them,” Sawyer says. He leans toward me and slides a warm hand along my cheek, sinking his fingers into my hair and pulling me close. I close my eyes and our mouths meet. Blood pounds through his fingers and lips, echoing in my ears. My head spins with all kinds of surprising thoughts as my fingers explore his shoulders through his shirt. Thoughts like how I saw his bare, bony torso once when the boys played shirts and skins in fifth grade, and now, even though he’s still lean, his sinewy arms and back are roped with muscle, and I really want to see that chest once more.
When I come to my senses and realize the trouble we’ll be in if Mr. Polselli walks in right now, I reluctantly pull back, a little breathless.
Sawyer opens his eyes. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that.” He pulls his fingers from my hair and smooths it back into place.
“Tell me about it,” I say, and then I get a little shy, because here we are, in school, having hardly spoken to each other for years, and now we’re making out. In a way everything with Sawyer is so new and raw, but in another way, it feels like the most natural progression. We were so close before, and I still feel like I know him, you know?
“So . . .” I say, still tasting him on my lips. “Are we, like, going public with this? And if so, is that a good idea?”
He grins. “I’ve been thinking about that, and you know, Jules, I don’t want to hide it. But it’s up to you. If you feel like we need to because of your parents, I totally understand. Obviously.”
“What about your parents and your grandfather?”
Sawyer’s face sets. “Like I said in the hospital, I’m done playing along with their stupid game.”
“But—” Impulsively I reach out and brush my fingers across his cheekbone, imagining his grandfather beating him, and let my hand rest on his arm.
“He can’t hurt me anymore,” he says in a quiet voice, and I feel his biceps twitch through his sleeve. “Besides, I’ve got other shit to worry about.”
“Annnd there’s that,” I murmur, and turn to our lunch trays. I grab a few carrot sticks and blush when I bite down and they explode like firecrackers in the quiet room. “Ready to tell me?”
Sawyer’s eyes close and he lets out a resigned breath. He shakes his head the slightest bit, and then he opens his eyes and stares at the whiteboard in front of us. “I’m not exactly sure how to explain this,” he says. “I mean, I’m not sure what happened with you or how you saw your . . . your clues, or whatever . . .” He looks at me for help, and I realize I’ve never actually had a chance to describe to him what happened to me—I’d only told him that I saw a vision of a truck hitting his restaurant and exploding.
“The first time was at the movies,” I say. “Before the previews, when they have that ‘Turn off your cell phones’ ad. I saw a few seconds of the snowplow careening over the curb, smashing into your restaurant, and exploding. There was never any sound, just the picture. And then the Jose Cuervo billboard—it had a still shot of the truck explosion.” I hesitate as I relive it, having tried so hard to block it out. “Then I saw it on TV—and there was a new part added. Nine body bags in the snow. One of them was open, showing a face.”
I drop my head into my hand, not wanting to say the next part.
“A face?” he asks.
I nod and whisper, “Your face.”
He is quiet for a long minute. Then he stands up and shoves his desk right up to mine, moving our uneaten food to a different desk. He sits back down and we drape our arms around each other as I tell him the rest of it. I tell him about the gripping fear when I found out Angotti’s was closed that one Saturday night. All the times I drove past his restaurant to check if it was still there. The way I studied the scenes and tried to figure things out by the snow levels on the street. The vision’s growing frequency, intensity, and urgency until almost every place I looked was covered in the scene being played out. And my weird phone calls and visits to him, knowing there was no way he’d believe me, but having to do something about it.
When I finish, he nods slowly. And then he says, “Mine has sound. But not voices or street sounds or background noises. Eleven sounds, to be exact. All the same.” He makes a gun with his finger and thumb and points it at Mr. Polselli’s papier mâché bust of Ivan Pavlov. “Bang.”
Five
My hand goes to my mouth. “A shooting?” I whisper. His mouth twitches. “A school shooting.”
“Oh my God.” I look around the room as the shock of
it hits home. “What, here? Our school?” His Adam’s apple bobs and his eyes turn desperate. “I don’t know, Jules. I can’t tell where it is.”
“Tell me everything you can think of.”
“At first it was so quick I missed it. I remember thinking, ‘Wait, what just happened?’ and then brushing it off as me being tired. But then I started catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye in the restaurant window, like there was a person standing there on the other side with his arms raised straight out, but whenever I’d look full on, he was gone.”