Laces

by: alicecullengirl

--

four

I don’t have a plan when I wake up the next morning. I lay awake for hours last night, my mind completely blank, until I eventually fell asleep. Strangely enough, I didn’t have any Lace Hahn nightmares. I didn’t dream at all.

I get dressed and stick around for breakfast this morning. My mother puts a banana, some blueberries, and a few ice cubes into the blender. We both watch what happens when she pushes the button. The result is a bit mushy, but she says it’s healthy and potable so I drink it. The shards of shredded ice hurt on the way down, but I’m too distracted to notice.

Students have fallen back into their old routines. Groups of kids meet at their usual spots around the school. I don’t mean to go, but my feet drag me towards the school library where the most happening juniors sit on the tables before classes start, much to the dismay of the poor old librarian. I pretend to browse the shelves for a book while keeping an eye on the tables. I walk up and down the aisles for thirteen minutes, passing the reference section twice before I see the person I have been waiting for.

Streeter walks in, flanked by a few guys who are laughing at something he’s said. I watch the girls at the closest table, and what I see gives me an odd sinking feeling. Their faces glow when they look at him, just like before. But there’s something else. Something I didn’t see before. Sadness, pity, and sympathy. It appears only in the tiniest dose: in the set of one’s chin, the downcast look in one’s eyes, and the falter of one of their smiles.

I have my proof, and yet I stay. I wait until I hear him speak. If I hear it in his voice, I’ll know. And then I’ll leave. Promise.

“Streeter, you survived day one!” Amelia Carter laughs, all bounce and smiles, but her eyes look unsure.

Streeter grins back. “Just barely,” he chuckles, pocketing his cell phone.

It isn’t there. I don’t hear it all. There must be a mistake.

--

When Streeter sits across from me in English. I am a bit surprised. The bell hasn’t even rung yet. Somebody has decided to follow the rules. His wide smile makes me scowl. I look away from him, digging the binder out of my backpack and setting it on the desk. I wasn’t angry with Streeter until he sat down and smiled at me. His grin says that everything is one hundred percent okay, when I know there is no way it can be. Even his expression is lying to me.

I cannot stand being lied to.

“So, how’s your day been?” he asks, like we’re best friends and he really cares.

I don’t answer. I don’t look at him. It’s petulant and painfully infantile, but I cross my arms, too.

“Come on, talk to me.”

“No,” I slip, and curse myself for having said anything.

“You have to,” he informs me with smug surety. “It’s my birthday.”

Another lie. I bite my lip to keep from yelling. My voice is low and infused with a certain amount of venom. “Where is your army of zombies, then? Shouldn’t they be singing to you and kissing your feet?”

“It’s my secret birthday,” he allows. “Just between you and I.”

“Well, I’m not singing to you.” I have to draw the line somewhere.

Streeter looks hurt. Like I just told him that Christmas has been canceled. “Then don’t expect anything from me on your secret birthday.”

I can’t help but smile, my lips twitch and a laugh escapes me. But it’s hard to look at him. Something about him is wrong. How can someone whose girlfriend died less than three months ago look and act so genuinely unfazed?

Mrs. Munday calls attention. Class is starting. I shift my gaze to the board, where she is listing the names of characters from our summer reading book.

--

The crossing guard ushers me across the street. They only work about twenty minutes a day, before and after school, making sure people get across safely. It’s a waste of school funds. Haycock Road sees about two cars a minute. If you can’t dodge that, you should probably be holding your mommy’s hand.

The West End shopping center is just across the road, perpendicular to the school. There’s a Giant where kids always stop to get snacks, and a Starbucks where kids always stop to smoke and look cool. I never stop by Giant because I always see people’s parents shopping, and I never stop by Starbucks because there are honestly far cooler ways to die. I reach into my pocket and pull out my iPod. I’m about to power it up when I hear a set of footsteps behind me. Again. I sigh, but continue to walk across the parking lot to Broad Street. It’s the main street in town. It runs straight through the middle from one end to the other and becomes Route 7 once you leave. If you follow it far enough east, you’ll get all the way to Alexandria. Then, if you don’t mind swimming across the Potomac river or taking a ferry, you can reach DC from there.

But here in town it’s just the street we repaint compulsively every six months and dot with historical markers every few feet.

“You lied to me,” I finally speak. No use pretending he isn’t still following me.

“Did I?” he asks, like he isn’t quite sure.

“A lie of omission, yes, but still a lie.”

Streeter doesn’t respond. I turn around. His face is screwed up in thought, like he’s reaching back, trying to recall everything he’s ever said to me. Or not said. His expression is halfway between vexation and dawning realization.

“You didn’t tell me about her,” I mumble, wanting to backtrack and forget I ever said anything. Maybe I’m turning him off, being so childish and annoying and nagging.

“You already knew. Everyone already knows.” His voice is even lower than mine. Like the words are coming out against his will. Like he doesn’t want to say them. All the humor in his face has gone, replaced with a blank reluctance.

“I knew about her.” My fingers curl into a fist, though all my anger is gone, replaced with something else. “I didn’t know about you.”

“There’s not much about me--”

“About you and her. I didn’t know, and you didn’t even mention it.” I sound whiny, even to my own ears. I don’t know why I expected him to spill his life story the day we met, and yet I’m offended that he didn’t.

“Maybe I didn’t want you to know,” Streeter’s voice is suddenly louder. Infused with feeling, though which one I can’t tell. Three girls pass us, wearing matching scarves even though it’s over eighty degrees outside. Streeter drops his voice and smiles at each girl in turn. They flush red and scurry on by before he continues. “Maybe I wanted just one person in this city not to know. Not to look at me like I might crumble at any second. Because I’m not going to.”

And this is what I really want to know. “Why won’t you? How can you act as if nothing happened?”

I count twenty-three seconds before Streeter says anything. Just to the east of West End there is a funeral home. Built long before the shopping center, it was saved from demolition by the city’s historical society. They have a soft spot for old, boring things. In front of the funeral home is a stone wall. It always looks about two hundred pounds from falling over, but people sit on it all the time anyway. Streeter shrugs the book bag off his shoulders and sets it on the wall. He sits and looks up at me, looking so much younger than he is. Something about the set of his mouth or the look in his eyes. A look I don’t understand.

“Maybe nothing really did happen,” he spoke. “So my girlfriend died. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t her keeper then and I’m not now. If she wanted to step out into traffic, then good for her.” I wonder for a moment if Streeter Koestler is the devil. Because who could say such a thing? Ever? “She was a horrible girlfriend. A lying, cheating, self-absorbed bitch, really. I was going to break up with her, but I never got the chance, and I’ll probably regret that forever.” The words have no tone, and are expelled in one breath.

I look into his eyes. I don’t want to, but I understand what he’s saying. That look in his eyes, it’s a plea. Begging someone, anyone to understand him. It must be awful to be forever tethered to someone you want nothing to do with. To not be able to cut ties with your girlfriend because you’ll look like a heartless prick if you do. And because that probably constitutes speaking ill of the dead. Streeter looks like a completely different person to me. A sad person.

And then he smiles, jumping back to his feet and donning his book bag. The subject drops like an anvil. “Are you walking home?” he asks as we walk further east, past a car wash and a service station.

“I’m taking a walk,” I say. This city is two miles long, and yet everyone insists on driving everywhere. It makes me crazy. And so I take walks, if just to prove a point.

Streeter keeps pace with me. “You know, as a new student, a surprisingly low number of people have asked about where I’m from and all that.”

“Kids move in and out of town every month. Most people have caught the pattern by now.”

Streeter cocks his head to one side. “Pattern?”

I sigh. “Let me guess, one of your parents works for the government. You’ve been living in DC until they could find a house in town for under seven hundred thousand and you closed on the first one you found.” If you don’t already live here, real estate is a nightmare. Once you fork out the three quarters of a million for a house, you’re pretty much wiped out for the next few years. My mother always talks about how lucky she was, getting our house at just one hundred thousand twenty years ago.

“Six,” Streeter says, resuming his pace.

“What?”

“Our limit was six hundred thousand.”

“You got pretty lucky, then.” I want to tell him more, that the only reason he’s here is because Conyers is the sixty-third best school in the country and because the only thing you could ever hope to get out of a DC school, private or not, is a bullet wound. But I hold my tongue. He’s been psyched out enough. I roll my eyes. “Go home, Koestler.”

“Oh?” he asks. “I’m Koestler now?”

“Am I still Whitman?” I ask.

“Of course,” he replies so smoothly that I scowl and turn left at the next intersection.

“Go home,” I repeat. “I’ll see you in class.”

And with that, I walk north past the 7-Eleven on the cornerand double back to my house, and Streeter continues on down Broad Street.

--

The rest of the school week is rather slow. On Wednesday, I ignore Matt all through lunch for not telling me about Streeter sooner. It’s not reasonable, seeing as he can’t have known it was something I wanted to know, but I ignore him anyway. Matt pouts a bit. He says it’s my fault anyway for being so out of the loop. He’s not wrong, but the silent treatment stays in effect until Friday regardless. I see Streeter in English all week, but aside from a few comments about nothing, we don’t speak very much. He doesn’t follow me home from school again.

It isn’t until Friday night that Tyler calls me. Her older brother Jake is throwing a party tomorrow night and she has, for the first time, been allowed to help out. I don’t know what she means by “help out”, but she sounds like she might jump out of her skin with excitement. I assume Jake has agreed to let her hang some streamers in exchange for two hours of serving drinks to his free-spirit, twenty-something friends. That’s what he did last time.

I tell her Matt and I will be there, and she hangs up to go call him.

A/N: Alright, another chapter up! For my reviewers (like it says on my profile), a cookie for anyone who can guess what fair city tale takes place in. Hint: it’s my hometown. Another hint: the only names that haven’t been changed are street/surrounding city/franchise names. So you won’t have any luck searching Conyers High School on Google, haha. Good luck! -ACG