Falling (8 page)

Keller pulls into a loading bay out the front of the shop. “Come in,” he says when he sees me not moving.

We run in and grab the boxes from the counter sitting in the middle of the room. “I'm Reid.” I wave with one hand to a man that looks like Keller and is wearing the same clothes, as we begin to walk out.

“How nice to get your girlfriend to carry a box. I'm so glad I taught you to be such a gentlemen. Your chivalry is impressive.” His dad says.

“Bye dad.”

“What did he call me?” I ask when we get out of the store.

“Not you, he was saying that I'm not manly. He has an English Lit degree. He comes out with weird things like that all the time.”

“Right,” I say nodding my head, while he loads the back of his car and we head to Lilly's.

“So did Hayden get off all right?” I know I shouldn’t ask, or talk about it, or even think about it, but I can't help it. I want to know if he broke up with her, or if I am just someone to hang out with. But almost as important does he know anything about her being at school this morning.

“Duno. I wasn't there.” He doesn't look up. There wasn't anything in the way he said it. But clearly something happened.

“So when does she get back?” I turn my face to look out the window so he can't see me cringe at my own prying.

“End of semester. But I doubt she'll come back. She wants to go travelling in Europe, so she will probably head off then and go straight back to school from wherever she goes.” He stops talking, then smiles at me, “this is it,” he announces. I hadn't even noticed that we had pulled into up anywhere. “I'll just be real quick, then we can get something to eat.” He turns to look at me. “Or anything else you want to do. Do you get out often from school?”

“A bit.” I don't want to say the truth. That I get out once a week when the teachers take people like me who don't have family to the mall. Sara isn't a senior so she can't leave campus without teacher supervision, and it's just a bit too lame to hang out with myself all the time.

He takes two boxes at a time and literally runs them into the store. In a minute he's back out for the last one. I wait for five minutes while he talks to the lady in the store. I can see him through the open door.

He sticks his head through the car window. “Let's eat.” I jump out, take one step and groan.

“What's wrong? You don't like this place? We can go somewhere else.” He offers quickly.

“No, it's Megan.”

“Okay,” he says confused.

He puts his arm around my back and walks me up to the pavement.

“Reid. Oh wow. I didn't know you had a boyfriend. You never have a boyfriend.” She stops directly in front of me.

“Hi, Megan,” I say trying to move past her, but she steps into my way.

“I have known you since we started here and I have never seen you with a boyfriend. That's just great that you are able to get out and finally get over things. I am so happy that you can move on.” She beams her I-am-the-hottest-person-I-know smile at Keller and holds out her hand. “Megan Cunningham, I think I saw you at school on Monday night? So very nice to meet you.” She keeps hold of his hand for a second longer than necessary, staring into his face.

“Yeah,” Keller answers with a slight grimace. He pushes me through the door without looking at her again. “Now I get the groaning. Who is she and what's her problem?”

“She’s Megan and she is awful. And she thinks she's hot, and she thinks that you are hot, even her Mum thinks you're hot. And she's just weird.”

“That's kind of gross.” His mouth turns up like that thought tastes bad. “Do I want to know how you know that? Because that's disturbing.”

“She is. We aren’t friends.” I say to make it clear. “She thinks you’re pretty.” I open my eyes wide like I'm telling a horror story, but I get cut off by Megan and three of her followers as they come rushing through the door.

“It's so nice to see you actually out of school, Reid. I don't think I’ve ever seen you out of school when it's not a Friday. And you always have a teacher walking around with you. It’s just amazing to see you out with another person.” She adds breathless from trying to gush everything out so quickly.

“Mmm. Yeah.” I look up at Keller as he coughs.

“So are you guys out on a date? You’re just too cute together.” She puts her hand on Keller's chest and laughs at her non-existent joke. She doesn't even look at me.

Keller steps back from her with his eyes growing bigger the longer she leaves her hand there.

The lady behind the counter calls out our order.

“That's us. So you guys have a great night,” I say quickly.

“Oh,” Megan says surprised. “You're not eating here.”

“Nope. We're heading to Keller's, so I'll see you at school.” We rush out the door and jump into the car.

“What is wrong with her? Does she have a real, you know, problem.” He points to his head.

“I don't think so. She is always like that. But she’s never that friendly to me.” I put my hand on his chest and smile up at him like Megan did. “It must just be your presence. Because, like, you know, we’re just so cute together.” I bat my eyelids at him. “You know, I mean you're really cute, and if I keep touching you Reid might just combust then I can take you home with me instead.” We both burst out laughing as Megan waves at Keller from inside the shop.

“Sorry, I know you’re driving so you can't eat. But I have to, otherwise I will have to eat my arm. And that would be inconvenient because I use my arm all the time.” I say in between huge mouthfuls of really, really good cheeseburger.

We stop outside a house and I say in surprise. “You didn't have to bring me to your house. I was just saying that to get away from Megan.”

“I know. But I thought you might like to eat sitting down.” We both look down at the crumpled bag that once held my burger. “Yeah, sorry about that. You can eat, and I'll sit down with you.” I say walking behind him to the front door.

I walk into his house looking around, it's pretty cool. “Your Mum doesn't live here does she?” I blurt out. I really need to get a filter that stops words before I speak them, to check if they are weirdly rude. Then I could prevent awkward moments like this.

“No,” he says, “Why do you say that?”

“It's very manly. Not bad,” I add quickly. “Just manly.”

“Well I'm going to eat because this is my dinner. Not all of us have a mum to feed us,” he says sniffing.

I reach up and pat him on the head. “Oh poor you.”

He sits down and tries to eat really fast, so I turn away and look at the vinyl records hanging on the walls and the random pictures of Keller when he was little, hanging in really ugly black plastic frames. “Go have a look around,” he mumbles around the food in his mouth. Pointing randomly away from himself.

I move further into his house. That one looks like his dad's room. More random black plastic frames. Huh, that one's quite cute. He's doing a thumbs up at the camera, but super close so it's like his thumb is about to jump out of the picture.

I turn quickly around. He must still be eating. Is it too weird to look in his room? I look around again. He told me to look around. I gently push it open with the toe of my shoe. It’s surprisingly clean. Not that he looks dirty, but I wouldn’t clean my room if I wasn’t forced to. Even his bed is made. Mine only is because they inspect it while we are at breakfast. I step further into the room. It's pretty normal, double bed shoved into the corner. Old-school transformers cover.

I walk closer to his bed to have a look at the pictures, but Keller moves silently past me to grab it.

“Hey what was that?” I ask, feeling guilty for being caught in his room.

“Nothing important,” he says holding it behind his back. He leans forward and touches his lips ever so gently to mine.

Wow.

“Nice try,” I say, trying to recover my breath. I reach behind him to the photo, pulling myself closer to him. He just smiles down at me as I pry it out of his hands.

I twist around as his arms circle mine. “Don't look at it,” he says with his mouth to my ear. I lift my hands slightly, his arms block mine, but only just. “You know I was with her, you saw her, why would you want to see us together.”

“Can't be that bad, you still have it next to your bed.” He keeps his arms there but I pull the photo up anyway. It's weird, he is holding her just like this. They are looking at the camera laughing as he pulls her toward the water at the beach. She is wearing a tiny white bikini and a cowboy hat. He looks happy.

He yanks it out of my hands and tosses it in his rubbish bin, shattering the glass like it is nothing.

He holds my face in his hands looking down at me, it’s odd having someone look at me so intently, like he can see right through me. Like… we’re connected.

Oh no.

“What the hell?” Keller says startled. I surge out of his chest, controlling the look on my face and shoving my hands into my pockets to hide the shaking.

“Where did you go?” His eyes are huge.

“Nowhere.” I laugh, but my voice shakes along with my hands. “You must have closed your eyes.”

“No, you were gone. You left my hands, then you fell away from me. What happened?” He asks softly.

“I just turned around like I was before. But you got a fright at something so I jumped too.”

He stares at me. He knows there is no other explanation than this, but he knows it’s not the truth.

“Okay,” he mumbles after another minute of staring at me.

“Keller? You here?” His dad calls out. “I'm coming up the hallway, so you know.”

I step into of the doorway, clothed and untoussled from not getting up to anything. “Hi again,” I say brightly pushing away our weird moment, everyone is going to have to speak really loud because I can’t hear anything over my heart thudding in my chest. I fell into him. Keller steps out of the room behind me and leans against the wall.

“Either you’re home early, or we have to go,” Keller says to both of us.

“It's quarter to six.”

“Argh,” I say pulling a face to cover the fact that I’m not really sure what he just said. “Time to go back.” I guess.

“See ya then,” his dad says as we walk past him to Keller's car.

“You really don't have to keep driving me around you know,” I say once we are in the car.

“I don't mind.” He says quietly.

We drive back to school in total silence. It wasn't like this afternoon. I have to figure out a way to make it better because I can’t tell him.

We pull up at school with twenty whole minutes to spare. “Thanks for taking me out again. I don't get out of here much, as you heard earlier.” I roll my eyes, trying to lighten the mood.

I push on the door to get out when he doesn't answer, but he pulls me back, holding onto my face like before, looking into my eyes. I smile and quickly kiss him, so I don’t have to look into his eyes again. “See you later,” I whisper dramatically, putting my hand on his chest like Megan did.

Finally his face softens when he realises I didn't disappear. Hopefully he will think he just imagined it. “Bye.” He laughs. “I’m sorry that you have to see her now.” He says seriously.

I run up to the front door and wave before I force myself to go inside.

“Great to see you yesterday, Reid.” Megan leans against the wall. Sara raises one eyebrow at me, and Megan slips in between us, linking her arm in mine. “You should come sit with us for a change. You don't need to hang out with juniors all the time.”

“Yeah, I'm good. Thanks though.” I extract my arm, smile weirdly at the BFFs trailing behind Megan, and walk quickly away.

“You went and hung out with Megan yesterday? You left me at school by myself to hang out with Megan?” Sara looks livid.

“I think you mean, did I ditch Keller and go hang out with Megan, and that’s a big I don’t think so. We saw her while we were out, and she was so gross, so I don’t know why she’d want me to sit with her. She put her hand on his chest. And left it there.” I pause for dramatic effect. “He had to step away from it.”

Sara eyes her up. “She's got issues.” She finally tears her eyes away from Megan and shudders. “Poor Keller, did he go straight home and have a shower?”

“Funny, that's exactly what Keller did.” I say remembering him shudder under her palm. “And no he ate, although I'm sure he had a shower at some point.”

She turns to look at me, but keeps walking for the lunch line. “So you saw his house?”

“Yip, it looks quite a lot like a house.”

“Must have been good if you're avoiding.”

“Nothing out of the usual. His dad got back just after we did. I wandered around his house while he ate.”

“What he didn't feed you too?” Sara fills up her plate.

“I ate in the car. It had been so long since I had eaten, that I couldn't wait. Not that I knew that's where we were going. But I was going to have to chew on my leg or something.”

“Sounds like you are hiding something,” she sings. “You are giving crappy details in too much depth.” She keeps with the tune. Yes I am, but I can’t tell you otherwise people will lock me up for being extra crazy.

We find a seat. Megan walks by our table. “The offer is still open.”

“I'm still fine thanks.”

“Say Hi to Keller for me next time you see him.” She twinkles her finger at me.

“Mmm.” Is all I can manage to get out.

I finally start eating and the bell rings. “That's just mean.” I complain shovelling in as much as I can while walking to take my plate back.

“It'll be easier than you think to get Keller,” Amy not so quietly whispers to Megan. “Look at her go.”

I lift my eyebrows and shovel in a little bit more for effect, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, sniffing loudly, and head out the lunch room.

“Oh that's just gross,” Amy says, her voice dripping with disgust at every word.

I grab my vibrating phone out of my pocket. “Hi,” I answer quickly.

“Pick you up after school?”

“Great.” I squeak like Sara did meeting Keller yesterday and she rolls her eyes at me.

“Meet you out front like yesterday?”