Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [48]
“Saint points? For real?”
“Yeah. We get them for showing up on time and stuff.”
“Wait, you get points for just going to school?” Rich people really do have it all. I wish I got rewarded for going to school, although the idea of the reward being the chance to bring someone to the cafeteria for mystery meat and limp fries isn’t very appealing.
“Pretty much,” Eli says. “So … will you—do you—you want to come?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me to come?”
“Because I … we were talking about food and I’ve got all these stupid Saint points and I figured—I don’t know,” he mutters. “I just thought you might like to come.”
Could he—could he really want me to come eat lunch with him? Like, as a thing? A sort of date-ish thing?
I look at him again and realize I’m crazy. He could have anyone, and he’s probably asking me to lunch because—
Because maybe he wants to.
Oh, I hate my brain, but it won’t let go of that thought. That hope.
I look at Tess. “Can you see me there?” I ask her. “I’d pull my bike into the parking lot and people would faint in horror.”
“Did Tess ever go?” Eli says.
“Sure,” I tell him, careful not to look at him, to keep watching Tess. “She dated this one guy for a couple of weeks and he took her to some dinner they have. Remember that, Tess? Mom painted your fingernails for you, and Dad took about a hundred pictures. I can’t even remember the guy’s name. What was it?”
Nothing, and as I watch her, the silence stretches out, becomes uncomfortable. I glance at Eli and see him looking at me again. This time he looks upset. Almost angry.
Good. I’ve finally done it. Made him angry, and I bet he’s going to leave. I try to ignore the way my insides feel all hollowed out at the thought of not seeing him again, or worse, seeing him here and having him not talk to me, or worse still, say hello and move on like I’m nothing to him.
“Eli, what’s wrong with you?” I force myself to say. I try to sound like I’m pissed off, try to say it with challenge in my voice, but it comes out quietly. Sadly.
“You’re as bad as everyone who lives in Milford,” he says, and it’s so not what I’m expecting him to say—it’s so not true—that I’m too startled to react at all.
“Yeah,” he says when I don’t say anything. “You are. You—look, I don’t like Milford either, but you act like anyone who lives here is … I don’t know. Evil or something. Like the fact that I go to Saint Andrew’s means you can’t ever possibly …”
He clears his throat. “Just because I—I can’t help that my parents have money, or that Clement does, any more than you can help that Tess is here.”
“You can’t compare those things! You—you’ve never had anything bad happen to you or—” I break off as I realize what I’ve said. How wrong I am.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m not a snob. Not like you think. I just … I don’t belong at Saint Andrew’s.”
“Why? It’s just a place, like here or—”
“Like here?”
“Okay,” he says, and gives me such a shy, tentative grin that my heart gives a sharp, painfully joyous kick-thump in my chest. “Not exactly like here. Here the gift shop doesn’t charge fifty bucks for a coffee mug with a motto on it.”
“I bet gum is cheaper, though.”
“Not when I was working,” he says, and now I smile at him. I can’t help it. He’s so … he should be illegal.
He really should be. He’s got me thinking things and wanting things, and looking at him looking at me like he’s happy to be doing so, I can’t help myself.
I say, “All right, if I do meet you for lunch tomorrow, what time should I meet you? And where?”
And I’m happy. That’s the worst part. I’m joyously, stupidly, overwhelmingly happy. I’m not thinking about Tess. I’m not thinking about what I learned when I fell for Jack.
I’m not thinking at all. I’m happy, and I don’t care.
thirty-two
Of course, the one time I plan to leave school early to, well, to do something other than visit Tess, I get caught. Or at least my guidance counselor, with his shiny, worn pants and constant cup of coffee in hand, sees me leaving