Fade Out by Nova Ren Suma Page B

“Why, did Austin tell you something else?”
    “I don’t know, what else would he have told me?”
    “I don’t know, why don’t you say what he told you, and I’ll tell you if that’s what happened?”
    It’s one of those nonconversations that get me all tripped up.
    His eyes narrow. He is standing up to his full height now, making me feel smaller than I even am. There are a few seconds when I wonder if I should be scared. When I think that maybe something bad’s going to happen.
    Then it passes. He’s grinning. “Dude, I’m such a klutz,” he says. He points at my chin. “You’ve got some glop there. Looks like a white beard.”
    We laugh. Ha-ha-ha. But I don’t know why I’m laughing. I don’t know why it’s so funny that he punched a hole in the wall and I’ve got glop on my chin because he threw at it me.
    I wipe off my chin. Whatever went on with that wall, it’s pretty much all patched up now. You know: like it never even happened.
    Jackson puts the lid back on the spackle. “So,” he says.
    He could admit to anything right now. He could come clean and tell me that he never ordered pizza and he was with some girl named Bella and what would I do then?
    But what he says is, “So, how was it at your dad’s?”
    I give him the same answer I gave my brother: “Bad.” I figure he’ll say, That sucks , and I’ll say, Yeah, that sucks , and that’ll be the end to the conversation. But Jackson sits down on the steps and looks me over.
    “What happened?” he asks.
    I want to tell him, but first I try not to. “I just didn’t want to be there.”
    “What was it like? Weird, huh?” And somehow, with these questions and more that come after, he gets me talking. It’s like he really wants to know how it felt then, what it feels like now. Casey barely asked, and he’s my big brother. It’s hard to hate Jackson when it seems like he actually cares what I have to say.
    He tells me he gets it, that the weekend must have been rough, and I can’t explain it…. I begin to doubt myself again. Jackson’s a good guy. He wouldn’t—he couldn’t—do what I thought he did. Could he?
    “How long have you and Elissa been together?” I find myself asking. I never used to want to talk about Elissa, but everything’s changed now.
    “It’ll be six weeks this weekend,” he says with a smile.
    “That’s forever,” I say. In school last year when girls would get boyfriends, it lasted a week, two weeks. That was the longest anyone my age has ever been together.
    “You think so?” he says.
    “Yeah,” I say. “I like Elissa.”
    “Me too.”
    “I mean I really like Elissa.”
    “Me too.”
    I’m trying to say something, but I don’t know if he’s hearing it. Elissa’s the one, I’m saying. I know she’s right for him now. I realize he’s here for only the summer, but the summer is all that exists right now. And in it, Elissa is the one for him. Which means there can be no one else.
    “We should go see her,” I say. “Right now.”
    “Now?” he says. He doesn’t move off the steps.
    “Let’s get ice cream. Let’s go say hi to Elissa. You have time, right? The first show isn’t until ten forty, right?”
    “Right,” he says. But he looks torn. “My aunt’s out, though. I should stay here.”
    “But there’s no movie playing.”
    “Someone might want to buy an early ticket….”
    “Hardly anyone ever does. Besides”—I force myself to say it—“there’s always Austin.”
    “True.”
    “Also! You really want to see Elissa, don’t you?”
    “I guess…”
    That’s all I needed. In seconds, I’m dragging Jackson across the street to Taco Juan’s. A guy’s got to eat, right?
    “Oh, hey,” Elissa says when the bell over the door jingles and we step in.
    Things about Elissa: She’s pretty but not too pretty. She doesn’t look fake. She tries to keep her hair neat, but it’s so curly that’s hard to do, and right now I want to go behind the counter and fix it.