Page 40 of Left on Read

There they are. Right at the bottom of the bag, with a few loose coins and a couple of empty gum wrappers.

“Are you sure you’re okay to go to school today?” Mom asks, sneaking up on me again. She’s standing behind the kitchen counter, resting her elbows on the fake granite and leaning over it to look at me. I don’t know why I’m still on the floor.

“Yeah,” I respond, pushing still messy hair off of my forehead. “I slept for, like, almost twelve hours. I better be good to go. I have to be.”

Mom’s gaze tightens. I know what that look means. She doesn’t believe me, and she’s worried, and she wishes I’d take better care of myself. I mean, same. But there’s nothing I can do about any of that now.

There’s a knock on the door, and Mom rushes around the counter to answer it. She almost steps on me.

“Good morning!” She’s using her cheerful voice, the one thatgreets people with all of her Southern charm that I inherited not a bit of.

Hayes responds, and she laughs. They talk like old friends, and I really should be interjecting here, but I just stay hidden behind the door. After yesterday, I feel weirdly vulnerable around him. He was never supposed to see me like that. I was never supposed to almost puke all over him.

He was never supposed to have to rescue me.

“Come on in,” I hear Mom say. Damn her Southern hospitality. So incredibly rude of her to not allow me to sulk in the privacy of my own home. “Nova should be ready soon.”

Mom takes exactly one step back, and Hayes walks through the door. Now we’re all three standing in about six square feet of doorway space.

I look up at him, because for once, I actually want to make eye contact. I need to see how he’s looking at me now. Now that he’s seen underneath my poised veneer to the truly messy heart of who I am. Now that he knows the brain I’m so known for is prone to breaking in all sorts of ways.

He smiles. With his whole, sleepy face. My mom turns her back, and he winks. I’ve got to tell him to stop doing that. My heart can’t take it.

“Morning, Novella,” he says, like this is any other morning.

This has been such a weird day, and it’s not even 8:00 a.m. I pick up my backpack and stick my keys in the pocket of my jeans. I don’t need them yet, but I’m not ready to lose them again either.

As we get into the car, an awkward silence descends. I knew there’d be moments like this today, because yesterday was too much, and now he’s taking a mental step back. That’s how that goes.

“Thanks for picking me up. And for yesterday. Thanks for … everything, I guess.” My newfound desire for eye contact fades away as swiftly as it appeared, and I keep my eyes trained on the road ahead of us. The litter on the side of the road is always so fresh this time of year.

“Anytime.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but he does smile.

“Don’t say that,” I warn him, in all seriousness. “That really could happen anytime.”

“I know.” He shrugs.

The rest of the drive passes by in relative silence. I’m not sure if it’s comfortable silence or not. I can almost never tell.

By the time we get to class, nearly everyone else is there. Besides Lowry, of course. The classroom is in a mild uproar, everyone speaking over one another in an unorganized enough way that I legitimately can’t tell who’s talking to whom.

“What’s going on?” I whisper to Hayes as we sit down at our table. He’s half turned around, discreetly trying to sort out the conversational mess happening behind us. It’s loud enough in here that I really want to press my hands over my ears and crawl under the table.

“I think they’re just … complaining. Everybody. All at once.Like, the dam’s burst.” Hayes runs his eyes over everyone in the room, watching intently in that way he does. Where he’s seeing more than you want him to. More than you thought he ever could.

Instead of responding, I try to do what he’s doing. Listening and observing. Everyone’s hands are moving around in front of their faces; that’s the first thing I notice. It adds to the heightened sense of stress in the room, but it’s also kind of funny.

And he’s right. They’re complaining—although that’s not really the right word, considering how poorly the class has been run. They’re venting. Reality-checking. Confirming with one another how little they’ve learned, and how unprepared they feel to write this paper, which counts for so much of the grade.

I think I am someone who can fix this. I can damn sure try, at least. I lean in toward Hayes and speak slowly into the air between us. “If I sort of hijack this class right now, will you keep a lookout for Lowry?”

Maybe I didn’t mean to lean in this close. Close enough that I could count his jet-black eyelashes. He laughs, and I feel that rush of breath on my cheek. I wonder if he can countmyeyelashes.

“You got it.” He stands up. People start to hush as they notice him. He commands attention. I’ve always thought that.

I tap my phone screen to look at the clock. Six minutes after the hour. I figure we’ve got another four to nine minutes before Lowry shows.

Hayes walks toward the open door and leans against the cinderblock walls, inserting himself in the narrow wall space betweenthe whiteboard and the doorway. He nods back at me, strangely seriously. I feel like we’re coconspirators planning a heist.