Page 146 of On His Mind
I stay out past the point of any good reason. Even after the last of the candy’s gone and the street’s emptied of kids, I sit there on the cold step until Rowan leans out and hauls me in for a Jell-O shot.
Inside, I go quiet again. Back to the version of me that doesn’t talk. I knock the shot back and find my book and take it to the corner chair I always end up in, because my head won’t quit — it keeps wandering out into the crowd hunting a girl in a white angel costume whether I want it to or not.
I can’t name the exact thing that’s wrong with me. But when Blue sets his hands on Melly’s waist and starts moving with her in the middle of the room, a heat goes through me that’s hard to hold down. He’s gone for her. Anybody with eyes can see he’s gone for her, and he’s not hiding one second of it.
Benson’s down on his knees on the front walk for Lucy. Blue’s spending the whole back half of the night wrapped around Penelope’s roommate, in plain sight, in front of everyone, and nobody’s world is ending.
So what in the hell did I trade Penelope away for?
I put my eyes back on the book, because I can’t stand to put them on Penelope. She’s quiet tonight — quieter than the whole loud room. I catch that she’s keeping a wide berth around Theo Marsh all night, and I hate how much better that one smallthing makes me feel. I hate that I’ll take a scrap that size and be grateful for it.
When I can’t stand one more minute of it, I slip out the side door and let it close the noise off behind me. Nobody’s out here tonight.
It’s cold for Halloween, cold in a way I don’t have any memory of it ever being. Or maybe it’s not the night that changed. Maybe I spent all these years being warm that I’m only now, sitting out here on my own, learning what cold even is. Learning that I’m shedding my old self and have become this.Privileged.Thanks to Hawthorne.
The door opens behind me. A pair of white wings comes through it, and Penelope lowers herself onto the step beside me — close but not touching.
I look at her, then I look back out at the dark yard. “Angel, huh.”
“Devil,” she whispers, looking at the mask on my knee.
“Stanley’s idea.”
“It was supposed to be just me.” She pulls her wings a little tighter around herself against the cold. “The angel. I decided weeks ago.” She tilts her head. “Then the girls asked what I was being, and I said an angel, and they all thought it was such a good idea that they went and ordered the same thing.” She lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. “So now it’s six of us. And it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s just a group costume.”
But it means something to me. It’s the only thing in this whole loud night that means anything to me at all. She did it for me.
I turn my head and look at her properly now, the streetlight catching all that white. “Do I get to take it off you later?”
“Depends.” She doesn’t look at me. “I don’t think your house is clearing out anytime soon.”
“I think your roommate’s in love with mine.”
She nods once. “Maybe.”
“So.” I keep my voice careful, the old careful. “If your apartment’s empty tonight,” I say, inhaling. I pause for a moment. “Text me.”
She doesn’t reply to that. She just sits with her hands clamped together between her knees, staring out at nothing, and when she finally speaks, her voice has gone somewhere far off.
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
I don’t know what she means, so I wait.
“That Benson gets the girl.” She’s still not looking at me. “Blue gets the girl. And you’re just — what, Percy?”
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing in my whole useless vocabulary for me to reach for.
She whispers, “Still following rules that never even existed?”
My skin crawls when I watch her face drop the composure for one second, and I witness the pain underneath. It’s the same hurt coursing through me when I watched Blue with her roommate.
She stands and brushes off the back of her costume like she’s unbothered.
“I’ll see you at my place,” she says. And she walks back inside.
I drop my elbows onto my knees and pinch the bridge of my nose hard enough to hurt.
Fuck.
