Page 3 of On His Mind

Mary taught me that at the kitchen table when I was fifteen, both of us up at two in the morning with the lights off because I couldn’t stand them on. She counted out loud with me for a week. Then she stopped counting out loud and just tapped the table. Then she stopped tapping.

It works fine when you’re in a kitchen.

It doesn’t work when the whole street looks like a life somebody handed you by mistake.

Josh leans forward and rests both forearms on the wheel. He’s quiet long enough that I know something’s coming, which makes me want to get out of the truck before he can start.

“You got your schedule?”

“Yeah.”

“House key?”

“Yeah.”

“Phone charger?”

I look at him.

He looks right back. “Mary said to ask.”

I nod.

“Good.” He nods at the house. “You call if you need anything.”

Three houses down, two girls are hauling a mini fridge up a walkway, arguing about which end is heavier. Neither of them is right. I watch them instead of him.

“I mean it,” Josh says. “You don’t have to wait till something’s on fire.”

I look at my hands in my lap. My knuckles have gone white on nothing. There’s nothing in them.

He opens his door. I open mine.

The front door of the house bangs open and two guys come out backwards carrying a couch between them.

The one at the front is dark-haired and thick through the shoulders, built like he was born for hockey. The one at the back has longer hair he keeps blowing out of his face, and he’s laughing so hard the couch is visibly in danger.

“Left,” the dark-haired one says.

“My left or your left?”

“There’s one left, Stanley.”

“That’s factually incorrect if we’re facing each other, Benson.”

“You’re killing me.”

The long-haired one — Stanley — clocks us at the curb. His whole face opens up.

“Freshman?”

Everything in me stops moving.

It’s a stupid reaction. It’s a word. It’s a completely normal word being shouted across a lawn, and my body reacts like a door slammed. Heat rolls up the back of my neck and poolsunder my jaw. My hand finds the strap of my backpack and stays there.

Josh turns his head at me. Barely. A quarter turn.

Stanley says, “You Deveroux?”