Page 40 of The Beta Test

Braden and I are little more than stick figures with boxy clothes imposed on top. The shading I’d labored on and internally gloated over is crude, at best. Valor, the dog, is basically a floating blob with tiny, stick legs, and my tortured, screaming face looks like a child’s jack-o-lantern gone wrong. The only positive I can see about it is that my sun is nicely rounded, practically a perfect circle, with nicely spaced rays arranged around it.

“You know, your sun reminds me of how I used to draw them when I was in kindergarten with the wavy lines shooting out of it. It’s cute,” Jake adds.

And there goes my last remaining bit of dignity.

It’s clear that Jake is smiling just by the tone of his voice, but my eyes are too glued to the disaster I created to verify. Although he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be condescending, I can’t help wincing as he demolishes the last thing I thought was remotely acceptable.

Did I eat bad yogurt this morning? What had I been thinking? It’s an established fact that I’m not an artist, as illustrated by my struggles in art class.

Jake grabs my backpack and slings it over his shoulder, then his warm arm settles around me. We’re side-by-side, the horrifying doodle still in front of us.

“Let’s ditch,” he says.

I gasp again. How many times is he going to shock me within the span of five minutes?

I look up at his face, but his eyes are fixed on the notebook.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s lunchtime. Let’s go off campus and not come back the rest of the day.”

“But you’re too young to go off campus. Only juniors and seniors can leave during lunch.”

He sighs heavily. “I’m a junior. And let’s drop the ‘baby Jake’ routine, yeah?”

I nod, suddenly feeling drained. Maybe skipping school for the first time in my life is what I need. Why not?

Chapter Sixteen

“So,” Jake starts, then pauses to stir his burrito bowl and take a sip of soda, “I’m a good listener, so hit me with it. What’s going on?”

I scowl mid-chew. Not because he’s wrong—because it’s Jake. Jenna’s little brother. The one who used to look to us for cues—what to say, how to act, when to stop being annoying. Before he conquered his stutter, we were his primary social circle and as the older kids, we were the natural leaders.

And now he’s looking at me like he’s the calm one and I’m the mess.

“Huh?!”

Jake ignores my inelegant display and keeps going, steady as ever. The goodwill he’d earned driving me off campus and buying me lunch is disappearing swiftly. I don’t have the bandwidth to be managed right now. A break from campus is all the help I needed. Full stop.

“This may come as a shock,” he says, dragging it out while he rearranges a piece of chicken with his fork, “but I’m kind of an Avery expert.”

“What—”

“—And as such, I can identify a call for help when I see one.” He jerks his chin meaningfully towards my backpack in the booth next to me, which I brought inside the restaurant for some reason.

His meaning takes a moment to sink in. The doodle. The flaming dumpster field disaster that shouldn’t exist, that I shouldn’t have made, that I definitely shouldn’t have let anyone see, ever, including myself. Heat crawls up my neck. Just because someone pays extra for your guac, does not mean they’re entitled to your inner turmoil.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jake. It was just a picture.”

Then one of his big, warm hands covers mine on the table. I stare at it for a moment, noticing how it completely engulfs my hand.

“Talk to me,” he says.

Absolutely not. We may be ‘friends’ now, but this seems like an unnecessary leap. We can stay casual homework buddies who occasionally ditch school to eat burrito bowls.

My brain scrambles for safe subjects, ones that will deflect Jake’s intensity off me. The weather? Binder organization? Grocery list optimization? I discard those ideas immediately; Jake won’t be interested, and the grocery list thing makes me think of Analiese, which is definitely a no-go topic.

“Ok,” I say, pulling my hand out from under his and taking a deep breath like I’m about to say something important, but really I’m buying any microsecond of procrastination I can while I scramble to gather my thoughts. “Thanks again for going trick-or-treating with Hunter and me. You know, he hasn’t stopped talking about you since. He mentioned you said you’d come over and play video games with him? That was nice of you.”