I told Leo.
"So do I. And we"re not leaving." He spoke as he dragged me along. I didn"t know he took AP History.
"Can you slow down? My stride is about half the length of yours."
"Sorry. I"m trying to get us out of the hallway before a monitor asks us where we"re supposed to be."
"Where are you supposed to be?"
"Auto shop," he answered, glancing around a corner stealthily, then pulling me along again.
"Hey!" I whisper- yelled. "I"m not a cavegirl."
"Then good thing I didn"t club you over the head." He stopped in front of a metal door in the back of a locker section in a yet- to- be- redone part of the school.
"Are you about to take me into a janitor"s closet?" I asked.
"Better." He fi shed a key ring from out of his pocket and fl ipped through it until he found the one he was looking for.
"Is it the boiler room? Is this the part where we both fall asleep and Freddy comes after us? "Cause I could so kick his a.s.s."
-1- His key clicked open the lock, and he held open the door. "After 0- you."
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I stepped into a small room, maybe ten feet square, piled fl oor to ceiling with books. A few old student desks balanced precariously in a corner. One naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling.
"What is this? And why do you have the key?" I asked, sliding into a lone desk chair.
"It"s one of the En glish department storage closets. These are old cla.s.s sets of books that never get used anymore. I took the key last year out of a teacher"s drawer and spent study hall trying doors until I found this place. No one ever comes in here."
I stood up and ran my fi ngers across the book towers. Cla.s.sics like Moby d.i.c.k and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and an array of Shakespeare t.i.tles in tiny, hardbound books quivered at my touch.
"So do you want to tell me what you were running from?" Leo leaned against the closed door. He looked almost sinister in the weak, shadowed light, like a man in a dream you"re not supposed to talk to but desperately want to touch.
I wondered what my face was saying now.
"Becca gave me something." I cleared my throat, asking myself if I wanted to tell him about the list. He didn"t prod, which made me trust him. And he didn"t know Becca, which made me feel less guilty about sharing her secrets. Because now they were my secrets, too. "It"s a list of things she wants to do before she dies. We call it the f.u.c.k- It List."
I laughed ner vous ly, but his stoic expression remained unchanged.
"And because she might, maybe, actually die, and she doesn"t know if she"ll get to do everything on the list, I said I"d help her."
Leo asked, "So, what, like bungee jumping and dropping acid and going on an African safari?"
"Are those things on your bucket list?" I cringed a little. They --1 sounded so unoriginal, and I hoped he was beyond that.
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"I don"t have a bucket list. Nor do I feel the need to pay someone to drop me off a bridge. If I wanted to, I"d do it myself."
"I hear that," I concurred.
"So what, then?" he pressed.
"Just sort of random things that she wanted to do. Some are small, like eating a hot pepper."
"Quite a goal," he said, not exactly sarcastically but defi nitely unimpressed.
"f.u.c.k you. She started the list when she was twelve. And eating a hot pepper isn"t that easy."
"Sorry," he said. "What are some of the bigger ones?"
I didn"t want to get into it, all of the s.e.xual requests and how Leo helped fulfi ll more than one of them, with him and by myself. "Well, like today, I was helping her with number fourteen- telling off Lottie McDaniels. Only I f.u.c.ked it up and was a total c.u.n.t and said some- thing about her camel toe." I shook the memory loose from my head.
Leo laughed, a hearty laugh, which p.i.s.sed me off . "What?" I demanded.
"I just like how you used the words "c.u.n.t" and "camel toe" in a sentence."
"Oh." We were both quiet, so I pulled a Tempest from atop a pile and fl ipped through the pages. A dried crumble of a page withered in my hands. I returned the book to its deathbed.
"Come here," Leo beckoned. Maybe I was making the face again, or maybe it was the romantic nature of locked rooms and interroga- tion lighting, but I suspected what came next. At least the fi rst part.
I obeyed Leo and walked up to him at the door. He wrapped his -1- lithe arms around my waist and pulled me against him, leaning for- 0- ward to meet my lips. We kissed urgently, tongues reaching for each
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other"s, nibbling at one another"s lips. I rubbed my hand along the back of his hair, the short pieces tickling my palms and making them tingle. He took his hands off my back, and I felt them wrangling with the b.u.t.ton on the front of my jeans.
Were we about to have s.e.x in a book closet? My body would have said yes to anything with Leo at that moment, probably most moments, but my head did the talking. I pulled away from his lips.
He switched to kissing my neck, my cheek, my ear. I could hardly speak. "I don"t want to have s.e.x right now." When I heard the words, they sounded so uns.e.xy, such a complete pa.s.sion killer. But they were true. He didn"t seem to mind.
Breathing in my ear, he whispered, "We don"t have to," and gen- tly bit my earlobe. My legs could barely stand anymore.
We continued to kiss each other anywhere we could reach while he unzipped my jeans. I believed him when he said we didn"t have to have s.e.x, so I didn"t stop him when he slid his hand into the top of my undies and moved a skilled fi nger in circles in exactly the right spot. I stopped my kisses and leaned into his soft t-shirt, inhaling his deodor- ant smell as I tried to command my legs to remain upright. With his free hand, he willed my face toward his again, and we kissed in rhythm with his fi ngers. I gripped the back of his neck to hold myself up, and his fi ngers moved faster. This was nothing like the poking of Davis, and I tensed my body as I had done uncountable times alone in my bed. I lost the ability to kiss, to control anything, and I bit his shirt to stop myself from screaming and calling attention to the book closet.
We stood against each other once it was over, still but breathless.
The faint sound of the school bell rang outside the metal door. Qui- etly, Leo said in my ear, "AP History. I have to go." He held me by --1 the side of my arms and gently pressed me away from him. I steadied -0 -+1 8 9.
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myself against a small spot of cinderblock wall, zipped and b.u.t.toned my jeans.
Before Leo opened the door, he walked over to me and gave me a last gentle kiss on the lips. "Feel better?" All I could manage was a nod.
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CHAPTER.
15.
Becca was nowhere to be found online, and my texts weren"t returned until Friday morning. According to Becca"s mom"s report she was home after three days in the hospital and would get oral che- motherapy at home for several days. She wrote that nausea was her worst side eff ect. I emailed Becca a lite version of the Lottie McDan- iels story, focusing more on the nice things Lottie said about Becca rather than the a.s.sayed things I managed to say. As I was leaving for school, my phone buzzed. A text from Becca read, "I"m sorry. Just h.o.a.rked on Mr. Toad."
Mr. Toad was a stuff ed animal I bought for Becca when my fam- ily visited Disneyland a few years ago. She had told me how Mr. Toad"s Wild Ride terrifi ed her as a kid, so naturally I had to buy the toy.
S"OK. U can borrow my Chuckie doll LOL.
--1 How r u?
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B thankful you cant smell over the phone When can I c u?
Dunno. Call me after school.
m/ I left for school with a spring in my step, or at least more springy than my normally springless body was. Becca was alive and well enough to joke- text, and that would get me through the day. I man- aged to nicely avoid running into Lottie McDaniels when I saw her striking fi gure in the hallway and turned around, only to knock into Leo again. I smiled at him, and he looked leery.
"Did you poison someone?" he questioned.
"Why? Because I"m smiling? Give me some credit. My a.s.sa.s.si- nations would be much more subtle than that. No, just kind of having a good morning. Are you stalking me again, by the way?"