At some point during the bonfire Jane realizes Roderick's not beside her any more.
They've sort of had their arms around each other on and off all evening, to the point where it's like what going back for drinks at a bar must be like for a heavy alcoholic, or something. The excitement and the movement and the singing makes it hard to stay anchored to him for any length of time, and there are other people she wants to hug every so often too, but they keep going back to one another. Neither of them have said anything about it – they've barely exchanged two sentences together in total. But they've sung together. That makes it feel natural.
She shifts away from him for a moment to sing a few lines with Madison (that's her name, right? So many new faces, new names.). And then she returns, reaches automatically for the thick, warm arm that's been there all evening – and it's just not there any more.
Jane's not pleased.
She recognizes that she has no right to be angry. He's probably got his own life. And it's not like she's claimed him as her property. But Jane is used to getting what she wants. She's somehow reached the assumption - without any actual conscious thought, for Jane is a creature of instinct – that starting the homecoming evening together meant that they'd spend the whole thing more or less together. That being glee clubbers together meant the start of a Friendship with a capital F, the kind where you're more or less inseparable. The kind she read about in books and had never happened across in real life, probably because she hadn't found the right clubs to be a part of. People tend to shy away from her. Now Roderick's gone and shied away too.
Her lips thin, she crosses her arms.
She's a girl who makes things better herself when they don't please her. She doesn't wait.
She's going to find him.
Roderick thinks he's fairly safe under the bleachers, in part because he's not familiar with any part of sports culture, particularly the bits concerning what happens under bleachers.
Then he recognizes Becky Jackson, and for a moment he's terrified that she's either making out with someone or going to tase him, and both are daunting prospects. But she's alone and she doesn't have a taser. She's just sitting quietly, as if waiting for someone.
"Sorry," he blurts out, and ducks back out from underneath the bleachers – or tries to, and hits his head.
Becky Jackson smiles, but it's not a mean smile. Just the sort of inevitable grin that comes from watching slapstick. "It's okay," she says, tilting her head to regard him owlishly, "you can have it for a while." And she disappears, leaving the space underneath free.
Roderick isn't sure why, but he thinks she must understand.
He sits down in the long, uncut grass underneath the bleachers and pulls his knees to his chest. He's glad it's dark. He's probably not going to cry, but he'd rather not risk it.
What rabbit-hole has he stumbled down, and whose life has he started living? It's certainly not his.
One moment he's alone in the library listening to Viva Voce, not at all conscious that he's singing aloud (a bad habit that's gotten him into trouble before, but he can't seem to help it – the music inundates him and carries him away in a wave, and the wave feels so much better than everything else in his life that he lets it). The next, he's surrounded by strange pseudo-adults who seem to want nothing more than to be nice to him and make him feel special. He's always related more easily to adults than to people his own age, so he tells them the honest truth, and they talk him into an audition.
1965. Written and recorded by Mack Rice, made famous by Wilson Pickett on The Wicked Pickett a year later. The music carries him away again. He's never been drunk or high, but that's probably what it's like.
Suddenly people his own age are smiling at him and the girl named Jane is touching his arm while they sing. And there's this sense of… of connection. Her smile is brighter than the fireworks and it's actually aimed at him.
It's too much for him to know what to do with. He's totally overwhelmed. So he puts on Sam Cooke and sits under the bleachers with his chin on his knees, too happy to smile. This kind of happiness hurts.
Jane looks everywhere before she thinks to look under the bleachers. But there he is in the dark with his huge headphones pulled over his ears. He's staring into space.
"Roderick?"
He doesn't hear her. He's probably almost twice her size, but he looks quite small.
Jane says his name again, and when he still can't hear her, she ducks under the bleachers and sits beside him.
When he feels her settling next to him he startles like a wild rabbit and draws in a sharp breath.
"I kept calling you," Jane says, justifying herself rather than apologizing. Jane never apologizes unless she's in the moral wrong. And she isn't. But she's not angry at him any more. She gets the sense he needed to do this, whatever it is that he's doing.
"Sorry." He pulls off the headphones, resting them around his neck, and gives her his attention.
"We were just wondering where you'd gone."
"Sorry."
"We thought you'd left without saying goodbye." Jane scowls. She wants him to know that doing so is not acceptable, from this point on.
He pulls at a tuft of the long grass. "I thought nobody'd –" He cuts himself off. He's learning, Jane thinks. "I was going to come back in a minute."
"Still going to?"
He nods. "Just… one more minute."
He has extremely dark eyes. In the low light she can't tell where his irises end and his lashes begin. "Alright," she says, and ducks back out from under the bleachers, into the loud and colourful night.
Not long after, she feels someone near her in the warmth of the flickering bonfire and reaches out. His thick, soft arm is right there beside her.