She ignores him and he ignores her. They pass each other in the hallway, eyes staring ahead, never looking over at each other. He raises his hand in class, answering the question, adding his own running commentary until the teacher runs out of sympathy for the poor little rich boy and finally asks him to excuse himself to the principal's office. And she keeps her eyes on her paper, draws cartoon characters in the margin, but never looks up as he picks up his books and brushes past her.
It's textbook.
Veronica doesn't know when she learned the rules of the game. Sometime after Lilly died, or maybe before that, when Duncan ripped her into pieces, leaving her standing in the hallway, mouth hanging open and tears burning on her cheeks. It's hard to know because the two events are indistinguishable from each other in her head, both the death of something she'd loved.
She'd read the book, followed the rules and developed a hardness that hid the girl inside that still wanted everything to at least seem okay. She'd learned to play like an expert, exchanging niceties, polite words in the hallway to the boy she'd loved, the one who tore her heart out. Because no one would ever hurt her like that again. Because when they were hurt, girls didn't get angry. After all, anger was un-ladylike.
So they don't look at each other, they sit at opposite ends of the cafeteria, him always sitting alone. She learns to look for his bright yellow car then park on the other end of the parking lot; memorizing which door she'll need to leave by to make sure she doesn't see him.
There is an unbearable span of emptiness that stretches between them but it always seems to be filled with everything that's unspoken in their daily dance of avoidance. They can't acknowledge that they are both in the same sort of personal hell, except Veronica feels she is finally starting to climb out of hers and he's sinking faster and faster.
Maybe she should throw him some rope.
But the book says everyone man for himself. And she's not sure if he would even take the rope if she threw it to him, or if she could find a way to guide him out of his darkness.
It's hard to know when he won't talk to her.
It's textbook: the tortured ex-boyfriend; the dead best friend; the spurned lover; the psychotic killer with a taste for gasoline and matches. They all congregate in her dreams making her wake up soaked in sweat, heart racing, and she swears she can still smell the sulfur of the matches just after they scrape down the side of the carton and just before they burst into flame. She wonders if he has the same type of dreams. And when her dad knocks gently on her door then comes into her room, his voice slurred and tired, and she wraps her arms around him and lets him rock her back to sleep, she wonders if there's anyone left who does that for him.
She sees him wasted more and more, stumbling at the school dance, making loud comments in the middle of the pep rally, leaning against his car with his silver flask tucked in his palm. Self-medication is a textbook way to find the numbness that can take away the pain. Except she knows the pain will come back again and again and he's just learning this.
Some lessons can't be taught. They have to be discovered.
And one time their gazes actually meet and she turns away because there's too much pain and she doesn't know what to do with what he's trying to give her. She turns away and hurries down the hall and leaves him standing there with unanswered questions in his eyes.
She hasn't read that chapter yet and she doesn't know if she wants to.
Then it happens. She's leaving class and he's there, standing next to her car and she almost pretends not to see him, almost walks away, because it's too sudden and there was never anything in the book about this. He hangs his head and shuffles his feet and shoves his hands deeper in his pockets, and she knows he will understand if she does walk away because he's read the book too and knows nothing is as simple as love or hate or even forgiveness.
Instead she swallows and puts one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, because Veronica Mars decided to stop running away a long time ago. And all the things she wants to say run through her head as she slowly moves toward him, and he watches her, eyes bright with anticipation, and she sees him lean back against her car, watches as the tension slips from his body, and she can almost hear him sigh her name.
She doesn't know what to do when she's finally standing in front of him. She should ask him what he wants, what he's doing there, but she threw out the manual for heartbreak and betrayal as she crossed the parking lot and she imagines its pages ripped out, scattering across the hot asphalt, rustling softly as the wind picks them up and blows them away from her.
Her arms go around his waist and everything that happened slips away as she puts her head against his chest and listens to his heart beat and remembers what he feels like. And his lips are in her hair as he pulls her closer and they stay like that, him leaning against the LeBaron, Veronica leaning on him, wrapped around each other, not caring about the stares and whispers, the sideways glances as students pass them on their way home for the day.
"I'm so lost."
Her hair muffles his words and she knows she should tell him that she's not the one to save him, that anything they have between them is a temporary fix for the pain. But she can't find the words and just holds tighter, ignoring everything she should be doing, trading it all for this brief moment of contact and the feeling of having him in her arms again.
"Me too." She says quietly into his t-shirt.
And she smiles, because she realized that it's textbook. Sort of. At least the boy meets girl part, but the rest is pretty fucked up. The rest is still being written.