She spent all of Sunday waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Somehow, though, even with her stomach tying itself into solid little knots all day, she managed to get through her chores at home and complete her English paper. It was one-thirty in the morning by the time she did the final edits – she had nodded off twice while she was writing or she would have finished earlier – and before climbing into bed she quickly checked her phone to see if any of her friends had heard the news about her yet. There wasn't anything, really, just a long group text around dinnertime that involved half the members of the cheer squad bitching about Miss Grimes. And a few hours later, Gwen had messaged her on Snapchat with a photo of her unopened chemistry book captioned "kill me now." But there was no indication that anyone knew anything about where Sally Ann had been on Saturday night.
Even after she got to school on Monday, she kept waiting, expecting something to happen. It didn't make any sense: how could he not have told anyone about seeing her? A varsity cheerleader and one of the most popular girls in her grade working the register and checking IDs at a big box store? It was ready-made gossip, guaranteed to entertain the slacker freaks that he hung out with.
But all through her morning classes, through lunch and into the afternoon, it finally dawned on her that he might not have said a thing, that everything in her world was just as it had been before he walked up to her at the counter two days ago.
As she walked through the door of her chemistry class, she took a deep breath to steady herself, silently wishing that it might be true.
She found her normal seat behind Gwen, who immediately swiveled around in her seat to face her.
"So what happened to you last night?"
"English paper," Sally Ann replied quickly. "I turned off my phone." She nodded towards Gwen's chemistry book, sitting on her desk. "How's the studying going?"
"Don't ask," Gwen sighed, rolling her eyes a little. "I may need to borrow your class notes from last week, though. Mine are pretty crappy."
"Yeah, no problem."
The bell rang and Mr. Houghton made his way to the front of the room, his hands high up in the air as he tried to get their attention.
"Alright, everybody, settle down… Now, just a reminder, in case you somehow forgot, we've got a test coming up on Wednesday covering the first three chapters of the book. We'll do some review tomorrow, so come ready with questions. But today we're going to do one last lab, focusing on redox reactions… So let's head off to the lab tables" – he raised his voice as the room began to buzz with the sound of everyone shuffling out of their desks – "and you'll find you find the procedures there along with all your equipment."
Sally Ann grabbed her pen and notebook, trying her best to quiet the fluttering sensations in her chest as she walked over to their assigned spot at the second lab table. She didn't look up at Hasil's face as he approached her or even as he picked up the printed lab instructions and gave them a cursory glance. All she could do was focus on the long, pale lines of his fingers as they curled around the paper, at the empty space where the last two digits of his left hand should have been.
She didn't really know what to say to him, how to even begin.
"You want to see?" he asked, handing her the sheet of paper.
"Sure, okay," she said, taking another steadying breath.
It was easy to busy herself in the lab instructions for a little while, until she realized she was just staring at the paper without actually reading anything. And she knew she had to ask him; she couldn't go another day feeling like this.
"So, um…" she said tentatively, her eyes quickly flashing up to meet his, "did you say anything to anyone about seeing me at the store the other night?"
His eyebrows narrowed slightly. "No…"
"Oh," she replied softly. She could feel the coil of tension begin to unwind itself from her spine. "So could you not… say anything… to anyone?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Who would I tell?" But then he glanced down at her again, his look in his eyes growing sharper, more serious, as if he only now understood what she was asking. "But I won't… tell anyone," he added. "I wouldn't…"
His voice trailed off, leaving only silence between them, a thick, palpable quiet that surrounded them even in the middle of a crowded classroom, dozens of other students busily at work.
"Okay," she said, nodding a little. The strange thing was that she actually believed him. She couldn't have said why – in fact, there was no reason why she should trust him at all – but she did. If her secret did come out somehow, it wouldn't be because of him. And he hadn't even asked her why, she realized; he had just agreed to her request without demanding any kind of explanation. "Thanks…" she added.
She was about to suggest that they turn their attention back to the lab when she heard Mr. Houghton's voice cut above the cloud of classroom noise.
"Don't forget, folks, redox reactions are definitely going to come up on Wednesday, so this is a good opportunity to practice balancing your half-reaction equations…"
She nodded a little to herself; she had already gone over redox reactions on Saturday night after she got home from work, outlining the material based on her class notes and making herself a set of flashcards. Her plan was to do a little more studying this afternoon and then get together with Gwen and Sharon for a lunch-time cram session on the day of the test.
She dropped the lab instructions onto the table and reflexively pressed her palms against the front of her jeans, wanting somewhere to put her hands, a place to direct all her nervous energy.
"So have you started studying yet?" she asked casually, feeling the need to shift topics and find something easier to talk about. Hearing no response, she glanced back, only to be met with a half-blank stare.
He probably hadn't done anything at all, she realized, and then she wondered if he had even opened up the textbook in the last three weeks. It was kind of depressing, really, as she thought about it. He was great at the labs, and he clearly understood the concepts when they were laid out for him in ways that he could measure and observe. But if he hadn't been reading - or taking any notes in class - the test on Wednesday was going to be a complete disaster. She didn't understand why the thought of that made her feel so sad, or why she suddenly felt the urge to find a way to help him.
"Um, if you want," she started, not really knowing what she was saying even as the words continued to flow from her mouth, "we could go over some of it together..." She stopped, giving him an inquiring little glance. "I mean, I was going to study this afternoon anyway, so it wouldn't be that big a deal…"
He looked at her for a moment, his dark eyebrows knitting together in partial confusion, and she started to wonder if he had understood what she had said.
"Yeah, that sounds good," he finally replied, his expression shifting as his gaze turned stronger, warmer. Even in the harsh florescent lighting of the classroom, his eyes were so big and bright, deep ocean pools of blue and gray that she could feel herself drowning in. "Um, so... where'd you want to meet?" he asked.
She tried to pull back into her thoughts enough to fully consider his question. Now that she had offered to study with him, she realized that there weren't actually that many good locations for them to work. Her apartment was out the question, not with the possibility of her brother being around, and she couldn't even imagine going over to Hasil's house, although she guessed that it was probably just as unwelcoming to outsiders as hers would be. There was always the library, but it would be full of other students, and she knew that things would get bad for her – among her circle of friends at least – if the two of them were seen working together. And then it suddenly came to her, the one spot no one would ever think to look for them.
"I know a place that we can go," she said, feeling the corners of her mouth curling into a tiny smile. "Meet me by my car after school gets out, okay?"
He nodded and then they turned their attention back to the lab, but even so Sally Ann felt a tingling pull of anticipation that continued for the rest of the period, through her history class, and even as she worked on her own in the library up until the final bell rang. Her intention had been to finish up all her other homework before school finished, just so that she would have the rest of the afternoon free for chemistry. That turned out to be trickier than she had anticipated, though, mostly because she kept losing her focus every five minutes, her mind somehow drifting back to the way their gazes had occasionally caught as they were working on the lab.
And then she saw him there, standing a few feet away from her beat-up Honda Civic, as she made her way towards the back reaches of the parking lot. She had been running late this morning – staying up late the night before had led to multiple hits of the snooze button – and had been forced to park pretty far away from the building. But now she could breathe a tiny sigh of relief, knowing that nobody she really knew would see him there, waiting for her.
"Hey," she murmured as she unlocked the doors and threw her bag in the backseat.
He opened the passenger door and took a seat next to her, and she tried to ignore how different it felt with him now, in a smaller, enclosed space. Turning the ignition, she took one last glance out the window, just to see if anyone had spotted them, and then promptly hit the gas.
It wasn't that far to their destination – just a ten-minute drive – and as they were pulling up to the curb she could see Hasil staring in confusion at the for-sale sign on the front lawn.
"Wait, who lives here?"
"No one," she said. "It's been empty all summer. The owners must've moved away or something."
She and Gwen had found the house in May, back when there had been plenty of time for lazy afternoons with her friends, back when they had driven around for hours and had nowhere else they had to be. They had noticed the sign, the way the house was always dark at night, and at one point they had stopped and taken a look around. It was Gwen who had realized that one of the living room windows was unlocked, and that it wouldn't be too hard to get inside. There had been vague plans for having a party there in the fall, now that they were going to be juniors and part of the varsity squad, but then Sally Ann had gotten her job and school had started again, and there never seemed to be a good time. Gwen had probably forgotten all about it.
Sally Ann grabbed her backpack and took him around the side of the house, pushing the window open and stepping inside. As he followed after her, she glanced around: the rooms were empty of furniture, and all that was left were a few crumpled pieces of newspaper and some evenly-spaced indentations in the off-white carpet. The house was full of windows, though, warm afternoon light bathing everything in gold.
It was only as she was turning around to face him that she realized how truly alone they were. They had been alone in her car, of course, but that was different: there were other drivers and pedestrians, a whole world going past them through the windows. But here, it was just the two of them. If there were any place to abduct her and cut her into little pieces, she thought as she remembered Gwen's comment in the locker room, this would be it. But that was so ridiculous as to almost be funny; if he hadn't even thought to spread her secrets all over school, dismemberment probably wasn't next on his list.
He had his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, standing half-way in a patch of sunlight, the soft curls of his hair catching in the beams, a thousand shades of chestnut and auburn.
She took a deep breath and bit the edge of her bottom lip, warmth slowly rising up into her throat. It made no sense, the way she felt when she was around him, and she knew it had to stop – for her sake, for his, and in particular for the sake of the test she had fully decided he was going to pass. She was just helping him out with chemistry; there was nothing more to it than that.
So she dropped her backpack onto the carpet and sat down, taking just one quick glance up at him as she started taking out her textbook and notes.
"Should we get started?" she asked.