Through to You (19 page)

“Whatever,” I mutter as I get out of the car.

“How do I look?” Anna asks, smoothing her dress down. She's wearing a tight red minidress, high sandals, and a pair of long dangly gold earrings. She's way overdressed for a field party. She looks like she's going to a club. But I'm not going to tell her that, because Anna has decided that tonight's the night she's going to tell Nico she's secretly in love with him. Well. Maybe she's not going to tell him that
exactly
. I think it's going to be more like she's going to confess that she likes him as more than a friend.

“Is this dress too much?” Anna asks.

Yes. But I can't tell her that. It's too late to go home and change. And besides, she does look pretty sexy. “No,” I say. “You look great. Now just relax.”

“Just relax,” Anna repeats, blowing out a big breath. She glances around the clearing, where a bunch of cars are parked next to hers. “Do you think he's here yet?”

“I don't know.” I glance around. “I don't see his car. Did you text him?”

“Yeah. He said he'd be here soon, and that was a little while ago.”

We start traipsing down the path to where the party is.

“I better not get bit up,” I grumble. “You know how mosquitoes love me.”

“How are you going to get bit up?” Anna calls. She's already a few feet ahead of me, which makes no sense. How is she able to walk so fast in those shoes? “You're all bundled up.”

It's true. I'm wearing a pair of jeans and a hoodie over a tank top. It's not that hot out tonight. It rained earlier, and even though it's humid, there's a bit of a chill in the air.

We're getting closer to the clearing now, and a leaf falls from a tree and lands in my hair. I pick it out, irritated. Who decided that having parties in fields was a good idea? Obviously some jerk who wanted to be able to get drunk and couldn't wait until someone's parents went away for the weekend like normal people.

When we get to the spot where the party's taking place, there are about thirty or forty kids already there, hanging out, holding frosty cans of beer procured from coolers. Music drifts from a portable speaker, and everyone's talking and laughing. Ugh. I'm so not in the mood for happiness.

“Do you see him?” Anna asks anxiously. She stands on her tiptoes and scans the crowd.

“No,” I say. “But that doesn't mean he's not here. Who can see anything?” I'm just being cranky, because my eyes are already starting to adjust to the darkness. The moon is shining down into the clearing, and, as promised, there's a bonfire casting light around the party. Soon I can make out people's actual features, instead of just figures.

And that's when I see Penn.

At first I squint my eyes, because I'm so shocked that he's there. In the whole time I've been with him, I've never heard him even mention wanting to go to a party. It was one of the things I loved about him—that even though he seemed so dangerous and dark, he seemed happiest when we were just together, at my house, hanging out, doing nothing.

At least, that's what I thought. But now he's standing there, a can of beer in his hand. He's talking to someone. A girl. She's not anyone I recognize, but she looks young, like a freshman or a sophomore. She's tall and curvy, and she has the kind of hair where you can't tell if it's extensions or not because it's so long and curled perfectly.

Penn says something to her, and she laughs and throws her head back. As she does so, her hand turns a little bit, and the fire glints off the delicate silver bracelet she's wearing around her wrist.

She looks put-together and confident, exactly the kind of girl I'm not.

It feels like a rubber band is squeezing my rib cage, and for a second I can't breathe. The party seems to suddenly fade away, and all I can see is Penn and that girl.

Is that why he hasn't texted me? Because he was with her? Is he dumping me for someone else?

At that moment he looks up, and his eyes meet mine.

He doesn't even have the decency to look guilty.

I turn around and start to run.

“Harper!” Anna calls. “What the hell? Where are you going?”

I don't know where I'm going. I just know that I need to get out of here. I'm halfway down the path when I hear someone calling my name. At first I think it's Anna. But then I realize it's Penn.

“Harper!” he says. “Jesus, Harper, slow down.”

But I don't. Instead I speed up.

But he's too fast for me, and he catches up a second later. He reaches out and grabs at the sleeve of my hoodie, but I pull away. “Don't touch me,” I say.

“Harper,” he says, “Come on, stop. Let's talk.”

This makes me laugh. I stop and whirl around. “Let's talk? Seriously, did you really just say that?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

“
Now
you want to talk? Now that you got caught?”

He frowns. “Caught?”

“Yeah.” My pulse is racing, and my skin feels flushed. I never knew that anger and emotion could manifest itself in such a physical way.

“Caught doing what?”

“Caught talking to that girl.”

“Who?”

“Stop acting like you don't know what I'm talking about!” My fists are balled at my sides, and I can feel the nails cutting into my skin.

“You're talking about Devi? That blond girl? She's in my science class. Harper, we were just talking. Come here.”

He reaches for me, but I push him away. I can't take it anymore. I can't take him being close and then pushing me away. I want him so badly, I want to be close to him always. And for him to not want me back, in every single way, the way that I want him, is too much to take.

“No!” I start to walk away from him as fast as I can.

He doesn't say anything or try to stop me, but I can hear his footsteps behind me. It's not until I've gone a few yards that I realize I'm going down the path the wrong way. I'm moving deeper into the woods instead of heading back toward the car and the parking lot.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to turn around, because he's still behind me and that would be humiliating. But I'm not super-excited that I'm heading into the woods either. The last thing I want is to end up getting lost, or attacked by some animal or something.

Penn stops me from making the decision.

“You're going the wrong way,” he calls after me.

“I know!” I yell back.

We keep walking. I pray that he doesn't stop following me, because I really don't want to be out here without him. Outside the clearing the moon is more obscured by the trees, and there's obviously no bonfire. I can still hear the voices of my classmates, so at least I know I'm not too far away.

Now that I've slowed down a little bit, my anger is starting to fade.

So when Penn runs to catch up with me, I let him.

He falls into pace beside me.

He doesn't say anything for a few minutes.

“How deep into the woods are we going to go?” he asks finally. “Because if this is going to turn into some kind of
Blair Witch Project
shit, then I need to know about it.”

“What's
The Blair Witch Project
?”

He looks at me, stunned. “You never saw
The Blair Witch Project
?”

I shake my head.

“It's one of those found-footage movies. You know, where the people die and they find the footage a little later? A creepy witch kills them in the woods.”

“Sounds ridiculous.”

“It's not. It's scary.”

“Well, whatever,” I say. “Stop if you want.” I'm praying he doesn't take me up on it. If he leaves me out here alone, I'm going to freak out.

“Nah,” he says. “I can't leave you by yourself.”

I don't say anything for a few more steps. “I'm still really mad at you.”

“Harper,” he says, and his voice is soft and sweet. “I swear there is nothing going on between me and that girl. I was talking to her for, like, five minutes.”

I stop and whirl around until I'm facing him. “Why didn't you tell me what happened between you and Jackson?”

His jaw tightens. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“He said he got you an appointment for your shoulder.” I know I'm taking a risk—there's a chance Penn might completely flip out on me for talking to Jackson behind his back, and he might get even more mad that I'm questioning him about his shoulder.

And for a second I think that's what he's going to do. His jaw tightens even more, and his shoulders square, and he takes a big deep breath through his nose. I can practically see the internal battle going on inside him. Does he stay here and talk to me, or does he tell me to fuck off and take off through the woods? But what am I supposed to do? Just pretend that Jackson didn't tell me any of those things?

Penn lets out the breath he's been holding in. “Can we sit down?” he asks.

“Where? We're in the middle of the woods.”

He glances around until he finds a log that looks reasonably stable. We both sit down, and Penn swallows hard and then runs his fingers through his hair. “Jackson got me an appointment at a doctor for tomorrow.”

“I know,” I say. “He told me.”

“I know,” he says. “You just told me that.”

“So are you going to go?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because, it . . . it doesn't matter. My shoulder is fucked.”

“Okay.” I think about it. “But how do you know?”

“Because that's what the doctors told me.” He reaches for my hand and envelopes one of mine in both of his. I scoot closer to him on the log, suddenly feeling like I want to be as close to him as I can.

“But you haven't talked to this doctor, right?” I say gently.

“No.” He shrugs. “But I don't care.”

The clouds slip away from the moon then, and his face gets bathed in light. I can see the defensiveness in his eyes. And I realize what it is, why he doesn't want to go to the doctor. He doesn't want to have belief. He doesn't want to think that maybe someone will be able to help him. Because if it turns out they can't, Penn will have to really accept that he won't ever play baseball again. And he's already worked so hard to do that. He doesn't want to have to go through it all over again.

“I think you do care,” I say softly. “You know, if you go to the doctor, it doesn't mean anything. It's just an appointment.”

He doesn't say anything.

“If they can't help you, you haven't lost anything,” I say. “Don't you think you owe it to yourself to explore every possibility?”

He still doesn't say anything. He just kicks at a pebble with his shoe, then pulls me in close to him. I lean against his shoulder, breathing in his scent—peppermint and Axe body wash and clean-smelling laundry detergent. We sit like that for what feels like forever.

I'm not going to push him. Whatever Penn has going on is something he's going to have to work through himself. I can encourage him, but I can't change him. He has to believe he's worth it. He has to believe that if he lets himself think his shoulder can get better and then it doesn't work out, that the disappointment he's going to have to deal with is better than not knowing.

And then, just when I'm letting go of any hope that anything I've said can make a difference to how he feels, the universe decides that maybe I've learned that lesson.

“You'll go with me?” he whispers softly. “Tomorrow? To the appointment?”

“Of course.” I say it like it's a given, like it's no big deal.

“Thanks.” He kisses me then, his lips warm and soft and sweet, and we sit there, not talking, until finally we get up and he takes me home.

I used to get nervous before big games.

Once I was out on the field, I was fine. I could stare down a 3–2 count and not even blink. I could be down 0–2 and still go for the homerun.

But before the game—before the game was a different story. I'd stand in the locker room, bent over the toilet, throwing up whatever it was I'd had for breakfast. I always ate something before a game, because if I didn't, it was even worse. The dry heaves would shake my body as the acid burned my throat.

After I threw up, my stomach would still be in knots and I'd be a total asshole to anyone who attempted to talk to me. My coach knew better than to even try to converse with me right before a game. I'd go to the team meeting and just sit
there in the corner, in my own little world, trying to keep myself from puking again.

But then, once I stepped onto the grass, everything would change. It was like I got into some kind of zone. Between innings I'd be in the dugout or the bull pen, laughing and joking around, replacing whatever I'd thrown up that morning by eating bananas and drinking Gatorade.

And that's what I'm hoping is going to eventually happen after I wake up the morning of my doctor's appointment and immediately have to run to the bathroom to puke my guts out. At first I'm upset. I mean, who the hell likes to throw up? But then I'm kind of relieved. I've been walking around so numb for so long that it's kind of reassuring to know that I can actually feel something again.

After I'm done expelling the contents of my stomach, I take a long, hot shower, trying to calm my nerves. But it doesn't work. The only good thing about this whole situation is that I have an early appointment. Which means I don't have to spend the whole day sitting around, going crazy, trying to figure out exactly how I feel about all of this.

Harper is picking me up.

It doesn't make me feel great that my girlfriend has to pick me up to take me to a doctor's appointment, but I'm way too keyed up to drive. And it's not like my parents or Braden can take me. Braden's license is suspended (something having to do with “reckless driving,” which I'm pretty sure involved an incident where he was driving down I-95 while his friends mooned
people), and I'm not in any mood to be around my parents.