“Then why doesn’t this bother you as much as it bothers me?”
“If I thought there was any way I could stay here, do you think I would hesitate?” I cried.
“Do you think I’d willingly walk away from the most important thing in my life?”
Xavier turned to look at me, his turquoise eyes dark, his mouth narrowed into a hard line.
“They, whoever they are, shouldn’t have control over our lives,” he said. “I’m not about to lose you. I’ve been through that before, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Xavier . . . ,” I began, but he silenced me by putting a finger lightly over my lips.
“Just answer me one question. If we were to fight this, what are our options?”
“I don’t know!”
“But are there options, someone we can ask for help, something we can try, even if it’s a long shot?” I looked into his eyes and saw an urgency that had never been there before. Xavier was always so calm and relaxed. “Beth, I need to know,” he said. “Is there a chance? Even a small one?”
“There might be,” I said. “But I’m afraid of finding out.”
“Me too, but we can’t think that way. We have to have faith.”
“Even if it all comes to nothing?”
“You said yourself there was a chance.” Xavier laced his fingers with mine. “That’s all we need.”
Over the last weeks I’d felt a little guilty about distancing myself from Molly, but she had resigned herself to spending time with me whenever Xavier was otherwise occupied. I knew she must be resentful of his monopoly of my time and attention, but Molly was a realist and held the view that friendships had to take a backseat when relationships started—especially if the relationship was as intense as mine and Xavier’s. She seemed to have overcome her previous irritation with him, and although she was far from willing to acknowledge him as her friend, she was much more prepared to accept him as one of mine.
Xavier and I were walking into town one afternoon when we spotted Ivy under an oak tree with a dark-haired senior from Bryce Hamilton. The boy was wearing a backward baseball cap, the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to show off his muscular arms, and he kept smirking suggestively as he spoke. I’d never seen my sister look so flustered. The boy had her cornered; she clutched a shopping bag with one hand and nervously tucked her hair behind her ear with the other, clearly seeking a means of escape.
I nudged Xavier. “What’s going on over there?”
“Looks like Chris Bucknall finally worked up the nerve to ask her out,” Xavier said.
“You know him?”
“He’s on my water-polo team.”
“I don’t think he’s Ivy’s type.”
“I’m not surprised,” Xavier said. “He’s a total sleaze.”
“What should we do?”
“Hey, Bucknall,” Xavier called out. “Can I have a word?”
“Little busy here, dude,” the boy replied.
“Did you hear the news?” Xavier said. “Coach wants to see everyone in his office tonight after the game?”
“Yeah? What for?” Chris said without turning around.
“Not sure. Something about taking names for next season’s tryouts. Anyone who doesn’t show doesn’t get in.”
Chris Bucknall looked alarmed. “I gotta go,” he told Ivy. “I’ll catch you later.”
Ivy gave Xavier a grateful smile as Chris sprinted away.
Gabriel and Ivy finally seemed to have accepted Xavier. He didn’t intrude on our space but rather became a regular fixture within it. I began to suspect they actually liked having him around: first, because he was so reliable in terms of keeping an eye on me; and second, because he was useful when it came to working technical gadgets. Gabriel had found his students giving him strange looks when he didn’t know how to work the DVD player, and Ivy wanted to promote her social service program via the school e-mail system. Both had enlisted Xavier’s help. Knowledgeable as my siblings were, technology was a bit of a minefield for them, because it changed constantly. Gabriel had also grudgingly allowed Xavier to show him how to send emails to his fellow colleagues at Bryce Hamilton and teach him the workings of an iPod. It seemed to me that Xavier spoke a whole different language sometimes, using alien terms like
Bluetooth, gigabyte, and WiFi. If it had been anyone else, I would have switched off, but I loved the sound of his voice, no matter what he was talking about. I could occupy myself for hours watching the way he moved, listening to the way he spoke, committing it all to memory.
Aside from being our tech angel, Xavier took his responsibility as my “bodyguard” so seriously that I found myself having to remind him that I wasn’t made of glass and had managed quite adequately before his arrival. Entrusted to look after me by Gabriel and Ivy, Xavier was determined to keep his word and convince them of his moral fiber. He was the one who reminded me to drink plenty of water and the one who deflected questions about my family from curious classmates. He even took it upon himself to answer for me one day when Mr. Collins asked why I hadn’t managed to finish my homework by the due date.
“Beth has a lot of other commitments at the moment,” he explained. “She’ll get the assignment in by the end of the week.”
I knew that if it slipped my mind, Xavier would complete it for me and hand it in without my knowledge.
He became fiercely protective whenever anybody he didn’t approve of came within a twofoot radius of me.
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head at me when a boy named Tom Snooks asked if I wanted to
“hang” with him and his friends one afternoon.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked crossly. “He seems nice enough.”
“He’s not your type of person.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Yes. Now tell me why.”
“Well, because he’s off with the green fairy most of the time.”
I stared at him blankly so that he was forced to elaborate.
“He’s good friends with Puff the Magic Dragon,” Xavier hinted and waited for me to register, rolling his eyes when I didn’t. “You’re a dope.”
If it hadn’t been for Xavier acting as a buffer, my life at Bryce Hamilton would have been a lot more difficult. I had a tendency to get myself into sticky situations. Trouble seemed to seek me out even though I did my best to avoid it. It found me one day as I was crossing the parking lot to get to English.
“Hey there, sweetheart!” I spun around when I heard the voice behind me. It was a lanky senior with slick blond hair and pock-marked skin. He was in my biology class, but he was rarely there. I had seen him out behind the Dumpsters smoking cigarettes and doing burnouts in his car. He was flanked by three other boys, all grinning nastily.
“Hello,” I said nervously.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” He smirked. “I’m Kirk.”