With a nod and a concerned smile for me, Mr. Herman turned around and walked back to his own homeroom class, which by the sound of it was getting a little too comfortable without his supervision. His voice boomed, restoring order to the chaos I felt responsible for and he shut the door behind himself.
“Are you dizzy?” Ryan was still holding my elbow, afraid to let me stand on my own.
I shook my head to answer “no” and began searching the floor for the black feather. It was nowhere to be found. Who knows how many feet trampled it? But still, I looked for it, unable to take my eyes off the floor. I was so sure it still had to be here, somewhere.
“What are you looking for? Did you lose something?” We were walking toward the cafeteria for my “breakfast.”
“Yeah, my mind.”
I felt foolish wasting time staring at the floor, knowing we would only be excused from the short ten minutes it took to take attendance. Asking Mr.
Herman to give me a hall pass to look for a lost feather from yesterday’s rainstorm was not only pushing it, it was insane.
We entered the empty cafeteria, or “food court” as we sometimes liked to call it. The five vending machines standing side by side on the one wall were all we had to give variety to the masterpieces like creamed corn and Hamburger Helper. The student body liked to consider it a secret addition to the food pyramid.
Ryan deposited a dollar bill and punched the buttons A5 and E9, dispensing a chocolate chip granola bar and a yellow mini package of Lorna Doone cookies into the metal bin below. He reached in and handed them both to me.
“Here,” I began fumbling with the zipper on my purse to pay him back.
“It’s on me,” he smiled.
“Thanks.”
We walked over to one of the white laminated benches and parked ourselves as I gently tore open the package of cookies, offering one to Ryan. He shook his head no.
“So, do you want to tell me what happened back there? What did you mean by you ‘lost your mind’?”
I chewed slowly, not eager to tell him anything. In fact, if I remembered correctly, I had just given myself a pep talk about keeping my problems to myself. That was before that stupid feather had to fall out of my locker and ruin everything. I looked at him closely, trying to read him, anticipating how he was going to react.
“You’re going to think this is crazy,” I warned him.
Ryan sighed and cocked his head to the side like I was stating the impossible.
“Don’t you think you and I have seen enough to know nothing’s crazy?” he asked.
I bit my bottom lip, wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and delved into the story I swore to myself I wouldn’t tell. Before I knew it, Ryan had been given a short-but-sweet account of the dream feather coming back to haunt me, the spilling-my-guts email to his ex-now-deceased girlfriend, the too-real dream I had last night, Garreth’s no-show this morning and unfortunately the whole escapade that happened yesterday; including the disgusting cologne worn by Derek Arnold, which I made Ryan swear under oath to never wear. I also spilled the beans about Garreth’s strange behavior, his drinking, his suspension and my hiding out in the library for the rest of the day.
By the time I had finished, we still had three minutes left to high-tail our butts to first period and Ryan was staring at me with his jaw hanging open.
“Gee, is that all?”
I waited for the shock to wear off.
“I mean, crap, Teagan! It all makes sense now. Wait, never mind. I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there right now.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not getting you into this,” which was the absolute truth. I didn’t want Ryan involved. “This is my problem.” But with those words a strange trembling came over me and I felt like I had been punched in the heart. Those were Garreth’s words yesterday when I asked him who was going to sign his suspension slip. It was surprisingly easy to recount every detail for Ryan. How, by talking about it, I had become strangely detached from it. But hearing those words again was like reliving it and I could hear Garreth’s voice echoing in my head.
We began walking quickly back to our first period hallway when something occurred to me.
“Ryan, what did Brynn mean back there, at my locker?”
Ryan seemed to stiffen the moment I asked that seemingly innocent question. He stared straight ahead and I had to be careful to not run into any open lockers, as I kept stealing glances at his unreadable face. I followed him into the stairwell. He still hadn’t answered me. Then, he pulled my arm when we reached the bottom of the steps, yanking me back to where the storage door stood locked. He kept swallowing and looking away, either to avoid my eyes or to make sure no one was eavesdropping.
“Out with it, Ryan. What did she mean?” I was so afraid he was going to tell me something I didn’t want to know.
He looked down at his feet.
“You know Brynn and her secrets. She takes a little piece of information and bends it.”
He stalled for a minute, then looked at me.
“Maybe we should wait until after school,” he said, shaking his head as if agreeing with himself.
“Okay, if you think that’s best, but are you sure you don’t want to get it off your chest now? You look like you saw a ghost or something and whatever Brynn was talking about is really bothering you.”
“It’s been bothering me for a long time now,” he admitted quietly. “Getting it off my chest isn’t going to take it away.”
I didn’t care that we were late for first period. Whatever was bothering Ryan, I promised myself I would try to understand. To help him. As far as I was concerned, all that happened in the past stays there. It was in the past. I realized at that moment that Ryan was becoming a friend I really needed right now. It wasn’t like I could start over, pick someone out of the blue and go through that whole “get to know you” process. That wasn’t possible anymore. Not with everything that’d happened. Too many secrets … and what kind of friend would that make me?
No, Ryan was perfect. We’d been through the same ordeal. We’d had the same people touch our lives. Minutes ago I opened the flood-gates and told him everything. Unconditionally, he listened. I owed it to my friend to do the same for him.
“Were you waiting long?” Ryan called out to me. He shut the door to his blue Toyota Camry and walked over, the gravel crunching beneath his tawny-colored work boots.
I stood up from the bench outside the Dunkin’ Donuts and walked a few paces to meet him. I laughed, “You’re the only kid I know who wears those to school. Are you the one who’s been scuffing the floor?”
“Don’t mess with my shit-kickers,” he said playfully.
Shit-kickers? I rolled my eyes.
“Well, you know. Not you,” Ryan smiled.
I was right. Ryan was going to make a good friend.
“How about taking on Derek Arnold for polluting the school?”
“Gladly,” he chuckled. “Bringing Derek up doesn’t remind you of, you know? Him?”
He held the door open for me and I stepped inside.
“Of course it does, but I’m not going to let it ruin my life.” The determination must have been strong in my voice because Ryan looked at me a little differently then. At least I thought he did. Could’ve been my imagination. The truth was, it was ruining my life. It was eating away at me and I was hating every minute of it. I loved Garreth and was worried about him. I wasn’t prepared for this.
The tall pimply boy behind the counter appraised us. I remembered seeing him around school. He was quiet and his complexion needed some serious TLC.
“Um, I’ll take a Bavarian cream and a medium hazelnut coffee … just cream, no sugar please.”
“And I’ll have a large black coffee and a bear claw,” Ryan chimed in.