Page 19 of Room to Breathe

I wished hecouldtell the future. Tell me what was going on with my parents. Tell me what I was going to do with my life. Being smart wasn’t a career, and that’s all I seemed to know about myself at the moment. At least I had that.

Chapter 7

Now

“That’s how I fell intothe toilet,” I said. Not that I wouldn’t want to see Beau fall in there, but I thought a warning was courteous. I could extend that much to him. My butt hurt from sitting on the tile, so I was now pacing. He was up on the toilet, messing with the window. First he’d called out of it, to no success; now he was trying to detach it. Even if he could, I wasn’t sure either of us could climb out the small opening.

We’d already tried to take the pins out of the hinges on the door. I’d shoved a pen underneath and then hammered with the brick. When I got nowhere, he took over. It didn’t work. The hinges wouldn’t budge. Too much counterpressure or something. But even with one of us pushing up on the door handle, it did nothing to loosen the tension. So he’d moved on to the window.

“I won’t fall in. I’ve always been more athletic than you,” he said.

Okay, maybe I was taking courteous back off the table.

We’d been in here for at least three hours. Again, it was hard totell. Time passed differently when there was no clock to verify reality. It moved slower. But the sun was going down outside, which meant it was probably around six? Is that what time the sun set in late February? It had been a warm day, but I could feel a cool breeze coming in the window. I imagined it would get even colder the later it got.

How long would we be stuck in here? Overnight? I couldn’t be in here overnight.

My throat suddenly felt very dry. I looked around, my eyes landing on his jar of mints. He was obviously trying to open some doors with those, like I’d told him my Jolly Ranchers did with the kids at the tutoring center. Maybe Ms. Crane would grade on a curve the next time his test score was lower than he wanted it to be. Not that he needed to worry about that. He was number three in the class now or something. I’d slipped all the way off the board.

That thought made my throat tight. My whole identity had been wrapped up in my ability to stay in the top ten. And now I probably wasn’t even in the top fifty. I wasn’t climbing my way out of the hole I’d dropped into.

No, I wasn’t going to think about this right now. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

I unscrewed the lid on the mints and dumped them onto the counter, then filled the jar with water from the sink and took several big gulps. Even though the mints were individually wrapped, I still tasted a hint of their flavor in the water. The jar must’ve been lined with mint dust.

“You can have one,” he said.

I turned. He must’ve given up the attempts on the window, because now he stood in the open door of the back stall.

“I don’t want your mints,” I said. “Or your attempts at courtesy.”

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I guess I can’t see the future after all, or I would’ve avoided this bathroom.”

I took a sip of air. He was referring to the Halloween party. He actually remembered that? Standing out by the tree, looking up at the stars in that stupid peapod. And that’s what he would now use his hypothetical future-seeing powers to avoid? Being locked in the bathroom with me? Not the entire blowing up of our friendship? “Wish you had,” I said. “I would’ve made Mrs. Thiessen unlock this bagbeforedetention.”

He gave a single laugh. “You had detention today too?”

“I know that you’ve never been in trouble a single day in your life. It’s what happens when you aren’t in love with all your teachers and can disappoint your mother. Try to imagine it.” It was a low blow, but apparently we were doling those out.

He clenched his fists. “It’s actually what happens when you care at all about other people.”

“I think you mean when you care too much what people think aboutyou,” I snapped.

He let out a breath of frustration. “Can we call a bathroom truce?”

“A bathroom truce?” I asked.

“Yes, one that only needs to exist in this room.” He pointed at the floor.

“In the teachers’ lounge bathroom?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You don’t like me, I don’t like you, truce. We’re even.”

“No,” I said. “We’re not.”

“Just in this bathroom,” he reiterated.

“Fine,” I said. It really was exhausting to be this angry. Most of the time I didn’t think about Beau…Well, that wasn’t true at all. Most of the time, I could push Beau out of my brain when he found his way in there. But this was going to be a long lockup if my normal coping strategy didn’t work, because he was standing right in front of me.