Page 88 of Whatever It Takes

Or I can go find him. I can step over my hurt feelings. The ones that say,he left me, and just make sure he’s okay.

He approached them for me. To stand up for me.

That means something.

I make my decision.

I trace his footsteps down the hallway. I veer around the corner where I expect another hallway or a cluster of vending machines. Instead, I’m met with two bathrooms. Girls and boys.

“Oh God,” I mutter.

I’m staring at the boy symbol. Just go in. This will be my first foray into this great unknown that is the boys’ bathroom. I wish I didn’t give a shit. I wish I could just push inside without a second thought or care.

It’s just the boys’ bathroom.

It’s trivial, right?

Just go in.

I do this time.

I push the royal blue door with my shoulder. I’m met with one long row of sinks, two stalls, and three urinals. Not too shocking.

Garrison is sitting on the sink counter, a lit cigarette between his fingers. His head is hung, hair in his eyes, but as soon as I enter, he looks up. His bones seem to cement, joints unoiled. Frozen.

Maybe this wasn’t a smart idea.

“I…” I gesture to the door I came from, as though that explains everything. It actually explains absolutely nothing.

Smoke wafts around his body, and it takes him a second to shift the hand that holds his cigarette. He casually sucks on it, quiet.

I like quiet.

I’m familiar with quiet more than I am loud. I walk further inside and rest my back on a locked, out-of-order stall.

He blows smoke up at the air vent. Then his aquamarine eyes study his cigarette, embers eating the paper. “Did you hear the bell?” He finally speaks.

“Yeah.”

He nods a couple times, almost in realization, and then he takes another drag.

“Thanks for trying to help me,” I say softly.

“I probably made it worse.”

I cross my arms, feeling naked without my backpack. “They’re your friends?”

“Were,” he corrects. “They pretty much want nothing to do with me after…the thing.”The thing.He takes a deeper drag of his cigarette. I know he must mean when his friends broke into Loren’s house with gargoyle masks.

“What’d you say to Carly?”

He stares off past me, his gaze haunted. “I told her that she’s right.”

“What?” A weight bears down on me. And the room.

He puts out his cigarette in the sink basin. “I’m a piece of shit.” He says it with such finality, as though he’s accepted it for a long time.

I open my mouth to tell him that it’s not true—that he’s a great person. I pause.