One thing you can’t doubt about my best mate is his loyalty. He mucks about and teases me mercilessly, but I know he won’t just turn to Amy and tell her I’ve been spying. Instead, he makes a face behind her back and blows kisses while I try to make small talk.

“What did you do last night?” I ask.

“The usual,” she replies.

She doesn’t ask back, and I hope she doesn’t already know. If she saw me, she isn’t letting on.

“So why did you leave St. Gregory’s?” Zak asks, a bit too quickly for it to be a random question.

Amy doesn’t reply right away. It’s as if she’s lost in a memory. But, eventually, she says, “It’s shit there.”

She’s not very talkative today, yet she’s still said more than me. Even when Zak nudges me, I just stand there, wanting to blurt out something about the locks or last night, unable to think of something less creepy.

“I’d better get to physics,” Amy says, and Zak huffs.

“She’s too smart for you,” he says, then sort of sucks his face in. “Shit…sorry…I…shit.”

We all stand there in silence, and my face is so hot I can feel it melting. I can see Zak trying to make things better with a sentence he can’t untangle in his mind. But nothing comes. He just stares at me, apologizing with his eyes, until I take a deep breath and say, “She is.”

Amy smiles and Zak raises his eyebrows, and everything is happening in silence, but my head feels so loud.

Zak’s fighting the urge to bounce on the spot, and I know, if I don’t speak soon, he’ll do it, anyway. But what do you say after something like that? I think I’ve just admitted that I like her, and I don’t know quite when I decided that.

“So…” Amy says, “I’ll see you around.”

“You certainly will,” Zak says, talking to her but staring at me.

He isn’t teasing anymore. He wants me to think of a line Amy will remember all day. I can see the hope in his face that, for once, I get it right. But, for all the thoughts racing through my brain, none of them can form that sentence. None of them form anything.

All I can do is wave until Amy disappears and Zak grabs my hand and says, “Stop it. You are literally waving like a baby.”

19

Maybe the holes don’t mean anything. Maybe I’m imagining a horror story, because that’s just what I do. Not everyone’s life is shit. Ours isn’t anymore, and maybe Amy’s never was. But I still can’t bring myself to ask her.

“She likes you,” Zak says.

“How do you know?”