Her dark brow is still furrowed with suspicion. “And he just randomly decided to send you presents?”
“It’s kind of a long story. We talked and bonded a little on the way home. This is probably just his way of being nice.”
“Is it being nice, or is it charity?” she questions, still looking uneasy. “If you needed a new backpack, you could have told me, honey. I don’t like you appealing to strangers for things, especially strange boys.”
That finally does the job of getting a smile off my face, and a frown takes its place. “I wasn’t appealing to him for anything. I didn’t ask for a new backpack; I was fine carrying mine. He did this on his own.”
“A boy I didn’t even realize you talked to a couple days ago is so eager to be nice to you that now he’s sending you gifts?”
“Why are you so hung up on this being a gift?” I demand.
“From a boy,” she adds, like that should help me see why this is so horrible.
My eyes widen. “Stop saying that. Stop saying ‘a gift from a boy.’ My God, what is the big deal?”
She is also frowning. “I don’t know. I feel weird about it. You have never even mentioned this boy before and now all of a sudden he’s buying you presents? That must have been some walk.”
Aggravated, I toss the packing paper back into the box. I tuck Mockingjay under my arm and grab both my new backpack and my old one. Without a word, I storm down the hall toward my bedroom so I can transfer all my stuff to the new one.
“Where are you going?” Mom calls after me.
“To read,” I state, swinging my door open, stepping inside, and then slamming it.
___
I’m tired and grumpy the next day at school.
To start with, I stayed up half the night reading my book, too impatient to read the conclusion of the series to worry about sleeping. Then, the book did not go remotely the way I hoped or thought it would. The main character turned into a hot mess, and the ending was downright depressing. I finished reading around 4am, but I was too angry to fall asleep.
To make matters even worse, things were still leftover weird with my mom this morning. We hardly spoke while we got ready, and although the silence was charged like we both wanted to, we didn’t say a word to each other in the car.
Fighting with my mom always results in a terrible gnawing in my gut, but being confused about why we are even fighting to begin with isn’t helping matters.
School is uneventful until fifth period. It’s the only class I have with Hunter and while normally I don’t pay him any mind, today I find his presence distracting. Today I struggle to drag my gaze away from his desk. I take note of the gray hoodie he’s wearing. It has the school’s wrestling team logo on it—is he on the team? I imagine he is, or he wouldn’t be wearing it.
We lock eyes a couple times in class, but there’s no acknowledgment beyond that.
I’m still distracted.
Lunchtime is next. Hunter leaves with his buddies and I go back to my locker to get the lunch I packed. When I get to the cafeteria, he’s already seated with his friends, talking and laughing like nothing’s wrong.
We never talked before so I guess I shouldn’t have expected us to today, but I want to thank him for my new backpack and the book—even if I nearly threw the book a few times and wanted to set it on fire by the time it finally ended.
I look over at his table more times than I want to admit. After a while, I accept that he’s not going to look my way and I force myself to stop.
I try to catch up to him on the way out to recess, but he’s always surrounded by his friends and I feel too awkward trying to talk to him around them. I’ll feel bad if I don’t find a chance to thank him, but it’s too hard to get him alone.
By the time recess is over, I give up. Maybe I’ll see if I can find his address and send him a nice thank you note instead.
When school lets out, I head home. Mom doesn’t get off for another hour, so I’ll be able to get a head start on my homework before she gets there.
At least, that’s the plan until Hunter catches up to me when I’m heading into the woods toward my usual path home.
“Hey.”
My heart does a weird flail, but I offer a contained smile as I look over at him suddenly walking beside me. “Hey.”
His gaze shifts away from my face as he surveys my sturdy new gear. “Backpack looks good.”