“I’ll get a tardy slip.”
“Nah, it’s all good—I’ll work it out.” Travis’s words were reassuring.
“You will?”
“Sure,” Travis said with a smile. He wrapped his hand around my elbow and pulled me up. “You got the stuff for your first class?”
I reached down and pulled out the folder and the notebook before nodding.
“Maybe Mayra could walk with you,” Travis suggested. “Then I can talk to Monroe about the tardy slip, and you can say hello.”
I took a deep breath and tried to stop my hands from shaking. I had something that resembled a plan now, and that usually got me going when I was stuck. Travis was going to take care of the tardy slip, so that should be all right as well.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Travis walked over to Mayra, and then they both came back next to me. At some point, the corner of my notebook had become slightly bent, which sucked. I’d have to write all the notes into a new one.
“Hey,” Mayra said as she looked up at me through her eyelashes. They were definitely wet. “You have English first, right?”
“Yes.”
Mayra walked beside me down the hall without speaking. We stopped when we got to the closed door of the classroom, and I knew I was forgetting something.
“Oh!” I exclaimed when I remembered what I was supposed to say. “Um, hello.”
Mayra laughed quietly through her nose as she tilted her head up to look at me again. It was the first time I had noticed how short she was. She barely came up to my shoulder. She shook her head slowly, and when I looked back down to the ground, she reached out and placed her finger under my chin. She tilted my head back to look at her, and when I met her eyes, I could have sworn my stomach flipped over.
“Hello, Matthew,” she said as she smiled at me. “Would you like to go to Houston Woods this weekend?”
I couldn’t comprehend her question, so I just quickly ducked into the classroom. I needed distance and solitude to process what was going on inside my head, and I couldn’t think about anything but the potential for a tardy slip.
Considering the start to the day, I didn’t last long at school. About halfway through third period, there was a fire drill. It was just too much—too much difference. The school usually has fire drills after lunch, and third period is too early.
Travis had to come back to take me home. He didn’t really say much on the way other than to tell me he wasn’t going to argue about me taking the Valium he knew I still had in the bathroom upstairs. It had been prescribed for me after Mom died, but I had only taken it a couple of times. It always made me fall asleep when it wasn’t time for sleep.
“You need the extra rest,” Travis said. “Reset your system a little, okay? I’ll stick around your house tonight until your normal bedtime.”
I gave up. I didn’t really mind him being there. He was in “no bullshit mode,” and arguing with him was pointless. Once we were back at my house, Travis nuked a box of macaroni and cheese and then stared at me with his arms crossed over his chest until I swallowed the damn pill.
Today was one giant lose.
Chapter 5—What I Will Do for Cake
Groggy and disoriented, it took me a few minutes to even figure out I was on my couch, and it was the middle of the afternoon. It took a little longer to get my bearings because I could hear voices coming from the dining room.
“…hasn’t been that bad for a while,” Travis was saying. “The dude loves his routines, you know? You can’t really get in the way of them and expect decent results.”
“I didn’t know…” It was Mayra’s voice that responded to my uncle. “I just…I mean…I thought we kind of connected yesterday, right? No one ever asks him to go anywhere with us, and I thought I would ask him to go to Houston Woods this weekend. I didn’t think…”
“I have to admit you gave me a bit of a shock,” Travis said. “I suppose most uncles in my position would worry about walking in and finding their nephew on the couch with some chick. Honestly, I never dreamed it would happen.”
I heard him laugh quietly.
“Don’t get all embarrassed on me,” he said. “You have to know what that looked like.”
“We weren’t—”
“I know,” Travis said, interrupting her. “He told me. I’m also not an idiot, and I’m not a kid. I’ve seen enough of my wife’s DVDs to know that he’s a good-looking, well-built kid. I also know it would be damn easy to take advantage of him. If that happens, I’m not going to be particularly friendly.”