Skyler hated me. He never said the exact words, but I was always better at reading body language, anyway. He hated this program, he hated wasting his summer baby-sitting social pariahs, and he hated having to be around me.
Not saying he was a joy to be around twenty-four-seven, but there was room to feel some guilt. After all, if my parents didn't think I was one book away from a lifetime of hermitage, they wouldn't feel the need to intervene. And if they didn't feel the need to intervene, there existed an entire parallel universe where Skyler didn't become roped in with me for a whole summer. A universe where he didn't look like he was being forced through a meat grinder whenever we spent time together.
Maybe such a universe existed. Didn't seem to matter, though, because I was stuck in this one.
And this one sucked.
"Okay, everybody! Stay with your partner and follow me!"
Lilia stationed herself at the front of our awkward, dysfunctional group. But she was so short, when Neil moved in front of me, she disappeared. I drifted toward the back of the line, catching a vague sense we'd just been vaulted back to Kindergarten, following the line-leader single file. Skyler was nowhere to be seen.
Of course.
"Welcome to the mall!" Lilia exclaimed, rather loudly, but there wasn't really anybody else around considering it was barely seven in the morning. And the mall just opened. Some of the stores still had the gates down.
Riley hunched over her notebook, purple hair extensions falling in her face. Once she was finished scribbling down words, she flipped the page around to show to me.
I hate people. They make me want to jump off a bridge. Multiple times.
In response I offered a small smile, and Madison, Riley's "buddy", yanked her around to face the front. "Words," the blonde girl said. "You have to use words."
Riley proceeded to write her response in the notebook.
Well, progress didn't happen overnight.
Lilia gave us a thorough tour of the mall, and besides our juvenile counterparts, I was surprised to find out nobody had visited before. It was huge, about a fifteen minute drive from Heart. I myself remembered going only a couple times, when I was younger, before . . .
I swallowed hard, focusing on my breath. Don't think about that.
We took a break by the fountain, right in the center of the mall. I felt infinitesimal looking up three stories to the domed ceiling. Almost insignificant compared to such grandeur. By this time people trickled through the doors, all the gates were up, and the gears were set in motion.
"Where's Skyler?"
Her voice caused me to jump. Nellie and Neil perched against the fountain on either side of me, grinning the same way, both with a roguish glint in their eye. If they weren't opposite genders, I would have sworn they were identical. "I don't know," I muttered, staring down at my fidgeting hands. "He was here when we arrived but—then he wasn't."
Nellie rolled her eyes. "Typical Skyler. All rebellious and shit. So rude of him to leave you like that."
Neil swung his legs, knocking the heels of his sneakers against the side of the fountain. "Jeez, why are girls so emotional?"
His twin shot him a glare fit to kill. "Why are guys so pigheaded?"
"We are not."
"Are too."
"Are not."
"Are—"
"Guys," I interrupted, pushing them away from me. "Not in my ears, please."
Nellie reached behind me and shoved her brother's shoulder. "Look what you did, nimrod. You're gonna make her deaf."
"Me? You're the one shouting in her ear!"
"You're shouting right now!"
Goodness. For two people with separation anxiety, they sure couldn't stand to be around each other.
I slid off the fountain, neither of them recognizing my absence in the heat of their squabbling. Lilia was seated on a bench, talking to Spencer and Gideon about something. Gideon was shaking like a leaf. Spencer was picking at something in his teeth, attention caught by something in the distance. Madison shook her head at Riley, exasperated with the girl's apparent lack of speech. I figured that's why none of them noticed Skyler sauntering the opposite way with a cone of ice cream in one hand.
Unbelievable.
My first instinct was to let it slide, but to be honest, I was little hurt. And peeved. Everybody else had their buddy with them. Even Madison stuck around, and Riley had her pulling her hair out regularly. What was wrong with me?
There's a shit load wrong with you.
No. I shook my head, physically shaking the toxic voices out. Just because they were easier to handle now didn't make them any less there. Any less daunting. Any less vile.
I bounced on the balls of my feet, cursing the boy in my head as I started after him. People crowded the mall, now. Too many. In order to stave off impending panic, I had to focus my eyes on Skyler's back. It was so stupid. He'd always been like this, since our first day of preschool together. The teacher told everybody to stay in the sandbox and play, and what did he do? Ventured off to the swing set on the other side of the building. Maybe it was some sort of malfunction. Following orders gave him a rash, or something. I didn't pretend to know. I stopped trying to figure Skyler Richardson out a long time ago.
He rounded a corner, and I ended up losing him as he submerged himself in the massive crowd in front of the food court. I hovered on the perimeter, physically and mentally unable to penetrate the bubble of bodies, packed together like sardines, ducking, squeezing between tables, knocking over chairs . . .
"Boo."
A sharp yelp escaped me, and I clapped my hands over my mouth. Skyler flashed a crooked grin, hands in his pockets, ice cream cone finished and discarded. I pinned him with a blazing glare.
"You found me," He said. "That was fun."
Slowly, once my heartbeat returned to normal, I lowered my hands. "Why'd you do that?"
"What?"
"Scare me."
He rolled his eyes. "Come on, I didn't scare you."
But he did. He actually did, and I hated it.
"You have to admit it's a stupid field trip." He leaned his arms against the bars, peering over the ledge to the fountain. I hadn't realized I'd followed him this far, all the way to the third floor. "I mean, the mall? Single-file lines? What is this, Kindergarten?"
So he shared my sentiments. I balled my hands together, watching him. The way an unseen draft rustled the fine strands of his brown hair. The way his forearms bunched when he braced them on the railing. The way he looked at everything, even the freaking fountain, like it was the most interesting thing in the world. Like, in the moment, it was the only thing that mattered.
His eyes were damaging.
"Why, Ruby, are you checking me out?"
I blushed, gaze dropping to my shoes. And then he had to go and open his mouth.
"I mean, at least be subtle about it."
My face burned. "Shut up."
He laughed. My toes curled. I didn't understand it.
We must have stood there for five or ten minutes, him watching, me memorizing every detail of my shoes. Again. It was a process but I was good at it. Shoes never talked back.
Then a familiar pair of brown boots entered my field of vision, and I was starting to get good at memorizing them, too.
"You're not supposed to leave the group," I muttered.
Skyler snapped his heels together a couple times. "You talking to my shoes or me?"
Well, I was talking to whatever wasn't going to talk back, but for some reason he insisted on responding. "You're not supposed to leave the group," I repeated.
He sighed. "Ruby, I don't know what your problem is, but if I don't want to be here, I know you definitely don't. Why not at least have some fun while we're trapped here?"
Simple, really. Because Skyler and I had vastly different ideas of what fun meant. A great day for me was curling up in my bed all day and settling down with a nice, thick book, and reading the whole thing cover to cover with an endless supply of chocolate at my side. Skyler's sense of pleasure wasn't as tame.
I raised my head, stopping when I was eye-level with his chest. I stared at the beige buttons on his shirt, at each slow rise and fall of his shoulders with every breath. "Skyler."
"Ruby."
"Lilia will be worried."
"No, she won't."
My fingers curled into fists. Although it felt like lifting a thousand pounds of cement, I tilted my head back to look him in the eye. Let's try this again. "Skyler."
His crooked grin widened. "Ruby."
"Lilia will be worried."
After a moment of exaggerated thought, he nodded. "You're right." He walked away. "Let's go."
And as I watched him go, it occurred to me that I might have just been duped by Skyler Richardson.
Much to my surprise, Skyler didn't leave the group once since I dragged him back. Lilia didn't even notice we were gone, still preoccupied with whatever was bothering Gideon. She flaked on enforcing the single-file line, so we ambled around the mall in a discombobulated blob. I remained at the back, though, watching Nellie and Neil shove each other and Riley write a million words a minute in her notebook. Madison sucked down a Red Bull.
And then there was Skyler, oddly quiet, stalking behind me like a shadow.
Lilia looked considerably worn down when we stopped for lunch, the last stop on our social outing. With familiar around me, I managed to infiltrate the horrific scene that was the food court, but once I had a tray of chicken fingers and fries in my hands, I escaped to a table somewhere else, in a quieter section of the mall. My nerves relaxed. I bit into a piece of chicken.
"Nice spot. Good view."
I paused with a French fry in my mouth, having not expected Skyler to sit with me, much less exhaust the will power to find me. He had a burger, fries, and a shake, and looked way too happy with himself. "I have found the one plus with this stupid trip," he said. "Free food."
What a silver lining.
We ate in silence. Though fixated on my chicken, I was hyperaware of everything around me. I didn't want to be, but I couldn't help it. Every conversation, every piercing laugh, every shuffle of bodies behind me or beside me or around me. Every child crying, anytime somebody dropped something, the sound of Skyler balling up his trash. It all slammed into me as a barrage of noise, and even though I tried to filter it out, some of it stuck. Most of it stuck. Clogged my head, my brain, my senses. The only remedy was absolute silence, maybe a book to distract me. No other cure. Breathing didn't work. Visualizing my "happy place" didn't work. I knew from experience.
"And that's why I hate swimming with panda bears."
I blinked, attention switching back to Skyler. "What?"
"Ah, there we go. You just spaced out big time."
Come on, Ruby, pay more attention next time. "Sorry."
He shrugged. "I don't care. Doesn't offend me. You gonna eat that?"
Considering my appetite had all but left me, I shook my head and slid the leftover chicken toward him, which he promptly devoured. The rest of our group emerged from the food court, Lilia leading them toward us.
"There you are," you she said. "Ruby, your mother called and said she wouldn't be able to pick you up for another hour. Do you mind coming back with me?"
I nodded, the stone in my gut sinking lower as realization set in. They didn't trust me. They still didn't trust me to be alone. "Okay."
"Awesome. Everybody ready to go?"
Everybody was way passed ready to go. I trudged along beside them. Skyler loped ahead to talk to Neil, who never strayed far from Nellie. For some reason my eyes burned, thinking about my parents, about what they must think of me. And I hated doing it.
But I couldn't stop.