“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Sam says with a grin. He starts to take his hoodie from her, but I hold up a finger to stop him.
Let me wash it for you.
He looks surprised. “Um. Okay. If you want.”
I do want to. I want to wash his hoodie, and tell him to tell Noah—well, I don’t know what I’d say to Noah if I had the chance.
Pretty sure I won’t have to worry about that. No way is Noah going to ever want to see me face-to-face. On second thought, maybe I should cross my fingers for that amnesia.
* * *
I drive Asha to the diner, and she spends the whole time talking. About her knitting. About how she waits tables and Sam is a cook, and this cool guy named Dex owns the joint, and she really likes the job. About how she earned so many tardies for first period health class because her father makes her walk her little brother Karthik to the middle school every morning, and he is always running late.
She won’t shut up, but I can’t really be annoyed because I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to distract me. I appreciate the sentiment. I’m still a little rattled from what whoever did to my car. I keep wondering how far this will go. Messing with my locker, messing with my car, verbal intimidation—what’s next? Cutting my brakes? Roughing me up in the parking lot? I don’t think anything that extreme will happen, but obviously the past week has, if nothing else, shown that I severely underestimated what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Kristen & Co.’s bullshit.
Not talking leaves me a lot of time alone with my thoughts and ever-growing paranoia. I’ve never been like this. So inside my own head.
As we near the lake, Asha directs me down the street to the diner on the corner. I pull up against the curb and put my car in Park. Rosie’s doesn’t look like much from the outside, just a small, cozy gray building with a red neon sign out front, the E flickering on and off intermittently.
“Thanks for the ride,” she says as she unbuckles her seat belt.