Speechless(92)

                “Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Chelsea,” he says                     without turning around.

                I drop into my seat and lay my head down on my desk. I’m too                     tired to be embarrassed.

                I’m dragging all day, totally out of it, preoccupied with                     feeling guilty about Dad. And with thinking about Sam, and how much I’m looking                     forward to working at the diner again tonight, and then I feel even guiltier,                     because—hello!—this horrible, awful thing has happened to my father, something I                     am at least partially to blame for. I should not be happy about anything right                     now.

                Asha notices. At lunch in the library, she pokes me in the                     elbow with her pencil and says, “Hey, did you even hear what I said? About                     finding the axis of symmetry?”

                I definitely did not. And I definitely do not care. I’m too                     busy zoning out. A much more productive use of my time than geometry.

                She sighs and rolls the pencil between her fingers. “We can                     work on it later,” she says. She pulls out her knitting—the yarn is a mix of                     green and silver, this shiny, glinting material, and I remember the scarf she                     told Sam she’d make for him.

                I write Sam? on my whiteboard and slide it over to                     her.

                She nods and says, “I finished Noah’s a few days ago,” and then                     looks at me from underneath her eyelashes. “I’m visiting him this weekend.”

                I scratch Sam’s name off the board with my thumbnail. I don’t                     want to think about Noah in the hospital. What are people like after they wake                     up from comas? Even I’m not naive enough to believe it’s like the movies, where                     the person just opens their eyes and is perfectly functional. I wonder if he can                     talk. If the police have interviewed him yet like they interviewed me. If he                     even remembers that night at all.

                “You could come,” Asha says, carefully neutral.

                Come to the hospital? Yeah, right. I’d probably be kicked out                     on arrival. There is no way Noah wants me there.

                I don’t answer. I just take out my sketchpad and doodle                     absently. Sam and I still have to figure out our project. The last time we                     talked about it, he mentioned maybe making the characters out of papier-mâché,                     but the wire netting Ms. Kinsey has doesn’t bend well enough for it to seem                     feasible. So now we’re back to square one.