But Cody was nowhere to be seen. It pissed Nate off a bit. Cody could lay the blame on the Grove and the cliques all he wanted, but the way Nate saw it, Cody was the one abandoning him, not the other way around. It wasn’t until social studies, the very last class of the day, that he saw Cody again. Nate had been placed in the advance classes for every subject, and it seemed Cody hadn’t, but social studies was one of the few classes that wasn’t broken into levels. It was also one of the few classes where they were able to choose their own seats. Nate was sitting behind Brian, with Jennifer on his right and another of their Grove friends to his left. His heart skipped a beat when Cody walked in. He found himself smiling, willing Cody to catch his eye.
Cody scanned the desks quickly, his eyes wary. He stopped on Nate, pursing his lips. Nate waved, trying to beckon Cody to come over. The seat behind Nate was still empty, and he wanted nothing more than to have Cody there, at his back.
“What are you doing?” Jennifer whispered, pulling his hand down. “We don’t want him by us!”
Nate was about to protest, but it was too late. Cody had already chosen a desk on the far side, near the back of the room, right by the door. He stared resolutely at the desk in front of him, refusing to look Nate’s way. Once class ended, he was out the door again before Nate could even gather his things.
Nate cursed under his breath, although whether he was cursing himself or his new Grove friends or Cody, he didn’t know. He assumed he’d give Cody a ride home, and he waited at the car for fifteen minutes. Cody never appeared, and Nate finally admitted to himself that Cody’d chosen to walk rather than ride with him.
Wednesday was much the same. Nate went to the gas station at seven thirty to pick Cody up, but Cody wasn’t there. Nate waited a few minutes, fuming. He wanted to go to Cody’s house. To confront him. To tell him he was being a fool. If Cody’d just lighten up and trust him, he could make things work. He could bridge that gap between Cody and the preps. But he had no idea where Cody lived. He didn’t even know his phone number. It was a shocking realization. He felt like they’d been friends over the summer, but the truth was, unless Cody was at the gas station or in Jim’s field, Nate had no way of finding him.
He’d talk to Cody after social studies. He’d be ready as soon as the bell rang, and he’d run if he had to. He’d force Cody to ride home with him. Cody wanted to shut him out, to pretend they’d never sat across from each other at McDonald’s, dipping fries into their chocolate shakes. He wanted to pretend like they hadn’t talked about their moms and what it felt like to have only one parent around. It felt like Cody’d locked himself away in some secret room, but Nate intended to beat down the door. He’d tear the walls down with his own hands if that’s what he had to do.
That’s what he told himself, at any rate. But when the last bell rang, Jennifer was flirting with him, and Brian was talking about the bonfire they were having on Friday after school, and Michelle was talking about the new Dead Milkmen album and how Nate just had to hear it.
And, in the end, he didn’t even notice when Cody ducked out the door.
Cody had known from the beginning that he’d lose Nate once school started, but knowing didn’t make it any easier.
It wasn’t as if Nate ignored him completely. It was true he made no effort to talk to Cody in social studies, but on the rare occasions when they passed each other in the hall, Nate still said hi, or at least raised his hand in greeting. But Cody felt the hostility of the Grove residents in Nate’s company. He heard their snickers as they passed. Once, he heard Brian say, “Why do you still talk to that loser?” And so Cody changed his habits. He learned when and where he was most likely to see Nate, and he altered his course through the school in order to avoid him.
Even he couldn’t have said whether completely avoiding Nate made things better or worse.
To his surprise, Logan turned out to be his savior.
Logan’s little sister, Shelley, was a sophomore, and she was Orange Grove all the way. Logan, though, was the exception to every rule, partly because he was so big nobody dared mess with him, partly because he was the quarterback and the star of the football team. He had plenty of family in Wyoming, but his parents had moved to Warren three years earlier to open a steakhouse. Having come from California garnered him a certain amount of credibility, and a fair share of leeway. He was the only kid in school who could pick and choose who to hang out with from day to day. Logan spent a lot of his time at the bowling alley, but he was in the advanced classes in English, math, and science, and he played football. He smoked, which should have made him in ineligible for football, but it wasn’t like the coach was going to bench his best player. He was in 4-H, but drove a shiny black Camaro. Those things alone made him hard to pin down, but he refused to conform to clique standards when it came to clothing, too. Most days, he wore 501s and a denim jacket, which would have pegged him a burnout, but he wore them with pastel polo shirts, tailored sweaters, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat.