Brandy Colbert - Pointe

She lets out her signature sigh before turning around.

“I’m a regular, too,” I call after her.

She pretends not to hear me.

I’m sitting with my back to the rest of the diner, with just the dingy wall ahead of me, but I wish I’d brought something to do. Even my English essay would be better than nothing, because when I’m doing nothing, all I think about is Donovan and Chris.

Without Sara-Kate and Phil to distract me, I’m entirely too aware of every sound in the diner, from the dinging of the register to the person who keeps scratching a fork across their plate like nails down a chalkboard. I’m also aware of the heavy footsteps approaching my table. Different from the reluctant trudge of Jana’s, these are slow but purposeful. When I look up, Hosea Roth stands next to me, holding a white take-out bag.

“I thought that was you,” he says with a hesitant smile. Hesitant because I look as unhinged as I feel? Or because he’s here alone and I’m here alone, and we keep ending up in the same places? Alone.

He’s wearing a jacket this time. A black one over the same gray hooded sweatshirt. I find myself wondering again about the black T-shirt. Maybe it’s not part of his uniform in the cooler months. I don’t say anything. I just stare at his jacket and think how strange it is that he’s suddenly around all the time. There’s always been some overlap in our circle of friends since I got to high school, but he was just Phil’s dealer. Until now. I never really thought about him before he showed up at my dance studio, because I didn’t know how much there is to like about him.

“Theo? Everything okay?”

“Where are you going?” I ask, turning the pepper shaker around the table in wide, slow circles.

Because I want to know, but asking also means I don’t have to answer his question.

Hosea is taken aback and I guess I shouldn’t have asked but I don’t care. If nothing else makes sense today I don’t have to, either.

“Home, I guess. Had to make a drop-off at this party a couple of blocks away.” His cheeks are two pink circles again, flushed from the cold. I want to press my hands over them.

“Oh.” I look down at the table again. Squeeze my fingers around the pepper shaker. Wish the news that he’s not staying wasn’t so disappointing.

He opens his mouth. Pauses, then: “You look pretty bummed. You sure everything’s okay?”

I abandon the pepper, poke my finger at the yellow stuffing that bursts through the cracked red vinyl of the booth. “I saw Donovan on the news tonight. There was video. From when he was gone. He was laughing, like those people were his friends.”

Hosea looks at me for a while before he speaks, his gray eyes searching my face like he doesn’t quite know what he’s looking for. “I don’t have to be home right away. Want to go for a drive? It helps clear my head sometimes.”

“Okay.” It’s automatic, though I still have an English essay to finish, I barely know him, and he has a girlfriend. But it’s just a drive, and maybe it will clear my head.

“Then let’s go.” He cocks his head toward the door, but not impatiently.

Still, I shrug into my jacket right away, afraid he’ll revoke the invitation if I don’t move. On the way out, I stop in front of the counter and stare at Jana until she looks over, annoyed. She’s flirting with a trucker young enough to be her son.

“What?” she spits out.

“Never mind on that tea. I have to go.”

“You kids keep coming in here and ordering things then disappearing and wasting my time, I’m gonna make sure you don’t come back.”

“You love us too much to do that,” I say, and I even manage a smile in response to her scowl because I know how much it bothers her. “See you Thursday!”

She grumbles and waves me away and it’s just as well, because Hosea is waiting.

HOSEA STEERS THE CAR WITH ONE HAND AND HOLDS A SANDwich in the other. A BLT. An unlikely choice for eating and driving, but he’s surprisingly graceful.

His car is a carrot-colored hatchback with a faded black racing stripe down the center. It only starts after a couple of tries. It’s cramped inside, so small that his seat is pushed back almost twice as far as mine to accommodate his long legs. My eyes sweep over the pack of cloves in the console and I think about Ellie, how she’d be furious if she could see me sitting here right now. But she won’t find out. Somehow, I know Hosea won’t say anything to her any sooner than I will. And knowing I have a secret with him is even more satisfying than Ellie learning we hung out alone.

There’s hardly any traffic. Everything in Ashland Hills shuts down by nine and it’s a quarter till. I stood outside the cloudy windows of Casablanca’s as I called my parents. I looked in at Jana and the trucker as I told my father I stopped by Sara-Kate’s house, that I’d be home soon. It’s safer than Phil’s; he lives so close that they could easily bump into him or his mother.

Hosea doesn’t talk much. He’s eating and the radio doesn’t work but the silence makes me nervous. I don’t know him well enough to be comfortable, to guess what he’s thinking. To wonder if he regrets inviting me to go on this drive. I watch him take another huge bite of his sandwich, watch his jaw move sternly as he chews. I watch all of this from the corner of my eye and then, just before he takes another bite, I say, “Are you going to study music next year?”

He lowers the sandwich a bit and looks over at me like I’m crazy. “What, like major in piano?”

I shrug. “Lots of people do.”

We’re driving through downtown Ashland Hills, which is just three short blocks with the usual suspects lined up on each side: the supermarket, bank, library, coffee shops, boutiques, and restaurants. We don’t have a local dance studio, which is why I ended up at Marisa’s. My parents like living in a small community—they say it’s easier to get things done. Chicago is loud and busy, but sometimes I think I’d rather deal with the hassle than live in a town where everybody knows your business.

Hosea eases his foot down on the brake as we approach a stop sign. “I’ve never thought about studying music,” he finally says. “Not seriously.”

“Why not?” I inhale and decide I like the smell of his hatchback. There’s an old-car mustiness to it, but it’s mostly cloves and that familiar boy smell, like deodorant and soap and a hint of sweat.

Hosea finishes the last bite of his sandwich and brushes his hands against his jeans before we start moving again. “You know you have to be good enough to even audition for one of those places, right?”

“But you are good enough.” I look at him, think about the way he turns into a different person when he sits behind the piano. How he makes such familiar pieces sound brand-new, how beautiful and evocative the notes become under his fingers. He doesn’t say anything and that’s when it hits me. “Is that why you asked me not to tell anyone about your job at the studio? You don’t think you’re good enough?”

“I know I’m not. I should be competing or performing by now.” He pauses. “I haven’t even taken lessons since I lived in Omaha. I’m not exactly on the fast track to a conservatory.”

“Some people don’t need lessons.” I fold my hands in my lap. “It’s called raw talent.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” His grin makes my face warm and I look out the window because I don’t know what to say.

We wind through the quiet streets in silence for a while. Pass the Ashland Hills train station, then loop over to Klein’s neighborhood. The hatchback’s engine thrums as we drive by the sprawling houses, some of them dark save for the glowing porch lights.

“Whose party were you at earlier?” I ask when the silence is too much. It’s not uncomfortable, but with the radio broken, it’s easy to let my thoughts wander back to Donovan.

“No one from school. Just this guy I used to be friends with.” He shakes his head. “That’s the last time I’m going over there, though. He’s in over his head.”

“How do you mean?” I look out the window at an older woman walking her terrier. She’s bundled up in a parka, scarf, mittens, and a knitted hat, like it’s February. The dog is utterly unconcerned, taking his time as he finds the perfect place to relieve himself.

Hosea pauses, then: “He’s into some hard shit now. Shit I don’t touch.”

I look back at him because his voice changed. It’s more serious. Somber, almost. “Like what?”

“Like everything. Tonight it was crystal.”

Oh. Nobody at school messes with meth. “How do you know him?”

“He was the first person I met when I moved here. He’s a couple years older, but he grew up around the corner from my Grams and he was always cool to me, you know?” Hosea sighs. “He’s the closest thing I ever had to a brother and now it’s like I don’t know him.”

“That’s how I feel about Donovan.” I absently run my index finger along the cracked dash, come away with a fingertip of dust. “I mean, sort of.”

We’re at the edge of town now, where the houses thin out and give way to more land. He pulls off to the side of the road near a paved driveway with a closed gate and a large house set back from the street, shadowed by trees. Hosea leaves the car running for the heat.

He fiddles with the pack of cloves in the console but never attempts to take one out of the box. “Klein said you were with Donovan before he disappeared.”

“Yeah.” I shift in my seat as I think about that morning.

I’d walked in the unlocked front door of Donovan’s house like I always did, because the rest of his family was gone. His mother was on her way into the city to open the museum gift shop while his father dropped off Julia at kindergarten on his way to the office.

The Pratt house was messier than ours, but I didn’t mind. It was clean but lived-in and you never felt weird about flopping on a couch or putting your feet up on the coffee table. I stepped over a pair of mud-caked cleats in the foyer as I searched for their owner. He wasn’t in the kitchen where I’d assumed he’d be scarfing down a bowl of cornflakes next to the breakfast dishes soaking in the sink. And he wasn’t sitting at the bottom of the staircase, tying his shoes before he ran out the door.

He was up in his room but when he heard me on the stairs he immediately stepped out into the hallway. And he wasn’t in his pajamas like I thought, but dressed for the day in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a short-sleeved one layered over it.

I had to describe that outfit to what seemed like everyone in town, because they wanted to know the last thing he’d been seen in. White sleeves with a short black T-shirt over it. Or was it the other way around? Were the jeans dark or light? Was I positive they were jeans and not shorts? Was he wearing a belt? What brand were his sneakers?

But I never got to see his shoes because he pushed me out shortly after he greeted me.

“Hey, I’ll just catch up to you at school,” he said. Quickly, like he had things to do.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my hand firm on the banister as I waited for an answer.

He ran a hand over his head. He was in need of a haircut, which wasn’t like him. Usually his dad buzzed his head every couple of weeks, and Donovan stayed on top of this because he didn’t like longer hair, said it made his head itchy and hot.

“I need to take care of something before school.” His deep brown eyes moved from my face to the stair rail and slid across the carpet. “You should go on without me.”

Take care of something? We were thirteen. It’s not like we had errands to run.

I looked at him for a long time. Until he looked at me, too, and then looked away and back again.

“What, Theo?” he said, turning his hands up like I’d seen my parents do. The universal symbol for What do you want me to do?

“You’re being weird.” I tugged on the straps of my backpack.

“We don’t have to do everything together.” His eyes were elsewhere again. On the picture that hung next to the stairs—a portrait of him with Julia when she was just a baby, taken in the hospital before his mother was discharged. “I’ll meet you at school later and we can ride home together, okay?”

“Do you have a note?” I pressed on, not wanting to let him get out of this so easily.

Was this my punishment for not telling him about everything I’d done with Chris? Making up secrets of his own and throwing them in my face? It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t I been punished enough when Chris disappeared without saying goodbye?