Rolling Dice (33 page)

Not soccer and sports trophies. Grade 3 Spelling Bee. Mathletes Championship 2008. Pee-Wee Pals Baseball too.

“Sorry for the mess,” he says distractedly, and in my peripheral vision I see him kicking a pair of underpants out of sight. I smile inside. “I haven’t … Okay, well, this is clean for me. I just wasn’t expecting company.”

I’d laugh at that. He’s trying to make me laugh. I want to.

“Uh, sit—sit down,” he says. “Do you want me to get you a drink or anything? I should have offered earlier.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He stops stammering and his dark eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Sorry for what?”

“For coming here tonight,” I explain. “I know you hate me, but I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking, I just …”

“Whoa, wait. You think I hate you?”

Now it’s my turn to frown and look confused. “Well, yeah, I mean … you haven’t been speaking to me or even looking at me since—” I don’t finish, but I know he understands.

Dwight lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Madison, I don’t hate you. I never
hated
you. I was pissed at you, sure, but you were the one who couldn’t look at me and acted like I didn’t exist. I thought
you
hated
me
.”

Is that true? Have I really been doing that?

“I thought you couldn’t stand to be around me,” I mumble.

Dwight gives another dry laugh and runs his fingers through his hair. “So what, you didn’t hate me, or …?”

“I didn’t hate you,” I say quietly, truthfully. “I couldn’t face you, that was all. And then I was so sure you hated me …”

“Dice, come here,” he says softly, and I take a little step closer. With a sigh, he takes one long stride across to me, and wordlessly wraps his arms around me. That’s it. He just
hugs me. After weeks and weeks of neither one of us acknowledging that the other exists, he hugs me, because he knows that’s exactly what I need right now. I stand stiff and unmoving for a moment, before I put my arms around his thin, gangly body and bury my face in his chest, inhaling his smell. I don’t cry, though.

A while later, he peels my arms away, and takes me by the wrists to sit on his bed. I tuck my legs up and fold them underneath me, and Dwight sits in the same way, facing me. There’s a loose thread in his comforter, and I twirl it around my fingertip.

“What happened?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” I tell him.

“The beginning,” he tells me. “That’s always a good place to start.”

I tell him everything.

“And you know what the worst part of it is?” I say, my voice devoid of emotion as I look him right in the eye. “I don’t think I even really loved him. It would hurt more than this if I had. And it doesn’t hurt. He can go—go screw whoever he wants. I just don’t care. I thought I did. But I really, honestly don’t.”

“You know … it’s okay to be upset over it,” he says slowly, holding my gaze. “Nobody’s going to think you’re weak if you are upset.”

“I’m not, though. I think …” I search for the right words, trying to put my thoughts into order. “I think the trouble was that I was more in love with the
idea
of Bryce than Bryce himself. I think—I think the idea of actually having this boyfriend who’s so fantastic and wonderful on paper blinded me to the fact that he could be kind of a jerk in real life.”

I laugh humorlessly. “I sound so heartless and cruel.”

“No, you don’t.”

I look him in the eye again. “Yeah. I do. It’s the same thing with Tiffany. I was so—so caught up by the fact that she wanted to be my friend that I could only look at her in a positive way and didn’t want to think about how she made me feel two inches tall sometimes.”

After another moment I say, talking more to myself than I am to Dwight, “They didn’t suddenly just become bad people. It’s more that I suddenly looked at them without a filter. I’ve been shrugging off the bad stuff and ignoring it. It’s always been there. I just chose to ignore it.”

“I don’t think,” Dwight tells me, “that anybody can blame you for any of that. It’s not your fault that Bryce would rather get laid than have a meaningful relationship. It’s not your fault that Tiffany can be a complete bitch who likes to lord it over everybody, her friends included. And it’s not your fault that you wanted to fit in and ignore the bad things.”

I rub a hand over my face and give him an empty smile. I shrug helplessly and look around the room. A lump rises in my throat, but I push back the threat of tears. I’m not going to cry, not over this. Worse things have happened, and to much better people than me.

The truth comes out in a helpless, fearful whisper before I can help it, before I’ve
even really considered it myself. “I just didn’t want things to go back to how they used to be. I’m a terrible, terrible person,” I whisper. Because I am.

What have I ever done that’s any good in my life? I’m not smart and I can’t play an instrument and I don’t do sports. I’m not much good at art or math or anything like that—I got by in school last year and I’m doing okay this year, but “okay” isn’t “great” and it’s nothing to be proud of. Maybe I’d do well if I tried harder, but I don’t. I don’t do anything useful with my life, like charity work.

I’m very good at running from my own problems. It’s facing up to them that would make me something worthwhile, and when was the last time I ever did that?

I don’t even realize I’m crying until I see a teardrop land on the back of Dwight’s hand, which is still on my knee. I pull the cuff of the shirt I’m wearing around my fingers and wipe under my eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t just mean for crying. I mean for everything. “For tonight, for making you think I hated you, for not saying anything when Kyle was a jerk to you that first day of school, for kissing you in the library that day, for—”

He clamps a hand over my mouth. “Stop it. Stop it.”

I push his hand away, but before I can say anything more he’s talking again. “Stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault. We all mess up, okay? Look, Dice, it’s … Just stop it, okay?”

I can’t say anything. The lump is back in my throat and I know that if I try to speak I’ll burst into tears again.

So we sit in silence, watching each other, until I feel like I can talk. And when I do, I say, like I always have done, “Can we not talk about all this right now? Please?”

Dwight sighs. “Sure. You know where to find me when you do want to, though, okay?”

I nod silently. He hesitates for a moment before leaning forward and kissing my forehead. It’s not really a romantic gesture; it’s more comforting, telling me that he’s there. The corner of my mouth turns up in a smile.

“You can stay here tonight, okay? I’ll camp on the couch.”

“No, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can, and you will. It’s three in the morning. Your parents aren’t going to be too happy to be woken up at this hour, I bet.”

“They won’t care,” I insist. “Really. I can’t let you stay on the couch. I’ll just go home. It’s fine.”

“No it’s not. Look, I’m not letting you go home in this state. I’ll kidnap you if that’s what it takes,” he jokes, and I actually do smile at that, “but I don’t want you to be on your own right now. So you can stay here and I’ll bunk on the couch.”

I bite my top lip before whispering, “Thank you.”

He smiles. “Anytime. Oh, I almost forgot,” he says suddenly, stopping halfway to the door. He turns back and fishes something out of his pocket—my cell and my iPod. “They were in the pocket of your jeans. Now I’m no rocket scientist, but I
can
tell you that the dryer is not the best place for those.”

I laugh a little, sounding more like my usual self. “Thank you. Night, Ike.”

And he replies, “Goodnight, Dice.”

He snaps the light off before closing the door. I wait in silence for a while. I can hear the noise of voices and a video game downstairs; Gellman woofs quietly.

I press a button on my cell phone to bring it to life. The screen lights up, flashing up notifications of missed calls from all sorts of people. Most of them are from Summer, I notice. A fair few from Bryce too. And two from my mom—as always.

There’s a text from Mom asking for me to call her when I’m back at Tiffany’s. She sent it half an hour ago. I send her a text telling her I’m at Tiffany’s. I can explain properly tomorrow, I decide, when we’re face to face. She’ll understand. It’s not fair to make her panic in the middle of the night when she should be sleeping.

I send Summer a short reply too, because I feel I have to tell her something.
I’m fine. Sorry. I went home early, couldn’t stay. I’ll pick up my stuff tomorrow, thanks for picking it up for me. X
.

I decide that, just like Mom, Summer deserves a face to face explanation.

I scramble under the covers of Dwight’s bed and rest my head on the pillow. My mind is abuzz with too many thoughts to sleep, though, so I just stare blankly at the wall, where there’s a faded poster of the periodic table.

I think I’d almost prefer it if I was really upset about the whole thing. But I don’t feel much at all. Earlier, I felt like crying because I’m scared of my whole life here as the new Madison falling apart.

I continue to stare at the wall. I feel a little sick, in all honesty.

The truth is, I don’t know if I can still be friends with them after this. Especially given how awkward the situation with me and Bryce will make everything … It just won’t work. But besides that, I don’t know if I want to carry on hanging out with them and calling them my friends. Part of me wishes I could just cut myself away from them entirely.

As if it were that easy.

But the rest of me would miss Adam and Ricky goofing around, and Marcus’s occasional sarcastic and witty comment—and Summer, because she was always nice to me, and never made me feel like I didn’t belong.

I don’t know. I honestly just don’t know what to do, or even what I think about this whole thing right now.

I’ll have to just wait it out and see what happens. That’s all I can do right now. That’s the best thing to do.

Feeling a little soothed by that thought, I snuggle down into the bed and close my eyes. The pillow smells nice; gradually I let fatigue wash over me; sleep takes hold of me.

I wake up at seven-thirty. It’s hideously early, but considering I only got four hours’ sleep, I feel much better. I can hear a dog barking, and I groan sleepily and turn over, mushing my face into the pillow. Gellman must rouse the entire house if he’s awake this early every morning, I think.

But I’m awake now, and I know there’s no chance of me getting back to sleep. So I haul myself out of bed and run my fingers through my hair. I tiptoe out of the bedroom, just in case the others have managed to sleep through Gellman’s racket, and make my way to the bathroom. I wash my face and avoid looking at myself for too long in the mirror—though I catch sight of my hair; it’s sticking out at all sorts of angles, so with a sigh I run the faucet again and damp it down a little.

Since I have no clothes other than what Dwight gave me last night, which are creased from sleeping, I go downstairs looking a bit of a mess, in the hope of finding Dwight awake.

When I get to the bottom of the staircase, I hear voices coming from the kitchen, so I guess nobody can sleep through Gellman barking.

Hesitating in the doorway, I see Dwight’s mom, Teresa, frying bacon; Cynthia is sitting at the table, talking animatedly. They must be morning people, I think immediately. They’re even dressed.

I hope Dwight’s mom doesn’t mind that I stayed the night. I don’t want to put her out or anything. And who knows, maybe she doesn’t like me anymore after Dwight and I didn’t talk all those weeks.

“Hi,” I say nervously.

“Hi!” Cynthia says brightly, turning to grin at me.

“Good morning,” Teresa says, just as chirpy as her daughter. “I hope you’re hungry. Sundays we always have a big fry-up for breakfast.”

“Starving,” I reply with a laugh, because I’m so relieved that she doesn’t appear to bear a grudge.

“Dwight’s just gone to walk Gellman,” Teresa carries on. “They won’t be long. He just gets restless this early in the morning. The dog, I mean, not Dwight.”

I laugh. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding … I just …”

“Oh, honestly, dear, don’t worry about it. Dwight told me you had a really rough night and needed a place to stay. I won’t ask any questions.” I smile, and she continues, “Did you have a good night at the dance?”

“Yeah. It was great, thanks.”

Cynthia sighs wistfully. “I seriously cannot
wait
until I’m old enough to go to a prom.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” I say to her. “They’re entirely overrated.”

A few minutes later the front door opens. “I’m back!” Dwight yells. I hear Gellman panting, and a second later he barrels into the kitchen and makes straight for his water bowl, dunking his whole face in. Dwight follows him, hanging Gellman’s red leash from a hook.

“Morning,” he says to me. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay,” I tell him, and I’m not lying. “Thanks again.”

“It’s no problem, really.”

Teresa starts to plate up bacon and toast and fried eggs, and instructs us to sit down to eat breakfast, so we do. About halfway through, my cell phone trills from the pocket of the sweatpants I’m wearing.

“Sorry,” I say quickly.

“Don’t worry,” Teresa says, waving a hand. “Go ahead and answer. It might be your parents.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly, and check my cell. It’s my mom asking me to give her a call if I need a ride home. I can reply later, I decide, and put my cell phone back.

“So,” Dwight’s mom says, “how’s that project you guys were working on coming along?”

“Fine …” I say hesitantly.

“Okay,” Dwight says in the same tone. We exchange a brief glance before we continue to eat.

His mom laughs. “Wow. I can barely get you two to shut up.”

“Yeah,” I joke. “Come on, Ike, you’re barely letting me get a word in edgeways here.”

I catch a fleeting smirk cross his face and he shakes his head at me.

“Ike?” Teresa’s tone abruptly catches my attention. She sounds … stunned, I guess, is the only word for it. Her eyebrows have shot up too.