Lock and Key(41)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“So you’re friends with Nate,” Heather said after a moment, adjusting the valve again. “Right?”

I glanced over at her. The whole school had noticed, or so it seemed; it only made sense she would have, as well. “We’re neighbors,” I told her. “My sister lives behind him.”

She reached up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “I guess you’ve heard we used to go out,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

She nodded. “We broke up this fall. It was big news for a while there.” She sighed, touching her hand to the water again. “Then Rachel Webster got pregnant. Which I wasn’t happy about, of course. But it did make people stop talking about us, at least for a little while.”

“Perkins Day is a small school,” I said.

“Tell me about it.” She sat back, wiping her hand on her jeans, then looked over at me. “So . . . how’s he doing these days? ”

“Nate?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Fine, I guess. Like I said, we’re not that close.”

She considered this as we both watched the fish circling, first one way, then another. “Yeah,” she said finally. “He’s hard to know, I guess.”

This hadn’t been what I meant, actually, not at all. If anything, in my mind, Nate was too easy to read, all part of that friendly thing. But saying this seemed odd at that moment, so I just stayed quiet.

“Anyway,” Heather continued a beat later, “I just . . . I’m glad you and Nate are friends. He’s a really good guy.”

I had to admit this was not what I was expecting—it wasn’t exactly ex-girlfriend behavior. Then again, she was the queen of compassion, if her time logged at the HELP table was any indication. Of course Nate would fall in love with a nice girl. What else did I expect?

“Nate has a lot of friends,” I told her now. “I doubt one more makes that much of a difference.”

Heather studied my face for a moment. “Maybe not,” she said finally. “But you never know, right?”

What? I thought, but then I felt a hand clap my shoulder; Jamie was behind me. “So the water’s good,” he said. “You find the perfect one yet?”

“How do you even pick?” I asked Heather.

“Just go on instinct,” she replied. “Whichever one speaks to you.”

Jamie nodded sagely. “There you go,” he said to me. “Let the fish speak.”

“There’s also the issue of who runs from the net,” Heather added. “That often makes the decision for you.”

In the end, it was a mix of both these things—me pointing and Heather swooping in—that got me my fish. I went with a small white koi, which looked panicked as I held it in its plastic bag, circling again and again as Jamie picked out a total of twenty shubunkins and comets. He also got several more koi, although no other white ones, so I could always find mine in the crowd.

“What are you going to name it? ” he asked me as Heather shot oxygen from a canister into the bags for the ride home.

“Let’s just see if it survives first,” I said.

“Of course it will,” he replied as if there was no question.

Heather rang us up, then carried the bags out to the car, where she carefully arranged them in a series of cardboard boxes in the backseat.

“You will need to acclimate them slowly,” she explained as the fish swam around and around in their bags, their faces popping up, then disappearing. “Put the bags in the water for about fifteen minutes so they can get adjusted to the temperature. Then open the bags and let a little bit of your pond water in to mix with what they’re in. Give it another fifteen minutes or so, and then you can let them go.”

“So the key is to ease them into it,” Jamie said.

“It’s a big shock to their systems, leaving the tank,” Heather replied, shutting the back door. “But they usually do fine in the end. It’s herons and waterbirds you really need to worry about. One swoop, and they can do some serious damage.”

“Thanks for all your help,” Jamie told her as he slid back behind the wheel.

“No problem,” she said. “See you at school, Ruby.”

“Yeah,” I said. “See you.”

As Jamie began backing out, he glanced over at me. “Friend of yours?”

“No,” I said. “We just have a class together.”

He nodded, not saying anything else as we pulled out into traffic. It was rush hour, and we didn’t talk as we hit mostly red lights heading toward home. Because my fish was alone, in a small bag, I was holding it in my lap, and I could feel it darting from one side to the other. It’s a big shock to their systems, Heather had said. I lifted the bag up to eye level, looking at my fish again. Who knew if it—or anything—would survive the week, or even the night.

Still, when we got back to Cora’s, I went with Jamie to the backyard, then crouched by the pond, easing my bag into it and watching it bob there for those fifteen minutes before letting in that little bit of water, just as I was told. When I finally went to release the koi, it was almost totally dark outside. But even so, I could see my fish, white and bright, as it made its way past the opening into the vast body of water that lay beyond. I expected it to hesitate, or even turn back, but it didn’t. It just swam, quick enough to blur, before diving down to the bottom, out of sight.

When Jamie first called up the stairs to me, I was sure I’d heard wrong.

“Ruby! One of your friends is here to see you!”

Instinctively, I looked at the clock—it was 5:45, on a random Tuesday—then out the window over at Nate’s house. His pool lights were on, and I wondered if he’d come over for some reason. But surely, Jamie would’ve identified him by name.

“Okay,” I replied, pushing my chair back and walking out into the hallway. “But who is—?”

By then, though, I’d already looked down into the foyer and gotten the answer as I spotted Peyton, who was standing there patting Roscoe as Jamie looked on. When she glanced up and saw me, her face broke into a wide smile. “Hey!” she said, with her trademark enthusiasm. “I found you!”

I nodded. I knew I should have been happy to see her— as unlike Nate or Heather, she actually was my friend—but instead I felt strangely uneasy. After all, I’d never even invited her into the yellow house, always providing excuses about my mom needing her sleep or it being a bad time— keeping the personal, well, personal. But now here she was, already in.