Lock and Key(71)
Author: Sarah Dessen

The day passed in a blur of people, noise, and the Christmas music overhead, which I only heard in bits and pieces, whenever the din briefly died down. Harriet kept drinking coffee, the key necklaces kept selling, and my feet began to ache, my voice getting hoarse from talking. The zinc lozenges Reggie offered up around one o’clock helped, but not much.

Still, I was grateful for the day and the chaos, if only because it kept my mind off what had happened the day before with Nate. All that evening, after I’d taken the pies back and watched them get devoured, then helped Cora load the dishwasher before collapsing onto my bed, I’d kept going over and over it in my head. It was all so unsettling: not only what I’d seen and heard, but how I’d responded afterward.

I never would have thought of myself as someone who would want to help or save anybody. In fact, this was the one thing that bugged me so much about Nate in the first place. And yet, I was surprised, even disappointed, that at that crucial moment—You understand, right?—I’d been so quick to step back and let the issue drop, when, as his friend, I should have come closer. It wasn’t just unsettling, even. It was shameful.

At three o’clock, the crowds were still thick, and despite the lozenges, I’d almost totally lost my voice. “Go,” Harriet said, taking a sip of her umpteenth coffee. “You’ve done more than enough for one day.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, smiling at a young woman in a long red coat who was buying one of the last key necklaces. She handed over the bag, then watched the woman disappear into the crowd. “That’s fifteen we’ve sold today,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you even believe it? I’m going to have to go home and stay up all night making more. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“I told you,” I said. “They’re beautiful.”

“Well, I have you to thank for them. Yours was the inspiration.” She picked up one trimmed with green stones. “In fact, you should take one. It’s the least I can do.”

“Oh, no. You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” She gestured at the rack. “Or I can make you one special, if you prefer.”

I looked at them, then down at my own necklace. “May-be later,” I said. “I’m good for now.”

Outside, the air was crisp, cool, and as I headed toward the greenway and home, I reached up, running my hand over my own necklace. The truth was, lately I’d been thinking about taking it off. It seemed kind of ridiculous to be carrying around a key to a house that was no longer mine. And anyway, it wasn’t like I could go back, even if I wanted to. More than once, I’d even gone so far as to reach up to undo the clasp before stopping myself.

On that first night, when Nate and I had met, he had asked me, What’s it to? and I’d told him, nothing. In truth, though, then and now, the key wasn’t just to that lock at the yellow house. It was to me, and the life I’d had before. Maybe I’d even begun to forget it a bit over the last few weeks, and this was why it was easier to imagine myself without it. But now, after what had happened the night before, I was thinking maybe having a reminder wasn’t such a bad idea. So for now, it would stay where it was.

After everything that had happened on Thanksgiving, I’d thought things might be a little awkward for the ride on the first day back at school. And they were. Just not in the way I was expecting.

“Hey,” Nate said as I slid into the front seat. “How’s it going? ”

He was smiling, looking the same as always. Like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But then to him, I supposed that it hadn’t. “Good,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “You?”

“Miserable,” he announced cheerfully. “I’ve got two papers and a presentation due today. I was up until two last night.”

“Really,” I said, although actually, I knew this, as I’d been awake until about the same time, and I could see the lights from his room—two small squares, off to the right—breaking up the dark that stretched between our two houses. “I’ve got a calculus test that I have to pass. Which means, almost certainly, that I won’t.”

As soon as I said this, I expected Gervais to chime in from the backseat, agreeing with this, as it was the perfect setup to slam me. When I turned around, though, he was just sitting there, quiet and unobtrusive, the same way he had been for the last couple of weeks. As if to compensate for his silence, though, I was seeing him more and more. At least once a week, I caught him watching me at lunch, the way he had that one day, and whenever I passed him in the hallways he was always giving me these looks I couldn’t figure out.

“What?” he said now, as I realized I was still looking strangely at him.

“Nothing,” I replied, and turned back.

Nate reached for the radio, cranking it up, and then we were turning out into traffic. Everything actually felt okay, wholly unchanged, and I realized maybe I’d overreacted, thinking they would have. The bottom line was, I knew something I hadn’t the week before, and we were friends— at least for another six months or so. I didn’t have to get all wrought up about what was going on with his dad; I’d never wanted anyone to get involved with me and my domestic drama. Maybe what we had now, in the end, was best—to be close but not too close, the perfect middle ground.

Half a block from school, Nate pulled into the Quik Zip for gas. As he got out to pump it, I sat back in my seat, opening the calc book in my lap. About half a page in, though, I heard a noise from behind me.

By this point, I was well acquainted with Gervais’s various percussions, but this wasn’t one I was used to. It was more like an intake, a sudden drawing in of breath. The first one I ignored; the second, barely noted. By the third, though, I was starting to think he might be having an attack of some sort, so I turned around.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said, instantly defensive. But then, he did it again. “The thing is—”

He was interrupted by Nate opening his door and sliding back behind the wheel. “Why is it,” he said to me, “that whenever I’m in a hurry I always get the slowest gas pump in the world?”

I glanced at Gervais, who had hurriedly gone back to his book, his head ducked down. “Probably the same reason you hit every red light when you’re late.”