The Six Rules of Maybe

out of nowhere. His eyes were big and his breath smelled like a mix of onions and spearmint gum. He wore a U2 World Tour T-shirt tucked into his jeans that were cinched with a cloth belt.
    “Reilly … ,” I said. I tried to make the word say everything I needed to.
    “You’re mad,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re mad.”
    “It’s a little embarrassing,” I said. The words oozed and seeped. Nicole had been right.
    “Why would you be mad after what happened the other day?”
    “What? What happened?”
    Nicole showed up with the paper towels. She gave Reilly a look of disgust and began to wipe up the mess.
    “I gave you some notebook paper in AP English and you tookit.”
    “I said I was out, and you offered!”
    “You could have said no. That means something. You can’t tell me it doesn’t.”
    “Reilly,” I tried again.
    Nicole clapped her hands like he was a bad dog on her lawn. “Get. Out. Now,” she said firmly.
    He turned and left, just like he was that bad dog. Just like that. He slunk off. His jeans were too high on his hips.
    “Just like that,” Nicole said, reading my mind. She handed me some paper towels. “Watch and learn.”
    “So I know he comes out of the gym after second period,” Nicole said. We all knew who “he” was. “I wait there, over by the garbage cans? Every day. I pretend I’m throwing stuff away, and when I see him coming I turn and smile, and he smiles back.”
    “You never told us,” I said.
    “I know. It was just this thing I did. On my own. I didn’t want to tell you guys. But for the last three days, he hasn’t been there. We know he’s been at school. I think he’s taking a different way on purpose.” She looked a little sick. “Do you think it’s because he likes me? Maybe it’s just because he likes me, and he’s too afraid to show it.” Her eyes pleaded. It was one of the really bad things about rejection, the pleading that came with it. Maybe we should all have a personal law against pleading. We should forbid ourselves from doing it. That smallest person inside who was the one doing the pleading—they deserved our protection. They should be guarded to the best of our ability and only let out under certain careful conditions.
    “Maybe he’s been hurt. Do you think that could be it?” sheasked.
    “Probably,” I said.
    “Definitely,” Jasmine said. “Stupid bitch, whoever she was.”
    “Roses?” I asked. Mom snatched the little tiny card in its little tiny envelope out of my hand.
    “Don’t look,” she said.
    “Who are they from?”
    Mom looked puzzled for a moment, then made a funny little gasp. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I almost forgot his name! I was drawing a total blank. Dean .”
    The psychology books would really have something to say about that . “I thought Dean didn’t believe in wasting money on flowers,” I said. “I even heard him say so once, after you bought tulips.” I felt a small prickle of dread. I hoped flowers weren’t enough to veer Mom from the iciness she’d been showing Dean lately. Flowers may have worked for Juliet, but I thought, hoped , Mom was different.
    “People change their minds,” Mom said. The vase of flowers still sat in the cardboard delivery box. She flicked this box with her fingernail. It was the trying-to-decide gesture people used with grocery store melons.
    “But why did he change his mind?” I asked.
    “There doesn’t always have to be a why.”
    Maybe there didn’t always have to be a why, but there almost always was a why. If I had learned one thing from all my psychology books, it was that.
    “Huh,” I said. And, then, just like that, I got it. “He’s afraid he’s losing you,” I said. Those were the kinds of things you did when you were afraid of losing someone.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
    But she kept those flowers in that box, and that told me everything I needed to know.
    Kevin Frink’s Volkswagen was parked on our street every day after school. The chalk drawings had disappeared. Kevin Frink would drive Fiona Saint George home, and they would sit inside the small curved space of his car. I could see his big head and her small dark one, and she was talking, the girl who didn’t talk. Sometimes they would get out; Fiona Saint George would sit on the rounded hood of Kevin Frink’s car with her ankles crossed in a way that was flirtatious, and Kevin Frink’s bare arms would be exposed to the sun. Once I saw him disappear into