The Six Rules of Maybe

Cokes from the ground where Zeus had been sniffing their lids.
    “It doesn’t bother Juliet,” I said.
    He looked at me, perplexed. “I think it does. I know it does. A lot.”
    Now we stared at each other. We each had a person in our mind that the other didn’t know, not at all. I didn’t know how I could make him see.
    “Juliet is invincible,” I said.
    He laughed.
    “Juliet gets what she wants.”
    He shook his head, the sort of shake that means you think someone is sadly mistaken. He didn’t understand. Wouldn’t. Maybe even refused to. And if he didn’t understand, if he didn’t see , how could he be warned? How could he ever protect himself? He didn’t see what was coming, what was happening right then at that very moment. Juliet, with her fingers in the belt loops of Buddy’s pants, pulling them down past his thin hips. I could see into Hayden’s future as he sat there on the bench with his soft eyes, and it made me feel like my heart was being crushed.
    He put his burger down in his lap. Set down that food and looked at me hard. “Scarlet,” Hayden said softly. If he was calling me, I wanted to go, wherever he was leading. “If you lose someone like that …”
    Inside me, there were a pair of doors, and right then something was shoving up against them. Shoving and pressing, but I could not open them, even if he was asking me to. There was too much behindthose doors. Too much, enough to spill out and over me; I could feel the press against my chest at only the thought.
    “That’s not the way it is,” I said. But my voice was hoarse. Something was squeezing me inside.
    There was the scrunch of a paper bag and then the feel of his body as he scooted next to me. He put his arm around my shoulders, and I laid my head against his chest, the soft T-shirt beneath my cheek. I was supposed to be saving him, helping him, leading him to a safer place. But instead, it was me who was feeling the shelter of someone stronger.
    “It’s okay, Scarlet. Huh? A lot of life is just about surviving what happens.”
    I lifted my cheek from his chest. I was so close to him. He was smiling, and then he wasn’t. His eyes had a seriousness I had never seen before. I could smell the tang of his sweat. I looked into his face and he looked into mine. He swallowed hard.
    I leaned in and I kissed him then. His lips were soft and sudden and somehow familiar. I breathed in his smell. I could have wanted more, much, much more; I believed and held on to that belief, I knew what I desired and why; I wanted to go, go—but he pulled away, there was a firm shove on my shoulder.
    “Scarlet, stop,” he said. “No.” He looked sad. He looked so sad that shame and embarrassment instantly filled me. I wanted to run. I wanted to run so far away from there.
    “Don’t say anything,” I said. “Just don’t.”
    “I’m sorry, Scarlet.”
    “Don’t.”
    “I’m really sorry.” I wouldn’t look at him. “Listen,” he said. “Hey listen.”
    “Oh my God. I can’t believe I did that. Oh God. Oh God, I’mso sorry.”
    “Scarlet, it’s okay, okay? We’re good friends. We’re good friends and that’s a great thing.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    I was too ashamed to look at him, to move, to walk back and sit beside him in that car again. Ashamed, but if he had changed his mind then and kissed me back I’d have forgotten that. He was nervous, rubbing his palms on the bare skin of his legs, running his hands through his hair. We didn’t move or look at each other. We just sat on that bench for a long while, not saying anything. We sat there longer than I even realized, because the sun and sky turned orange-yellow and the night shadow started to fall, and it got cool enough for me to shiver.
    “Let’s just go back,” Hayden said finally.
    Those words were so simple, you could almost forget how impossible going back truly was.

Chapter Twenty-three
    W hen we came home, the house was still empty, emptier than empty, the way it is when you can hear a ticking clock and the rooms almost echo. Zeus made two victorious laps around the living room, but the furniture seemed to be sitting ever so still, and you could hear the sound of crickets coming through the back screen door we’d left open.
    Every movement of mine felt full of shame and humiliation and wrongness. I didn’t speak, because I knew my own voice would be bad and horrible. We, Hayden and me, did not settle onto the couch in the living room to watch the