Whatever works.
David takes us down to his classroom and shows the Kid around, and I can tell there’s a moment when they randomly begin discussing the Civil War and Pop-Tarts that Tyson begins to get excited. I smile at them sadly, knowing that this is just another step for the Kid on his quest for world domination. And another step away from me.
Blah, blah, blah.
The Kid is looking through some of the textbooks he’ll be using for the year when Otter’s phone rings. He glances down at the display and a weird look crosses his face. “I better get this,” he says.
“It’s not Jonah, is it?” I ask, my voice hard. Jonah would be the only one I could think of that would explain why Otter suddenly looks tense. We haven’t heard from him since I tried to break his face off the night of Creed’s end of summer party. He’d run back to San Diego, for all I knew.
Talking about Jonah is not a good thing for me.
Otter shakes his head and says, “Hello” into the phone as he walks out of the classroom.
“Who’s Jonah?” David asks, suddenly standing next to me.
“Just this dick I know,” I grumble before I can stop myself. I squint at David. “Why do you care?”
David shrugs. “You looked really pissed off when you said that name, so I just wondered I guess. That was rude of me. I apologize.” He grins, and of course it looks perfect. All those even teeth that look like they get bleached every day and would probably glow as brightly as the sun in a black light.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say.
“You and Otter, huh?”
Oh, how professional. You should be fired! “Yep, me and Otter.”
“Been a long time?”
“Why?” I glare at him.
“Just wondering.”
“Long enough.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
“Yes. It is.” I don’t want to talk to Mr. Perfect anymore.
But apparently he wants to talk to me. “Look, Derrick, I’m not trying to hone in on anything here. Just trying to figure out how things are, is all.”
I think he’s telling the truth, but he could be a pathological liar. And a sociopath. He looks like the type. He probably has dead bodies stacked four deep in his closet. “You want to know how things are?” I ask him quietly.
He nods.
I turn to face him full on, and he’s about as tall as Otter, though not as big around. I’m not kidding myself into thinking I can intimidate anyone, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. “Otter’s mine,” I tell him softly. “He’s mine, and he’s not going anywhere. So you can stop thinking whatever you’re thinking about him, because it ain’t gonna happen. We clear?”
David grins. “Crystal. I like you, Derrick. You’re very funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” I growl.
“That’s what’s so funny about it,” he reassures me. “You won’t have any problems from me. Otter’s wanted you for years.”
“Uh, what?” I knew this, but how the fuck does David know this?
David watches me as he speaks, looking for what, I don’t know. “We dated about five years ago. Nothing too serious, it only went on for seven or eight months. Neither one of us really broke it off; it just sort of ended. But every now and then, he would talk about you, and you could just hear something in his voice, see something in his eyes.” He shrugs. “There was something about him when he talked about you. He never got like that when speaking of anyone else. But you were still in high school and underage, so obviously he wasn’t going to do anything. Well, that, and the fact that you had a girlfriend, from what I remember.” He says this last like he expects a response.
But I don’t want to give him one, because even though I’d known how Otter had felt about me, had heard it from the man himself, it still shocks me to know how other people could have seen it too, that it is a real thing, that it has memory because people have seen it. I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. How is it that all these people could have seen what was right in front of me and I didn’t know?