“I might what?”
“Still go to your dream school.”
“NYU?”
“Thatisyour dream school, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but remember I told you that I can’t go?” I sigh. “They don’t accept reform school students and I sure as hell don’t have the money to go if they did accept me anyway.”
He gives me an inscrutable look that I think is weird.
But before I can dwell on it, he breaks my gaze and looks over my shoulder.
“Still the only non-pink thing in your room,” he murmurs, his eyes riveted on something.
I don’t have to turn around to know exactly what he’s staring at.
It’s my diary.
It sits in the middle of my pink bed much like it did two years ago; I was writing in it before I decided to text him.
He brings his eyes back to me, all shiny and dark. “Still call it Bandit?”
I knew he was going to ask me that.
I knew it.
But still I wasn’t prepared for the pounding of my heart at his question. And also embarrassment.
This strange pinch in my chest, because I don’t.
Idon’tcall my diary by that name, not anymore.
If he’d asked me this two days ago, I would’ve bragged about it. I would’ve happily told him that no, I’m not that stupid anymore. I am plenty stupid but notthatstupid.
But now, tonight, I don’t want him to know.
I don’t want to tell him.
But somehow he already knows. “Nah, you wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
His gaze is penetrating. “Because you probably figured it out.”
I know what ‘it’ is but I still ask, “Figured what out?”
“That some bad things can’t be reformed. Some bad things have no good in them. They stay bad forever.”
I ache now.
Or rather I achemorethan I already did.
Before he so suddenly came here.
And I can’t help but ask, “Where are you staying?”
He frowns at the sudden change of subject.