The Boy Next Story by Tiffany Schmidt

Author:Tiffany Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2019-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

31

On the Wednesday of Thanksgiving break, Trent drove me home after work, teasing, “You might be the only teenager I know who isn’t glued to their phone.”

“Do you spend lots of time with teens who aren’t me and Merri?” I asked.

“Well, no,” he admitted. “Just you two and my cousin, Quinn, who’ll be a Hero High freshman next year.”

I nodded and leaned against the seat. Nodded again when he suggested, “True crime podcast? Funny one?”

I knew there were texts waiting on my cell—Clara requesting my schedule for the next couple of days so she could make plans; Huck’s comedic and desperate updates from his eight-hour car trip; a picture from Byron of his latest drawing with a note: Something’s not working. What? But I was too exhausted to respond to any of them. The store had been packed since Dad unlocked the door this morning, and everyone had been chatty. I was in introvert overload long before my shift ended at three. Trent’s podcast was background noise I could ignore, not even curious why the words I caught included: “blood spatter,” “anxiety,” “vintage housedresses,” and “cats.”

“Hey, sleeping beauty—oh wait! I take that back. I just meant . . . because you were asleep. I wasn’t making a joke about your name. Lilly says you hate that.”

I cracked open my eyes to see Trent frowning. “Forgiven.” I yawned. “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem. But actually—can you do me a favor?” He got out, then opened the door behind his and picked up an enormous vase of lilies. They were pure white in their centers and on the tip of each petal, but in between they were a purple so dark it resembled black. I wanted to draw one immediately. “Can you put this in Lillian’s room?”

“If I can carry it?” I looked dubiously at the fancy vase—was it crystal? How big a deal would it be if I dropped it? “Did you buy every lily they had in the store?”

Trent looked at the bouquet in his arms. “Is it too much? It’s the anniversary of our first kiss, and she’s closing at the store, then doing something with Merri, and I have dinner at my aunt’s—I wanted her to know I was thinking of her.”

I was glad he hadn’t handed me the vase yet, because it might’ve melted through my arms at the sweetness of his words, or maybe I’d have dropped it out of bitterness for those plans my sisters apparently had that didn’t include me. Most likely it’d have slipped from my startled grasp when a voice behind me said, “It’s perfect. I’ll carry them in for you.”

Trent passed the vase to Toby and the two exchanged Thanks, man, No problem, dude head nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow at Thanksgiving, Rory,” Trent said before getting in his shiny car and backing out of the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Toby since our Knight Light meeting Tuesday morning. The freshman and sophomore classes had worked in their pairs to pack food-drive boxes

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