Chapter 18

From the moment I went back to school after I got well again, I had a problem with Robertson. He’d changed. Just because we’d gone to the movies—or, no, maybe because I’d asked him to the movies—he thought he had a claim to me. Before, he’d always been bordering on the impossible but somehow kept it in check. Now he’d gone all the way over the edge. He thought I was his, and he wanted the world to know.

It began the day I returned to school. Bunny and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria when Robertson saw me. He was at the other end of the room, but he stood up and bellowed, “Emily Beth! There you are!” Everybody’s head turned. Everybody looked at Robertson, then at me. Robertson sounded as if he’d been searching the world for me for years. “You look great!” he yelled. “You don’t look sick at all!”

Then he charged across the room and lifted me off the bench. He was strong, and it happened in an instant. He was laughing, but I wasn’t. I felt like a toy, one of those little floppy things whose arms and legs dangle.

Almost every day that week there was another Robertson incident. He’d catch up with me somewhere, in the hall or outside on the steps, and say something like, “Cats purr before they die, Emily Beth. It’s a scientific fact.” And then, with me off guard, he’d move in, rumple my hair, pat my shoulder, or put his hands around my waist.

I’d say, “Robertson, hands off, please.”

And he’d say, “But Emily Beth, I love you.”

And I’d say, “Robertson, don’t say it. Don’t think it. Forget it!”

He’d smile and back off—for the moment. The next day or the next hour, or sometimes in the next minute, he’d be back again, watching for me in the halls, swooping down on me, getting his arms around me. I know it sounds like he was just being affectionate. But it was something else. It was possession. He acted as if I were his, as if he could do anything he wanted, pick me up, put me down, turn me around, rumple my hair, whatever, just because he “loved” me.

I got so I dreaded seeing him. What made it really weird was that when he acted normal, I liked him. He could be a very sweet nice guy. One day it was raining and he gave me a ride home on his bike. He acted perfectly. We talked in a friendly way. I thought, Good! That’s out of his system!

But the next day, he saw me in the hall and came straight for me, and it started again. The grabbing and squeezing. He gave me a little shove and push, back and away, like I was his favorite rag doll.

“What am I going to do about him, Bunny?” I said, as we were leaving school. “He’s getting out of hand.”

“You have to tell him, Em. If you don’t, you can’t expect him to change. You have to set the limits and make it really clear. My father says everybody is entitled to their own space. He says sometimes people don’t act right, just because they don’t know what the limits are.”

Bunny’s father is a psychologist, so Bunny knows a lot about these things, too. She’s been a help to me lots of times. (One funny thing, though, is that sometimes she and her father have the biggest fights in the world.)

“So I’m supposed to just tell Robertson, cool it, or something?”

“Just say what you feel. Tell him how you feel when he grabs you. Give him the word straight, Em.”

“What if he doesn’t listen?” I said nervously. “You know the way he talks.”

“He’ll listen,” Bunny said. “People are much better at listening than you think.”

The next day I tried to do what Bunny said. We were in the cafeteria again. This time, we went up to Robertson and sat down at his table. I put on my glasses, just to make the point that I was dead serious. “I want to talk to you, Robertson.”

“Great! I want to talk to you, too! You’re going to Picnic Day, aren’t you?” He stared at my glasses. “You do look cute in those things! Wear them to Picnic Day.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m happy I’m going to be seeing you at Picnic Day,” he went on, as if he didn’t see me every single day.

“The whole school goes to Picnic Day,” I said. “You’ll see everybody there.” I thought that might get him in the right mood to understand what I wanted to tell him about limits.

“I just want to see you!” He rumpled my hair.

I jerked away. “Don’t do that!” I almost shouted.

“Robertson,” Bunny said quickly, “Emily wants to explain something to you.”

“Right,” I said.

“About the picnic?”

“No!”

“Robertson, Emily wants to explain how she sees your relationship.”

He looked happy. He put down his sandwich. “I’m listening, Emily Beth.”

“Robertson—” I cleared my throat. “Now, you know I like you, but there are limits to what—”

“I like you, too.” He slid closer to me on the bench.

“Stay right where you are! What I came here to say is, we’re friends, and friends don’t go around mauling each other.”

“Of course not.”

“Friends talk to each other.”

“We talk a lot,” he said happily.

“You’re not hearing me. Let me tell you again. We’re friends, but that’s it. Just friends. Which means we respect each other. We don’t pummel each other.” I looked at Bunny. She nodded encouragingly and mouthed the word space. “We give each other space,” I said.

“Got it,” he said.

But from the look in his big brown eyes and the way he was leaning into me, I knew he hadn’t.