When Tuesday afternoon rolled back around, Tig found herself popping a mint before she went to the library. Then she inwardly chastised herself for having done so. It doesn’t matter if you have minty fresh breath because a) Will is not your boyfriend; he’s Olivia’s, and b) You’re going to sit so far away from him that you could gnaw on some garlic and he’d never know it, she told herself. And yet, somehow, her hands managed to find their way to her hair and fluff the roots before she went into the library and found Will at their table.
“Oh, hey!” Will said. His eyes sparkled so much and his voice sounded so . . . not exactly surprised—but maybe . . . unexpectedly pleased?—that it almost felt like a chance meeting instead of a scheduled one.
Tig put her backpack onto the chair opposite Will’s.
“Why’re you sitting over there?” Will asked.
“Why wouldn’t I sit over here?”
“No reason. I just kind of thought, you know, it might be easier to show you how to work problems if you sat on the same side as me, so you could see my paper and stuff.”
“Oh,” Tig said. “Right.” That was completely logical.
When Tig sat down next to Will, he asked, “Do you have any more mints?”
Tig blushed. So much for gnawing garlic. “Sure,” she said, handing him the roll of wintergreen breath mints.
“Ooh, I love these things,” Will said. “My favorite flavor.”
“Mine too,” Tig said.
“Did you know that if you sit in a dark closet and bite down on one of these with your mouth kind of open, you can see sparks fly?” Will asked.
“No way!”
“It’s true, I promise,” he said. “I’ll have to show you sometime.” Then he blushed. “Not that we’d be, like, together in a dark closet, but . . .”
Tig couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not like you’re a kidnapper or something.” Will laughed too. Then Tig added, “And don’t worry. I’m not going to even ask what you were doing sitting in a dark closet with a roll of wintergreen mints when you made this interesting discovery.”
Will put his hand over his face. Then he said, “Don’t you keep up with your Internet mythology? I had no choice but to try it.”
They laughed a little bit more and then found themselves staring at each other in silence. Tig looked away and cleared her throat. “So, algebra . . .,” she said.
Tig allowed Will to teach her all about congruence, similarity, and transformations, even though she could have done the problems they worked in her sleep. Playing dumb was excruciating for Tig; she hated being the damsel in distress. But it was her stupid lie about not understanding algebra that had gotten her into this mess in the first place, so she had to go along. She was relieved to get her mom’s text message that she was waiting outside. “Time to go,” said Tig.
“I appreciate your mom giving me a lift home,” Will said.
“No problem,” Tig said. Thank goodness the van was so roomy. Tig wasn’t sure how much longer she could sit so close to Will and tell herself she felt nothing. As if the whole pretending not to understand algebra hadn’t been torture enough.
When they got to the van, Tig’s mom had about a dozen shoe boxes sitting on the front passenger seat. Behind that, her little brother and little sister were surrounded by equipment from their soccer team, and behind them were bags upon bags of groceries. “Sorry, you two, but you’re going to have to crawl into the very back,” Mrs. Ripley said. “After I drop Will off, I’ve got to get these two to practice, then drop you and the groceries at the house while I run these shoes to the repair shop to get rubber taps put on the heels.” Mrs. Ripley let out a big breath and blew her bangs off her eyes.
First Tig, then Will, climbed into the very back two-seater bench. Will fastened his seat belt, but Tig couldn’t get hers to work. “Mom,” Tig said, “it’s doing that thing again.”
Mrs. Ripley sighed. “You know how that one sticks,” she said. “You just have to give it a good jerk and then it will catch.”
“I’ve given it a good jerk,” Tig said. “It’s busted.”
“Will, could you help her out, please?” Mrs. Ripley said.
“Sure,” Will said. He unfastened his seat belt and turned around to face Tig. Then he leaned over her, so close, they were almost touching, and began to tug on the top part of the seat belt that hung from the side of the van. “I think I almost got it,” he said. “Almost.” When he said the second almost, he made a sudden pulling movement, and his mouth brushed against Tig’s head. Even though her hair was covering it, and even though it was only for maybe a half second, she could feel Will’s bottom lip ever so slightly skim the top of her ear. She immediately flushed.
“Got it,” Will said.
“Oh, thank you, Will,” said Mrs. Ripley.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Tig.
Will smiled. He looked a little flushed himself. “My pleasure,” he said.