IT’S LIKE A BLESSING in disguise, or whatever you want to call it. Tabby finally gets arrested, which is what she deserves. Obviously she wasn’t as clever as she thought. I should be happy about all this, but I’m not, because they’re dragging Beck into it even deeper, and now he’s all grumpy and quiet and doesn’t want to talk about any of it. He doesn’t even want to touch me, to be honest.
“A lot of people own those boots,” I say when I see him at school today.
“I know, sweetheart,” he says, brushing my hair off my face—I love it when he does that, especially in public. “But nobody wants to believe me.”
The boots—they’re clunky black ones. Durangos. I’ve never seen him wear anything else.
“You don’t even go into the woods,” I say. He’s super quiet, his hand balled up on my shoulder. So quiet that I’m not even sure he’s breathing.
“You don’t even go into the woods,” I repeat. Then, “Do you?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not much for hiking and shit.”
I have no idea why it takes him so long to answer, and why his answer just sounds like what I want to hear. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time online.