Exhale by Jennifer Snyder Page B

“Yeah, sure man. Seven o’clock, I haven’t forgotten.”
    I could see through his grin the same way Missy could see through mine. I could see how much he hurt and I wondered if I was the only one it was visible to.
    “All right, later,” Brody nodded and continued on the way he’d been going.
    Derek’s smile faded from his face. His eyes dropped back to the concrete and his hands crammed themselves deeper into his pockets than before. I fought the urge to catch up to him, to comfort him, and to make a genuine smile appear on his face once more. But I knew that if I gave in, then the feelings I had managed to stuff inside a tiny bottle and tuck away on a dusty shelf inside of me would come forward and open. So would the guilt I held that had forced us apart, that I still hadn’t managed to release entirely. I couldn’t deal with that again. I wasn’t nearly ready.
    “Finally, there it is,” Missy said just as Derek walked out of my view. “I knew I’d put it in here somewhere.”
    I tore my eyes from the double doors he had stepped through and took in a breath, as I forced my mind to clear of all things Derek.
    “Number forty-two…” Missy said as she scanned the paper in her hand. “I got sixty-four, how about you?”
    I glanced down at the forgotten paper in my hand and scanned for number forty-two. “Sixty-four.”
    “Oh, good.  Maybe we both did it right then.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” I said as we started walking again, making our way toward homeroom.
    After the last class of the day, instead of booking it as quickly as possible out of this hellhole like everyone else, I headed to the library with a gargantuan book I had borrowed from Mr. Deetz involving European history, my fingers marking the pages I needed to copy for research on a project due next week. I spotted Derek through the plate-glass window and I paused mid-step. He sat hunched over a table intently reading a textbook, his right hand firmly gripping his pen as it hovered above his notebook. I stood there staring at him, comparing him to the Derek I remembered, the Derek from before Kyle’s death. They were two very different people.
    The old Derek would have been tapping a tune with his pen against his notebook while biting his bottom lip as he focused hard. He would have had some form of emotion on his face; he was never expressionless. This Derek was always expressionless, unless he was faking it for someone. This Derek didn’t tap his pen or bite his bottom lip like the old Derek. He merely just sat there, staring blankly at the white pages with black lettering in his textbook, unmoving.
    I waited for him to notice me, but he never did. I didn’t know why this disappointed me so much.  Hugging the extremely large European history book against my chest as though it were a shield, I took the few remaining steps toward the library door and pushed it open. Without even a glance in Derek’s direction, I crossed the room and headed straight toward Mrs. Meeks’ desk to ask permission to use the student copier.
    “Hi, Mrs. Meeks, could I use the copier machine, please?” I asked in a soft voice, my heart hammering against my chest and my palms growing sweaty from the thought of Derek noticing me. “I need to make a few copies of some things for research since Mr. Deetz won’t allow me to take this book home.”
    “Sure, that would be fine. I need to run these papers down to the principal’s office; do you know how to use the machine?” she asked with a friendly smile as she pushed her round glasses up a little higher on the bridge of her nose.
    “Yes.” There was only one button, right? It couldn’t be that hard.
    Mrs. Meeks nodded and walked away carrying a stack of papers. I turned and made a straight shot from the front desk to the only copy machine available for students that stood just outside the computer lab. I glanced at Derek only once along the way. His head was still turned down toward his textbook, his face still