“I had to spend a lot of time in the nurse’s office,” Jason murmured. “Whenever I’d go in there, Mrs. Boot would glower at me with her good eye. I once heard a rumor that her gaze was a laser beam that could melt your brain.”
Aria giggled. “I heard that rumor too.” Then she frowned. “Why were you at the nurse’s office a lot?” She didn’t recall Jason being particularly sickly—he was a star soccer player in the fall and played baseball in the spring.
“I wasn’t sick,” Jason corrected. He flicked the little zipper on the pocket of his warm-up pants. “I, um, went to the school psychologist. Dr. Atkinson. Well, he asked that I call him Dave.”
“Oh,” Aria chirped, struggling to smile. Psychologists were fine, weren’t they? In fact, Aria herself had asked her parents to send her to one when they first moved to Reykjavík—Ali had vanished just a few months before. Ella had suggested Aria do hatha yoga instead.
“It was my parents’ idea.” Jason shrugged his shoulders. “I had a hard time adjusting to the move to Rosewood in eighth grade.” He rolled his eyes. “I was really shy, and my parents thought it would do me some good to talk to someone with an objective point of view. Dave wasn’t so bad. Plus, talking to him got me out of class.”
“I know lots of people who went to Dave,” Aria said fast, although truthfully, she didn’t know anyone. Maybe this was the big secret Jason was hiding. It was hardly anything to get panicked about.
The instructor returned, hitched Jason up, and walked away. Jason faced Aria and asked what type of climb she wanted to start on—easy, medium, or hard. Aria snorted. “That’s a pretty stupid question, don’t you think?” She giggled.
“Just checking,” Jason said, grinning. He led her to the easy section of the wall and showed her how to place her left foot on one rock and pull herself with her right hand to the rock above it, climbing up a few feet to demonstrate. When Jason climbed, it looked easy. Aria stepped onto the first rock, her muscles twitching. She reached for the rock above it and pulled herself up. Amazingly, she didn’t fall. Jason had his eyes on her the whole time. “You’re doing great!” he cried, grinning.
“That’s what you say to all the girls,” Aria groaned. But she continued up a few more rocks. Don’t look down, she repeated to herself. She used to get dizzy just standing on the edge of the low diving board at the local swimming pool.
“So you told me the other day that you just moved in with your dad and his girlfriend,” Jason called, keeping pace with her. “What’s that about?”
Aria reached for another rock. “My parents separated when I moved back from Iceland,” she started, wondering how to word this. “My dad had an affair with his old student. Now they’re getting married. And she’s pregnant.”
Jason glanced at her. “Whoa.”
“It’s weird. She’s not much older than you.”
Jason made a face. “When did they start seeing each other?”
“When I was in seventh grade,” Aria admitted. She scanned the rocks above her, looking for the best handhold. It was nice that they were talking—it took her mind off how hard climbing was. “I caught them kissing in my dad’s car.” And then, maybe because she’d remembered the time Ali had snapped at Jason so heartlessly about the cat, she added, “Your, um, sister…she was with me. And she wouldn’t let me hear the end of it.”
She peeked at Jason, wondering if she’d overstepped her bounds. He had a neutral expression on his face, one she couldn’t gauge. “I’m sorry,” she called. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No…I get it. My sister was like that. She knew everyone’s precise button to push.”
Aria hung on to the wall, suddenly too tired to move. “You had a button, too?”
“Uh-huh. It was girls.”
“Girls?”
Jason nodded. “Sometimes she used to tease me about girls. I could be…awkward, I guess. She used to needle me about it.”
“She knew all of our weaknesses, all right,” Aria said. She looked up again, radiating with guilt. “I still feel bad talking about her to you.”
Suddenly, Jason pushed off the wall, swinging freely from the tether. “Come down to the ground for a minute,” he called. “Slide down with your harness.”
Aria slid down as he instructed, landing clumsily on the mat. Jason studied her very seriously, and Aria wondered if she’d made a mistake bringing up Ali. But then he said, “Maybe it’s good we’re talking about her. I mean, right now, Alison’s this big elephant in the room that no one will discuss with me. When I’m at home, my parents don’t bring her up. When I’m out with friends, they don’t say a word. I know people are talking about her, but whenever they get around me, they shut up. I know my sister had faults. I know some people didn’t like her. Some people more than…” He mumbled something else and then trailed off, pressing his lips together tightly.
“What was that?” Aria asked, leaning forward.
Jason fluttered his hand, waving away what he’d just said. “I’d like you to talk about Ali with me.”
Aria smiled, comforted. Talking about Ali with Jason would give her a whole new perspective on who Ali really was. She wondered if she should tell Jason about how Ali had spread rumors about him to Jenna Cavanaugh—or how Jenna had spread rumors about Jason to Aria. Or how Ian had reached out on IM, saying someone had forced him to flee. Or how New A had helped Ian escape.