“Don’t call me that,” Meredith says.
“You know we mean it with love, don’t you, Bite Size?” Jared asks her.
“Yeah,” she says, smiling. “That’s why I keep hoping you will. So I can keep saying, ‘Don’t call me that.’”
“Weirdo,” Mel says, affectionately, and hands some more fries to our sister.
The sun’s still out, but it’s late afternoon. We’ve been here a couple hours, and the fire guys are still no closer to having it under control. Fortunately, the school’s in the middle of a huge clearing, so there’s not much chance of the forest catching. That would really suck.
Instead, it’s like a town-sized picnic. We wave to people we know as they walk by or come up to us and chat. We’ve all found our parents and figured out we’re all safe. I even let Mr Shurin give me a hug. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said.
“You don’t need to,” I said back.
He let us be and started walking the couple miles back to his house, his car having been toasted, too.
I feel bad for him, despite also wanting to kill him for involving Mel. But he’s not a loser. He’s never been a loser. And his only family is leaving for college. And after that, leaving forever, as far as I understand it. What’s he going to have left?
What are any of us?
“You okay?” Jared says, frowning at me now.
“Just thinking,” I say.
We’re lying on a grassy stretch. Graduation robes turn out to make decent picnic blankets, though I doubt we’ll get our deposits back. Jared gently scoots Nathan off his stomach. Nathan takes the hint and turns his full attention to Henna. Which, all right, is nice of him.
“I really could, Mike,” Jared says. “Heal you.”
“I know. I saw it with Finn.”
“I want to. I’ve always hated seeing you suffer.”
I look at him. I don’t answer. He straightens up suddenly. “Oh, my God,” he says. “I’m such an idiot.” He turns to Henna. “Can I see your arm?”
Surprised, she holds it out to him. “Why?”
I’m still a little surprised myself she doesn’t know already. Then I’m kind of pleased. No one else knew. He told me first.
“Do you mind if I totally heal this?” Jared asks her.
“Can you do that?”
“I can now.” He puts his palms on her cast. The white lights shoot out briefly one more time and stop. Henna flexes her hand at the end of her cast and frowns.
“It doesn’t feel weird any more,” she says. “You healed the whole thing?” She grabs some loose plaster at the end of the cast, which is looking pretty grimy. “Think I can take this off?”
“Wait, wait,” Steve says, sitting up. “What the hell’s going on? You can’t just take off a–”
But Henna’s already ripping at the rough plaster. Nathan helps her, and they get it off pretty quickly.
She rolls her hand around. “It’s healed,” she says. “It’s completely healed.” She turns her whole wrist around and looks at Jared. “You even fixed the scar.”
They all look at me. My hand goes up to my own scar. “I thought you guys said you liked it.”
“What’s going on?” Steve asks again.
Mel takes his hand gently. “I told you,” she says. “You’re going to have to have an open mind around us.”
“But if he can do that–”
“Think of all the other good I can do,” Jared says. Then he says, more quietly, so only I can hear.