La place que j'ai laissée vide

When I got back to my seat, Lena was talking to the girl next to her.

She looked up and talked to me like she always did.

"Where are your glasses?"

I rubbed my eyes. They were dry and stinging from the sun.

"Lost them."

She sighed and pulled the curtain shut beside me.

"I'll walk you home tonight."

For a second I let myself believe the thing I'd heard on picture day had been my imagination after all.

After school, somebody came and pulled her away.

She told me to wait for her in the classroom.

So I waited.

Two hours.

I wanted to call her, but my phone had died.

Finally a teacher passed by and spotted me.

"Owen? Why aren't you home yet?"

She knew my eyes were bad and offered to drive me.

I said no.

I didn't want Lena coming back and not finding me.

When she saw my phone was dead, she called Lena for me.

Twenty minutes later, Lena appeared in the doorway, out of breath.

"I texted you. I told you to go on ahead."

"I didn't see it."

I held up the phone, useless in my hand.

"It died."

She looked at me for a long moment. Something complicated moved across her face.

In the end she said none of it.

"Let's go."

She barely spoke the whole way.

She spent most of it answering messages.

There was a scent on her, something green and faintly bitter, like crushed herbs.

It hadn't been there earlier in the day.

Where had she been?

When we got to the front of my building, somebody called her name.

A few people were standing by the entrance. I couldn't make out their faces.

But the same scent came off one of them.

Lena took a few quick steps toward them. I stayed where I was.

"What are you guys doing here?"

"The place we're going is right around the corner. We came to grab you."

The voice was low and clean, and I knew it. I'd heard it over the morning announcements all year.

Grant Hale. The guy half the school had a thing for.

"Okay. Give me a second. I'm walking him in."

One of the boys made an impatient sound.

"Seriously? You're already at his building. He needs an escort from here?"

One of Lena's friends jumped in to explain.

"Owen can't see well after dark."

The boy clicked his tongue.

"He looks fine the rest of the time. Who knows if any of it's real?

"It's Grant's birthday and she still has to make a whole trip out of this. I think he does it on purpose. Way to kill the mood."

I stood there with my hands closed into fists and nowhere to put them.

When Lena came back over, I kept my voice down.

"Go with them. I can get myself in."

She hesitated.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

I turned and went inside.

Their voices carried after me.

"Hey, Lena. Aren't you going to tuck your invalid boyfriend in?"

"He's my friend. Don't be disgusting."

My feet stalled.

In all the years I'd known her, that was the first time she'd ever snapped at anyone about it.

The courtyard paths were well lit.

Even so, the lights only gave me a general sense of which way to go.

I felt my way forward. Something was closing around my chest.

She'd never bothered correcting people before, because it hadn't mattered to her.

Now it mattered.

Because of Grant?

My leg caught on something and I went down hard.

My palm lit up with pain, and for a second I just sat there, lost.

She hadn't always been like this.

We used to live across the hall from each other.

She held my hand on the way to school and on the way home.

She asked the teacher to put us at the same desk.

When other kids made fun of my eyes, she got in front of me.

When had I started being a chore?

"Owen!"

Fast footsteps behind me.

Lena hauled me up off the ground.

"This is what you meant by 'I'm sure'?"

Her voice was sharp.

But her hands were careful, checking me over for anything broken.

Then she took hold of me and walked me home, the way she used to.

The small flame in my chest caught again.

Lena still cared.