Page 8 of The Wrong Track

He lifted it and swung it over his own shoulder. “I may as well carry this for you. I’m looking to up my gains.” He flexed his arm and pointed at the muscle, then smiled again. “I’m kidding.”

“Ok.”

“I guess you don’t think I’m that funny.” He was still smiling and I felt the corners of my mouth tug.

“You can carry it,” I granted. So we ended up walking out together, with Beth Ellen kind of staring from her desk, but she didn’t seem mad at me. It wasn’t like I was poaching on her territory, walking out of a library with a police officer I knew from before.

But I still wanted to take my bag back. I reached for it but Tobin didn’t let go.

“Nice car,” he said when I showed him where I’d parked.

“It’s John Hatcher’s. He loaned it to me.” That would be Hatch, Hazel’s boyfriend, and Tobin got a funny, tight expression. Definitely not a smile.

He only said, “That was generous of him.”

I nodded. I hadn’t wanted to partake of that generosity but I’d hadn’t had any ideas myself of how I’d get around, and Hazel’s other plan had been either to buy me a car or to get the car dealership (Whitaker Automotive, I assumed another branch of Tobin’s family) to give me one. I figured this was the least intrusive and easiest to return/pay back. I already owed her a lot. Plus, it meant that I didn’t have to show anyone a license, which I didn’t have. Four years earlier in Virginia, Kilian had taken my ID when he’d taken my phone and ATM card. When I moved, I’d have to figure out how to get a copy of my birth certificate and then I’d get a real license again.

It was too cold to stand out here ruminating about my future or talking about Hatch, the boyfriend that Tobin didn’t seem to like, so I nodded again and opened up the driver’s side door, and I reached out once more to take the backpack. “Thanks for carrying my bag,” I told him, and this time, he relinquished it.

“Do you want to go out? Not out, not like that,” he modified quickly. “Just to go with me and eat, that’s all. I usually grab something on the way home.”

I thought about it for a moment, about the last time I’d been out to a restaurant. The fact that I couldn’t remember doing it said a lot.

“My treat, since it was my idea,” he said. He started walking backwards. “You can follow me. I’ll be the one in the patrol car.”

Even though it was ten or twenty degrees below zero, I still waited there, watching him jog over to the black and white car. I watched it start and its lights go on because the sun set around noon at this latitude so it was already dark. Then, because it was just stupid to stand like an icicle, I also got in and then backed up slowly. I was very, very afraid of something happening to Hatch’s vehicle while it was in my possession. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to pay for a broken taillight on a car this new and nice.

The squad car had stopped in the library’s exit to the street, waiting for me. I pulled up behind it because it was the only way to leave. And I turned left, following it, because that was the way back to my townhouse, too. I stopped at the red at the corner and Tobin waved a gloved hand at me. This was the moment that I had to decide if I was going somewhere with him or not, because my house lay to the right, and he wasn’t signaling as I was sure an upstanding officer of the law would if he were making a turn on this busy street. I watched as the light switched to green and he went straight ahead, but I hesitated for another moment until the car behind me tapped its horn.

I drove after Tobin Whitaker, accelerating until I had to hit the brake instead so that I didn’t run into the back of his car. What was dinner, after all? And who would have been safer than Hazel’s best friend, a guy who’d sworn to uphold the law and had been nice to me? He’d carried my heavy bag of books just now. He had also sat next to me while I was on a gurney in the hospital last November, shaking and crying and terrified. Because I’d known that Kilian would have gotten sprung eventually, and the first thing he would have done would have been to come after me…

My thoughts drifted enough that I almost hit the police vehicle again and I had to really slam on the brakes, which couldn’t have been good for this nice car. Hazel had tried to give me lessons on winter driving because we didn’t have a ton of that where I was from in Virginia and anyway, I hadn’t gotten much experience behind the wheel before I’d had to give it up. One of her tips had been to ease into braking, if possible. Second had been not to follow another driver too closely, so I stopped accelerating altogether and let the car drift until there was a lot of space between us.

That was what I was doing in general, wasn’t it? Since Kilian had gone, I’d been drifting uselessly. The last few years with him I’d also been useless, hiding and blending and trying not to call attention to myself. But before that, I’d been a doer. I remembered writing dates and times in my phone, checking my agenda for the day and having practically every moment scheduled. I went early to debate club, then I’d gone to class, then there had been practice afterwards. Getting my sister after her school was over and helping her, cooking dinner, working on homework until late because I’d taken hard subjects during my first three years of school. I’d been focused and organized. Clear-headed. Happy.

Tobin signaled, turned into a lot, and parked, and I followed behind him again. He was out and over at my door before I’d made a move to open it, so I unlocked it for him.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” he commented and next he said, “They didn’t salt here or plow very well. Be careful.” And when my foot slipped only a tiny bit, he held under my elbow like he’d done when he’d told me that Kilian was dead. Really dead, even though there were no pictures online that I could find, but it had to be true. We walked like that to the restaurant and then I pulled my arm away.

Tobin was telling me that he ate here all the time, that the woman who owned it was friends with his cousin, Mason. “She’ll definitely come over to talk.”

She did. Tobin introduced me to Mrs. Baghdatis, the owner, and she immediately filled him in on her own son and his exciting life in Boston. It did sound very nice, except I knew that it had to be cold there, too. She asked him all about his cousins, his mom, and the rest of his family, listing a slew of names before she strolled off to find menus for us and then waited at the table while we chose our food.

When she finally left, Tobin shrugged. “Wherever I go around here, I know people, and they all want to ask about my family,” he said.

“Your family’s rich,” I commented. “Right?” They seemed to own everything, anyway.

“Some of the members are. Not my particular branch.” He shrugged again. “My grandpa decided that he wanted to be a writer, that it was a good idea to eschew worldly goods. That was how he described it,” he explained. “He didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the family and their success. Which didn’t work great for him or my grandma, because they were pretty poor. He wasn’t a good writer.”

“That’s too bad.” Poverty sucked, as I knew from experience.

“His parents ended up buying them a house and they were ok. He decided not to eschew that, which was a good decision.” He smiled. “And it made my dad get up and go at it. Maybe he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t had to, right? A few of my cousins are kind of assholes, just trading on the family name and money, but I’ve never been able to do that, either.”

“I guess that’s good. I’d take the money.”

“I’m guessing that Grandpa Joseph didn’t know how hard it would be to live without it when he went around eschewing,” Tobin said. “But I’m doing fine. I like my job and I have that house, now, because my grandpa left it to me. I have my family, friends. I’m all set.” He wasn’t smiling anymore, though.

“You’re really lucky, then.”

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