They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Laundromat Roof

The Lions lost thirty-one to ten.

My brother threw three interceptions, and the third one was so bad that the whole student section went silent.

I watched from the press box with Rhett and a pair of borrowed headphones.

Colby walked off the field with his helmet in his hand and didn't look up once.

When it was over I went back to Hale Street and couldn't sit still.

I paced the apartment.

I wiped the same counter four times.

"Mom said cards," I said, at last. "And at brunch, Colby pointed at the chart by position. He didn't look. He pointed where the pink was, like he'd already memorized it."

Rhett was drying a pan.

He didn't say anything.

"Why would he do that? Why would he say nobody told him?"

"Come upstairs," he said.

"There's no upstairs."

"There is."

He led me to a narrow steel ladder behind the bathroom, and then through a hatch in the ceiling.

The roof of the laundromat was flat tar paper with a low brick wall around it and a view of the whole town.

The sky was black and enormous.

There were a thousand little lights below us, and the dryers' vents breathed warm steam up through the cold.

He had spread an old wool blanket in the corner by the chimney.

"I come up here when the wiring in my head gets too loud," he said.

I sat down on it.

The roof was freezing, but the chimney bricks held the heat of the dryers.

He sat next to me and took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders, and my pulse jumped like it always did.

"I can't stop thinking," I said.

"I know."

"I want to stop."

"Then let me help you stop."

I looked at him.

His face was a shadow, with the scar a pale line through one brow.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you've done four days of fighting and I'm tired of watching you carry it. For one hour, you don't have to think. I'll do the thinking."

My breath hitched.

"Okay."

"Lie back."

I lay down on the blanket with the sky above me.

He knelt over me and slowly unzipped my coat.

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