Read Absent (Katie Williams) for Free Online

meet him in the burners’ circle during sixth period, and I’d skipped American lit to do it. But he hadn’t been there. No one had. I’d sat at the base of a tree for half an hour, scratching patterns in the dirt and staring up at theprotective branches above me, before someone had finally arrived. And that someone hadn’t been Lucas.
    What are you even doing here, Wes Nolan? I thought when the sound of footsteps produced the cargo-jacketed, shaggy-haired burner. Wes was accompanied by Heath Mineo, the school drug dealer, so short and corrupt that he resembled a tiny mafia boss from the cartoons. Wes extracted a pack of cigarettes and tapped it against the trunk of one of the trees.
    “Hey, look, it’s Wheels!” Wes said.
    I rolled my eyes.
    “You know her?” Heath asked as if I weren’t standing right there.
    “Not even a little,” I said at the same time Wes said, “A little.”
    “Someone stand you up?” Wes asked, flipping out two cigarettes and passing one to Heath.
    I studied him for a moment, then dismissed him. There was no way he could know about Lucas and me. He was just trying to make a joke because when it came to Wes Nolan, everything was a joke.
    Look at that. You’re alone and friendless.
    Ha.
    Ha.
    Ha.
    “I’m just sitting here. That okay with you?”
    “Free country,” he said. “Free trees.”
    Wes and Heath smoked their cigarettes down in near silence while I returned to my dirt patterns, silently urging them to go, knowing that Lucas wouldn’t show if they were here. But, maddeningly, when Heath finally dropped his butt in the mulch and left, Wes remained. I reached for my phone, but then brought my hand back. I didn’t want Wes to see me checking the time.
    “It’s five minutes until the bell,” he said, visibly pleased with himself. “So whoever you’re meeting probably isn’t going to come.”
    “I’m not meeting anyone.” Instead of my phone, I took my egg-drop project out of my bag, unwrapping it from the sweater I’d used to cushion it.
    Wes slid two more cigarettes out of the pack, offering one to me.
    “I don’t smoke.”
    “Why not? It gives you superpowers, you know.”
    “What? Like cancer?” I said, then grimaced. Everyone knew that Wes Nolan’s dad had died of stomach cancer freshman year.
    But if my comment bothered Wes, he didn’t show it, saying, “Enough chemo, and you’ll glow like a superhero.” He tucked the cigarette back into the pack and nodded at my project. “What’s in the box?”
    “You want to hear about my physics homework?”
    “I’m here smoking. You’re here not smoking. Why not pass the time?”
    “It’s an egg drop.”
    “Like the soup?”
    “Like you drop an egg off the roof, idiot,” I said, and he grinned wider at the insult. “We had to create an enclosure for the egg using stuff from around the house, and today we’re going to drop them from the school roof. If it doesn’t break, you pass.”
    “And if it does break, you make egg-drop soup.” He blew out a plume of smoke. “Can I see it?”
    “Only if you promise not to pretend to drop it as a joke.”
    “You know me only too well, Paige Wheeler.”
    He turned the gift box around in his hands, studying its tiny springs (pilfered from three remote controls), peeking under the lid.
    “How does it work?”
    “The springs are hooked to a Ziploc bag full of shaving cream, and the egg is in the middle of the bag.”
    “Kind of a like an airbag in a car. Clever.” Then, of course, he pretended to drop it.
    “Does everything have to be a joke to you?”
    He grinned. “Why not?”
    “Because not everything’s funny.”
    “What? Don’t you like to laugh?”
    “Of course. Who doesn’t like to laugh?”
    “You, maybe. You always scowl at me.”
    “Say something actually funny, and I’ll laugh.”
    “Knock, knock,” he said.
    “Who’s there?” I asked reluctantly.
    “Me,” he said.
    “Me who?”
    He grinned. “Just me.”
    “That’s the