Do I?

For a moment I’m not sure. I look down at the floor, at the spill of flour by the row of mixing bowls.

I remember the first night I came in here and the first thing that’s happened every night since.

How’s it going, Caroline?

“It’s bullshit,” I say.

His eyes narrow.

“It’s bullshit for you to pretend not to be dealing drugs out the back door, like you’re going to protect me from knowing the truth about you. It’s not fair that I’m supposed to come in here and bare my soul to you, and you don’t even want me to touch your stupid cell phone.”

West crosses his arms. His jaw has gone hard.

“You’re a drug dealer.” It’s the first time I’ve ever said it out loud. The first time I’ve ever even mentally put it in those words. “So what? You have some dried-up plants in a plastic bag in your pocket, and you give them to people for money. Whoop-de-do.”

He stares at me. Not for just a moment, which would be normal.

He stares at me for ages.

For the entire span of my life, he looks right in my eyes, and I suck in shallow breaths through my mouth, my chest full of pressure, my ears ringing as the mixer grinds and grinds and grinds around.

Then the corner of his mouth tips up a fraction. “Whoop-de-do?”

“Shut up.” I’m not in the mood to be teased.

“You could’ve at least thrown a fuck in there. Whoop-de-fucking-do.”

“I don’t need your advice on how to swear.”

“You sure? I’m a fuck of a lot better at it than you.”

I turn away and pick up my bag and my Latin book off the floor. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be around him if he’s going to hurt me, bullshit me, and tease me. That’s not what I come here for, and I hate how the pressure from the way he stared at me has built up in my face, prickling behind the bridge of my nose, sticking in my throat.

“Caro,” he says.

“Leave me alone.”

“Caro, I made forty bucks. Okay? That’s what you want me to say?”

I stop packing my bag and just stand there, looking at it.

He made forty bucks.

“How much did you charge?”

“Sixty-five.”

“For how much?”

“An eighth of an ounce.”

I turn around. “Is that a lot?”

“A lot of money, or a lot of weed?”

“Um, either.”

He smiles for real now and shakes his head. “It’s a little more than anybody else is charging, but the weed is better. It’s the smallest amount I’ll bother to sell. Why are we talking about this?”

And that’s when I lose my nerve. I shrug. I look past his left ear.

I don’t want to ask him.

Before this year, I never gave money a lot of thought. My dad is pretty well off. I grew up in a nice house in a safe neighborhood in Ankeny, outside Des Moines, and even though Putnam isn’t cheap, I didn’t have to worry about tuition. I always knew my dad would pay it, whatever it was.

But that was before the pictures, and it was before I figured out that, no matter what I do, I can’t make them go away. Not by myself.

I need fifteen hundred dollars—maybe more—to hire the company that will push my name down in the search rankings and scrub my reputation online. The guy I talked to when I called said that cases like mine can be more involved, which means a higher fee.

I don’t have a job. I had one in high school, but Dad says I’m better off concentrating on my schoolwork now. I have a hundred thousand dollars in a savings account—my share of the life-insurance settlement when my mom died from cancer when I was a baby—but until I’m twenty-one, I can’t touch it.

With no income and no credit history, I can’t get fifteen hundred dollars on a credit card without my dad cosigning on the application. I tried.

“Caroline?” West asks.

“What?”

He steps closer. “What’s this really about?”

And I blurt out the stupidest thing. “You don’t have to protect me.”

Because I’m sick of it. Of being protected. Of needing to be.

“I’m not.”

His eyes, though. When I meet his eyes, they’re blazing with the truth.

He is. He wants to.

“You know what the worst thing is?” I ask. “It’s knowing I was always stupid and sheltered and just … just useless. Everyone telling me I’m smart, like that’s so great and important. Going to a good college—oh, Caroline, how fantastic. But one bad thing happens to me, and I can’t even …”

I trail off, because I think I’m going to cry, and I’m too angry to give in to it.

West takes another step closer, and then he’s rubbing my arm. The flat of his palm lands against the back of my neck, over my hair, and he’s tipping me forward until my forehead rests against his chest.

“You’re not useless.”

“No, seriously, I can’t—I need you to hear this, okay? Because the thing is—”

“Caroline, shut up.”

The way he says it, though—it’s definitely the nicest anyone’s ever shut me up. And his rubbing hand comes around my back and presses me into him, and that’s nice, too. I can feel him breathing. I can smell his skin, feel my hair catching on the stubble underneath his chin.

It’s better here. I like it.

I like it too much. So much that I spend the longest possible span of time I can get away with savoring the heat of him, the weight of his hand on the back of my neck, the way his boot looks stuck between my flats. But then I have to ask. I have to.

“West?”

He makes a noise like hunh.

“Do you have a lot of money?”

I lift my forehead to ask him, which puts me in startlingly close range of his face. I’m close enough to see the frown begin at the downturned tips of his eyebrows and spread across his forehead.

Close enough to see his eyes go baffled. Then angry. Then blank.

His hand drops away from my neck. “Why are you asking me that?”

It’s too late not to say, but the butterflies in my stomach have turned to lead ingots, and I know this is all wrong. I know it is. But I don’t know why or how to get out of it. “I, uh … I need a loan.”

He steps back. “What for?”

“Remember when I told you about that company that can clean up my reputation online?”

“You said it was expensive, so you’d have to tell your dad.”

“Yeah.”

I wait a beat.

“You didn’t tell your dad.”

“I can’t, West. I thought about it, but I … What if he sees?”

It could happen any time. My dad could be sitting at his desk and type my name into a search engine, just because. Or somebody he works with could point him in that direction. A friend. One of my sisters. Anybody.

I close my eyes, because the humiliation of it, the shame of asking West to help me fix this thing—I can’t.

I can’t look at him at all.

“How much do you need?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars. I heard you … I heard sometimes you do that.”

He sighs. “You have any income at all?”

“I get an allowance.”

I open my eyes, but I can’t lift them above my shoes. My black flats are dusted with flour. It’s worked its way down into the buckle, and I doubt I would be able to clean it out, even if I wanted to.

“How long would it take you to pay me back?”

“I could pay you a hundred fifty a month.” If I never buy anything or eat outside the dining hall.

West kicks my toe with his boot. Waits for me to look up. His eyes are still dead.

“I’m charging you interest.”

“I would expect you to.”

“I’ll have it on Tuesday.”

And then there’s nothing left to say. He’s gone, empty, and I’m too full—like there aren’t any edges to me. It’s just pain and disappointment, all the way through.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m … I’m going to head out. I have to write that paper.”

He just grunts at me and weighs out dough. A thousand miles away.

I don’t see West on Friday, because he’s working at the restaurant, and we’re not friends.