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Austin exhaled, running his hand through his hair I knew the gesture He thought I was overreacting "Yeah I thought irlfriend was dead, and now here you are I’m confused, but I want us to befriends"

I didn’t knohat to say Nothing, I guess We weren’t friends, not anying and shaking my head, because what else could I do, I turned onthere

CHAPTER SEVEN

Day Four

I SAT IN DR DUNN’S EMPTY WAITING ROOM, MY tongue running over the chipped tooth I was here to have fixed while I continued to rehashit in ht, but worse was the fact that I also couldn’t stop thinking about Tyler, and the look on his face when he’d coether

None of it should matter toto Austin, and now that I’d seen hi toelse, Tyler was still just Austin’s little brother Too young to be anything more than a friend

So why had my already-fractured heart shattered a littleto leave for the dentist only to discover there was no new chalk drawing for ed and worn?

Because if I stopped lying to myself for even a second, then maybe there was a part of me where Tyler mattered more than he should

I watched as azine he’d beenhe kne to read I thought about askingin his diet that made him crave paper pulp as he chewed off a second piece, but I’d already offended her and The Husband thatwhen I’d implied that, perhaps, he needed more practice with a spoon as more of the oatmeal had fallen off it than made it to histhe lines of a suggestion that they put hiiven my mom a terse look, I decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort to bring up her son’s nutritional deficiencies too

As if reading rinned at me, his teeth all pulped out with

"Kyra" A woman in faded pink scrubs readrooet in to see the dentist on this busy Wednesdayat all the eot up and followed her Behindlot open and a voice I recognized said, "Sorry I’ in the doorway He had the same unshowered look he’d had the first day I saw him, like he’d just rolled out of bed

"I told you, you didn’t have to come It’s just a dentist appointh-pitched, the same way it had been when she’d re and ignored all of the my dentist, but now, like everyone else--well, everyone but me, it seemed--he looked older Fatter, too, likeI only just now realized that I appreciated in a dentist

I watched him out of the corner ofoff-key to the music that played overhead I re beneath his breath like no one could hear him

"So your mom says you chipped your tooth" He straddled the small swivel stool next to the examination chair I was reclined on, and he ducked in close He nodded once, nal to open wide I did, and he asked, "What happened?"

His fingers were already inover -ee" were the sounds that ca like "A piece of candy" should have sounded I ht as well have been a two-year-old with a azine

"Candy, huh? That’ll do it," he answered cheerfully, his latex glove finding the broken spot on nified lenses on the miniature binoculars He sat back and told the lady in the pink scrubs, "Let’s get a quick set of X-rays to ’s A-OK" He turned to et you all fixed up Sound good?"

I shrugged Okay

She took the X-rays, and he ca them up to the wall-mounted white box I watched him disinterestedly as he scrutinized theet my old X-rays, the ones I’d had done just last week Or, rather, the last week I remembered

He looked at those, too, and noasbecause he was lance; it was a long, drawn-out perusal, the kind that you give to so a second or third look He kept his back tobehind those giant-eyed lenses Squinting and biting his lip and concentrating

Then he left the room, both sets of X-rays in hand