Karyn was careful to position herself such that she was always closer to Sarah than Jon as the three students navigated the hallway and entered the nurse's office. She was also careful to appear nonchalant enough that Sarah didn't suspect she was doing it deliberately.
With Jon sitting on a cot off to one side of the office, the nurse applying bandages, and Sarah sitting beside him, Karyn sat down at the nurse's desk a safe five or so feet away. She couldn't talk to Jon freely with Sarah and the nurse there, but this was about as good as it was going to get.
Karyn made eye contact with Jon: "Hey, you know that thing we talked about at the wall the other day?"
The stone. Jon nodded as the nurse stood up to get more gauze.
"I trust you," Karyn continued. "You can use it without my permission. Do what you think is best. I trust you to find a solution without me."
Jon nodded again, and the nurse returned her attentions to his half-bandaged face.
Sarah looked between the two, from Jon to Karyn and back. There was something she wasn't understanding here, but if last night in her bedroom wasn't proof enough, the way they were looking at one another now sealed it for Sarah: the two had a deep connection. They had more of the energy of an old married couple than of teenagers who had only just started dating. They understood one another in an intrinsic way.
And Sarah realized that she wanted that. She wanted it for her best friend, and she was going to nurture it where it had clearly already sprung. But she also wanted it for herself. And she realized that she was never going to get that from Biff Goddamn Meadows. Even if she hadn't just broken up with him in the cafeteria, she suddenly realized the two never would have worked out. Her relationship with Biff had been a puddle, fleeting and easily stepped in, while Jon and Karyn's was as deep and permanent as Lake Superior.
But Sarah could figure out what that meant for her later. She wasn't done playing matchmaker yet.
"I'm sorry I got blood all over the clothes you gave me," Jon turned to Sarah while the nurse lifted his shirt to look at the bruises on his back.
"They're just clothes. I was going to get you some new ones, anyway."
"You don't have to do that."
"Don't tell me what I don't have to do." For a moment, Sarah fell back into her normal catty tone, but the sad look on Jon's swollen face compelled her to reel that back, to speak to Jon in a way that he'd understand. "Look, I want to do this for you. You're dating my best friend." Karyn fidgeted uncomfortably in the nurse's chair at the pronouncement of her apparent relationship with Sarah. "That means you're basically my brother-in-law." Jon began to fidget on the cot, a mirror of Karyn. "You're practically family. And family helps each other."
The feeling from the cafeteria came back to Jon right in that moment. The feeling that he'd been so alone, and he just needed anything, anyone to cling to. The Mary Tyler Moore song started playing in his head again:
"But it's time you started living
Time to let someone else do some giving"
Everything that he had been holding up inside of him, all the adrenaline that had kept him going since Biff's fist had connected with his face, it all drained out of Jon at once, and he felt tears soaking into his bandages as he collapsed limply onto Sarah's shoulder.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Sarah looked up and met Karyn's eyes. "Thank you," Karyn mouthed.
