Rise to the Sun

by Leah Johnson

  “Here,” she says, after it clears. “Something to remember me by when this is all over.” She smiles a little as she tucks it into my open fanny pack. “Submit it to galleries and call it Aftermath of Cute Girl’s Compliment. You’ll get rich for sure.”

  I don’t have a response to that—don’t even know how to begin to make sense of the moment we just had. So I pretend to listen to Pop Top. I try to ignore the feeling that I’m sinking into something here that I don’t have the tools to fight.

  And the fact that maybe I don’t want to.

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  “I want to go to the Ferris wheel.” Odd Ones, the band that took the stage after Pop Top finished, have just wrapped up their encore, and now Imani is standing over me with her arms crossed and her face saying that this isn’t a request, it’s a demand. I should have known that sitting out two sets in a row wouldn’t bode well with her. I look at Toni—not for permission, just to, like, excuse myself—and she says, “I should go check on Peter. He’s like a succulent—he can survive alone for a while, but he does better when someone is tending to him.”

  I brush myself off and follow Imani.

  She moves a little too fast for a while, until we’re out of the range of Toni and Peter and the last set we saw. She’s shockingly athletic for someone who spent most of junior year eating lunch in the library in order to maximize her study time. I have to dodge people lying out in the grass, and skip over the corners of blankets to keep up with her as she moves. The Ferris wheel lights up in the distance, massive and glittering and colorful, and I have the urge to take a picture. But I decide to wait until the sun goes down instead.

  I give the “Hey, Farmer” wave to a couple as I pass and they wave back, and it’s just so nice. It’s so easy.

  And I realize that even though I’m covered in a thin layer of sweat and I can already feel some particularly heinous tan lines brewing and I’ve drunk more water over the course of the past few hours than I ever have before, I’m content.

  For the first time in months, I’ve gone nearly an hour without thinking about the hearing. I’m not thinking about toppling my next conquest—honestly, I’m not even thinking about finding the next apple. I’m settled in my skin. It’s so unfamiliar to me though, I almost don’t recognize it for what it is. But I’m me, so of course it doesn’t last for long.

  “You should be careful,” Imani says, stepping over the legs of a guy in a Kittredge T-shirt. He waves at her as we pass, but I don’t think she notices.

  “I already told you I was wearing SPF 30,” I say, trying to joke my way out of the tone she’s using. “I read something that says once you go too far over it doesn’t actually work.”

  “You know I’m not talking about that.” We stop in front of the Ferris wheel, and she looks over at the way my shoulders are reddening. “You do need a reapplication, but I’m talking about this.” She waves her hand around easily, gesturing at everything.

  I tell myself Imani just wants what’s best for me, wants a future where the people who have broken my heart get broken in some way in return. But that’s because she doesn’t see me for what, for who, I am. That part of me probably deserves the heartbreak. I’m a one-woman wrecking crew and eventually I destroy the people closest to me, especially the people I decide to love.

  At some point, I got really good at the chase. I got so good at it that most days, most nights, I barely even had to try. It became second nature, putting on a costume and becoming who I needed to become to get the attention of someone smarter, funnier, more talented than me. And I’d be able to hold their attention for a while. But pieces of me would inevitably begin to slip out. I’d talk too much about the wrong things, go overboard with a display of affection, or worse.

  Cal, the debate team captain, said I distracted him away from his shot at state when I showed up in a brand-new bright orange jumpsuit I discovered at a garage sale. Moira, star forward for the girls’ soccer team, sprained her ankle the night before sectionals because I insisted on going to the skating rink for our two-month anniversary. I wore this great pair of thrifted Saint Laurent velvet platform sandals to Kai’s Battle of the Bands performance, but tripped and fell into their kit, effectively destroying their lucky cymbal five minutes before curtain. And then there was Troy.

  They all ended the same way. In flames.

  The only relationship I haven’t ruined is this one, our friendship.

  “I know you came here to have a getaway, but you’ve had months to figure out what you’re going to say at the hearing, and you still refuse to tell me,” she says. Her voice gets a little quiet. “Since when do we keep secrets from each other?”

  I kinda want to stomp my foot like a toddler having a temper tantrum because Oh my God. I don’t want to do this today. I don’t want to do it any day.

  It’s incredible how fast all the warmth that I’d felt just ten minutes earlier, lying in the grass with Toni, disappeared. One reminder of my latest and greatest screwup, the last relationship that self-destructed as a result of my own poor decision-making, and it’s like being splashed with cold water. Only worse because I’m drowning in my own shame.

  “Imani, please.” I can hear the whine coming through my voice and I have to turn to my last resort. I put on my best doe eyes. And because I don’t know what else to do, I lie. “I’m not keeping anything from you. Can we just focus on the weekend?”

  I don’t know when the switch flipped, when our relationship became this weight where I feel like a burden to her too. The same way I do around my mom, or Nia—like I’m this defective thing beyond repair—but I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. If there’s one person I’ve always known I could count on to love me despite all my wrongness, it would be her.

  “You’re not—” She stops walking and turns to me right before we reach the ticket booth. “You’re not, you know, trying to hook up with Toni, right?” She twists the silver ring around her pinky. We bought it at Navy Pier during a weekend trip to Chicago last year to get over my breakup with Brianna, the drum major for the marching band. We had a matching set until I lost mine during a late-night swim in Theodore from Theater’s pool. “Because you promised this would be just us.”

  My heart pangs hard and sudden.

  “I meant it.” I shake my head, just grateful that she doesn’t hate me. That she hasn’t been so relentless recently because she’s ready to toss me to the curb. “We pinky swore on it,” I add.

  I throw my arms around her neck and hold her tight. I tuck my face into the space between her neck and shoulder and she brings her arms up to wrap around my back. She feels so solid, like always. My best friend, the lighthouse in the worst storm.

  “I love you, Mani.” My voice is muffled by her shirt. “You’re always looking out.”

  “I love you too,” she says, voice quiet. When we pull back, she sighs softly, exhausted, no doubt by the ridiculous sun and the Georgia humidity.

  Her eyes skate across my face briefly and she shakes her head.

  She waits a second before saying, “Wash hated heights when we were kids. We’d go to the state fair every year, and my parents would never let me do the Ferris wheel because he couldn’t do it. They didn’t want him to ‘feel bad.’ ” She puts air quotes around her words and looks at me with a half-smile (because a full one might just cause her to pull a muscle). I smile back twice as wide. “This is like a lifetime in the making. You should write this down for posterity.”

  I look up at the Ferris wheel, where the lights dance purple and pink across the late afternoon sky. Big, bold, its presence inescapable. I hold my pinky out to her.

  “Consider this a solemn vow, then.” She links her pinky with mine and we both kiss our thumbs. “I’ll never let my slight acrophobia keep you from greatness.”

  She huffs out a laugh, and we bring our hands down to swing between us. Imani is a little brighter after that, and as we stand in line at the booth, she talks more than she has since we got to
Farmland. And, because I am a love scientist, it’s about Peter!

  “I just think he’s funny. Guys usually think you’re supposed to laugh at anything they say just because the patriarchy is insidious even on a micro level.” A corner of her mouth ticks up and I know then that I’ve done it. My magnum opus is finding Imani a beau at Farmland. God, I deserve a Pulitzer. Or a Nobel. I can’t remember the difference, but either one will do. “He really works for it, you know? He tries to earn every smile. It’s … nice.”

  We’re next in line for tickets, and I’m already planning their wedding and deciding what I want their kids to call me—Auntie Liv? Titi Livi?

  She rolls her eyes at herself. “But who cares about all that when we’re finally about to ride this thing? You weren’t the only one checking the message boards, you know. This is like some music festival behemoth.”

  “What’s bigger than behemoth? Colossal? Because if so, it’s that,” I add. She laughs her low, rich laugh that reminds me of only the best things.

  The attendant at the booth is holding her hand out for our ticket money when both of our phones buzz. The next clue for the scavenger hunt appears—the only things visible in the picture are a checkered background and the apple in the foreground—and because we can’t take any chances of not getting the next apple before someone else takes it, I start back in the direction of where we left Toni and Peter.

  “Olivia, wait!” Imani calls from behind me. I don’t know why she’s still standing in line when she got the same notification that I did, but her feet are planted when I turn back. I know she’s excited to ride this thing, but we have two more days, and we need to get this apple now. She twists her ring absently. “We can’t just do this really fast?”

  “We’ll ride it later, I promise! But we’re losing precious time, Mani—this is an emergency.” I feel my entire body start to vibrate. This is it. This is what we came here for: an adventure. A big weekend. Everything can be good if we let it.

  I smile wide and start power-walking. It takes a few seconds, but I finally hear Imani’s footsteps behind me, and I give myself over to the thrill of this new kind of chase.

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  When Olivia and Imani come back after we get the next apple clue alert, Olivia sweeps in like a flash, her eyes bright and excited. My heart pounds a little at the sight, and I can’t tell if it’s in anticipation or fear. The fact that I don’t know somehow makes it even more intense.

  “You know where this is, right?” Olivia points at her phone screen. She’s breathing hard from her walk over but looks energized instead of exhausted. Imani, on the other hand, just looks fed up.

  She sweeps her long hair over her shoulder and stares straight ahead. It’s almost like the rest of us aren’t here, standing in a circle examining the clue on our respective phones. The look reminds me too much of myself—or the myself I am when I’m doing whatever this is with this girl I just met—to be comfortable. I look back down at my phone and focus on the task at hand.

  “See that black-and-white checkered wall blurred in the background?” It’s barely there and impossible to see if you’re not looking for it, but I know these grounds like the back of my hand. There’s only one place it could be.

  We weave through the Core, and Peter winks at me over Imani’s head and raises his eyebrows in silent code: Dude, look! We’re on a double date! I can see it in his eyes; he’s going to go all crush-stupid over this girl he barely knows, despite my years of advice to the contrary. He didn’t say it explicitly while Olivia and Imani left for the Ferris wheel and the two of us stayed for the next set, but he might as well have. Peter is just like that—almost obsessive in his passions.

  I bring us to a stop in front of the metal-roofed, glass-walled structure near the back of the Core. I hold my hand out in the most lackluster ta da! motion I can manage, even though I’m proud to have cracked another mystery. Olivia smirks, like she knows more than she’s letting on about how I feel but she doesn’t mention it.

  “Silent Disco?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “You really think it’s in there?”

  I look around her body and examine the scene. The Silent Disco pavilion is filled with people wearing huge headphones and dancing to whatever is playing through them. It seems like a horror movie to me, but Olivia looks thrilled at this development.

  I nod. “Behind the old DJ booth.”

  I try not to get caught up in my memory of seeing the back of the DJ booth for the first time—too young to see over the turntable as my dad spoke to his old friend. Back before it was the newly remodeled Silent Disco at all, and it was just the Disco—a retro-inspired all-day, all-ages dance party, and one of my dad’s favorite activities to take me to as a kid. It felt like he knew everyone, and everything, back then.

  “You have to crawl behind the booth to get to it. But the paneling down there is covered in checkered wallpaper.” I rub the back of my neck and explain, “This whole place used to be a mashup of different decades. Checkered patterns for the fifties. Disco ball for the seventies. Neon colors everywhere for the eighties.”

  “I love it when you pull out your endless well of knowledge, Toni Baloney. Let’s do this!” Peter rubs his hands together and volunteers to go inside. He looks at Imani, waiting for her to make a move toward the pavilion, and his expression is so open and hopeful. I feel the warm flash of annoyance light quick and indignant up my spine on my best friend’s behalf when she crosses her arms over her chest and dismissively answers, “I’d rather not.”

  Peter, eternally undeterred, bounces on the balls of his feet anyway. He and Olivia take off to get in line and head in, and me and Imani are left standing side by side. We’re surrounded by the ambient noise of laughter and music playing, but there’s an obvious silence between the two of us as we wait.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” she asks after a few minutes. She doesn’t look at me.

  “No,” I respond slowly. I don’t know if this is a test, but if it is, I’m sure I’m failing. “Are you?”

  She presses her lips together and turns away without answering. I wonder what I could have done wrong to this girl to make her hate me so much so quickly, but Peter and Olivia bound out of the pavilion and pull my attention away. Peter is clutching the golden apple in both hands like he’s afraid of dropping it, and Olivia has her arms spread wide like she’s the master of the universe.

  “We all gotta go back in there together!” Peter says once he reaches us. “Imani, I think you would like it. I have it on good authority that at least one of the headphones is playing Pop Top.”

  Imani doesn’t look thrilled by the idea, but Olivia’s face lights up. She snaps her fingers like she’s just solved a great mystery.

  “You two should go!” She points at the two of them. “Me and Toni need to practice for tomorrow, and I think we’re probably out of clues for a while.”

  She looks at me for backup, raising her eyebrows like I should agree. But Peter cuts in first.

  “Yeah, we can go dance and these two can go rehearse! I, for one, am tone deaf, so I’m pretty sure I’d be more of a hindrance than a help. What do you say, Imani?” Peter looks at her expectantly, but she looks at Olivia instead. They seem to communicate exclusively using a series of elaborate blinks.

  Finally, Imani sighs. “Sure. Okay, let’s go.”

  Peter practically skips back to the Silent Disco pavilion, a reluctant Imani dragging her feet behind him. I look at Olivia, where she charges ahead of me, the hem of her dress swaying when she walks like even her steps are a dance. I glance back at Peter, cheesing at Imani in line. I wonder how any of us ended up here. I wonder if it even matters.

  FRIDAY EVENING

  We have to head back to camp since that’s where Toni’s guitar is, and I’m feeling like Ginger Rogers or, like, Fred Astaire or something. Like I’m walking on air. Everything is coming together perfectly. Imani and Peter are well on their way to hitting it off with just a few more nudges in the right d
irection, we’re finding all the apples, and Toni’s face looks marginally less murderous than it did this morning. All we have to do is rehearse, and barring me screwing things up somehow, we could even make a decent showing at the competition tomorrow.

  And because I’m feeling so great, of course that’s when I choose to check my phone.

  A few notifications have popped up in the time it took to find the last apple. There are the usuals: a few texts from my mom asking how Bible camp is. I send her a quick response with a Googled scripture and try to ignore the pang of guilt.

  It’s not like I’m being missed, I remind myself with a snort. She’s probably just wondering why her blood pressure has returned to normal levels for the first time since I was old enough to talk.

  When I close my texts and open up my Confidential app, I brace myself. There are a couple Confidential DMs from a burner account with no profile picture, and my stomach drops immediately. I’ve been getting these every day since last semester, despite locking my account months ago, and they still manage to make me feel sick to my stomach every time.

  From @justice4troy000 to @OliviaTwist:

  if u dont wanna b treated lik a slut don’t act like 1.

  if troy cant play this season u shouldnt even come back to school

  better yet dont come back anyway. nobody wants u here

  I delete the messages quickly and don’t even bother reporting the account. It doesn’t matter anyway, I know, because a new one will just pop up in its place tomorrow. As it turns out, the people at my school who take pride in harassing me online have an endless pool of email addresses to pull from. And Confidential—a site started by local high school students as a Big Brother-esque social site meant almost exclusively to share gossip—well, clearly their priorities are not on the side of shutting down trolls. I turn off my push notifications so at least tomorrow this won’t be the first thing I see.

  I’m suddenly tired. I’m so tired of all of this. I don’t want to go back to school in a week. I don’t want any of it. I just want to go back to first semester, before Troy Murphy had ever paid me any attention. This is miles away from how I imagined my senior year. But I hope against hope that things can go back to normal. All it’s going to take is my silence.