Rise to the Sun

by Leah Johnson

  It feels so freeing to stop trying to contain everything, to stop trying to maintain a façade of the stoic, strong, and silent Toni Foster that I’ve been playing for all these years.

  “Toni.” My mom’s voice is softer than it usually is. It’s the voice she reserves for comforting me. “I’ll come get you. Do you want me to drive down there? I’m driving down there, okay? Just—”

  I sniffle, and laugh, just a little. Because I love my mom, and her lawyer-y need to make everything better by leaping into action. But I don’t think I need that right now.

  I just need an answer, one that no amount of time or live music or nights alone can seem to answer—one I’ve been dancing around my whole life.

  “No, please. Stay. I just—Why didn’t dad go to college?” I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head on them. “Why didn’t you ever tell him he had to get a different job? Some boring, normal career?”

  At first it’s silent on the other end, but I know she’s hearing everything I’m not saying: about what college holds, about the fact that until this weekend I hadn’t been able to play in months, about why I can’t seem to find my footing in life. But she doesn’t ask the right questions in return.

  “Are you having second thoughts about IU? Is this a freshman-year panic? Because we can talk to your academic advisor about finding a major that suits you.”

  “No, Mom, it’s not about college. It’s about Dad. It’s about me.” I breathe out slowly. I don’t want to worry her. I’ve never wanted her to have to worry about me. But I need her to be honest with me right now. “It’s about—How was he so sure that he was supposed to be out on the road? That he wasn’t supposed to be at home, with us?”

  I wipe my nose with the edge of my shirt. She doesn’t speak for a long while.

  “It wasn’t about you,” she starts.

  “It was about … restlessness.” She sighs. “Your father was never satisfied. He was always chasing the next best thing. He loved you so much, Toni. But there was a hole in him that he was always trying to patch up with whatever was out there on the road.” She sounds like she’s thought about this a lot. Like it pains her to say it aloud. But we have to. We’ve gone too long without talking about this. “There’s no amount of love from another person that can fill a hole like that.”

  I think about all those nights waiting for him to call home after a show was over and being disappointed again and again until I learned not to wait up. Until I learned not to expect anything from anyone so I couldn’t ever be let down. I remember the aching feeling of longing that remained in me until I opened myself up to Olivia. I remember how being with her felt the way the best kind of song feels; like coming home.

  “You are more than either of me or your dad’s worst mistakes, Antonia, and heaven knows we both made plenty.” I don’t even breathe as I wait to hear what my mom is going to say next. “You can build a life you’re proud of, and happy with, and not become your father. This isn’t an either-or situation.”

  And I don’t know if she’s giving me permission, or what she’d even be giving me permission for, but I know it’s what I needed to hear.

  I stand up. I was wrong before. Maybe it makes sense—my trying to walk away—I don’t know. What I know is that no matter where I end up next year, I want to feel forever like I felt with Olivia this weekend. Maybe love wasn’t enough to make my dad feel settled, wasn’t enough to make him stop running, but it can be enough for me.

  “How did you know you wanted to be a lawyer?” I ask quickly.

  “Other than being your mom, it’s the only thing I could imagine spending my life doing. The only thing I’d want to do every day,” she says without missing a beat. “Listen, are you going to be okay? I was serious when I said I’d come down to get you. You don’t sound like yourself.”

  I nod even though she can’t see me. I’m closer to being okay than I’ve been in nearly a year.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I say. I think about Olivia, about how good we could be together if I just let us. I smile. “I think I’ve finally figured it out.”

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON

  The sun has risen higher in the sky and the people around us are bustling, headed home or to enjoy what’s left of Farmland. But I’m not paying attention to any of that; I’m focused on the way my skin prickles with the thrill of being the sole object of someone’s attention. Being someone that can hold attention, that can be wanted, even for a second, manages to stop the restlessness that I feel.

  I turn to Peter with a coy smile plastered on. It doesn’t even feel right on my face anymore. I’m putting on a costume. I hate it. I need it.

  “Okay but what about Infinity on High? You can’t seriously tell me that Infinity on High isn’t in your top three of their best albums ever!” he says.

  “You’re cute when you get all worked up.” My voice doesn’t even sound like mine. I’m someone else.

  Peter’s eyebrows wrinkle together. “Huh?”

  “I said”—I move my hand to his chin, tilt his face to mine—“you’re cute when you’re all worked up.”

  Peter swallows slowly and his pupils dilate. He starts to lean forward, and I know I’ve done it. I’ve got him to want to kiss me. But the excitement that usually comes in this moment doesn’t. The endorphins stay dormant. If I just push a little further, maybe I can capture it again.

  I angle my face toward his, and I move in slowly, seductively. I tilt his chin just right so that I can almost—

  “Wait, hold on—” Peter’s head snaps back before we make contact, like he’s coming out of a trance, but it’s not quick enough.

  “Olivia?” comes a voice to my right. My stomach drops.

  “Oh my God,” comes a voice to Peter’s left. He looks over his shoulder and immediately stands up. I clench my teeth.

  I don’t have to look to know who the voices belong to. Actually, there’s nothing I want to do less than look right now. But Peter runs in her direction and I know this is happening.

  “Toni, this isn’t— Just wait a second!” he calls.

  I push myself to standing and see Toni’s back as she rushes away, with Imani running in the opposite direction. The buzzing in my ears intensifies until it drowns out every other noise in my head. My mom through tears, Why can’t you be more like your sister, Olivia? Troy’s voice whispering in my ear at that first party, If you cared about me, you would. The constant monologue I have running saying: You’re not enough. You’ll never be enough.

  But one thought holds tight through all the rest of it: Everything I touch, I break.

  Choosing whether to go after Imani or Toni isn’t a choice at all. Toni has already decided that I’m not worth wanting, but Imani is my best friend. Imani has to take me back.

  “Imani, please! Wait up!” I race to catch up to her. She’s already managed to walk nearly halfway to the Core in the time since she stormed away.

  I know I shouldn’t have made a move on Peter, not when I told her I wouldn’t so much as bat my eyes at anyone this weekend. I promised her a best friend weekend, and I didn’t deliver. She should be a little mad at me for that. I deserve it.

  But it’s not like she wanted to date Peter—she told him as much. So, she can’t be that mad that I kissed him. Or almost-kissed him. Whatever.

  At least with Imani there’s room to apologize, to figure things out. It’s not like the two of us have never gotten into it, after all. But with me and Toni, it’s clear that ship has sailed. There’s no hope left there. It was bleak before the thing with Peter, but some things are too extreme to ever come back from.

  And kissing someone’s best friend, even if it only almost happened, is the type of thing that means no return.

  And maybe that’s why I did it. Like how the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, maybe the loneliness you choose is better than the loneliness that’s chosen for you.

  “Peter said you turned him down.” I stop in front of her and hold my hands out to keep her
from going any farther. The quick jog has already left me a little breathless, so I take a puff of my inhaler quickly before continuing between breaths. “I would never try and, like, take your man from you. I know that doesn’t make this much better but—”

  “You think this is about a guy I barely know?” Imani’s voice is hard, pressed steel, a voice she saves for cursing out my exes in the hallways or for getting restaurant managers to take her seriously when she wants a refund on her undercooked chicken piccata. Never for me. “Of course you do. Because that’s where your mind always is, on finding a new object of infatuation. You don’t care about gender, whether the two of you have anything in common, your own well-being—nothing matters to you, does it?”

  “Whoa. Um.” It’s like a gut punch, hearing her say it so plainly.

  I’ve known that Imani doesn’t agree with a lot of my decisions—has actively warned me off most of them—but I didn’t think she thought so little of me. Like I’m some inflated caricature of a confused bisexual, just running from person to person because I can’t make up my mind. It’s something my mom would say, or Nia, but never my best friend.

  “That’s kind of harsh, Mani.” I flex my fingers and try to think past the rushing in my head.

  I made Imani a promise when we came to Farmland that I wouldn’t do what I’ve done before—abandon her and leave her to fend for herself. And I didn’t. While I was with Toni, she was having fun with Peter! She was happy … I thought.

  I think back to the first night where he crashed in my sleeping bag. It seemed like they were vibing. They like the same music and are able to switch between commentary on the history of Pop Top just as easily as they can the science of photoluminescence or Calvin Coolidge’s pet raccoon. How was I supposed to know that she not only wasn’t interested in him, but felt like I’d pawned her off on him so I could run off into the sunset with Toni?

  She leans back like I’ve slapped her. “Harsh?”

  “Yes, harsh.” I cross my arms over my chest and widen my stance. Maybe if I look solid, my inside will reflect my outside. “And you’re being kind of biphobic. Just because my sexuality is more fluid than other people’s doesn’t mean—”

  “You don’t get to lecture me about being a good person right now,” she seethes.

  “Look, can we just make up, please? This has honestly been a really hard day for me, and I kind of just want to cry and eat a taco from that cart in the Core.”

  Imani’s face shifts so quickly and so drastically into outrage, I take a step back on instinct. My stomach clenches.

  “How is this somehow about you too?”

  “What do you … what do you mean?” I can feel tears welling up at my eyelids, threatening to spill over.

  “I mean exactly what I said, Olivia. Every person in your life is just another funhouse mirror to show you different, more entertaining versions of yourself for a little while.” She throws her hands out to her sides. “It’s always about you. Your feelings. Your heartache. How can you use this person to feel good about yourself for fifteen minutes until you get bored, get dumped, and then move on? Lather, rinse and repeat.”

  I want to argue, to say it’s not like that, that I’ve never thought of her as a means to an end. But maybe she’s right. Maybe there’s some truth in what she’s saying. Maybe I am the problem, just not in the way I’ve been thinking. My mind immediately jumps to Troy, and it feels like I’m breathing through a straw.

  “Troy is a different story,” she says—always too in tune with my emotions, even now. “You didn’t deserve that. No one does.”

  It’s silent for a second. Or, at least as silent as it can be at a music festival.

  “It’s just—You’re not a character in a movie, okay? You’re a real girl. You don’t get a montage where you buy a new wardrobe and suddenly everything changes. This is your life. You are who you are.” She pushes her sunglasses up on top of her hair and presses her hands to her eyes. She doesn’t look at me as she adds, “Your problem isn’t that you’re too much or too extra, or whatever it is you think scares people away. The people you date are just assholes. Your problem is that you’re selfish.”

  “Imani, I’m—”

  She cuts her eyes at me, and they’re more than a little watery.

  “Sorry? You should’ve said that that time I had floor seats to see my favorite band, and instead of watching them perform, I left to talk you down from yet another crisis because you really thought Aaron was the one and now you’re going to be alone forever.”

  “But you said—”

  She rolls her eyes. “You really believed that me, of all people, would make the mistake of buying phony tickets? I said that because it made me sound less pathetic than the truth.”

  Her fists clench at her sides and I wish for a second she would just punch me or something. Let’s just get it out of the way, just have it out, because anything would be better than this. This hurts more than any uppercut could, and she’s clearly not done yet. Now that she says it, I can see it so clearly. I’ve done this so many times over the course of our friendship, she could probably go on forever.

  “Or how about the time you made me come to Chicago with you to help you recover from a breakup, and you abandoned me in a dirty basement—after listening to a terrible band play—surrounded by skeevy dudes trying to touch me for four hours without telling me where you were? Meanwhile you were off making out with their lead guitarist?” Her whole body is rigid. “I was so scared, Olivia. And you didn’t even bother to keep track of the rings we got on that trip—the only good part of the whole weekend.”

  She twists the silver pinky ring around until it slips off. I didn’t think she noticed that mine had gone missing. But there’s a lot I underestimated about Imani. She closes her fingers around it as she says, “Or what about the time you picked looking for a stupid apple—a contest which is probably canceled by the way—over riding the Ferris wheel with me? The only thing I wanted to do in this hellhole. So, no. It’s too late for your sorry. I don’t fucking forgive you for this.”

  She starts walking, toward nothing in particular but away from me, which must be enough for her. She stops suddenly, spins, and takes two steps back in my direction, pointing.

  “No, you know what? I can’t even blame you. This isn’t even on you. This is on me.”

  “Imani, no. It’s my fault, I—”

  She keeps going, almost as if she’s not even speaking to me anymore.

  “I just kept holding your hand through every heartbreak, just kept thinking, At some point she’ll get it. She’ll understand what she means to me. Next time, she’ll choose me.” She laughs. “But you were never going to get it, were you?”

  I—What? My mouth goes dry.

  “I think I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”

  Her voice breaks and it’s too much for me to handle. Imani doesn’t cry, not ever. And it’s so horrible, all of this, the whole terrible, awful, mess of it. Because I loved her too, that first day in Honors Geometry, when she raised her hand and answered that first question with such sureness I knew she was the type of person that I’d be stupid not to hold on to. She was so smart, so solid, and she’s been that every day since.

  I just don’t love her the way that she loves me. Loved me, past tense now, surely.

  We’re standing in the middle of the gravel road, and a blue sedan crunches the ground behind us, trying to get out. We step to the side so we’re standing in the grass, and Imani doesn’t rip into me again. She doesn’t say anything for a while. And I don’t know what to say. So the two of us just stare at each other until her deceptively calm voice pipes up.

  “I came to tell you that I’ve decided to stay to see Kittredge.” I reach forward to take hold of her, somehow. Like maybe she won’t leave me if I can just cling to her for a second longer. She jerks her arm back as I get closer. “Don’t”—she starts with a snap—“Don’t touch me, okay?”

  She closes her eyes
and angles her face up to the sky. It’s graying quickly, the weather somehow managing to capture the way this moment feels in the most cliché of all movie clichés. Another breakup scene in my life, flanked by disaster. God, I’m a walking made-for-TV tragedy, huh?

  “The minute Kittredge is done performing, I’m leaving.” Imani wipes at her cheeks. “I’m not going to miss my favorite band again because of you.”

  She doesn’t wait for me to respond. She just turns away, opens her fist, and lets her ring fall to the dirt with an inaudible thud. And it’s that, the cheap little ring that meant enough to her to wear it every day for over a year, discarded like trash, that breaks me.

  As she walks in the direction of nothing in particular, leaving me standing there surrounded by all the things I couldn’t say, I hiccup through my sobs. All my apologies and explanations so jumbled and messy that I don’t know how to put any of it into words.

  I don’t walk back to camp or head to the Core after her. I sit right there in the grass where I was standing, and watch Farmers heading back to their campsites and then some of the people who’ve already packed up camp and are getting ready to leave. I pick the ring up and try to shine it on the hem of my dress before slipping it on my own finger.

  Imani knows me better than anyone, and I’m supposed to know her just as well. So how did I manage to miss every glaring, screaming sign in front of me for the past three years that said she had feelings for me? While I was consumed with finding The Right Person—or just The Person, depending on the day—I was driving a knife even further into my best friend’s heart. I made everything about me, sucked all the air out of every room we shared together.

  She was right to be angry with me. Furious, in fact. I know I got off easy, even, after everything I’d done over the past few years. Imani had been the best friend I could’ve asked for, showed up for me every time I needed her. But I never returned that to her the way I should have.

  I was wrong. When Toni said all those things about what I deserve and what I should accept for myself, it was because she wasn’t seeing the version of me that the people who know me the best see. The version Imani sees—the version my mom or Nia see. She couldn’t have been.