Blue

by L. E. DeLano

  I can barely understand him around his fingers.

  “I’ll just sip slowly, thanks.”

  He pulls his thumbs out, wiping them on his jeans. “I can see how this would not be sexy. Have I blown our first date already?”

  I shift my eyes to the screen, a mysterious smile on my lips. “No.”

  He folds his hands across his chest with a satisfied smile. “Official first date: confirmed.”

  15

  The movie wasn't bad. It wasn’t good, either, but I think it did what we both wanted it to do: it took our minds off our lives for a little while. Or maybe just being together did that. I’m willing to take a step back and consider that. We laughed all the way through the movie, mocking some of the more ridiculous plot convenience moments, mimicking a few choice bad lines. We even had a popcorn catching contest that progressively moved from sitting next to each other to throwing across the entire auditorium. It was hilarious and I haven’t had that much fun in, God, I don’t know how long.

  The first half of the ride home is just a continuation of that vibe for a while. But then we have this silence—like we both realize we have to go back home, and back to what we were dealing with before we took this break. It occurs to me that he managed to push aside my earlier questions. I still don’t know what’s making his life as hard to live as mine is right now.

  “So, are you going to tell me why you’re at home?” I asked hesitantly. “Did you get suspended, too?”

  His eyes don’t leave the road as he drives, but he waves a dismissive hand. “Nah. I’m never in trouble. I stay firmly under the radar.”

  “So—mental health day?”

  He shrugs. “Mental health day that turned into a mental health week. I’m excused, don’t worry.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what else to say to that. But I feel like I should say something. “I don’t want you to think I’m sticking my nose into your personal life.”

  “Well, we are dating now.” He turns his head to grin at me.

  I smile back, and keep going. “But I know you’re dealing with something. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. But if you do want to talk, I’m here. I know I don’t seem like a good listener—”

  “I would never say that,” he says emphatically. “You’ve got a lot going on. I get it.”

  “I just feel kind of bad,” I tell him. “You’ve been listening to me for weeks now. And I know everybody’s got their own stuff to deal with. You’ve been dealing with mine and yours, and I appreciate it.”

  “All part of my diabolical plan to get you to date me,” Devon says, adding a maniacal cackle that makes me laugh out loud. “Now that we’re dating, it all dries up. I’m cold and emotionless from now on, and it’s going to be up to you to decide if I’m a manipulative villain, or if you’re going to melt my frozen heart.”

  “I see,” I nod slowly. “Then we’ll just have to take it one day at a time.”

  “That’s the best way to live a life.”

  Devon pulls up at the end of my block just in case any of my mom’s nosy stay-at-home mom friends wanted to give her a report on my whereabouts. I start to reach for the door handle and then belatedly remember we were sort-of on a date.

  “I had fun today,” I say. And I did. I really did.

  “I want a rematch on that popcorn contest. You barely beat me.”

  “I caught six more pieces of popcorn in my mouth than you did,” I remind him.

  “Yeah, but my throwing hand is still bruised. You had an advantage.”

  I bite my lip as if considering. “Fair enough. Next time you can move two steps closer.”

  “So there is going to be a next time?”

  He makes it casual, leaning in with his elbow on the back of the seat. His eyes hold mine and for some reason, I’m not breathing evenly.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  And then he moves forward slowly, and his lips brush my cheek. He must’ve read the disappointment in my eyes when he pulls back because he smiles slightly.

  “I’m saving the real kiss for an officially-sanctioned date,” he says.

  “You told me this was a real date.”

  “It was, but more like a stealth date. A guerrilla date, if you will.”

  “Guerrilla date. I like that.”

  “I like it too,” he says and then he reaches out with his finger and taps the end of my nose. “And I like you. So when I give you that first official kiss it’s going to come with all the bells and whistles.”

  I raise a brow. “Balloon drop? Glitter? Pyrotechnics?”

  He gives me a mocking half-bow “As my lady commands.”

  I started to reach for the door handle again, but his hand on my shoulder stops me.

  “Since we’re officially a whatever now,” he says, “don’t you think I should have your digits?”

  “Oh, uh—yeah, of course.” I dig out my phone, and impatiently swipe away a half-dozen notifications before I open it up to contacts and add his number in. I text him so he has mine.

  “Hi?” He says, looking affronted as he reads my text. “That’s hardly first text material.”

  “It’s a guerrilla text,” I say.

  “Hmmph.” He shoves his phone back down inside his coat pocket.

  “Later,” I say, finally opening the door.

  “Any time after now is later,” he reminds me. “I’ll text you after dinner. Or maybe in five minutes.”

  I give him a smile, and the door shuts behind me. He makes a big show of looking straight forward as he drives past me, like he doesn’t even know me, and I laugh.

  I feel like I’m thirteen again and sneaking back into my house after meeting Jules under the plastic frog canopy on the playground where we’d watch all the YouTube videos my mom wouldn’t let me watch.

  Grabbing the mail out of the mailbox, I idly sort through it as I walk through the house. My mind replays my afternoon, and the warmth of his breath and lips on my cheek.

  I have to admit, for a guerilla date it was pretty good.

  He gets my humor. Most guys my age don’t do humor well. They’re too busy thinking about how much they want to get laid, or they’re too busy obsessing about some other girl and they’re half distracted when I’m trying to banter. Or they’re like Austin, and if it doesn’t involve a ball, a scoreboard, alcohol, weed, or something blowing up, it’s pretty much not worth talking about.

  Okay, not all guys. Not all the time. I’m overgeneralizing. But it does feel that way—a lot. Devon and I clicked. We just clicked. Every joke we made about the movie, every plot twist we saw coming, every time we hit each other in the face with popcorn trying to land a goal in each other’s mouths—it was stupid, goofy fun. And I really needed some stupid, goofy fun.

  In fact, the whole afternoon was great, and a great start as far as first dates go with the exception of one tiny little thing.

  I still know next to nothing about him. I made an effort, I mean, a real effort to talk to him. To find out more about him and his life instead of everything always being about me. He did tell me a few things about his old school in Florida. He’d been on the golf team there and was a little disappointed we didn’t have a golf team.

  “A rich private school like Audubon?” He’d said, waving his hands in exasperation. “How is it that none of you golf? That’s a no-brainer. I suppose nobody plays water polo either?”

  “We do have high tea every Friday at three,” I responded. “And don’t you know? Golf is so early 2000’s. Nobody who’s anybody is golfing anymore.”

  He’d sniffed, and tilted his soda up to take a drink, making sure his pinky was properly extended. Then he deflected me into a conversation about Fahrenheit 451. We have a presentation due in a few weeks and neither of us have picked our book yet. We had a great time tossing t
itles off each other, everything from Pride & Prejudice & Zombies to various erotica titles we found on Amazon, with each suggestion growing more bizarre and hilarious. Before I knew it, the movie was over, we barely saw any of it, and I still didn’t know much about him on a personal level.

  But hey, it was only a first date, right? We’ve got time for that. Because there’s going to be a second date. And life is finally going to be about something other than this situation with Maya and Jack.

  I think I like that. I think I like that a lot.

  16

  "Welcome back to the both of you,” Mrs. Ramsey says from her squeaky chair behind her desk. “I hope you’ve spent this week wisely and done a bit of self-reflection.”

  We both make non-committal noises, and neither of us bothers to elaborate. I see Maya’s eyes drift to the clock on the wall and I’m right there with her. Let’s just get this over with.

  “Maya, I was very glad to hear that your foot is on the mend.”

  Maya’s face changes at the remark. The boredom disappears, and she winces—just enough to tug some sympathy into Mrs. Ramsey’s eyes.

  “It’s a little better,” she says with a dramatic sigh. “I should be able to practice with the team tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Well, don’t overdo,” Mrs. Ramsey cautions.

  Overdo her performance, I think. Drama queen. I’m surprised she didn’t bring a pillow to prop her foot on.

  “Today,” Mrs. Ramsey says, “I thought we could talk a little about how the—event that you share has shaped your time here at Audubon. Just your time here at school,” she qualifies, holding up one hand. “It might be beneficial to get a look at the other perspective.”

  “Doubtful,” Maya mumbles.

  “And I want to stress that this is not a contest,” Mrs. Ramsey goes on. “We’re not trying to keep score over who has it the worst in this situation. I think we can all agree Maya has a more significant loss and life-altering circumstance.”

  I can’t argue with that. Part of me feels like I want to, though. Then I feel like an asshole for feeling like that. Hell, I don’t know what I feel anymore except miserable.

  “So let’s just concentrate on how your shared event shapes your lives during the school day,” Mrs. Ramsey says. “Maya—do you feel like people treat you differently since you’ve come back?”

  “Well, yeah,” Maya says incredulously. “I am the girl with the dead father.”

  “And you’re also the girl who left school and recently returned,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “In a way, that brought everything back to the forefront again. If you had remained in school, it’s unlikely anyone would have been mentioning it this far down the road.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Maya shrugs. “But my Mom needed my help with our business trying to replace my Dad. It all took time to figure out and hire somebody in.”

  I hadn’t considered that. At first I thought she just got bored at home, then I figured she did it so she could torment Jack through me. It never occurred to me she might have wanted to come back, and couldn’t.

  “And Blue,” Mrs. Ramsey continues. “People are treating you differently with the advent of Maya coming back to school. That’s fair to say, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I want to keep going. I want to tell her that maybe this would’ve died down in a few days if Maya had kept her mouth shut and concentrated more on basketball than me. I mean, she’s hurting herself as much as me by keeping all this drama churning. But I am determined to get through this session as peacefully as possible. If I have to sit through another kitchen table talk with my mother, I will drive myself off a cliff.

  “Maya, can you expand a little on what it’s like to come to school every day?” Mrs. Ramsey asks. “What sort of remarks have hurt or upset you? Will you share a little of that?”

  Maya looks like she’d rather climb in the car next to me as I drive myself off that cliff. But she gives another half shrug and opens her mouth.

  “I don’t know. Just—people saying that Jack Mancini got away with murder. And that Blue is all full of herself about it.”

  “That’s not true!” I snap. “And who the hell is saying my brother is a murderer?”

  Maya raises her brows. “Everybody.”

  “Maya.” Mrs. Ramsey’s tone is a little sharper. “That’s more than a bit of over-generalization. I walk these halls every day, too. I hear student conversations all day long. The entire school is not talking about this—or at least they hadn’t been. The two of you have managed to build a perfect prison for yourselves with your behavior. We need to try to find a way to help you deconstruct that.”

  She leans back in her chair, steepling her fingers and looking at me over the tops of them. “Blue? Let’s hear your side of this. What sort of things are being said that are hurtful to you?”

  “You can pull up any one of her social media accounts,” I say pointing at Maya. “Just read them. You want a list of every bad thing that’s being said? It’s all there.”

  “I’m not interested in your interactions with Maya at the moment,” Mrs. Ramsey clarifies. “What are other students saying?”

  “That I punched you in the face after I deliberately broke Maya’s foot,” I say waving my hand in the air. “That I broke my boyfriend’s hand, too. That my brother killed a man and his plea bargain is somehow my fault, too, because my father makes a lot of money.”

  “Let’s talk about that, then.” Mrs. Ramsey leans forward. “So there is an assumption that because you have a certain level of privilege, it affected the outcome of the court trial.”

  “Obviously.” Maya interjects.

  Mrs. Ramsey holds up a finger to silence her. “That’s for a judge or jury to decide. But that assumption of privilege is also affecting the perception of you here at Audubon, and in a very different way from Maya.”

  “I can’t help it if my dad makes money,” I protest. “A lot of people have parents that make good money. It’s not my fault Maya doesn’t fit into that group.”

  “And that’s because I’m a scholarship student, right?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “My parents were married for twenty-three years,” she says, slapping her hand on the desk. “We own our own business. We’ve got a house in a nice neighborhood. We may not have your level of money but I’m not from some struggling, dirt-poor family. But none of that matters to you. All you see is another scholarship kid with Puerto Rican parents causing trouble in your rich little school.”

  “I never said that!”

  Maya throws her hands up. “You didn’t have to! I feel it! I feel it every day from every one of you and you have no concept of what that’s like even for a minute. If I didn’t play basketball, I would have no value here. I’m not rich enough or white enough and no matter how good my GPA is, no one thinks I’m smart enough.”

  I roll my eyes. “Projecting.”

  Mrs. Ramsey rests her chin in her palm, two fingers stretching up the side of her face.

  “What makes you say that?”

  I shrug, but it’s stiff and tight. I suddenly feel like I’m under a microscope. “I just think she’s exaggerating. Nobody’s like that here. I’ve never heard anybody say that stuff.”

  Maya starts to interrupt, and Mrs. Ramsey holds up a hand to silence her.

  “You have some decent friends, in that case,” she says to me. “But a statement like ‘nobody’s like that here’ draws completely from your own experience as a wealthy, healthy, heterosexual, young white woman in a wealthy, predominately white private school. Her experience is not your experience. Can you understand that, at least?”

  “She can’t,” Maya grumbles. “Nobody ever treats her or her family like they don’t belong.”

  “So give her an example,” Mrs. Ramsey encourages. “When did you have to deal with someone treating you badly
?”

  “I’ve been called names. People have asked me if we live with all my grandparents and aunts and cousins in the same house. One of the teachers tried to give me a big bag of her daughter’s clothes. She told me she knew I’d appreciate nice things.”

  “How about another time?” Mrs. Ramsey asks. “It doesn’t have to be at school.”

  Maya does not want to talk about this anymore. She just shrugs, twirling a pencil in her fingers, back and forth.

  “Last week,” she finally says. “At work.”

  “In your family’s coffee shop?”

  Maya nods, still twirling the pencil. Her eyes tighten with the memory. “I was on my break, sitting at one of the tables. It was my Tia’s birthday so I called her and we were talking in Spanish. Some lady came in and she tells me to speak English because I’m in America. I started to say something but my mom gave me this look like she’d kill me if I did, so I just went outside to finish talking. My mom told me after to just ignore that stuff because we need every customer. Like we have to put up with that shit for her five-dollar latte.” She tosses the pencil down, then picks it back up and twirls some more. “Stuff like that.”

  Mrs. Ramsey leans forward. “So your mother was afraid to let you defend yourself?”

  Maya shrugs. “She’s always up in my face reminding me I have to always be better, do better, prove I’m as good as the rest of you.” She sucks in a breath, pauses for a moment. Her voice gets softer. “My dad was different. He just let me be me.”

  My throat feels tight, and my eyes fill up. I blink hard a few times.

  My mom is like that too, I think. But instead I say, “At least your dad was involved in your life.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me grateful?” She snaps. “That I had a great dad while he was alive?”

  Silence hangs between us and her words sting like a slap.

  “I’m saying I don’t have your kind of father.” I don’t know why this is coming out, but it is. It needs to come out. “I can count on one hand the number of family dinners I’ve had with my dad in the last year. He works all the time. He’s got a pretty high level position at his company, and that’s why we make lots of money. But it’s kind of useless if you barely know each other. It’s like we’re all roommates. Not like we’re family.”