He doesn’t sing the next lyric.
“For you,” he amends, his smile kicking up a notch.
He takes advantage of my stunned silence, and gets creative with his dance moves, spinning me around with sure fingers, and dipping me so low, his hand is the only thing saving me from a collision with gravity.
Mom’s applause clears the hazy spell Doyle put me under. “You two would put Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire to shame.”
I want to dance with him to the next song and the next one after that. But we’re in my kitchen with my mother. There’s also the danger of being swept up in feelings that once led me to complete heartbreak.
For so many solid reasons that don’t hold a candle to my desire to be near him, I push away.
“Doyle’s definitely a smooth operator.” We stand a few inches apart, and I fight the urge to put my hands all over him by knotting my arms across my chest. “Is the sauce done?”
Mom quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t you dare even think about it, missy. That sauce needs to set.” She tugs off the floral apron my father’s mother made her with bright fabrics she had shipped from the Dominican Republic. “You two scoot. I’ll call you when the food’s ready.”
Doyle waits for me to lead the way, and I practically have to drag him to my room. He follows right up to my doorway, then hesitates.
“Is this more Southern manners? You may enter, Master Rahn,” I say with a flourish of my hand as I flop onto my mattress.
“You sure it’s all right with your mama? For us to be in here?” He clears his throat and says alone in a hushed voice that makes me giggle.
“My parents are pretty liberal. When I started dating Lincoln, my mom sat me down to tell me about how I shouldn’t be worried if I didn’t orgasm vaginally from sex at first, then handed me a box of condoms. Ribbed. For my pleasure.”
I’m the only one laughing at the story.
“Sorry. TMI?” I pat a messy spot on the bed where he can sit. He takes a single cautious step into the room.
“I don’t like thinking about you with your ex-boyfriend.” His voice loses all of its usual warmth and comes out so icy and clipped, he sounds almost Northern. He flips open one of the cardboard box flaps at the base of my room’s storage ziggurat.
“Hey, I never said you could root through my stuff. Isn’t that, like, Manners 101?” I’m irritated at how, suddenly, my perfectly comfortable mattress pokes me with previously unnoticed springs. Or maybe I’m reeling from how quickly the lovely giddiness I felt in Doyle’s arms spirals away, like dirty dishwater down the drain.
He digs his hands deep into his pockets and leans against the wall, looking at me with hooded eyes. “You got a nice room.” It’s more accusation than observation.
“It’s pretty cookie-cutter.”
“Better than what a lot of people got.”
“I guess your room is pretty crap if my messy hovel impresses you.”
“I share with my brothers and cousin, remember?”
“Wait, you share a room with both of them? And Brookes? That’s gotta be tight.”
“When Lee’s home on leave, both of them. So there’s sometimes four of us in a room half this size. Two sets of bunk beds and a whole lot of elbowin’ for an inch of space.” I raise my eyebrows in sympathy and he explains, “Helps make sense of why I roam so much, I guess. Need more space than I got at home.” He shifts his eyes around my room. “Maybe you should do something with this place.”
“Why bother? I’m not—”
“Planning on sticking around for long?” he finishes for me, and it comes out sour.
I flip facedown and thump my fist on the pillow. “How’d we go from slow dancing to lectures? Can’t we go back to talking about crap that doesn’t make us fight? Like…prom! You were telling me about prom.”
There’s nothing more generic and safe than prom. It’s one of those cliché traditions that unites horny teenagers across the nation, bonding us all by our love for formal wear, crappy food, schmaltzy music, and nostalgia.
Doyle pushes his shoulders off the wall and sits on my bed, finally losing that stiff-limbed, disappointed look I bring out in him every so often. But it’s strange, because instead of looking judgmental, he looks guilty.
“So…’bout prom?” He scoots back so his knees don’t knock against his jaw. It’s hard to sit this low to the ground, especially when you’re a giant like Doyle.
I hook a hand around his elbow and force him to trust fall back. We stare at the plaster swirls on my ceiling.
“You sure this is all right?” His strawberry blond hair curls on my pillowcase, and I fight back a lump in my throat over how beautiful it is.
“It’s not like we’re humping each other.” I turn on my side and let a devilish smile curve over my lips. “Unless…”
“I don’t want to get your mama chasing my tail with a shotgun.” Before I can protest the likelihood of that happening, he holds up a hand. “I’d rather imagine it going down that way to keep us from fallin’ into something we might not mean to fall into jest yet.”
There are so many baseline feminist, sexually liberated problems I have with every ideology he’s spouting, but there’s also the weird but true fact that his insane philosophies make me feel protected. So, no matter how my brain protests, my mouth stays shut.
I scoop up his hand and lace our fingers together, then position our joined hands between our chests like a barrier. “As long as we just lie here, we’re okay.”
I mean it in the way it sounds on the surface plus a level deeper, and wonder if Doyle knows that. He rubs his thumb along my index finger, knuckle to fingernail, in answer.
“Prom ain’t a topic that’ll put things at ease.” His face is so close to mine, I can see every spoke of purple blue and pale lavender in his eyes.
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.” He squirms when I don’t give him the out he so clearly wants. I’m intrigued. Why does the always-chatty Doyle want to let the whole prom thing drop? “It’s…not official.”
“So, like a rebel prom?” I mean it as a joke.
Doyle never misses an opportunity to smile at my jokes. He doesn’t smile at this one. “Nah.” It’s crazy, the amount of bitterness he infuses in that one word. “More like a coward’s prom. Two of ’em.”
“You mentioned that. Two proms,” I say. “That’s not that weird, Doyle.”
“Two proms.” He darts his eyes down, staring at his big hand caged around my smaller one. He says each word like he’s pulling it out from somewhere deep inside himself. “One white, one black.”
For a second, I think he’s talking about our hands. Our skin. Us.
Gentle as his voice is, that stripped-down description of the two of us—which is just the truth—presses a jagged knot of emotion into the back of my throat.
“What?” I croak out dumbly.
“Proms. Two. Black. White.” He goes monosyllabic and tightens his fingers around mine.
Once it all clicks, a cyclone of thoughts roars through me so fast, I drag Doyle with me when I sit up.
“What?”
“I know it ain’t right. Lots of people hate it, but lots don’t. Tradition’s a strong thing down here. ‘’Cause it’s always been that way’ is everyone’s favorite way to explain anything they know ain’t right—”
“Like…segregation?” My words hop between his, a fierce one-two punch.
Doyle hangs his head and nods like he’s personally responsible for all this.
I tug my hand away, because I need to get my whirling thoughts landed, but Doyle takes it as evidence that I want to be nowhere near him.
“Right. I should probably see myself out—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I stand on the mattress and push him back down with one bare foot. “Why would I want you to leave? Why are you not freaking the hell out?” I demand, pacing back and forth on the squeaking mattress.
Doyle reaches out his hand and
lets his fingers graze my calves as I sweep by.
“I guess you can adjust to even a real batshit-crazy idea once you live with it long enough, but I swear I nearly puked having to tell you, Nes. That’s not freaking out enough for ya?” He runs his fingers through his hair until he looks like a ginger Einstein and rubs the back of his neck raw. His skin is flushed and his are eyes overbright, like he’s got a fever.
I stand so that my feet straddle his body, and I look down into his upturned face. “And everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, it’s not like we had a Civil Rights movement or anything. This is totally fine’? I know things are backward around here sometimes, but this is… Seriously, my mind is blown, Doyle.” I pace away and rush back, pointing in his face. “Mind. Blown.”
In case he didn’t catch the sentiment the first time.
“It’s always made me sick,” he says shakily.
“What is prom? Just a fun party with fancy clothes and crappy catering and uncoordinated dancing… Oh, and what am I missing?” I throw my hands up and let loose a maniacal evil-villain laugh. “Racism! Of course. Racism is the key ingredient to any successful social gathering down here, right?”
“Nes, it’s not like everyone thinks it’s right—”
“Just most people?” I interrupt. “And let me guess. The people who agree with it are the people in charge? Crooked cops, principals, queen bees…the people nobody bothers to stand up to?”
I should take the innocent-until-proven-guilty high road, but putting probable faces to this lunacy makes it personal. Under all my rage I’m sad, pissed, and grossly disappointed.
“Nobody bothered to stand up to them before,” Doyle amends.
I’m too furious to listen to technicalities. This is some screwed-up bullshit, no matter how it’s worded. I refuse to go limp with tears, so I rev my anger into high gear.
“So what about me?” I demand, staring at him like it’s not a clearly rhetorical question.
He shrugs, but I’m being vindictive even though this isn’t his fault, and I know that.
“Don’t shrug at me, Doyle Rahn! Do I get to choose which prom I go to? Or do they get to decide my race? Oh my God, do they whip out the ‘one drop’ rule? How ’bout the old ‘paper bag’ test? How about other people of color at Ebenezer? Huh? Asian kids? Native Americans? Pacific goddamn Islanders?”
I make a fist and think about how satisfying punching a hole in the wall would feel. I also think about how much broken knuckles would hurt.
But what’s a little more hurt? I hurt right now. Badly. I ache.
I think about what Jasper and Ollie and even Lincoln said. About going home. To Brooklyn, where there are problems, of course, but nothing remotely like this. Isn’t relocating to choose a better, easier existence over a crappier one what my families did—my Irish family and my Dominican family? They left places that were unjust to come to America, a land of freedom and equality and opportunity.
“What a crock.” I collapse on the mattress and loosen my fist, suddenly sapped of all my strength.
Doyle sits with his legs pulled up, chin on his knees. “I want to change it.”
“Yeah? Good luck, Doyle. People around here haven’t gotten over losing the Civil War, and that was two hundred years ago.” I scowl, not at him, just for the sheer satisfaction of letting my face twist into something ugly.
But he takes it personally. “Please, Nes, hear me out. I been thinking on so many things since I met you. I know you ain’t planning to stick it out here for the long haul. I don’t blame you for that, not at all. But maybe we can do this now, while you are here, while we have the time. Change this one thing, you and me.”
“Change what?” I look out the window, at the wall, anywhere but into Doyle’s hopeful eyes. “News flash, Doyle—the rest of the country at least attempts to keep their bigotry under wraps. Is this even legal? And if it’s such a long-standing tradition, who do you think will want to fight this other than you and me?”
He hesitates.
“People will,” he insists.
But he hesitated.
“People like who?” He can’t come up with a single name. “Doyle, it’s a lost cause. I want you to know I’d never look down on you for going to your own prom, even if it is a racist travesty. I get that it’s a big rite of passage or whatever.”
Doyle gives me a blatantly irritated look. “I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ to prom without you, and I ain’t plannin’ on skippin’ either. So, you do what you like, but I’m finding my way ’round this mess.”
I’m ready to keep arguing, but my mother calls us in to eat. I block the doorway. “Look, my mom is sensitive about the way people treat me…about race and stuff. So shut your trap about this, okay?”
He nods and keeps his mouth pressed in a tight line.
We march out to the dining room, where my mother has set the table with her mother’s shamrock-adorned Belleek china. I’m going to smile when I eat her food because it’s time to call a truce. I can’t be at war at school and out in the world and at home. I need a safe haven. I think about how quickly digging in your heels becomes a habit you can’t break.
It becomes your own little tradition.
I refuse to do that anymore. To show Doyle there are no hard feelings directed at him, I link my pinky around his under the table and appreciate the tiny smile he crooks my way. We will eat and pretend things are good because lying is how I’ll shield my mother from the ugly truth facing me.
Taunting me.
Daring me to do something, even though the odds of my winning are microscopic.
Dammit. I was never good at walking away from a dare.
EIGHTEEN
Off and on for the next few weeks, Doyle bothers me about the prom business.
That’s not all he does, of course.
He drives me to a deserted beach with white sand dunes we run to the top of, then slide back down, screaming until our mouths are full of grit. When we’re tired and sun pinked, I drive his truck on the beach. Once the stars speckle the sky, we park and lie in the bed, our heads pillowed on rolled-up sweatshirts. The radio is stuck on the oldies station, and Doyle sings “Brown Eyed Girl” to me even though I don’t have brown eyes and I’m not Doyle’s girl.
“Your voice is so beautiful,” I sigh as he croons along to Van Morrison.
“Hush now, you’re gonna make me blush,” he says, but he’s clearly pleased with his talent and even more pleased with my admiration. He continues to sing the song in a way that makes me think those “hearts a-thumpin’” might be all about us.
One random Saturday morning he knocks on my window with a bundle of hangers and tells me to shut my piehole as he digs through a box from the pyramid in my room without asking permission.
“You need to make up your fool mind ’bout whether you’re staying or going.” He points the hangers at me like a judge’s gavel.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I snap.
“Are you?” He tugs out some long-sleeved shirts that are too hot for this sauna state. “If you’re stayin’, commit. I’ll help you dip your baby toe in, chicken.”
“I’m not a chicken.” I bok.
“Really? Prove it.” He holds a bare hanger out to me, but I swat it away.
“Later.”
“Now.” One more shirt, one more hanger. “You don’t wanna dip your baby toe in, I can always straight toss you into the deep.”
“I wish you’d find someone else to bother.” I negate my weak threat by grabbing a hanger and zipping my leather jacket onto it. Another thing I can’t wear here, but I couldn’t wear it in Brooklyn in March either. It’s practically summer here, and they’re getting another freak spring snowpocalypse back home.
“You’d cry a river if I found someone else to bother.” He hangs the next shirt with arrogant determination.
“Would not,” I mutter, but not too loud.
By the time we’re done unpacking that single box, there are a couple shirts hangin
g in the closet, an owl sculpture on the windowsill, a few pictures stuck to the once-bare walls, and a tin of violet candies on the bed between us. Doyle grins at me as he sucks on a candy only he’d like, and when we almost kiss but don’t, his eyes brighten to lavender and his lips smell like tiny purple flowers. I’m hungry to know if they’d taste that way too, but I’m too gutless to find out.
On other days, he picks me up for school too early, and we sit with our legs draped over each other’s in the grassy school courtyard. Doyle crowns me with tiny flower wreaths. We scout new breakfast spots and share ice-cream sandwiches at lunch. I make him Spanish flashcards and teach him to dance the merengue on the cement patio next to the pool, my hips rolling with his, the relaxed movement of our feet forming pretzel patterns on the bricks as Rubby Perez’s “Volveré” keeps our steps and hearts in sweet rhythm. He traces the red A tattooed on my neck and it’s not quite enough, but neither one of us knows how to ask for more.
A thousand times our lips almost touch, a thousand times we go quiet and lean close, but…nothing. All the chances we had to kiss and never took have webbed us into this sticky friend zone.
My ongoing quest to navigate the ins and outs of Ebenezer High has also been as successful as I could have hoped. Which means I’m almost entirely ignored.
The only time I’m noticed is when Doyle bounds down the hall to meet me, when his friends extend me an obligatory greeting, or when Ansley attempts to make my life hell. I’ve managed to dodge Armstrong’s office, but I feel like Generic Mean Girl One’s dogging me, waiting for me to slip up so she can march down and file her report.
One random Tuesday, Doyle has a dentist appointment, so I’m alone in English when Ansley takes the seat behind me, claws out, ready to pounce.
Her smile’s triumphant, most likely from some “win” she imagines she scored against me. “Hello, Agnes. I see you’re not attached to Doyle’s behind for once.”
“Don’t you have some puppies to kick or babies to steal candy from?”
She brushes her fingers over the gold cross that dangles from her neck and gives me such a smug look, I have to sit on my hands so I don’t punch it off her face.
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