I try to grab his hands again, but he won’t let me. “But I’m glad I saw it too,” I confess. “Because I was just as tricked as everyone else. I bought it, Doyle. You’re really, really good at pretending everything’s okay. As close as I thought we were, I had no idea what you were dealing with.”
“I wish it was still that way. I wish you never saw that guy I was the other night.” His words burrow out from somewhere dark and bitter.
“You think that guy is weak? Screwed up?” I whisper, tears chasing hot and quick down my cheeks. My nose runs, and I wipe it on my wrist like a little kid. “I’m in love with that guy, Doyle. That’s the truth.”
“Holy hell, Nes, please don’t say that,” he begs, his voice cracking.
“No, I will say it. I’m sick of not saying what I feel. I’m sick of hiding the truth. I’ve never felt as close to anyone as I felt the other night with you. Explain that,” I dare him, my body quaking with frustration because I can see he’s working hard to ignore my arguments and reject the love that feels so fragile already.
“Adrenaline,” he bites out. “Drama. Fear. Dammit, Nes! I thought you, of all people, wouldn’t be into all that.”
“‘Into all that’?” I repeat slowly. “What does that mean exactly? You think I get off on the fact that I watched your father beat the crap out of you?”
“It doesn’t make a whole lotta sense, but what the hell else am I s’posed to think?” he demands, his words pure ice.
“There’re a lot of lies between most people. But you and me? We’re stronger than that. I’ve been lying and lied to for so long. I’m glad we were forced to be honest the other night.”
“Honest?” His laugh snarls somewhere behind his gritted teeth. “Guess that’s one word for it. Look…” He takes a deep breath and combs his fingers through his hair, neatening it up this time. He won’t face me. “I can’t… It’s not gonna… Look, mebbe I shouldn’t have come ’round at all. I’ll see myself out.”
“Doyle! Wait!” He stops when I call his name. So my voice still has some power over him. But not that much. Not enough that I can use it to bring him back to me right now. “I… I’ll see you around?”
It’s weak. It’s nothing near what I want to say, but I’m afraid to take the fight any further. I think I’ve already pushed too much, and I don’t even dare think too hard about what the consequences might be.
Doyle Rahn stands, tall and hurting and almost mine, but not quite, in the middle of my room. There are a thousand things we both should say now, right now, before it’s too late.
“Sure.”
He climbs back out the sill, and, when I hear his boots hit the ground, I crush my fist into my mouth and fight back the sobs.
TWENTY-FOUR
My life, already spiraling out of control, is officially a certified nest of insanity now that I’ve screwed everything up with Doyle.
Ollie assures me it’s going to be okay. That we’re going to figure it out. That boys are complicated. I know she wants to swing her arms out Sound of Music–style and scream with giddy joy about how alive all her hills are with sweet love music, but she isn’t the kind of person who’d do that when her best friend is in a permanent funk.
“Talking to my best friend makes me happy,” I tell her when she wants to see me happy again. “Happy isn’t a 24/7 pity party you force your bestie to chaperone. I demand you tell me about the bike ride to the bridge.”
She makes a noise in the back of her throat, like she’s trying to strangle the words back but just can’t. I’m glad when they explode out in this narrative glitter typhoon.
“It’s been killing me not to tell you! It was incredibly romantic, and he made me ride on the handlebars, like I was a freaking baguette in a basket and not a full human who weighs a very decent amount! And his legs and arms are pure muscle—which I know makes me completely shallow for even noticing, but does it count if I love those muscles more because I respect the work he put into disciplining himself, which, in turn, made that muscle? No? Okay, it’s all right, because I’m a girl in love, and he’s a boy who took me to a bridge on the handlebars of his bike and he brought a lock, like lovers do in Paris—except now the authorities are putting up guards because they apparently hate love in the City of Lights—and we wrote our initials on it and locked it and then he kissed me until I was literally seeing stars. Romance is killing my grasp on the laws of grammar, and I don’t care! I’m happy being a linguistic outlaw in the name of love.” She finishes her crazy rush of a story with that final, ludicrous declaration, then follows it with, “I’m sorry. This has to be the last thing you want to listen to.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m secondhand swooning! I mean, it’s weird because Thao is still a weasley freshman in my mind, but your story gives me hope, Olls. That love isn’t dead. No matter what the French authorities want to pretend.”
Her laugh is the puppeteer pulling the strings on my smile.
“It’s alive, and its heart is beating. Hard. Doyle Rahn is going to call you. I promise. I never lie.”
That’s true.
Ollie never lies.
But Doyle doesn’t call. I start a thousand texts and delete every one before I hit Send.
He still waits for me at my locker, but the silence when we walk down the halls is so uncomfortable, I start to dodge him.
He jogs down the hall to help me with a box of books Ma’am Lovett asked me and Alonzo to grab from the book room.
“Here, let me.” He reaches out, but I turn away and watch his eye twitch.
“Thanks. I’ve got them.”
Like he can’t hear me, he tries again.
“Doyle, I said I have it,” I snap. “I don’t need your help.”
He grabs the box and tugs. I yank back. Alonzo comes up behind the two of us. “Here, give me.” He takes the box from our hands and hands it to Doyle, who gives him a nod before he stalks into class with his arms full.
“What kind of macho crap was that?” I demand. “Look, he’s hurt, Lonzo. He doesn’t need to be carrying those books.”
“They ain’t that heavy.” Lonzo balances his box on one forearm like he’s proving his point.
“If they aren’t that heavy, why couldn’t I carry them?” I cross my arms tight over my chest.
“Because you were tryin’ to keep him from getting hurt.” Lonzo glances into the classroom, where Doyle is slumped in his seat.
“That makes no sense,” I huff.
“Doyle Rahn’ll take a beating over pity any day.” He shrugs. “You gotta accept that’s who he is.”
“So I should ignore his bruises as long as his pride’s intact?” I sneer.
“Nah.” Lonzo hands me a few books from his box as a crappy consolation prize. “Some people’re hard in the head. They think acceptin’ help is a sign of weakness. But you’re smart. Mebbe you can make him see that kinda thinkin’ is his daddy’s way, not his.”
Alonzo’s words rattle around in my head nonstop. I know he’s right. All except the part about me being smart enough to get through to Doyle.
I try, a few times, to approach Doyle about it, but the feelings between us are too charged. Drawing close to him is like holding my finger out to someone’s fuzzy sweater after I scuffed my socks on the carpet—just waiting for a shock. I only admit how much I miss him in my tortured dreams every night.
In English, Ansley makes an unoriginal joke that’s kind of funny. Doyle’s laugh feels like betrayal. She’s at his locker. Her Jeep is parked next to his truck. The school paper runs a story on the Rose Queen candidates. I see Doyle behind Ansley in a candid shot and can’t decide if it’s a coincidence or something more.
As pukey as seeing them together makes me feel, the pain of losing his friendship is a thousand times sharper than any jealousy could ever be.
We make clumsy attempts to fix things between us. He buys me ice-cream sandwiches I eat, even though they taste like the memory of our better days. I leave a pamphlet
for Al-Anon, the group that’s for families of alcoholics, in his locker. He doesn’t say anything about it, but a week later he asks me to read his personal essay for college applications.
“You don’t gotta, if you’re busy—”
“No, I’m not,” I say too fast. “I’m happy to read it.”
“I jest don’t wanna come off like some backwoods idiot. Try not to laugh too hard. I did the best I could.”
He hands me the square of folded paper, and I realize it’s a huge step for Doyle, to let me see a part of him he doesn’t think is good enough. I think about what Lonzo said to me about Doyle as I take the paper.
“I’d never laugh at you, Doyle. This is the least I can do to thank you.”
His eyes sparkle like they’re sprinkled with purple glitter. “Thank me?”
“If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve run away from this place screaming before I made it through the first week.” I wait with my breath held for his grin, my exhale timed with the uptick of his lips.
“I hope you don’t hate me for convincin’ you to stick around,” he says, his words burred. We lock eyes.
“I have no regrets.”
That’s the truth.
Later that night, I sit on my bed and bawl my eyes out, Doyle’s heart, in essay form, smoothed on my lap. The sentences about his tortured childhood are blunt and honest, and I realize he’s still making peace with the love he feels for people he was never able to trust, people who made him feel like he had to tackle life on his own. The essay’s hopeful conclusion hints at a friend who won’t give up on him, and a group he’s joined that makes him feel less alone.
I want so badly to be the hero he paints me as at the end of his essay, but all I do is correct the mistakes with a green pen and hand the creased paper back to him with the biggest understatement I’ve ever uttered. “It’s good, Doyle. Really good.”
“Thank you, Nes.” There’s a moment where I think we’ll bridge this weird gap, where I’ll say all the right things and we’ll navigate through this. But I keep my mouth clamped shut, and he turns on his heel and leaves me contemplating my own cowardice. Just like that, we’re back to square one.
Our awkward bachata goes on for one long week that slides into two.
Space, space, space. Maybe that’s what we need.
I doodle wild exploding hearts and sprawling stars all over my computer science binder, barely listening to my teacher drone about HTML tags. I can give Doyle all the physical space he wants, but my mental space is full of him and me, us together, and—at the darkest edges—the two of us on our own.
Which is probably exactly the way it needs to be.
I start typing when everyone else types, but my code is all screwed up and the text is running up and down the page like I’ve lit some kind of coding fire. I sit back and watch my program implode. So many crappy life metaphors right on the screen in front of me.
Maybe Doyle’s had a skewed perspective on our relationship because I’ve needed him to be some kind of ambassador for me as I navigate an alien place he knows so well. But he can’t honestly expect me to accept his help and then never help him back.
If he loves me like he claims he does, wouldn’t he want to let me in? Let me be a shoulder to lean on when he’s cut low, when he’s limping and aching?
Maybe I’m rabid for there to be this truth between us because I turned my back on truth when Lincoln’s life was spiraling out of control. I covered for him, lived in his fantasy world, hoping that if I faked it well enough, the bad parts of our relationship would disappear.
I’m still thinking about it three periods later, when I’m parked on top of the bleachers, surveying the big, noisy gym below me. The entire place went nuts as soon as the coaches made the announcement about some sport sign-up, so it’s outright pandemonium on the floor, which gives me a chance to avoid soccer drills in ninety-percent humidity. Sweet.
There’s a light vibration on the bleachers, and when I glance over, someone leaps up like a deer and takes a seat in front of me.
“Nes?” Khabria asks cautiously.
“Hey, Khabria.” I was prepared to hide out alone this period, but my social hermitage has been pretty intense since my fallout with Doyle, and I’m pretty happy for any interaction… “What’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you.” Her voice is crisp. I’m dying to ask her what kind of lipstick she uses. It looks like it’s not even a mere cosmetic. It looks like it’s red velvet. Most of the time my attempts at lipstick make me feel like a clown with wax lips. “About all this bullshit.”
“Uh… This bullshit?” I stammer, following the jut of her thumb. One of the huge glittery posters for Rose Queen is behind us, and I realize the gorgeous, laughing girl with the glittery crown who looks like one of the Supremes is, in fact, the girl with the scowl sitting in front of me. “Oh yeah! Doyle and I saw your poster a few weeks back. Cool. I hope you beat Ansley.”
“Not sure if that’s even possible.” Khabria scrunches up her nose. “Maybe I shouldn’t have rocked the boat. My girls were sure I’d win Rose Princess, no problem. I decided to drop out of the princess race, which was bad enough. But going up against Ansley and her crew? May not be my smartest move yet.”
I’m not well versed enough in Ebenezer tradition to know what the difference between Rose Queen and Rose Princess is—Doyle declined to answer back when I asked him, but I figure I’ll ask Khabria. Who looks royally pissed about the whole thing.
Okay. Maybe I’ll ask her once I work up the courage.
“Guess I don’t have much choice now either way.” She smooths the navy skirt of her cheer uniform and tucks one of the thousands of silky braids twisted around her head back into her intricate bun. “Why not shake up all these stupid traditions? I don’t know if you want to help, but Doyle said we should talk.”
Doyle! I look around, like Khabria might summon him just by saying his name.
Of course, he’s doesn’t appear, and I do my best to club back my disappointment.
“Sure. I mean, I’m happy to help. Just…” I twist my hands and shake my head. “I’m a little confused. What exactly do you want me to help with?”
“Prom.” She lets the word pop out of her mouth, and the twitch of her lips signals a mix of excitement and revulsion.
“Oh.” I glance back at the poster, wondering what exactly Doyle talked to her about. He never got around to telling me before he broke my heart. “I don’t think I’m even going to prom.”
Her eyes remind me of toffee, but with a hint of danger—like toffee that’s been broken into sharp shards. She flicks them over me like she’s deciding if she should push me off the bleachers or just get up and leave without bothering.
“Why not?” Her eyebrows rise to danger-zone levels.
Crap.
“Doyle told me about the whole two-prom thing—”
“Right.” Her eyes narrow.
“I mean, I can’t go to a prom where I can’t…” Where I can’t dance with the guy I love because of the color of my skin. “Go with all my friends,” I finish lamely.
“You think I’m going to some racist prom?” Her voice warns me to tread carefully.
“I get you want to have an amazing prom,” I rush, then skid to a stop, not sure where I’m going with this train of thought. Khabria has me nervous.
“Everyone wants to have an amazing prom.” She says it like it’s the opening line of an acceptance speech. “And one that’s not racist. With one Rose Queen and one Rose King who the entire student body picks.”
I seize my chance to redirect the conversation by asking for some clarification.
“Is the Rose Queen like the Prom Queen?” I ask, and she stares like she’s trying to gauge if I’m pulling her leg. “Cut me some slack, okay? I never know anything unless someone takes pity on me and explains.”
“I getcha, girl.” She leans back on her hands and kicks her feet out, getting comfortable like we’re old amigas. “Rose Queen is
the official queen of the unofficial prom, since, y’know, Ebenezer High is home to one of the most spineless administrations in the States and they don’t recognize any official prom.” She lifts her hands and makes graceful air quotes around the word. “Problem is, the Rose Queen can be the queen of only one prom.”
“Ah, right. So, I guess you could have a Rose Queen go to either…” I’m about to say the white prom or the black prom, but I swallow those words and start fresh. “You can have a Rose Queen go to one prom and a Rose King go to another? Hypothetically.”
“Well.” She raises one finger and shakes her head. Her gold earrings pick up the dusty sunlight struggling through the windows and shimmer. “Thing is, black kids are s’posed to run for Rose Prince and Princess. Only. The other crowns are reserved for other students.”
There’s been a lot of weird racist crap since I got here, so, seriously, this should neither surprise nor upset me, but I am floored.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I whisper, too stunned to even scream in the face of this lunacy.
Khabria shakes her head and pops her mouth around her defiant, “Nope. Now, it’s not a rule. It’s a tradition,” she explains, pulling her voice up prim and proper and dropping a big dollop of sweet-as-cream Southern charm on top. “So, what I did? Running for Queen?” She points at her regal image on the poster board, and I can’t imagine her as anything but a queen. “It’s not breaking any rules.” She arches her dark eyebrows. “But it’s breaking every tradition.”
My palms are slick with sweat because, after so much time talking, this is someone actually doing something. This is action, and, even though I’m not sure I’m brave enough to help, I definitely want to know all about it.
“So what happens? With the Rose Queen vote? I mean, what will happen?” I’m thrilled by the quiet anarchy Khabria is poised to unleash on Ebenezer’s whole quivering Jenga tower of racist traditions.
“How would I know that?” She lowers her eyebrows. “I don’t plan on stuffing the ballot boxes. I’d say the administration will do what it needs to to keep things from blowing up, except there’s this whole protocol for voting, and you need to have two witnesses when the ballots are counted. One is always black, one is always white.” She snorts. “Not a rule, of course. Just a…”
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