“You really should expand your vocabulary before you criticize me,” he said, and headed straight down the walkway.
“Simpleton,” he mumbled and broke into a run, knowing she’d chase him for the insult.
Edy took off. They sliced her yard in two and hopped the fence that separated their homes, first he, then she, before dashing for the front door, with Rani shouting after them that they needed to act sensibly.
Ten
Time went on, as it had the tendency to do. In temperamental Boston, weather held to no reason. Cold then mild, frigid then gruesome. Edy, in an effort to find balance, in an effort to find a semblance of her old life, concentrated on easygoing evenness. She permitted herself no more lingering stares at Hassan, no more indulgent thoughts hidden under cover of solitude. He was her friend, and she had known long before these wayward feelings emerged, that the future held no more. Old traditions, old ways more powerful than them both meant destiny had eked out paths determinedly separate for them both. It meant that she would watch him grow, love and be happy with another girl, and if she couldn’t bear that, then she couldn’t bear to have him in her life. But there had never been an Edy without Hassan, never a Hassan without an Edy. She would permit no one to take that from them, not even her.
Like Edy, Hassan fell into his old tiresome self. First at her house for breakfast, he raided the fridge, holed away with her dad to talk football, and blitzed her with pillows if she took her time getting up in the morning. Awkwardness melted away between them, until nothing but old familiarity seemed to remain. He had his new friends—football friends, cheerleading friends, and Edy turned to more time with Wyatt. Wyatt kept her sane and busy when homework and ballet couldn’t do the job. He demanded little from her, and on the days when she had only cursory attention and her own uncooperative thoughts, he contented himself filling the silence for them both. Holidays and football marched by this way, hand in hand through Christmas, through winter. South End claimed their first state championship with Edy on the sidelines screaming as a bundled up Wyatt moved brisk to keep warm. Six touchdowns and a new record for most yards transformed Hassan from legend to god in a single year.
Spring thaw swept through, like the opening of rose petals when blooming, like the sweet scent of showers on a warm May day. Fist beneath her chin, Edy stared out the window of her AP English class, mesmerized by the patter of rain. She imagined herself in a field bursting with orchids, bathing in sunlight. Eyes closed, body expressive, she’d be in tune with the pulse of the earth, with the machinations of her heart, as she danced for an audience of one.
A wad of notebook paper battered the back of Edy’s head. She whirled to see Mason straightening his powdered wig, a wig borrowed from Edy’s father.
“We’ve been practicing our speech,” Matt said. He cleared his throat. “’Tis freedom we seek.”
“Drop the mic,” Mason suggested.
Edy snapped forward again amidst a room full of snickers. A fair assumption would have been to think they had an allegiance to her, or at the very least, that their need to protect her would extend to protection of her pride. Definitely, not the case. Even though Edy’s father had expressed his reluctance at having to miss the annual history program because of pressing commitments elsewhere, it didn’t stop everyone—especially the twins—from having a laugh or twenty at his expense. Cue the day of the event and her father’s noticeable absence. Cue the twins arriving at school, dressed as her father, with one having gone so far as to borrow his wig.
A spitball caught her in the ear, jerking Edy from her scowling. It had come from the seat right next to her. Edy dug it out and careened to face Hassan, the culprit. Before she could open her mouth with something foul, he puckered up as if to kiss her. The smile crept to Edy’s lips without her permission. Delayed, she chucked the offending item back. He caught it without looking.
“Show off,” she mouthed.
She had planned this time to puzzle over the machinations of appearance and reality in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But as Edy shared too much time with a boy who occupied too many of her waking thoughts—and all of her sleeping ones—she needn’t a primer on artful deception.
A lot had changed since the birthday party, and yet nothing had changed at all. She was still Edy and he Hassan, two friends and nothing more, even while the girls around him had tripled. Unlike before, Hassan returned their indulgent stares and flirted when they flirted. He made dates and ventured out, while Edy’s time with Wyatt had tripled. Star gazing appeared to be his favorite thing.
Not long after the New Year’s, Edy auditioned for a spot with the nation’s most prestigious summer intensive in ballet. While her initial motivation had been the honor of admittance, each passing day near Hassan brought another wish, that of distance and an ease to her hurt. Only in the shadows of her bedroom did the wounds of the day set in, anguish from another round of heartbreak. Edy imagined that a summer apart would do her good, giving her a chance to get over her friend in what would be their longest separation ever. After all, only she knew the strain of a fictitious smile during the day, book ended by weeping through the night. Perhaps her love of dance could heal that with effort.
Even before the letter arrived, Edy knew she would be accepted to the School of American Ballet, an appendage of the New York City Ballet. She was simply that good. In order for her to attend, Edy and Hassan’s mother would spend the summer in New York, living with Rani’s sister. Ali and Edy’s father would be touring Europe and the U.S. most of the season, anyway, as they were in impossible demand following the release of their new book on the politics of social unrest. Hassan would summer at the Dysons’ when the boys weren’t touring football camps, and Edy would separate herself from him, as best, and completely as she could.
Summer arrived, and with it, Wyatt’s lip trembling tantrum about her going away. While it would have been nice to see Hassan pitch a fit, Edy set off on the four-hour trek to New York with a pinch of redemption. Hassan’s mother made for a meandering sort of driver, insisting on pit stops along the way, and Edy found herself peeking at her phone for messages from Hassan only to find it flooded with fractured complaints from Wyatt instead.
They got to New York eventually. Ijay and Kala Gupta lived on the twenty-fifth floor of a gleaming, window-laden high rise overlooking Central Park West. Their bellman, clad in a starched crimson coat and black slacks, tipped his gold-lined cap and greeted Rani by name. “Ted” he said simply with a tap of his badge, before taking both Edy’s luggage and Rani’s and leading the way up.
Rani’s sister, Kala, answered the door. She wore a silk cream blouse that tied at the hip and smart brown slacks, looking every bit the polished Manhattan wife and socialite. Kala grinned perfect white teeth before embracing her sister, skin deep pecan to Rani’s butter cream, sharp angles against curves. Not a hair ran out of sync with Kala’s tight pin-up, not an off-putting color, nothing overdone, as always her make-up complimented, coolly. Perfection had always been her mantra.
She fussed over Edy and remarked on how much she’d grown before holding her out at arm’s length for a good look. Two years, she proclaimed, and Edy would be all the rage. One, if she had a growth spurt.
Yeah. Whatever.
Kala led them inside, albeit hesitantly, fingernails picking at each other suddenly.
The condo remained as Edy remembered it: open-air with big floor-to-ceiling windows that drenched everything in sunlight on a good day. A view of Central Park, Central Park Lake, and a dazzling Manhattan skyline swept them in a panoramic arc from where she stood.
New York, Edy thought with an exhale. Just the place to rejuvenate, renew, and morph into something spectacular. Just the place to meet a million Hassans or forget he existed altogether.
“Edy?” Kala said. “You remember Ronsher, don’t you? He’ll be here, too.”
Ronsher was the son of Rani and Kala’s older brother. Edy turned to face him, and not for the first time, was struck by how
much he looked like his cousin Hassan. New York, Edy thought, would have been the perfect place to forget Hassan, were it not for Hassan’s duplicate parked alongside her for the summer.
Only, Ronsher wasn’t Hassan’s duplicate anymore. He’d staked a claim on a look all his own, a look he needn’t worry about his cousin borrowing any time soon.
A full foot taller than the last time they’d met, Ronsher, or Ronnie Bean, was a lean and golden boy aptly named by the twins for his likeness to a beanstalk. He had the smile of Hassan and the glimmer of his eyes, but oh, was he different from what she remembered. What had once been thick and healthy black hair fell into his eyes in fat chunks of midnight and chestnut. He wore an ocean of eyeliner, had both ears pierced, and his black tee fit vice-tight. Neon letters screamed “Groove, Slam, Move,” across his ribcage as his listless eyes roved from Kala, Edy, to the ceiling. “Emo tragedy” were the words that came to mind.
“Hey Ronnie Bean,” Edy said, unable to look away from him, even at the risk of rudeness.
“Just Ronnie,” he amended with a great sigh.
It was harder to see Hassan under all that, in that, but Hassan was still there, in the broadness of the shoulders and the shape of the face, in the mouth that seemed almost identical.
Edy moved to hug Ronnie Bean, then stopped at the look he gave her.
“So, you’re here for the summer, too?” she said, falling back into awkwardness.
“More like forever.” Bean shouldered her as he passed and made for the hall, dismissing her in jeans so skinny Edy could make out the curve of his ass.
“I hope you’ll change your clothing and your attitude while here!” Rani yelled in Punjabi before the door slammed soundly behind Bean.
Edy looked wide-eyed and at the women, knowing their tolerance for American tantrums to be nil. But Kala merely exhaled.
Ronnie Bean had spent summers in Boston. Over time, he’d become one of them, welcomed. He was Edy’s friend. Her good friend. Or rather, he had been.
“Ronsher moved in six months ago,” Kala said. “I’m not sure how long he’ll be here.”
Edy remembered Bean’s dad, a civil engineer for the U.S. Army with little patience and exacting standards. It seemed impossible that the Ronnie Bean before Edy could be produced by such a rigid man. Obsessed with propriety and beholden to the old ways, Bean’s father held honor and decency, as defined by him, in the highest regard. In short, there could be no end to the ways Bean could have offended his sensibilities, even if he weren’t standing before Edy looking like the Indian premiere of MTV.
The following morning, Edy rose early, showered, dressed, and found messages from both Hassan and Wyatt. She gave Wyatt a quick, cursory greeting, but paused long enough to give Hassan the lowdown on Bean. What was he doing in NYC, and why was he suddenly an asshole? When no answer came quickly, Edy rushed to breakfast, gobbled her food, and got ready for the fifteen-minute walk to SAB, the School of American Ballet. On her way out, Edy discovered that Ronnie Bean had been thrust upon her, unwilling escort that he was. He wore the t-shirt and jeans from the day before and pretended not to hear Rani’s snort of disgust.
Four blocks into their walk, Bean broke the silence.
“I don’t care what you think of me, you know. You or anyone else.” He splashed black puddles, mucking the hem of Edy’s pants as they went.
She glanced at him. “Okay.”
“And I had stuff to do, you know. Other than walk the baby to school.”
“Then go!” Edy said and cut a sharp left to avoid his splash. “Now stop before I shove you face first in the dirt.”
Bean slowed as something like a smile played at the corner of his lips. But as quickly as it arrived, it departed. “Whatever,” he said. “And the minute I turn my back, the Central Park rapist pops your cherry and dumps you in the Hudson.”
“There’s a rapist on the loose?” Edy looked over her shoulder, just in case.
Bean sighed. “Edy Phelps, the Boston bumpkin.”
On the next block, he pulled her into a deli and ordered two oversized bagels weighted with lox, tomatoes, capers, onions, and cream cheese. Edy glanced behind them at the door, wondering what would happen if she were late on her first day to the world’s most rigorous ballet intensive.
“I die for these things,” Bean admitted and tore into one ferociously.
Edy sniffed the fish suspiciously. “I can’t imagine why.” Her stomach twisted in a merciless vice, earning a grimace from Edy. Bean shot her a quizzical look just as her cell phone vibrated. Edy looked down to find a message from Hassan.
Go easy on Bean, he wrote.
Nothing more.
~~~
For two weeks, Edy’s schedule never deviated. Pointe, variations, adagio, ballroom dancing, and character classes, all of it arduous enough to bend bone and crack the back. Despite Edy’s vow to put distance between her and Hassan, they exchanged texts each morning and again at night—sometimes all night—and sometimes long enough to line the bookshelves of the world’s best scholar. Her texts with Wyatt were frequent more so than long, with him checking in after this class and that one to see how it went and what was happening next. She came to expect and receive his irritation each day, since she only answered his messages at night.
Something was happening with Bean, something that Edy had noticed almost immediately. Though he bellyached about walking her to class and missing out on much-needed sleep each day, he never went home, or even in the direction of home, on leaving her at SAB in the morning. After two weeks of his charade, Edy’s mind had run through a whole mountain of possibilities, from Bean getting hooked on some vicious synthetic drug and meeting up with his dealer for a daily fix, to a secret girlfriend of another race. By the time she got up the will to ask him, she’d decided that a girlfriend might be the explanation.
They were back at his deli, him with his bagel, Edy with a safe and rather mild fruit smoothie when she decided to broach it.
“What’s her name?” Edy said and took a sip of her drink. She regretted not ordering tea or some other warm beverage. Though the day’s weather mimicked a sauna, she told herself the heat would help her near-constant stomachaches.
“Whose?” Bean asked around a mouth full of salmon and cream cheese.
“Your girlfriend. She must be white with all the trouble you’re going to.” She took in his red shorts, Jordans, and baggy tee before considering. “Or from the hood.”
Bean arched a brow. “Girlfriend?” He slung the word back at her, simpering.
“When you leave me at SAB,” Edy rushed ahead all the while wanting her words back. “You walk in the opposite direction from home.”
“So? I get on the subway.”
“And go where?”
Bean snatched her smoothie for a loud, indulgent slurp. He handed the cup back bottomed out.
“Catch you in the p.m.,” Bean said and disappeared, insistent on the wrong direction.
The next morning, Edy woke Bean early and told him she needed to be at SAB by eight instead of nine. He grunted and cussed, emerging from bed in the red shorts and “Goin Nowhere” tee from the day before. Bean showered and left his Sonic the Hedgehog spikes damp so that they hung like well-placed highlights accentuating a classically handsome face. The two skipped out on breakfast and headed for the deli, offending both Kala and Rani that morning.
“Let’s sit and eat,” Bean suggested after ordering.
Edy hesitated. “I have to go in early.”
“Two orders of bagels and lox for here,” he said and held up a finger to shush Edy’s protest. “You’re not fat, even if you ballerinas are obsessed with being grotesquely thin.”
“We are not!”
“And you don’t have to be in early, either,” Bean said. “So humor me as if I’m Hassan.”
Orders in hand, they took a cramped table in the corner at the back. Edy stared at the bagel Bean had ordered for her, wondering how she could get out of eating it and ha
ve strength enough for the day.
“Hassan called me,” he said.
She looked up. It made no sense to be surprised, and yet she was.
“Called?” Edy said with forced indifference. “Oh really? About what?”
Bean studied her. “I talk to him every day. Suddenly.”
Edy had no idea what to say.
Bean took a gargantuan bite of out his bagel. “You guys are tighter than ever these days. “I assume that’s who you’re gabbing with when your phone’s buzzing all night.”
Edy’s gaze dropped to her food. Suddenly, gnawing on fish and bagels seemed a damned sight more appetizing than continuing her talk with Bean. Better that than explaining how Hassan was only half her nighttime equation. Better to eat crap smelling fish than explain her odd conversations with Wyatt, conversations where she attempted to convince him she hadn’t been gone that long and her absence really shouldn’t affect his mood so.
“I meet friends on the Lower East Side,” Bean said. “After I drop you off each day.”
“And?”
“And we dance.”
Edy’s gaze dropped to his body, and she saw him, really saw him for the first time. Lean, muscular, controlled movements. Hassan had a dancer in the family.
“I’d like to say dancing was what sent my pitā over the edge, but really it was his total repulsion with me.”
He took another bite of his bagel, appetite unsoiled by his father’s rejection.
“Repulsion?” Edy said.
Bean shoved the last of the bagel into his mouth and began to wrap Edy’s in napkins.
“Come on. Eat it on the walk. Talking time is over.”
Eleven
Roland Green opened the door and sighed at the sight before him.
“You,” he said and turned his bottle of Heineken up, swallowing until it emptied.
Love Edy Page 12
