Luz, Rebound

by Jeania Kimbrough

  I swept my hand back across the desk, over another envelope bearing my mom’s familiar scrawl, to display the one underneath. It didn’t have a return address, but my breathing quickened and my focus changed when I recognized the handwriting anyway. Ryan. He’d scribbled he’d write to me in the hallway on his notebook, but I didn’t know when, or how, or if I could even count on what he said. It would have certainly been hard for him to pass me a note in class without observation and without a good chance of Christie finding out, but through the mail was simple genius and beyond the constraints of our high school world. I smiled at the thought he must have put into this and slid my fingernail under the corner of the sealed flap, ripping it open along its folded edge.

  Kara,

  I can’t see or talk to you alone. It will only

  hurt Christie. We can’t be friends anymore.

  And you know that too.

  RH

  I didn’t know anything of the sort! Although he’d cleverly used my words I’d written in his notebook in the hallway as the final part of his own response, I didn’t believe them in this context. Argh! He made me so mad. My heart beat in my ears. The only reason he had given as to why he couldn’t see me was Christie. He didn’t say he didn’t want to, and this omission was important. He must know I didn’t give a flip about her or her feelings, especially after the way she acted toward me. So why even use her as an excuse? Things that he wouldn’t say bugged me more than those Ben did. I crumpled the note in my hand. I didn’t believe he wanted to end our friendship, despite what he wrote. He still cared. I could see it in his face in the hallway, tell by the way he wanted to know if I still loved him. But I hadn’t been able to give him an unqualified yes. So this was punishment.

  Oh, Ryan. I uncrumpled the letter and read it again. Why did you have to go and get so involved like this with Christie if you still have feelings for me? He needed to grow up. And I was tempted to make him.

  I opened my desk drawer and forced the letter far into the back, turning my attention to the Hershey’s kiss-and-tells. I suspected they’d be from Nic and Kelli—we’d always sent them to each other—and they were. Had they sent roses on top of that? I’d be embarrassed if they did because I just stuck to the kiss-and-tells, like usual. I picked up the first one, careful of the thorns on its sides, and touched the tip of it to my nose. The fresh, silky fragrance produced a growl from my stomach, sweet in contrast to the stale air of my dorm room. It couldn’t be Ryan, not after that letter. My fingers from the other hand pulled off the note and opened it as I brought the soft petal under my nose.

  Let’s go skiing for spring break.

  Eww. There was no signature. Cooper, probably, I thought as I tossed both the flower and note down, removing the paper from the last rose to read:

  Congratulations. You’ve been chosen by your classmates to be on Spring Fling court. Good luck!

  I reread the note again, thinking I’d misunderstood something the first time. Nope. Huh. Well, how about that? I bit at my lower lip, halting a smile in disbelief. This was unexpected. I’d never been elected to the court of any dance in high school, although only junior and seniors were ever chosen. Kelli and Nic had already made it for dances while I was away. I was a little envious of not having had that experience along with them, but just figured I ruined my chances at doing the same by being absent for a year. Apparently, I was wrong. My teeth let go of my lip, and I could feel a grin expand. Lately, I had so many mixed emotions about being back at school again, but this news made me happy. I went to the window to open it just a crack and let the cool afternoon air flood into the room. When I came home I wanted to feel connected to my class, to experience acceptance by my peers. Now that this need was being met, the taste of being supported by my community was sweet. Ha! I just needed a date. And luckily I had the weekend to think some more about that, because when Kelli and Nic got home from school on Friday, they had some big news: Christie had made Spring Fling court as well.

  Chapter 14

  Contact

  By Sunday morning, I decided to call Ryan. The Spring Fling announcement made me do it. Somehow, I just could not let Christie and him show up at that dance together. If she won, it would of course suck; but if she won with that ring on her finger and Ryan by her side, it would be unbearable. I couldn’t wait any longer for him to act on his own.

  I told myself if his mom or anyone else answered I would hang up, but if he did, maybe he’d talk.

  “Ryan, it’s Kara,” I said at the sound of his hello. After a moment of silence on his end, I went on. “I got your note. It came on—Valentine’s Day—Friday.”

  “I said we shouldn’t talk.” His voice was colder than I expected. “I gotta go.”

  “No, wait!” I gripped the receiver harder on my end, clutching at the echo of his last few syllables. “Wait,” I repeated more calmly. “You said you couldn’t talk to me alone. Technically we aren’t physically alone together. I’m here on campus and you’re at home. Of course, you also said we couldn’t be friends. That’s the part I didn’t quite understand. Did you mean that?” I spoke more easily now, having planned on this objection coming from him. I was trying hard to be funny and charming.

  “Why would I write it if I didn’t mean it?”

  “Maybe you write things you sometimes don’t mean. Like that I have big feet.” I laughed. A little sound on his end sounded like half a laugh. It gave me encouragement.

  “You shouldn’t have read all that. You shouldn’t have taken my notebook.”

  “Well, you know I love to read what you write,” I deliberately flattered him. “In fact, it kinda made me sad you only wrote me once when I was away.”

  The conversation between us paused for a minute. “I heard you got along fine without me. Some Australian guy, right? How long did it take you to find him?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I was promised to him or anything.” I took a breath trying to calm the bite in my last comment. The tone was just dropping from his voice. I didn’t want to ruin this shot at talking to him by making him angry. I had to change the subject from Christie. “Anyway, a guy in Australia or Christie have nothing to do with the word ‘us.’ I thought we were friends for life.” I paused, reaching back for a memory to support what I was saying. “You told me you wouldn’t hate me for going away before I left.”

  Ryan paused now. “I don’t…hate you. You didn’t write me, either.”

  “I didn’t want you to know how unhappy I was most of the time. I didn’t want you to say, ‘I told you so.’” That was half true. When I met Ben I was happy for a while, until we separated, too.

  “I heard you hurt yourself there. Is everything all right now?”

  I smiled into the phone, realizing he knew and cared about a lot of things that had passed, despite never mentioning them before. He was someone with whom I really wanted to hang around. “Yeah. I biffed it really hard running one day and broke a couple of jaw teeth, but now they’re pretty much fixed. Thanks for asking. Were you okay while I was gone?” I asked, remembering my last conversation with Dr. Matthews.

  “I was great,” he said.

  “You look…bigger. Stronger, I guess.”

  “Thanks. You look…tan.”

  Kara has a pretty tan, Christie had written. But he didn’t add the pretty part, even though what he just said made me think of it. “Thanks.” I bit my lip. His voice had softened. “It feels nice talking to you again.” There, I’d let it out, like a breath of raw emotion.

  Ryan didn’t respond.

  “It would be nice to talk in person someday even though—”

  “We can’t—”

  “—even though you say we can’t.”

  We laughed.

  “I miss you…friend.” The emotion in my voice was back.

  “Kara, stop.”

 
“Meet me sometime?” I persisted.

  “No.”

  “We could meet in the chapel.” I spoke as if the idea had just occurred to me. “It’s dark in there after school. No one would know. I went there once.”

  “Nuh-uh. When did you go there anyway?”

  “When you left after our conversation the other day. I had it completely to myself. It was quiet.”

  “We’re not supposed to be in there after school. We’d be in trouble if they caught us.”

  “No,” I agreed. “That’s why no one will.”

  It took some back and forth, but finally Ryan agreed to meet me “just one time” in the chapel the next Wednesday after school. Christie had already made tentative plans with her friends to go shopping that day for a dress for Spring Fling and had told Ryan he wasn’t invited. “Dressing rooms and stuff,” he’d said. Our conversation ended quickly after we agreed to meet in person. I supposed because it had become a premeditated step neither of us were quite ready to say anything more about.

  ***

  I’d been sitting away from the entrance, in the shadows of the far back corner of the room, so I could see anyone who passed by or came through the French doors opening to the main hallway. The building was mostly deserted at this time; only a secretary or the janitor or an occasional student from the dorms seemed to ever walk by. I felt secretive and slightly predatory sitting in the dark. The smells were keener, the silence louder. If nothing else, this was a new way of experiencing Trinity. I felt like I was about to break a law.

  The sound of a latch betrayed his approach. Ryan deftly stepped in and set the door softly back into place. He didn’t stop to look around, but headed toward the shadows away from the door, toward me.

  “I’m here.” I stood up when he paused, making enough sound to give away my position. “On the stage steps.”

  I cringed when I heard him thud into a row of seats in his effort to make his way over to me. He let out a little curse. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “This is stupid,” he said under his breath. “Yeah…okay.” He came toward the steps and took the aisle seat closest to them, but not directly in front of me.

  “Not stupid; a little adventurous, maybe,” I said when the creaking of the wooden seat beneath him silenced. I sat down again, too.“I used to take for granted they just locked this place up after school.”

  “They were before, but I guess with the rehearsals for the last Christmas play they stopped for a while and forgot to start back up again. Or maybe it’s the new janitor. No one probably told—.”

  “Shhh. Hallway.”

  His face turned toward the door. A couple of teachers walked into view and paused for a second in midconversation before moving on. I knew they couldn’t see into the darkness of the chapel, but I wondered if it were possible to hear us speaking. I couldn’t make out their muffled words, but the sound of a conversation was a steady hum.

  “Do you think anyone can hear us from there?” I asked after they continued to walk on.

  “I don’t think so. Unless we’re loud. The hallway has its own sound. The quiet’s amplified here.”

  “That’s a good way of putting it.” The sound of his voice in the hushed darkness made me tingle all over. And when I heard his words, I imagined the face and lips that spoke them, and I wanted to press mine against them. These were new, but instinctive, unrepressed thoughts that ran through my head. I wondered if he had them, too.

  “Backstage it would be even quieter. Behind the curtain.”

  He paused a few seconds before he replied. “I can’t go there with you.”

  “But you’ve already come so far.”

  His quick laugh was soft and short. “You said you wanted to talk. I can’t stay long. What did you want to say?”

  His brisk rejection made me change the course of our conversation. He shouldn’t be so smug.

  “Is Christie pregnant?”

  “W—what?”

  “I’m wondering why you gave her that ring. I don’t see any signs and Kelli says no way, but why the heck are you already planning on marriage?”

  “No, she’s not pregnant, Kara.” I couldn’t clearly see his expression. His face bent toward his lap. “And it’s not an engagement ring, either. It’s like the step before. It’s just…something she wanted.”

  “Hmm. Something she wanted. What about you?”

  “Huh? Well, yeah, of course, making her happy is something I want, too. And this does.”

  “So, you’re playing down the whole promise thing, but she takes it very seriously.”

  “I didn’t say that. I take our relationship seriously, too.”

  I stood up and backed up a step on the stairs, then sighed. “Ryan, do you love Christie?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I don’t think you really do.”

  “That’s your problem. You think you know everything. You think you’re better than she is. And that you can snap your fingers or something and I’ll come running back to you.”

  That stung. He wasn’t joking. “I don’t think I know everything. But maybe I do think you can do better. Your problem is you keep trying to punish me,” I lashed back.

  “It’s not all about you.”

  I hesitated, wondering what he meant by that. Did he really see me like some kind of ego monster? Was I? I swallowed hard, feeling emotion stuck in my throat, blocking my breath.

  “I know you miss me. You have to miss me, Ryan. I miss you. Three months from now we may never see each other again. Do you want to just leave it this way? Don’t you want to be able to talk? To spend time with each other?”

  His eyes, connecting with mine, looked like he was tossing around the questions in his head.

  The pressure that I had felt in my throat was rising. A picture of him smiling, happy to be with me, came to mind like a relief valve.

  “Do you remember when you took me to the zoo? It was our first date and your grandma drove us, and then she made us spaghetti.”

  His mouth twitched, but he stayed still.

  “We saw the apes there, and they were tickling and hugging each other. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told me to look into their eyes to see their humanity. You said that like us, they have friends for life. And then you took my hand, and the chimps in front of us did the same. And you said it was a sign that we would be good friends ourselves. Always.”

  “They do that. They mimic humans. Besides, I never wanted to just be friends.” He sighed, and I watched light between his lashes dance when he moved his gaze around him. His lips clicked together. “What do you want from me, Kara? Do you want to be my girlfriend now? Is that what you want?”

  “No,” I said, but regretted it immediately as I watched his face fall in the half-light. But I didn’t really want to be his girlfriend, exactly. I just wanted him, in other ways than just a friend. “I mean, no, that’s not what I am saying. I just wanted to remind you that we’re more than this.”

  His stared past me now, unblinking.

  “I wish we could go to Spring Fling together.”

  “So that’s it.” He shook his head and stood up. “You know how much that would embarrass Christie, right?” He took a couple of steps toward me, his voice hard. “You just want to break us up. You just don’t want me with her. You want to get back at her, through me.”

  I turned away from him at that, my face burning as if he had slapped it. This wasn’t the way I wanted the conversation to turn. It was all true, but there was something else that was harder to explain. I took another step away from him.

  “I told you I’m not following you up there.” His hand grabbed my wrist.

  “I’m not asking you to anymore. Get out of my way.” I snatched my hand away
, breaking his grip. I set out to move past him, but when I did he turned, forcing me back against the wall.

  Ryan pressed into me harder, the length of him against me. My shoulder blades dug into the cool plaster. His mouth came over mine, demanding and tight at first, like he was trying to shut me up, and then softer, softer, like he was coaxing something out of me. I felt his tongue and parted my lips. My arms went around his neck. I kissed him back, bringing our bodies closer together, until several passionate kisses later when he pulled them down.

  “I hate you,” he said, breathing harshly at what must have looked like triumph in my eyes. The old Ryan had revisited me that instant and he hadn’t been able to control himself. Still, he backed away from me and left the chapel without looking at me again. I wondered if the delicious thrill I experienced at this tiny victory was how monsters feel.

  Chapter 15

  Yes to the Dress

  “You gotta ask somebody.” Kelli flipped through a rack of formal dresses in Lush Life, our go-to store for fancy occasions. “Strapless or sleeves?” She shifted her weight again to favor her injured ankle. She was off crutches, and this was one of our first weekend outings together since it happened.

  “Strapless,” Nic answered for me. “If you don’t, they’ll all be taken. What about Matt? He’s single right now. He’d probably go for it, you know.” She pulled out a pink tulip-waisted column dress for me to try on. “Are you sure you can fit into a three? I thought you used to be a five.”