When You Were Everything

by Ashley Woodfolk

  “Thanks, C,” she said, and then she was gone.

  now

  YOU ACTUALLY CARE?

  As soon as I step into homeroom, I see Layla. I notice Dom too, but I’m so laser-focused on what might happen next with her, so nervous about what she might say, that I can’t even acknowledge him when he smiles at me.

  Layla abruptly walks over and my belly feels like it’s full of heavy stones. She looks pissed, her brow furrowed, her eyes spitting fire. “Hi?” I say slowly.

  “Did you get my t-t-t-text?” she asks. I nod and try to ignore how strange it is to hear her raspy voice. I’ve already forgotten the scratchy quality of it.

  “Well, why d-d-didn’t you text me b-back?” she asks next, and it sounds like an accusation. I shrug instead of telling her the truth—that I only got my phone back this morning.

  Mr. Yoon asks everyone to take their seats so he can take attendance. Layla sighs and pulls her phone out of her pocket and mimes tapping her thumbs against the screen—she’s going to text me. I nod and sit down in the middle row. She goes back to the rear of the class, where she’s sitting next to Sloane. My stomach clenches, but I try to breathe deeply.

  As Mr. Yoon calls out name after name, the texts from Layla start to roll in. I can feel them vibrate against my thighs, but even after three pulses, I’m too tense to look down. I glance back at Layla, and she widens her big, dark eyes in my direction. I could have guessed the expression she would make before she made it, and I wonder if knowing someone’s face as well as I know Layla’s matters at all once you’ve done the kinds of things we’ve done.

  I swallow, look at my lap, and start to read.

  My mom called your mom, right?

  What happened?

  Are you in trouble?

  She called. I’m definitely in trouble.

  Shit.

  It’s fine.

  I didn’t mean for that to happen.

  You actually care?

  I ask this because it seems like she does. The possibility gives me a strange surge of faith in her that I wish I didn’t feel. A long while passes before Layla’s next message, and in the space between my words and hers, I think about what I’ll say next if she doesn’t hate me—and how I’ll kill the stubborn hope blooming in my belly if she does.

  I’m having a really hard time with that paper for Novak.

  I wait for Layla to say more, but when she doesn’t, I send, Okay…?

  So I went to Novak yesterday to beg for an extension. She said no unless I had like a family emergency or something. Which I didn’t. Then she said she’d assign me a tutor.

  There’s a break before she sends the next message. A tiny pause where the bubbles that show she’s typing make my stomach drop.

  You.

  I swallow hard and look up as Mr. Yoon calls my name. “I’m right here,” I say, even though I’m miles away from this classroom in my head. I don’t want to tutor her. I’m not even signed up to be a tutor anymore. The hope I felt a moment earlier dissolves, and instantly Novak’s on my shit list too.

  What does me being your tutor have to do with your mom calling mine?

  I was freaking out.

  I obviously don’t want you to tutor me.

  Ouch.

  Feeling’s mutual, I send.

  So after school I was kind of losing it a little bit in my room and when my mom got home she heard me.

  She came in and asked me what was wrong and I kind of told her everything.

  Everything?

  Everything.

  My face heats up. Tears sting the corners of my eyes. I never wanted anyone to know all of what happened between us—especially not Mrs. Hassan. While my mom thinks Layla’s perfect, that’s what Mrs. Hassan thought about me. Layla and I used to joke that we should switch mothers; that they’d both be happier if they had the other’s kid.

  I don’t want Mrs. Hassan to know all I’ve said and done to Layla because I don’t think I can handle her hating me too. Will she still call me Pinky when she sees me? My dad doesn’t even know the whole story.

  I told her not to tell your mom about any of it.

  But when I was upset I kind of also blurted out that you’d been missing a lot of school and she got really concerned.

  You know how my mom is.

  I think she was just calling Ms. Naomi to make sure you were okay.

  I feel a little solace from this bit of information. That even after Mrs. Hassan knew the very worst things about me, she was still worried. But I still text Layla again, just to be sure.

  You really told her everything?

  She doesn’t text back right away, and though she’s less than ten feet from me, I can’t bring myself to look back at her.

  Yeah.

  I told her.

  Now she knows you’re a bitch and not the innocent little good girl you pretend to be.

  These are the kinds of things Layla would say to other people before. But these are the things she says to me all the time in this after version of us. It still catches me off-guard.

  I throw my phone into my bag and onto the floor just to put some distance between my heart and Layla’s words. Mr. Yoon looks over at me, and so does about half the class. Layla and Sloane are probably smirking, but I don’t turn around to see.

  “You okay over there, Miss Baker?” he says.

  I want to cover my face and shout NO because I am so angry.

  But I just stare at my desk, clench my teeth, and nod.

  THE HOT SEAT, PART I

  “Seriously, Novak?” I say as I step into my AP lit class. I toss my Macbeth paper onto her desk, a day early, and it slides into place next to a pile of other collected assignments.

  “Um, hi?” she says. Ms. Novak sucks in her upper lip and clasps her small hands together before tucking them under her chin, and my brown eyes land on her gray ones with a challenge. Her willowy frame is always draped in long, flowy things, and today she’s wearing a dress the color of chimney smoke that brings out the lightest parts of her eyes. I want to strangle her with the scarf she’s wearing.

  “What’s up with you assigning me to tutor someone when I’m not even a part of the tutoring program anymore?”

  She nods and pats the butterfly chair beside her desk—Novak’s Hot Seat, we all call it, though we are rarely in trouble if she invites us to sit with her.

  “Come. Sit,” she says calmly.

  I yank out the single earbud still tucked into the curve of my ear, and the Etta James song that accompanied me to class fades to silence just as more students begin filing in. “I got a pretty crappy message from the attendance office on Friday,” she says once I’m seated.

  I deflate, all my bravado gone at the mention of the attendance office. I see where this is going. I tilt my head skyward, resting my neck against the back of the chair, and look up at the ceiling. I sigh, but I don’t say a word.

  Dom walks in. He reaches out and tugs one of my dangling braids as he passes me, and his hand smells like almond soap and something else, something smoky and rich. When he takes his seat in the front row, I turn my head to look at him. He winks and my face feels as hot as it did in homeroom but for a completely different reason. So I look down at my lap, avoiding his eyes and Ms. Novak’s, and trace the lines of my palm with the fingertips of my other hand.

  “So it’s true,” Novak says. She puffs up her cheeks, blows the air out, and the papers on her desk flutter like butterfly wings. It isn’t a question, but I finally lift my head to look at her and nod. She sighs again at my confirmation.

  “Damn. Well, to answer your question, I assigned you to tutor Layla to make up for all the work you missed on the days you’ve been skipping, Cleo.” She says the word “skipping” like it’s a word she’s never uttered before, especially not in a sentence so close to my name.
Then it’s my turn to be bewildered. I sit up a little straighter.

  “But I kept up with everything, didn’t I?” I ask.

  “Not exactly. You always did your homework. And that was pretty boss, if I’m honest. But there were in-class responsibilities that I let slide when I thought you were out sick.”

  I nod, not wanting to put up a fight, especially after the way I stormed into her classroom. So embarrassing. I just want out of this chair as quickly as possible. “Okay,” I say.

  The class is getting rowdy, the way classes sometimes do before the teacher makes herself known. But when I glance at Dom where he’s sitting in the front row, he’s silently reading a book like the perfect human he is.

  I turn back to Ms. Novak, an idea blooming. “What if I tutor someone else, though? What about Dom?” And just as I speak his name, the class goes suddenly still and quiet. Those weird silences always seem to happen at the most inopportune times, but the timing of this one is exceptionally bad. Everyone is looking at me. Dom is, too.

  “Girl, Dom doesn’t need a tutor,” Ms. Novak says in a hushed tone. She looks from me to him and back again. She tucks a bit of her curly Afro behind her ear. “He’s second in the class, right after you.”

  I’m too embarrassed to inquire about this further, to try to figure out why Dom would ask for my help on his Macbeth paper if he didn’t really need it. And before I can say anything else anyway, Ms. Novak says that if I have any other questions I can talk to her about it after school.

  “But keep in mind, this is kind of a punishment, Cleo. You did a crappy thing. You don’t get to pick how this goes down when you’re making up for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  Just before I head back to my seat, my eyes lock with Dom’s. He smirks, his heavy eyebrows lifting, his white teeth shining, and I die.

  then: September

  MILKSHAKES

  The first few weeks of school passed in a blur of reading, tutoring, and homework. And while Layla sang almost constantly to get ready for chorus auditions, I wrote and rewrote my statement of interest for the Shakespeare program in London. I asked Layla to read it, and Layla’s mom to read it, and my own parents to read it, while Layla demanded that all the same people listen to the three songs she couldn’t decide between for her audition, and then, once she’d narrowed it down to one, we had to help her pick which rendition would showcase her voice best. She also asked Sloane, and she took her advice over everyone else’s, but it didn’t bother me. We were both so close to getting everything we’d ever wanted. Whatever gave Layla the best chance at making chorus was what I thought she should do, even if that meant listening to Sloane Sorenson.

  Before I knew it, Ms. Novak was standing behind me as I hit send on my application, and then I was rushing off to the auditorium to see Layla perform. After weeks of preparation, auditions for chorus were happening that afternoon, and I felt almost as prepared as I knew Layla was.

  But Layla still looked nervous as she stepped out onto the stage. Her uniform shirt was a little wrinkled along the bottom from being tucked into her pants all day, which was how I knew she was really undone by this audition. Layla was normally meticulous about the way she looked because she had so little control, she told me once, over the way she sounded. She cleared her throat.

  “Mmmmmy nnnname is Layla Hhhhhhhassssssan.”

  Her speech stuttered and stuck much more than it usually did. I stood up and moved a few rows closer to the stage from where I had slipped into the back, hopeful that if Layla saw me, she’d feel a little less scared and maybe her speech would even out a bit. I wished I had thought to text her about using one of her accents, or practicing her smooth speech in this real-life situation, but it hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “I know your name, Layla,” Mrs. Steele said with what sounded like a smile in her voice. “There’s no need to be nervous, hun. Can you match my pitch?” She sang out a note that was high and clear, and Layla took an audibly deep breath and followed suit. Her voice eclipsed Mrs. Steele’s instantly.

  “Excellent,” Mrs. Steele said even as Layla held the note. I felt my chest swell with pride, as if I had anything at all to do with her talent. Sometimes it felt like everything about my friends belonged to me.

  “Cadence, Sage,” Mrs. Steele said, and the girls stood and walked up the stairs to the stage. “Let’s try some harmonies.”

  They did a few different scales with Layla, testing her range. She sailed through each one effortlessly, and though she stuttered as she introduced her solo song, once she sang the first line, it was impossible to look away.

  Kids from the hallway poked their heads into the auditorium, and a few other students who were there for friends gave Layla their rapt attention. She sang with her eyes closed and her head lifted, and her voice was undeniably special. Her shiny black waves fanned around her head and looked like a halo backed by the stage lights. By the time she was done, everyone was murmuring about her being the kind of powerhouse soloist the chorus needed, and I had to hold myself back from standing up and clapping like it was a real performance.

  “Great, great work, Layla. Really,” Mrs. Steele said after Layla’s big finish.

  I waited for her in the hall next to the stage exit door. When it opened, I applauded, but it wasn’t just Layla who spilled into the hallway. Sloane was there, and the rest of the Chorus Girls were too (they had become a proper noun in my head). Plus a bunch of other girls who had just tried out.

  “Cleo!” Layla said as soon as she saw me. She flung her arms around my neck and almost took me down. “That was t-t-terrifying. D-d-did you hear how mmmuch I stuttered on my own name?”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, but you did such an awesome job with the singing part of it! Should we go and get milkshakes to celebrate?”

  Layla nodded and hooked her arm through mine. “Sloane invited me to hang out with them. Wanna c-c-c-come?”

  “Sure, I guess,” I said. I kind of wished it could be just Layla and me, but it was her celebration, and she’d probably be spending lots of time with these girls if she was picked to be in chorus, which I knew she would be. “I just need to ask my dad first. Come to the library with me real quick? I bet he hasn’t left yet.”

  “Sure,” Layla said. She glanced back at Sloane. “You g-g-g-guys mind waiting?”

  Sloane was too busy laughing at something Sage had said to answer, but Valeria nodded. “There’s no rush. We’ll wait for you.”

  But by the time we asked my dad, went to our lockers, and made it back to the bit of hallway right outside the auditorium, everyone was gone.

  “They said they’d wait, and then they didn’t?” I said to Layla. I rolled my eyes a little. “Well, that speaks volumes.”

  “Shut up,” Layla said. She jogged a little farther up the hall to peer around the corner. “You shhhouldn’t have taken so long, C-C-Cleo.” I gave her a look, but she didn’t notice. She hurried to pull out her phone.

  “Don’t blame me for this. They’re the ones who said they would wait.”

  Layla sighed and started down the long, empty hallway toward the front doors. “You d-d-d-didn’t really want to hang out with them, C-Cleo. I could t-tell. So you just took your time sssso we’d take t-t-too long and they’d g-g-g-give up on us and leave.”

  “I swear I didn’t,” I said. “But shouldn’t you be a little more upset with them for leaving?”

  Layla sighed. “You d-d-don’t get it, Cleo. It’s always b-been just me and you. When you’re like Sloane and you have a lot of friends, it’s harder to k-k-k-keep everyone happy.”

  She was texting as she said this, so she wasn’t looking at me. I studied her face—the way she was saying this so matter-of-factly. It sounded rehearsed, not like she was speaking for herself.

  “So like, if everyone w-w-was ready to go except us,” she continu
ed, “I g-get why they’d leave.”

  I guessed I didn’t get it.

  She pocketed her phone and looked up at the door as we got closer to the end of the hall. “Sloane thinks that in addition to ch-ch-chorus, I should go out for the w-w-w-winter musical.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  Layla nodded. “She mentioned it right when I c-c-came off stage after my audition.”

  I didn’t know how I felt about it—Layla with a speaking role—after what had just happened when all she had to say was her name. It unnerved me, which was probably ableist BS since I wasn’t a stutterer, but I couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t know, though,” Layla said.

  “I think you can do anything,” I told her, which was mostly true. I just didn’t want her to do everything, but it wasn’t my call.

  She smiled. “Thanks, C. I guess we might as well get those mmmilkshakes?”

  We went to our favorite place and ordered the most ridiculous one on the menu to share. It was topped with an actual slice of birthday cake and covered in rainbow sprinkles.

  “So good,” we muttered to each other between bites. We were about halfway through the milkshake, and Layla’d just challenged me to see how much I could drink before I got brain freeze, when her phone buzzed.

  “Oh, yay!” she said. “It’s Sloane. They’re at Washington Square P-P-Park.”

  “Cool,” I said, massaging my temples. “Let’s just finish this first. Slowly. How long are they going to be there?”

  Layla threw an amused look in my direction and tossed some of her wavy hair over her shoulder. “Cleo, we’re obviously g-g-g-going to the p-park now, duh.” She waved down the waitress without another word, and I sort of paused, surprised at her. I wasn’t used to our friendship being a…dictatorship. Usually we talked about what we were doing and decided together. As I sucked down what I could of the shake and put a few bucks on the table to pay for something I couldn’t even finish, I was glad she had charged out of the restaurant ahead of me. At least she couldn’t see the stank face I was making.