Before Willa and Sydney get up to leave, I ask Willa for her number, because she’s promised we’ll all go see the Cover Girls together. “I’ll text you, okay?” I promise. “And I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They wave goodbye when they head out and I feel warm and fuzzy inside, and so much better than I did when I first arrived. I secretly hope that the three of us will sit together in the cafeteria tomorrow, but I try not to set myself up for disappointment if we don’t.
When “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone comes on a little while later, the few customers left in the diner start singing along, and I wonder if this is a better idea than just doing a fundraiser for Dolly’s—playing music, or maybe bringing in a live band. Maybe even the Cover Girls, if they’re as good live as they sound recorded. I look around, and there’s enough space near where Miss Dolly and Pop are dancing for a singer and a keyboard. I make a mental note, but I have no idea if Dom will think of this too as charity he doesn’t want or need.
As the dining room empties, I walk over to Pop where he’s counting the cash in one of the registers. “Need help closing up too?” I ask. I already let Mom know I’d be late. Pop writes something down because he still does all his math on paper.
“Why don’t you go back and grab a broom from Dolly? You can get started sweeping the dining room floor.” I nod and head to the back, my music still playing over the sound system even though we’ve already locked the front doors.
“Hey, Miss Dolly?” I say just before I walk past her. I place my hand on the knob of a small closet just outside her door. “Is this where you guys keep the broom?” I glance into the break room from the hall and I see a photo I didn’t notice the first time I was in here with Dom. It’s of a pretty, dark-skinned woman and a baby, and once I step a little closer, I can see that the woman looks a lot like Dom. When Miss Dolly sees me looking at the photo, she smiles. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I take her expression as an invitation.
“Is this…Dom’s mom?” I ask. Miss Dolly nods.
“Yep. That’s my baby girl. Mallory. Pop calls her Molly. So we were Dolly and Molly.”
I bite my bottom lip and step farther into the room. I point to the baby in the photo. “Is that…?”
“Baby Dominic? Sure is.” Miss Dolly picks up the photo and looks at it a little more closely. She smiles, but her eyes look sad.
“Molly got pregnant with Dominic when she was eighteen. She’d already been accepted into Brown, and we weren’t going to let that opportunity pass her by. So when she told us she wanted to keep the baby, we told her to defer a year, and we’d help take care of him while she went to school. Dominic’s dad, John, was around too, but he had just joined the military. So off they both went—Molly to school and John to basic training, and somehow…they just never got back to being full-time parents. Something would always come up. First Molly wanted to get her graduate degree, then John got deployed. Then Molly met someone while she was in grad school, and when John found out, he took on another tour. We didn’t want Dominic to be jerked around—to have to move from place to place while they figured their lives out—so we just held on to our boy. By then we were pretty attached anyway. And by the time they had both settled enough to handle having a child, Dominic was nine or ten, and mostly as uninterested in living with them as they had been in him.”
“You’d already made a life here,” I say, because I get that part at least. They have a house and the diner and each other. They’re happy.
She nods. “Yeah, and it’s a good one, too.”
But then I remember Dom at that party in the summer, how he said he’d just moved here. “But I thought Dom just moved back to New York this past summer?” I ask.
“Ah, yes. He usually spends his summers in Washington, D.C., with his dad, so after middle school that’s what he did again. But then he wanted to give living with his mom a try. Henry and I were upset, because we had a feeling Molly wasn’t ready. I don’t know how the girl thought she could go from no children to raising a teenager. But I didn’t let Dom know that I felt that way. I just hoped for the best. So he moved to Atlanta with Molly. He started ninth grade there with her, but unfortunately I was right. She couldn’t handle him. He started acting out, and she didn’t know what to do. I honestly think Dom missed New York and maybe us a little too, though he would never in a million years admit it.” She chuckles and I smile. “We didn’t want to pull him out in the middle of the school year, though, so I let him finish out the year before he came back. I’m not letting him go again, I can tell you that much right now.”
She reminds me of Gigi, the way she talks about Dom like he’s everything she ever wanted. It’s how my grandmother always made me feel when I was with her.
I swallow and dip my head a little, so happy to be in this small room with her and so grateful for her story, but a little sad that Dom isn’t here with us.
“Dom’s…upset with me,” I say. “And I really don’t want him to be, because I’ve had a pretty rough couple of months and he’s been kind of great about it all.”
Miss Dolly looks concerned, but I want to make it clear to her that this isn’t about me. “What can I do to make things better between us? I’m still learning how to be his friend.” And as soon as I say it, I know this is what I failed to do with Layla—she changed and I didn’t adapt. Maybe I changed too, and she didn’t try to learn what the new me needed either. I don’t want that to happen with Dom. “I don’t know how to give him what he needs, I guess. I want to be the best friend I can be.”
“He’s very proud,” Miss Dolly says, without asking for any more details even though she’s just basically given me her entire life story. “He’s very stubborn,” she continues. “And he’s a little too smart for his own good,” she finishes. “Sometimes, with Dominic, the easiest thing to do is to let him figure things out on his own.” She leans back in her chair and squints at me, and her dimples pop into her cheeks even though she’s only smiling a little. She wags her wrinkled finger at me. “He likes you, I can tell.”
I blush a little, and I can’t help but smile even though Dom didn’t talk to me all day. I don’t know if she means as a friend or more, but either is fine with me.
“He’ll come around,” she says. “Just give him a little time.”
THE RUMOR
When I walk into school the next day, everyone is staring at me.
I know I’ve been more paranoid about a lot of things since I lost Layla, afraid that the whole world could turn against me at any moment because my best friend did. That’s why I’m not sure I can trust my heart around Dom. That’s why I don’t always answer Jase’s, Sydney’s, and now Willa’s texts right away—I’m still a bit afraid of letting any of them get too close. But I don’t think I’m hallucinating when I say everyone is staring at me.
I want to think it’s because I’m wearing a new sweater over my uniform shirt. It’s tighter than the things I usually wear, and bright white against my eggshell-brown skin, in sharp opposition to my normal black hoodies. My boobs look great, if I say so myself. And my nails are painted white too, or “Love, Lilly,” as Sydney read off the bottle before letting me borrow it. She said she’d only wear the color in summer but she thought I could pull it off year round. “You need to lighten up,” she’d said. “Figuratively and literally.”
So I try to ignore the looks, or chalk them up to my new clothes, my bright nails. I open my locker like everything is normal.
The truth is, the stares and whispers remind me of the day everything between Layla and me started to go really wrong—when Sloane called me a bitch and Layla didn’t seem to care. And when I get to homeroom, people are still staring, and it’s harder to ignore in a small classroom than it was in the long, wide halls. I notice something else too: Layla and Sloane are sitting side by side again. I never did find out what happened yesterday to briefly pull them apart.
Mr. Yoon takes attendance and when I raise my hand and say “Here,” it feels like the whole room goes silent.
I stare at my book. At my white nails against the pages, which have yellowed with age, and I read the same line of Othello over and over and over:
Men should be what they seem. Men should be what they seem.
Dom is late. He comes in a few minutes after the attendance has been taken, and though I look right at him, he avoids my gaze. He sits a few feet away, despite the open seats on either side of me. I gave him his space all day yesterday, so today I planned to apologize. I wore my cute sweater and painted my nails and hoped it would make me brave. But with everyone staring and him still keeping his distance, I lose my nerve. He doesn’t want to speak to me, just like Layla. I swallow and look down at my desk, pretending to read the words on the pages in front of me, until I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. When I look down at it, it’s a text from Sydney.
Meet me in the second-floor girls’ bathroom, like NOW.
Why?
I’ll tell you when you get here.
I raise my hand and ask Mr. Yoon for a hall pass, and as soon as he gives me one, I walk quickly to the bathroom to meet Sydney.
I push open the door and she’s pacing, arms crossed, her crazy-curly hair everywhere.
“Holy shit, Cleo,” she says. She doesn’t stop pacing. “Holy freaking shit.”
“What?” I ask.
“Have you noticed anything weird today? Like are people treating you differently?”
I don’t want to talk about everyone staring at me, when yesterday I was invisible. I don’t want to say Yes, of course, how could I have not? I shake my head. Then I kind of shrug and nod, because I’m not sure I want to know why.
Willa bursts into the bathroom a second later. She reaches out and pulls me into a hug and her armful of bangles are cold against my neck. “It’s so awful,” she says. And Sydney gently pulls her away from me.
“I didn’t tell her yet, Will.”
“Tell me what?” I ask, officially freaked all the way out.
“You know what everyone’s saying, right?” Willa whispers, and I instantly feel shaky and all wrong inside. My sweater feels too tight; my nails a little too white.
“No…?”
Willa storms through the bathroom like a whirlwind, knocking all the stalls open, making sure we’re alone. Once she’s confirmed that we are, she crosses her arms like a bouncer at a club and nods at Sydney. I can see that they have the kind of connection Layla and I used to—they can communicate without any words at all. It makes my chest ache in a peculiar and lonely way.
“Someone sent around a text…about your dad,” Sydney says.
I frown. I was expecting it to be something horrible about me: about how I skipped so many days the last two months, or that someone saw my mom riding the train with me, dropping me off like I’m a little kid. I even thought that maybe it would be some lie about me and Dom, since he’s sat at lunch with me a few times and anyone who saw us could have decided to tell the world that we were secretly dating or something worse. But my dad?
“He doesn’t even work here anymore,” I say.
“Yeah, that’s what everyone is talking about. Look, I don’t believe it, okay? I want to make that clear first. I don’t think it’s true.”
“Me either,” Willa says. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. Her choppy hair swings. “It’s totally ridiculous.”
“Sydney,” I say, stepping closer to her. “You’re freaking me out. What are people saying about my dad?”
She takes a deep breath and nervously flips her hair. She looks down and up and all around. And just before I’m about to scream at her to just tell me, she does.
“They’re saying that the reason he doesn’t work here anymore is because he…” She squeezes her eyes shut. “He hooked up with a student.”
I lose my breath. I blink a half-dozen times. And then Willa is beside me, with her arm wrapped around my shoulder. It feels like the weight of her is the only thing keeping me from splitting apart.
“What?” I ask, and my voice comes out almost as a whisper. “What the hell? Why would anyone say that about him?”
Sydney opens one of her eyes, and I guess I look calm enough because she opens the other and shrugs. “No idea, dude. It’s also kind of weird that’s it’s happening now, right? Almost two months after he quit. Like, if this was going to be a rumor, shouldn’t it have started a long time ago?”
I can’t think straight. I can’t even really see—I’m that unsettled. I push Willa roughly away. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, and I desperately want to scream. At anyone who believes this horrible lie; at Sydney for telling me about it; at the monster who could invent a rumor this cruel. But more than anything, I want to disappear.
The last time I felt like this was right before Layla and I fell apart for good. I feel the punch of tears at the back of my throat, but it’s not because I’m sad.
This is pure, unadulterated rage.
“That’s why everyone is staring at me,” I say. “That’s why people are acting like I have the bubonic plague. They think my dad is a…pedophile?”
I look at Sydney, like she needs to confirm this any more than she already has, but she just tucks her hair behind her ears and looks at the floor. Her earrings today are spirals, tiny tornados I wish would pick me up and carry me away. I look at Willa and her dark eyes are fierce, like she’s as angry about this as I am. She reaches out and grabs one of Sydney’s dangling hands—it’s like she always has to be holding on to someone else.
“What are you going to do?” Sydney asks. And I make a mental note that she said “you” instead of “we.” Layla would have said “we,” and something about having to endure this alone is too much to take. I grit my teeth and step into a stall, slamming the door closed behind me.
“Cleo,” Sydney says. “Cleo, are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not, but—”
“Just leave me alone,” I mutter.
I hear Willa and Sydney whispering, and then Sydney tries to talk to me again, but I stay silent. After about ten minutes a few other girls come into the bathroom, and under the door I see Sydney’s riding boots and Willa’s checkered Vans shuffle to the other side of the bathroom. When it sounds like the other girls have left, Sydney tries one last time.
“Cleo. It’s almost time for first period. Do you want me to stay in here with you or do you want space?”
I want her to stay, but I don’t want to have to ask. I want her to go, but I can’t send her away.
I don’t say anything, and when I hear Sydney swing her bag back over her shoulder, my throat gets achy, and my eyes fill.
“If you need us,” Willa says after a few hushed minutes pass between us, “just text, ’kay?”
“We’ll come right away,” Sydney adds, and she drags her feet a little as they turn away from my stall. I hear Willa’s bangles jingling, and then they’re finally gone. I open the door of my stall the tiniest bit to peek out and make sure the bathroom is completely empty. It is.
I kick the stall door a few times until it swings all the way open. Then I sit there until I feel calm enough to go back to Mr. Yoon’s class and grab my stuff. I can’t go to first period—I can’t do the rest of today. I know there will be consequences, but there’s no way I can sit in a room with twenty other people who think my dad is a perv. I want to find out who did this to him—destroyed his reputation with a heinous lie—so I need to find out who sent that text message.
The second I step out of the girls’ bathroom, Jase steps out of the boys’. He’s looking down at his phone, so I try to skirt by him, but he must recognize my braids or hear the clomp of my boots.
“Cleo Imani—” he starts, but I cut him off.
I spin and I say, my voice hissing through my teeth, �
��Not right now, Jase, okay?”
He looks surprised. His ever-present, dimpled grin falls off his face and his brow crinkles, his dark eyes taking in my war-torn face. “Oh shit, are you all right?” I swallow hard around the hurt and shake my head, because I could never lie to Jase.
“But I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I just need to get back to class.”
He reaches for me then. He reaches in that particular way that he used to whenever we’d had a fight back when he loved me. He’d put his big hand out and I’d put my smaller one in his and he’d pull me to his chest. I would complain or cry and he would kiss me until it was all better. But he can’t fix me with kisses, because he doesn’t love me anymore. And even if he did, this isn’t something his gentleness would make better.
“I have to go,” I say, so softly I’m sure he doesn’t hear me. I leave his hand outstretched, dangling in the space between us.
When I walk back into class, Dom has moved into one of the empty seats closer to where I was sitting. And while this would have been exciting to me ten minutes ago, now it just pisses me off. Why should he get to decide when he wants to be my friend? Why does everyone else get to pick when they want to be close to me and when they don’t? I’m sick of it.
I sit down, and I pretend Dom isn’t there, less than a foot away from me, though the sweet-smoke-and-nutty-soap scent of him is hard to ignore. I start packing up my stuff, the lump in my throat swelling so large that I have to bite my tongue against the pain of it.
Dom leans across the space between our desks. “You good?” he asks, and I know my jaw is clenched tight and my eyes are probably glassy behind my glasses, because not even my best Poker Face could hide this kind of pain well. I’ve been so used to going it alone that I forgot what it was like to have someone else care. Like Sydney and Willa in the bathroom. Like Jase in the hall. Like Dom now. Having people who notice when you aren’t okay complicates things.
When You Were Everything Page 19
