The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James
Page 18
She glides the lipstick over my mouth a couple more times and grins at me. “Perfection.”
“Really?”
She nods and finally, finally, her hand drops away from my face. I slide off the counter and turn to look in the mirror. I look… different.
But somehow, totally like me.
My belly, however, is still jumping all over the place like a jackhammer. So is my heart. My face tingles where Quinn touched me and I keep thinking about the way Quinn’s fingers felt when I held her hand under the waterfall and how, maybe, that felt like me too.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. No. No way. That wasn’t me. That was… that was… Old Life Sunny. That was a girl who gets betrayed and laughed at during slumber parties. She slipped through for a second, just a second, but New Life Sunny is back and she’s bright blue and is putting on makeup and is going to find a boy she likes. She is.
“We should do eyeshadow,” I say, rummaging through Lena’s makeup bag again.
“Oh, yeah, totally,” Quinn says. “I like—”
“And mascara. And eyeliner. Do you know how to put on eyeliner?”
“Um, not really, but I bet Lena does.”
“We’ll ask her when she gets out of the shower,” I say. “And have her do some blush. Oh, and I wonder if she has some perfume. Boys like perfume, right? I hope they like blue hair. I bet they like purple. We should go out later and find some boys.” I pause my word vomit for a split second to glance out the window. “Yeah, it’s stopped raining, which means boys are on the beach. Boys are always on the beach. We can find some and—”
“Sunny.”
“We just need to find two. That’s all. Just two boys. I don’t even care about liking them anymore, do you? Let’s just kiss them, right? Let’s just get it over with. And then—”
“Sunny,” Quinn says again. “Stop.”
I chug a breath and bite down on my blue lips and blink a whole lot, trying to stop the stinging in my eyes. I stare down at Lena’s makeup bag. It’s bright orange and covered in little gray skulls. They look cute, exactly like something Quinn would have.
“Sunny, I don’t think…” Quinn trails off and takes her own big breath. I glance at her and she’s not looking at me. She’s biting her lip too. She’s blinking a whole lot too.
“You don’t want to do the Kissing Quest anymore, do you?” I ask.
She shakes her head and honestly, I’m for-real relieved. I can figure the kissing thing out on my own. It’s too confusing with Quinn. Too… I don’t know. Just too much.
“Okay,” I say. “It’s okay. I get it. We don’t—”
“No, Sunny, you don’t get it.”
I blink at her.
“I do want to do the Kissing Quest,” she says.
“You… you do?”
She nods. Bites her lip. Blinks her eyes. “I just don’t want to kiss a boy.” She still doesn’t look at me when she says it, but I sure am looking at her. I can’t do anything but stare, stare, stare.
“Wh-wh-what?” I stammer, even though I heard her. I heard her loud and clear.
She shakes her head and wipes at her face. Her hand smears a little bit of purple lipstick onto her cheek. “I never wanted to kiss a boy. I just… I just said that because you did and I liked you and…” She blows out a big breath through puffed cheeks. “When you told me about the Kissing Quest, I wanted to be part of it with you and I thought maybe I could find a boy I liked, just like you. But I don’t think I want that. I never really have.”
“Never?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet, at least.”
“Oh.”
I want to say something else, something amazing, but I’m concentrating too hard on breathing to get any words out.
“Remember that girl Sadie I told you about?” Quinn asks. “Back in Alaska?”
I nod. I think I nod. It might be that my head has popped off my body and is rolling around on the bathroom floor. I’m not sure.
“I liked her. Like, I liked her liked her. And I thought she liked me. She even told me she did, but then her best friend found out and Sadie kind of freaked out and then…”
I’m holding my breath. My heart has stopped beating. “And then?”
“And then we moved here. My mom… she wasn’t actually done with her work in Alaska, but things were bad. Like, school was really, really bad. They called me a lot of names and laughed at me in the halls. Wrote gross notes and stuck them on my locker about being gay and having crushes on certain teachers, which I’ve never had. They made fun of me because of my name, because I’m brown.”
“What? You’re… brown?”
She gives me this Oh come on look, but I’m lost.
“Because I’m Latina, Sunny. I was pretty much the only brown girl in the whole town.” She sighs and waves a hand over her body. “Just… all of me. They hated all of me.”
My heart breaks right in half. “Oh, Quinn. They’re idiots. For real, they’re so, so wrong. You’re… you’re…”
Smart.
Funny.
Beautiful.
Totally and unbelievably cooler than I will ever be.
It’s all there, all these great words that are all true about Quinn, but I can’t get them out. She shrugs and wipes her face again, because she’s crying.
I don’t even think about it. I grab her and pull her into my arms. I do it so fast and so hard, my elbow hits Lena’s makeup bag and it clatters to the floor. Every single thing inside scatters all over the place, but I don’t care. I need to hug Quinn. So I do and she hugs me back, her arms around my waist and her chin on my shoulder. Her hair is still damp and smells like the minty organic shampoo that Kate keeps in my shower.
I want to tell Quinn stuff. All about my wonderings and Margot’s betrayal and how my stomach feels like butterscotch pudding when I’m around her, but maybe all these thoughts about girls don’t mean for me what they mean for Quinn.
Maybe I just… maybe I feel… maybe I’m only…
She pulls away and wipes at her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I hand her a tissue, but I really want to hug her again. Or hold her hand. Or… well… anything to make sure she knows she doesn’t have to worry about me turning on her or something.
She nods and then blows her nose and actually makes a honking sound. It’s like a baby duck and it’s hilarious and it makes us both crack up.
“Girls, you want some cookies?” Lena calls from the kitchen. I hear cabinets slamming open and closed and she must have found Dave’s stash of soft-baked chocolate chip cookies that he hides in the back of our pantry and brings out when Kate’s not around.
“Yeah!” I call back while Quinn furiously wipes at her face a bit more.
“You’ve got some…” I grab another tissue and then wipe the purple lipstick off her cheek. It’s sticky, so I have to press kind of hard, Quinn staring into my eyes the whole time. Her throat bobs around and my stomach… well… it’s doing what it always does around Quinn Ríos Rivera.
“Thanks,” she says, taking the tissue and finishing the job for me. Then she motions toward the makeup-covered floor. “We should clean up this mess and then go eat about a billion cookies.”
I laugh. “Deal.”
We both bend down and start tossing makeup into the bag. All sorts of stuff I still want to try out someday. Glittery green eyeshadow and something called bronzer, lip gloss the color of a tangerine and carbon-black eyeliner with a tip so thick, it looks like it would take over my whole eyelid.
We’re just about done when the bathroom door flies open. I turn to see Kate in the doorway, Lena right behind her. My heart starts running—no, galloping—like it’s trying to escape my body. Kate takes in my hair, the mess of color all over the bathroom, the bandage on my arm. Her chest heaves up and down and a muscle ticks in her jaw.
Quinn slips her hand into mine and squeezes. I squeeze back.
CHAPTER
23
“Don’t,” Kate says, her teeth gritted together. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
“It’s okay,” Lena says. “We just—”
“You don’t get to tell me what’s okay right now, Lena,” Kate says. She turns back to me, her jaw clenched, her nostrils flaring with too-fast breaths. I’ve never seen her so mad. She’s coiled like a snake about to strike. “Sunny, go to your room. Quinn, I need you to head home, okay?”
Quinn nods, but I hold on to her hand. “Kate, don’t—”
“Sunny, you need to do what I ask. I am barely holding it together right now and, frankly, this is none of Quinn’s business.”
Her voice is sharp and kind of rude and I feel my cheeks flame up from embarrassment.
“It’s okay,” Quinn whispers, squeezing my hand again. “Text me later.”
“She won’t be texting you tonight,” Kate says, her voice even more razor-y.
“What?” I say. “Kate—”
“Go to your room!”
Her yell echoes off the bathroom walls. Behind Kate, Lena watches, her face pale.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn says, letting go of my hand and trying to edge past Atomic Kate, who’s not budging.
“Quinn, wait—”
“It’s okay,” Quinn whispers. “It’s okay, I’m sorry.”
No, it’s not okay and she shouldn’t be sorry. Kate’s acting like it’s Quinn’s fault I dyed my hair and I don’t want Quinn to think anything is her fault ever again. But she’s already down the hall and I hear the front door slam.
“Sunny. Your room. Now,” Kate says.
“No.”
She glares at me, but her eyes are shiny and her chin is trembling. I know her about-to-cry look and this is it. “Excuse me?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say.
“You didn’t do anything wrong?” she echoes. “So, going surfing when I expressly told you not to wasn’t wrong?”
“We didn’t—”
“You did. There’s a salty, sand-covered surfboard leaning against my house right now. That rash guard is wet and on the floor in the hallway. And I don’t even know what to say about the cut on your arm.”
I glare right back at her, but my chin is bouncing around too.
“Kate, that was me,” Lena says. “I took her surfing. I thought it was important and her arm is fine, I promise. Just a scrape. But you should’ve seen her. She was amazing and it made her feel confident out there. So don’t be mad at Sunny. Blame me.”
Kate turns around. “I do. I do blame you. This is not okay, Lena. This is not what I wanted to happen, at all.”
“You’re the one who told me she’d come around,” Lena says. “You told me it was important that Sunny know I’d wait, as long as it took, for her to give me a chance. Well, she’s giving me a chance.”
“I wanted you to get to know your daughter and for her to know you. For her to know she was worth knowing. Don’t you get that? I did not mean for you to go behind my back and take her into the ocean and dye her hair blue.”
“I wanted it blue,” I say, but Kate doesn’t hear me.
“You have no idea,” she says to Lena, her voice more shaky now than razor-y. “She may be your daughter, but she’s my kid. I kept her fed and clothed. I watched her cry when she lost her best friend and wouldn’t tell me why. I read to her every night. I felt my world falling apart when she got sick. I paid all the bills that insurance didn’t cover. I wished, night after night after night, that she’d get a heart. I watched her grow into this beautiful, amazing person who I would do anything for, anything to protect. I did that, which you would know if you’d called or written, even once, in the past eight years.”
“Katie—”
“No.” Kate shakes her head, tears careening down her face. “No, we’re done. You don’t get to swoop in and undo our entire lives. She could’ve been hurt today. She could’ve died.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Yeah. Today. But you lied to me. To my face. And she’s not like every other kid, Lena. She’s fragile.”
Lena sighs and rubs her forehead. I don’t know what to say. I knew Kate would be mad if she found out we went surfing, but this is more than mad. This is… destroyed.
“Please go,” Kate says, looking right at Lena.
“Wait, what?” I ask. Lena just stares at her.
“You need to leave, Lena. Right now.”
“Katie, that’s not fair,” Lena says.
“No, it’s not,” Kate says, “but I don’t know what else to do here.”
“She’s fine,” Lena says. “Sunny is fine. She proved to herself she could do it and she’s—”
“You put her in danger,” Kate says.
“Kate,” I say. “She didn’t. I just surfed, that’s all.”
“We need some time,” Kate says. “We all need some time.”
“Some time?” I say. Panic curls my hands into tight fists. “What? What are you saying?”
“Sunny, for the last time, go to your room!”
“No!” I turn to Lena. I want to grab her hands, but her arms are folded tight across her chest. “Lena, don’t go, please.”
Lena doesn’t answer me, though. She stares at Kate and Kate stares back. Finally, Lena lets out a big breath and looks at me. “Sunny—”
“No,” I say. “Please don’t.”
“Sweetie,” Lena says, reaching out and tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “Maybe Kate’s right.”
“She’s not right! How could you say that?”
Lena takes a step closer to me. “She’s right about taking a breather right now. This has been a lot, for all of us, and I want what’s best for you.”
I shake my head. “So best means leaving? Again? You’re just going to leave me?”
Kate sucks in a breath and reaches for my hand. I yank my arm back.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lena says softly. “I promise. You have no reason to believe me, I know, but I won’t leave. We’re just going to take a few days so Kate and I can figure things out.”
Kate doesn’t say anything, but she’s stiff as a board as she stares at the ground.
“But I want to go surfing again tomorrow,” I say. “And you still need to take me shopping and I need to talk to you about… about…”
Liking.
Kissing.
Quinn.
The words bubble up and die before I can say them, but I know I want to say them all to Lena. She’d understand. She’d get it, all this confusion, all this starting over, all these big huge feelings in my stomach that I can’t get rid of. I want to wade out to the deepest part of the ocean and bob on our boards while we watch the sun tick across the sky and tell her everything.
“You’re not doing any of those things, Sunny,” Kate says. “Not anytime soon, anyway.”
My mouth drops open and tears leap into my eyes. I wait for Lena to protest, to tell Kate she’s wrong, but she just stands there with her tattooed arms folded over her chest.
“Lena,” I finally say.
She looks at me then, her eyes all big and sad. “I’ll see you soon, Sunshine. I promise.”
No, no, no. That sounds way too much like goodbye. It sounds like the end. It sounds like eight years without anything but mermaid dreams and a picture of a lady who has the same eyes as me.
I want to wrap my arms around her waist and never let go. I want her to fight for me. Because what if she doesn’t come back? What if this is just like when I was four years old and she figured out I’m not worth all of this?
What if?
But she doesn’t fight. She doesn’t do anything but give me one more sad-eyed look and then turn around and leave.
Kate and I don’t really talk about what happened.
Of course, she cleans my arm again, slathering it with a billion layers of Neosporin before covering it up with a hospi
tal-grade Band-Aid. Then she takes my blood pressure. Then she calls Dr. Ahmed and yammers on and on to her about my surfing and the itty-bitty cut on my arm and hair dye. Like hair dye is going to make me suddenly sprint into cardiac arrest or something.
After she’s pretty sure that I’m probably going to live, at least for the next few hours, she tells me to go to my room. Again.
“That’s it?” I ask, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her fill up the kettle with water.
She nods, her jaw tight.
“Can I call Lena later?”
She flips off the water and slams the kettle down on the stove. “Sunny. Not now.”
“Can I?”
“No.”
“Well, when?”
“In a few days, all right? I need to think this through, figure out the best way for her to be in your life. I might need to talk to a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? What for?”
“Honey, it’s complicated. There are financial issues and… just a lot of things to think about, okay? I thought I was ready. I thought we were all ready, but—”
“This is stupid,” I say, and my throat gets all tight. “You wanted me to talk to her. You kept saying I’d regret it if I didn’t.”
“I know that. I do want you to get to know her, but she can’t do this, Sunny. She can’t go against what I say and put your health and safety at risk.”
“She didn’t—”
“I’m your guardian. Legally. She gave you up.”
The last four words hurt and Kate knows it. She closes her eyes and shakes her head, but she doesn’t take the words back. She doesn’t even try to explain why Lena did what she did. Kate has always tried to explain. She’s always wanted to help me understand that Lena loves me, that she gave me up for my own good, that there were good reasons for it all.
But today’s different, I guess.
“Lena’s just trying to help me,” I say.
“Help you do what, exactly? Get hurt? Act like you’re eighteen years old when you’re twelve?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Feel like I’m not about to drop dead all the time, that’s what!”
Kate’s face goes totally white. Tears spill fast down her cheeks. The kettle whistles, yelling like a banshee, and Kate still hasn’t said anything.