“Sorry,” Riva said. “It’s not you. I had a
bad day.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it was real tough. All that
sun and sand…”
Her eyes widened, and she swatted his upper
arm. “Shut
up
.”
“So this wasn’t a sanctioned trip.”
She hauled him into the room and closed the
door behind him. “If you’re going to make me tell you about it,
don’t do it with the door open.”
He shrugged and took a moment to look around.
Riva’s room didn’t look like what he’d expected from a girl’s
room—not that he’d been in many. There were no bright colors and no
pretty smells. A rat’s nest of wires and electronics took up the
entire wall next to the computer, and the poster over her bed would
have inspired his mother to send him straight to church.
“Diablo?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Her eyes sparked. “Yeah. Do you play? I
usually group with people from back home, but if you want in…” The
moment of enthusiasm died when she saw his blank expression.
Terrell tried to look cool and casual, not
like a guy worrying that she might think he was gay because he
didn’t play video games.
“Never mind,” Riva said. “I’m glad you showed
up. My mom was having a nervous fit down there.”
Terrell took a seat next to her computer.
“So, what was the problem with the beach?”
“No, the beach was fine. The beach was great.
Before I went there, I made an idiot of myself in school, and now
my boyfriend’s mad at me.”
Terrell sighed. “Who’s your boyfriend?” A
word or two from this year’s Homecoming King would probably settle
him down, and then Terrell wouldn’t have to feel guilty about
ignoring his mom’s exhortations to look out for Riva.
“You wouldn’t know him.” She sat on the bed
and picked at her fingernails. “We started dating back in Jersey,
just before I left. He goes to college in Atlanta now, at
Emory.”
“That’s a good school.”
“Yeah, he wants to be a doctor.”
Terrell recognized the expression on Riva’s
face. He’d worn it himself a few times, before he’d wised up. She
was too into this guy for her own good. A certain kind of college
guy loved high-school admirers, who would think he was cool no
matter what and would do just about anything to keep from getting
dropped. The first three or four guys Terrell had dated had been
like that, and he’d felt pretty stupid when he’d seen the pattern
for what it was.
Terrell searched for a question he could ask
without giving away too much about himself. “What’s he mad
about?”
She gave him a helpless look. “I don’t want
to talk about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Really. I’m an idiot, and it’s
embarrassing.”
Terrell took a deep breath. “If you’re
embarrassing yourself over a guy, he’s probably not worth it.” He’d
told himself that on more than one occasion. He didn’t always
follow that advice, but he’d been sorry every time he’d ignored
it.
Riva laughed. “What are you, my dad?”
Terrell thought of his Uncle Nelson, his
mom’s half-brother. He’d only met the man a couple of times, but
Nelson had always seemed to exist in a completely different world.
It had taken work for Terrell to identify the features Nelson had
in common with his mom—the width of their noses and jaws, the slope
of their foreheads, the color of their hair. He remembered Uncle
Nelson taking him and his mom out to a restaurant that was too
fancy and expensive to be comfortable, as if he could use money to
make up for all the distance between them. It hadn’t worked.
Terrell looked at Riva. She had that same
nose, too, which Terrell had also inherited. She was only a few
years younger than him, but she seemed so lost and sad, lonely
every time he saw her in school, and even lonelier now, talking
about this college boyfriend who was probably pushing her around.
He turned his head toward her wall of electronics, thought about
this nice house he’d been judging her for, and remembered the way
her dad hadn’t seemed to know how to have a friendly
conversation.
“You miss him, huh?” he said.
“My dad?” She jumped, blinking rapidly. “I
mean, yeah, I miss him. Everything about Jersey.” She sighed,
scrubbing a hand through her short hair. He’d only ever seen it
styled before, but she must have gotten into the water at the beach
because a bit of kinkiness was asserting itself. That also helped
him see the resemblance between the two of them.
“I miss my dad, too,” Terrell said quietly.
“I go to church with him every Sunday, but I miss having him
around.”
Riva shook her head. “I don’t think my dad
was ever really around. Not even when he lived in the house, you
know? I mean, it’s okay, but…”
He stood from the chair and sat next to her
on the bed. She seemed startled. He gave her a brotherly push with
his shoulder, hoping to reassure her. “Look,” he said. “I’m not
your dad. But I am your family. You remember that, okay? You can
come to me if you ever need anything. If you need me to talk to
that boyfriend or whatever. I’ve got your back.” Terrell didn’t
look at her face. He wanted her to understand the importance of
what he was saying, and he didn’t want to see if she didn’t.
She turned and hugged him quickly. When she
pulled back, he saw, before she turned away, that her eyes were
glistening. “Uh, you, too, okay? I mean, I don’t know what I can
do, but I mean it. Seriously.”
Terrell hugged her back. His eyes stung a
little bit, too.
* * * *
“Come on!” Jo laughed as she said it, but
that didn’t quite cover the frustration in her voice.
Daisy gripped the steering wheel harder and
pretended she needed to pay attention to the road. “There’s nothing
to tell!” she insisted. She’d been saying that for two days, but Jo
kept asking anyway.
“I mean it! You can admit it! You like
someone,” Jo said, drawing out every vowel.
Daisy winced.
“You disappear mysteriously, don’t answer my
texts after school, and there’s beach sand all over your car. You
owe me an explanation.”
Not for the first time, Daisy wished she
hadn’t been so caught up in Riva the other day that she’d forgotten
to check her phone. If she’d noticed Jo’s text, she could have just
said she’d cut out and gone to the beach by herself. Jo wouldn’t
have suspected anything, and Daisy wouldn’t be getting the third
degree now.
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“What’s the matter? Is he a nerd or
something? You know I won’t judge!”
“There’s no boy!” Daisy turned into her
driveway. She didn’t want the specter of the things she’d never
admitted to Jo to ruin their typical Friday night routine. She’d
been looking forward to this for days—simple rituals that she hoped
would settle the dizzying feelings she’d been having ever since
she’d actually
talked
to Riva.
She wanted to practice cooking with her mom,
stream a video as usual, and just hang out. Besides, Jo was
supposed to be talking her ear off about the flavor of the week,
not interested in Daisy’s nonexistent love life. Why did this one
boy have to be the one to blow Jo off? It would have been so much
more convenient if he’d kept her busy that afternoon and given her
plenty to talk about with Daisy.
Shutting off the car, Daisy began to get out.
Jo remained in the passenger seat, arms crossed over her chest. “I
swear.” Daisy tried to smile. “I swear that if I liked a boy, you
would be the first to know.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right!”
“What?”
“You expect me to believe you’re sixteen
years old and you’ve never had a crush on
anyone?
Why don’t
you trust me?”
Daisy sighed. “Come on. My mom is waiting.
She said we’re making
mamposteao
.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Without having to look, Daisy knew Jo was
still pouting. She would never have said that otherwise. She worked
in a Vietnamese restaurant, so she was even more tired of hearing
people complain about unfamiliar food than Daisy was.
“Yes, you do. It’s that thing with rice,
pork, and pigeon peas. You like it. Get out of the car.”
Jo got out, slamming the door shut harder
than strictly necessary. Daisy flashed to the memory of Riva
stepping gracefully out of the car onto the sand. In the days
since, Daisy had held the awe and delight in Riva’s expression
close to her heart. She wanted to be the cause of those feelings
for Riva, all the time.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jo said,
cutting into Daisy’s fantasies.
“What?”
“That look on your face. You keep smiling out
of nowhere. That’s what it looks like when someone has a
crush.”
Daisy grimaced, frustrated with herself. She
wished her private thoughts didn’t show so clearly on her face. It
would have been nice to keep a secret or two without constantly
getting into fights with her best friend.
“Can we just have a good time? Please?”
Jo grudgingly agreed, and things got a little
better. A lot of people might have thought Daisy’s Friday nights
sounded stupid—cooking with her mom and best friend instead of
going out to a party or on a date. They’d been doing it every week
since Daisy was seven years old, though, and the tradition meant a
lot to her. She was proud that she could cook Dominican food well
enough to impress relatives who still lived on the island.
Including Jo was important, too. To Daisy, this was one of the
clearest ways of expressing that her best friend was part of her
family, part of herself.
She wished they’d been cooking something more
challenging this time, though. Daisy had no trouble remembering the
traditional ingredients, and the recipe didn’t really call for
enough slicing to keep three people occupied. Jo didn’t press her
for details about her crush in front of her mom, but she also
didn’t have much to say. Daisy chopped green peppers and wondered
about the secret she was keeping. If Jo really was part of her
family, why
wouldn’t
Daisy trust her? What was there to
lose? Jo had to have seen lesbians on TV. Maybe she’d even met a
few. This wasn’t 1950, or even 1990.
Daisy had seen plenty of coming out stories
on the Internet, and she’d seen the assurances that things would
get better after high school. A lot of people seemed to think
coming out was no big deal. The way some people wrote about it,
they made it sound almost stupid to be afraid.
Daisy was still afraid. Everything that came
out of Jo’s mouth these days was a story about a boy. She already
thought Daisy was prudish or weird for not being like her. If she
found out Daisy didn’t like boys at all, and never would, she might
decide they had nothing in common anymore.
And that was one of Daisy’s milder fears.
Sometimes, she turned over worse reactions in her head. What if Jo
told everyone at school, accidentally or on purpose? What if she
assumed Daisy was in love with her? What if it turned out she
wasn’t
okay with lesbians? They’d never talked about it,
after all.
Daisy knew she ought to tell Jo. She couldn’t
keep this to herself forever. At some point, she did hope to have a
girlfriend, even if she had to wait until college. And if Riva
had
been trying to come out the other day, and she’d been
interested in Daisy, that would have brought the crisis to a head
right away. Daisy wouldn’t have passed up a chance to be with Riva,
and then she’d have either had to admit the truth or keep an even
bigger secret from her best friend. Besides, if Jo wasn’t okay with
it, she wasn’t much of a friend.
Daisy knew that, but she still didn’t feel
ready to tell Jo.
Normally on Fridays, Daisy enjoyed laughing
and joking with Jo and her mom. She loved the smells of garlic
heating in oil, spices, sizzling meat. This time, she ate her food
without tasting it, shoving rice from one side of her plate to the
other while Jo made conversation with her mom.
“What are we watching tonight?” Jo asked.
“Daisy? Are you listening?”
“Huh?” Daisy shrugged. “I don’t know. What do
you feel like watching?”
Daisy actually had a whole list of movies and
TV shows she wanted to see, but that was another thing she couldn’t
reveal to Jo. Why did it feel like more and more of her life was
falling into that category lately? She’d thought at first that she
was keeping
one
thing from her best friend, but that one
thing had started to feel more like
everything
.
Jo rattled off a few recent titles, rom-coms
and action movies they’d missed in the theater.
Daisy nodded along. “I’ll go set it up,” she
said. “Mom, are you watching, too?”
Her mom shook her head. “Your father should
be home from work soon.”
Jo grinned and melted at that. Daisy’s dad
wasn’t around much, but when he was, you could practically hear the
romantic music playing in the air of the Mejia house. Daisy’s
parents were crazy about each other, and Jo had always loved being
around that.
Jo glanced at Daisy, obviously seeking
permission to bask in her mom’s love-glow a little longer.
“I’ll meet you in there,” Daisy said.
Since her mom wasn’t watching, Daisy figured
her parents might want the living room to themselves. She went to
her bedroom and turned on the computer. Then she navigated to the
video-streaming website and entered the family password.
She cursed as soon as she saw the screen,
involuntarily pushing the mouse away from her hand as if that could
take away what she was seeing. “Recommended for you,” the site
proclaimed, right up top. Beneath those bold letters was a series
of titles and movie posters that made her heart pound and her face
get hot.
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.
Imagine Me & You. But I’m a Cheerleader. The World Unseen.
The list went on—far, far too similar to that secret list Daisy had
been keeping to herself.