All Hail the Clique ... The Clique IS Dead
“The end of the world it seems. You bend down and you fall on your knees.”
âKate Voegele, “It's Only Life”
Â
Â
M
ina was sick.
She raced into the house, past her parents in the sunroom and up the stairs into her room.
The entire evening was a patchwork quilt of ugly words and images seared in her mind so deeply, her stomach lurched whenever they flashed. She laid across her bed and dialed Michael's number again. She smashed the End button when his voice mail came on for the fifteenth time.
He wouldn't text her back.
He wouldn't answer her calls.
She had to talk to him.
Michael was the reasonable one. Once she talked to him, they'd figure out how to get at JZ, bring it all back together. She dialed Michael's number again, waited patiently for the voice mail message to end, and left a message, “Mike, please call me ... please.”
She jumped when her mother's face appeared in her doorway. “Hey, baby girl,” her mother said, instinctively treading lightly. “Wanna talk?”
Mina shook her head no, then threw herself into her pillow and bawled. She lifted her head long enough to wail, “Ma, it's a mess. JZ and Michael are fighting and ... Cinny just sent me a text saying she's mad at JZ.” She dumped her face back into the pillow. “What's happening?”
Mariah Mooney stroked her daughter's back, letting her cry until the tears turned to dry hitches. “Tell me what happened.” She pressed gently on Mina's shoulder until Mina sat upright.
Mina relayed as much of the story as she could bear, leaving out the more hurtful words and only scratching the surface of the story Jacinta had told her about JZ taking her home. Her voice hitched, “It's ... it's like we're falling apart.” She placed the pillow on her lap and hugged it. “I knew that if Mike got into the Carter, we'd miss him and all butâI didn't think it would mean we wouldn't be friends.”
“You'll always be friends,” her mother said. “Maybe just not like you are now.”
Mina wailed. “That's not enough.”
Mariah smiled. “It might have to be.”
Mina sunk her face into the pillow, smashing her eyes and her mind closed against what her mother was proposing. The clique not friends anymore? The words were as foreign to her as another language.
Her mother's hand raked gently through her hair. “Tonight sounded pretty bad.” Mina nodded and Mariah went on. “It might be bad for a while. But you guys will bounce back, I bet.”
Fresh tears streamed down Mina's face as she thought about Michael and JZ using the term
was
in reference to their friendship. She shook her head, lifting it up only enough to be heard. “Not from this, Mommy. I just have a bad feeling.”
Mina's mother leaned down and kissed the back of her head. She stroked Mina's back until her breathing took on the steady rhythm of sleep, then she repositioned her in the bed and stepped out.
The chirping of Mina's phone awoke her several hours later. She reached blindly for it, finding it on her nightstand.
“Hello,” she whispered, squinting at the clock. Her vision was too blurred to make out the time.
“Mi, it's Jay.”
“JZ?” Mina's eyes, sore and puffy, fluttered until her vision steadied. She rolled onto her back. “Jay, what's going on?”
“Can you meet me outside?”
She peered at the clock. “Jay, it's one o' clock.”
“Thanks, Time Lady. Are you coming out or what?”
“Just come to the door of the sunroom. I'll let you in.”
“All right, peace.”
Mina sat up, staring around her room, dazed. She was still dressed. She didn't remember falling asleep. She got up, went to the door, and listened to the sounds of the house. Her father's light snoring confirmed what she needed to know. She eased down the stairs and went out to the large sunroom. Her parents must have turned in only a bit earlier; the room was still warm from the gas stove.
She walked to the main sliding glass door and waited for JZ to appear. Even staring straight out the window, he startled her when his face popped up. She slid the door open as quietly as possible.
“Where's the car?” She peered behind him in the frigid night.
“I walked,” JZ said. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them.
“You're crazy. It's pitch black out there.”
JZ snickered. “We've lived here our entire lives, Mina. When was the last time somebody got jacked walking in the Woods?”
Mina shrugged. Far as she knew never. Still, she wasn't about to walk down the street alone at night. She went over to the sofa and sat down.
JZ sat beside her. He held his hand up. “Don't say anything, okay?”
She obeyed.
They sat in the dark silence, listening to the last cracklings of the gas stove and the creaks of the house settling, until JZ said, “You know I hate ... talking about feelings and shit.” His eyes were wide and white in the darkness. Mina focused on them, nodding. “But I gotta get some things straight. Be real with me, all right?”
She nodded again. A sliver of cold curiosity lodged itself in her spine and she shivered.
“Is Michael gay?” JZ said.
Mina's gasp was a tiny sip of air, but JZ heard it. His eyes locked on her lips before closing heavily. He shook his head. “Tell me, Mina.”
“I ... you should be asking Michael this, Jay.”
He hung his head. “You know that's as much of an answer as you gasping.” He was scowling when his head came back up. “But I said be real with me. I need you to answer.”
Mina's throat tightened. She shook her head no as she answered, “Yes.”
JZ's hands went to the crown of his head, then slid down to his forehead again and again, first slow, then quickly, in a back and forth motion until his hair stood up in tiny, fiberlike spikes. He blew out a deep breath as if it were taking a lot of effort to go on.
“When did he tell you?” he asked.
“A few weeks ago.”
“Guess you weren't going to tell me, huh?”
Mina's face cracked. “It ... he ... no.”
“How y'all gonna ...”
Mina pressed her finger against JZ's lips. “Look how you acted tonight. Are you seriously going to catch a 'tude that Mike never told you?”
JZ rubbed his hands on his thighs, squeezed his knees, then shrugged. “All right, yeah. But I was his boy. It's like ...”
“Was?” Mina said, choking on the word. “Can't y'all still be friends?”
“Were we ever?” JZ's eyebrow rose.
“Why would you say that?” Mina said in a high-pitched whisper. She could barely contain her frustration. “We've been friends since we were five years old and ...”
“And Michael never bothered to tell you until recently and he never told me. So did we really know him?”
“I can't pretend it didn't hurt to know he'd already told Lizzie,” Mina said.
JZ's eyes popped wide. “So Lizzie knew? For how long?”
“Since freshman year, apparently,” she mumbled.
JZ shook his head up at the ceiling. “See, that's what I mean. Man, secrets is bull.” He cocked his head and squinted at Mina. “Now the two of them kept this from us and we're supposed to be like this.” He held two fingers together. “Come on, Mina, that's not right and you know it.”
Mina touched his thigh. “I don't disagree, but it's not anything we should end our friendship over.”
JZ chuckled. “Only you would say that, TV Land.”
Mina hadn't heard that nickname in a while. In middle school, Michael and JZ used to torture her with the name, teasing her for her belief that everything could be wrapped up nice and neat, ideally in thirty minutes like the old-school reruns on TV Land. She hated being teased about being a bright-eyed optimist, but had grown to feel it had to be somebody's job to be the optimist, so she embraced it and admitted as much to JZ.
“Well, you and Michael are beefing right now but you'll work it out.” She shrugged at his skeptical glance. “If I don't believe it, no one else will. And if no one believes it, it won't happen.” The pain in JZ's eyes made her heart ache.
He flicked her under the chin with his knuckle. “Go 'head and believe it, Mi. But only me and Michael can make it happen.”
Her eyes welled. “Are you saying you're not going to try?”
“Just saying ...” JZ looked past her for so long, Mina was tempted to turn and see what was behind her. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Mike was right. He need to get his. Do his thing. Go some place where he's not the sidekick.” He chuckled, wistfully. “That's why Batman works alone.”
“What does that have to do with y'all making up?” Mina frowned.
“Sometimes friendships die, Mi.” He swiped angrily at his eye. “Mike gotta dip and I gotta respect that.”
“But y'all can do all that and still be friends.”
Mina's heart raced as JZ shook his head, disagreeing.
“I don't know Mike no more, Mina.”
Mina pulled JZ's arm, as if physically trying to bring him to her place of thought. “Jay, don't say that.” She tugged on his arm, then smashed it down, angry. “Don't say that.”
JZ leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thigh. He spoke toward the floor. “So is Rob his ... boyfriend?” His body flinched on the last word.
“No,” Mina said, dully. “They're just friends, like you and him were ...
are
friends.”
JZ turned his head toward her. Mina looked him in the eye.
“Real talk. They're just friends.”
She turned away, wiping at a stray tear, when she saw JZ's eyes glisten.
“I know Michael's mad right now, but he ...” she stopped when JZ stood up abruptly.
“All right, Mouthy Mi, time for me to jet.”
“So that's it?” Her eyes gleamed fiery accusation. “You just gonna break up the clique like that?”
JZ stretched. He put his hoodie up on his head. His voice was tired. He was over the conversation, Mina could feel it.
“The clique not broken up, Mina. We're all off doing our own thing most of the time anyway... . I bet after a few days you won't even know the difference.”
Mina started to refute him, but stopped. Lately, their get-togethers with all of them present were far and few between. It was hard enough coordinating against six schedules to get together, but even random, spontaneous gatherings among two of them at once were near extinct as demands from their lives mandated attention.
JZ dangled his arm around her in a choke hold, then moved it around her shoulder.
“You still my girl, though, Mouthy Mi.”
Mina wrapped her arms around him, clinging until he returned the embrace.
She looked up at him. “What about Cinny?”
His mouth was a half-moon smile. “She ratted me out already, huh?”
Mina nodded.
“I'll set things right with her if she ever talks to me again.”
“Why can't you do the same thing with Michael?” Mina pleaded.
JZ squeezed her once, then let go. He took several long-legged steps and was out the door before Mina could say anything else.
Umma Do Me
“ 'Cause life is way too short and I can't wait no more.”
âLesley Roy, “I'm Gone, I'm Going”
Â
Â
M
ichael awoke early the next morning. It was Saturday, but he had work to do.
His hand instinctively rubbed his jaw.
JZ got a good right hook,
he thought, wincing.
He grimaced as the pain shot through his entire face. He didn't even want to know what he looked like. No need to see the representation of the stinging, aching, and itchiness that buzzed across every inch. Besides, if Rob's reaction, the night before, was any indication, his face was probably a good mix between Will Smith in
Hitch
when his face swelled up from eating seafood, and any Ultimate Fighter, winner or loser.
Unable to resist, his hands roamed the terrain. His left eye was soft and puffy. His right cheek jagged. His jaw swollen.
Good thing it was the weekend. By Monday ... he stopped himself from thinking about Monday, Tuesday, or any day he and JZ would have to roam the halls together. His stomach rumbled and he forced himself out of bed.
He padded over to the mini-fridge in his room and grabbed an orange juice. The sting from the acid tore into his lip, squelching his appetite immediately.
Okay, so I'm not going out or eating today,
he thought.
It was just as well. He had to finish one final design. He thought he'd have the entire summer to finish it, but the fight with JZ changed the priority of the outfit.
He turned on his iPod, placed the volume as loud as he dared without waking his grandmotherâhe definitely didn't feel like going there with her questionsâand headed to the costume dummy in the far right corner.
He'd always wanted to be able to spend all day just designing and sketching, designing and sketching. But class work, Bay Dra-da fittings and meetings, and kicking it with the clique often kept him from tackling some of his more ambitious ideas.
Today was the day to make good on the dream.
He walked to the work table and laid out some charcoal fabric. The scissor made a whispery
schk, schk
sound as it ate across the material, emphasizing how quiet the room was.
He looked up and scoped out the spacious basement bedroom. The room felt huge without the clique. Images of them hanging out while he worked on his latest project flashed in his mind. Their hyper overtalking both distracted and fueled him.
The room's silence tormented him.
He turned up the music a few notches, willing his mind to focus.
In three more months he'd be staying in the Carter dorms in DC anywayâmight as well get used to something new.
He shut out his thoughts and let his hands take over.