We Are the Goldens (16 page)

“High school boys don’t know how to handle real emotion or connection,” you said. “Just because he hasn’t contacted you doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about you. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s feeling yet. Just wait.”

That was my favorite day. My favorite stop on our tour. Despite the ominous music of the Wave Organ, despite that warning, I saw a happy ending.

Do you remember that day? How it felt to stand out at that rocky tip with me? Us, in isolation. Us, together. We had a good time that day, didn’t we?

I hope, Layla. I pray, even though you know how I feel about religion, that this wasn’t our last good time.

FELIX CALLED ME ON HIS
way back from the airport.

“I know school starts tomorrow, and I know how you need your beauty rest, but wanna sneak out for a donut?”

“The one thing I don’t need is a donut.” Not after all the sweets on our Tour of the Places We Used to Go. “Just come over. I’m at my mom’s.”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Great.”

“I’m just warning you, I look hot. Seriously hot. My homeland agrees with me.”

“I’m bracing myself.”

I didn’t want school to start again, but I was happy to have Felix back. And happy to see Mom. I missed her, and the part of me that lived with her. Not only the way we were together, but my room there, the kitchen, the streets, that
particular patch of city. It was like I’d been favoring one leg over the other—and it was nice to get my balance back.

I’d convinced myself that things would be different when we went back to school. That you could live equally in the Mr. B. world and the regular world. I believed you were happy. That you weren’t ruining your life or making an unspeakably bad mistake. That your secret was one I should keep. Those two timeless winter weeks had cast a spell on me.

Felix did look great. Sun-kissed with shaggier hair and even the slightest hint of man stubble. He smelled like coconut.

He hugged me for a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I was the one who owed the apology. I’d been a brat. Boy-crazy and a little bitchy.

“Please,” I told Felix. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“But I—”

I kissed his cheek, feeling the soft prickle of his first beard. “I’m sorry, Felix. Really sorry.”

We went out to the square of yard behind Mom’s house. We took blankets and sat in the reclining chairs she’d bought for sunbathing—an opportunity that presents itself once every two years. The sky was dark and fogless.

“How’s Angel?”

“The surgery’s next Monday.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Mom broke the silence that followed when she leaned out the window above. “Hot cocoa, anyone?”

“I’ll take a whiskey,” Felix answered.

“Cocoa it is, then.”

She came down carrying a tray with a teapot and two cups. She shot me the evil eye when she saw the blankets I’d taken outside. There were indoor blankets and outdoor blankets. But she didn’t want to scold me in front of Felix. She’s got such a Mom crush on him.

“So,” Felix said. “Tell me everything.”

“I missed you.” This was both true and false at the same time.

“And Sam?”

“What about Sam?”

“Did you miss him too or did you spend your whole break with his tongue down your throat?”

“Jesus, Felix.”

“It’s
Hey-soos
. Don’t go forgetting your Spanish.”

“Sam was away.”

“Where’d he go?”

I couldn’t admit that I didn’t know.

“It doesn’t matter.”

There were so many things I wanted to say to Felix that night, but instead I stretched out on the sun chair in the dark and listened as he tried to talk himself out of being afraid of Angel’s operation. I stroked his arm. I refilled his cup with lukewarm cocoa. I tried not to think about the next morning, walking down the hall and into Sam. It would no longer be just you and me, better without anybody else.

Eventually Felix got up to leave, though I wished he never would. I thought of him that first day of school, standing on
the sidewalk with his ridiculous flat-brimmed baseball cap and eager grin.

“Will you wait for me? Out front?”

He cocked his head. “Of course.”

“Thanks, Felix.”

“De nada.”

I imagined many different ways my reunion with Sam might go, from a high five to a quick hug to a grand embrace where he held me, dipped me back, and kissed me long and deep. Patience, I thought. He’s sorting out his feelings. What I didn’t imagine was a barely perceptible nod. And when I say barely perceptible, I mean that I may have made it up.

I tried to construct an alternate narrative:

Maybe he didn’t see me and that wasn’t a nod in my direction but at someone else behind me
.

Maybe he was waiting for me to give him a high five or quick hug and when I kept walking I hurt his feelings
.

Maybe he saw me but he didn’t say anything because there was a note waiting for me in my locker, about how he missed me and wanted to kiss me again
.

The verdict was in by the end of the day, delivered by Felix: “Sam Fitzpayne is a total dick.”

“What?”

“Sam Fitzpayne is a total dick. A cock. A prick. A wiener. Do I need to make it more clear?”

“That’ll do.” I felt nauseous. I didn’t want to hear what Felix had to say next, although, on some level, I already
knew. Sam had walked by me in the hall. He didn’t cross the cafeteria at lunch to say hello. And there were the glances from random people all day long. I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but I know when people are staring at me.

And you. Before all that happened, before that night in his room and your words of encouragement that followed, you’d warned me. You’d told me there was something about Sam you didn’t trust. A
cruelness
, you’d said. I hated that you understood more about everything than me.

Felix waited for me on a bench across the street from school, working up his list of names for Sam. He waved me over and I took my time crossing at the light.

School had let out. With no soccer or play rehearsal I didn’t feel free, just lost. I’d wanted to find you. Maybe walk the miles home instead of braving the bus. I’d even checked the art room, but the lights were out and the door was locked.

“Should we go get a coffee so I can expound?” He looked up at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Tell you all the ways he is so very penislike?”

I thought about the afternoon we’d spent at the café drinking lattes, and the waiter with the smile he reserved just for you. I didn’t want to go back there. Maybe ever.

“No. Just give it to me straight.” I sat down next to him.

“Sam shot his mouth off about what happened at his party. With you. Upstairs. He told anyone who’d listen.”

Maybe this sounds perverse, but my first reaction was delight. My logic trapped someplace between
He remembered!
and
He’s not embarrassed!
But of course I know there’s talking and there’s
talking
. There’s telling and there’s
telling
.

“The worst part is, it’s like … he doesn’t even realize you’re my best friend. How could he not bother noticing that?” He shook his head. “If he didn’t outweigh me by twenty-five pounds, I’d have punched him in his preternaturally good-looking face.”

I looked down at my feet. My mind in overdrive, like that little spinning rainbow wheel you get on the computer. Searching for some way this would all be okay.

I could feel Felix staring at me.

“You’re not saying anything.”

I shrugged.

“Why did you do it?” he asked quietly. “I mean, I’m not, like, mad, or judging you or anything, but why did you have sex with Sam Fitzpayne?”

“What?”

“You hardly knew him.”

I stood up and starting walking toward the park. Then jogging. Then running.

“Nell!” Felix shouted.

I didn’t turn to see if he was coming after me, though I must have known he would.

I scrambled through the thick ivy to the jogging trail that wound through the woods. I could hear shouting and laughter coming from the playground in the distance. Kids with their flimsy cardboard squares shooting down that goddamn rock slide. The path spilled out onto the back of a baseball diamond. I kept going. Not looking back. I finally lost steam around the soccer fields, hurled my backpack to the ground, and collapsed on the grass. Felix joined me, planted his head between his knees, and tried to catch his breath.

“Meanie. You know I’m out of shape. I’m not a jock like you.”

“You didn’t have to follow me.” I struggled with my breath too. “And I didn’t have sex with Sam.”

He leaned backward into the goal and stretched out his legs. I lay down next to him. The net divided the sky above us into perfect little squares.

“You don’t know how much I want that to be true.”

“It is true, Felix.”

He propped up his head and turned over onto his side, facing me.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Felix stared at me. “I’m going to kill him.”

“That might be a little extreme.” I liked the way I sounded. Nonchalant. Able to crack a joke. Inside, a sick storm blew mercilessly.

“So nothing happened?” he asked. “You were up there for a pretty long time.”

I thought about pressing myself against that cold window. The view of the bridge. The twinkling lights.

“I didn’t say nothing happened. I just said I didn’t have sex with him.”

How did you feel, Layla? When you knew people were talking about you? Staring at you? Whispering your name?

You would say—you did say—that you didn’t care. That you didn’t give a crap. And maybe it’s because what they said about you, what they thought about you as they stared at you in the hall, it was true.

But for me it was all lies. And I cared. I gave a crap. I couldn’t help it.

I guess it’s not fair that this was the moment the vacation spell began to lift. You probably think it’s because of what Sam did to me. That I’m jealous you were loved while I was used—you had real love, I had nothing. Maybe you think I wanted some company in my heap of ruin, but I’d never wish for that.

It’s just that I started to wonder. To look more carefully at the perfect picture you’d painted.

It’s like that quote you parroted at me.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth
.

Your version of what was happening with Mr. B. was your opinion, Layla. Your perspective, one I was able to share for those fleeting weeks, because you are a master at getting me to see things your way. Through your eyes.

But as we reentered the world, I began to do what City Day was supposed to teach me.

I began to think for myself.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS
were hellish.

You probably heard the sobbing I saved for the night, my bedroom door latched. I cried until my eyes felt like leather.

He’s just a boy
, Duncan said.
He can’t be worth all this
.

Parker tried too.
I guarantee he doesn’t even know he’s hurt you. He doesn’t understand his power. That’s the thing about beautiful boys. They don’t know. They don’t understand
.

The Creed brothers never would have done something like this to me. Never.

They looked at each other and shrugged.
We barely knew you
.

They weren’t making me feel any better.

You knocked. “Nell?”

I sat still. The room emptied. I couldn’t even hear my own breath.

“Nell?”

There was no use fighting it. You know how to make me unlock doors.

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“How can you possibly not know?”

“Is this some sort of trick question?”

I climbed back into bed and grabbed hold of my elephant, my last remaining stuffed animal. Cupcake. Honey. Maisy. Rufus. Violet. Bob. Its name and gender had changed many times over the years.

“Sam told everyone,
everyone
, that I had sex with him.”