Lily is showing me photos of her midnight-haired punk boy when Darbs bangs up the bleachers at high speed, skipping every other step. “You guys!” she yells when she’s still a good dozen away. “Hey, you guys!” By the time she reaches us and plops onto a bench, she’s out of breath and has to take a minute before she can talk.
“What’s your guess?” Lily asks me.
Since Darbs looks happy, I go with “Yana?”
“Good one,” says Lily.
Darbs nods and her turquoise hair flops all around her shoulders. “Guess what I found out?”
“She’s a bisexual Christ-hugger like you after all?” Lily says.
“No!” Darbs beams. “She’s a lesbian Christ-hugger!”
I blink at her. “Seriously? After this entire school year of pining? You could have been with her all along?”
Lily whaps her. “Are you guys a thing now?”
Darbs scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “Ew, no!”
Lily and I exchange glances. “Uh…” says Lily.
“I’m dating Ethan,” Darbs says. “But get this, you guys. We prayed together!”
It takes me a second, but then I put it together. Darbs found someone who is more like her than like everyone else at school, someone who embodies two things that other people have a hard time believing can exist within the same person.
“It’s like I’ve found a unicorn,” says Darbs, and she and Lily laugh.
I laugh along, but it’s hollow.
Like me.
Itch is in the stairwell again. Apparently the most recent girl to waltz through the revolving door of his love life is Akemi Endo. She and Itch are in a corner, leaning against the wall, gazing into each other’s eyes. By all appearances, the school could explode around them and they wouldn’t notice, which is strange. Something is different about this girl—about the way Itch is with this girl.
It’s the gazing.
Itch’s tongue isn’t in her mouth. His hands aren’t roving over her body. They aren’t even holding hands. They’re just looking at each other.
There’s a twist in my gut, a painful squeeze that holds and then goes away, leaving me even emptier than before.
I turn the corner into the main lobby as, across the crowded room, Oliver comes down the stairs. I pull back to wait him out, but as I do, sadness washes over me. Sorrow that isn’t for me, but for him.
Oliver’s hair is combed neatly and he’s wearing a suit, but that’s not why I’m sad. It’s because of his tie. His maroon tie. It’s a “power color.”
Oliver is going for an interview at the bank. He’s letting his soul be crushed by the immense weight of his future.
A future in which I am nowhere to be found.
“What?” I look at Shaun, surprised, as he turns the wheel to guide us out of the school parking lot. “When did he do it?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“But it was such a big deal,” I say. “It meant everything. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Shaun shrugs. “It was anticlimactic.”
We pull onto the main road and head toward my house. “Spill,” I command Shaun. “What happened?”
“Kirk sat down at the dinner table for chicken casserole. He said he had something to tell them, and everything got really quiet. His dad put down the serving spoon and his mom clasped her hands together, and they waited. He said that was awful, the waiting part.” Shaun smiles. “Kirk said it all came out of his mouth in a babbling stream, about how someday he wants a house in the suburbs and some kids and a dog, but that he’s not going to want a wife. He’ll want a husband.”
Even though I’ve never met Kirk, I can picture it. The tablecloth, the silverware, the hush of his parents. “What did they say?”
“Kirk thought there’d be some sort of Lutheran hellfire raining down, but it was nothing like that. His parents looked at each other and smiled, and then his mom said, ‘Thanks for telling us, honey.’ His dad said he’d better bring up his grade in math if he wants to afford a house in the suburbs. And that was it.”
My shoulders relax. “They already knew.”
“Yeah.”
“Kinda like if you asked him to prom,” I say. “Not a big deal at all.”
Shaun shakes his head. “It’s been too long. We missed our chance.”
“Have you even mentioned it? Did you tell him the date?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Why do you care? It’s not like you’re going.” Shaun slides a look at me. “Unless maybe you are…?”
“Don’t change the subject. You should at least ask him. You’re not giving him a chance to say yes or no. You’re not giving him a choice.”
Shaun is silent the rest of the drive. When he pulls up in front of my house, he turns to look at me. “Oliver doesn’t have a date.”
“Oliver hates me,” I tell him. “Thanks for the ride.”
Lily and I had plans to go to the mall after school so I could help her find accessories to go with her prom dress. She said she wanted something that straddled the line between cute and ironic, so we were hoping to find skull earrings decorated with rhinestones.
Sadly, I’ll never know what treasures awaited us at our local retailers, because instead, Lily and I are in the shadows underneath the bleachers, and she’s sobbing against me. “Why?” she keeps asking.
“I don’t know.” I stroke her dreadlocks. “It’s not fair.”
Lily’s punk boy broke up with her today…in a text message while she was in chemistry class. A week before prom. It definitely is not fair.
“Did he give an explanation?” I ask when Lily is finally wiping the tears from her face.
“I called him during sixth.” It surprises me, because that’s when she has private violin practice, which she never, ever skips. “I said I had a migraine.”
Apparently that’s what we do when we have boy problems.
“What did he say?”
“That he needs to be free. That Juilliard girls are too entrenched in their prescribed world. That we’re too rigid. Too—” She breaks off, then gets control of herself again. “Too focused. He says he wants anarchy in love. What does that even mean?”
It means he’s an ass. I don’t say it with my mouth, but my face must be expressive enough, because Lily starts crying again. I pat her. After a second, she pops her head up. “Do you think I shouldn’t go to Juilliard?”
“No!”
“But I could play violin somewhere here. Like kids’ birthday parties or something.”
“Lily, you can’t help it if a boy changes you, but you don’t let him change your plans.” I neglect to mention that kids don’t want violinists at their parties. “You are going to Juilliard and you will be an amazing famous violinist, because now you have suffered for your art.” I look into her dark, sad eyes. “That stupid punk-ass boy hurt you and that sucks, but years from now, you will be in a giant stadium, and thousands of people will be shattered by your playing, because your music will be so full of truth and heartbreak and mystery and…What?”
Lily is smiling at me through her tears. “Violinists don’t play in stadiums.”
“Where, then?”
“Concert halls. Symphony spaces. Auditoriums.”
“Then those,” I tell her. “You’ll play in those and you’ll kill it.”
She considers. Nods. “I just want to fast-forward to that part,” she says. “The part where it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“I know,” I tell her. “I do, too.”