“Fine,” Jamison says. “If you insist, I’ll go.”
“So, what should I tell Michelle?” Sam asks.
“Tell her I have my eye on someone else. It wouldn’t be fair to string her along.”
“Such a gentleman. Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who’s the special person?”
Jamison shakes his head. “It’s just an excuse. I’m not here for a girlfriend. I don’t have time for that drama.”
One more second of this and I’ll burst into tears. Before I can hear another word, I slink out of the library, Sam and Jamison none the wiser.
13
SHE’S NOT A FARM ANIMAL
Lori sits across from me, tucked behind her desk. Rain slides down her office window in long, depressing streaks. It rarely rains in Alder Creek, but every now and then, heavy clouds will descend over the mountains and settle on the valley, encasing the town in fog and rain. The present weather has brought a chill that I can’t shake.
“So,” she says.
“So . . .” I echo.
“Did you peruse the college information I gave you?”
“Not yet. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. You still have time. Most applications aren’t due until mid-January.”
“I guess it’s a good thing it’s only October, then,” I say.
Homecoming is this weekend. River was nominated for the sophomore homecoming court. As traditional high school popularity goes, River’s at the top of his game, and yet he’s still acting like a complete asshole. It’s worse when he’s hungover, which has been more frequent lately. He’s starting to drink like Ellis. Like he’s numbing pain with booze. But what pain? It can’t all be because of Chris.
“What’s on your mind, Amoris?” Lori asks, her black glasses propped on the top of her head.
“I’ve been thinking about your last-name theory.”
“What specifically about it?”
It’s what Sam said to Jamison that’s really eating at me. She’s never had her perspective challenged. It’s only been reinforced by everything she’s ever seen and everything she’s ever learned. But I didn’t think that what I was learning was hurtful. Rayne would never raise a child like that. My life has been a collage of peace, love, and happiness. How is that wrong? Aren’t Rayne’s footsteps the right kind to follow? And yet, I’ve always just accepted that perspective as right. I’ve accepted her path, instead of trusting myself to find my own way.
“I’m worried I’ve been a follower my whole life,” I confess. “And I’m only now realizing maybe that’s not such a good thing.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Lori says. “You’ve been brainwashed since you were in kindergarten. Maybe even before that. We all have.”
“So, I’m just a cog in some messed-up societal system?”
Lori laughs. “Yeah, kind of. Capitalism doesn’t thrive on unique thinkers. It thrives on factory workers. In a way, our public educational system is rigged. It always has been.”
“Why are you here if you don’t believe in it?” I ask.
Lori leans across her desk and whispers, “To fuck with the system. Someone has to.”
“So is that the answer? Just step out of line and start walking in a different direction. You make it sound easy.”
Lori turns serious. “It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, Amoris. People don’t like deserters. Especially people who benefit from the system, because the more people who refuse to live by the rules, the more the system crumbles. You have to decide how you want to live. Lines are easy to follow. They’re comforting. It’s why most people stay where they are.”
“But there’s a cost,” I say, thinking of Jamison. A human cost. “Some days, I wish I was more like you.”
Lori smiles. “What you should wish is to be more like you.”
More like me? Who am I, if not a cog in the machine? It’s all I’ve ever known.
“Who am I?” I ask.
“Keep looking. You’ll find her.”
“I hope you’re right,” I say. “I’ll look at the college brochures, but I can’t promise anything.”
“You can come to my office anytime, Amoris,” Lori says. “That’s what I’m here for. But you don’t have to promise me anything. Make that promise to yourself.”
Ellis is already halfway to plastered when we get to the homecoming dance. Beckett hosted a preparty with booze and weed, because God forbid any of us go to the dance sober. Maybe we feel the inclination to get drunk because, without knowing it, we’ve been programmed, set on a path we’re desperately searching for a way out of, an escape from the inevitable. Except the morning always comes around, and the hangover reminds us of the cost of stepping out of line.
The dance is a formality. A photo opportunity for parents to get pictures of their teenagers all dressed up. For us to look like innocent, untarnished adolescents with good morals and prude intentions. A parental Facebook moment. And it’s all a lie. The dance is an intermission between pre- and postparties, unless you’re a freshman. It’s foreplay on a grand scale. The night will inevitably end messy, dresses and suits balled up on the floor of someone’s bedroom, left to wrinkle.
Ellis dances into the gym, Beckett on her arm, the two of them a pristine couple to be envied. Tucker is with me. For a fake date, he plays the part well. He’s attentive and complimentary. In truth, it feels quite nice to have a boy dote on me. He even brought me a corsage. And dressed in a blue collared shirt, khaki pants, and cowboy boots, Tucker looks handsome. I can tell Sam thinks the same by the way he’s eyed Tucker like candy all night.
And while Tucker’s appearance is nice to observe, I have to keep telling myself to focus on my date. My gaze just wouldn’t stop drifting to Jamison at the preparty. Still dateless, he’s dressed in fitted dark-gray pants, a white, crisp button-down, and a clean pair of black Vans. It’s impossible not to notice him, and it’s excruciating at the same time. But I’ve barely been able to gawk at him since we got to the school. He and Sam disappeared before we made it out on the dance floor.
“One hour,” Ellis says. “And then we’re out of here. I don’t want my buzz wearing off.”
She and Beckett disappear on the dance floor, swallowed by people. I gesture toward the bleachers.
“Oh, thank God,” Tucker says. “I can’t dance in front of these people.”
“Are you that bad?”
“No, I’m that gay. One Justin Timberlake song and the whole place would know.”
I laugh as we sit down on the bleachers. It’s not three songs into the dance when Tucker looks at me and says, “Is Jamison gay?”
“What?”
“Just be honest with me, do I have competition? I swear all I hear about is Jamison this and Jamison that. I’m worried.” There’s real panic in Tucker’s voice. I put my hand on his thigh.
“You don’t need to worry. Jamison isn’t gay.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Tucker relaxes, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. I can see the defined outline of his muscles through his shirt. The girls at his school must be all over him.
“I’m worried Sam is getting tired of this,” he admits. “I don’t blame him. Lying is exhausting.”
“Is it really that bad?” I ask. “You can’t come out?”
“I’d lose everything,” Tucker sighs. “No sports. No friends. I don’t even know what my parents would do. They’d probably move just to get away from the shame, which means I wouldn’t just be ruining my life, but theirs, too. My family’s lived in Eaton Falls for generations. Our land is everything to them. I couldn’t do that. Not now. Not when I’m so exposed. I can wait. College isn’t far off. Next year at this time, my life will be different. I’ll be on my own. My parents can make up some story as to why I never come home. No one in town needs to know, and we’ll all be safe.”
“But in that scenario, you’re still losing your home, your family. Doe
sn’t that make you sad?”
“Is it really my home or family if I’m not accepted as I am?” he asks. “Home should be a place where you feel safe. Where you’re accepted just as you are. I’m living in the illusion of home right now, but the truth is, Sam is my home.”
Tucker may have just described love perfectly, or at least what I think love is meant to be. “That’s beautiful,” I say.
Tucker stands and holds out his hand. “Enough moping. Come on. Let’s dance.”
“What about your bodacious gay moves?”
“It’s a slow song,” Tucker says. “I’ll grab your ass. No one will know.”
Tucker spins me out onto the dance floor and then pulls me in close, his chest coming to rest against mine. It feels good to be in someone’s arms again, even if it is my gay best friend’s boyfriend.
“You’re right. You are a good dancer,” I say as Tucker leads me around the floor, his hand pressed to the small of my back. “Don’t forget the ass grab. Make it look real.”
“Or I could just kiss you and make it really obvious.”
Tucker’s lips are tempting, all pink and full. My body feels abandoned. I went from kissing Zach nearly every day to nothing. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t craving some intimacy.
“It’s an interesting offer,” I say. “But your boyfriend just walked back into the gym.”
Jamison and Sam emerge through the crowd. When Tucker lets me go, I immediately miss the warm feeling of his body next to mine.
“Tuck,” Sam says seriously when they reach us. “I want to show you something.”
“This better be good,” Tucker says. “I was dancing with a really hot chick. I think she’s into me.”
“Woman,” Jamison corrects. “She’s not a farm animal.”
“Sorry. An intelligent, strong, hot woman.”
“I’ll accept that,” I say.
“I’ll keep an eye on your date,” Jamison offers.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I counter.
“As if you’d listen to me even if you did,” Jamison says.
“I’ll go, but only if you promise to dance with her,” Tucker says.
Jamison nods. “I think I can manage that.”
Tucker and Sam discreetly walk away, and I swear Tucker winks at me. Jamison and I stand awkwardly next to each other. How did this happen? I went from a kid who could finish Jamison’s thoughts to a tongue-tied teenager.
“Where did you and Sam go?” I ask.
“Nowhere important. It’s nothing.” I want to strangle his vague answer. But when I move to return to the bleachers, Jamison stops me. “I promised Tucker I’d dance with you.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Jay. I don’t want a pity dance.”
“Who said anything about pity?”
The DJ puts on another slow song. Jamison wraps himself around me. I feel consumed by him, my head on his chest, his arms pulling me into his strong frame. The heat is back, but this time more intense. An all-encompassing blaze that reaches deep into my skin and bones. As much as I want to deny it, force it down, ignore it—I can’t. The pull is there, ever present, no matter the awkwardness.
“What’s going on?” Jamison asks. My heart pounds so heavily in my chest that I worry he can feel it drubbing against him.
I put some space between us. “Nothing.”
“Are we really gonna keep doing this?” he asks.
“Doing what?” But I know what Jamison means. Silence can be so destructive. If I don’t say something, he’s going to leave me on the dance floor, walk away frustrated, and keep his secrets. And it will be my fault. I will have let it happen because I wasn’t strong enough to stop it. Just like I wasn’t strong enough three years ago.
“You were right,” I blurt out. “I should have talked to River. I chose my brother over Sam, and it was wrong. I feel terrible about it. If it was you . . .” I step farther back, running my hands through my hair. “Just the thought makes me sick.”
“People have said it before,” Jamison says. “And they’ll say it again.”
“People are awful, and I hate them sometimes.”
“Hate doesn’t help, Amoris.”
“Look, you don’t need to do this. I know you’re only here because Sam coerced you into coming.” I attempt to step back again, but Jamison takes me in his arms.
“Do you live in my head?” Jamison asks rhetorically. “Then don’t tell me what I’m thinking.”
We dance quietly.
“So what does help?” I whisper. “If anger doesn’t work?”
He whispers back, “Merciless honesty.”
The song lingers on as those two words hang between us. Jamison has said it perfectly. It’s the writer in him, the wordsmith, the observer. Because the honesty that creates the most change is always merciless. And that’s exactly why I’m afraid of it.
When the song ends, Jamison takes my hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“I need to show you something.”
He leads me down the dark, empty hallway and up the staircase to the second floor. In the quiet, it feels like we’re trespassing. Snooping in a place we shouldn’t.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
Jamison faces me toward the mural on the wall. “Tell me what you see.”
I stare at the familiar mural, wondering if this is what Sam and Jamison were talking about in the library. But why? What’s so threatening about this mural? There must be something or Jamison wouldn’t have brought me here. With each passing second that I have no answer, I worry I’m disappointing him. He and Sam see this mural differently than I do. They see something important.
“Really look at it, Amoris,” he whispers.
And then, like one of those magic-eye pictures where you stare at it so long that your eyes are blurred and hurting, suddenly the real figure appears.
Then it’s all I can see.
“Holy shit, Jay.”
“Yeah. Holy shit is right.”
In the middle of the mural, painted over the waves of an American flag, is a slave ship.
14
ALMOST
Neither of us moves. We just stand there, facing the mural.
“You’ve known this was here for months,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s not about you, Amoris.”
“But you told Sam.”
Jamison doesn’t deny it. “He understands.”
“Because he’s not White,” I state flatly.
“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Sam’s an artist. He sees the world . . .”
“Like you,” I say. “Because you’re an artist, too.”
“Yeah . . . something like that.”
What he won’t say is that I don’t see the world like they do. I just copy and play other people’s songs. I don’t create my own.
But that’s not fair. He didn’t give me a chance to understand.
“Maybe it’s not what we think it is, Jay. Maybe it’s just a ship. I mean, we didn’t paint it. Who knows what the artist meant?” Jamison tenses, and I know I’ve made yet another mistake.
“I’m not concerned with what the artist intended, Amoris. When I look at this, I see a slave ship. A celebrated slave ship. Like we should be proud of this piece of American history. That’s fucked up.”
“OK, you’re right. It’s totally messed up,” I say, thinking out loud. “Then we need to take action. Get the school to paint over it, maybe.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“But maybe it is, Jay. You’re so quick to doubt.”
“See, Amoris, this is what I’m trying to explain to you. The difference between you and me. You feel safe reporting something like this. But there are always consequences for people who look like me. It’s the same thing that just happened with Tucker. He felt safe calling you a chick. But do you like being called a chick?”
“You know that was meaningless.”
“But let’s say it was Beckett,” Jamison asks. “Would you want Beckett calling you a chick?”
“No,” I answer.
“Would you ever call him out on it?”
“Probably not, because he’d say he was trying to give me a compliment, and he’d call me an overly sensitive bitch.”
“Right,” Jamison says. “Being a woman makes you vulnerable in that situation. It’s the same with being Black in this situation. And I can’t afford that noise right now.”
“But you’re always separating people by race, Jay. I don’t see how that helps anything. We’re all human beings.”
“That’s bullshit, Amoris, and you know it. What if men said that to women? When people see me, they don’t see a man. They see a Black man. And that perception shapes my entire life, just like being a woman shapes yours. Asking me to pretend otherwise only protects racists.”
I hate that word. It’s ugly. And Jamison says it like they’re all around us. But I can’t believe that. That’s not the world I live in.
“What do you want to do, then?” I ask.
“Truthfully?”
“Yes, Jay.”
“I want to walk down the street and not get looked at suspiciously. I want to use my body without worrying that someone will think I’m dangerous. I want to pretend that this piece-of-shit mural doesn’t exist. That it hasn’t sat on this wall for God knows how many fucking years and no one noticed. And I want to act like a teenager for once, instead of constantly being on guard. I want to have fun without worrying about the consequences.”
“We can have fun,” I say, taking his hand in mine. Even his skin feels tense. “What should we do? Go streaking? Toilet paper Beckett’s house? Egg my brother?”
That at least makes Jamison smile, and the tension eases slightly. “Your suggestions are stereotypically juvenile.”
“You said you want to act like a teenager. Technically, we’re still juvenile for a few more months. We should take advantage of it. I bet we could steal some toilet paper from the bathrooms.” I attempt to pull him toward the stairs, but Jamison resists.
“How about we start with something that won’t potentially get us arrested.” He takes me by the waist, right here, with only the faint sound of music echoing down the hallway. His hand slides up my back, pulling me to him.
Only the Pretty Lies Page 10