“I can’t recall Thom mentioning that.”
“He hasn’t? Maybe he thought it was a secret.”
“I know what’s going on here.”
Mr. Wright put down the transcript.
Now it was my turn to say, “Excuse me?”
“I know what’s going on here,” Mr. Wright said again, more pronounced. “And I don’t like it one bit.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but . . .”
He stood up from his chair. “I will not be ridiculed in my own house. That you should have the presumption to apply to my alma mater and then to sit there and mock me. I know what you are, and I will not stand for it here.”
I wish I could say that I hurled a response right back at him. But mostly, I was stunned. To have such a blast directed at me. To be yelled at.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t figure out what to say.
Then the door opened and Thom said, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”
Suddenly Mr. Wright and I had something in common— disbelief. But I also had faith. In Thom.
“If you say one more word, I’m going to scream,” he said to his father. “I don’t give a shit what you say to me, but you leave Ian out of it, okay? You’re being a total asshole, and that’s not okay.”
Mr. Wright started to yell. But it was empty yelling. Desperate yelling. And while he yelled, Thom came over to me and took my hand. I stood up and together we faced his father. And his father fell silent. And his father began to cry.
As if the world had ended.
I could feel Thom shaking, the tremors of that world exploding. As we stood there. As we watched. As we broke free from limbo.
And I wanted to say, All you need to know about me is that I love your son. And if you get to know your son, you will know what that means.
But the words were no longer mine to say.
Except here. I am writing this to let you know why it is likely that you received a very harsh alumni interview report about me. I’m hoping my campus interview will provide a contrast. (Thom and I will be heading your way next week.) I do not hold it against your university that a person like Mr. Wright should have received such a poor education. I understand those were different times then, and I am glad these are different times now.
It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. It is never easy, I’m sure, to conduct a college interview with your closeted son’s boyfriend. And, I am positive, it is least easy of all to be the boy in the hallway, listening.
But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:
It’s not the easy things that get you to know a person.
Know, and love.
Cat Got Your Tongue?
Sonya Sones
It Feels Just Like I Dreamed It Would
My skin misting all over,
my T-shirt clinging to me,
my breath coming in short, soft gasps,
my heart hip-hopping in my chest,
my hands trembling
and reaching out,
my fingertips buzzing as I take hold of it,
gripping it for the first time,
slipping around it as if it were a trophy—
my very own driver’s license!
Everybody Sing!
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday, dear Bria,
Happy Birthday
to deliriously happy, totally independent,
sixteen-year-old, licensed-driver
me!
Actually, My Real Name Isn’t Bria
It’s Umbria.
And just in case you’re wondering why
I have such a bizarre yet fabulously exotic name
it’s because my parents named me
after a region in Italy.
Which, supposedly,
is the very region in which I was conceived.
So, as you might well imagine,
every day I thank my lucky stars
that I wasn’t conceived
in Oxnard.
My Parents Told Me That It Happened in a Car
Not that I had even the eensy beensiest desire
to know that.
Mom says maybe that’s why learning how to drive
came so easily to me.
But it wasn’t easy trying to figure out
California’s teen driving rules.
I’m still not real sure about it.
I think it goes something like this:
For the first six months after you get your license you can’t drive around with anyone under the age of twenty in the car unless there’s also someone over twenty-five with you, except for your siblings or unless you have special permission to take your friends to school, but only if you get it in writing and even then you have to have it signed by their parents and by your parents and the principal, and probably the pope, too, but after you’ve had your license for six months, it’s okay to drive other teens around without an adult in the car, as long as their midriffs aren’t showing and there are absolutely no poodles present, though for the whole first year I’m pretty sure that it’s a no-no to go cruising between midnight and five A.M., especially during earthquakes, unless a licensed driver over the age of twenty-five or under the age of ninety-seven and three quarters is in the car, too.
And under no circumstances can you ever
drive to an IHOP on a Tuesday.
So That Means
That even if my big brother, Paris
(can you guess where he was conceived?),
wasn’t twenty-one years old
it’d still be okay for me to be the one driving us up
to Aunt Ginger’s place for my birthday luau
(her idea, not mine ),
as long as we could prove that he’s my brother.
And even if a practically blind cop were to pull us over
he’d be able to see that Paris and I are related.
Because we look more like twins
than twins:
same green eyes flecked with gold,
same shoulder-length wavy brown hair,
same annoyingly adorable dimple in left cheek.
Levitating to My Luau in Paris’s Mustang
Shooting through the night
like an arrow on the wind,
we’re zooming past the orchards
with the top down.
Breezing down the road,
listening to rap,
my fingers have to tap,
have to dance to the music of the ride.
The car and I are one,
swaying through the dark,
awaying to the rhythm
of the drums.
I could drive like this for hours,
I could drive us any where,
drive us right up past the moon
to the stars.
Both of Us See It
This bullet of fur,
this tiger-striped shadow, this smudge, this blur
that darts from the dark like the tongue of a snake.
We see it streak out.
But it’s just
too sudden,
too fast,
too—!
I Slam on the Brakes
Slam them so hard that wheels scream, rubber burns.
“Oh, no!” I gasp.
“Did I hit it? I didn’t hit it.
Did I?”
Paris doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t need to.
I already know.
I know.
But I don’t want
to know.
And I sure don’t want to turn around and see it lying in the middle of the road. But I swivel in my seat and there it is—
a mangled mound of tiger-striped fur, one delicate paw extended out of the heap, as though caught in mid-swipe,
a small white moth
fluttering above it
in the bloodred glow of the tail lights
&nb
sp; as if trying to coax the little cat to life,
trying to lure it back
to the chase—
I rest my forehead
on the steering wheel
and cry.
I Guess Paris Must Feel Pretty Sorry for Me
Because he doesn’t even call me Dumbria.
He just reaches over and switches off the ignition, silencing the CD and filling the night with the sudden echoing choir of crickets.
He lets me cry it out for a few minutes. Then he hands me a Kleenex, tousles my hair, and says, “Geez, Bria.
I know you aren’t particularly fond of kitties, but don’t you think you’ve gone just a tad too far this time?”
Now I’m laughing instead of crying. And thinking to myself how much I love my brother.
But then that gets me thinking about the people who probably loved that cat.
And I break down all over again.
Paris Sighs
Then he puts his arm around me and says, “What a rotten thing to have happen your first time out of the box.”
He says that I should try not to take it so hard. That there wasn’t anything I could do. That it really wasn’t my fault.
“Believe me,” he says, totally deadpan. “Even if a good driver had been driving the car, the same thing would have happened.”
It takes me a second to realize that I’ve just been insulted. Then I start laughing again.
He says, “Well, we better get going
or we’ll be late to your birthday luau.”
“Okay,” I say. “But you’re driving us the rest of the way.”
“No. You drive,” he says. “It’s only five more blocks.
You’ve got to get right back on
that Mustang that threw you.”
He’s giving me that look of his,
the one that means,
“Don’t even think about defying me, lowly baby sister.”
So I blow my nose one last time,
switch on the ignition,
shift into drive,
and flee from the scene of the crime.
Two Minutes Later
We pull up in front of Aunt Ginger’s house.
Paris commends me on my courage,
my fortitude,
and my parallel parking.
We head toward the front door,
but before we can even knock,
it sweeps open and Aunt Ginger yanks us inside,
hurling herself into our arms.
It’s like being hugged by an unusually friendly octopus
who just happens to be wearing a hula skirt and
one of those bras made out of coconuts.
(Ouch! Ouch!)
“Aloha, my darlings!” she cries,
flinging a lei over each of our heads.
“I want you to meet Leon,
my fifth and final husband.”
Leon stops strumming his ukulele
and steps forward to pump both our hands.
He’s a Buddha-esque little man dressed only in a pareo,
with a belly as round as his gleaming bald head.
“Which one is the birthday girl?” he says with a grin.
This is apparently Leon’s subtle way
of letting us know that he’s noticed
the length of my brother’s hair.
“I am,” Paris says,
with a seductive bat of his eyelashes.
This totally cracks Leon up.
“You’re going to get along great with my son!” he says.
His son? No one said anything about a son.
I hope he’s not as obnoxious
as her fourth husband’s little brat was. . . .
“Flynn?” Leon calls. “Where are you hiding?
Get on out here, boy.”
Flynn Walks Through the Door
Wait a minute.
This is no little brat.
This is—
Suddenly
I’m staring deep into a pair
of swimming-pool-blue eyes,
these huge, dreamy,
heavy-lidded miracles
fringed with a forest of feathery black lashes.
I’m just standing here dumbstruck,
staring straight into Flynn’s soul,
while the room spins out of focus around us,
and my heart starts dancing the hula.
I’ve Read About This Sort of Thing Happening
This hokey love-at-first-sight thing,
this sparks-flying-fireworks-exploding-
ohmigod-I-think-I’m-about-to-melt-into-a-puddle-
right-here-and-now-
all-over-the-floor thing.
I’ve read about these mushy moments dozens of times.
And I’ve heard about them, too,
from some of my friends.
But mostly from Paris.
And in way more detail than I actually wanted to hear.
Like when he was crushing on Ava.
And then when he swooned for Emily.
And when he swore his undying love for Nicole.
And then there was Monica and Maggie and Brooke.
Although not necessarily in that order.
I’ve read about all this sappy stuff happening.
And I’ve heard about it happening.
But I never thought
it would ever happen
to me.
Or That When It Did
It would be with a boy
named Flynn.
A boy whose hungry eyes
are holding so tight to mine
that they’re making me feel
as if we’re exchanging our genetic codes. . . .
We aren’t speaking.
But we’re saying everything.
It’s as if in this one kaboom of a glance my fate’s been Krazy-Glued to Flynn’s
forever.
I Let My Eyes Drift Down to Flynn’s Lips
“Hau’oli la hanau momona ’umi kumaono,” he says.
“Huh?” I say.
“It’s Hawaiian for ‘Happy Birthday, sweet sixteen.’
I’ve been practicing.”
“Wow . . .” I say, temporarily stunned into monosyllables
by the husky sound of his sexy voice.
But a second later I manage to pull myself together
and purr, “I love it when you talk Hawaiian to me.”
This makes Flynn laugh.
And the sound of it bubbles up
and washes over me like cool spring water,
quenching a thirst I didn’t even know I had.
I notice Flynn’s eyes doing some drifting of their own,
and suddenly I’m very glad that I decided to wear
my slinky little Hawaiian print dress,
the one that clings to all my curves like shrink-wrap.
Then Paris says, “Hey, Flynn.
Can you teach me the Hawaiian words for
‘How about them Lakers?’ ”
And Flynn cracks up, as Leon herds us into the kitchen.
Aunt Ginger Tells Us She’s Been Secretly Yearning
To throw me a luau for my sixteenth birthday,
but that she hadn’t suggested it
because she didn’t want to be intrusive.
So she was happy to help when my mom called to say
that she and my dad had been
“unavoidably detained” in Turkey.
(Thank goodness
their conceiving days
are over.)
Then she slips on an apron and asks my brother
to help her chop the onions and tomatoes
for the lomi lomi salmon.
Leon opens the oven to check on the kalua pig.
He asks Flynn to peel the sweet potatoes.
I offer to set the table, and head out onto the patio.
Lilting Hawaiian music drifts from the speakers.
Strings of lanterns, shaped like ti
ny pineapples,
twinkle on and off, like tiny pineapple-shaped lanterns.
Alone at last,
under a full moon,
with my fantasies of Flynn . . .
I’ll be setting out the plates
when he’ll come up behind me and whisper in my ear,
so near that I’ll feel the tingle of his breath on my skin,
“Do you need any help, Bria?”
But I won’t answer.
I’ll just lean back, pressing my body tightly to his.
He’ll wrap his arms around me,
holding me so close
that I’ll feel his heartbeat’s wild drumming.
Then he’ll start kissing my neck,
my shoulders,
my—
“Do you need any help, Bria?”
I whirl around—
Ohmigod!
It’s Flynn.
I Can Feel My Cheeks Flushing Hibiscus Pink
“Sure,” I say,
trying not to stare at his lips.
But they’re like eye magnets,
so tempting they should be illegal.
“How about if you put out the napkins,” I say,
trying my best to sound nonchalant,
“and I put out the plates?”
“Okay,” he says.
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