“Go get your sister,” she says, squeezing once before letting me go. “It’s almost time to eat.”
I’m finishing up some homework later that night when Gracie gallops down the hallway, grabbing hold of the doorjamb and swinging her gangly body into my room. Her nails are painted a bright, sparkly blue. “There’s a boy here for you,” she reports.
“What?” I had my earbuds jammed into my ears in an attempt to block out the rest of the world entirely. I didn’t even hear the doorbell ring. “Seriously?”
“Yep,” Gracie says, popping the P delightedly. “And he’s hot.”
“Oh god.” I check my hair in the mirror—end-of-the-day greasy, but there’s nothing to be done about it now—then slick on some ChapStick and head downstairs.
Gray is standing near the front door, his hands shoved into the pockets of his oversize sweatpants as he chats gamely to my parents about We Should All Be Feminists, which we’re going to be discussing at book club on Thursday. My mom looks completely enamored. My dad looks completely confused.
“So,” I say brightly. “You’ve met Gray.”
My mom raises her eyebrows. “We have,” she tells me, in a voice that unmistakably communicates the fact that up until this moment I’ve entirely failed to mention him. I didn’t think he was for real, I want to explain to her, although seeing him standing here like a friendly giant in my parents’ tiny foyer, it occurs to me again how wrong I was.
My mom looks like she’d be more than happy to settle in and spend the rest of the evening with Gray watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, but thankfully, my dad lays a hand on her arm.
“We were just about to head upstairs,” he says. “There’s ice cream in the freezer, if you kids are interested.”
“Sorry,” Gray says, making a face once it’s just the two of us in the foyer. “Is this okay? I didn’t mean to get you in trouble or anything like that.”
“Oh no, you’re fine.” I shake my head. “They’re not those kind of parents.” They are, however, the kind of parents who are probably lurking around the corner hoping to accidentally-on-purpose overhear us, so I grab my coat off the overflowing rack, zipping it over my leggings and Bridgewater hoodie and leading Gray out onto the porch.
“So what’s up?” I say, tucking my hands into my pockets and shivering a little; January in Massachusetts is brutal, single-digit temperatures and the kind of shrieking wind that chaps your face and stings the insides of your ears. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, totally.” Gray shrugs. “I just wanted to check on you, I guess. I mean, not that you can’t take care of yourself or anything, but I wanted to make sure you were hanging in there after . . .” He trails off, a little awkwardly. “You know. After.”
I raise my eyebrows and smile. “You could have done that over text,” I point out.
Gray nods. “I could have,” he agrees. “I didn’t want to.”
“Oh no?” I’m grinning for real now, I can’t help it. I’ve never met anyone like him before. “Why not?”
Gray’s fingertips brush the hem of my coat, just lightly. “You know why not.”
“Well. I’m glad you did.” I look down at my fuzzy slippers, suddenly shy. “I’m okay, I guess. I feel a little bit like I just made the biggest mistake of my life, possibly? But other than that, super.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Gray says immediately. “I mean, easy for me to say, right? But I don’t think it’s ever a mistake to tell the truth.”
It is easy for him to say, probably. Still, I appreciate the sentiment.
“Maybe not,” I allow. But then I think of the look on Chloe’s face this morning, the whispers that followed me down the hallway. “It just feels like the truth didn’t mean anything, you know? Like I put myself out there, I opened myself up to all this shit, everybody staring at me and making their judgments, and it didn’t even change anything.”
Gray considers that. “Maybe not,” he says. “But it kind of changed you, right?”
That stops me; I’m quiet for a moment, turning it over in my mind. On one hand, there’s no silver lining here—it’s not like I’m glad this all happened, but I guess it’s true that I’m tougher than I was a couple of months ago. It’s true that I see things differently now.
“Maybe,” I say again, shivering a little in the bitter cold.
“Come here,” Gray says; for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me, but in the end he just wraps me in his arms. We stand there for a long time in the glow of the porch light, the winter wind calling down the empty street.
Twenty-Four
I barely sleep that night, picking half-heartedly at an Eggo on my ride to school the following morning and letting my coffee go cold in the cup holder. I may have been ready to raise hell in the kitchen of my parents’ house last night, but this morning all I want is to run right out the door and disappear into the woods behind the football field. Forget switching classes, I think miserably. At this point I’m ready to try homeschooling for the rest of the year.
Gray finds me in the hallway before third period. “Hey,” he says, reaching for my hand and squeezing. “How you doing?”
“Me?” I paste the world’s fakest smile on my face, then realize it’s just Gray and let it melt into an exaggerated grimace, crossing my eyes and baring my teeth. “I’m super. Why, do I not look super?”
“Oh no, totally super,” Gray says grandly, bumping his shoulder against mine before we head inside and take our seats. I tell myself I’m imagining the low murmurs as I make my way down the aisle. Chloe, meanwhile, will barely look at me.
“Hey,” I try, kicking lightly at her chair from across the aisle; she offers me a smile even faker than the one I tried on Gray a minute ago, then turns back to her bullet journal. I sigh and pull my notebook out of my bag.
Bex isn’t in class by the time the bell rings for the start of the class period. For a second I let myself hope for dorky Mr. Haddock, but a moment later Bex strolls through the door with his reusable coffee cup in hand, like possibly he was lurking outside in the hallway just waiting for the exact right time to make his entrance.
“There he is,” Dean calls, slouched in his chair near the window. “Thought you abandoned us, man.”
Bex flashes the dimple in his cheek, easy. “Me?” he asks, all innocence. “Never.”
He’s wearing dark khakis and one of his signature chambray shirts, a fresh new haircut that makes him look even younger than usual.
“Now, tell me: did you guys manage to actually learn anything yesterday, or not so much?”
He takes attendance and asks if anybody’s read anything good lately, just like always, then opens up a detailed discussion of some Joyce story with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever. The weirdest part is how into it everyone gets—Dean Shepherd offers surprising insight into the story’s symbolism. Chloe raises her hand about a thousand times. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this: it’s like he’s going to make things normal again through sheer force of will, and everybody has decided to go along with it. It makes me feel more than a little crazy. More than that though, I’m furious—the kind of anger that could light fires and power cities, the kind that laughs at the limits of my nice-girl self-control. Why doesn’t anybody care about what happened? I want to shriek, loud enough to rattle the windows. Why doesn’t anybody care about me?
I scribble in the margins of my notebook and pray he doesn’t call on me to make some kind of point about how fine everything is between us. It feels like years before the end of the period.
“All right, that’s it for today,” he says as the bell rings. “Marin, can you stay after for a sec? Yeah, yeah,” he says, shaking his head at the assorted snorts and snickers from the back of the room. “Get out of here, the rest of you animals.”
I startle at that, gaping at Bex as everyone files out of the classroom—everyone, that is, except Gray, who leans against the doorjamb, backpack slung over one broad shoulder l
ike he’s waiting for the public bus.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my gaze darting from him to Bex and back again.
“I’m gonna stay,” he announces.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “Go.”
Gray shakes his head. He’s taller than Bex, and broader; he fills almost the whole doorway. “Nah, I’m good here.”
I know he means well, but it feels like he’s peeing a circle around me.
“Go,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “Gray, seriously.”
Gray goes, but not before shooting Bex a look that could take the bark right off a tree. “See you at lunch, Marin,” he says.
Bex watches him go for a moment before turning back to me. “Well!” he says, faux-brightly, and there’s that sheepish smile again. “I guess we know where I stand with your friend Gray.”
I take a step backward; the backs of my legs bump awkwardly against a desk. “He’s just—”
“I’m kidding,” Bex says, holding both hands up. “It was a joke.” Then he makes a face.
“Okay,” he says, perching on the edge of his desk, “Marin. Can we just . . . reset?”
“Reset?” I repeat dumbly. That . . . is not what I was expecting him to say. “Like . . . between us?”
“Yeah,” Bex says. He picks a rubber band up off his desk, stretching it between his thumbs. “Listen, I’m sorry I came down so hard on you about that paper.”
Wait, what?
“It wasn’t about the paper,” I blurt, faintly horrified. Holy shit, is that what he thinks? “I mean, I didn’t go to Mr. DioGuardi just because—”
“No, no, no, of course not,” Bex says. He’s still fidgeting with the rubber band. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
Then what are you saying? I want to ask, but even as I have the thought it feels extremely unwise to argue. I think of the way everyone’s been staring at me since yesterday morning. I think of Mr. DioGuardi and maybe you were confused.
“Okay,” I say finally, edging toward the doorway. My heart is thudding. “Yeah. Um. A reset would be great.”
“Good,” Bex says, finally dropping the rubber band back into a jar on the desk and getting to his feet. “Glad to hear it.”
“Okay,” I say again. “Um. Thanks.”
“No problem,” he says, with a brisk, businesslike nod. “Have a good day.”
I pull my backpack up on my shoulder and book it out of Bex’s classroom. Gray’s leaning cross-ankled against a bank of lockers across the hall.
“How’d it go?” he asks, standing upright and reaching for my hand.
I shrug, weirdly reluctant to talk about it. “Fine?”
“Fine like he’s going to move to Saskatchewan and never talk to you again?”
“No, fine like . . .” I shake my head, fighting a flash of annoyance. I know he’s just trying to be supportive, but I need a second to myself to try to figure out what just happened. “Forget it.”
“No, hey, talk to me.” Gray puts a hand on my arm, but I shrug him off, harder than I mean to. He takes a step back, hands up.
“Sorry.” I feel like a shaken-up soda bottle, like if anyone even looks at me wrong I might explode in every direction. “I think I just need some air.”
“Marin—” Gray frowns. “You’re not coming to lunch?”
“Not hungry,” I say. “I’ll see you later, okay?” I don’t wait for him to answer as I head down the hallway.
I’m so focused on getting away from him—on getting away from everyone—that I’ve made it almost all the way to the far end of the building before I realize I have no idea where I’m actually headed. It feels like there’s nowhere to hide. Two months ago I would have hightailed it directly to the newspaper room, flung myself down on the couch—and complained at great length to Bex himself, probably. It’s grossly surprising to realize I miss him—or at least, I miss the person I thought he was. All at once I’m furious he’s taken that from me too.
Finally I make my way to the bio lab, where Ms. Klein is sitting at her desk grading papers and eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon.
“Hey, Marin,” she says, surprise flickering briefly over her features. “You okay?”
“Yep!” I say. “I just, um—” I break off, trying to come up with some kind of plausible book-club-related excuse for being in here and coming up empty.
Ms. Klein doesn’t seem to need one: “Do you want to talk?” she asks quietly, putting down her pen. “About . . . what everyone is talking about?”
“Um,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. God, I can’t believe even Ms. Klein knows. “Not really. Can I just, like, hang out in here for a bit?”
Ms. Klein lifts her chin in the direction of the lab benches. “Sure thing,” she says, and her voice is very even. “Have a seat.”
Twenty-Five
Weekend afternoons are notoriously slow at Niko’s if there isn’t a bridal shower or a christening booked in the sunroom, which is bad news for tips but good news in that it’ll give me four long, boring hours’ worth of chances to try to smooth things over with Chloe. We’ve been avoiding each other since we got back from break—or, more to the point, Chloe’s been avoiding me. On the rare occasions I’ve made it into the cafeteria, she’s been eating with some girls from the drama club. We’ve been putting the next issue of the Beacon together entirely via a string of extremely tense, polite emails.
When I get to the restaurant though, I find Chloe’s monosyllabic cousin Rosie rolling silverware at the wait station instead, chunky rings on every one of her fingers and a diamond stud glittering in her nose.
“She changed up her schedule,” Steve explains when I ask about it, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Some new club she’s in.”
I sincerely doubt that—after all, it’s Saturday—but it’s not like I’m about to argue with her dad of all people. I shuffle my way through my shift, then swing by Sunrise with two plastic clamshells of baklava tucked under my arm. I drop one with Camille at the nursing station and bring the other into Gram’s room, where we sit on the love seat with the window cracked to let a tiny bit of cold, fresh air in, brushing flakes of puff pastry off our laps.
“Oh, you know what, Marin?” she says suddenly, getting up off the sofa and heading for the closet, surprisingly spry in her cardigan and khakis. “I’ve got something for you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You do?”
“I do!” She stands on her tiptoes and rummages along the top shelves for a moment; when she turns around she’s holding a fabric-covered storage box, the kind you buy at craft supply stores. We must have moved a hundred of them from her house in Brockton, full of old papers and mementos and slightly creepy locks of hair from when my mom and uncles were little kids. When she brings this one back to the love seat and pulls the top off though, I see it’s full of old photos—and not the ones from the seventies that I’m used to seeing, my mom with pigtails riding her bike and my uncles’ hair curling down over their collars. These are older: my grandpa at his high school graduation, looking grave and serious even as a teenager. The narrow brick apartment building in the North End where my grandma grew up. And—
“Is that you?” I ask, grabbing a faded photo out of the pile and holding it up to get a better look.
“Damn right it’s me,” Gram says with a laugh. Her shiny brown hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it. She’s standing in a crowd in a leafy green park, dressed in bell-bottoms and huge sunglasses and a sleeveless white T-shirt, a clunky beaded necklace nestled in the deep V of the collar. She looks ferocious, her arms flung in the air and her mouth opened in a howl.
“What is— I mean, what are you—” I break off, not even sure which question to start with. “Is this in the city?” I finally ask.
She nods. “Right on Boston Common,” she says. “I took the bus in with a bunch of girlfriends for a civil rights demonstration. Your grandfather almost lost his mind.”
“He didn’t want you to protest?” I ask, ey
ebrows raised.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Gram takes the picture from my hand, gazes at it appraisingly. “But he was worried about me, I think.”
“Well, if this was when you got arrested, I guess he was right to be.”
Gram waves a hand. “Oh, please,” she says with a smirk. “First of all, this wasn’t the protest where I got arrested. Second of all, maybe worried isn’t the right way to put it. We were coming from different places, that’s all. He didn’t always understand why certain things were important to me, or why I reacted to things the way I did.” She smiles at the picture, almost to herself. “He tried though. And that was the most important thing.”
I think of Gray then. He and I haven’t talked much either, the last couple of days, and I feel crummy about the way we left things outside Bex’s classroom. I know he just wanted to take care of me, back in Bex’s classroom. I didn’t know how to explain how important it felt for me to take care of myself.
I’m about to ask Gram what she thinks I should do about him when Camille knocks on the door, poking her head in. “That baklava is delicious,” she reports with a smile. “How are you ladies doing in here?”
“We’re great,” Gram says, beaming, the box of photos still balanced in her narrow lap. “My daughter is visiting.”
“Granddaughter,” I remind her gently.
“Of course,” Gram says. “My granddaughter. Ah . . .” She trails off then, a flash of panic skittering across her face; I can see she’s lost her train of thought.
“Marin,” I say, trying to keep my voice casual. She’s never forgotten my name before. It’s a fluke, that’s all. “But Camille and I know each other already, remember?”
“We’re old friends,” Camille says. She’s smiling, but her tone is slightly wary, her gaze flicking from me to Gram and back again. “You girls just yell if you need me, okay?”
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