The Bad Boy and the Tomboy

by Nicole Nwosu

  “Why would I freak out? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Andrew isn’t.”

  “What? What happened?”

  Despite my panic, Jasmine was calm. “You know how Andrew and I didn’t have class last period? We decided to go climbing at that place downtown. It was crazy, the rope slipped, and he fractured his ankle when he landed the wrong way on the mat. Never seen anything like it—those places are usually safe. We’re about to leave the hospital right now. We’re heading to his house.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Hanging up the phone, I stood. “Andrew hurt his ankle. Ced, can you give me a ride to his place?”

  Cedric agreed and before I followed him out of the living room, Sam tapped me with his foot. “Don’t panic. He’ll be okay.” Of course he would be, but after many years of being best friends, Andrew was a person I knew like the back of my hand. A significant portion of Andrew’s injury would bring his concern to one thing: soccer.

  15

  Enter Your Room

  Andrew’s right ankle was covered with a walking boot. He finished telling the rest of the team before practice about how he had broken his ankle during an indoor rock-climbing incident on his date with Jasmine. “I’m happy you’re okay,” I said for the hundredth time since I’d first rushed to his side a few days earlier. “I’m just sad that I won’t have you by my side this year.”

  He playfully punched me on my side. “Don’t get emotional on me now, Anderson.”

  Disappointment fell on Andrew’s face when Jon Ming passed a ball to Jacob. “This sucks,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry. If it’s anything, Coach says you can come to every game of the tournament and be right here with us. It’s a good thing you’re in the team photo—” My words weren’t even helping me much less Andrew. “You might be able to play during outdoor season.”

  “True.” Andrew cursed under his breath. “I wanted to take down Michael.”

  “You and me both,” I said.

  “You still can.”

  Coach’s whistle broke through the chatter in the air and we made our way over with the team to the center of the field, all eyes on Coach. “Andrew is not going to be able to play for a while. However, even with the loss of a strong player we’re going to pull through.” A murmur of agreement went through the rest of the team as Coach continued, “After some discussion, I’d like to announce that we have recruited a new player to our team.”

  Andrew and I exchanged confused looks, our eyes following Coach’s to the person emerging on the field. No way.

  The new player on our team stood beside Coach, clad in familiar athletic wear, clean cleats, and shin pads. He was all ready to practice. Sam inspected every single player on the team with his overanalyzing eyes and when they landed on me, he winked. Idiot. “This is Sam Cahill.”

  As practice started, the boys didn’t say much to Sam, possibly due to their unease about his recent fight. People at school hadn’t stopped talking about it. The shiner around his eye didn’t help.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” We had jogged over to set up for another drill. He was doing well with the drills, and the guys were warming up to him. It was easy for him to read the next move another player was going to make and act quickly with each play.

  Sam shrugged. “Coach asked. I wasn’t sure how you were going to take it and I told him not to tell you. Andrew said it was okay. Besides, it was kind of worth it to see the surprise on your face.”

  I was still shocked as I sat down in the back seat of Caleb’s car after practice. I was used to us messing around with the ball after practice, but then Caleb showed up, and before I knew it, we were all in Caleb’s car to drive to his house.

  Caleb sang terribly at the top of his lungs as we arrived at an apartment building. I followed the guys out of the car, slinging my backpack over my shoulder as we made our way up to Caleb’s floor in the elevator. The apartment was big and really nice, decorated with pictures of Caleb with different people, some of them Sam when he was younger.

  “I was a cute kid,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, what happened?” I joked and he shot me a look.

  “Tia!” Caleb yelled. “We’re home!”

  A short woman appeared from the living room, an apron around her waist and a frown on her face. She looked angry at Caleb, who was grinning at his aunt like a ninny. Tia Maria walked over to her nephew, a towel in her hand—and then she whacked him with it.

  “Ow, ow,” Caleb complained, putting his hands out and grabbing the towel. “What did I do?”

  Tia Maria snatched the towel back, scowling. “How many times have I told you not to yell? My ears are sensitive.”

  Caleb only grinned. “Love you.”

  “Love you too.” She turned to me, tucking the towel into a large pocket of her apron. “You must be the princess Caleb talks about.”

  “I prefer Macy,” I said.

  “She’s a pretty girl.” Caleb’s aunt’s compliment made me blush. “Why is she friends with you two?”

  Caleb put his hands on my shoulders as I laughed, leading me down the hall as he shouted, “We’re taking her away now. Tell us when dinner is ready!”

  “Caleb Romero,” Tia Maria exclaimed. “What have I told you about yelling?”

  As we made our way down the hallway, I saw a painting on the wall: a book with words coming out of the pages, delicately drawn with precision.

  “My cousin Lucas drew that,” Sam said.

  “It’s amazing.”

  “Yeah,” he concurred. “I’m gonna go use the bathroom. Maybe check up on Andrew? Caleb, you’re helping me with that stupid essay.”

  As Sam walked off, Caleb said, “You just want me to write it for you.”

  Caleb brought me to a brown door, a contrast from the white walls.

  “You do realize I’m about to enter your room, right? I’m kind of scared of what I’ll see.”

  Caleb pulled me inside the room. He loved writing and reading, but the number of books he had on his shelves was jaw dropping. His desk was filled with papers. “Working on something?”

  “This is where I have my ideas.” He pointed at a black leather-bound notebook. “I write them out here and start out my story lines.”

  There was writing on the edge of his ceiling. “Those are a few inspirational quotes,” he explained.

  Picture frames littered his desk: one showed a woman in a hospital bed holding a newborn in her arms. “Is that your mom?”

  “Yeah. She died of complications from childbirth a few days after I was born,” he said. “My dad had a heart attack a couple of years later. My sister always said that he never let us know how sad he was after our mom was gone, but then he was just . . . gone.” I’d lost one parent. Caleb had lost both, and barely remembered them. “Isn’t this the part where you give me a hug? Most girls do that when guys tell them their sob stories.”

  I hugged him, his arms wrapping around me too.

  “That’s the hug.”

  At his messy desk, amid all the papers, sat another photograph. Caleb was in midlaugh, standing next to Sam in what looked to be the Cahills’ backyard. However, Sam was in the middle of play fighting with a girl, his eyes bright. The girl’s brown hair blocked her face but I could see the glint of green eyes as she tried to look at the camera.

  The familiar green eyes made me walk toward the picture frame. Caleb followed, “This was taken a while ago.”

  “That’s her? Bethany?”

  “Sam told you about her?” He sounded surprised. “He doesn’t talk about it. No one really brings it up around him.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “I met Beth the day I met Sam,” he explained. “We were all really close. Inseparable. Even though we mostly met up during summertime. When she passed”—he cleared his throat uncomfortably—“it w
as hard to accept.”

  I reached up to squeeze Caleb’s shoulder in comfort when he took a deep breath. I was opening my mouth to speak when Sam entered the room. “Tia’s making food.”

  As if he wasn’t upset, Caleb feigned enthusiasm. “Let’s get started on that essay.”

  “You mean you can get started on that essay.” Sam tapped me on the side. “What do you say, Hazel? Want to watch a movie?” He fetched Caleb’s laptop and the three of us forgot our homework as he searched for a movie, the topic of his sister pushed away.

  “Let me give you some pointers,” Andrew told Sam in the busy cafeteria at lunch on Tuesday afternoon.

  “On football?” Sam questioned.

  “On Macy,” Andrew clarified. “She hates left side even though she’s good at it.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “You are,” Andrew argued. “If she doesn’t have a Pop-Tart for after a game, she’s not motivated. Tell her that one will be provided and I’ll be the one who’ll give it to her because I’m the only person who can calm her down after a win.”

  As Andrew continued to talk to Sam, Austin, on the other side of me, typed rapidly on his phone. “What’s up?” I asked him as everyone at the table fell into their own private conversations.

  “I’m talking to someone.”

  “Talking to—oh.” If I’d been having this conversation a while back, before I even had a boyfriend, I would’ve cringed at the topic of dating, but now I was intrigued by the smile that came to Austin’s face.

  “Yeah, oh,” Austin joked. “I told the twins.”

  “And?”

  “Same reaction as you guys.”

  “We won’t break your trust, Austin,” I assured him. “Never.”

  “I know that.” His eyes snapped up to Stevie. “She’s new to the group. That takes time.” It was understandable. Jon Ming asked him a question about a class and my focus moved to Andrew, who was now engaged in a conversation with a girl who was in our calculus class, Olivia. She was asking him about an assignment we had due in a few days. Jasmine was talking to Caleb about another one of his weird theories but her eyes kept darting over to Olivia, a frown on her face.

  Sam must’ve noticed too—the moment Jasmine excused herself to go to the bathroom he leaned into my ear and whispered, “She’s jealous?”

  I jumped back in surprise—Sam was closer to me than I’d realized. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, bewildered by my racing heartbeat. “I think she is.”

  “She has nothing to worry about,” he assured me, his other hand playing with my camera strap. “Has she seen the way Andrew looks at her?”

  “Jasmine jumps to conclusions sometimes,” I said.

  I was right. She did it whenever we watched a movie, predicting the ending. She did it when she decided that she and Andrew weren’t going to work out before they had even gotten together.

  The thought stayed in my head later that evening, when Cedric was in my room after officially meeting my dad over dinner. The two had hit it off, with Cedric being as polite as he’d ever been. With a quick warning from my dad to keep the door open—which made me turn red instantly—I dragged Cedric up to my room to do the homework we needed to do. I was snacking on a Pop-Tart as he went through his phone, showing me different posts from social media.

  A loud knock came from downstairs. Justin was at the rec center playing basketball with his friends and my dad was most likely in his study. Pulling myself out of Cedric’s arms, I headed downstairs to the door. I opened it to see Jasmine, her braided extensions up in a bun that I’d rarely ever seen her wear. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her cheeks were stained with dried tears.

  Cedric, standing on the stairs behind me, wordlessly went back to my room and came back a few seconds later with his things. “I’ll leave you guys to talk.”

  “Ced, I’m sorry,” Jasmine said roughly.

  “It’s all right.” He turned to me and kissed me briefly. “I’ll call you later.”

  When he headed out, I grabbed Jasmine by the arm, closing the door behind her and immediately pulling her up to my room. “What happened?”

  She lay on my bed. “Sometimes I hate going to school.”

  “You have us—”

  “I know.” She wiped a hand at her eyes. “You guys make it worth it, but there’s so much shit.”

  “What are you talking about?” I sat in front of her, waiting.

  “You and Drew have been friends for long,” she said. “And you’re like siblings with each other and I don’t think you’ll understand what this feels like. I was jealous.”

  “Why?” No one was stupid enough to not see that Andrew was in love with Jasmine with every atom of his body. For her to feel jealous must have been from a misunderstanding, but the upset expression on her face told me otherwise. Jealously over a boy was something I’d never experienced. I never understood why girls would put themselves through trouble for a guy. Nor would I ever understand why they would think they weren’t good enough for them.

  Jasmine let out a huge sigh, putting her hands to her face before taking them off again. “I mean, look at Stevie, she’s pretty and blond. And Olivia? She’s pretty, nice hair, and they’re both—”

  “White. They’re both white.” I realized now what was happening. “Has Beatrice been saying stuff like this to you?”

  For a moment Jasmine didn’t speak. I thought she was going to brush off the topic but then she said, “When I explained to you that Beatrice makes me feel like I don’t belong in Port Meadow, I meant that.”

  “But you do.” I shifted on the bed, placing myself next to her.

  “Sometimes I feel like I don’t,” she admitted. “Even before Beatrice started saying things to me at school. Remember sixth grade? You and Andrew were in the same class and I wasn’t . . .”

  I nodded.

  “I kept my hair in braids like these during the school year so it was rare for me to show my natural hair unless it was summer. I didn’t have braids for about a month, and other kids kept touching my hair. Constantly. Without asking. It almost felt like I was a zoo animal or something. I never told anyone.”

  Her dejected tone made my heart sink and I grabbed her hand as she continued. “And that just reminded me that not only is my hair different from everyone else’s, I’m different. I think I became insecure after a few incidents. Especially about the way I acted around people who weren’t you and Andrew. I got used to hearing micro-aggressive or generally racist comments growing up. Most of the incidents I would report and nothing would happen to the other person.”

  Beatrice’s Oreo comment to Jasmine came to my mind as Jasmine spoke up again. “After meeting the guys and a few other people at Wellington, I saw myself a lot better. I used to tell myself ‘Yeah, so what if I don’t look like everyone? Neither does Jon Ming or Austin and that’s okay. Because I like being myself.’”

  “I like it when you’re yourself too,” I said, and she gave me a small teary-eyed smile.

  “But sometimes Beatrice’s comments make me feel like I really don’t belong anywhere,” she said quietly. “That I’m too black for white people, so she tries to provoke me into a stereotype to give everyone the reaction she wants. And then with the Oreo comment, it’s like she wants to remind me that I’ll never truly fit in. Sometimes her comments are worse. Sometimes I believe her.”

  “I wish she didn’t say things like that to you or make you feel that way,” I murmured, failing to suppress my anger about how one person could make Jasmine feel this. “You don’t deserve that. No one does. Has Beatrice been saying that Andrew should be with a white girl instead?” Her silence confirmed my answer. “Andrew dating someone of a different race is no one’s business. Same for you. Beatrice needs to—”

  I took a breath before my frustration got the best of me. I stopped
talking for a moment, pondering my words before I said, “I hope you know that Andrew is with you for you. Not Olivia. Or Stevie. Or anyone else. The guy loves you. A lot. I mean, he’d sit and watch every single movie you love with you. And you love a lot of weird movies.” Jasmine nodded, a faint smile on her face as she grabbed my laptop and turned on Star Wars.

  Her favorite film usually put her in a good mood. Yet her entire posture was slouchy, her shoulders hunched; a complete one-eighty from the Jasmine I was used to. During a moment of transition in the film she said, “My mom and dad are getting a divorce.” I paused the movie, unable to hold in my gasp at the news. “Dad was having an affair with some woman at work.

  “Drake called me,” she continued. “He’d suspected for a while. I mean, it used to get bad. Dad would throw shit. He could’ve told her that he didn’t love her anymore but instead he . . . I—I can’t face him knowing what he did.”

  “You can stay here tonight if you want.”

  She rested her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes. “Thank you. I mean it.”

  “Anytime,” I whispered to her, watching my best friend fall asleep even as the movie played on.

  16

  Infatuation

  “You coming to watch practice?” Austin asked Stevie the following day after school as we walked down the hall.

  “Cute boys in shorts, who could pass that up?” she said.

  “Who, them?” The team was my second family. Stevie wasn’t exposed to their conversations and antics. “Cute? Gag me.”

  “Which are the cute ones?” Austin asked. “If I’m not an answer—”

  “Austin, you don’t need me to feed your ego,” Stevie said as we passed by Cedric, who was in a conversation with his friends but who waved, telling me he’ll see me later. “Cedric plays rugby, right?”

  “You’re into rugby players?” Austin asked.

  “It’s just a question!” she exclaimed, knowing Austin was teasing her.

  “You’re probably into Cahills,” Austin said.