“So you’re not mad at me?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“I haven’t done anything around the house for the last two weeks,” I pointed out. She had to have been frustrated at this, at least as frustrated as I was with myself—I did my own laundry, and I was on my last pair of underwear.
“True,” she said, her smile broadening. “You seemed so down that I thought I’d give you a break. But now that you’ve cheered up a little, you can join me in spending the rest of the day doing some good old-fashioned spring cleaning.” She picked up the sandwich I had made, inspecting the clumsy stack of cheese and vegetables. “After lunch, of course. Or brunch, rather.”
“Can I tell you something, Oma?”
“Of course. Anything.”
She meant it, and I could tell.
“I’m bisexual.” I said it before I could be afraid.
She didn’t look away. “We love who we love,” she said after a long pause. “Thank you for telling me.”
I looked out at the river, glowing blue in the sweet spring light, and felt so grateful for her that I couldn’t say anything.
In the periphery of my vision, Ellie sniffed my plate with great hope, and before I could reach down to stop her, her nose slipped over the edge and her mouth opened, but the plate had been balanced precariously, and the weight of her snout flipped it over, showering her head in the disassembled remains of my sandwich. She looked utterly bewildered, a slice of Swiss cheese atop her head and some lettuce hanging from the corner of her mouth, and Oma and I couldn’t stop laughing.
* * *
Claire and Kitty always walked to class together in the morning, always stopped at Kitty’s locker before Claire’s, and always left themselves at least ten minutes for Claire to sort through her things—inevitably she had lost notes or a textbook—before class. On Monday, I got to Claire’s locker fifteen minutes before the first bell, sweating and breathless after the long walk from Harold’s to school. I’d had to wake up before sunrise, but it was worth it. At least I hoped it was. I stood there holding the brown paper bag, leaning against the lockers, until they walked up.
They were talking until they saw me, and then they stopped, Kitty in the middle of her sentence. Claire looked surprised, Kitty wary.
I stepped forward and held out the bag. “Pancakes for you.” I nodded to Claire. “And waffles for you.” I looked at Kitty. Then I looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry I said what I said. You’re not boring. You’re the most interesting people I know. And I’m sorry I ignored you for two weeks. I still went to your piano recital, Claire. You were fucking incredible. I just didn’t—” I took a breath. This was getting away from me. “Sorry. And Jess says she’s sorry, too, and I’m also sorry if Jess was shitty to you, I honestly couldn’t tell if she was actually mean or—”
“June,” Kitty interrupted. I chanced a look at her but couldn’t read her expression. “Are you okay?”
“I am now. I really am sorry. I just needed—” I remembered my conversation with Oma. “Some space. To figure things out. But I’ve done a lot of thinking, and you two are my best friends. I never should have called you boring or shut you out. Every day I spent not talking to you was a mistake.”
“You are forgiven,” Claire said. She smiled, not the big, rambunctious grin I was used to, but something smaller.
“We were really worried,” Kitty said softly. “And hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Well, thanks. I really appreciate it. And I forgive you.” Kitty took the bag from me. “We’re still friends.”
“Me too,” said Claire. “Pancakes help.”
“Yeah, seriously.” Kitty glanced at her phone. “Shit, we only have eight minutes to eat.”
They sat down under their lockers, and after hesitating a moment, I sat down next to them as they pulled all the boxes out of the bag. “Ooh, coffee too,” Claire said, grabbing the drink tray. She looked at the two cups, then at me. “None for you? Did you drink it on the way over here?”
I shook my head. “As penance.”
“You idiot,” Kitty said. “Split mine with me.”
I leaned against the wall and took what they offered to me, a sip of coffee, a bite of waffle that, in spite of all my best efforts, had gone a bit cold. They told me what I had missed in my time alone, and I tried my best to explain the conversation with Jess, and I listened to their laughter. I could have listened to it all day. It was like my favorite song.
* * *
And then there was one person left.
All day Sunday as I vacuumed and dusted, I thought of ways to apologize to Sam. I thought of showing up at his house with a gift of a new pack of film or meeting him near his school Monday and inviting him on a walk. But then I remembered I had never been to his house, and I didn’t know which of the many exits he took from school. I imagined more elaborate ideas, like taking a picture of the words I’m sorry, making a print of the picture, and leaving it at his normal seat in photo class on Tuesday. But again, when I thought about the logistics, it didn’t seem like a great idea. In fact, the more I thought about it, it seemed like the kind of thing a serial killer might do.
Instead, on Monday night, I called him. Maybe it would’ve been braver to talk in person after class on Tuesday, but I couldn’t wait. I sat outside on the balcony, my legs hanging off the edge, and I bit my lip as I listened to the phone ring. Once; I leaned my head against the railing. Twice; the metal was cool and hard, iron and rust. Three times; below, the condo had finally opened the pool, and the water shone like a sapphire in the moonlight. Four times; the lights in students’ dorm rooms flickered off and on. He wasn’t going to pick up.
The fifth ring was cut short. His voice, wary: “Hello?”
I sat up straight. “Hi.”
“What’s up? Do you…” He cleared his throat, and in the background, something rustled. “Do you need notes for the photo quiz or something?”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” I said.
“Oh.”
This was the third apology I had made in the last forty-eight hours, and somehow it still wasn’t easy. “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” I said. “For not talking to you these past few weeks. And not responding to your texts. And…for what happened in the darkroom. I was being a bad friend.”
“No,” he said, his voice low and sad. “I’m sorry. In the darkroom, I misread the situation. I shouldn’t have done that. And I shouldn’t have cursed at you. That was really shitty of me.”
“I forgive you,” I said. “You didn’t exactly misread anything. I just… I was really confused. But I’m better now, I think.”
“Well, I was a huge asshole, so that’s kind of you,” he said. He cleared his throat again. “If that’s what upset you so much, I understand. But is there anything else? Claire told me you kind of blew up at them. Before…the darkroom.”
I grimaced. “Yeah. I apologized today.”
“Claire also told me that. Apparently she and Kitty got breakfast breads. It made me think maybe buying you pancakes would get me back into your good graces.”
I laughed. “Well, I was actually trying to apologize to you, so maybe you can buy me pancakes and I can get you breakfast in return. We’ll have the best brunch Harold’s has to offer.”
“Deal.” I could hear the grin in the word, but then he went quiet. “So, if it wasn’t the kiss, what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want, but not talking to you for so long was weird. And bad.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I picked at the rust on the railing; a flake came off and floated five stories down to the ground.
“I don’t mean to make you feel worse. I just don’t get it. I could tell it had something to do with Jess, but…”
This was the moment. I had to choose. It would be the easiest thing in the
world to tell him that Jess hadn’t gotten along with him, Claire, and Kitty and that this clash had made me doubt the depth and importance of my new friendships. It was true, which made it even easier. But it wasn’t the only truth, and that meant it wasn’t enough.
“Jess is my best friend,” I said slowly. “And she’s really different from y’all. I was worried you wouldn’t get along, and as it turned out…things didn’t blow up, but I could tell that she didn’t really fit in. And she could tell, too.
“But over the past few months, I’ve kind of been realizing that I was feeling a lot more for her than you’re supposed to feel for your best friend.”
Silence. I listened hard to hear his breathing, anything, any reaction, but there was nothing.
“I wanted it to be this perfect weekend. With everyone just being absolutely happy together. And then she got mad at me for…well, for nothing, really. We didn’t talk after she left,” I finished, “until yesterday.”
“Did she apologize?”
I was too nervous to distinguish his tone, and I nodded even though he couldn’t see. “Yeah. She knew she was being awful. She’s got her own insecurities.”
“Did you tell her…how you feel?”
This time, I could hear him clearly. The easy smile that he’d given me earlier was gone. He was guarded again, cautious, maybe—was I imagining it?—a little sad.
“No.”
He murmured something, and I pressed the phone closer to my ear, feeling the heat of it. “What?”
“Sorry. I said, why not?”
I looked out at the river. It was a clear night, the moon vivid and shining overhead, and I could see all the way across it to the bank on the other side. It could have been a mile wide or more. Behind the trees, there might be houses or shopping malls or an equally quaint downtown with a boys’ boarding school, our mirror. In all my time here, I had never crossed the bridge to find out.
“Partly because it already messed things up with us, me moving here,” I answered. “And I didn’t want to make it worse. But mostly because I don’t think I still feel that way. And if I told her and she somehow felt the same way about me—which I’m positive she doesn’t, but still—I don’t know if I’d want to be with her like that.” I paused for a long time, kicking my legs absently against the side of the balcony. “I don’t know if we’re good for each other, in the end.”
He was quiet for a minute, and I wondered if he was going to ask more. If he was going to ask me: Do you feel that way about anyone else? Or if he would be bolder: Do you feel that way about me? We weren’t just friends. He deserved to know.
But I didn’t have a good answer. I felt a spark with him where with Jess it had been a blaze. Thinking back on those long, sunlit weekends with her, I was amazed at myself, ashamed of myself, that I had failed to recognize my own ferocious desire. Maybe I didn’t love her exactly that way anymore, but I knew what it had felt like. I missed it, kind of.
He didn’t say anything, and I asked what I wanted to know: “Do you think we can still be friends, Sam?”
“Yeah, we can be friends,” he said. There was silence on the other end of the line. Then he repeated himself, his voice stronger. “We can be friends.”
“Can I sit next to you in photo tomorrow?” I had been sitting in the corner next to Maya.
He laughed, and the tension eased a little. “Yes. Of course. As long as you help me finish my prints.”
“God, yes. It’s the least I can do. I’m done with all mine.”
“Already? We still have a week left.”
“What do you think I was doing for the last two weeks?”
“Moping. Making plans to never see me again.”
“I slept a lot.”
“I always sleep a lot. That’s why I’m not done with my photo project.”
We talked for over an hour, until my phone battery ticked into the red and an exhaustion headache spread across my forehead. By the end, we were both laughing. I hung up and closed my eyes.
Absent my voice, the quiet of the night settled in all around me. The light wash of the river against the shore, the occasional faraway rumble of a car crossing over the bridge. Frogs somewhere. Cicadas. The things we said and didn’t say to each other.
Twenty-Two
On the last day of school, I woke up early to make coffee for myself and Oma. When she walked into the kitchen, still wearing her bathrobe, and saw me carefully lowering the French press beside the two waiting glasses, she smiled and shook her head.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” she said.
“Yes, I do.” I poured the coffee, filled the glass the rest of the way with ice, and held it out to her.
“But it’s cold!” She looked at me, indignant. “Why is there ice? Did you use cold water? You know it won’t work if you use cold water.”
“I made cold brew,” I corrected her. I had prepared it last night after Oma went to bed after watching several YouTube videos on proper technique. I forced the cup into her hand and poured myself one. Oma’s nose wrinkled.
“Coffee should be hot,” she said.
“Just try it.”
She took a sip, closed her eyes, considered.
“Coffee should be hot,” she repeated, “but this is good.”
I tried it myself. It was great. “You’re welcome.”
She left to shower without another word, but she took the cup with her. “Victory,” I murmured to myself as I started cleaning up.
We walked to school together, earlier than normal for me, later than normal for Oma. Technically, she still had class to teach. In contrast, my only non-AP classes were in the afternoon, and with our exams having wrapped up earlier that week, all my teachers had given me permission to skip so I could hang my work for the photography show at 3:00. I didn’t really need to be anywhere until lunchtime. But I had walked to school with Oma that first morning, back in January, and I wanted to do it again now that we were at the end. The sun was dazzling and warm; I was wearing a dress with straps that just barely passed the dress code. Everything was green.
I spent the morning as I had spent every other morning for the last week, outside with Claire and Kitty. All the juniors and seniors had the same idea, and the lawn was a quilt of brightly colored towels and picnic blankets, girls talking and laughing and walking from blanket to blanket as if they were calling on the houses of their friends. I had made a second carafe of cold brew and poured it into a thermos. Claire brought strawberries from her aunt’s garden, and Kitty filled a tote bag with mini blueberry muffins from the cafeteria’s end-of-year breakfast buffet.
“I wish this was all summer,” Claire said, stretching on the ratty blue quilt.
“Same,” Kitty sighed. She was going home for the summer, spending time with her family and working at her local library. “But your music camp is going to be great.”
“It will be,” Claire acknowledged. “But still.” She had gotten into the kind of summer camp that was really more like school—hours and hours of practicing and lessons with well-known instructors. It sounded way too intense for me, which meant she would love it.
“I’m gonna miss you,” I said to the sky. Claire rolled over to hug me, and Kitty squeezed my hand.
Like Kitty, I would be going home. My parents were arriving tomorrow to pick me up. Unlike her, I didn’t have a job lined up, but on Monday, I had an interview with a new coffee shop near my old school. I was excited about it; if I could learn how to be a good barista, I might be able to do the same work once I got to college or even find a part-time job here next year. As far as I knew, Jess hadn’t submitted any job applications.
“It’s only three months,” Kitty said.
“Not even,” Claire said.
“And then we’ll be back here.” The thought of returning for another year, which I had once found depressin
g and scary, was now a great comfort.
My phone buzzed. Sam: where are you?? The timestamp said 12:33.
“Shit.” I jumped up.
“What?” Claire squinted up at me. She had lost her sunglasses again.
“I was supposed to be in the arts building three minutes ago.” I grabbed my bag and started running up the hill, dodging groups of girls as I went. From behind me, Kitty yelled, “We’ll see you at three!” and Claire called, “Good luck!”
By the time I reached the hallway, I was out of breath, but I shouldn’t have rushed. I was far from the last to arrive. A few girls were walking up and down the stairs, carrying their framed prints in batches of two or three down to the hallway where they would hang. Erica was hammering nails and hooks into the wall, following long blue stripes of painter’s tape. In Sharpie on each piece of tape, she had written a name. All of us had a section of wall and two rows of photos, four or five on top and the same number on the bottom. I found my spot at the end of the hallway, the last except for Sam’s, before I went upstairs.
He was stationed on the floor in the back of our classroom, carefully resetting the mat on one of his photos. I picked my way through the chaos of girls and black frames. He looked up when he saw me and grinned.
“Finally,” he said.
“I thought Erica was gonna be mad,” I said, not so gently nudging him with my foot as I moved past him to where my own frames leaned against the wall. “I ran here.”
“Oh, did I not mention that half the class still wasn’t here?”
“You’re a jerk.” I lifted up my frames and moved them to the desk beside the floor where he sat. Below me, he shrugged, smiled, looked up, and held my gaze for a few seconds. He had gotten a haircut and traded out his T-shirt and shorts for slacks and a green collared shirt. Dressed for the occasion.
“You look nice,” I said.
“You too,” he said. “Good dress.”
A few minutes later, having made sure all our photos were intact and set properly in their frames, we took the stairs down together. Since Erica hadn’t yet made it down to our end of the hallway, we grabbed hammers and picture hangers and measuring tape ourselves.
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