“I’m sorry I was weird last night.”
“You don’t—”
“Will you let me finish? Jeez, River. You’re like a girl. You can’t stop talking.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m mad at myself. For wanting to do things I know I shouldn’t do. Sometimes just keeping from doing those things can be totally exhausting. You must understand, right? Like, it’s probably that way with you and weed.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And I don’t have time or room in my life to like a boy.”
By boy I really, really hoped she meant me.
“And there are so many reasons I shouldn’t like you, River. For one thing, you’re white. Like superduper white. And you live on the Westside. And you’re a marijuana addict. And you conceal your addiction from your friends. And I’m pretty sure you’re still hung up on another girl. And you don’t even drive. I could go on and on, but I only have, like, seven hundred minutes on my cell plan. But the thing is, I feel like I can trust you and that I know you better than I do, which is sort of scary. It makes me want to find the room and the time because I feel…good when I’m with you.” A few beats of silence. “You’re allowed to say something now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Go.”
“Okay. I don’t want it to feel like we know each other better than we do. I want us to know each other for real. Not in a high school way.” I saw that my stop was coming up, but I didn’t pull the cord. “I…I want to be your friend. I want to be a true friend. That’s…probably more important than anything else right now.”
“So…what was up with that whole I’m going to kiss you now bullshit?”
“Oh, I do want to kiss you. Like, I really, really want to kiss you. But I also want to listen to you. I want to…help you. If, like, you need to talk about why you steal, how it’s unfair that you can’t have all the things you deserve.”
She sighed.
I dug my fingertips into my eyes. Pushed until I saw bursts of color.
“Where you at now?” she asked.
I looked out the window. “Somewhere east of my house. I missed my stop.”
“Get off at Crenshaw.”
“Then what?”
“There’s a Pizza Hut on the corner. Wait for me there.”
—
Just as it started to sink in that she wasn’t going to show—that I’d hopped off that bus, jumped when she said “Jump,” just like I did with Penny—I looked up and there she was.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
We stood face to face on a busy and not-so-beautiful street corner with the smells of a Pizza Hut wafting over us. No magical streetlamp like where I first took Penny Brockaway’s face in my hands and kissed her.
I took a step closer, not sure what to do or say. Wishing it was as easy as it had been that night with Penny, but knowing this was different, more complicated and more real.
But she stepped back. “You want to eat something?”
“No.”
“You got something against Pizza Hut?”
“I have everything against Pizza Hut.”
She smiled. “Me too. Come on.”
We walked back to the bus stop just as a bus was pulling up. I grabbed her hand and led her down the near-empty aisle to two seats in the last row. She draped one leg over mine and I put my hand on her knee. We sat as close as two people could without sharing the same seat.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Nowhere.”
“I didn’t mean metaphorically.”
She laughed and leaned even closer. “Sometimes I ride the bus just to get some room to think. And I like to watch people. Imagine them—the secrets they keep. The stuff they can’t admit. I wonder…what would this person do if she could do anything? If there were no walls or boundaries, what would that guy do? What would happen to their lives if this bus granted wishes?”
I stared at her. I think it had been a while since I’d blinked. I knew she was inviting me to look around, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Daphne—”
“Take this one here.” She nodded at a slight woman a few rows up to our left whose seat faced the aisle. She wore a jacket too heavy for the weather and her feet were encircled by shopping bags. “What do you think?”
“I think she looks tired and sad.”
“Remember, this bus grants wishes.”
“Right.” Her hair covered most of her face and she hadn’t looked up from her hands in her lap. “Last night she won five hundred bucks in a karaoke competition, enough for a plane ticket to New York. She wants to audition for a Broadway musical. She’s been saving up, putting away every dollar she can manage into an empty tampon box she keeps under the bathroom sink.”
“Ha.” Daphne took my hand, the one that rested on her knee, and laced her fingers through mine.
“She gets the part, by the way. And then she wins a Tony.”
Daphne looked at the woman, who still hadn’t looked up from her lap, and smiled. “Do you want to know what wishes I have that I don’t admit?”
“Of course I do.”
“I want to be a lawyer. I want to do immigration or maybe workers’ rights. Does that sound crazy?”
“Why would it sound crazy?”
“Because I’ve already been on the wrong side of the law. And I’ll need another three years of school on top of college. That’s a lot of dollars I’d have to hide in my tampon box.”
I squeezed her hand. “I believe in you. I know that’s one of those things people say, but I mean it. You’ve got what it takes to do whatever you dream of.”
She moved her face an inch closer to mine. “This is the bus that grants wishes. Where anybody can be anything.”
“Yes it is.”
“And on this bus, maybe it doesn’t matter that our group has rules or that we’re from different places or that we both have a crapload of problems.”
I took my index finger and touched it to her bottom lip.
Now didn’t seem like a good time to tell her I wasn’t addicted to marijuana; that if I could be whoever I wanted I’d be the boy who never lied. I wasn’t sure when it would ever feel like the right time to tell her the truth, but I knew it wasn’t now when all I could think about was kissing her.
Which I did. Quickly, just as our magic bus reached the end of the line.
Before Penny, nobody had spent much time gossiping about me, and that was how it was after she dumped me. But now that I’d brought a mystery girl to the dance I became a person of interest again. People were talking about me and that girl.
After weeks sitting rows away in Spanish class, Penny moved in next to me.
“Hey, River.” She gave me a little wave right as Mr. Fernandez cleared his throat and said Buenos días, amigos. I gave her an apologetic shrug.
Penny always took forever to gather her things after class—each pencil, each eraser had a precise spot—but when I jumped up she shoveled everything into her bag and followed me out into the hallway.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“Did you have fun Friday night?”
“Yeah. It was fun.”
“Great. Yeah, I had fun too.”
“Okay, then.” I turned to walk toward my locker.
“River,” she said.
“Yeah?”
She bit her upper lip. “This is weird.”
“Yeah, I know.” I almost reached out and took her hand, but only because that was what I used to do when she needed some reassurance.
“I just don’t want things to be weird between us.”
Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have dumped me in the middle of the lake.
“Okay…”
“So, we’re good?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“Because I care about you, River. And I want us to be friends.”
—
Luke and I had lunch period together
and we sat out near the football field splitting a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
“What’s up with Will and Maggie?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they didn’t call me back all weekend. Neither did you, but I’m used to that. Anyway, I wanted to see what those guys were up to ’cause I didn’t have plans after the game, but they didn’t call or text or anything. So then I find out they went to the movies and I ask Will this morning which one they saw, and he smiles and says he can’t remember.”
“Hold on to your briefs, but I think they might be into each other.”
“Duh. When I asked what’s up with them I meant are they finally getting it on.”
“What? You knew?”
“It’s been obvious since forever.”
“It has?”
“River. Dude. You’re kind of clueless.”
I ate the last few Doritos, going over Friday night again. The way Maggie looked. The way Will noticed the way she looked.
“So…tell me more about the dance,” Luke said.
“I thought you hated dances.”
“I do, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about them after the fact.”
“Penny and Evan were together. But you already knew that.”
“Yeah.” He took a long sip from his soda.
“Do you know more?”
“When nobody called me back I ended up going out with Evan and some of the other guys from the team after the game.”
“And?”
“You want me to tell you about Evan and Penny?”
I thought about this. “Not really.”
“Good. So why don’t you tell me about this girl you brought.”
“She’s Mexican.”
“So you think I might know her? Because I’m half Mexican? Do you think maybe we’re cousins?”
“No, asshole. I was just telling you about her because you asked. She’s Mexican. She lives in Boyle Heights. She’s smart as anything and she confuses the hell out of me, which I like. Her name is Daphne.”
“Daphne. That has a good sound to it. It sounds so…”
“So…not Penny?”
“Yes.”
“Was I really that bad when I was with Penny?”
He sighed. “Sorta. It was like the way my dad likes to tell the same story over and over again. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the story, it’s just that you get really tired of hearing it.”
“I get it.” Everett had this thing he’d make us do when we’d hurt someone’s feelings, but I wasn’t about to look at Luke and say “I honor you” because Luke would probably have thought I was having a stroke and called an ambulance. But I did tap him so he turned to look me in the eye when I said what I needed to say.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been a good friend.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t about to give me a pair of short-shorts, are you?”
I laughed. “No. You in those shorts is high on the list of things I never want to see.”
—
I approached Penny after Spanish class Wednesday in the hall. She’d said she wanted to be friends and I took her at her word.
“Hey, Pen.”
“Hi, River.” Those two words sounded so different than when she’d found me on her back steps with her dog, or in her kitchen with Natalie. Then she’d said hello in a way that meant: What the hell are you doing at my house? This time, she sounded pleased to see me.
“I didn’t do my homework,” I said.
“Why not?”
I thought of telling her about how Daphne had called last night after she got everyone to bed and we’d stayed on the phone until 1 a.m. I didn’t want to tell Penny this to make her jealous, but because I couldn’t concentrate on math or Spanish or anything ordinary: Daphne was an electric distraction.
“I just didn’t have the time.”
She leaned in close. “Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “But I had Juana do my homework.”
I guessed Juana didn’t particularly enjoy that task, but I also guessed she did it without complaint. Probably right after cooking Penny’s family a bland meal.
“So…”
This “so…” meant she’d heard that things between me and the girl from the dance were maybe going somewhere. I wasn’t sure how. I hadn’t told anyone I’d kissed Daphne. That was a good secret in the midst of so many others that weren’t so great.
“So?”
“Come on, River.”
I’d have kept playing dumb, but I knew that if there was something Penny wanted, she wouldn’t quit until she got it. Especially when she wanted that something from me.
“Oh, so you mean you want to know about the girl?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, there’s this girl. And I like her. And it turns out she just might like me too, because…the world is a mysterious and unpredictable place.”
“Is she, like, your girlfriend now?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“What’s so complicated?”
I shrugged. How could I say that getting to know Daphne was a whole different endeavor than getting to know Penny? If I’d ever even really known Penny in the first place.
“Well, I’m happy for you.” She didn’t sound it.
“And Evan?”
“Yeah…I don’t know….” She took down her hair from its bun, shook it out, and started to redo it. “I’m not sure I really want to be in a relationship right now. College letters come soon, and I have to decide where I’m going and think about my future and it’s just sort of weird starting over with someone else. Getting to know someone and all that. It’s so much work, don’t you think?”
No, I didn’t. It felt like the opposite of work.
“I guess so.”
“It’s the end of our senior year, Riv.” She looked at me the way she used to, right before telling me what I needed to do, or wear, or say. “It’s just not the time to start something new.”
From Everett’s yellow pamphlet, page one, bullet point two:
• A SECOND CHANCE support group for teens is built on trust, on the understanding that there are no lies, no hidden truths.
I understood this and willingly violated it week after week.
And now Daphne, who didn’t pretend to be someone she wasn’t, who respected Everett and his rules, grappled with the uncomfortable truth that she was violating page two, bullet point four:
• No physical or romantic relationships between group members.
“Being honest in there is really important,” she told me between kisses. “But I just don’t think everyone needs to know everything.”
“Being honest is important to me too,” I heard myself say.
“I know it is, River. It’s one of the reasons I like you. And one of the reasons I can see us together.”
“I thought it was my quick wit and unmatched charm.”
I hadn’t been able to wait until Saturday. I didn’t want to share her with a roomful of addicts. So on Friday I begged her to meet me at a movie. We only made it through the first twenty minutes, after which we left to buy popcorn and never returned. I didn’t want to watch a movie; I wanted to watch her. We sat out in the empty lobby.
“Yeah, that, and you understand my problems and I get yours. We’re a broken set.”
“A broken set. I like that.”
“What about Christopher and Mason?” She took a piece of popcorn and tossed it in the air, catching it in her mouth. “Maybe we should tell them.”
“Well, Christopher is overprotective of you, and we all know what a big mouth Mason has.”
“That’s rude.”
“What?”
“Making fun of someone with an eating disorder.”
“I wasn’t making fun of him. I was saying, literally, Mason has a big mouth.”
“No, River, you weren’t saying literally he has a big mouth, like he’s a Pac-Man or some shit. You were sa
ying it figuratively, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were talking about his gossiping and not his eating.”
Man, I thought. I could really fall in love with this girl.
—
The next night we met out front. I got there first and stood with everyone until Daphne arrived and greeted us casually, like there wasn’t one among us who’d been counting the minutes until he could kiss her again.
We sat together at the far end of the circle. I spent the whole meeting sweating that I’d somehow out us, make an amateur mistake, forgetting that I’d become a world-class liar.
It was Daphne’s turn.
“It’s been…a pretty amazing week.” She smiled at Christopher, who sat across from her, like he was the reason. “All the work…none of it felt like a burden, you know? Like I didn’t really mind. And I think that’s because for the first time in a really long time I’m doing something for myself. Just for me. I know I come here, and that’s something for me, but I mean something that makes me excited and happy. That’s maybe what the shoplifting is about….I don’t know…maybe it’s about taking something nice for myself. Maybe that’s why I steal stuff I don’t even care about. Because I’m trying to take something for me. I don’t mean that to sound like an excuse, I’m just trying to understand it better. That’s part of this whole process, right?”
Hand gestures back and forth.
“And I know we’re here to share or whatever, but I feel like keeping this to myself, you know, keeping it…just for me.”
“That’s okay, Daphne,” Everett said. “Not every piece of ourselves must be shared. So long as what you keep secret isn’t feeding your addiction.”
It was my turn to speak, but Everett’s last sentence stopped me cold. So long as what you keep secret isn’t feeding your addiction.
Was Daphne Vargas, my new and beautiful secret, feeding my addiction? Was I addicted to having a girlfriend? To being loved? Was I incurably needy? Was that why I couldn’t even be honest with the girl I was falling in love with about who I really was? Did I even know who I really was?
I took a deep breath. Tried clearing my head. I couldn’t pose the questions that flooded me, and I couldn’t just sit there saying nothing. I shifted in my seat, and my chair made one of those noises that hurt inside your teeth.
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