Little & Lion
Page 23
“Yes and no. I need closure. Not just with her, but… I wasn’t honest about who I was when I was there.” I finger the Magen David hanging from the silver chain around my neck. “I need to try to make things good with her… Iris… And I need to go back and see what it’s like living there when I’m not hiding who I am.”
Emil nods again. “When do you leave?”
“Not for a while. I have a few weeks here…” I take a breath. “What you said to me, back at the cemetery movie—I think you’re one of the best people I know, too. I don’t want to leave you hanging and I don’t want you to feel like you have to wait for me. I just…”
“You’ve gotta figure shit out. I get it.” He looks down at his shoes before his gaze finds its way back to me. “Do you have to figure it out before you go?”
I stare at him, not sure what he’s saying.
“I mean, can we hang out until you leave? It doesn’t have to be… It can be whatever you want. I just don’t want to stop talking to you.”
“I don’t want to stop talking to you, either. Or seeing you.”
We move toward each other. We kiss. I’m worried it’s going to feel like a good-bye, like a farewell to everything we built this summer. But it’s sweet. Hopeful. And I feel certain that it won’t be our last.
twenty-six.
Mom and I make lunch while Saul goes to pick up Lionel from the hospital.
We’ll grill the shrimp when they’re back, when it’s almost time to eat, but we start making the salad while we wait. Mom puts me in charge of the avocados.
“Did you get a chance to talk to Iris about rooming together?” she asks, rinsing a colander full of radishes. “The school emailed me. They said they need your roommate request as soon as possible.”
Mom and Saul seemed genuinely sad when I told them I’ve decided to return to Dinsmore. They asked if I was sure, and told me that whatever challenges we had to get through with Lionel, they knew we could do it together. I’ll be sad to leave them again, too, and Lionel, of course, but it feels like the right decision—going because I want to.
“I haven’t talked to her.” I slide a knife carefully along the edge of the bumpy avocado skin, trying to keep the blade moving in a straight line.
Mom frowns. “I know you just decided for sure that you’re going back, but honey, you’re going to end up living with someone you don’t know if you don’t tell them something soon.”
“I…” I swallow hard. There’s never going to be a good time to do this, and if I do it now, that’s one less thing to worry about for the rest of the summer. So I start talking. “Iris wasn’t just my roommate. She was sort of my girlfriend. Second semester.”
If my mother is surprised by the news, it doesn’t show on her face. She turns off the water. Her voice is soft as she says, “And you two broke up?”
“Yes, but… there’s more to it. We were kind of shamed into breaking up, right before school ended. Someone caught us together, and the girls in our dorm… Well, if the school brochure had a section highlighting the bigots, they’d be front and center.”
“Oh, sweet pea.” Mom walks over so we’re standing next to each other. “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” I say.
“You know, now I’m not sure I want you going back there if it was so bad. Maybe I should have a talk with the administration about those girls.”
“No, Mom. I want to go back.… I can handle it myself.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, but… only if you and Saul promise not to shut me out about Lionel.” I’m nervous to say it, but it’s something I’ve worried about ever since I made my decision. It would be easy for them to say things will be different and then not follow through once I’m three thousand miles away. “I know I messed up, but… I want to feel like I’m still a part of this family, even if I’m not here.”
She nods. “Of course. You’ll always be part of this family, sweet pea.”
“I don’t know if Iris wants to see me again. I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for us.”
She smooths her hand across my forehead. “Bravery doesn’t always look like you think it will. And it’s never too late to stand up for the right thing. You’re a good girl, Suz. Something tells me she’s going to forgive you. And if it takes her some time, I’m sure you’ll understand.”
I nod, realizing I have no idea how Iris will react to me. All I can do is hope for the best.
Mom looks at me very seriously. “I know we’ve said this before, but I am okay with whatever sexuality you identify with. So is Saul.”
“I think I’m bi,” I say. “I like Emil. I’ve… had crushes on other girls.”
“Well, I’ve never understood the whole issue some parents have with their kids not being straight.” She hugs me and then pulls away to look at me again. “It shouldn’t be the default, baby. I want you to be you, whoever that is.”
My throat goes dry when I hear Saul’s car pull into the driveway.
Mom and I wait for them in the living room and when Lion walks in, I feel overwhelmed. From pangs of missing him and relief that he’s here in the flesh and the anxiety that he’ll be angry with me. Mom hugs him and then takes Saul by the elbow and says, “We’ll finish making lunch. It’ll be ready in about ten minutes.”
Lionel looks at me and I stand in place, looking back. He smiles and I take a tentative step forward.
“Hey, Little,” he says with the ease of his old self.
My whole body relaxes. “You look good.”
He nods. “I’m all right. I mean, not all the time. I’m still adjusting.”
“That’s normal, though, right?”
He smiles again. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
I feel weird standing here in the living room with him. Too formal. As if he’s reading my mind, he opens the front door and we walk outside, sit on the front steps of our fairy-tale house.
“They said you’re going back to boarding school.” I can’t read his tone. It’s factual more than anything.
“Yeah. I think it’s what I need to do.”
“I hope it’s not because of me. I promise—” He stops, like he needs to catch his breath. “I promise not to put you through this again.”
“No. No… Lion. This is about Iris and making things right. With her and with myself.” I nudge him in the side. “You can’t scare me off that easily.”
He gives me a grudging smile that turns into a grimace. “I’m sorry, Little. Really fucking sorry. It was shitty of me to ask you to keep that secret.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to say that.”
“No, it wasn’t fair. And God, I feel like the biggest asshole for what I said… when you came in my room.” He closes his eyes for a couple of seconds and when he opens them and looks at me, their color is somehow bright and soft at the same time. “That was the worst thing I could have said to you, and I knew it. I would never be done with you. Ever.”
“Same here,” I say, releasing a breath. Then: “I’m never keeping a secret like that again. If anything ever happened to you…”
For the first time in a long time, the air is peaceful between Lionel and me. Maybe neither of us has much else to say, but it feels good to sit here like this, with nothing bad or secret or unspoken between us.
“Did the parents tell you about my Central Coast road trip?” he asks.
“Kind of, but they didn’t say much. What happened?”
“It’s all kind of hazy, but I don’t even know how I ended up in San Luis Obispo. I think Rafaela and I were talking about it and I thought how cool it would be to go on a trip there, and then I just sort of took off.” He shakes his head like it was years ago instead of a few days. “Guess I took a detour and camped out on Pismo Beach overnight. That’s where I lost my phone.”
“You spent the night at the beach?”
He shrugs. “That’s what I told the guy at the bookstore. I was waiting on the doors
tep when they opened. Got caught trying to buy a book with Dad’s credit card.”
“A twenty-thousand-dollar book.”
“Not just any book. A 1969 copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations by Salvador Dalí,” he says, still awestruck. “He signed it, too. Dalí! It was amazing.”
“It was twenty thousand dollars,” I say in disbelief.
“Well, the hypomania thought I should have it.”
“At least your hypomania has good taste.” I shoot him a wry smile.
We’re quiet again, until Mom sticks her head out the front door and says lunch is ready. The smell of spicy grilled shrimp wafts out the door and lingers on the porch, reminding me of the tacos we ate when I arrived from Massachusetts at the start of the summer. That feels like a lifetime ago.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I say to Lionel as we stand.
“Yeah… me too.”
He gestures for me to walk in ahead of him. I think about how easily we could have lost him, both physically and mentally. But then I stop myself.
Right now, I just want to look at my brother, be at peace with the fact that he’s going to get better. We didn’t lose him.
He’s still my brother.
He’s still here.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to my brilliant editor, Alvina Ling, for loving this story from the start and helping me shape it into the book I always wanted it to be. Many thanks also to Kheryn Callender for your sharp eye, fresh perspective, and overall enthusiasm.
And thank you to the entire team at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for all your hard work and dedication to this book.
Thank you to Corey Haydu for understanding me and supporting me and listening to me beyond reason. And for being my Life Twin. I am so grateful to know you.
Thank you to my dear friend Kristen Kittscher for your steadfast friendship, constant encouragement, and eternal kindness.
For friendship and first reads, thank you to Courtney Summers, Stephanie Kuehn, Sarah McCarry, Maurene Goo, Kirsten Hubbard, Elissa Sussman, and Justina Ireland.
Thank you to my parents for being my biggest fans.
And all the gratitude in the world to Tina Wexler for always believing in me and pushing me to do my best work. I am so honored to call you my literary agent and friend.