by C. Desir
“Not funny, Hailey,” she called. “I get paid.”
“Uh-huh. See you later.” I waved without looking back.
“Later.”
Huh. Big afternoon. And I met Pavel. Cool. I might save telling Kyle until a nice lull in dinnertime conversation.
◊ ◊ ◊
Kyle showed up early for dinner.
With my moms. In the shoes.
“I think I told you . . . vegan,” I said as soon as we sat. “Two moms—one’s into pottery. One’s a yoga teacher. The house is filled with drying herbs and homemade pots. It’s almost disappointing the vegan thing is so expected. But no one rocks a stereotype like my moms.”
Kyle smiled but didn’t say anything.
The moms sat down on their side of the table. Like not only questioning us, but two-on-two interrogation.
I leaned toward Kyle and pretended to whisper. “The inquisition is next, and I’m hoping it’ll be directed more at you than me. Partially because I like to watch you squirm, partially because I think it would be cool to learn more about you, but mostly because I’m tired of fielding their questions.” I took my first bite of taco.
“Hailey.” Lila’s voice was full of the soft irritation she did so well. “Can you cut the poor guy some slack? I’m sure it’s already awkward to come to dinner.”
“I don’t care that you’re gay,” Kyle blurted out.
“Way to open the convo, Kyle.” I elbowed him, laughing.
“No . . . um, I mean, if that’s why you thought I might be uncomfortable, or . . .”
Kyle already being uncomfortable needed a push off the edge. “I ran into Pavel today.”
Kyle choked on his taco. I hit his back a few times.
“Cough it up. Pavel had a message for you.”
Kyle’s face turned red. Again. So predictable, but it still hadn’t gotten old. “Um . . .”
“I didn’t stalk him. I ran into him on the soccer field. He said to tell you to think positive, and that you think I’m gorgeous. It’s sweet.” I bit my tongue on the G-spot thing. No need to stir up the moms.
“Um . . .”
“Hailey.” Rox gave me the mom wide eyes that said I should probably start behaving myself.
It felt so good to be myself again that I couldn’t help it.
And then, when the questions started—in a way that the moms thought was normal conversation, but was too poorly disguised—Kyle handled the inquisition better than I ever expected him to. He told them about being half on the college campus for senior year, and about his mom working as a nurse, and that she was single, and I wondered if they heard any of the shaking behind his voice when he talked about her, like I did.
I guessed right then that his mom would end up on the list in some way. Or she needed to. But I was going to maybe be more like Sensitive Hailey this year. My single year. So I might not bring it up . . . tonight.
Hopefully Kyle and I would keep talking so I’d know how to talk about his mom. Probably at some point I’d ask, and it’d serve him right for letting silence hang between us for too long. I’d been right a long time ago: Kyle was already coming out of his shell. When he finished up that list, he’d be amazing. I wanted to help.
Once he and Rox started talking music, it was over. I gave up and ate four tacos. I loved music, but I didn’t keep track of who drummed for who during what years. How exhausting. And boring.
Well. Unless you’re suddenly Talkative Kyle and Rox, who chattered away like the Barbie twins from school.
◊ ◊ ◊
After dinner Lila stepped into Rox’s arms, and they stood in the kitchen together in a nauseating display of affection. I’d pretty much given up trying to deter them by the time I was in fourth grade. The moment their lips touched, Kyle’s eyes went to his lap.
“So does that turn you on, or is it weird? Because I think no teenager should have to watch their parents make out.” No way they wouldn’t get my hint.
“There are other rooms in this house.” Rox laughed as she wrapped her arms more tightly around Lila’s waist.
“I should go.” Kyle stood.
“Nope. List.” I took his hand and dragged him outside.
◊ ◊ ◊
We lounged on the small bench on the porch, our feet on the pathetic excuse for a coffee table, with one another’s lists in our hands. Kyle had folded his like mine, and I ran my fingers over the edges a few times, wondering how long it would take his to wear soft. I couldn’t read it. He must have known but gave it to me anyway. My heart skipped when he did.
“Not to be mean, but this is a ridiculous fear, Hailey.” He pointed to my list.
“Is not.”
“Nobody is going to change out all your clothes.” He shook his head, but the corner of his mouth was pulled up in a smile. One night and some direct questioning from the moms and I felt like I was finally really seeing him.
“They might change out all my clothes. Even I can see the disapproval on the moms’ faces when I leave for school some mornings. And what if they made everything pink?”
“You’re wearing pink right now.” He tugged on the sleeve of my shirt. Kyle was totally sort of flirting with me. Definitely breaking out of his shell. He might be ready for Calc Girl soon—though she’d better realize what a good catch he was.
“Yes, but this is the right kind of pink. There’s the right kind of pink and the wrong kind of pink. I need you to promise me that when I go blind—”
“If.” His eyes met mine.
“Fine. If I go blind, you’ll check my clothes once in a while, okay? Make sure no one has changed out my wardrobe. Because, yeah, fears don’t always make sense, right? But this one has kept me up late more than once.”
“Fine. I promise.” Kyle thought I was ridiculous, and it was good to at least have his opinion, even if he thought I was crazy.
“Why did that have to be so hard?” I jutted out my chin and gave him a shove. “All I’m asking you to do is look in my closet every once in a while when I can’t see.”
He laughed a little. Awesome.
“So I thought of a way to help you with a different thing on your list. Or maybe something we could do together,” he said. His eyes were fixed on the paper in front of him.
I leaned against his shoulder. “You have my curiosity piqued.”
“I think I’m not going to tell you what it is yet, because it might not happen for a while.”
“Huh. Kyle. I like it. But it is a fear list, you know. So as much as I want to jump in and cross something off, let’s not do the bungee-jumping thing. I need some warning for that one. And you can spare me the lecture on it being generic. I don’t care.”
“Bungee jumping seems pretty normal as a fear. Kind of logical, actually. It’s self-preservation, you know? It’d sort of suck if, in tackling this list, you got rid of your mechanism for self-preservation.”
“Of course, it’s on there because I think that jumping off a bridge while cabled to a rubber band is a fear that really digs deep, you know, into primal-fear territory, and I want to experience that.”
“Well, that’s not really normal, then. That’s more insane.”
“No. More kick-ass,” I countered.
He flipped the paper over.
“What’s this list? This isn’t fear stuff.”
“It’s . . .” My chest tightened so much that I had to pull in a deep breath. “There are a few things I want to see before I can’t see anymore.”
“Paintings?” It was almost like he choked on the word.
“Impressionists—I mean, that’s sorta how I see the world anyway. I want to see the real thing. The canvas they had their hands on. Before I can’t. I’ve seen the ones at the Art Institute, but I want more.”
His brow pulled down as he handed my list back to me. The mood had changed a bit—not bad, just a different kind of relaxation, one tinged with a little sadness.
I slumped even lower.
Kyle and I were hangin
g out. On the porch. No evil eye from my moms. No pressure to prepare for a new gig. He got me. And the shittiness of my summer was finally starting to dissipate.
“Kyle. I’m weirdly happy. You had dinner with the moms. Choked down not one, but two vegan tacos, and here you are talking with me like we didn’t ignore each other for the past few months.”
“You’re happy?” he asked. And there was a lot more depth in his voice than I think he intended for there to be.
“I’m happy.”
“Good.” He even leaned into me a little.
And I mostly meant it. I still felt like a bit of a screwup, and it sucked that my girl band didn’t exist anymore, but I was doing music, practicing every day. Still hung with Tess, was hanging with Kyle again. I knew something was missing, but maybe I’d always feel that way.
“Now, tell me more about the mini road trip you went on this summer.”
Chapter Twenty-Five: Kyle
The first semester of senior year was exactly what I had wanted summer to be. I barely saw Hailey in school, but sometimes I’d catch flashes of her in the hallway. She invited me over to dinner again. And again. Three times altogether. The third time she invited me, I sprung my idea for helping with something on her list.
“I’m totally guessing on this soy milk.” She leaned forward and squinted. “Is this a cup?”
Her skin was flushed, but in a good way. As if she was psyched that she was actually making dinner, and the endorphins poured off of her like palpable energy.
I sat on the counter, my legs dangling over the edge, and watched her pull ingredients from the fridge. “Looks like a cup to me.”
“Maybe you should measure the stuff and I’ll mix it all together.”
I jumped down and touched her arm. It was us now. Sort of. Touching and not being weird or awkward. Too much. And my sleaze factor had dialed down considerably the more time I spent with her. I didn’t think about all her pink parts whenever I laid a hand on her shoulder now. “The item on your list said ‘Cooking (for the moms),’ not ‘Have Kyle make dinner for the moms.’ You can do this. I’m here to make sure you don’t burn the house down.”
She laughed. Low and husky. So yeah, I wasn’t completely oblivious to how she made me feel. But I was starting to actually be a good friend, and I wasn’t letting go of that. There were more things to check off my list before I could try for Hailey anyway.
“I should have gone with spaghetti. Spaghetti pie is too complicated.”
I wanted to rub the tension from her shoulders, but even I wasn’t dumb enough to think that was innocent and friendly. So I hopped back on the counter. “Spaghetti pie is way better.”
She blew a hair out of her face. “Do you think they’ll like it?”
“I do.”
“I want to make it good for them. Because, well, you know . . .”
It still made my throat close up to see her vulnerable about her eyes, about her moms. Such a strange disconnect in the Hailey everyone saw, but I knew her so much better now that it made sense. All part of the package.
“It will be good. Don’t worry. Go for it.”
She pulled out the tomato sauce and reached past me for the can opener. “Thanks,” she whispered. “This was a good one for you to help me with.”
It got me closer to crossing Be a good friend to Hailey off the list, but I wasn’t there. Not yet. There was too much to make up for.
I’d tackled a few of the things on my list. Asked for a letter of rec from my Calc teacher. Had Pavel teach me stick shift in his crappy family VW van. Which was hilarious and involved a lot of swear words. In the end, he pressed a Zig Ziglar cassette into the ancient player and took me to a cemetery to practice. Weird, but classic Pavel.
The problem was, I kept adding new stuff to do. Some I told Hailey about. Some I didn’t. So when she asked, it always seemed like I hadn’t accomplished anything.
“I’ve never had vegan noodles before,” I said, watching her move across the kitchen. She didn’t stumble for anything. This was comfortable. Home.
“Well, I hope you ate something before you got here. They feel a little like cardboard and taste a bit like paste.”
“Nice. Meals at your house keep getting better and better.”
She turned and smiled at me, though. Because we both knew it was the truth.
◊ ◊ ◊
We went to the movies one Friday night with Pavel and Tess. But it didn’t really work because Pavel kept hitting on Tess with terrible pickup lines like, “It’s a good thing I have a library card, because I’m checking you out.” Only, he said “checking you in,” and even I had to laugh. Afterward, Hailey convinced us to get ice cream and walk along the tracks.
“So, five things left on the list?” she asked as she stepped carefully from slat to slat. I knew she couldn’t see what she was doing, but I didn’t offer to help. Hailey was weird about that kind of stuff, and the line between pity and helpful assistance was pretty gray.
I sighed. “Maybe a few more than that.”
Pavel had run to catch up with Tess, who’d bolted out of the van and onto the tracks as soon as I parked the crappy VW.
“But you’ve done some stuff, right?”
“Yep.”
“Stop it with the one-word answers. Don’t you ever volunteer stuff without me having to conduct an interview?”
I laughed. “You don’t really give me a chance. You sort of start with the interview questions right off the bat.”
She stopped and I bumped into her. My hands reached to steady her. And sort of landed on her ass instead. Which really was an accident.
Hailey barked out a laugh. “Did you just grab my ass?”
“No. Well, yes, but I didn’t mean to.”
“Hey, Pavel,” Hailey called, “Kyle grabbed my ass.”
Pavel raised a fist in the air. “Good going, brother. Now you find the G-spot.”
Hailey laughed hard enough to snort. “Seriously,” she finally said, “why would you even want other friends?”
I smiled. “Yeah. He’s kinda great.”
She nodded and I realized we’d sort of stopped when she’d stumbled. “So can I ask you something?”
“Aren’t you already doing that?”
“You write all the time. In your notebooks. What’re you writing?”
I released a deep breath. “Everything. Nothing. It’s all sort of stupid. Sometimes song lyrics that remind me of things. Sometimes lines from books. Bands to check out. Podcasts I like. Sometimes the notebook is like a vacuum for my thoughts. You know, when they’re circling around my head so much and won’t really shut up? If I write them down, they aren’t so loud.”
“I kinda suspected as much. Journaling is sort of a weird hobby for guys.”
She pulled off her glasses and scrubbed the lenses as if that would somehow help her peer at me better in the dark.
“I started after the locker-room thing with Pavel. Because I didn’t really talk to anyone. And all the school guidance counselors told me I needed to move past it, but no one actually wanted to listen to get me past it. Not in the way that you did. My sort-of friends at the time turned into nonfriends. I was alone with my thoughts every day. And the locker room was the only thing I could think about. I’d relive it over and over. Know I wasn’t doing enough to stop them, feeling hate and fear over and over. I could taste the blood. Hear Pavel’s screams in my head. I started writing it all down, and it got a little better.”
Her face softened and she reached out her hand to squeeze mine. I squished my eyes shut and wondered if it would always hurt to be with her and not with her at the same time. “I can’t imagine you being in worse shape than what I found you in. I’m maybe glad I wasn’t around that year.”
“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t have taken me under your wing in quite the same way.”
She laughed. “Is that what I did?”
I released her hand and stuffed mine back in my pocket. “Something like that.�
��
“So what else have you added to your list?”
I lifted my shoulder. Stupid. She couldn’t see it. The worst kind of insensitive nonanswer.
“I don’t think I’m ready to go there with you yet.”
“Really? After the big journal reveal, you have even more secrets? Huh. I’m intrigued. Is it something dirty?”
I laughed. “Hardly.”
She tapped her chin, then pressed the glasses back up on her nose. “Well, I guess I’ll have to wait until we’re best friends for full disclosure, huh?”
“Kyle,” Pavel called from so far down the tracks that if it were anyone else, I might not have heard. “Tess has agreed to introduce me to her lady friends. I’m looking after our interests, my friend.”
Hailey laughed again. Addictive laugh. Addictive girl. “Looks like I won’t be usurping Pavel’s BFF title anytime soon.”
“Unless he throws me over for one of the ladies.”
“Well, as the only ladies Tess talks to are Mira and me, and Mira’s not even around regularly, I don’t see Pavel having a lot of luck in that area.”
She started off down the tracks again and I watched her for a few seconds. She turned back and grinned at me. “Stop checking my ass out. You already copped a feel. That’s all you’re getting tonight.”
◊ ◊ ◊
I wasn’t happy-happy, but I wasn’t miserable. I had a friend who was a girl. And yes, maybe I wanted more, but it didn’t matter because when I was with her, it was spectacular. And I had a friend who was a guy who snail-mailed me ridiculous photocopied articles and told me stupid theories about women. I wished his life were different, I wished our past together were different, but he didn’t seem so bothered by all of it. So maybe I should’ve been able to let go some too.
And suddenly, life wasn’t so incredibly lonely. Home became texts from Pavel and school became maybe seeing Hailey in the halls. And my thoughts quieted some. I still wrote. Especially in the house alone or on the train to Concordia. But it wasn’t all depressing. I had people to talk about. Things in my life that sort of mattered that didn’t have anything to do with the past or my mom.