Pointe

by Brandy Colbert

  “What’s up, Legs?” he says, making room for me, his green eyes taking in my every move.

  He smells like a cologne factory, and I’m sure whatever brand it is, it’s wildly expensive. Just like every stitch of clothing on his body and the shiny car he parked in the lot this morning.

  “Don’t objectify my best friend like that,” Sara-Kate says with a lazy grin. A breeze slices through the air and she wraps her arms around the black lace of her vintage party dress. It’s thin and stylishly tattered and she must be beyond cold. But Sara-Kate doesn’t believe in coats until the temp drops down to freezing, and even then only sometimes.

  She passes me a half-smoked joint. I can immediately tell that Phil rolled it. He’s an expert. Phil doesn’t half-ass anything. If he’s going to be a stoner he’s going to be a damn good one, with perfectly rolled joints and lighters that never burn out on you.

  “I’m not objectifying her,” Klein says easily. “I can’t help it if Theo has nice attributes.”

  His eyes slip from my neck down the length of me, hovering on my pink silk top with the Peter Pan collar. Sara-Kate gave me this shirt for my birthday; I love it but it sort of makes me look like I’m five, and I’m flat to boot, so Klein seems extra-pervy, staring at me like he wants to rip it off. I button my coat the rest of the way.

  “Can we not talk about Theo like Theo’s not standing next to you?” I take a long drag and look around the circle as I let out the smoke, trying to figure out who to pass it to next. I catch Hosea’s eye and we both look away this time.

  I wonder if he thinks I told Sara-Kate and Phil that he works at the studio.

  The smoke courses through me in its hazy, familiar way, coasts through my chest and relaxes my shoulders. I close my eyes for a moment, want to remember this blissed-out state before we’re subjected to Crumbaugh at the assembly. She’ll be up there because she’s forever front and center when anything big goes down. She’s the world’s worst guidance counselor—devoid of any useful advice, but always ready for the spotlight.

  Klein nudges Hosea, though his eyes follow the joint between my fingers. “So what’s this bullshit assembly about?” Because seriously, he never shuts up.

  “Not bullshit,” Phil says. He pushes a piece of hair from his forehead. It’s getting kind of long now, curling over his collar in a shaggy, old-rock-star sort of cut. I swear to God, Phil could time-travel back to 1972 on any given day and no one would know the difference. “It’s necessary. I heard some little freshman asking who ‘this Donovan kid’ is. I wanted to punch him.”

  “Maybe he’s new in town.” Even stoned, Sara-Kate likes to give the benefit of the doubt.

  “That’s no excuse for being uninformed,” Phil counters. “It’s national news.”

  He takes what’s left of the joint and sucks on the end of the roach, brooding. For once, he isn’t being testy just for the sake of it. He was Donovan’s friend, too. It was the three of us for a while. We formed a little trio and started calling ourselves the Brown Brigade because there aren’t a lot of people around here who look like us. When we met in kindergarten, I didn’t know Phil was Mexican until I heard his mother scolding him in Spanish. His skin was only a bit lighter than mine, so I didn’t understand that the history of brown skin is as varied as its shades, just that we were different.

  Klein sighs. “Let’s get outta here. I gotta take a piss.”

  He leads the way back to the two-story, stone-colored building, followed by Phil in his kelly-green corduroys and Sara-Kate in her bright red fishnets, shivering as she walks. If the administration ever proposes uniforms or actually enforces the dress code, it’s no secret who’ll be screwed the hardest.

  Hosea takes the last drag of his clove, exhales away from me, and tosses it to the ground with all the other butts, stomping it out with his boot. “Heard you were looking for some boomers.”

  “What?”

  “Mushrooms?” The corners of his lips lift a tiny bit.

  I open my mouth and close it again without a word. Fucking Phil.

  “No, it was a friend . . . She doesn’t go here. She was just asking around, though.”

  He appraises me. Up close, his eyes startle me. They’re a deep, pure gray. Like steel, but softer. He sticks his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie and says, “Let me know if she changes her mind. I can help.”

  “Oh. Okay, yeah. Thanks.”

  He starts walking toward school but I stand in place, watching him. He has a steady gait and long hair that looks impossibly soft and messy at the same time. He’s taller than I realized. At least six two, maybe six three—with broad shoulders that hunch down as he walks, almost like he’d curl in on himself if he could. I stand looking at him for so long that he turns back to me. “You coming?”

  We don’t talk on the way inside. We walk beside each other but not really beside each other, because he has a girlfriend. Ellie Harris. She’s always around. In fact, I wonder where she and Trisha are right now. I can’t tell if they’re best friends by default, since they’re dating Hosea and Klein, or if they actually like each other.

  Once we’re inside I let him get a few feet ahead of me. I’m totally stoned and everyone is rushing around me too quickly, all heading in the same direction. The teachers are trying to keep some control over the crowd but we outnumber them. My reflexes are shit and I get turned around as a couple of sophomores run by me on either side, racing to break through the throng of students. I start to lose my balance but someone rights me with a steady hand just as I stumble.

  “Theo! Are you okay?”

  Bryn Davenport. Cardigans and khaki skirts during the day, most likely to vomit up a fifth of vodka on any given weekend. I held her hair once. It wasn’t so bad. She’s a polite drunk. She must have thanked me fifteen times while we sat on the floor of Victoria Martino’s bathroom.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Just a little slow this morning.”

  “God, can you believe Donovan’s back?” Bryn absently runs a hand through her bobbed black locks. “I never thought we’d see him again.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Molasses-slow. Fog city. High as shit. “I guess I never did, either.”

  Donovan and I used to talk about going to high school before we’d even made it to sixth grade. We vowed to never become those friends who stopped talking when they got to a new school and found new people.

  “What if we’re sick of each other by then?” I was hanging upside down on his bed, my head near the floor, my hand wrapped around a waxy stick of strawberry licorice.

  “We won’t be sick of each other, T,” he said from the other side of the bed. My feet were near his head and vice versa. “We’ve known each other our whole lives. Almost. What’s gonna change?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked around his room: the blue-and-gray wallpaper border along the top of the walls with fat white baseballs dancing through the middle; the matching, pilled bedspread and sun-bleached curtains; the bookshelf of comics across the room, next to his desk. He was getting too old for it—except the comics; I was sure he’d never outgrow those—but I think a part of him was reluctant to ask for a new, more mature bedroom. Just like I hated to think about how it was probably the last year I could admit I still played with dolls.

  “What if you get a girlfriend and she doesn’t like me?” I said, cracking my toes next to his ears. “Or you stop talking to me because you don’t want her to know you sucked your thumb until third grade?”

  “Only when no one else was around!” he said too loudly as he shoved my legs hard, almost pushing me off the bed sideways. “And I know things about you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Mr. Frog?” I gnawed on the end of the licorice. “So what. He sits on my bed. It’s not like I still have tea parties with him.”

  “No, I’ll tell them how you snore when you sleep.”

  “I do not!” I pushed myself u
p on my elbows, but all I could see was his torso spread out on my right side, covered in a navy-and-orange Bears T-shirt. “You’re the one who snores. And drools.”

  “At least my parents don’t keep a night-light in my room just in case.” He laughed and I smacked him on the thigh and then we got over it because I had to ask him for the package of Twizzlers that was out of my reach.

  “But T, seriously, we’ll be cool, right? High school, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever. Right?” His voice was faint, like he wasn’t sure he should have said anything. Like it was too earnest and he thought I would make fun of him.

  “Of course,” I said, and it hung heavy in the air for a few seconds, like a verbal contract. And then: “Who else is going to put up with you?”

  Donovan was around until the first part of middle school, so the students who moved here after seventh grade or transferred from private school—like Sara-Kate and Klein—know about him only through other kids’ stories and the news. It’s strange to think that Sara-Kate knows so little about such a huge part of my past, that even Bryn Davenport is closer to this situation than she is.

  High school seemed so far away back then, it’s hard to believe I’m here now and Donovan never made it. I wonder if he went to school while he was gone . . . or if he was imprisoned 24/7, secured to a piece of furniture when his kidnapper left the house.

  “Sorry,” Bryn says, her eyes clouded with worry as she looks into mine. “Too heavy for a Friday morning?”

  “No, no.” I shake my hazy head. Pull lazily at the hem of my top. “I was just thinking of our quiz in world gov later. Totally forgot.”

  “Well, it’s Jacobsen.” Bryn gives me a faint smile and lightly touches my arm again, leaving her hand there for a moment, as if she’s afraid I can’t hold myself up on my own. Do I really look that high? I need a mirror. “He’ll give you another chance if you screw up. See you in fifth.”

  She scoots away from me and into the crowd, elbowing her way through two meaty football players. Small and fearless, that one.

  We all pile into the musty, cavernous gym, our shoes squeaking on the shiny basketball court. I gaze around for what seems like ten minutes before I find Sara-Kate and Phil. Then I take a deep breath and climb to the top of the wooden bleachers, only stopping once to wobble. I brace myself on Joey Thompson, but his shoulders are so thick I’m not sure he notices.

  I try to slide onto the end next to Phil, but he won’t budge. He stops talking to Sara-Kate long enough to point to the open space on the other side of her. Great. I step over Phil’s feet and then Sara-Kate’s before I plunk down next to Klein. Hosea is on the other side of him. His eyes are on me and then they’re not, and somehow that feels like a much bigger loss than it is.

  Klein leans in and I swear to God his cologne almost chokes me, but I concentrate on breathing through my mouth so he doesn’t notice. What I really want to do is look past him, talk to Hosea, ask him how he got to be so good at piano.

  Klein grins at me. “You’re coming to my party tonight, yeah?”

  A few vodka shots and a pill or two and it would most definitely be a leer.

  I stop myself from recoiling, say, “I think so” as I crack my knuckles one by one.

  I look to Sara-Kate and Phil but they’re no help. Phil is complaining about all the time he spent worrying over his trig test only to have it postponed for the assembly. Sara-Kate has one fishnet-stockinged leg crossed over the other as she nods. She’s good; it almost looks like she cares about what he’s saying.

  “We’ll celebrate your friend being back.” Klein leans even closer and says in a low voice, “Don’t think, Legs. Do.”

  “How’s Trisha?” I ask in a voice that carries.

  I hear a quiet laugh from the other side of Klein and I can’t hide my smile, but I also can’t bring myself to look at Hosea. Instead, I turn my head to the front, where the principal and guidance counselor are trying to get everyone to shut up so they can start this thing.

  Principal Detz talks about the miracle of Donovan’s return and how even though not everyone knew him, he’s one of Ashland Hills High School’s own, because he would have been a member of the junior class this year if he hadn’t been abducted.

  Crumbaugh stands next to Detz with her hands clasped, looking like autumn exploded all over her. It’s kind of ironic that she’s dedicated her life to preparing kids for their future when she still dresses like a child. Her wardrobe coordinates with seasons and holidays: pumpkin sweaters in October and red hearts from head to toe in February.

  “This is a happy time,” she says now in her nasal voice. “But I understand that some of you may be confused by the feelings brought up by Donovan’s return, so I’ll be holding extended hours over the next few weeks as we learn more about his story.”

  I lean in to Sara-Kate. “Seriously? She’s making this about us right now?”

  She shakes her head, brings a hand up to touch the tiny silver hoop at the edge of her bottom lip. “Totally clueless.”

  Nobody in this room knows what Donovan went through, can even begin to fathom what his life has been like since seventh grade. Even if he wasn’t chained to a bed, his day-to-day looked nothing like ours. The more I think about it, the more positive I am he’s never seen the inside of a high school. Kidnappers don’t care about education or extracurricular activities or well-balanced meals.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Crumbaugh.” Detz smiles like she’s the most gracious being on the planet before they tag-team a series of stranger danger warnings better suited for a kindergarten class.

  Sara-Kate says my name, and when I look up she’s standing, holding out her hand to help me up. The assembly is over and I feel worse than when it began.

  Talking about Donovan won’t make me forget how I’d step out my front door and hear his voice for months, even years after he’d been gone—teasing me about the way I stand in first position when I’m not in ballet class: heels together, toes pointed to opposite corners. Or inviting me over for dessert because the Pratts had pie or cake or ice cream every night and not just for holidays and special occasions.

  A sit-down with Crumbaugh may help other students, the ones who don’t have the memories or connection I do. The ones who haven’t logged years of sleepovers and countless carpools with Donovan, who don’t know that he completely understood me without even trying.

  But talking about Donovan won’t make me forget the last day I saw him. It won’t make me forget how the last minutes between us were so filled with tension and secrets that for the first time in my life, I questioned whether we were still best friends.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE THING ABOUT KLEIN ANDERSON’S PARTIES IS THAT THEY REally are the best.

  Most families in Ashland Hills do pretty well for themselves, but the Andersons are Old Money, which sets them apart. It also means Klein has access to any kind of liquor and drugs he wants. Girls, too, if Trisha Dove weren’t around to keep him in check.

  I eat dinner with my parents, change out of my school clothes, and wait for Phil. Sara-Kate is coming, too, but he swings by to get me first since I live three blocks over. My parents are parked at the dining room table, involved in a hot and heavy game of Scrabble. When I walk in wearing my jacket, they take a break to issue the standard weekend warnings: be careful, home by midnight, don’t get in the car with anyone who’s been drinking, and I stop listening after that.

  I look over at Donovan’s house as I walk out to Phil’s car. Déjà vu. Just like four years before, the porch and front steps are covered in signs. Only this time, instead of hopeful, almost pleading messages, they are happy! And grateful! And heavily punctuated! WELCOME HOME, DONOVAN!, and GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME, and WE MISSED YOU!!!! Stuffed animals are everywhere, like plush dolphins will make up for all the time he didn’t get to be a kid. And the candles—they’re propped up on every available flat surface. Tea li
ghts and pillars and scented. I know the people who left all this stuff mean well, but they’ve only succeeded in making the Pratts’ lawn look like a shrine . . . or a junkyard.

  Phil is staring at it, too, when I slide into the passenger seat.

  “So, I guess you haven’t seen him?” he asks, chewing on his bottom lip as he turns to me.

  “We’ve called a few times but they’re not answering.” I take a deep breath, thinking of how hopeful I was this afternoon when my mother and I sat next to each other on the couch, the phone between our ears. “I think they unplugged their answering machine. And my mom says we can’t go over without talking to someone first.”

  “What do you think he’s doing? Besides feeling really fucking happy that he’s back?”

  “Maybe that’s all.” I strap my seat belt across my chest, click it into place. “Maybe being happy is enough.”

  I look along our street as Phil reverses down my driveway. Our neighborhood looks like any other neighborhood in Midwest, suburban America. The same brick houses, the same long, wide driveways, the same tastefully landscaped yards and seasonal porch decorations. This time of year, it’s colorful gourds displayed in groups of three and four, and harvest wreaths hung on front doors.

  “Phil, where do you think he was?” I ask, glancing at Donovan’s house once more before we head in the opposite direction. “I know the cops found him in Vegas, but where do you think he was actually living?”

  “I don’t know.” Phil looks both ways before he continues through a four-way stop. “I didn’t really think about it. I mean, I did, but it felt wrong. Like, here I am living this normal life in a normal house and he’s out there being forced to do God knows—”

  I put my hand on his arm when he doesn’t continue, gently squeeze right above his elbow. “Yeah. Me too.” Then, “Do you think he’s the same at all? I mean . . . what will we talk about when we finally see him? I can’t picture it. I can’t . . . I won’t know what to say.”