by Katie Henry
Jonah glares right back at her, and I feel like I’m holding my breath. But then he just turns on his heel and storms out the door.
“It’s okay,” Will says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Jonah’s disappointed. He doesn’t . . . It’s going to be okay.”
“Is he right?”
“About bookers passing over people of color?” Mo says. “Yes. It happens all the time. Remember what we told you about boxes?”
I do, of course I do, but Will jumps in before I can say so. “What Jonah was saying—we might not have told you there’s another type of box. The”—he makes air quotes—“‘diversity slot.’”
“They’ll book one person of color, they’ll book one queer person, and it’s like . . .” Mo mimes dusting off her hands. “All done. Good enough.”
That’s awful, and it makes me feel even more awful, to think about taking someone’s spot, when there are so few spots in the first place. But that isn’t what I was asking.
“I mean about . . .” I hesitate. “Is that really why the booker picked me? Is that what you all think, but Jonah’s the only one who’ll say it?”
Will and Mo share a look.
“Stop staring at each other and just tell me.”
“So, um, I’m gonna . . .” Will’s already edging away. “Find Jonah.”
I turn back to Mo. “Well?”
“I’m not going to pretend like it’s not a factor,” Mo says, “that you’re conventionally attractive.”
I hate that phrase. “Conventionally attractive.” I never know what anybody means by it. You’re pretty in the most boring kind of way?
Being pretty is such a mind screw sometimes. But I would never say so out loud, because it’s like people expect me not to know I’m pretty. Everyone seems to want to be the first person who’s pointed it out. Like the only way for me not to be a conceited bitch is to be delighted by this brand-new information they’ve bestowed upon me. I’m not a feral child brought out of the wilderness last week who’s just learning fire is hot, forks help you eat, and having shiny hair and big blue eyes is valuable social currency. Please.
I know I’m lucky. I know being pretty is a privilege I didn’t earn, and I know I get put on a pedestal because of it. But if it’s a pedestal, then I’m chained down to it.
“But is that the only reason?” My eyes are getting hot. “That I’m pretty? Is that the only thing I have to offer?”
I won’t be pretty forever. There’s an expiration date on this piece of me, the only piece anyone cares about. What if this is all I’ll ever have, and then it just . . . disappears?
“No,” Mo says firmly. “You’re funny. And smart. And a million other things that matter more.”
“You’re funnier,” I say. “And smarter. That’s why I made him take you, too.”
She sighs. “Yeah—I know you thought you were doing me a favor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first off, I don’t need charity to get a slot somewhere—”
“Oh my God, why are you mad at me?”
“I am not mad at you,” she says, decidedly calm. “I am . . . annoyed.”
“But . . . what did I do?” I’m suddenly, embarrassingly close to tears. “I got you a gig, didn’t you want—”
“It is not a gig,” she says, and it’s the third time she hasn’t used a contraction. It’s like she needs each extra syllable to collect her thoughts. “It is a bringer show.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes,” she says through gritted teeth. “And yet you agreed to be in one.”
“It’s a real club, isn’t it? He showed me his business card.”
“It’s real,” she confirms. “And they don’t do open mics, it’s true. But he didn’t offer you a guest spot, or an audition, he offered you a show where you have to bring people so they will drink alcohol and he will make money.”
Oh.
“Fine,” I say, feeling incredibly stupid and even more naive. “So we’ll tell him we aren’t doing it.”
She runs her hand through her hair. “We’re doing it.”
“But—”
“It’s not my favorite kind of show to be invited to, but then again, it’s the only show I’ve been invited to. And he seems like a douche, but it is a real club. Who knows, someone who matters could be watching.”
“So you’re saying I got scammed?”
“I’m saying you got played a little,” Mo says. “Chalk it up to experience. Plus, the showcase at Loyola is in a month, and you’ve barely gone up anywhere except the Forest. So, honestly? You could use the experience.”
Three days later, I’m sitting in the cafeteria, realizing I don’t actually have any friends. If a friend is a person who will pay a cover charge for a bar they aren’t allowed in at all to come see you tell stupid jokes, then I definitely don’t have any friends. Not at school, anyway.
I could ask Alex. Your boyfriend is supposed to be your friend, right? It’s in the name. When my older cousin got married last year, she stood at the altar and sobbed, “I just can’t believe I’m marrying my best friend.” And I was happy for her and all, but I also thought: Wouldn’t it be kind of weird to have sex with your best friend?
I thought I’d get by on borrowing Mo’s friends, but that didn’t fully pan out.
“Izzy, I can give you the guys, and I guess my girlfriend, maybe someone else, too, but—” And then she frowned. “You’re from here. You don’t have one person who would go?”
The truth is, not really. But for more reasons than one, the truth wasn’t an option. So we agreed: I’d find one person.
There’s a flash of red hair in the corner of my vision. I turn just in time to see Naomi, backpack half-open, walking past our table toward the doors. She’s always done that, forget to close her bag all the way. In elementary school, you could track her through the halls by the Hansel and Gretel trail of colored pencils and animal-shaped erasers she left behind. For a moment, I’m tempted to reach out and zip her backpack all the way up. The way I used to.
But I don’t. I sit at the table in silence, listening without hearing, Alex’s and Margot’s and Kyle’s voices buzzing in my ears like mosquitoes in the summer. I get up, suddenly, and my knee bangs into Alex. He looks over, surprised.
“Be right back,” I tell him. “Bathroom.”
But when I push open the cafeteria doors, I don’t turn left, toward the girls’ bathroom. I turn right, into the locker bays.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. She’s not going to say yes. Just because our history presentation went well—she ended up liking Fanny Brice, I ended up feeling way more comfortable at the front of a classroom than I ever had before—that doesn’t mean we’re friends again.
But she’s the only one who knows about Izzy. So she’s Isabel’s only real option.
“Hey,” I say tentatively.
Naomi, standing by her locker, jumps. When she turns, her eyes widen. “Isabel?”
“I wanted to invite to you a comedy show,” I blurt out as quickly as I can, hoping it’ll stop her in her tracks. Which it does.
“You—what?”
“There’s this comedy show. That—uh—I need someone to go with me. Well, not with me, exactly, but to watch me—”
“You’re performing?” she asks.
I nod. “It’s a bringer show, though—which means I have to bring people, so I thought—”
“Are you bringing Alex?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Because he still doesn’t know?”
I think: Because he wouldn’t like it, and you might.
I think: Because he’d tell me to stop, and you never would.
I say: Nothing.
She sighs. “What day is the show?”
“Thursday.”
Naomi chews on her lip. But before she can choose either way, I hear it: the sound of someone walking down the hallway perpendicular to the locker bays, someone with he
avy footsteps walking in our direction, about four seconds away from us seeing him and him seeing us.
I have trouble hearing people when they talk, but weirdly, I can hear other sounds so much better than most people. The upstairs neighbor’s cell phone ringing. Peter when he’d sneak in way past his curfew. And this person walking the hall, closer and closer to us, and oh, God, what if Alex followed me? What if he could tell I was lying and he’s coming to find me but he’s only going to find me with—I grab Naomi by the arm and yank her around the corner. Whoever was coming down the hallway—Alex or not—walks straight on, and out of hearing. I let go of Naomi and breathe out my relief.
“Ow, what the hell?” she says, rubbing her arm.
“I’m sorry,” I say as my heart rate goes back to normal. “I thought it was—”
“I know who you thought it was.” The way she says it, so bitterly and so resigned at the same time.
“It’s just not the right time,” I say, trying to explain. “He’s stressed about college stuff, so I was going to wait to tell him about how we—”
“How we did what?” she asks, but it isn’t a question. “Talked? That you dared to hang out with a non-approved person?”
She makes it sound so evil. “You guys never gave each other a chance.”
“Because I knew what he was,” she says, turning away from me. She shakes her head, then spins back around on me with such pure fury it almost knocks me over. “I told you. That’s the worst part, I knew what was going to happen and you didn’t listen to me. I told you not to go out with him.”
I think: Yeah, and he told me not to see you.
I think: Why does everyone think they can tell me what to do?
I say: Nothing. Because just then, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
Forget lacrosse. Forget film. Alex’s true talent is his impossibly bad timing.
where are you??
you’re taking a really long time
I knew what I’d find before I even pulled out my phone. And so did Naomi.
“Have you ever considered he might be doing this on purpose, Isabel?” she asks, sounding just on the verge of tears now. “Have you considered there’s a reason he only wants you talking to his friends, not yours—”
“So he wants me to be friends with his friends!”
“Why he only wants you to hang out with him after school—”
“People in relationships spend time together, okay?”
She steps in closer. “That he doesn’t send you all those text messages hour after hour because oh my God, he just loves you so much, it’s because he wants control over you even when he’s not around!”
“You don’t understand,” I say, and it’s like six months ago all over again. “Nobody in his life is there for him. His parents are never around, they act like he barely exists, and—yeah, so he’s clingy. But I’m good for him. At least with me he knows somebody cares about him.”
“Does he care about you?” she shoots back.
“Of course he does.”
“He doesn’t,” she says, and God, it stings, the dismissiveness in her voice. She wants to tell me what I can’t believe? She can’t believe someone might actually be able to love me.
“I tried, so hard!” she throws at me. “I tried to make you understand—all I did was try to help you—”
“You judged me!” I say. “That’s all you did. The second I didn’t make the choice you wanted me to, you started treating me like I was too stupid and weak to choose at all!”
“Well, if you can’t see what he’s doing to you, maybe—” She stops short, but we both know what she was going to say.
After a long moment of silence, I take a step closer. “I’m trying, okay? I want us to be friends again.”
“I know,” she says softly.
“I never wanted us not to be friends.”
“I know.”
“So then—”
“I can’t do it, Isabel,” she says, her eyes wet and her jaw tight. “I can’t, I can’t let you drag me around corners because you’re terrified of your boyfriend.”
“That’s not true. That’s—”
“I miss you so much,” she says, jabbing at the air with her hand with each word. “But I just can’t do this.”
“Do what?” I ask, throwing my own hands up. “I don’t understand—do what?”
“Watch you destroy yourself.”
Destroy myself?
“He’s my boyfriend,” I say.
“He’s your jailer.”
The word hits me so square in the chest, I nearly double over. Jailer. I know why she thinks that, I get that’s what she’s sees, but . . . Alex loves me. I’m the most important person in his life. That’s why he’s always texting, that’s why he wants to see me whenever he’s free, because I matter to him. Not because he thinks he owns me. If it was only that, like Naomi thinks it is, if it was only control—then—that would mean I didn’t matter. To anyone.
But it isn’t true. So it doesn’t matter. I straighten my shoulders.
“That’s a really shitty thing to say.”
“It’s not shitty. It’s true.”
It can be both. The thought seizes me without warning or wanting. I close my eyes, take a breath, and remind myself it isn’t true, of course it isn’t true.
Naomi is just jealous.
Naomi is vindictive.
Naomi is a crazy weirdo stalker, Isabel. Ignore her before she goes full psycho and boils your pet bunny, Isabel. Just delete her number from your contacts—here, I’ll do it for you.
“Forget I asked,” I snap at her, already turning around, already storming off. “Forget I even tried.”
“God,” she says. “Isabel—”
“Don’t worry.” I toss over my shoulder as I go. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Chapter 14
CHARLOTTE’S HOME FOR spring break this week. Peter’s was last week, but he opted to go stay with his roommate. I would, too, if my roommate had a house in Palm Beach.
The closest thing I’ve got to roommates are my plants, which, on the upside, are much quieter.
The second closest thing I’ve got is Charlotte, who’s found some reason to barge into my room every day this week. Today, it’s to borrow a scarf that, to be fair, I borrowed from Naomi last year and never gave back.
“Just don’t lose it, okay?” I ask her. Naomi and I probably won’t be friends ever again, but on the off chance we do, I don’t want to re-destroy everything over a scarf.
“Please.” Charlotte wraps it around her neck. “Even if I did, it would be payback for my green coat.”
One time. One time I took a coat from her closet without asking and she acts like I’m a seasoned shoplifter.
“Do you need anything else, Charlotte?” I ask.
“Touchy,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender. “You know, some sisters actually hang out together. Talk, even.”
“Yes,” I deadpan. “I’ve heard tell of such things. In the ancient tomes.”
She tilts her head at me. “Huh.”
“What?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you tell a joke.”
That wasn’t really a joke. Just a line. But I’m not going to correct her, so I shrug.
“My roommate, Lily, and her sisters talk like, all the time, but they’re weird, anyway,” Charlotte says, brushing it off. “So.”
I pick at my bedspread and say nothing. Which only proves her point.
“I don’t take it personally,” she says. “I want you to know that.”
How benevolent. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” she says, with the same kind of easy confidence my mom has in the courtroom. “You don’t like talking at all. Why would it be different with me?”
I can’t help it. I start laughing.
“What?” she says. “I mean, you don’t.”
“I do, actually,” I tell her. “It turns out I do like talking, and I want to talk,
and have things to say, but only when I feel like someone’s actually going to listen.”
“Oh my God.” She rolls her eyes. “This is what happens when you’re the baby of the family, I guess. You think everything is about you.”
That makes me laugh even harder. “How could I think that?”
“Yeah, beats me.”
“How could I possibly think everything’s about me when all you guys do is shut me down. You especially.”
Charlotte drops the plant leaf she was holding like it’s suddenly hot. “Me?”
“You’re always interrupting me. Talking over me. Like if I got a single word in during dinner you’d . . . I don’t know, spontaneously combust.”
Now it’s her turn to laugh. “What?”
“Or I guess just that you’d lose, if I got to talk. If anyone paid attention to me for one second, instead of you, you’d die. Like it was you or me, every dinner, every family trip . . . ,” I huff. “Always.”
“Wait.” She plops herself down on my bed. “Is that what you think? That I’m always cutting you off or interrupting you because I, what—see you as a threat?”
When she puts it that way, it does sound kind of dramatic. “Yes,” I mumble, and then am instantly embarrassed by how defensive I sound.
Charlotte buries her head in her hands. “Jesus Christ.” She straightens up and looks me in the eye. “That’s so not true.”
“What do you mean, of course it’s true. You’re always interrupt—”
She cuts in then. Which only proves my point.
“Not to mess with you, Isabel.” She pauses, and seems to realize it, too. “Sorry.”
“You see what I mean?”
“I said sorry!” Charlotte grimaces. “Yeah, I guess I cut people off, a lot. You think it’s not my best quality, fine. You and my Sociology 101 TA can have lunch and commiserate.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means it’s bullshit to drop my recitation grade ten percent because I talked over Noah White maybe twice. He sucks. It was a public service.”
“Charlotte.” I snap my fingers. “Focus.”
“It’s not about you, okay? It’s a ‘me’ thing. I just—I don’t know, I feel like . . .” She shakes her head. “This is going to sound stupid.”