That's Not What Happened

by Kody Keplinger

  “Somewhere in the middle there.”

  “You’re tall compared to some of our girls. You should try out for the team next year,” she said.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I don’t really do sports,” I said. “At all. Even jogging more than half a mile makes me feel nauseous, so …” I trailed off, horrified to realize I was telling this cool senior girl how out of shape I was.

  “Too bad,” she said. “Because right now it’s looking like this team is going to suck when I’m gone.”

  I don’t know if Brenna was being arrogant or honest. Maybe both.

  I do know that she was right, though. Since she died, our girls’ basketball team has kind of sucked.

  “So … about what Amber said …”

  Miles and I were in my truck, headed home from school only a few hours after the Tater Tot incident.

  “I know,” I said as I shifted gears. “But it’s not going to keep me from getting the truth out there. I’m still collecting the letters. I’ve emailed Kellie again. And texted her, too. She hasn’t responded yet, but I know she will. And you’ll write yours and then—”

  “I was talking about prom,” he said.

  “Oh.” I bit my lip and kept my eyes glued to the road. “Sorry. I thought … Prom just hasn’t been on my mind.”

  “I get it,” he said. “But it’s coming up in just a couple weeks.”

  “Are they even selling tickets anymore?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But … I kind of already bought two.”

  “You did what?” I cut my eyes at him before refocusing on the road. “Miles, those aren’t cheap. And I haven’t said I was going yet.”

  “I know,” he said. “Grandma insisted, though. She was upset I didn’t go last year. I told her I might this year but that I didn’t have a date yet, and she gave me money and told me to buy tickets just in case. I wasn’t gonna tell you. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to go with me because of the money or something. But … yeah. I have tickets.”

  “That was sweet of your grandmother.”

  “She asked if I was taking you,” he said. “She likes you.”

  “She barely knows me.”

  “She knows I like you.”

  I felt the blush beginning to creep up my neck, the heat of mingled guilt and happiness.

  “So,” he said. “Am I? Taking you?”

  “Miles … I …”

  “Lee,” he said, his voice sounding clearer and less sleepy than usual. “If it’s about me … if you don’t like me, I get it. But we can go as friends. Whatever you want.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like you,” I said. “But I’m …”

  “What?”

  I sighed and turned the truck onto my driveway. I turned off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition. “Miles,” I said, looking down at the purple, crescent moon–shaped key chain Denny had gotten me for Christmas two years earlier. I ran my thumb over the raised dots on its surface, the Braille that spelled out my name. I knew that, right then, in his pocket, Miles had a blue star embossed with his name. We were a set. “Miles, I’m asexual.”

  There was silence in the truck at first. Which I guess was to be expected. When I finally worked up the courage to look at him, he was staring at me. He didn’t look disgusted or annoyed. I hadn’t expected him to—that wasn’t Miles at all—but deep down, I think I’d still feared it. Instead, he just looked confused.

  “Asexual?”

  I lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Somewhere on that spectrum. It’s not that I’m repulsed by sex. I’m not. Ideally, I’d love to find someone I want to sleep with one day but …” I pick at my nails, thinking of the best way to explain. “Okay. Think of it like when you open the fridge because you’re hungry, but nothing is appealing. You don’t have anything against eating—you’d like to eat at some point—but you can’t imagine eating anything you see in that fridge.”

  “So … sex is eating.”

  “This might be a terrible metaphor.”

  “No,” he said. “I think I get it. So you’ve never been attracted to … anyone.”

  “Not in that way, no,” I said. “I’ve had crushes. But they’ve all been emotional. Not physical. I’ve never felt that kind of sexual attraction. Not even to any of the hot famous guys on TV.”

  “Not to me either, then.”

  I bit my lip and looked down at my hands again. “No,” I said. “Not even to you.”

  “Oh … Okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Miles.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “That’s … that’s not something you have to apologize for. It’s cool.”

  But when I looked up again and found Miles looking out the window, away from me, I knew that I’d hurt him. I hadn’t been apologizing for who I was. If anything, I was sorry that I’d waited this long to tell him. I felt like a jerk, like I’d let him believe something more could happen between us when I’d known for a while that it couldn’t. At least, not the way I thought he’d want. But I liked him so much, and even though my feelings for him weren’t sexual, they were romantic.

  Maybe, selfishly, I’d kept this from him for so long because I wanted him to keep liking me. I kept him at a distance, trying to keep my own feelings safe, but I’d failed us both in that way.

  “So …” He turned back to me. “What about prom?”

  I blinked. “You still want to go with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just figured …”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I wanted to have sex on prom night?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean … I don’t know.”

  “Where would we even do it?” he asked, his slow words vibrating with a hint of laughter. “We could never afford a motel. And I’m not giving it up in the bed of your dirty old truck.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t put down my truck just because you’re sad about not getting laid.”

  We both smiled at each other, and I was relieved to still be able to do this, to joke like this, even after being honest with him. But eventually, both our smiles slipped, and we were left staring across the cab of my truck at each other.

  “Do you … like me?” he asked. “You can be honest. I just … You said you still have crushes. Am I one of them?”

  “Of course you are,” I whispered, because the idea of saying that any louder felt too overwhelming. “But that doesn’t matter.”

  He stared at me, downturned eyes unblinking, challenging me to answer unasked questions.

  “Do you really want a girlfriend who might never want to sleep with you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Hadn’t really thought about it before.”

  “Well, I have,” I said. “Because I’ve lost one best friend already. I couldn’t take it if I lost you, too. Besides, I’m leaving in a few months. It’s a bad idea. We’re a bad idea.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For not telling you sooner, I mean. I talk so much about the truth being important, but I hid this and—”

  “It’s fine,” he said quickly. Which, considering Miles never spoke quickly, did seem a little strange. He just shook his head, dark curls flopping around his pale face. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “If you were serious before,” I said, “about it being okay to just go to prom as friends … I think I could do that.”

  “I was serious,” he said. “So you’ll go?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just as friends. Everything else is off the table.”

  He nodded. “Just friends. Like we’ve been for the past three years. Nothing changes.”

  “Okay,” I said, though I still felt nervous. Even if Miles was okay with going to prom in a completely platonic way, I wasn’t sure if I could keep my own emotions in check. It wasn’t that spending an evening with him, dancing, wearing a nice dress, didn’t sound wonderful. It did. Too wonderful. Too easy to get caught up in the moment and let myself forget that our friend
ship needed to come first.

  But I pushed that fear aside and sat back. We were going to prom together. That was settled, and if I just kept an eye on the boundaries, we might even have a great time.

  “I guess this means I need a dress,” I said. “And you need a tux. That’ll be interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything but T-shirts and hoodies.”

  “Me either,” he admitted.

  “I promise that if you look ridiculous, I won’t tell Denny.”

  Miles chuckled. “Thanks.”

  “It must be weird for him,” I said after a minute. “All this prom stuff. It’s hard for me without Sarah, but he lost two best friends. And now all these big end-of-high-school things are happening without them.”

  Miles nodded. “Yeah. I think I forget that sometimes. About Jared and Rosi.”

  “Same. I mean, it’s not that I forget them so much as just, like … I don’t know. He’s always cracking jokes, making me smile when I get upset about missing Sarah. Maybe I’m just selfish, but it’s easy to forget he might miss his friends, too.”

  “He doesn’t talk about them as much as you talk about Sarah,” Miles said. “We all gotta deal with this stuff differently.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I reached for the door handle. “I’m just glad the three of us have each other at least. It will be tough going to things like prom and graduation without Sarah—and Jared and Rosi, I’m sure, for Denny—but at least we don’t have to deal with it alone, you know?”

  He nodded, then opened his door.

  Once we were out of my truck, I pulled out my cell phone and checked to see if I had any messages. But all I had was one from Mom, telling me she’d be home late. She’d picked up a second shift because the other manager was out sick. I sighed and put the phone back in my pocket.

  Miles looked over the hood of the truck at me. He raised a single, questioning eyebrow.

  “I was hoping to hear from Kellie,” I said. “I’ve texted and emailed, but she hasn’t responded.”

  Miles shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sounds like she doesn’t wanna talk.”

  “She will if she gives me a chance to explain my plan,” I said. “I’m worried she’s not even opening my emails because she sees my name and thinks I’m just harassing her like everyone else here did. She might hate me for not speaking up sooner. I just … I want to make it up to her. I want all of us to have our stories out there so it’s not just the McHales’ book about Sarah.”

  “Maybe … she doesn’t want the truth out there.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “She tried to tell people the truth years ago. Why wouldn’t she want them to know now?”

  He just shrugged.

  “Speaking of which,” I said. “Have you—”

  “No,” he said, scratching the back of his head as he looked away from me. “I really don’t wanna write anything, Lee.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He shrugged again.

  I stared at him, wishing I had the same power to read him that he had over me. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I am painfully familiar with every little jerk of his head or slump of his shoulders. Sometimes I can read a novel’s worth of thoughts just by looking at his eyes. But other times, it’s like there’s a wall between us, and I question how well I really know Miles Mason.

  “Are you embarrassed?” I asked. “About your writing? I know you’ve failed English before, but I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I can help you edit if you want.”

  “You … think I’m saying no because … I’m not smart.”

  “What? No,” I said. “I do think you’re smart. But if you’re worried about not being a great writer or something … if that’s not why you don’t want to do this, please stop me from making this worse.”

  “That’s not why,” he said.

  “Then what’s the problem? Why don’t you want to write the letter?”

  “Just don’t, okay?” He turned and started walking toward his house. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Miles,” I called after him.

  “I got homework,” he said. “Don’t wanna fail English again.”

  “Miles.” I sighed. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know,” he said, giving me one last look over his shoulder. “See you later, Lee.”

  I gave a little wave and let him disappear into his grandmother’s yard before I headed up the front walk onto my porch. I didn’t know what reason he could possibly have for not wanting to write his story. Denny, Ashley, and Eden had jumped at the chance to get their voices out there, even if I wasn’t sure what “out there” was yet in terms of sharing the letters. And I was sure that, once Kellie heard me out, she’d want this, too. So why was Miles so resistant?

  I decided to leave it alone for a couple of days. But I wasn’t going to let it go. I couldn’t. Not at that point. The idea of collecting the letters and sharing them with the world, shoving them right under Brother Lloyd’s nose, had taken hold of me. I woke up thinking about the letters. I fell asleep thinking about them. I dreamed of them. The claws of this idea, this new goal, had sunken in deep, and almost every thought seemed to swirl around how and where and when I’d show them to the world.

  And if you’re reading this, then I guess I succeeded. The letters are out there. Just not in the way I initially imagined.

  From Denny:

  Whenever people talk about Jared, they always seem to remember him as a farmer’s son. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “That Grayson boy. Such a shame. He was from a real good family. Good hardworking people.”

  No shade to Jared’s parents, they are good people, but comments like this don’t really speak to who Jared was. They don’t mention that he spent every summer mowing lawns or working on his family’s farm just so he could save up money for the newest generation of gaming console. Or that his room was so messy, you couldn’t sit on the bed without hearing the dreaded crunch of a video game case cracking beneath your butt. Or that he was a ridiculous flirt. He even flirted with my sister, who he had less than zero chance with, and he knew it. But with girls he actually liked, like Rosi, he seemed to forget all the cheesy pickup lines he’d learned from the internet.

  The first time I hung out at his house was in seventh grade. We’d barely been in his room for two minutes when I heard the telltale sound of a computer booting up. “Do you like RPGs?” he asked. “Like Age of Dragons or Bomb Shelter?”

  “Um … no?” I said, and gestured to my sunglasses.

  “Oh, right.”

  Then there was a long pause. At twelve, I’m not sure Jared knew how to interact with people outside of video game talk.

  “Well,” he said eventually, “do you want to play one?”

  “I’m not sure you’re getting this whole blind thing.”

  “No, hear me out,” he said. “I can play the visual parts and tell you what’s going on. And then when, like, important choices come up, I’ll let you pick. These games are all about the story, anyway. At least they are for me. It’ll be fun.”

  It was fun. Maybe more fun for him—he got really into the ESPN-like play-by-play of all the combat—but it ended up being a cool way to spend time with a friend and feel like I was a part of something, gaming, that had previously been off-limits for me. It would never be my passion the way it was his, but I did end up playing a few of those audio-only video games.

  I sometimes listen to live streams of people playing the newest games that I know Jared would have liked. I want to stay on top of what’s happening in his favorite franchises. I like to think about how he would have reacted to big plot twists or the way he would have gushed about new badass DLC. (Lee, that’s short for downloadable content. I know you don’t have your nerd card yet.)

  So yeah. When I think of Jared, I think of games. I don’t think he’d have it any other way.

  It didn’t take long for Mom to find out about the harassment I was getting from Brot
her Lloyd and his congregation.

  She started getting suspicious when my truck was keyed in the school parking lot. I’d lied and told her that my driver-side door wasn’t the only victim, and that some asshole must have been vandalizing classmates’ cars for the fun of it. It was obvious she didn’t completely buy it. I may be an actress—or an aspiring actress, more accurately—but like I’ve said, I’m not the best at improv. Still, she let it slide.

  But then someone egged our house in the middle of the night.

  I woke up on a Saturday and found Mom on the porch, scrubbing away at our front window. Until that moment, I didn’t even know egging houses was still something people did. But I guess things become classic for a reason.

  “I just don’t know why anyone would do this,” Mom said as I stepped out onto the porch. “I’ve heard of kids doing this kind of thing on Halloween, but it’s the middle of April.”

  “Can I help?” I asked, the guilt twisting in my stomach like an agitated snake.

  “No. Thank you, though, Lee baby. I think I’ve got it.” She shook her head and pushed dark brown bangs off of her face. “But … do you have any ideas? Why anyone might target our house? I took a look around and it doesn’t look like any of the neighbors got hit.”

  She looked at me. It was the look mothers give when they know something, but they want you to be the one to say it. Denial wasn’t an option this time. And even if it had been, I’m not sure I would’ve taken it. I had a sudden flash of Kellie Gaynor and all the ways people had found to torment her and her parents. Someone had broken Mrs. Gaynor’s windshield. And a week later the word liar was spray-painted in red on their front door. And that’s not even taking into account the harassment they faced in person.

  If people were mad at me for speaking up, they wouldn’t hesitate to take it out on our property. Or on my mom. Which was something, I realized then, that I probably should have considered sooner.

  “Mom,” I said. “Can we talk?”

  She lowered the rag she was using to clean the window. “What’s going on, baby?”