He offered me a weak smile. Those smiles took a lot out of him, but he kept trying. I gave him one back.
Chapter Eighteen
I heard from Naomi after dinner, which I spent with Rosie and Mel at a restaurant down the street from the hospital. Do you hate me? Naomi had texted me.
Never. Do you hate me? I texted back.
Never.
Our building, and I suppose Alicia’s, since she discovered it, was about halfway between the hospital and Naomi’s home on the other side of the park, so I didn’t have to wait too long before I saw her. I felt like a musician about to go onstage, all nerves and bracing until I saw Naomi coming up the hill. Then I was onstage. The nerves dropped off me and I was okay.
Naomi walked with purpose to the top of the hill. I walked as fast as I could up my side of the hill until I was nearly out of breath. Naomi stopped once she saw me. She picked up her pace and reached out to touch my cheek. “Walter—”
“It’s fine,” I said. Naomi walked into my arms. The palm of her soft glove slid along my cheek as she looked into my eyes. “It doesn’t hurt.” The lights above us shimmered in her pupils. She blinked. I brushed a tear away with my thumb. Neon signs painted her face pinks and purples.
“And your dad,” she said, looking worried now, maybe even anxious.
“He’s fine,” I said.
“I’m really…” Naomi didn’t have the words, either. She nestled her head into my chest. “I’m really mad at you.”
She pulled back and was smiling. I was, too. “I know. You should be,” I said. “I’m mad at me, too. You can be mad. I’m sorry.”
We kissed. It had been too long since we kissed, our hands on each other’s faces and necks; it probably looked like we were strangling each other. Naomi pulled back.
“So mad,” she said, looking into my eyes and touching my cheeks again. We laughed. It really didn’t hurt anymore.
On top of our building, we sat on the roof and leaned on the edges, our arms touching, our heads aimed upward, looking at the sky and the stars with no city in sight. No people, no buildings, no cars or lights. Just the dark night sky.
“So I’m gonna say something, because I’m thinking it,” I said. “You were right. I was an ostrich with my head in the sand.”
“Huh?” Naomi asked.
“And I talked to Mel, and I am handsome and worthy of you,” I continued. “I just get intimidated easily. I mean you’re really intimidating because you’re so amazing, but you push me in all the right ways. You’re the best thing to happen to me, and I want to be that for you, so I really think we should stay together.”
Naomi smiled and nuzzled into me.
“You sound like my brain,” she said. “I was really worried. It’s just what my parents always warned me about—my big mouth, always getting me into trouble.” She shook her head. “You were so … Why couldn’t I just chill and enjoy it? I thought you were done with me; I almost got you killed with my drama. I couldn’t even call you, because I knew I’d just cause even more pain.”
“Talking to you would have been a much better pain than being alone with a face half made of hamburger,” I said. Naomi laughed. “I’m not done with you. Not by a long shot.”
“It was too real, seeing you at school,” Naomi said. Now she couldn’t stop looking at me. “It’s one thing to hear rumors, but something else to actually see it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to see it, either.”
Naomi took off her glove and touched my face again. “So I can be your girlfriend still?” she asked very softly. She cupped my bruised cheek in her hand and looked into my eyes. I placed my hand over hers.
“Yeah, you can be my girlfriend still, if I can be your boyfriend still,” I said. We were close enough that I moved my head near hers, ran my nose up her cheek. “I think that would be good.”
It was as if a bomb had gone off, or a land mine. Debris went flying everywhere, but somehow it all came back down just right. We had ground again. I hoped it would always be that way, that things could scatter and chaos could strike, but we’d always land softly—we’d always get back to here. Everything worked when I had Naomi.
“I think I might love you,” I said.
Naomi laughed, a happy laugh. “Oh, you think so? Yeah?”
“I do, I do love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” Naomi said with no hesitation, a big, wide grin. “God, you’re hot.” She turned her head away and slammed her eyes shut. “Oh my god. I’m such a dork. Don’t break up with me.” She opened her eyes. “I say the stupidest things.”
I leaned back into her. She put her arms around my waist. “You’re right to be mad at me, you know,” I said. “I was scared and I was holding back.”
“Why would you be scared?” Naomi asked. And she didn’t scare me. I felt more comfortable with her than I did in my own skin. It wasn’t her I was scared of.
“I’m not good with change,” I said. “But I’m ready and I know it now more than ever. And if you’re mad and you can’t give me a hundred percent, then I’ll give you more, okay? I’ll give a hundred-twenty or a hundred-thirty percent. It’ll add up. I did the math.”
And Naomi gave me a hundred percent kiss. That was how I fought: by being with Naomi, by being together and being happy. That was the fighting. Because no one can fight the world we live in. You can’t punch the concrete walls, you can’t pull a gun on the city and tell it to change its ways, because you’re not gonna win. But you can change it by existing inside it, by being a part of it. You can replace all the broken bulbs and relight the darkest alleys, one at a time, until the whole thing glows bright like Main Street.
Author’s Note
BRIGHT LIGHTS, DARK NIGHTS wasn’t the book I set out to write three years ago. It was a much simpler story originally. Some things remained; in fact most of the characters in the book now were there from the start. Naomi was there, Jason was there, Walter had a different name but he was the same kid. Their relationship was central to the story but the fact that one was white and one was black wasn’t ever supposed to be an issue.
My projects tend to be very personal. I write about what I’ve gone through, how I think and feel. And while I certainly kept to that, this story was bigger. An image I kept coming to while working on this was of a couple looking deeply into each other’s eyes, while we slowly pull back and see the rest of the world around them. This was my first outward-looking project.
The inclusion of the world at large opened a lot of doors for the story. Once I made the decision to bring up an awareness of color in the book, things fell into place almost immediately. The tone of the book made sense, the characters’ motivations suddenly popped. The universe seemed to be frequently commenting to me that I was on the right path.
There were times I thought it was silly to even write about it. There are TV shows with interracial couples with lead characters, there are celebrities that date outside their race and people are all for it, right? But that’s not really accurate, not everywhere at least. If you spend any time online, you’ve seen your share of racism. The Internet has given racists a voice and peers.
This was one of the things I wanted to tackle with this book—where is racism today? What does modern racism look like? It’s changed, it’s a little mysterious, and it’s a little faceless. Sometimes it’s not even intended or expected, but views and ideas are ingrained and come out even in friendly well-intentioned places. And other times, it’s just rude and in your face.
Like everyone, I have my thoughts and opinions, but I’m a fairly non-confrontational person. I don’t like to argue, I don’t like to force my views on anyone, and I don’t ever intend to persuade anyone to think any way. Books work best as a conversation, not a monologue. Once the topic is presented, I want to converse through the characters, I want to talk about it from each point of view.
In this story, Walter comes to terms with his own racism, and that’s as someone who is dating
a black girl and listens to hip hop and considers himself young, cultured and open-minded. And yet he still struggles with his heart and his head and some deeper rooted fears he’s barely aware of.
I really enjoyed my time in this city of East Bridge. I can’t say for sure if I accomplished every goal I had. I’ve never written anything like this before, but I gave it my best and it’s time to pop the bubble I’ve worked in and let it out into the world. Hopefully, you love Walter and Naomi as much as I do.
Acknowledgments
Pretty much any acknowledgment I attempt to write has to start with my editor, Connie Hsu. This is our third book together, and she read this story over and over, watched it evolve, she knows this world as well as I do if not better. She saw what this book was before I did and she helped me see it, too, as long as it took. It sounds weird that someone could read your work and say “Do you see what you’re actually writing here?” but that’s what happened. She looked through the cracks, saw the real story that was bursting to get out, and it took a long time, breaking down a lot of walls piece by piece and doing a lot of cleanup after, but we got there. I don’t think this book would exist with anyone else on board. She astounds me with the things she picks up and kept me on track like a mouse in a maze. She sounds like an evil overlord when I say it that way, but that’s not how I intend it. I’ll leave it in regardless.
I want to thank my agent Kirby Kim, who had a lot of patience as I pestered and pestered and pestered him. It’s been a long road but I am glad we’re still on it together.
There’s a whole ton of people in the book industry I want to thank, a massive team of people that have their fingerprints on this novel, from test readers to designers to sales people and copy editors and foreign market teams. Every time I visit Connie, she’s introducing me to people that have done crucial things with my book. Full disclosure: I have very little business sense, that’s why I write and draw all by my lonesome, and without these people this story would be a stack of papers in a storage bin somewhere instead of a physical book sitting on shelves in stores.
I would like to thank those who championed my book through acquisitions (Alvina Ling, Victoria Stapleton, and Simon Boughton), the early readers who helped make the book what it is today (Allison Moore, Leslie Shumate, and Zoey Peresman), and the team who turned the final manuscript into a book (Christine Ma, Jill Freshney, and my designer Beth Clarke).
I want to thank my family, of course. Without them there’s no me, everything I think or feel or believe in stems from my upbringing, who I am comes from who I was. So thanks to my parents, brother, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, dogs, cats, bunnies, and babies. A special hi to my buddy Aria.
Cori gets a big thank-you for being the friend who read the whole book in an early stage and offered her advice. She’s heard me talk about this book more than anyone not on my book team, and always listened and offered her thoughts and excitement and encouragement. If anyone was sure this book was going to get finished and be great from the get-go, it was her.
More thanks:
Takarra, some things you said to me and probably don’t remember helped lead to this book, and I’m sure bits of silly conversations we’ve had have slipped in somewhere in these pages. Carly, you were a sign that I was on the right path with what I was working on and I had you in my thoughts as I worked through it. Thanks to Sara Rhine for listening to me talk about this book, thanks to Elaine, Briana, Ben Kowalsky, The Bob, CD for inspiring, and, last but never least, thanks to the wider book-reading world, anyone who’s sent me an encouraging e-mail, bought or read one of my books, librarians, booksellers, book lovers, fellow industry people and authors who have reached out or replied to me when I’ve reached out or inspired me with their own works.
I’m very glad and thankful to be a part of this awesome world.
Playlist
1. Act 1, Part 1, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—Jay Electronica
2. Electric Relaxation—A Tribe Called Quest
3. Find Your Love—Drake
4. Love Unconditionally—SWV
5. Cinnamon Tree—Esperanza Spalding
6. Neon Valley Street—Janelle Monáe
7. When Can I See You—Babyface
8. Everlong (Acoustic)—Foo Fighters
9. The Prettiest Girl in the Whole Wide World—Weezer
10. Like a Lovesong (Back to Back)—The Pillows
11. That Girl—Justin Timberlake
12. Ask Myself—Robin Thicke
13. XO—Beyoncé
14. We Found Love—Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris
15. Run to the Sun—N.E.R.D.
16. Enemy Gene—of Montreal
17. It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over—Lenny Kravitz
18. They Don’t Know—Jon B
19. My Love Is Your Love—Whitney Houston
20. Ordinary People—John Legend
About the Author
Stephen Emond is the creator of the Emo Boy comic series, two illustrated young adult novels, Happyface and Winter Town, and Steverino, a comic strip that ran in his local Connecticut newspaper. You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Stephen Emond
Winter Town
Happyface
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Bonus Material
About the Author
Also by Stephen Emond
Copyright
Text copyright © 2015 by Stephen Emond
Illustrations copyright ©2015 by Stephen Emond
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
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All rights reserved
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Emond, Stephen.
Bright lights, dark nights / Stephen Emond.—First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Walter Wilcox’s first love, Naomi, happens to be African American, so when Walter’s policeman father is caught in a racial profiling scandal, the teens’ bond and mutual love of the Foo Fighters may not be enough to keep them together through the pressures they face at school, at home, and online.
ISBN 978-1-62672-206-4 (hardback)—ISBN 978-1-62672207-1 (e-book) [1. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 2. Race relations—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Single-parent families—Fiction. 6. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 7. High schools—Fiction. 8. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.E69623Bri 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014047413
eISBN 9781626722071
First hardcover edition, 2015
eBook edition, August 2015
Bright Lights, Dark Nights Page 22