CHARITY
“Hey,” Dom says when I walk into the kitchen. His lips slip into a grin.
“Hi,” I say back. I take a step closer to him, peering over his shoulder. He’s arranging small scoops of baked macaroni and cheese on a bright blue dish—another one of his small plates, I guess. It’s slow in the dining room, and sometimes he gives free samples to customers waiting at the counter for take-out orders, or regulars nursing coffees while they read the paper. When I asked Miss Dolly if it was okay to step away and see if Dom needed any help, she grinned at me conspiratorially. I think she knows I just want to talk to him, but she’s kind enough not to call me out about it.
“I thought you weren’t coming in today,” he says. He sets the plate under a heat lamp and turns back to the stove, sliding dirty pots and black-bottomed pans into the deep sink.
“Yeah, I wasn’t. But you know Dolly’s is like my safe place now.” I lean against the counter beside him. “I had to tutor today,” I say quietly.
“Uh-oh,” he says, looking at me through the fringe of his lashes as he continues to move expertly around the kitchen. “How’d that go?”
“It could have been worse, but she barely looked at me the whole time. Jase was there, which helped.”
“Ahhh,” Dom says. He walks over to the fridge and pulls out a fat red tomato and a ball of juicy-looking mozzarella. “Hard to be upset with that ray of sunshine nearby.”
I laugh a little. “Exactly. But I don’t know. I think today is the first day I realized Layla’s totally different now. Like my Layla is really, really gone.”
He nods. Dom’s always focused in the kitchen, but tonight he seems even quieter than he usually is.
I’m about to ask him if everything’s okay when he picks up a sharp knife and starts to cut the tomato into thick slices. My stomach growls.
“Want some of this?” he asks, and I wonder if he heard. He picks up the mozzarella next and slices it, then arranges both on a plate, alternating tomato, then cheese, then tomato before drizzling it all with a thick olive oil.
“Duh,” I say. He smirks and sprinkles big granules of salt and pepper all over it, and I grab two forks.
We eat standing up, without talking, and the soft sounds of us chewing is drowned out by the dishwasher and the one other cook, who is talking loudly on his cellphone. The cheese is smooth and cold and the tomato is so juicy that the seeds slide down my chin. I wipe them away with the back of my hand.
“So is it over?” Dom asks. He hands me a napkin, but his eyes seem distant even as he looks at me. “Like, are you done tutoring her?”
I nod. “I think so. If she needs more help for the next assignment, I think I’m going to ask Novak to pair her up with someone else.”
I cut the last slices of tomato and cheese in half so we can share up until the very last bite. I look around the kitchen at the stainless steel appliances, the stacks of serving plates and spices. I want to believe that truly good things can last forever even if my friendship with Layla couldn’t.
“So. I was doing some research about fundraising,” I say, lifting the empty plate and used forks. I settle them into the sink and turn the water on, rinsing it all clean. He looks at me blankly, so I add, “For this place. For Dolly’s.”
“Oh,” Dom says. He angles his head in my direction, and his dark hair shimmers as he turns. He looks skeptical. Or I guess uninterested. He grabs a bar mop and starts wiping down the counter, and I thought he’d be more excited by the prospect of raising money for his grandparents—that he’d be dying to hear what I had to say.
I take a deep breath and I pitch him the idea about running a fundraiser in the neighborhood.
“I don’t know,” he says.
I tell him about the crowdsourcing websites I’d looked up—how successful I read they can be.
“We could post about it everywhere. People love feeling like they’re a part of something.”
Dom crosses his arms. “I don’t really want to do that,” he says.
“But, Dom,” I insist. “It could be really great. What about your small plates? We could set up a table out front and give out little samples to encourage people to come in like you do with the regulars now anyway, and maybe have a donation box near the door. Or what about posting SAVE DOLLY’S posters around the neighborhood. People would be so—”
“Look,” Dom starts, but he isn’t facing me. He sniffs hard and rubs his hand down his face. He stares at the floor, then at the stove in front of him, then at the wall behind my head. His eyes turn stormy and he furrows his brow. “I totally appreciate you offering to help out after school or whatever. Lolly and Pop do too. But this is our livelihood, not some part-time gig the way it is for you, and…”
I cut in. “Don’t worry about it, really. You know I love this place. I’m happy to help. Obviously, I know a fundraiser won’t fix everything. We’ll need to come up with something more sustainable to get business back to where it used to be, but I think it’s a good place to start, and I’m—”
He looks right at me then, and the weight of his gaze stops me cold.
“Cleo. Stop. Just stop. We don’t need—or want—your charity.”
The color of our conversation turns so quickly that I’m a little too stunned to say anything that makes much sense.
“Right,” I say, the way he’s looking at me hurting more than his actual words. Stupidly, I say it again. “Right. Of course not.”
I try to clear my throat a few times, but it doesn’t work. Dom doesn’t look my way or say another word to me, just keeps cleaning the kitchen like I’m not there. And here I stand again, feeling invisible; feeling forgotten.
Before I walk out of the kitchen, I want to apologize. I want to get us back to sharing a plate, to talking like we’re old friends, to fix whatever I just broke. But the last time I tried to tell someone I was sorry, they just told me how little they wanted me in their life. And I’m not brave enough to hear that again—that someone I want doesn’t want me back.
Now, not even Dolly’s is safe.
All this time I’ve been blaming Layla for the way things are between us. But after her, and Sydney, and now Dom, it’s clear that the problem isn’t them. It has to be me.
I pull on my coat, waving goodbye to Miss Dolly and Pop, wondering if I should bother coming in tomorrow if Dom is still upset with me. It isn’t until I’m back inside my own bedroom that I realize I’ll be avoiding three different people at school tomorrow—that I’m back to being all alone again.
A CHANCE
I expect Monday to be torture, what with the Sydney and Dom situations, but in homeroom I encounter the perfect distraction: there seems to be trouble in Chorus Girl Land.
When I walk in, Dom ignores me, which hurts, but I expected that. What I don’t expect is to see Layla sitting as far away from Sloane as possible in a classroom of this size. Sloane’s cheeks are a bright, angry red, while Layla looks like she’s been crying. It’s strange that it makes me kind of happy, seeing them so unhappy. But I need to know what happened.
I spend the rest of the morning launching a full-blown investigation, which is an excellent way to avoid my own problems. I ask around in each of my classes. I walk slowly down the hall, listening for whispers. I linger in bathroom stalls. But by lunch I still know nothing.
I’d planned to hide in the library during the lunch period because I couldn’t imagine going back to eating alone after weeks of Dom and Sydney sitting with me. But the cafeteria is prime real estate if one wants to hear the latest gossip. Everyone talks about everyone else on a nearly endless loop in there.
So I head to the cafeteria, thinking about where I should sit. I want to pick the most strategic table, but I have no idea where Layla will be today since she and Sloane are in the middle of a fight. I still haven’t decided when I get to the lunchroom and see S
ydney sitting across from Willa at my normal table. Sydney spots me and shouts my name across the whole cafeteria. I immediately turn to leave, reverting to my original plan of hiding out in the library, but she comes over and stops me, grabbing my hand.
“I need you to at least listen to me, okay? If you still hate me after you’ve heard me out, then you can ignore me forever. But I’m not letting you avoid me just because you’re scared. I’m not letting you lose out on potentially great friends because you got burned once. And believe me, I’m a great friend.”
“Sydney,” I whisper, looking around and behind her at the dozens of people watching us. “I don’t hate you.” I know she’d be a great friend; she already has been. What I’m worried about is her disappearing. Her finding out the worst of it—the worst of me—and realizing I don’t deserve friends. Especially not friends like her.
But I don’t argue because too many people are staring. I follow her slowly across the room.
Willa is tossing fries into the air and catching them in her mouth. Her short black hair is in what I guess could be called a ponytail, but it looks more like a tiny sprout surrounded by a million colorful bobby pins growing out of the back of her head. She’s wearing her signature bangles—dozens on both wrists—and they jingle as she throws food in the air and dives for it.
“Hey,” I say a little coolly to her. But when she looks up, she gives me the warmest smile, despite my chilly greeting. It sends Layla’s words from weeks ago rushing through my head again: You think you own places, Cleo. Just like you think you own people.
And I hate to admit it, but maybe she’s right.
I clear my throat and work hard to smile at girls with whom I haven’t yet ruined everything.
“Yo, you like jazz, right? Sydney was telling me that you’re like, obsessed with jazz.”
This is the first thing Willa Bae says to me. Her voice is raspy and deep, and it’s strange to hear a voice like that coming out of such a small girl. She looks at me expectantly, eyebrows raised. She leans back in her seat, tosses her arm across the back of the chair beside her, and nods like she’s listening to music no one else can hear. She reminds me of Ellen Page, if Ellen Page were Korean and had a cool haircut. And dammit, I think I like her already.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do love jazz.” I sit down slowly, forgetting about Layla and Sloane and whatever their drama might entail, feeling cautiously open, hopeful and terrified and unsure of what she’ll say next.
“Sweeeeet,” Willa says, dragging out the e sound and reaching for a pair of chunky purple headphones. She fits them over my ears like it’s her job, then picks up her phone and starts typing, searching for a song, I guess. I look over at Sydney with wide eyes. What is happening? I mouth.
“Ugh, Will. I told you I needed to talk to her.”
“And you can talk as much as you want as soon as Cleo has heard this one song.” Willa looks up at me, shaking her bangs away from her narrow eyes. “You have to hear this one song,” she reiterates.
She presses play and what I hear kind of blows me away.
It’s a cover of “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the voice is clear and light, full of the kind of passion that only comes from being fully and deeply in love. I close my eyes so I can shut out the rest of the world as I listen, and when I hear Willa’s voice again it seems to be coming from somewhere farther away than the three feet between us.
“See,” she’s saying from underwater, from a galaxy away. Her bangles sing—an added percussion to the song I’m listening to—so she must be gesturing at me wildly. “That’s the reaction you were supposed to have!”
When I open my eyes, Sydney is rolling hers.
“Who is this?” I ask Willa once the song is over. I hand her headphones back though I really want to keep listening.
“It’s this jazz cover band called the Cover Girls. This girl I used to see, her older sister is the singer. I’ve been obsessed with them ever since the first time I saw one of their shows. I was telling Syd that we should go to one.”
“Oh my God,” Sydney says. “Are you really trying to use Cleo to guilt me into going? She doesn’t even know you!”
Willa is unbothered. She turns to me like Sydney isn’t even at the table with us.
“But you want to go, don’t you?” Willa says, smirking and wiggling her eyebrows. “Don’t you?”
I toss Sydney an apologetic look. “Kinda?”
Willa punches the air. “Yes! I knew you would! We’re going!”
Sydney covers her face. “Oh my God,” she says again.
* * *
—
“She’s cool,” I say to Sydney when Willa goes to grab a coffee. “Confident in a scary kind of way.”
“Oh, I know. That’s just Willa. She is like, totally cool with who she is and she doesn’t hide it.”
I nod, watching as across the room, Willa fills a coffee cup and then starts talking to someone in line behind her more with her hands than her voice. She reaches out and squeezes the girl’s hand. She fingers a strand of her hair.
“I really do want to go see that band, though,” I say. “You really didn’t like that song?”
Sydney looks serious all of a sudden. “It’s not that,” she says without further explanation. When she starts talking again, it’s not about the music.
“Look,” she says. “What I wanted to talk to you about before Willa derailed my whole plan was us.”
I swallow hard and take a sip of water. I haven’t touched my lunch yet, and this conversation is making my stomach squeeze with tension, so I don’t think I will. Besides, lately all food seems subpar, and only reminds me of my weirdness with Dom. I sit further back in my seat.
“It’s kinda messed up that you just wrote me off the way you did. That you just decided to stop talking to me. And I know you had a rough time with Layla, but don’t assume things about me just because of stuff that happened with her.”
But you don’t understand is what I’m tempted to say to her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I mumble instead.
“Do you not want to hurt me? Or are you afraid I’m gonna hurt you?”
I let out a long, low sigh. “Both?” I admit.
Sydney nods, and then Willa is back. She looks at us, taking in the tense way we’re staring at each other across the table. I feel like I’m close to tears. “You need some privacy?” Willa asks.
And when Sydney says, “You mind?” Willa shakes her head and slips those giant headphones over her ears. It sounds like she’s listening to metal now. She nods to the beat and keeps her eyes and hands busy ripping open creamers and sugar packets for her coffee.
“Look, how about we do this,” Sydney says. Her earrings are tiny chandeliers today, and I stare at them instead of meeting her eyes as she talks. “How about you give me a chance, and I give you one? How about we each try our best, but we tell each other if we mess up? How about we don’t decide we can’t be friends before we even try?”
I blink, looking up and away from her, trying to get rid of tears, but I’m sure my eyes still look glassy. I give a tiny nod.
Sydney clears her throat. “Okay, then. What’s the next spot on your New Memories list?”
I take out my phone and pull up my list. But then I glance over at Willa, who is messing around with her phone. I don’t say a thing, but I guess Sydney can tell what I’m thinking: Willa is a threat because she’s cute and cool and clearly comfortable with herself in a way I’m still trying to become. Why be friends with me, when Sydney could be friends with a girl like her?
Sydney crosses her arms. “Stop it,” she says sternly, like she’s a teacher, or my mom. “Give Willa, and yourself, a chance too.”
then: December, week 2
NOBODY
It had been three days since I yelled at Layla in the hallway. Thirte
en since she’d texted or called. It was also the day that Daddy was moving out—whoever had occupied the apartment he’d found had decided to move early so they could be settled in their new place before the holidays. My parents thought that this was a good idea—for Daddy to be settled before the new year and his new job started—so we wouldn’t even be having a final Christmas together, as a family that lived in the same place.
I could barely look at my mother, because it felt like everything that was happening with Daddy was all her fault, and I was upset with myself because Layla’s complete and utter silence was mostly mine.
Daddy had already started lining up boxes of his clothes, books, records, and art along the hallway when I woke up.
“You’ll have two Christmases,” he said when he found me in the hall, weeping with his copy of Antony and Cleopatra in my hands.
“God, Daddy. I’m not a fucking five-year-old!” I said, throwing the book back into the box I’d lifted it out of. “You should know I don’t care about that.”
Daddy looked wounded, and I felt bad for making something that was clearly hard for him harder. I was just about to apologize when my mom stepped out of the bathroom and said, “Cleo, I know you’re upset, but we don’t use that kind of language in this house.”
I didn’t apologize then. I just started crying harder.
“Seriously, Mom? You’re lecturing me about language when Daddy’s shit is in fucking boxes all along our goddamn hallway? Are you even human?”
I slammed my bedroom door, dressed quickly, and ran out of the apartment after that, not looking back at either of them. I didn’t want to see the agony on my mother’s face or have to deal with my father’s sadness. And I knew I couldn’t be there when the movers arrived and he and everything he owned disappeared from our home for good.
* * *
—
At school, I discovered that the Chorus Girls had rallied around Layla, and because of what I’d said to her in front of them, I was instantly their enemy. Seeing them step into the school building unexpectedly and almost immediately made my bad morning worse.
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