I looked at her. “But you had the dance job lined up.”
She shook her head. “No, not at that point, I didn’t. It’s just—Panama’s always been my thing, you know? It’s the one time a year I feel like someone different, like an alternate-universe version of myself, if I had been a regular Panamanian girl who grew up with her whole family around her. You and JaKory won’t ever understand that because your whole family is here, in the States. And I adore my family, but I think what I love even more is who I am when I’m with them. I don’t have to be the girl who’s trying to prove something all the time. When I’m with my cousins and everyone, I get to blend in, and—and I feel like they love me just for the sake of loving me.”
I smiled sadly. “And it would’ve been hard to share that with JaKory and me, because then you would’ve felt pressure to act like the version of yourself that you are around us.”
She winced apologetically. “Yeah. So I guess I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Thanks.”
She busied herself with the grass for a moment, plucking up blades and laying them vertically across her palm. “Codi?” she said. “Just so you know, I think you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met. And I think being friends with someone should be like the concept of infinity—like you truly believe that person has no limits, and you just want to keep counting upward with them to see where they go.” She paused. “I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel like that lately.”
My throat was too tight to speak; all I could do was nod in gratitude.
“It still stings that you lied to me,” Maritza went on, “but the selfless part of me is happy for you. If you’ve grown closer to Ricky and your other new friends, that’s okay. I don’t have to be your best friend in the entire world. I just want to be in your life.”
I picked myself up and went to sit next to her on the curb. She let me.
“You are my best friend, Maritza. There’s no replacing you.”
I reached for her hand, squeezing it tight. She swallowed and blinked very fast.
“Do you think Ricky’s becoming a best friend, too?” she asked thickly.
I hesitated, but there was no trace of jealousy or insecurity in her expression. She was asking me the way she asked about my paintings: like it mattered to her because it mattered to me.
“I think he’s becoming one,” I said, and I told her about that moment Ricky and I had looked at each other in the trees, how it felt like we understood each other intuitively.
“I love that feeling. It’s how I felt when I met you and JaKory.”
I paused; the expansive feeling in my chest deflated a little. “Yeah. The recess crate.”
“No, the next day,” Maritza said.
“Wait—what?”
“Don’t you remember the next day? That teacher, Ms. Hillgrove, asked us to carry the recess crate to the gym, and on the way we found that flower garden on the side of the school?”
“I don’t—”
“We were reading ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’ in English class, so you and I got down in the bushes and pretended to be the cobras, and JaKory started yelling at us in a British accent? It was so weird, so random, but all three of us just went with it. I still remember going home and telling my parents I’d made friends.”
I had no recollection of the moment, but a grin was spreading across my face. Maritza laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“We were weirdos, Codi.”
“We’re still weirdos.”
“Even you?”
“God, more than ever.”
She laughed again, and there was a trace of relief in it. “Well, as long as Ricky and Lydia and these other people didn’t take that from you, I guess I can live with them.”
“Thanks,” I laughed, squeezing her arm. The air between us had changed; it felt light, spacious, like I could truly breathe in it. “Now tell me what happened with dance.”
“Oh, lord,” she sighed. “It’s dramatic.”
“Tell me anyway.”
It was a long story, starting with the tension between Maritza and Rona after the night they’d made out on Maritza’s couch. The animosity between them had escalated in the last three weeks, but the other dance girls hadn’t known why.
“Then we had a team sleepover last night,” Maritza said. “My parents temporarily ungrounded me so I could go, because I lied and told them it was mandatory. We were playing Truth or Dare, and it was stupid stuff, you know, like Maggie had to answer which dance team dad she’d have sex with, and Brenna had to text this guy a picture of her bra. Then Rona was dared to kiss one of us, and the team picked me.”
I gasped. “Oh god. Did you do it?”
“Of course not, that’s the problem. Everyone was chanting Kiss her, kiss her, and I freaked and started yelling that I wasn’t gonna do it. All the girls got really quiet, and they were looking at me funny, and Mary Glenn was like, ‘It’s not a big deal, Maritza, we’re all a little on the spectrum.’ They thought I was some kind of conservative, homophobic freak.”
She paused; her expression was wounded.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Tried to tell them they had gotten it all wrong, that I just didn’t like making a joke out of something that wasn’t actually a joke, but no one would listen. They just kinda migrated away from me and started talking about what movie we should watch. So I grabbed my bag and got the hell out of that stupid-ass basement, and I ran out the front door so Mary’s parents wouldn’t see me, but then—well—”
“What?”
“Well—Vivien followed me out.”
“Vivien Chen?”
“The one and only,” Maritza said with a wry smile. “I was sitting there crying in my car, trying to calm down enough to drive, and all of a sudden she’s tapping on my window. She gave me a really big hug and asked if I wanted to talk. I told her the truth about what had happened with Rona, and you know what she said? She said, ‘Rona has no idea who she is or what she wants, but you do, and you can’t let her take that from you.’”
“Wow,” I breathed.
“And then…” Maritza’s eyes grew bright. “She told me that a few months ago, she kissed a girl from her church. And that she was always here if I needed to talk.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Are you saying—Vivien Chen likes girls?!”
“I think she does,” Maritza said, and the way she laughed was shy, almost blushing.
I stared at her. “Do you have a crush on Vivien Chen?”
She shook her head, but there was no denying her smile.
“Maritza!” I said, giddy with shock.
“She was texting me all day, asking how I was feeling. She kept sending me GIFs of The Sandlot.”
I laughed, remembering the GIFs Lydia had sent in the beginning. “Oh yeah, this is definitely a thing.”
Maritza shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t deal with those dance girls again.”
“Of course you can. Vivien’s right, you can’t let Rona or anyone else take something you love away from you. You know that.”
Maritza was quiet. “You know … this whole time, I thought that if I didn’t make a constant effort to put myself out there, nothing would ever happen for me. For any of us. I was so worried about forcing things into existence that I didn’t realize what was happening on its own.” She took a deep breath. “I never should have forced things with Rona. I could feel in my gut that it wasn’t right. And I shouldn’t have tried to tell you and JaKory who you were or what you needed. You guys did a much better job figuring it out on your own.”
We swiveled around to watch JaKory through the Waffle House windows. He was talking animatedly, and I could see his smile even from here. Daveon was wearing his fedora.
“That damn fedora,” Maritza said, clucking her tongue. “Anyway, I’m tired of all this emo bullshit. Are you in the mood for a coffee?”
She went inside to get us a cup while I wandered back over
to Ricky and my brother. They were both sitting on the curb now, and I sat down next to them and let their conversation wash over me. When Maritza came back, she was carrying four coffees on a tray, and she handed them around to each of us.
“You’ll get used to it,” I told Grant, who had taken a sip and failed to hide his grimace. “It grows on you.”
* * *
For a while we sat there in the humid night, watching cars pull in and out of the lot, counting the tired, grimy people who walked in through the doors and back out sometime later. There was one car that remained on the opposite side of the parking lot the whole time, which Maritza surmised must be Daveon’s friends waiting for him.
At last, JaKory stepped out of the Waffle House with a boy about his size who wore glasses and a red flannel shirt, despite the peak July temperature. We watched as they walked over to the long-parked car, from which two people, a guy and a girl around our age, stepped out to shake JaKory’s hand. It was obvious that JaKory and Daveon were wildly happy, that their giddy energy was spilling over into every gesture and grin.
“Our turn,” Maritza whispered, as the four of them loped our way.
JaKory’s smile was even happier up close. “Y’all, this is Daveon,” he said, brushing his shoulder against the other boy’s, “and his friends Kara and Julian.”
We introduced ourselves to each other, everyone smiling and gripping hands almost like we had accompanied JaKory and Daveon to their wedding. Even my brother seemed excited.
“I’m so happy we got to meet you,” I told Daveon, looking him square in the eye.
I could tell he was shy, but he looked right at me through his thick-framed glasses. “Me too,” he said. “This whole night has been a dream.”
Maritza was conferencing with JaKory. Based on their gestures, it looked like they were trying to work out some kind of plan. I was about to ask what was going on when JaKory took Daveon’s hand and led him toward the back side of the truck.
“So,” Maritza said, snapping the rest of us to attention, “how about we move over this way?”
The remaining six of us moved farther into the parking lot, forming a kind of protective barrier between the truck and the rest of the world. When I glanced around the truck bed, I could just see JaKory standing in the grass, his head close to Daveon’s.
Leave it to Maritza to make sure JaKory got his kiss.
It was another ten minutes before Kara checked her watch and said they should get going. Reluctantly, we backed toward the car, none of us eager to make JaKory and Daveon say goodbye. Ricky stepped up and knocked gently on the hood of the truck.
JaKory lumbered back toward us, pulling Daveon behind him, their expressions sad and resistant.
Everyone said their goodbyes. I hugged Kara and Julian and gave an extra-long hug to Daveon. Finally, it was just JaKory and Daveon who had to say goodbye. They hugged each other hard while the rest of us examined the asphalt.
Our cars left the parking lot together, ours in the lead and the others’ right behind it. JaKory kept his eyes on their car until it disappeared onto the opposite interstate. We were all very quiet.
“Well?” Maritza said finally.
“Well what?” JaKory said.
My brother whipped his head around. “Well, how was it?” he asked, and we all laughed.
JaKory shook his head and leaned against the window. He was smiling like I’d never seen before.
“Perfect,” he said. “He was perfect.”
* * *
We drove east into the gradually lightening sky, with only a handful of other cars on the interstate. The windows were down and the air rushed over my hair, strands of it catching on my eyelashes. The music was playing just loud enough to know it was there, but too softly to know the song.
We got back to our northern corner of Atlanta just as the sun was creeping up. We dropped JaKory off first, waving him out of Ricky’s car in a daze. He stood in his driveway with the early-morning light coming over his face, and I didn’t know whether it was my perception or not, but he looked like he was holding himself taller.
Maritza hesitated when we got to her house. She opened the door to get out but pulled back at the last minute and put her hand on Ricky’s arm.
“Thanks for everything,” she told him. “You’re almost as good a driver as me.”
Ricky laughed and squeezed her hand. “Bye, Maritza. I’ll come watch you dance sometime!”
I followed her out of the car. We lingered in the driveway, exchanging a knowing look, and then I hugged her. She hugged me back, and when she pulled away, her eyes were wet. Neither one of us said anything about it.
Then it was only Ricky, Grant, and me on the quiet drive back to our neighborhood, with the light growing stronger and the birds waking up. Ricky rolled his truck to a gentle stop in front of our house just as the sprinklers began to spritz spritz spritz on the neighbors’ lawn. Grant made a show of shaking Ricky’s hand, then got out of the truck and waited for me in the driveway.
“Will you be able to catch any sleep before church?” I asked Ricky.
“Not much,” he said tiredly. “But it was worth it.”
I wanted to say many things to him then—things that had grown inside me over the last two months as I’d gotten to know him and his world better—but I knew those things weren’t necessary to say aloud. Instead I looked at my friend and gave him a tired smile.
“Feel like a dumbass teenager?” he said.
“Something like that.”
“’Night, Codi.”
“’Night, Ricky.”
I followed my brother down the driveway and around to the basement. We slipped into the house and up to our rooms, and he gave me a single wave before he shut himself behind his door.
I put on my pajamas, crawled into bed, and fell asleep to the birds singing.
21
TWO WEEKS LATER
The last day of summer burned hot like only August can. By ten A.M., it was scorching outside, the sun so fierce that even walking to the mailbox was a chore. The trees and flowers were past the point of bloom and had crossed over to the first stages of wilting and withering.
Thank god we had the pool. There were hardly any kids there that day, probably because they were being yanked around on last-minute trips for school clothes, binders, and mechanical pencils. There was an old couple I’d never seen before who looked unapologetically pleased about the start of the school year, a group of middle-school boys who had no doubt ditched their moms for one last day of dunking each other’s heads in the deep end, and one family whose toddler was obviously too young for kindergarten. And then there was us.
Maritza and JaKory weren’t there yet, but they were on their way and had promised us snacks and a fruit tray from Publix. Maritza had texted that she was letting JaKory drive her car. He wanted to practice now that he was applying for his license, but there was one major downside Maritza hadn’t anticipated:
Maritza Vargas: He claims the driver gets to control the music, and this punk won’t stop playing emo Troye Sivan songs
For now, it was just the four of us: Ricky, Cliff, Lydia, and me. Ricky had finally told Cliff about his liking boys—and Tucker—and Cliff was making a show of embracing it.
“I always thought Leo DiCaprio was a handsome motherfucker,” he told Ricky, as if they were sizing up football recruits. “I probably wouldn’t say no if he tried to kiss me. I mean, if he tried to go beyond that, I don’t think I’d—”
“Dude,” Ricky said, cutting him off. “You don’t have to go there.”
“I’m just saying, we’re all a little gay, aren’t we?” Cliff asked. “I can see the appeal of Tucker. Dude has some serious throwing arms.”
“Yeah, it’s his ‘throwing arms’ that really do it for me,” Ricky muttered. He rolled his eyes, but I could tell that he loved being able to talk freely in front of his best friend.
“Whatever, bro,” Cliff yawned, lying back in his lounge chair. “Jus
t make sure you don’t go out with any dickheads at UGA. Whatever guys you choose to date, they’d better be able to hang.”
“Aren’t you and Tucker gonna keep dating?” Lydia interrupted, rubbing sunscreen onto my shoulders.
“I don’t know,” Ricky said, biting his lip. “Clemson’s only an hour-and-a-half drive from Athens, but I’m worried we’ll get caught up in our own stuff…”
Lydia turned quiet, rubbing more sunscreen into my neck. She and I hadn’t talked about what would happen when she left for GCSU in ten days’ time.
Maritza and JaKory got there then, and to my surprise, Maritza had brought someone with her. Vivien Chen was prettier than I remembered, or maybe I had just never paid attention to her before. Today, as she walked over to us carrying the fruit tray in her hands, she was smiling generously. She was also, I noticed, wearing one of Maritza’s favorite shirts.
“Does everyone know Vivien?” Maritza asked, trying to play it cool.
Lydia caught my eye. I’d told her everything about the drive to Alabama, including Maritza’s surprising development with Vivien, and she’d quickly become a big fan of “Vivitza,” as she called them. She winked at me and sprung up from our chair to welcome Vivien with a hug. She couldn’t have been any cuter.
It had taken a little while to get to this point. Maritza and JaKory weren’t exactly gunning to be buddy-buddy with my new friends, but they had warmed up to Ricky and Lydia over the last two weeks. Ricky had even come out to them, which was a grander gesture than any I could have expected from him.
The seven of us stayed there all afternoon, swimming and tanning and picking at the snacks. We played Categories in the pool and Never Have I Ever on the lounge chairs. When an ice-cream truck came by, I used my surplus money from Totes-n-Goats to buy ice cream for all of us.
“God bless those dancing-pig cocktail napkins,” Ricky said, taking a bite of his Drumstick cone. “They really came through for you.”
We stayed until we could no longer deny it was dinnertime. Ricky and Cliff left first, clasping each other’s hands by Cliff’s truck. Cliff scooped the rest of us into hugs, even Maritza and JaKory, who startled before they hugged him back. Ricky followed suit with his own round of hugs, and the sight of him squeezing my two best friends made my throat ache in the best way.
Late to the Party Page 24