Chapter Nineteen #2
I watch him with an amused expression as we weave through the overstuffed shelves.
So much of our summers were spent covered in dirt in the woods, or down in the Village with sticky fingers and dollar-store aloe on our sunburns.
But I never got to see him like this, at home in a way, in his element.
I can tell there’s a part of him that truly loves this school.
It’s in the set of his shoulders and the way he absently straightens the books as he passes them.
“A microfiche, really? That’s awesome. I’ve always wanted to use one.”
He glances at me over his shoulder, laughing. “Of course you have.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, even though I know what he’s going to say.
“Nothing, it’s just, you’re still a secret nerd.”
“Not sure it’s much of a secret anymore. And being nerdy isn’t a bad thing. And being good at school doesn’t make me nerdy.”
“No, being nerdy is what makes you nerdy.”
As we travel deeper into the basement, I’m overcome with the feeling of being watched. Some hind part of my mind begs me to turn around, but instead I inch closer to Lucas.
“Here you go,” he says, stopping in front of a bookshelf with glass doors. The yearbook spines are the same deep blue and yellow gold of our uniforms.
“What years are you looking for?”
“1965–69, I think.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Retro.” Pausing, he tilts his head to assess me. “You’re looking for Gigi.” It’s not a question.
“Yeah, she went here too, you know. So I figured after everything…”
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
I’ve wondered more than once why he wasn’t at the funeral but Malachi was. Even if Malachi’s only purpose for being there was to tell me to go home.
“About that,” he starts, and I hold up my hand to stop him.
“Don’t say you’re sorry for my loss.”
He closes his mouth again, his eyebrows tugging together.
“I’m sorry, it’s just—everyone always says that, and I’m tired of people feeling bad for me.”
“No, I get it. I was too young to remember my mom dying, but even now when people find out about it, they always have to say something stupid. And after Lex… you know…”
My stomach drops. Of course, how could I forget about his mom? She died the summer before I met the boys. Cervical cancer recurrence. After last summer, I can’t imagine what that’s been like. Four people to mourn instead of one.
“Yeah…,” I murmur, because I don’t want to say something stupid, either.
Lucas nods his head in understanding, placing his warm hand on my forearm.
After a second he says, “I think the sixties are on the bottom shelf,” before turning and squatting down. “Here they are. But I only see the yearbook for sixty-eight. I’m not sure what happened to the others.”
We find a table beneath a creaking yellow light and sit side by side.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Nah, I’m just curious. She never talked about her time here. She mostly made it seem completely unremarkable. Like I would be better off somewhere else. But that didn’t stop me… clearly.”
That’s not all the way true, but he doesn’t need to know about the disgust on her face when she talked about this place or her insistence that there was something majorly wrong here.
The worn leather binding is soft in my hands as I open the cover.
Immediately I’m struck by the thick, gently browning pages and classic black-and-white photos.
Campus looks almost the same. In nearly every picture Biltmore looms in the background, a focal point for many of the candid shots that span several pages.
“Damn,” Lucas mutters.
Groups of girls huddle around the tiered fountain in the center of the quad, their uniforms only a slight deviation from the one I have on now.
Calf-length skirts and white long sleeve button-downs, a dark tie accenting their chests.
Many of them hold long, slender cigarettes while laughing, their round, youthful faces tilted toward the sky.
On each of their lapels is the same adornment we have on ours.
The BMA crest is divided into four quadrants—a wolf, an open book, a scabbard, and a crescent moon—a knotted rope splitting it horizontally, the quadrants in alternating shades of marigold, hemmed on each side by honeysuckle.
I pull my lapel away from my chest, furrowing my brow at the woven patch.
As I continue to turn the pages, my breath is tight in my chest. I’m afraid of what I might find. When I reach the junior class, my finger swipes across the last names quickly, searching for the one face I’ll surely recognize.
“There.” I point to the photo.
Harper Margaret Willow
She is glorious, even in the muted gray tones.
I’m once again struck by the resemblance between us.
It’s almost uncanny. Our faces hold the same heart shape, our eyebrows sculpted into a natural seriousness.
Her hair, like mine, is large, a curly, frizzy, appendage that she has tamed into two striking braids that hang behind her back.
Her deep brown skin, several shades darker than my own, glows against the sea of pale students.
She sits for her photo, staring off to the side, a knowing glint in her eyes.
“Wow, you guys look…”
“I know.”
Tears roll down my face, splashing against the page.
I swipe furiously at them, afraid to damage the book.
Gently, Lucas’s arm wraps around my shoulders.
I turn into him, breathing in his scent.
Woodsy with a hint of citrus. It doesn’t take away my pain, but the pressure in my chest loosens slightly, and the static that had been building reduces to a low simmer.
“This is—I am—I—” I can barely get any words out between my sobs.
He rubs soothing circles into my back, but he stays silent, letting me work through my emotions.
When I’ve soaked his shirt with my tears, I sit up, wiping under my lashes with the tips of my fingers.
“Here,” he says, standing as he lifts the bottom of his white button-down. I tilt my head all the way back, and I feel small again. Tiny and crouched in the weeds of the estate, eclipsed by my love for those two boys.
Beneath the hem of his shirt is a warm, bronze-toned muscular stomach and a trail of curly black hair.
I avert my eyes quickly, glad that my face must already be too much of a mess for him to notice.
He bends down, using the newly freed hem to wipe away the lingering tears on my face, his right hand sinking into the back of my curls and holding me in place.
I can barely breathe, he’s so close to me.
When he sits again, he leans in, the soft brush of his breath whispering against my skin as he squints in concentration, plucking an eyelash from my cheek and holding it on the tip of his pointer finger.
“Make a wish,” he says.
I grab his wrist, steadying his arm as I lean forward.
Closing my eyes, I wish for the truth. In whatever way it will come to me. I wish for a place in Earnest where I truly belong. And then, at last, I wish for a world where the only boys I ever loved don’t look at me with hate-filled eyes.
I blow.
A small smile touches the edges of his lips, and at least one part of that wish has already come true. “Now,” he says, clearing his throat, his cheeks blooming pink. “Where were we?”
On the second to last page, a square in black and white, my grandmother standing in front of Lee Chapel, a sign held over her head.
I bring the page up to my nose as I sniffle. The letters on the sign are so small, I can barely make them out:
JUSTICE FOR THE BEAUMONT CLARK SCHOOL
NEVER FORGET
Underneath the photo is a caption: Harper Willow hosts a demonstration of free speech.
I read the sign over and over, something tugging at the back of my mind.
I sway to the side.
“Whoa,” Lucas calls, but he sounds far away. “Harper?”
I shake my head, shuddering where his hands grip my shoulders.
“Sorry.” I shrug out of his touch, and the dizziness begins to subside, my hearing slowly returning. “I got so distracted during art lab today that I forgot to eat lunch.”
He stares at me, his eyebrows pinched together. But he doesn’t say anything.
I turn the page and stop cold.
A single photograph, a brown-skinned girl with a tightly coiled afro and glittering eyes.
Remembering Adiola Cane. 1958–1974.
I shut the book with a heavy thud.
All these disparate pieces—the burned-down school, a dead girl, a missing girl—and yet it feels like I’m still standing on the tip of the iceberg.