Chapter Fifteen #2
Andrew flicked through a few sketchbooks, but Thomas had only been doing exercises. His canvases still lay blank. Oil pastels unopened. The new charcoals had been worn to nubs already, but Andrew had to dig through the trash to find what they’d been used on.
The paper had been slashed, but it looked like a face framed in soft gray feathers. Dove feathers.
He dropped the mess back in the trash.
He shouldn’t have come. Even if Dove had cut ties with Thomas, he was still tangled up in her, and it made Andrew’s pained heart stretch in pathetic ways.
He started to leave, but slowed to watch the girls sorting their fabric scraps.
“Oh,” he said, “those are your Pride flags?”
“Yup.” Lana sounded terse. “Someone slashed them. A hate crime. Wickwood wouldn’t bother to track down the culprits even if we reported it. Useless.”
The girl beside her piped up, “It might’ve been a senior prank?”
“Hate. Crime.” Lana slapped a piece of shredded green and gray into a pile.
“Chloe, stop thinking all people are nice. They are either inherently annoying or downright oxygen wasters.” She narrowed her eyes at Andrew.
“Want to help? We’re seeing if all the pieces are still here and then we’re sewing them back together.
Ms. Poppy said she’d buy new ones, but I think this sends a stronger statement. We will not be cut down.”
“Well, I’m sewing,” Chloe said. “Lana needs to practice her running stitch.”
Lana wrinkled her nose, and Chloe stifled a laugh.
Andrew thought she might be a junior, because he knew her name but didn’t recognize her from class.
Chloe Nguyen had light brown skin and hid behind incredibly long hair.
Bright motivational bracelets covered her wrists, saying things like: YOUR WORTH IS INFINITE!
And HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE! That much positivity went against his entire nature and stressed him out.
He wanted to ask if they’d seen Dove come upstairs, but the words pooled like tar on his tongue. Maybe if he lingered, they’d talk about her and he’d have pieces for the puzzle of her strange behavior this year.
He knelt and pulled a handful of torn fabric into his lap. Lana looked pleased and then hid it with her trademark scowl, while Chloe gave him a shy but encouraging smile.
The flags felt soft and silky in his hands. “Why do you even want people to know you’re … you know? It’s not their business.” Had he just said that out loud? What was he thinking? He glanced up, mortification flushing his cheeks hot. “Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to—be offensive—”
“You can talk, Andrew. I won’t bite your head off,” Lana, known-head-biter, said. “And you’re right, it isn’t anyone’s business. But some of us don’t want to hide. I don’t care if people know I’m a lesbian. It’s just part of me.”
“And it’s nice to find other people like you?” Chloe sent Andrew a cautious smile. “No one understands what it’s like to be bisexual like other bisexuals.”
“Not that anyone has to come out,” Lana said so close to Andrew’s ear that he jumped. “You don’t owe them, and people suck anyway. All of them. Well,” she added, grumpy, “you two are okay. For now.”
Chloe nudged Lana in the ribs until she batted her off with a begrudging smile. “You’re so not as crabby as you pretend to be.”
Lana sniffed. “I am, actually.”
“Thomas isn’t as mean as he pretends to be, either,” Andrew said in a quiet voice.
Lana snorted and untwisted more pieces of flags. “Thomas is a menace.”
“Wait, Thomas Rye?” Chloe said. “Half the girls in my year have a crush on him.”
This time both Andrew and Lana shot her alarmed looks. Having a crush on Thomas would be a little like putting a blade to your mouth and then being surprised when it cut you.
“He’s a genuine bad boy,” Chloe went on.
“Not the ‘I got drunk and totaled my dad’s Mercedes’ bad boy, but the kind that has dark secrets and is so beautiful and talented and unknowable.
” She noticed their matching horrified expressions and looked embarrassed, fussing with the flags again. “That’s just what the girls say.”
“Thomas is such a bad idea,” Lana said. “Plus, he’s already way in love with…” She darted a glance at Andrew and then looked away. “Someone already.”
Stones settled in Andrew’s stomach. Dove.
They sorted flag pieces in silence for a few minutes before Chloe started talking about types of embroidery stitches and Lana blustered that she could learn to sew within the next half hour.
Andrew wanted to fumble an excuse to leave, but he also felt tied to this moment with thin cords of defiance.
Of want. Just once, Andrew wanted to step outside of his skin and be someone who could talk easily, fit next to other people and not want to take himself apart and analyze everything he’d done wrong.
He wanted to know if anyone at GSA was asexual too, if they packed it down inside their chest because it hurt them the way it hurt him.
He should ask.
He couldn’t ask.
He hadn’t meant to make the girls come out to him just now, but it felt like they’d held out a tentative gift. Opened a door in case he wanted to slip inside, too.
“I think I’m asexual, but not like—” He stopped and tried to collect himself.
“I could fall in love once, I think, but I don’t want the …
physical stuff. I know this isn’t, um … normal.
I just—” Why had he even started talking?
He burned from the inside out, and his cheeks must be flaming by now.
He’d all but said sex without saying it, and they were probably confused because he was being unclear, and talking in circles and—
Lana gave him a careful look as if she was fully aware of his inner meltdown, and she spoke with all her sharpness filed back.
“There are plenty of people like that. But strike ‘normal’ out of this conversation—it’s the most obtuse word and I hate it.
There are asexual people who don’t want sex or they hate it or are indifferent about it. It’s a spectrum.”
The knot in Andrew’s chest gave. He had never talked about this because he couldn’t afford to take his feelings for Thomas out of their battered box and ask if he was broken to fall in love and not want sex.
“Okay.” Andrew barely got the word out. He’d said it, he’d confessed out loud, and now he needed to disappear inside himself and breathe for a second. Maybe they sensed this because the conversation tumbled into how long it would take to sew all these flags, and they let him sit in silence.
He kind of liked Lana and Chloe.
Footsteps scuffed at the classroom door, and they looked up expecting Ms. Poppy’s return—but Thomas stood there.
Since classes had finished for the day, he’d changed into jeans and a green striped tee shirt with a frayed hem.
Without his uniform, he went from disreputable private school bad boy to mussed and distracted artist who wore half his paint on himself.
He held a paper bag of the dreaded sandwiches and chewed his lip.
Maybe he’d been watching them for a while.
Andrew wasn’t sure if he wanted Thomas to have heard or not. He scrambled to his feet, careful not to mess up any of the fabric piles.
“Thanks for helping.” Chloe waved at him, black hair falling over her face to hide her quiet smile.
Lana grunted, giving Thomas a sour glare, but she tugged at Andrew’s pants as he started to step around her, so he looked down. “If you’re lonely, you can talk to us whenever.”
He nodded, because speaking felt too much right then. She let go.
Andrew followed Thomas downstairs, their footsteps in sync. Part of Andrew wanted to blurt it all out, but most of him didn’t. It was irrelevant to start obsessing over how he felt when the truth was this: Thomas liked girls. Specifically, Dove.
“What were you all talking about?” Thomas said, too casual.
Have you ever thought about kissing me? “Just how their flags got destroyed.”
“Probably Bryce Kane and his vultures.” Thomas led them back to their homework table and surveyed the mess. “Let’s eat outside. Rain sort of stopped. Unless you don’t want to?”
“I’m not the one scared of October,” Andrew said, as if he wasn’t scared of everything else.