Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
He had a beast caged behind his ribs and it took all his energy to keep it there.
He needed a distraction. Focus on something else. He sat hunched in the back of the studio above the library, both hands spread on the carpet with the rough fibers scratching his skin.
Last time he’d felt like this, he put his hand through a mirror.
Around him, the studio thrummed with giddy chaos.
Chairs and desks had been pushed back, and kids trickled in for the GSA club.
Nothing seemed organized. Everyone was everywhere, talking and joking and gushing over the person who’d brought in delicately frosted cookies from culinary class.
Ms. Poppy wore a huge scarf she’d either splattered with paint or had purposely used as her paintbrush—the latter seeming more likely since her brown skin was also smeared by turquoise and lavender.
Instead of leading a discussion, she’d said, “Halloween has us, I think. Let’s discuss gender expression in clothing and you can all tell me about your costumes. ”
Andrew kept waiting for someone to bulldoze over and ask why he was here. No one did. Apart from a few curious glances, he generated no response. Maybe Lana had warned them off, or maybe the entire school had always assumed he was gay.
Two deep purple Converse boots halted in front of him, and he squinted up at Lana.
She gave him a knotted frown. “I need to welcome some newbies. Are you okay here?”
“I’d rather leave,” Andrew said, voice low.
“Too bad. You’re stuck with me until we have a chance for a good long talk. Sit tight and wait.” She patted his head, but it felt like being affectionately thumped instead of consoled. Then she charged off to bark at the timid freshmen clustered by the door.
“Lana refuses to let anyone feel alone.”
Andrew pulled his legs to his chest as Chloe sat down beside him.
She held two of the frosted cookies decorated with snowflakes so detailed they looked like they’d fallen fresh from the sky.
He accepted one because he didn’t know how to say There’s a forest growing in my stomach, so I’m never hungry.
“She has resting murder face,” Chloe said, “but she’s aggressively friendly.
This is my first year at Wickwood and she took one look at me and said, ‘We’re friends now.
Keep up.’ She won’t let anyone get away with asking if we’re sisters, either, which they do all the time since we’re both Asian.
As if we look anything alike. But I guess this is how she deals with everything?
This school is intense and she puts up with a lot.
When she’s upset, she cares for people in, like, angry revenge at the world for being crap. ”
“She doesn’t have to keep scraping me off the floor.” He sounded washed-out. “You’re all busy and she doesn’t owe me anything…”
Chloe gave a sad smile. “She looks out for you because, well … you’re Dove’s brother.”
He thought and clearly falling apart might be the unsaid conclusion. “You don’t have to sit with me if you don’t want…” He trailed off, finishing sentences having become an exhausting task.
“Um, please pretend you need me.” Chloe gave him a sheepish look. “I’m so, so shy, and if I sit in the circle, they’ll try to include me. They’re all nice, but I prefer to listen.”
“I get it.” He risked a sideways glance at her. “But shy people don’t make good friends. Neither of them can keep the conversation going.”
“Silence is okay with me,” Chloe said.
She ate her cookie and the quiet between them was companionable as they watched everyone descend into a passionate discussion about gender and clothing.
Not everyone dressed up for Halloween, but most of the drama kids did.
Lana had corralled the newcomers into the circle and made sure they had a place to sit.
She already had her phone out to exchange numbers with them.
When she glared over at Andrew and Chloe, he realized it wasn’t a reproach at them for being antisocial.
She was just checking they were all right.
Crumbs from the uneaten cookie stuck to his cuff. He sighed and then noticed Chloe twisting her rubber bracelets. She wore six on each arm, the colors candy bright against her light brown skin.
She noticed him watching. “My therapist suggested wearing something I can fiddle with. I have, um … social anxiety? Probably obvious, I guess, but this helps.”
Andrew slowly flexed his bruised fist, the small cuts on his knuckles left by Thomas’s teeth. “When I get anxious, I hurt myself. Or other people.” He had no idea why he said it. He was never this honest.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
“Have you ever wanted to be something else so … so someone would still want you?”
Chloe considered this, and he liked how she didn’t rush her answers. “Sometimes? Like I’m anxious and queer and Vietnamese, and I just think … wow, no one could be bothered with me if I’m too much. But it isn’t true. You just have to find the people who love you for you. I’m lucky to have those.”
“It’s shitty that it has to be luck to be loved as you are,” Andrew said.
Chloe looked serious. “Agreed.”
“Sorry, I’m … sorry.” Andrew squeezed his eyes shut. “I know how whiny I sound compared to what you deal with.”
She gave him a small smile. “Did Thomas do something to you?”
He loves me and I put a knife through his ribs. Andrew fumbled for words through the haze of anguish still smoldering in his mouth, but Lana stomped toward them and dropped cross-legged on the floor. She demolished the last of a cookie and then eyed Andrew’s.
“Are you going to eat that? I’m starved. Rehearsals flattened me. Also, Chloe, are you dressing up tomorrow?”
“No.” Chloe looked mortified. “They said optional. I’ll just wear a nice dress.”
“I’m going as a witch. I bought a hat.” Lana sneaked a hand toward Andrew’s cookie, but he passed it over to Chloe.
Chloe bit into it, smiling demurely at Lana.
Lana narrowed her eyes. “Leaving you two to bond was a mistake.”
Chloe beamed.
Andrew hugged his legs tighter to his chest. “Aren’t you a junior, Chloe? How did you and Lana get close?”
“I tell you,” she said, “Lana hunts for lonely people. Hunts. But we’re also roommates, so that helped.”
Something heavy thumped in Andrew’s stomach.
He shot a glance at Lana, but she busied herself retying her shoelaces.
He couldn’t jump to conclusions. Tons of the dorm rooms slept three.
Lana said she had the sketchbook Thomas had given to Dove, so clearly they were still in the same room, but why did he never see her around Chloe?
Dove had isolated herself from everyone.
But why?
He thought of Lana and Thomas in that dim hallway, how she accused Thomas of hurting Dove. She would know, wouldn’t she? But Thomas wouldn’t hurt …
“After we wrap up here, let’s go for dinner,” Lana said. “It’s meat loaf night, isn’t it? Freaking fantastic. They better serve Halloween cake tomorrow. Remember that time Dove had lemon cake in a Tupperware box and was eating it under her desk all through class? She never even got caught.”
Andrew huffed a laugh. “Thomas caught her. He followed her around all day begging for some.”
“Typical needy boy.” Lana rolled her eyes, but she didn’t sound as barbed as usual.
Andrew couldn’t stop himself. “Why do you hate him so much?”
Lana abruptly went still. She shot a glance at the teens hanging out around the room, surrounded by queer flags draped over desks and unequivocal acceptance as they chattered. It was a happy moment, and he’d dragged war into it. He should never speak.
Lana pushed to her feet. “If they hadn’t had that fight, maybe this year would’ve been amazing. We could’ve all been friends.”
Andrew could see it, unwrap it like a story: all of them together, an unwieldy group with sharp elbows and sharper tongues, but with enough laughter and teasing to smooth it over.
Dove would soften Lana and Thomas. Andrew and Chloe would share wry smiles and retreat to watch the more energetic explosions from the others.
Thomas would always reach a hand back for Andrew.
Dove would quietly stick them all together.
He missed it in a deep, aching way, even though it had never happened and it never would.
“I get that you forgave him.” Lana looked away. “But he was the reason you put your hand through that mirror.”
Andrew said nothing; it was easier that way. But a yawning emptiness opened in his mind, an endless black nothing where a memory should be.
He had no idea what she was talking about.