Chapter Fourteen #2
I open my mouth, but Kristen rushes to say, “She’s planning the Squash the Pumpkin Festival. Our school hosts it, but the whole township is welcome to come. It’s a pretty big deal, and this year Clarity is president of the festival planning committee, so it’s going to be the best one yet.”
Kristen describes the festival in more detail before hammering her point home. “Clarity is the backbone of the committee. She’s worked so hard ever since she joined as a freshman. I’m excited. You have to come.”
Maurice glances at Kristen a couple times during her spiel, but mostly, his eyes stay on me. On my face, then on my eyes specifically. The attention is daunting, like I’m under a microscope. And without looking at her, I can feel the negative energy rolling off Hannah.
I don’t blame her. I basically invited Hannah on my own blind date, and instead of making any attempt to clear everything up, she just has to take it.
“The festival sounds supercool,” Maurice admits.
I jump in and add, “Hannah is actually my copresident this year. We’re working on it together.” Looking over Maurice’s shoulder, I catch Kristen’s lips twitch. Thankfully that’s subtler than an eye roll. “We just decided to have the festival at Highland Park.”
“Isn’t that, like, the make-out park?” Maurice asks, laughing a little.
“You’ve been?” I ask.
“I mean, yeah. I’m pretty sure everyone’s been at least once. Haven’t you?”
“Um—I—” I stop before I stammer out of control and resist the urge to glance at Hannah. My cheeks tingle as my face begins to heat up. No one knows about the kiss. You’re just friends. There’s nothing to hide. “We went to scope it out,” I say, technically not lying.
That easy smile slips over his lips again, and it reaches his glassy eyes—he’s high.
The realization hits me, and I don’t know what to feel.
I’m a little annoyed, especially that Kristen would go to such lengths to set me up with someone who smokes when she knows I don’t like it.
At the same time, Maurice isn’t even a prospect for me, so whether or not he likes to smoke doesn’t actually matter…
I glance over at Hannah and catch her watching the game before my movement draws her attention back to me. I’m sorry.
“Do you still want snacks?” I ask instead, figuring she might need to vent more than me at this point.
“Oh, yes! I’m starving, and this game is so boring.” Kristen hops up and cuts across a few empty seats in front of us to get to the stairs.
Kristen, Hannah, and I make our way down the bleachers, not even attempting to talk over all the noise. Hannah is walking a few steps ahead of me, so I can’t even see her face to temperature check.
“Isn’t this so exciting?” Kristen coos, coming up behind me. She loops her arm through mine, pulling me closer for warmth. Even though we can’t see our breath, the air is chilled enough that I wish I wore more than a sweatshirt.
“The game is so exciting,” I say, hoping my sarcasm isn’t overflowing. The fact that she just called it boring a few moments ago, when she’s the reason we’re all on this sinking ship, didn’t escape me.
“Not the game. I want to know what you think of Maurice!”
As we slow to a stop at the back of the line for the concession stand, Hannah catches Kristen’s question and turns her full attention to us. Her eyebrows are raised, doubling down with her own curiosity.
God, what I would give to shrivel up into a raisin…
“Isn’t he hot?” Kristen prompts when I don’t immediately gush over him.
“I mean, he’s good looking,” I say, knowing that’s the wrong answer for both people with me right now.
“Why are you so pressed about him anyway?” Hannah asks, all the polite friendliness from before gone. “If you think he’s so hot, why don’t you date him?”
Crap. I hear the challenge in her voice and wonder if Kristen caught it too.
“Because he’s Clarity’s soon-to-be boy—”
“No, he’s not,” I say, because that’s definitely not the truth.
Kristen rolls her eyes, and when I look over, I see Hannah’s eyes widen, almost ready to roll out of her head.
“I think he’s going to be her boyfriend, if she just gives him a chance,” Kristen says, giving me a long stare before looking to Hannah. “But, for now, I’m hoping Clarity will just get to know him, maybe even let him be her date to the festival you two are planning.”
“A date?” Hannah repeats, spitting out the word.
“This is not happening,” I assure Hannah and remind Kristen.
Kristen opens her mouth to object. “I told you I’m not dating right now.
I told you I don’t want to do this, and you set me up anyway?
You ambushed me!” I turn to Hannah and choose my words carefully, painfully.
“I’m so sorry, I had no idea she was going to do this—”
“Why are you apologizing to her?” Kristen cuts in.
“Because I invited her to come to this game to get to know me and get to know you, and you turned her into a fifth wheel.”
What I really want to do is focus on Hannah.
Focus on her lips, pressed together so hard that they’re draining of color.
I want to focus on smoothing out her face’s hard lines, ones that I’ve seen before but never because of me.
I need to tell her that Maurice means nothing, that this blind date wasn’t my idea, that I truly, truly didn’t sign off on this.
But I can’t do any of that in front of Kristen. I ball my hands into fists instead, my fingernails digging into my palms.
“Look, Clarity,” Kristen says, her voice as quiet as she can get with a football game going on and a marching band riffing every time there’s a play.
She stands squarely in front of me, hands on my shoulders, and it’s impossible not to look her in the eye.
“I’m sorry for springing this on you, and I’m even sorry to you”—she says to Hannah—“if I’ve ruined your night or made you uncomfortable in any way.
” Then she turns back to me, her blue eyes glowing under the fluorescence of the floodlights.
“I didn’t think you’d pull your head out of your textbooks or your committee long enough to actually check someone out.
And you promised.” Her brows tip up and her bottom lip pouts with the reminder.
She turns to Hannah. “Don’t you think Clarity deserves to find love?
Or, at least, to have a little fun this semester? ” Kristen reasons.
A pocket in my chest breaks. If the line hadn’t already been crossed, Kristen posing that question to Hannah, right to her face, hops us firmly to the other side.
I hate it. I hate this night. I hate Kristen’s dumb plan.
I hate watching Hannah’s walls break—the ones she’d built to guard herself whenever Maurice would show up.
“She definitely does,” Hannah agrees, her voice so quiet I doubt Kristen heard it.
The Ridgeway Ravens lose. Maurice and I exchange numbers, and I leave with Hannah. By the time she’s driving me home, I’m paralyzed with uncertainty.
“What are you thinking?” I whisper, though the sound takes up every spare inch of space in Hannah’s silent car.
Her face is red, and her mouth is fixed in a line that keeps scrunching up.
“What do you care?” she asks, a dark, bitter laugh falling out in between her words. The sound is almost unrecognizable coming from her.
“I do care,” I say, though I know that’s not enough.
“Really? Because you have a hilarious way of showing it.”
“I didn’t know he was coming,” I insist. “I didn’t plan this—”
“Your best friend has been begging you to let her set you up with someone, anyone—”
“And I told her not to.”
“Kristen is your best friend, and you didn’t tell her about camp. The person you’re supposed to be able to tell everything to, you couldn’t tell about us… about you. And I just had to watch you get pressured into a setup you clearly don’t want…” She trails off, the thought hanging between us.
“I know it might not make sense to you and this isn’t exactly ideal—”
“Clarity, it doesn’t have to make sense to me. It’s the fact that it makes sense to you that’s concerning.”
“You don’t understand,” I remind her, feeling a sting when I catch her wince.
“Help me, then. Kristen isn’t religious. I get that you’re scared, but are you really going to… to follow through on whatever this is that she kicked up tonight? I mean, Clarity, you let the boy take your number. He is going to text you.”
“I’m not ready for anything to change.” I know that answer is vague, but it’s the only one I have.
We roll to a stop in front of my house, the drive feeling impossibly short when there’s so much unsaid and unfinished between us.
I’m relieved to see the lights off inside, meaning my parents probably went to bed early.
With the car in park, Hannah takes a second to cover her face with her hands and take a deep breath.
I want to reach out and touch her, assure her that this setup will be going nowhere, but I’m trapped.
Being just friends limits what I can do to assure Hannah that there’s no one else for me, not without admitting that I don’t view her as just a friend.
Without making this messier than it already is.
“Coming out was different for me,” she says, breaking the silence, “and I’m not ignorant to the fact that it’s hard for a lot of people. I guess the difference is that I like you so, so much. I wish that I could be enough—”
“You are enough, Hannah. This has nothing to do with you. It’s about me,” I say, reaching for her. I take her hand and weave my fingers between hers, like I can weave the truth into her through my touch.
“I don’t get why you can’t be in the closet and figure yourself out. Why does Maurice have to be part of it?”
I didn’t see Maurice as part of anything. Figuring myself out has been the plan all along.
“It’s not like I said I would be in a relationship with him, or promised anything,” I remind her, thinking. Isolating myself in the closet has only made it harder to deny how much I want Hannah, a denial that seems to hurt her more and more.
“What if I just—we just—went along with it?” I ask, piecing together this kind of wild new plan.
“If Maurice is around, then no one will suspect anything. Just the idea of him and me turning into something would be enough to keep people from looking at you and me. There won’t be room for assumptions… ”
She nods, her eyes darting back and forth like she’s reading the steering wheel in front of her, but I know she’s thinking.
“So, you would just use him, like, as a beard?”
Even though I have no idea what that means, when she turns to me, her face is more open, her voice lighter. A beard must be something good.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll use Maurice as a beard and Kristen will be appeased and I’ll have a little less anxiety about everything and we could be together. We could date.”
Hannah’s eyes snap to me, wider than I’ve ever seen them. “What did you say?”
“We could be together, Hannah,” I repeat, confidence flooding my entire body.
“We could have our secret relationship,” she breathes.
An uncontrollable smile takes over my face. “I’ll make it look convincing, but I won’t do anything with him. I won’t kiss him or hold hands or anything like that, I promise.”
“I trust you,” Hannah swears, leaning closer.
I almost lean toward her too, but I catch myself. We’re parked right outside my house. I just assumed my parents were asleep, but I may be wrong.
“Sorry,” I say when Hannah flinches, shifting back a few inches. “I want to kiss you.”
Her eyes soften, and she sighs. “I want to kiss you too.”
I imagine kissing her again and realize that sometime soon I’ll get to. At the thought, I reflexively dip my gaze to her lips.
Just out of reach.
“Clarity,” Hannah whispers. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Am I sure about digging myself into a deeper hole of lies, about roping another person into the mess that is me figuring out my romantic life? Not at all. But I’m sure that Hannah is worth it, that I can at least try.
“Hannah,” I say, finding her eyes again.
The yellow hue of the streetlight outside her windshield casts a golden glow on her face.
The anticipation dancing in her eyes is the same excitement she’d have when we were deciding what to do or where to go at camp.
Every night had the potential to be better than the last, a new path to hike, a new conversation where we could peel back the endless layers of each other and get to know more, get closer.
And here we are again, under a blanket of stars, choosing what to do next.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” I ask, sucking in a breath and holding it.
“Yes,” she says, unwavering.
And for the first time since the Incident, I feel like myself.