Chapter Twenty-Three
“I’m kidnapping you, and you can’t say no. I need you for a photography assignment and it’s Wednesday, which means you don’t have festival committee today,” Kristen gushes, her hand wrapped around my wrist as if I’m going to try to run away.
“ ‘Clarity, I need your help with a photography project’ or ‘Clarity, can you please help me with something after school’ or ‘Clarity, hi, how are you?’ All viable options that don’t involve cutting the circulation off to my hand,” I tease. “But yes, I can help you.”
Kristen lets go of my wrist so I can finish shoving folders into my bag before closing my locker.
“I didn’t know if you were going to be busy with your new friends,” she admits, holding her hands up in surrender. “You’ve been running off with them after school. I feel like you never need a ride from me anymore.”
I roll my eyes. I know she’s only half kidding, but the comment still strikes a nerve.
Ever since I found out Hannah told Rowena about our relationship, I’ve been avoiding her and the team.
Outside of yesterday’s meeting, I’ve been using an essay I have due this week to dodge our nightly FaceTime calls, and I haven’t tagged along to any more of their games.
And now that Yasmin has called me out, I wonder if I’m doing everything wrong. I might not be a good Christian. I don’t feel like a good girlfriend. And lying definitely means I’m not being a good best friend.
“It hasn’t been that much,” I tell Kristen as we start down the hall. “Plus, I figure, the less I need rides from you, the more time you can spend with Vincent.”
We pass Hannah’s locker on our way toward the art wing.
The team has an away game today, far enough from Stow that they got to leave halfway through last period.
I was relieved to know I wouldn’t run into the team after school today, that I wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse not to sneak in some time with Hannah. Relieved and guilty.
“Clarity,” Kristen huffs, “call me toxic, but I like when you need me. Okay? I want to give you rides and get Starbucks and spend time with you.”
What about your boyfriend?
I swallow the thought, knowing it’s not entirely fair.
Kristen doesn’t have to choose between Vincent and me, nor do I want to make her feel bad for being happy.
While Vincent was a jerk in the past, I’ve noticed the way he makes her smile, and how much time they spend together.
She tries to include me, and while it doesn’t always work out, it’s more than I can say for myself.
Not giving Kristen a chance to save the committee was an oversight. But not inviting her to the baking party was wrong. I want to make it up to her, like I promised.
“Do you want to have a sleepover tonight?” I ask. “Just us, like old times?”
We turn down the stairwell that leads to the art wing.
Descending from the plain halls covered in school projects, club posters, and athletic event flyers, we enter the center of Kristen’s universe.
The walls that were virtually empty at the beginning of the semester are now plastered in projects: photography projects, paintings, sketches, cases filled with ceramics and sculptures.
It’s colorful and abstract, collaged with realism, just like Kristen.
“You know,” she says after a moment of thought, “let’s totally do it.”
“Really?” I stop in the middle of the hallway and pull on my backpack straps like I’m holding on to a roller coaster.
“Yes! Just let me grab the camera.”
After an overcast photoshoot in the farthest acre of the Haverford Tree Farm, showers, a ten-minute deliberation with Kristen’s mom, and a placed pizza order, Kristen and I start setting up the den.
I blow up the king-size air mattress we always use, double-checking the tape covering the tiny holes we’ve accumulated over the years.
I find a spare set of sheets in the linen closet in the hallway and run into Kristen on her way back from her room.
She nearly barrels into me since she can’t see over the pile of blankets filling her arms.
She laughs when she realizes I dodged her, and we file back into the den, her dog, Skittles, on our heels.
Her dad had the addition built onto the house when we were in elementary school.
The walls are made of wood from the farm and so is most of the furniture: The coffee table is a flat plank of knotted pine and the bookshelves still have their rich cedar scent.
I love this place. My second home.
Kristen starts fluffing pillows while I arrange our snacks on the coffee table at the foot of the bed.
I watch her for a moment as she buzzes around, checking the corners of the fitted sheet and doubling back to adjust the lights.
The way she smiles to herself as we work in quiet harmony makes me wonder if she’s missed this as much as I have.
I know we haven’t changed that much, but we aren’t the same as we were before this summer.
A bitter part of me wonders what right now might look like if I hadn’t gone to camp.
I don’t regret finding myself and finding Hannah, but in some alternate version of my life, there’s way less drama.
Less stress. And Kristen and I never stopped being how we were.
When we finally sit down, I pick at the hem of the pajama pants my mom brought over, trying to ignore the twist of guilt that comes up whenever I acknowledge how much I lie to Kristen now.
“What are we thinking?” Kristen asks, sitting back with the remote. She starts clicking through the Netflix categories. “Romance, action, thriller?”
We used to tell each other everything—crushes, stupid fears, drama, whether it was ours or gossip we heard at school. Now I’m hiding the biggest thing in my life, the missing piece that completes me as my true self.
Hannah.
Thinking her name makes my chest tighten.
I sent her a good luck text before Kristen and I left school.
She didn’t reply until long after the game would’ve ended.
I hadn’t thought much of it, mainly because I was busy with Kristen, but when Hannah asked about us FaceTiming tonight and I said no again, I felt like whatever progress I made in finally spending quality time with Kristen was only pushing me further from figuring out how to move forward in my relationship with Hannah.
“Earth to Clarity?” Kristen snaps her fingers in front of my face, inches from my eyes. I jump, which usually makes her laugh. But when I meet her eyes, her brows are pinched in concern.
“You asked about movies?” I say, registering the list of romantic comedies filling the TV.
“You spaced out,” she says, leaning against the couch so that she’s fully facing me.
“I’m just in my head, sorry.” I grab the nearest blanket and pull it over my lap before focusing on the bright screen. The first option is To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before followed by Emily in Paris and The Half of It.
“What’s wrong?”
My eyes snag on The Half of It. Hannah told me about this movie. She wants us to watch it together, mainly so I can see what happens when a closeted girl’s world doesn’t end when people find out the truth.
“What do you and Vincent, like, do together? When you hang out and stuff?” I ask, desperate to know more about who Kristen is when she’s away from me now, to stop the gap between us from growing.
Her face unpinches. Instead of confusion, she looks surprised, and then her lips melt into a warm smile.
“This might sound stupid, but we really just hang out.”
“Okay, but what do you do?”
“We take walks through the farm and in the woods behind school, sometimes we get coffee, but we usually just go places where we can sit around and talk.”
I haven’t really considered what they do beyond what I already knew… which is that they smoke on the farm.
“You don’t go on dates?”
This makes her laugh, the sound light and familiar, but still distancing. Whatever my question prompted is a thought, a memory, that I don’t know about… a reminder that we don’t talk like we used to.
“Does Vincent seem like the type to you?” she asks.
That makes me crack up a little. “I guess not… Well, what do you guys talk about then?”
Kristen shifts, twisting her lips for a moment. “I don’t mind the question, but can I ask why you’re asking?”
“Just trying to get a fuller picture of your relationship, what you see in him, what makes Vincent better than another guy,” I say.
She nods, understanding. “Honestly, we just talk a lot about our lives. Sometimes it feels like half our relationship is us recapping the seventeen years we spent not together. We also talk about our ideas—”
“Your ideas?”
Kristen glances at me, the look too brief for me to make anything of it.
“You know, it’s all stuff that I’ve told you before. Like, what inspires us, what we want to do after high school, after college. Our inventions, our philosophies, that kind of dramatic stuff.”
“I had no idea Vincent had philosophies,” I tease, shifting out of reach when Kristen tries to swat me.
“He’s deeper than a lot of people give him credit for.”
“I’m not unconvinced of that possibility.”
“Oh my gosh, when you start dating someone, I’m gonna dog the heck out of them to get back at you!”
You already do, I think to myself.
“Okay, okay. What’s an example of Vincent being deeper than a drop of water on a countertop?”
“Well, I told him about how Tyler—that guy I dated in, like, eighth grade—cheated on me. This was when we first started officially dating, and we were, like, talking about past relationships and dos and don’ts.
“Anyway, he said that when it comes to cheating, people are always so hung up on the are they or aren’t they when they should really be asking themselves what will I or won’t I do if they are.
And at first, it did hit my ear wrong. He was taking the focus off the cheater and putting it on the person being cheated on.
But, when you think about it, he’s right.