Chapter Twenty-Nine
My phone is ringing, I realize, and jolt awake.
“Are you dead?” Kristen yells into the phone. “Dead? Bleeding? In the hospital? Someone died? You sleepwalked to LA?”
The skate show! I snap to my senses.
“I’m okay, just running on CPT,” I say, running down the hall to my room.
“Clarity,” Kristen whines, buying my answer. “Come on, Maurice is here—”
“Not all black people run on CPT,” I remind her, catching my nest of hair in my bathroom mirror on my way to my closet.
“Are you close at least?” she asks. Before I can answer, she starts talking to someone else, the sound of skateboard wheels on concrete and wood smacking pavement filling in the space between her mouth and the microphone.
“Yes,” I lie. “I’m close. Did Maurice go yet?”
I shimmy out of yesterday’s clothes and into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, stepping into my Air Force 1’s—because the skate show is supposed to be a date-type thing after all—and stop to spray myself with perfume and roll on deodorant on top of yesterday’s deodorant—gross—and brush my teeth megafast before hurtling back into the hallway.
“No, but he’s not too far off. This is a big deal. He doesn’t want you to miss it,” Kristen presses. “Get here.”
Her hiss sizzles inside my empty stomach.
“I’m coming,” I say, hanging up.
Now that Kristen is on board with the plan to use Maurice as a beard, she has mapped out the skate show as a major moment for our fake…
situationship. Other kids from school will be there, which means I can get enough visibility with Maurice to stir up assumptions about him and me, enough that no one will give Hannah and me a second glance.
Of course, if I miss the show and he decides he wants nothing to do with me, I could lose my safety net altogether.
In the living room I find my purse on the end of the couch. I check it for gum, lip balm, emergency mascara, and my house key. A few specks of glitter fall off my bag onto the couch, reminding me of the poster mess… on the precious carpet. The carpet.
“You changed?” Hannah asks, far behind.
“Can you help me move this?” I ask, grabbing one side of the coffee table. “My parents are going to kill me.”
We move the coffee table and I quickly go over the carpet twice with the vacuum, then use the upholstery attachment to clean all the glitter I can find off the couch cushions. Just when I think I’ve got it all, I spot another speck and decide to go over everything one more time just to make sure.
Hannah single-handedly moves the coffee table back into position while I wind up the vacuum cord and deposit it back in the closet.
In the living room, Hannah packs up the homework she ended up starting last night. I check my phone for the time. It’s eight, which means if my parents left the hospital on time, they’ll be home within the next twenty minutes or so.
Which is fine. Hannah will be gone. The living room is clean. They know about the skate show, and that’s where I’ll be… at the skate show… that I have to get to… with the car I don’t have.
“Thank you,” I say after taking a deep breath. “For helping.”
“Of course,” Hannah says, shouldering her bag. “I’ve been there, hiding the evidence. Though it’s usually cleaning up after a party, not racing to clean up a school-related crafting session. But I guess that’s as wild as you get,” she adds, chuckling.
I wish I had time for her tired smile, her droopy eyes, her somehow casually perfect unbrushed morning hair, and for all the feelings coming back to me now as my brain wakes up and remembers what we talked about last night. But right now, I have to save face so that we can explore the possibility…
“I hate to ask you this, but can you take me somewhere?”
“Is everything okay?” Hannah asks, stepping closer to me.
“Yes, there’s somewhere that I’m supposed to be and I’m super late,” I say, turning and heading toward the door.
“I can take you,” she says, right behind me.
We file out of the garage, and I set the security code before it closes behind us.
“So,” Hannah says as we pull onto the street, “where are we going?”
Right. Coming out and telling her that she’s dropping me off at a skate show/date with Maurice is probably not the best idea. But neither is lying…
“Veterans Way Park in Hudson,” I say coolly.
“Is there a farmers market today or something?” she asks, glancing down at her phone to queue up some music.
I mean, probably… this is Hudson we’re talking about. It’s basically the real-life Ohio version of Stars Hollow.
“No, it’s just this thing that I promised Kristen I would be at,” I say.
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s a thing…” I say, stalling to think of the best way to break the news. I silence my phone when it starts to chime again.
“Is it a secret? Are you joining the Illuminati or something?”
“You believe in the Illuminati?” I ask, pretending to be amused.
“Evading much?”
“It’s really nothing. Not a big deal. Just something I’m doing with Kristen, that I’m late for, that she’s going to kill me over,” I ramble.
“So… if it’s nothing, then I can come?”
Wrong.
“Um, well—”
“Ouch.”
“No, it’s not like that,” I rush to say, somewhat helpless when we pull onto Darrow Road; it’s pretty much a straight shot to the park. A straight shot for me to either stop Hannah from seeing what she’s taking me to or undoubtedly make her mad. “It’s another Maurice thing.”
Silence.
“He and Vincent are in a skate show to raise money for the park. Kristen invited me to it a while ago.”
“And this is the first time you’re telling me about it?” she asks, though we both know the answer is yes.
“I wasn’t trying to hide it,” I promise. “Actually, when she first invited me, it was before Maurice and before us.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that we agreed you’d be open and honest about Maurice-related stuff,” she argues, glancing at me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, and I’m sorry to spring it on you like this.”
“So, if I wasn’t driving you to the skate show, when would you have told me?” she asks.
We pull up to a red light, so she can stare at me, eyes wide, as she waits for an answer.
I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe I was even trying not to think about it. But I wasn’t consciously trying to hide it from her…
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Now that I’m out to Kristen, I figure that changes everything as far as Maurice is concerned. Plus, it’s a public show. It’s not like Maurice and I are going to be alone together.”
“Right,” Hannah says, her inflection jumping. She cocks her head to the side and squints her eyes, focused on the road now that we’re moving again. “So, since this skate show is an event that’s open to the public, that means I can come.”
My heart leaps, but not in the romantic, fun way. It leaps like it wants out of my chest entirely.
“Hannah…”
We begin our descent down the gentle hill that crosses from the Stow border into Hudson.
Halfway down this hill is a traffic light, and once we turn left, we will be on the side street that snakes through the entirety of Veterans Way Park.
Essentially, once we turn left, we will be there, just a couple of bends in the road away from the skate park.
“Turn in here,” I say, pointing at the Starbucks on the opposite side of the intersection from the side street.
“But the park is there,” Hannah says, slowing down as we near the light.
“But I—uh—want some coffee,” I say.
Hannah reluctantly turns right instead of left, and we pull into the Starbucks parking lot.
When she cuts the car off, I say, “You don’t have to come in with me. I’m just gonna get some coffee, and I can walk the rest of the way.”
“Oh no, it’s okay,” she says, her voice light and fake. “I want some coffee too, and since we will both get coffee and both be leaving at the same time, I can drive you the rest of the way and stay for the show.”
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I mumble.
“What? Getting upset that my girlfriend conveniently didn’t tell me she had a date with her beard? A date that I got roped into bringing her to? I’d say my reaction is more natural than ‘on purpose.’ ” The humor has drained from her voice.
“I’m sorry—”
“I don’t like this,” she says, a weight of finality in her tone. “I don’t like the Maurice plan anymore.”
“We can’t—”
“We can though, Clarity,” Hannah insists, turning to face me as best she can in her seat. She reaches for my hand, weaving our fingers together. “We can date in secret without Maurice. You can still be in the closet—no one will know. But at least I won’t have to think of you out on dates with him.”
I remember what Kristen told Vincent that day at the field hockey game, about me becoming a field hockey groupie.
Whether or not she was being serious, the only thing that stopped her and will stop anyone else from making an accusation that’s more on the nose is Maurice.
Today could be a big win for us, enough momentum for us to spend more time together at school without me having to be nervous about what people will think.
We still need Maurice. At least, I do.
“Hannah, I’m not ready. The plan is working.”
“Clarity, if you just see—”
“No.”
“Why?”
“If people see us together so much, they could start to guess—”
“To guess what? That you invited your friend to whatever is happening across the street that—let’s be honest here—I could just drive up to and see if I wanted to, whether or not you want me there.”
“Why do you have to be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Pushing so hard,” I whine. “The plan—”
“Exactly, the plan didn’t include Maurice. And one of us has to push,” she says, the accusation leaving her tone. “You’re scared, and I get that. But before, you didn’t want to be together at all. Then we found a way. Why can’t this change too?”
“Now just isn’t the right time,” I plead.
“When then? Are you just going to hide me from everyone, keep me locked away to stop anyone from ever even picturing us together?”
The words leave her mouth laced with desperation and disbelief, and I know they sound ridiculous.
But the answer is yes. The best way to prevent anyone from piecing us together is to not even create the image for them to dissect in the first place.
Maybe it is neurotic and controlling. But it makes sense.
To me, at least. This is one of the few things that make sense, that feel safe.
“You can’t be serious.” Hannah deflates, taking my silence as a confirmation. “So, I’m just your little secret then? You’re ashamed of me.”
“I am not ashamed of you.” Shock makes my heart thunder. I squeeze her hand, but she slips hers out of mine and pulls away.
“Us being in a secret relationship is way different from me being your closet secret, Clarity—”
“I didn’t ask you to be in the closet—”
“You didn’t have to. A secret relationship is us doing something in secret, but together. You shoving me into the background of your life is something entirely different. That’s you pushing me into a place that I don’t deserve to be.”
“I’m not trying to do that, Hannah—”
“But you’re still doing it, even without trying, Clarity.”
Curled in on herself, Hannah looks so small.
Her expression pinches—not into hurt, not anger, but something else.
With her pointedly staring at her hands in her lap, twisting a bracelet around her wrist, I feel the wall rising between us again.
She glances over at my lap, and I look down to see Kristen’s face lighting up my phone.
“You should go.”
She’s right, even though I know that’s not why she’s telling me to leave.
“This isn’t over,” I tell her as I get out of the car. She doesn’t understand how today is a good thing for us. And maybe she won’t see it until I get the results Kristen and I are banking on.
“Don’t I know it,” she huffs bitterly, not looking at me as I stand there with the passenger door open, waiting, before I close the door.