22. Valentine
“August Anthony Mariani,” I say, climbing through his window. “Put on something other than your man briefs because we have some carnival plotting to do.”
August squints at me in the late-morning light. I can tell he’s been awake for a bit because he’s not grunting and cursing into his pillow, but not long enough for the surly to wear off completely.
“And you know what kind of underwear I wear, how exactly?” he asks, his voice rough. Swee snores peacefully by his side, his scraggly old cat body tucked carefully under August’s sheet like a person.
“Because I go through your drawers. Obviously.”
He cracks a smile. “Fair enough.”
I laugh. “You wouldn’t care?”
“If you went through my stuff?” He shrugs. “Nope. I trust you.”
I’m instantly reminded of my conversation with Bentley yesterday and feel justified all over again about defending August. Now, if I could just stop thinking about that conversation altogether, that’d be awesome.
I pull my sparkly purple notebook from my shoulder bag and plop down in August’s desk chair. “Ready?”
He props himself up on his elbow. “I’m not saying I don’t want to plot, but I’m definitely going to need some coff—”
“I’ll get it. You feed Swee. And then we’ll—”
He looks at me from under his tousled morning hair. “Tiiiny.”
“Yeah?”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
My heart thuds with the unexpectedness of the question. And I feel disoriented like someone just shined a light in my eyes. “Huh?”
“Either someone spiked your orange juice or you’re upset about something.”
“Uh—” I start, spinning my wheels to come up with an answer that isn’t a lie. If I tell him the truth about Bentley in light of him thinking I’m upset—which I’m absolutely not—he’ll get the wrong idea.
But before I complete my thought, there’s a knock.
“Come in,” August says, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the interruption.
August’s mom opens his door. “Don’t mind me, I just heard Valentine’s voice and thought I’d come in and share some good news. Hi, sweetie,” she says to me.
“Hi, Ruth,” I reply, and her smile brightens. Her curls are piled high on her head in an effortless bun, and she’s wearing a floor-length maroon shirtdress with a brown belt. I’ve always envied her style.
“Good news?” August says, and the hope on his face is hard to look at. It doesn’t matter how many jobs she loses or how practical he is about everything and anything; when it comes to his mom, he keeps thinking he’ll wake up one day and everything will be different.
“Well,” she says, her cheeks pink. “I got a job.”
“Yeah?” August says with kid-like enthusiasm. “Vinnie changed his mind?”
“Better,” she says. “It’s a painting job. A house.”
“That’s great, Ruth,” I say.
Relief seems to wash over August. “When do you start? Do we need to pick up supplies?”
“The Kellermans already ordered the paint. But I’ll need some odds and ends. More brushes for instance and—”
“The Kellermans?” August says, his voice a smidge too loud, sitting up so fast that Swee startles with a snort.
Kyle Kellerman, my mind screams. The awful image of seeing Kyle in the supermarket three days ago flashes through my head, and my stomach knots itself into a tangled mess.
“See, I ran into Nancy Kellerman at the bakery this morning, and she told me they’ve decided to completely redo their paint colors. I offered my services, and I guess she must have liked the idea, because she just called and told me I’m hired.” She holds her hands out and opens her mouth as if to say, Ta-da!
August looks like someone slapped him.
Ruth drops her hands, her cheerfulness turning to confusion. “August?”
He doesn’t respond right away, probably torn between wanting his mom to have a job and wanting her to refuse on principle. His shoulders slump. “Yeah, no, that’s good,” he lies. “Just processing the big news.”
A timer goes off somewhere in the distance, and his mom turns toward the door. “Banana muffins,” she says over her shoulder as she enters the hall. “To celebrate!”
I wait as her footsteps fade on the steps.
August stands and closes his door, his expression shifting like a brewing storm. “You heard that, right? It wasn’t just my imagination that my mother is now working for Kyle effing Kellerman’s family?”
I sit forward, instantly feeling the responsibility of saying something that’ll make this less awful.
“Maybe you should tell her how you feel,” I reply, my voice gentle.
He gives me a “be serious” look. “Tell her what exactly? That Kyle practically dragged Des out of the house that night? Or that he got her drunk before putting her in his car?”
The lights on the cop cars painted the night-shadowed asphalt in a sea of flashing blue and red. It was too bright, too loud for the sleepy street at 1:00 a.m., and for a split second I thought it might not be real. August and I got out of the back of his mom’s car, still in our pajamas, the sluggishness of sleep gone and replaced with sweaty, pulsing fear.
August’s mom spoke with an officer, whose face was drawn with the burden of what he was saying. I followed August into the commotion, my heart pounding in my ears, only catching pieces of the policeman’s words: “Race... kids... unfortunate accident.”
But my mind couldn’t make sense of it because there, wrapped around a tree, was Kyle’s brand-new car, the one he took us for a ride in not two days before, bragging about how fast it was... had been Kyle sat in the back of an ambulance, his eyes wide with shock and blood on his shirt. But there was no Des. Des wasn’t there.
Then I saw what Kyle was staring at. A body bag on a stretcher. And I knew; I instantly knew, the same way you know when you drop a glass, even before it hits the ground, that it’ll never be reparable. I looked around, frantic for someone to tell me it wasn’t true. But August’s mom was folded over herself, wailing. And August was frozen, standing at the edge of the caution tape, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“It might be good to say those things,” I reply even more gently.
He shakes his head as he paces. “Honestly, what good would it do at this point to prove to her that we all missed something about Kyle? Why subject her to the same shit guilt I live with?”
My breath catches and my heart beats faster. “August, it’s not your—”
He turns so quickly that I flinch. “Do not say ‘fault,’ Tiny. Don’t even think it,” he says with finality, and I feel blood rushing to my cheeks. For months after Des died, people kept telling him that it was a senseless tragedy, that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. That was when he stopped talking to people in general, even me.
I glance briefly at my hands. “Well, hey, look, I’m sure there’s another job out there. All we need to do is find it.”
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyebrows. “We’ve been through three towns applying, including the places she’s been fired from before. I even stopped at the Gibbonses and the Hershwicks to ask about their home repairs, and they both told me flat out that they felt more comfortable hiring a contractor. There is no other job.” He tosses his phone onto the end of his bed for emphasis. “I seriously hate money, like, a lot.”
I’d ask if August’s dad could help. But I did that when he found out Berkeley denied him financial aid because of his father’s salary. I told August I was sure he’d want to contribute, to which August spent the next ten minutes cursing about how his dad’s a prick who’s too preoccupied with his second family to care. “Maybe I could—” I start, but he cuts me off.
His eyes darken and he looks away. “I know you’re trying to help, but this isn’t your problem. It’s mine,” he says, and I’m instantly aware that The Wall is up and the conversation is over.