18. Lilah
LILAH
Acoffee and a ham and cheese croissant on a plate from French Press, the coffee shop where I’d had my interview, slid onto my open notebook.
I rocked back and looked up.
Mason leaned against the edge of the table with his arms folded across his chest.
“You left me this morning.”
“Left you? I wasn’t aware we had plans.”
“You do love your plans.” He scrubbed his hand over his chin.
“I—I needed to go over my thermodynamic favorability notes before my test.”
He reached out slowly like he didn’t want to startle me.
I forced myself to stay still, anticipation tingling my senses.
He tucked my hair behind my ear and dragged his thumb across my skin. “Even if you need to get here at four a.m., I’ll drive.”
The wing flutters in my stomach tickled and tumbled. “I don’t get to say no?”
“Do you want to say no?”
The ten-minute warning bell for homeroom chimed overhead.
I gathered up my books and balanced the plate on top. It slid around on my stack and I tried not to lose the pastry packed with shaved ham and cheese. “Thanks for the food. Did you steal the plate?”
“Don’t worry. Bought and paid for.” He plucked my books out of my hand and slipped my backpack off my shoulder. “Do you have a pathological aversion to asking for help?”
With the weight gone, I stood with only the plate, feeling a hundred pounds lighter. “I’m just not used to there being anyone around to ask or offer.”
“That changes now. Eat before that gets too cold.”
I bit into the flaky croissant and the warm cheese coated my tongue.
The salty, thick pieces of ham were a hearty balance to all the soft and gooey deliciousness of the rest of the croissant and buttery egg.
Crumbs rained down with each bite, but I didn’t stop until I almost bit my finger devouring every inch of it.
“Ham and cheese is a winner,” he said it like he was adding to a mental note.
I let Mason lead us toward my locker, stifling my grin. “Definitely a winner. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“How was your game?”
“Game?”
Normally after a big win, the hallways were humming with excitement and celebration. But not today. “Everyone’s staring again.” And not in the normal way. Was that a thread of hostility?
“At me. Don’t worry.” He walked, head held high like he couldn’t feel the dozens of eyes on us.
I stepped back and put some space between us. People passed him without the adoring looks they usually did, but all eyes were on him. Everyone walked around Mason, but not to cheer for him or high-five, but with sideways glances, some curious, some angry.
A pit opened in my stomach. “What did you do?”
“What I deserved.” He tilted his head toward the double-doored exit. “Can I give you a ride home after school?”
“Don’t brush my question off.” I spotted an open classroom and pulled him inside. The door closed, muffling the hallway noise. I rounded on him and pressed my palm against his chest. “What did you do?”
He let me shove at him until the backs of his legs hit the teacher’s desk. He sat on it and picked up a blown glass paperweight, rolling it in his palm. “Nothing.”
The beats of silence with his forced nonchalance annoyed me.
“You’re not going to tell me.” I marched to the door, flung it open and yanked a random underclassman into the room.
“What happened at last night’s game?”
The terrified kid’s eyes bounced from me to Mason.
“Don’t look at him. Look at me.” I stepped between them, blocking Mason’s view of the slightly sweaty guy wearing too much cologne. “What happened?”
“Mason—” His gaze darted over my shoulder. “Mason choked on the ice.” A thick swallow. “Just stood there until the coach subbed him out.”
“What?” I rounded on Mason, blood pulsing in my veins. “Thank you—you can go.”
Behind me, the door opened, swallowing up the tense silence in hallway noises as he made his escape.
“Were you trying to throw the game?”
“No.” He tossed the glass ball from one hand to the other. “You know you’re damn hot when you’re this pissed off.”
I shot him a pointed look and breezed right past that, although a little thrill rushed through me. “Why would you do that?”
He shrugged.
I marched up to him and snatched the paperweight from his grasp before gently setting it back down. “Was this your way of trying to balance the scales again? Embarrass yourself? Try to make me feel better by getting people to stare and whisper about you?”
His jaw clenched and I wanted to wrap my fingers around his neck.
“So your selfish need to prove yourself to me comes at the expense of everyone else? At my expense. At the expense of the team. At the expense of the school. There are a lot of people who care about how the team performs. They care about these wins.”
“And I care about you.” He stood, but I refused to back down. “I deserve it.”
“Why do you think you need to be punished instead of just doing better? And you’d sacrifice what all these other people want and all these other people worked hard for to prove a point and make yourself feel better!”
“I wanted to prove—”
“Why do you think this is what I want? It’s about you!
So selfish that the only thing you can focus on is what you want.
What you think will make it better. Never once thinking of what the hell I want.
If you knew me, you’d know I’d never want you to do that.
I’d never try to hurt you. And this was your big plan?
How you were going to prove to me you’ve changed or whatever?
You doing this is only proving how much you never really knew me at all. ”
I stormed out of the room, nearly running into the teacher coming in.
Mason could smooth that over himself. He’d taken it upon himself to handle everything else.
I avoided him for the rest of the day and escaped to home again, leaving a couple of minutes before the last bell.
In the empty house, the silence was so loud it rang in my ears as I uploaded the supplemental documents to my final college application.
A notification came in from the Hawthorne awards committee that I was a Windsor Award finalist. My heart skipped a beat while I read the email.
As long as I maintained my grades and no one else selected premed, it would be mine.
Relief and restlessness gripped me. All of this should make me happy, but instead a hollowness thunked in my chest.
Fidgety and needing to focus, I flipped open my trunk.
I moved things aside and pulled out the satin bag I hadn’t touched in weeks.
A heavy panel spilled out of the bag onto my lap.
The weight of the fabric covered in glass beads on my lap slowly calmed me.
I settled in my chair by the window with thread and the small pouch of beads.
The smooth glide of my fingers over the cool glass was a return to the familiar.
The same thing my mom had done, same motions, although her stitches were always tighter than mine.
Her voicemail played, and it felt like she could be in the next room, or we were talking on the phone like we had to sometimes when she was in the ICU and I couldn’t visit.
After sewing on the final bead in the silky pouch, I reached into the bigger bag filled with the rest of the pouches and picked up another. Empty. I pulled out another, also empty.
Panic gripped my chest and I dumped all the bags out onto my bed. I checked every pouch. There were no beads left. My harsh breaths turned into a whimper.
When I’d first begun working on the bodice, it had seemed impossible that I would ever finish the mountains of beads.
It was a task to help me turn off my brain, where I could lose myself in the feel of the thread, the glass and repetition.
It was calming, but I also gained a little progress every time I brought it out.
But now it was just over? I’d searched for beads previously, once some pouches emptied, but I still didn’t know how such little things could be so expensive. It was a choice between the cost of beads now or textbooks next year.
I ran my fingers over the dress, where the design ended halfway down the skirt.
Those were the last tiny, shiny bits of my mother’s treasures and now they were gone.
The loss plunged deep into my heart. Her distant voice wasn’t enough. I wanted her to hold me. To comfort me. To tell me what to do.
I sat with my back against the trunk, holding the dress and tracing over the designed beadwork on the bodice. A hopeless, lonely feeling settled over me. It would be years before I’d be able to finish it.
Tears rolled down my face, hot and silent, and I stared at what little I had left of her. The project we’d been working on together, even after she left. It had been so long since I’d let myself cry and here I was doing it again. My skin stung as the salty tears spread across my cheeks.
A knock interrupted my turmoil.
I wiped at my face and my nose with my sleeve, got off the floor and opened the door.
“Lilah.” The breathless way he said my name now was half gut punch and half jelly-knee inducing.
I folded my arms across my chest, floppy sleeves covering my hands, and looked down. “What did you want?”
“You’re crying.”
I slapped on a smile. “Nope, not anymore.”
Mason’s eyebrows were scrunched with concern, trying to break through the facade I’d thrown up to shield myself. “What happened?”
“Life.”
He stepped inside the house like I’d invited him. “What are you doing?”
“Please, come on in.” I left the door open, not wanting him to think I wanted him to stay. “And none of your business.”
He fingered the beaded sleeve of the dress I’d been crying over. “Is this one of your designs from your book?” He looked at me with awe in his eyes.
“No, it was my mom’s. I’m trying to finish it.”
A pause of appreciation. “This looks better than the stuff Alena buys.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Hardly. Can you leave now?”
“I’m serious, Lilah.” He breezed past my request.