Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
I’m triple-checking that the gluten-free goods are being separated from the rest of the baked goods when I hear Amber, Mo, Marcus, and Holden all chatting amiably.
“My nanny taught me to angry-bake,” Amber announces after the seventh straight compliment on her lemon bars.
“Angry-bake?” Marcus repeats, chewing vigorously on some fudge. “Is that like a hate-kiss?”
“Marcus, stop eating our merchandise!” I must sound like a broken record at this point, but he just grins. I swear he’s doing it to annoy me.
“A love bite, maybe?” Mo offers.
“It’s putting everything you feel into whatever you’re making. I angry-baked so many treats for my parents,” Amber says. “I’d just be like, ‘You think you’re going to work nineteen-hour days and never come to my school plays? Take this freaking macaron.’ ”
Holden roars. “Oh, you really showed them!” I can’t get over how helpful he’s been, how he’s followed Marcus’s lead in, like, not being a jerk today.
Holden, I’ve realized, is one of those people who always needs a partner, a second half.
His boyfriend, Bennett, is a junior and they can’t be together all the time, so Jason and Holden are normally inseparable.
But in Jason’s absence, Holden seems to have affixed himself to Marcus’s side.
Marcus, for his part, always seems to do his own thing. Slipping in and out of groups like he belongs in them but somehow doesn’t need them.
“Then I realized you could love-bake, and, well, it’s what I want to do forever and ever.”
“What are you doing for college, Marcus?” Mo asks.
“I’ll probably stick around here, actually,” he says, reaching for a cookie. When our eyes meet, he grins and defiantly eats it, but, really, I’m only listening to what he’s saying. “My dad needs an extra pair of hands at his shop and my sister’s just a kid, so it helps if I’m here.”
“That is so sweet,” Amber says.
“An extra pair of hands?” Holden scoffs. “Plan B practically runs that place ever since his dad got sick.”
I feel a squeeze of sympathy for Marcus, which is odd since I don’t know Tommy Riddick well at all, other than the occasional story from Jason about his uncle.
Everything Holden said, really, is news to me.
I knew that Marcus’s dad owned a car shop, but I didn’t know Marcus helped out, much less “ran” the place.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure Hailey Chow just got here. Did your ESP tell you that?” Marcus teases Holden. To us, he explains, “Hailey is Bennett’s ex.”
“Oh shit!” Holden says, immediately ducking to pretend to pick something up from the ground. “Tell me when she walks past.”
Marcus laughs. “That’s your plan? You want us to tell you when she walks past?”
Everyone is laughing and having fun again, and I wonder if I’m the only one who notices that Marcus successfully diverted the conversation away from his future plans. Right at that moment, though, I notice Jason’s mom walking over to our table.
“Zadie! Did you help put this on? You kids have done such a good job. Hi, Marcus!” Mrs. R leans over the table and Marcus kisses her cheek.
“It’s so nice of you to come and support us,” I say. The despite Jason not being here goes without saying.
“Of course,” Mrs. R says. “Can I try some of that pie?”
I put a slice of coconut cream pie on a paper plate for her.
“Have you been feeling well, though? Or I suppose it’s that you’ve been busy planning all this?” she says, motioning around us.
I blink at her, unsure of her meaning. Then it hits me.
I’ve missed seeing Jason twice.
But that can’t be what’s bothering Mrs. R.
“Yeah, I have,” I say.
She takes a bite of her pie. “Mmm,” she says. “This is delicious. You did all the baking too then, Zadie?”
It’s the most passive-aggressive thing I’ve ever heard Mrs. R say, and it surprises me. Is it really such a big deal that I missed a couple of mornings with Jason?
“Amber did most of it,” I say.
All the weeks I’ve shown up for Jason seem to be forgotten. Suddenly I’m not his “life partner.”
The fundraiser is starting to wind down, so Mrs. R says goodbye and leaves. As we all pack up, I feel uneasy about the interaction with Jason’s mother. I’m embarrassed by Tyler’s treatment of me too, the way I’m suddenly worth messing with because Jason isn’t here.
I go from uneasy and humiliated to angry when two juniors I know from track come over to ask about how Jason is doing, but instead of asking me, they ask Marcus.
“He’s making a lot of progress,” Marcus says in that annoyingly vague way of his, because, again, I’m the one who has seen Jason every day since his accident except two.
And now I’m strangely determined to remind everyone here, to remind his mother, that as far as they all know, I’m still the girl Jason loves.
Do you realize what Jason did in last night’s dream? I want to yell at them.
He kissed me in front of everyone. And sure, it wasn’t my ideal reveal for our relationship, but it was still big.
When I’m carrying some empty containers over to my car, I pull out my phone right there in the park, take a picture of my ring—this glistening symbol of everything we had—and fire off an Instagram post.
Missing my @JasonRiddick4real
I think I’ve let people forget that I’m one full half of Sterlingwood High’s power couple.
Since this is the first time I’ve been on socials in a long time, I’m drowning in mentions under #prayersforJasonRiddick.
I’m knee-deep in my important work of liking, boosting, and reminding everyone I’m alive when two icy hands slide over my eyes from behind, covering me in darkness and making me squeal.
“Sorry, sorry! You were just such an easy target,” Amber says, giggling as she reveals herself.
I slide my phone into my pocket and turn to her. “What’s up?”
“I know we were going to hang out, but Talon just got here—he didn’t realize the fundraiser started at twelve, as in noon,” Amber says.
“He thought it started at midnight?” I give Amber a “you’ve got to be kidding me” look.
She lowers her voice. “It was an honest mistake,” she says. “But anyway, I thought maybe the three of us could hang tomorrow and today I could just chill with Talon?”
The hopeful lilt of her voice does nothing to pacify me. “Ambs, we had plans!”
Specifically, we were planning to work on college apps, eat at Tanner’s (our favorite diner just off the highway), and basically make a girls’ day out of it.
“I know! I’m sorry,” she says, then makes a sad puppy face. “Please? Wasn’t I so helpful today?”
“You were, but…”
“And weren’t my baked goods hands down the best of the lot?”
I sigh. “Amber.”
She throws her arms around me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she says. She’s blowing me a kiss and running toward a blue van at the edge of the park before I can even argue.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” I yell at her back. She waves and keeps running.
“Another one bites the dust,” Mo says as we say goodbye to our bake sale crew and finish packing away the last few items. The boys took half the leftovers, and the other half is for Mo’s siblings. “So much for senior year will be all about the girls!”
“You still have me,” I say, because Mo looks particularly despondent.
We’re headed toward our cars when the first big wave of nausea sweeps over me.
“Zad!” Mo hurries over to me when I stumble, even though her car is in the opposite direction. “Are you okay?”
I groan as I open my car door. “Yeah, I think I’m just getting another headache. I’ll go to bed when I get home…”
“Uh, no,” Mo says. “I’m driving you. Give me your keys.”
I hesitate. “And how will you get home?”
“I’m sure the happy couple can spare a few minutes. I’ll get them to give me a ride back to pick up my car. I’m texting them now.”
I relent and we enter my car. While Mo turns on the ignition, I lean against the window for the coolness of the glass.
“You really don’t need to do this,” I say, trying to be brave.
“And you seriously need to see a doctor. Maybe we should go to the hospital.”
“No!” The fierceness in my voice is a surprise even to me. “I really don’t want to.”
Mo frowns. “Why?”
“Because…” I say.
Because I don’t want to see Jason.
The realization sends a shock wave through my body.
I don’t want to see Jason.
Maybe Mrs. R isn’t crazy after all.
If I go to the hospital, I’ll feel compelled to see Jason. And I don’t want to see him looking limp and paler each day, like a ghost of himself—not when I can just keep seeing him as he used to be. Healthy and strong and on top of the world.
It makes no sense, but it’s the way I feel.
“Because it’s not a very big one,” I tell Mo. “And I’m pretty sure it’s a PMS headache.”
Mo is wary but finally says, “Those suck.”
“I also didn’t sleep too well last night,” I say, to really put a nail in it.
“Oh! I was reading this research about how not getting enough sleep, even more than vitamin deficiencies, is like the worst thing for migraineurs,” she says.
“I should really say ‘people who suffer from migraines,’ but I just like the word migraineurs. It sounds like some kind of French delicacy, don’t you think?
Or like some fancy type of nomad. Migraineurs. ”
“Oh, totally,” I say, feigning a laugh. When Mo abruptly ends the conversation, I’m afraid she’s seen me grimace and is going to insist on the hospital after all. She’s been so overprotective ever since the crash. But she just plays with the air controls in the car, turning down the fan.
Then she says, “I’ve been thinking lately about how wild it is that no two experiences are the same.
Like even migraineurs don’t have the same pain.
Who knows if we’re describing the same things when we talk about headaches?
This came up because I was, like, inputting symptoms in Zebra for pneumonia or something, and it just blew my mind that someone might have three of these key symptoms and someone else has seventeen, but it’s all the same disease. ”
“That is kind of wild,” I say.
“Then I realized we might not all be having the same experience of anything. Like my grandparents’ version of falling in love might be different than your experience of falling in love, so is it ultimately the same thing? How can anyone know anything? Everything is unknowable!”
“That’s probably true.” Trying to keep up with Mo is making my brain hurt more.
“So then I was thinking more about love and relationships, in general. And I…Do you remember what I told you right before you and Jason got together?” Mo asks.
I try to recall what she’s talking about, ignoring the pulsing in my temples. “You’re not ready to be Aunt Mo-Mo?”
Mo cackles. “Well, that too.”
I smile despite myself. “You told me to make sure Jason is good enough for me.”
She nods. “Yeah, how did you know he was?” She won’t look me in the eye, and something shocking occurs to me.
Whatever is keeping Mo preoccupied, making her late and distracted, it’s bigger than an app.
Maybe Amber was right this morning; maybe Mo is hiding something for real. “How can we know anything?”
I let myself consider what she’s asking. Is she going through something with her family? Is it a guy?
“Like, even now, how do you know Jason is good enough for you?” she continues, and her sudden curiosity about Jason feels as close to confirmation as I’m going to get.
Mo is notoriously tight-lipped about crushes. I think she feels weird about being the only one of us three to never have had a boyfriend.
“Mo, do you want to tell me something?” I wish I could find a more playful way to ask, but when your head feels like a rock concert—and not in a good way—it’s kind of hard to be cute.
“I really don’t,” she says, ducking her head.
I smile. “Don’t worry, I see what this is,” I say, nudging her with my elbow. I so badly want to ask who the lucky guy is, but I don’t want to push. She’d tell me if she wanted me to know.
She shakes her head. “It’s not like that. And you haven’t answered the question. Why Jason?”
“You know, you’re always so hard on him, but he’s never done anything to hurt me.” Other than break my heart, I don’t say. “He’s a good guy.”
“How do you know, though?” Mo asks, passionate. “Someone isn’t good just because everyone says or thinks they are.”
She’s called me out on this before: The truth is that Jason is the king of Sterlingwood High partly because he’s white.
He’s attractive and smart and athletic and all the things a good all-American boy should be.
Would a Black guy with all those attributes be considered the same?
Absolutely not, and none of it is wasted on me.
I could be just as biased as everyone else.
But it’s also more complicated than that because Jason just happens to be, like, the peak of everything good in our town. He volunteers and goes to church with his parents and gets good grades and rarely curses. He likes me. I like him.
My headache is intensifying, but I give a shaky smile.
“I’m not going just off what everyone thinks.
You know my dad was a big romantic, right?
I don’t think anyone had as many relationships as he did.
I don’t need to tell you how they all went,” I say, feigning a laugh.
“But he did like to say, ‘Love is what you do when no one is watching.’ When nobody was around us, Jason was still a complete gentleman. And that’s how I know. ”
Mo sighs. Wistfully, I think. My head is hurting so much now that I’m squeezing my fist like it might help.
“You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“My mom will take me if it gets worse,” I promise, trying not to flinch with each road bump Mo flies over.
When we get home, of course my mother isn’t there.
I’m surprised I have the brain space to feel embarrassed about the stark contrast of our cold, quiet place in comparison to the warmth of Mo’s always-bustling house.
Mo is waiting with me till she gets a ride, so I pull out glasses of water for us and swallow some Advil covertly.
“Hey, you finally posted the ring on main!” Mo exclaims as she looks through her Instagram.
“Oh, yep. Thought it was about time,” I say, but my brave face is starting to wobble. “Do the walls look funny to you?”
“What?” Mo glances over at me like I’m crazy. “The walls are fine.”
But around me, the furniture is disappearing, and the ground feels like it’s crumbling underneath me. I know immediately what’s happening, so I make an excuse to go to the bathroom. Once I shut the door, I sink down onto the floor and try not to die. Seconds later, the walls around me are gone.