Chapter Two
After Michael leaves with my money, I spend a few minutes figuring out how to kill him. Sorry, officer, he slipped and fell onto my knife!
But murdering someone, even someone who deserves it as much as my stepdad, would probably mess up the rest of my junior year. At the very least, I should wait until after AP exams.
So I resort to texting Drew wyd.
Drew McVeigh is this senior in third period pre-calc. He’s all scruffy-skater vibes: sandy hair, voice like the crackle of dead leaves, and a scar on his chin. You know. The type of cute that inspires girls to comment I can fix him on TikTok.
In February we got paired up for a project on parametric equations and we would half-work, half-procrastinate in his bedroom. While we were computing intersection points, he kissed me, and I decided that was fine. We’ve been fooling around ever since.
He’s not the love of my life or whatever. He’s not even my boyfriend. But he’s heard of deodorant and has his own car—well, access to his dad’s girlfriend’s car—which puts him squarely in the top ten percent of Chinook Shore High School guys.
Fifteen minutes later, Drew’s parked in front of my house. When he sees me, the corners of his lips drag upward, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “Mulan. What is up.” I’ve asked him not to call me that, and yet here we are. Maybe I should start calling him Mushu.
He reaches through the driver’s window for a high five, which I don’t return.
“Don’t make me regret texting you,” I say.
“Yo, what’s wrong with the nickname? Mulan is straight fire. She’s a total badass, and she’s hot.”
“And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s also Chinese.”
“C’mon, Char, don’t be that way.” He dangles his hand in the air, still waiting on that high five, and after a beat, I lift my palm to meet his.
Maybe I should give him more crap about the nickname, but it’s hard to stay pressed at Drew. It’s like being mad at a golden retriever.
When I open the passenger door, the seat is cluttered with empty beer cans.
“My B, lemme fix that.” In one fluid motion, he swipes all the cans onto the car floor. Classy.
I sit and click the seat belt buckle into place. “So, your dad’s place?” We usually make out in Drew’s room.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Nah, we can’t go there today. He’s being annoying.”
In a burst of recklessness, I say, “Let’s go to Osprey’s Point.”
Osprey’s Point is a picnic area near the shore. Benches, sandy gravel, leafy green trees. Gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean. Like the rest of Oregon, before it was Osprey’s Point, it had a different name and it belonged to Indigenous people.
Now it’s become an infamous hookup spot for Chinook Shore High School students, exactly as Lewis and Clark intended.
Drew has offered to take me before, but I always shot him down.
I was scared that saying yes was the same thing as agreeing to go all the way.
And that was not on my junior year bingo card.
But right now I’m choosing chaos.
He cuts his eyes to me. “Serious?”
“Why not?” I try to sound bored, but my heart skips at the thought of losing my virginity. What if it hurts? What if I screw it up somehow? Would it be weird if I find a wikiHow on sex and sex-adjacent topics? That’s definitely weird.
After a beat, he nods and twists the ignition to life.
During the drive, Drew puts on a Pink Floyd album, which is fine by me, because my brain is still replaying the incident with Michael.
Every time I think about him shoving the envelope into his waistband, how easily he claimed the one thing that was mine, bam.
New surge of anger. New wave of homicidal bloodlust.
I guess it’s good that I’m hanging out with Drew.
When we pull up to Osprey’s Point, it’s abandoned, although someone must’ve been here recently—there are seltzer cans littered across the ground. In the sunlight, their tabs gleam like rubies.
He asks, “Do you want something to drink? I have Coronas.”
I hate the blunt taste of alcohol, but I find myself nodding anyway.
We find a clean-ish bench facing the water and crack open our bottles. He wraps his arm around me, and I lean into his shoulder.
It’s almost romantic. The ocean is humming with sunlight, and there’s a soft breeze coming in. A whiff of salt. Somewhere far away, a seagull shrieks. If we wait another hour or two, we could watch the sun dip below the horizon, the same way it does every day.
As we sip our beers, Drew yaps about his older brother David, who recently got out of rehab.
“Dad thinks my brother is this total disaster, but David’s still kinda my hero,” he says.
“He was always so badass. For his senior prank, he and his friends got this cow onto the second floor of the school. They set up all these hay bales. It refused to go back downstairs, so the school had to bring in a farmer to help. It was awesome.”
Wait, I saw this on the local news in seventh grade. There was so much mooing. “That was your brother? No way.”
“Yes way.”
I shake my head, amazed. “Has your class decided on a senior prank?”
He smirks. “Wait and see. It’s going to be spectacular.”
Until right now, I didn’t even know David was in rehab. Around here, it’s not rare for kids to end up there, but it isn’t something that people openly discuss. Drew and I don’t really have a relationship like this, where we actually talk about things.
I remind myself that he’s leaving in September and I’m not out here trying to be besties with a guy who once joked about me eating his goldendoodle. He did apologize for that one, but still. We don’t need to start spilling our guts out to each other.
When I kiss him, he tastes like Corona Light and mint-flavored lip balm.
We do that for a while and I climb into his lap; then his hands start roaming toward my hips.
I let them roam. His body is hard and bony beneath mine.
When I first started kissing Drew, I thought there would be some hunger clawing through me, some ravenous and obvious need—but it’s always been more like a mildly interesting science experiment.
Maybe I’m not the type to feel anything stronger than that.
I don’t know how far he wants to go. I don’t know how far I want to go. And maybe it’s bad to do this here, outside, in plain daylight. But I want him to keep touching me. I want to forget about the rest of my shitty life.
“Char,” he mumbles into my mouth.
“Mmm?” I don’t really want to talk. It gets in the way of making out.
“Char. Stop.” Then he pulls away. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
“You’re kissing me like you’re upset. Like you’re trying to get rid of your own feelings.”
“I’m not upset.” I lean in for another kiss, but he dodges me.
“Uh-huh.” He pushes me off his lap, and my butt slides onto the bench. “If we’re gonna, um, do it, I wanna be more serious.”
I give a faint laugh. “What, like, girlfriend-boyfriend or something?” Why would we define the relationship now? He’s going off to college in a few months.
“Not even that. But you never want to talk.”
“What? We’re talking right now.” Which is hardly the best use of our mouths, by the way.
He scrapes a hand through his hair. “Like, you’re obviously pissed off. You’ve been all stiff ever since you got into my car. But you won’t even tell me what’s wrong.”
A small white-and-brown puff of a bird—a sandpiper, I think—lands near our feet.
I point. “Look, a birb.”
He doesn’t even bother glancing in the direction of my finger. “It’s like there’s this great wall between you and the rest of the world.”
Great wall. He cannot be serious. He’s acting like I owe him a peek into the depths of my soul when he says dumb stuff like this. Annoyance flares in me. “You want to talk about something? Let’s start with the fact that Mulan is a ridiculously racist nickname.”
He blinks in genuine surprise.
“I didn’t know that it actually bothered you.” When I stare at him, he adds, “Kay, fine, Imma stop calling you Mulan. Happy?”
It doesn’t feel like much of an apology. He doesn’t get that the problem is bigger than a stupid nickname. “Okay, but what about that time you joked about me stir-frying your dog?” Which didn’t even make sense. Drew knows I can’t cook.
“Stop doing that,” he says.
“Doing what?”
He shakes his head. “You’re trying so hard to find stuff to complain about when the real problem is that you don’t want me to know anything about you.”
I throw my hands up. “I’m fine with you knowing things about me!” He knows plenty of things. Sure, they’re mostly tongue-related things, but still.
“Oh, yeah? Then what happened with your dad?” He raises his eyebrows as if this is a big gotcha.
“Drew, that’s not some crazy big secret. He’s a selfish deadbeat. He cheated on my mom.” I haven’t seen him in almost a decade.
“Oh.” He has the decency to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“Yep.”
“So, what’s got you so bothered today?”
I fall quiet. Talking about my sperm donor is like reminiscing over a sad story that happened to someone else, some past version of Char that no longer exists. Talking about Michael, my current family bullshit… that feels different. That feels like handing Drew a knife that he could use to stab me.
The silence stretches between us like a taut rubber band ready to snap.
He nods. “Exactly.”
“It’s not that interesting,” I say.
“I’m sure.” He stands up. “Let’s just go back. I’ll drop you off.”
“You don’t want to… hang out for longer?” My chest tightens at the thought of returning to the house. Michael is there. Michael will always be there. I can’t avoid him forever.
“Nah, I should get home. And Char?”
“Yeah?”
His face is this mask, and I know what he’s going to say before it even comes out of his mouth. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore.”