Four #2
I assumed she wanted to talk about yesterday.
Which blew, because I had set out that morning determined not to talk about yesterday.
Water under the bridge, moving on, all of that.
Cella would probably call it avoidance, but Cella couldn’t say shit when she was drawing heart-shaped nut sacks on my window.
We were one left turn from the school, stuck behind a long line of cars, when the quiet got unbearable. I said, “Hey, I’m sorry about—”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What’s up?”
The light turned green, then yellow, then red again in the time it took her to speak. We were only a few cars closer than before. “Is there anything you want to tell me? Or anything you haven’t told me that you might want to?”
Had she figured out about Mason?
I hadn’t even figured out about Mason.
“Er, no?”
“Cool. Cool, cool, cool.” A few beats later, “Are you positive? You know I would never judge you for anything, right?”
She lifted my hand off the gearshift to hold between both of hers. She seemed to realize how weird this was immediately. She glanced down at her hands, then back at me, lips pressed together, regretful but accepting that this was what we were doing, now.
“O-kay,” I said. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Just that you don’t need to hide anything around me, not ever.”
“You already know the biggest secret I could ever tell you. Probably the biggest secret anyone will ever tell you. I don’t think there’s anything I’d hide from you after that.”
“Okay, yeah, I know.”
“Great.” I started to slide my hand away.
“It’s just, are you sure?”
“If you have a question, just ask,” I said, a little snappy. I left my hand in hers to make up for it.
“Do you gay?” Cella blurted. “I mean—are you gay? I mean, do you like guys?” She slapped her palms over her mouth. “Oh, that was just . . . just awful.”
The stoplight cycled again. I eased off the brakes mechanically, crawling to the front of the line, slowly processing her question.
“. . . Huh?” I stepped on the brakes. Processed. Spluttered, “No! What?”
“Is that a no to the gay question or the liking guys question?”
“No to all of it! No to ‘Do you gay.’ ” Cella moaned at the reminder. “I thought you knew that.”
“Things change?” She was chewing her hair again. “Just checking in.”
I watched her out of the side of my eye. “Might I ask why you’re ‘checking in’ all of a sudden?”
“Forget it.” She slid down as far as the seat belt allowed. “Sorry.”
“I’m not offended,” I said. “Well, now I’m offended that you think I’d be offended.”
That got her to smile a little. And to stop choking herself with the seat belt.
“Girls are super into you,” she said. Her smile turned teasing. “Sometimes I think you don’t even notice.”
“So I’m picky.”
“I’ve known you for a decade, and I’ve never seen you with a crush on a girl.”
“Yeah. I’m picky,” I emphasized. “You’ve never seen me crush on a guy, either.”
“That’s the thing,” said Cella. She bit her lip, contemplating. “Yesterday, with Mason, you looked a little . . .”
“I was hungry!” I shrieked. I couldn’t stand hearing the rest of that sentence. “His blood smells weirdly good. That’s it.”
“I’m telling you what it looked like. To him, at least. He—don’t freak—he wanted me to ask you.”
“What?”
“I said don’t—”
“The hell does it matter to him?” I asked. “Does he want to blackmail me or something? Expose me to the whole school?” My hands tightened on the wheel. There was enough blood in me now for my knuckles to visibly whiten. “Would you have told him if I said yes?”
“No!” Cella said quickly. “It’s not like that, promise. He was just curious. Or maybe confused. I made it clear that I wouldn’t tell him even if I knew. But I’ve also been . . . curious. I asked for me.”
“Bastard,” I muttered. “Probably just wants an ego trip.”
A car horn let me know the light had turned green again. As I turned into the lot, my frown slowly reversed itself. “Tell him I’m gay as all hell,” I said. “Wait, I’ll do it.”
“Are you insane?” Cella gaped. “Or are you . . . ?”
“Still not into guys. But let him think I am. Let’s see what he does with it.”
“What if it gets around? I know you’re not always—how should I say—paying attention, but Carrington’s got its homophobic assholes like every other school.”
“What’re they going to do, hit me?” I flashed a fangy grin. “It’s 2019. They should worry about the fact that they’re peaking in high school. If Mason talks and anyone has a problem with it, they can kiss my gay ass.”
***
With my elbows on the table, I rested my chin over interlocked fingers, peering up at Mason.
He didn’t look great. Like he’d hardly slept last night and hadn’t fixed his hair that morning.
He was glaring down at the open pastel kit at the center of the table as if it had personally dragged him out of bed.
We were twenty minutes into class, but his paper was blank.
I flicked a white eraser diagonally across the table to get his attention. “I heard there was something you wanted to ask me.”
Mason’s shoulders hunched. Taking a pastel for the first time, seemingly at random, he said, “I’m working.”
“The answer’s yes, by the way.”
Mason’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He blinked a few times, eyes jumping all over my face. “Just to, um. Clarify. My specific question was . . .”
I leaned my cheek into my palm, looking up under my eyelashes. “You asked if I’m into guys.”
The other boy at our table coughed into his elbow.
He stared intently at his project like it wasn’t eavesdropping if he didn’t look.
Mason’s aquamarine pastel crumbled where he pressed it into his paper.
I wanted to photograph the bug-eyed look on his face.
I wanted to put it down in pastels and hang it on Mrs. Garfield’s spotlight wall.
“You’re gay?”
“You’re straight?”
“No,” Mason said reflexively. “Yes! What the fuck?”
I’d never understood the idiom “tickled pink” until this moment. Watching Mason flounder sent up fluttery pink butterflies beneath my skin, thin wings tickling me from the inside.
“Easy, tiger.” I tilted my head, hair scraping my brow, and gave a patronizing smile. “Whatever you say. Don’t worry about me—you’re not my type.”
“I didn’t ask!”
“Did you think it?”
Mason didn’t have a retort for that. He tried for a few seconds, visibly searching for words to wrap his lips around.
But he took too long and seemed to realize this.
He shut his mouth and hardly looked up from his paper for the rest of the period.
I picked up the violet pastel and went back to the petals of the Oregon iris, but not before shooting Cella a triumphant smirk.
She rolled her eyes but looked like she was holding back a laugh.
It was the first time I’d left an interaction with Mason as the indisputable winner. I felt pink all over.