Five
I should’ve anticipated that Mason would be a sore loser.
“What’s with the sunnies?” he asked me. I ignored him. “So mysterious.”
Mason offered Cella a piece of his beef falafel (if I wasn’t hell-bent on pretending I was anywhere else, I would have pointed out that a falafel with the chickpea swapped for beef was just a meatball).
Offered, as in, he speared it on a fork and held it up to her mouth.
Cella flushed vibrantly but allowed him to feed it to her. Witnessing it made me queasy.
Mason looked at me and beamed.
Cella didn’t see a thing, humming happily as she chewed with her eyes closed.
Mason managed to take up the entire lunch block, then insisted on walking Cella to our fifth period. He slung an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close as they walked, and shot me a wink over the top of her head.
“Almost forgot.” Outside of the economics classroom, Mason somehow managed to take something out of his backpack without letting Cella go.
My jaw actually dropped at the sight of Cella’s old purple limited-edition Nintendo DS, arguably her most prized possession.
“You were right. This rocks. I caught a Munchlax!”
For the turbulent first months after I’d made the Trade, when playgrounds and cafeterias were still too much for me, Cella and I would spend recess and lunch in hallway corners and empty classrooms. I would watch over her shoulder, fascinated, as she played Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl.
The habit of sneaking somewhere quiet during lunch had started then and never stopped.
So when Mason bowed lavishly with the DS extended, when he took Cella’s reaching hand and kissed the knuckles before placing it in her palm, when he straightened and shrugged at me like I was missing out on some inside joke—it was for everyone’s well-being that I threw open the door and stormed inside.
He was messing with me.
That day’s lesson in drama class was all about stage directions. Miss Jenkins had us write our own, and at the end of class, she asked for volunteers to share their work and act it out. Without a pause, Mason’s hand went up. He asked if he could perform with a partner.
His “stage directions” were just shitty dance choreography.
He went behind Miss Jenkins’s desk without asking, played a swingy jazz instrumental track, and took Cella in a sloppy hold in front of the entire class.
He swung her, spun her, dipped her. With every turn, he looked my way.
By the end, Cella was tomato-faced and giggling uncontrollably.
When I lifted my hand from my desk, excusing myself to the bathroom, there were fingertip-shaped dents in the wood.
***
“What’s the move, Team M-A?” said Mason at the end of class, popping up between Cella and me.
“I’ve got my first official practice later, and the boys are taking me out after to initiate me—which, I’ve gotta say, sounds alarming—so we playwriting tomorrow?
” He threw a lazy arm over her shoulders.
“Get it? Team M-A? Marcella, Mason, Macbeth, Macduff, Malco—”
“No,” I said, slinging my bag over my arm with enough force to dislocate a human shoulder.
“No to drafting up our masterpiece or no to the team name? ’Cause we can definitely workshop that.”
“No: exhaustive.”
“It’s Kieran’s birthday tomorrow,” said Cella, clapping rapidly with her fingertips, a giddy move I thought of as her butterfly clap.
“Aw,” said Mason. “Baby’s first birthday?”
“Play nice,” Cella said like a tired mother. “When’s yours?”
“August 29th. I’m usually the oldest in my grade.”
Cella sighed. With a birthday at the end of July, she was usually the youngest. I was unreasonably annoyed to learn that Mason was older than me.
He nudged my shoulder. I resisted the urge to hiss like a cat. “Don’t worry, I’ll buy you something pretty.”
“Best gift I could ask for would be a day without seeing your hyena face.”
“Cellaaa,” Mason whined. “You don’t think I look like a hyena, do you?”
I realized too late that we weren’t walking toward the lot. Mason had been subtly steering Cella through the halls, nearing the gym.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. Inside, the cheer team was getting ready for practice. “You mentioned not knowing many girls, and she’s the second-coolest girl ever. Hey, Lara!”
“Nope,” I said, turning on my heels.
Behind me, Cella said, “I should . . . He’s my ride, so. See you tomorrow.”
A girl with cherry-red hair was already jogging over.
“It’s whatever,” I said. “I’ll just wait over there.” I waved in no particular direction. Mason followed my hand and cocked an eyebrow. I’d noticed he wasn’t good at that, but he tried all the time. He sort of just lifted both and looked a little lopsided.
“The equipment room?”
“. . . Yup.” I resigned to my fate.
The gym equipment room was dark and smelled like a sweat stain with undernotes of detergent.
The floor was a perfect concrete square, framed on each side by cases, shelves, boxes, and racks.
Carrington’s mascot, a giant river otter with conniving eyes and black-and-orange boxing gloves, smirked at me everywhere: on bags, helmets, practice jerseys, and painted on the center of the floor.
I reached into a crate of footballs and tested the weight in my hands.
My family only ever had soccer balls lying around, waiting in corners and beneath tables to be kicked across the driveway in the dead of night.
The football was lighter than I’d expected.
Sensing Mason approaching, I placed the ball back in the crate.
A sliver of light appeared, then winked out as Mason slipped inside.
He blinked hard and muttered a curse, looking especially tired, dragging a hand roughly over his hair—so that was why it had been such a mess today.
He was looking right at me in the dark, everywhere but my face.
He didn’t seem to realize I was looking back at him.
He quickly straightened his shoulders, smoothed out his face, and tugged on the long string hanging from the ceiling bulb, filling the room with white light.
“Brooding?” he asked.
“Not sure what you think’s happening here,” I snarked back. “But I already told you, you’re not my type.”
Mason’s brows drew together, oddly sincere. “Why are you like that?” he asked. “So defensive.”
“Why are you here?” I threw back. “Did you ditch her?”
“Relax. She’s hitting it off with my friend. Figured I’d give them some space.”
“And you thought to come here?”
“Thought we could use a heart-to-heart. What’s your problem with me?”
“Are we really doing this?”
“It’s like you decided you didn’t like me the moment you saw me.”
I considered, then shrugged. “I mean, yeah.”
“You’ve got to see how that’s unfair.”
“I don’t like being around you,” I said. “And you don’t like me either, so what’s the point of this?”
“I’m proposing we try to get along.”
“Why should I?” I said. “I. Do. Not. Like. You. Anything about you. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not.”
I spent every day concealing half of who I was, maybe more than half, as a matter of survival. I had decided long ago that I wouldn’t fake anything else.
“Right.” Mason looked down at his hands, defeated, or maybe imagining me in a chokehold. “Don’t you want to make things easier on Cella?”
“Things would be easy if you’d leave her alone,” I snapped. Mason looked to the ceiling for strength, and apparently not finding it, turned for the door. “Do you even like her?”
He made a face. “What are you asking?”
“Which part was confusing?”
“Mind your business, Callisto.”
“She’s my best friend; it is my business,” I growled. “She’s not a toy.”
“That an accusation?” Mason grinned. “Do I look like I’m playing?”
I took one long stride forward. “I’m asking if you have feelings for her, Mason, or if this is a joke to you.”
“Hey, so, I don’t have to have this conversation with you right now, or ever.” He spread his hands. He wasn’t meeting my eye. “You act like the world owes you explanations, but you never offer any yourself. So I hope this keeps you up at night.”
He made it one backward step closer to the door before I had him by the blue sleeve of his Henley. I felt him tense against my palm.
“Tell me what your intentions are,” I said over his shoulder, squeezing high up his arm, “Before I force it out of you.”
A drumbeat started up, low and forceful, climbing in speed.
Ba-bum, ba-bum.
Mason didn’t bite. “You think I don’t know your deal? You’ve got eyes like a deer, Sunshine,” he snarled. “You wear it on your face when you’re threatened.”
Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum.
I blinked to clear my head.
Mason ranted on, “You wouldn’t have to withstand the utter torment of my presence if you didn’t follow Cella around like a duckling.
But that would require having other friends.
” He pursed his lips like he was thinking, unhurried.
His heartbeat gave him away, kicking up to a jog: thumping, stomping.
Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum ba-bumba.
“You’re so mad about sharing her attention.” Mason laughed. “It’s cute. You’re nothing without her.”
I tugged him to one side so we were face-to-face. From here, it was harder for him to evade eye contact.
“Is that the big play, then?” I said. “Drag her around to get back at me for hurting your feelings?”
There was a crescendo in Mason’s pulse, a brief but thundering wave. Afterward, it slowed but continued to press closer. The rush of blood beneath my fingertips was loud even through Mason’s shirt, river eddies inside my head.
It was hard to think. “Take our issues out on me, not Cella,” I forced out. “That’s so—selfish!”
“You’re pretending you’re upset for her sake to get what you want, but I’m selfish?”