Fifteen
I woke up in Annalisa’s bed wearing pants and no shirt, surrounded by dried flowers. My mouth tasted like iron and booze. My tumbler was on her nightstand, not completely empty. The blood at the bottom was clotted and disgusting. It would be a pain to wash.
We hadn’t knocked out together like this since we were kids, back when we still slept at the same time. I sat up, petals crunching beneath my legs, and wished her sweet dreams.
Annalisa normally slept like the dead, but today, her hand shot out from the sheets like a corpse climbing out of a grave, grabbing my wrist with unnerving strength. “Gonna update me later,” she mumbled, sleep-slurred. “Tell me everthin’.”
“I am so afraid of you right now.”
“Also. Kissed your girl last night. Hope y’don’ mind.”
Her hand went slack and dropped to the sheets.
“Come again?” I said. “Annalisa? Hey, Lisa!”
Annalisa tucked her hands under her chin the way she did when she slept as a cat.
I checked my phone and was floored to see it was already five in the evening. No wonder I felt so deeply rested. I always woke up energized after sleeping during the day the way I was made to.
There were two texts and a call from Cella, plus a text from Lara. Nothing from Mason.
Chill out, I scolded myself. Be patient.
Cella’s messages had come at 1:30 a.m., a picture with the text COSYME TWIMS beneath. In the picture, Cella and a girl dressed as Dorothy beamed and pointed at each other. They seemed to think they were wearing the same costume.
Lara’s text was from an hour and a half later: a picture of her in her blue sheets with a matching bonnet, getting drooled on by Cella, to show they’d gotten home safely.
Cella’s call had come just minutes before, probably what woke me up. Once Annalisa’s door was shut behind me, I called her back.
“Hey,” I said, quiet in the dark halls so as not to disturb my sleeping family. “I just had this dream about a tea party, but the dainty cups were all filled with blood. Nice, right?”
“Can you come over?”
My heart sank. I told her I’d be there in ten. A few minutes later, she texted me again: make it 20, followed by a shopping list.
I got to Cella’s house with two tote bags carrying extreme sour candy, a box of yogurt smoothies, a “really big” peach, sour-cream-and-onion chips and guacamole, cheesecake-flavored crunchy peanut butter, and a single ice cream sandwich from the checkout line.
Mrs. Liu-Gibson took a yogurt cup for herself as she let me in.
Cella called out when I knocked. I found her in bed, cuddling a stuffed beaver, looking like death warmed over. She paused her phone, which was propped against another plushie playing the “Teenage Dream” music video.
“So. Mason broke up with me.”
“I kind of gathered. From the peanut butter.”
“I have my peanut butter spoon.” She showed me. It had a tiny plastic handle, made for a kid’s hands, but a huge bowl. She’d had it as long as I’d known her. “Can you just. Pretend you’re not happy about this? And maybe don’t say you told me so?”
“Noted and noted,” I said, sitting next to her. “For the record, I’m not, and I wasn’t planning to.”
I hated that she thought I’d be happy about this.
Hated more that denying it felt at least a little bit like lying, even if it wasn’t for the reasons she thought.
Was I even allowed to feel upset seeing her upset?
I felt like I had been drawing a lot of lines in the sand lately and doing an awful blind job of it, making up definitions for ideas I couldn’t even name.
“I can’t believe you were the last one to kiss my boyfriend,” she said with a soundless laugh.
Stiffly, I said, “That was barely a kiss.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“You were also wasted.”
“This is true. But I remember having a revelation. Like I opened one of my chakras or something. I wish I could tell you what I saw. I think it might’ve been enlightenment. Either that or purgatory.”
“Maybe only drunk-you opened your chakra, and you have to get drunk again to see the light?”
“I’m not doing that again anytime soon,” she said, rubbing her temples. When it became too hard not to ask, even though I hoped I knew the answer, I asked, “Was it bad? I mean, he wasn’t a jerk about it, was he?”
Cella shook her head. “It was fine. Aside from the hangover; that part sucked. But we’ll be friends, I think. His reason was . . . Well, he, um, told me. What he is. He said you already knew?”
“Sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said.
“I get why you didn’t. And, Kieran, listen.
” She squeezed her beaver. “I wanted to say. I’m sorry for brushing you off when you said he gave you a bad feeling.
I can’t imagine how terrible it’s been for you, being around him all this time.
It must’ve brought you back to such a dark place, and you couldn’t even talk to me about it.
And I went and made you spend even more time with him. ”
“Don’t,” I said, biting back a please—please don’t say you’re sorry to me right now.
“You could have, though. Told me, I mean. I just want you to know, I would have ended it in a heartbeat if you’d asked.”
I felt queasy.
“I know a two-week relationship doesn’t really warrant grief snacks, but do I get an exception for my first breakup? I kind of just want to be a baby right now.”
I wrapped one of her blankets around her like a burrito.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “This is exactly what I needed. But I can’t use my hands.”
Cella wanted the chips and guacamole first. I picked the biggest ones, and she opened her mouth wide, unfazed when I said, “Here comes the air-o-plane.” We had to finish the music video with earbuds in because she couldn’t hear over her own chewing.
Next on the queue was “California Gurls”—she nodded her head as she watched the way people nodded at museums. Halfway through Snoop Dogg’s verse, she squirmed a hand free to pause the video.
“It’s just,” she said, grabbing a handful of chips. “It felt really nice. Holding someone’s focus for once. Especially someone like him. For a guy like that, who’s got so many people vying for his attention, to single you out—it feels so intentional. You can’t help but feel special.”
***
Hours later, when Mason called, Cella was slumped sideways against me, swaddled and dozing. My tongue felt swollen in my mouth, as if sore from every I’m sorry I had bitten back that evening. I didn’t pick up the phone.
I did save his number, though. I lingered for a while over his contact name, trying to come up with something discreet. My mind kept going back to Mason at the football game, the way he ran. I set his name as the tiger emoticon, then texted him for the first time.
Can’t talk. Being a friend, if I even can anymore.
11:40 p.m.
And the second.
Again. Tomorrow. I won’t miss it.
11:40 p.m.