Twenty-two #3
“And . . . other times.”
Her look was dark. “How many other times?”
“Three.”
Cella stood up quickly and bumped into her scrapbook, sending a flurry of photos and stickers to the carpet. “When?” she demanded.
“Cella, do we really have to—?”
“When?”
I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t see her reaction as I told her, because Annalisa was wrong: I’d never been brave a day in my life. “My birthday, the first game, and later at the party.”
“Open your eyes,” she demanded. I had never seen her face like this, wiped completely blank.
She didn’t say anything else right away. She left the chair to crouch and clean up the mess around her desk. It was the quietest thirty seconds of my life. When she was done, she didn’t sit back down.
“Dating my ex behind my back is one thing.” Her voice was full of lead, heavy and poisonous.
“A bad thing, Kieran, but whatever, I can deal. I always deal.” Her shoulders were shaking with something pent up.
“But, I don’t know, I just feel like maybe, that all could have been avoided if you’d told me you were sucking his face the night before our first date. ”
“Cella,” I said, clutching the sweatshirt to my chest. “I wasn’t expecting it; I didn’t even like him. I thought it was never going to happen again—”
“Shut up!” She exploded. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’m so tired of hearing you speak!
It’s all just excuses, and listen, you can’t excuse this one.
You had so many chances to tell me and spare me the humiliation, but, what?
You didn’t want to hurt me? Didn’t want to make me mad?
Well get this: I’m hurt, and I’m fucking mad! ”
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing, dropping the sweatshirt. She gave me a look, Not another step. “I didn’t know about the mates thing, okay. It was all so—unexpected. But I felt terrible, Cella. I feel terrible.”
“Shut up! I was worried when you kept disappearing,” she said.
“That’s all I ever do. I worry about you, and I think about you, and I think about worrying about you.
Fuck, Kieran, all of these years. Do you know how many things I haven’t done because I’ve been worrying about you?
How many friends I could have made if I wasn’t always thinking about whether they’d bother you or put your secret at risk?
The number of things I haven’t tried just because I knew you wouldn’t want to try them with me, and I didn’t want you to be alone?
Not that you ever noticed. Clearly you don’t give a shit about how your actions affect me. ”
I had noticed. Of course I’d noticed how often Cella had wanted to do something but never asked for my sake. It was why, when she did ask, I always said yes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I sounded like a broken record, but what else was there to say? Anything else was just another excuse. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve spent so much time standing back with you,” she said.
“But somehow I’m the only one who gets shadowed.
Everyone wants to know you, and you don’t even try.
I try so hard, Kieran, just to be good enough that people look at us and see us both.
You knew how much it meant to me, thinking someone finally saw me first. And you knew I was wrong.
But you let me waste my time, and my excitement, and all of these firsts that I could have saved for someone who actually wanted me. ”
Her first date, her first boyfriend, her first kiss. Mason had stolen them all, and I’d been an accomplice.
“Cella,” I said with nothing to follow. I tried anyway, digging for roots in a desert.
“I know, okay? All of it. I’m a terrible friend, and I don’t deserve you.
But we need each other. I know that, too, and I just .
. . Tell me what I can do. Anything. I’ll do anything to make it up to you or whatever’s the next closest thing. ”
Lying again. If she asked me to break up with Mason, I wouldn’t. But Cella knew that, and she wouldn’t ask. She had always been the better friend.
She didn’t answer my question.
“That thing I was going to tell you?” she said. “I’m going to be in the winter play. Auditions for Clue were last month.”
My first thought, in spite of the irony, was, Why didn’t you tell me? Until recently, Cella and I had told each other everything, and maybe that was part of the problem.
I said, “That’s really great. I’m happy for you.”
“I liked it, in a way—crouching behind you. I liked having an excuse to not put myself out there. It’s safe when it’s just you and me against the world. I thought it was, anyway. But I want to be at the center of something. Under the metaphorical spotlight. And the literal one, in this case.”
I was nodding like a bobblehead. “You’re going to be amazing.”
Cella said, “I want you to get out.”
I bent down to pick up my sweatshirt and to blink hard a few times where she couldn’t see me. Cella was already leaving the room when I straightened. She went left down the narrow hall toward her bathroom. I went down the stairs and out the door.