Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Deja
Iblock Brandon on my phone and notify my friends that he’s been kicked out of my house and is to be avoided. They push for details, but I tell them nothing. I figure the truth will trickle through the grapevine eventually.
So, I’m shocked when I get to school and find him waiting for me by my locker. He looks rested and based on what he’s wearing, a black Balmain t-shirt under a soft and drapey sweat suit, he must have spent the night at Rourke’s.
“Didn’t you land on your feet,” I quip, pushing past him to open my locker.
“Can we talk? I need to explain.”
“Let me guess? The drugs weren’t yours, you were holding them for a friend.”
He can’t respond because we both know the drugs were his.
“We have something special, Deja. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. You can’t just throw it away.”
“Say that louder so everyone can hear.”
“I don’t really care anymore,” he says. “I keep it a secret so I wouldn’t get kicked out, but I’m already kicked out, so who cares? There is nothing wrong with us being together. You can’t honestly tell me anyone else makes you feel the way I do.”
“What is that? Used? Manipulated? Betrayed? You’re right; no one else makes me feel that.”
I slam my locker and make tracks for homeroom.
I have a free period before lunch, and I go outside to sit under an oak tree.
It’s cold, so I have the courtyard to myself.
The leaves have just started to fall from the trees, a sparse layer of orange, red and gold littering the ground at my feet.
I’m glad I wore a hoodie today, because I can look down at my feet and no one will see my tears.
Some of you might say, oh, he didn’t do anything to you, but after he shared his mom’s illness and his sexual history, I figured if there was anything else big to tell me, he would have done it.
It’s not even that I have a problem with drugs per se, but it’s this feeling like I’ve been taken for a fool.
And the way he threatened Devin. That was scary.
What else did he do in his old life besides deal drugs?
Was he in a gang? Has he beat down or even killed someone before?
Impulsively I get my phone out and text Mello.
Can I treat you to lunch? I need to ask you something.
Sure. I love lunch.
Meet me in the courtyard.
I stay under the tree and try to pull myself together.
By the time Mello finds me, the only signs of my tears are my red eyes and a slight sniffle.
We don’t have a lot of time for lunch, so we hurry to the parking lot, and I drive us to a nearby fast-food place. We find a seat and wait for our orders.
“How’s your ankle?”
“As good as can be expected,” he says. He’s still wearing a walking boot and moves well, but I know ankles are tricky.
“Did they say when you’ll be able to play again?”
He shrugs. “I can’t speak to that. I try not to think about it too much. I just focus on healing. So what’d you want to talk about?”
I blow a noisy puff of air through my lips. Now that he’s sitting across from me, his piercing amber eyes seeing too much, I feel awkward.
“You’ve known Brandon a long time, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Since sixth grade, I think. Maybe seventh? I met him playing soccer.”
“Yeah, Lisa told me.”
“I’m not going to help you get back at him or whatever. Y’all need to work your shit out.” His tone is friendly.
“That’s not it. Keep it on the DL, but Brandon got kicked out last night. Devin found his stash.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You knew?”
“That he was back doing that? No. But I saw him hanging out with RVH, so…”
“RVH?”
“Rourke. I did kinda wonder how he got in with that guy so fast. This makes it make sense.”
“I was wondering what happened before. What did he do.”
“He was just selling weed, nothing too hardcore. He mainly would go over to Merrill, hang out with the white kids over there and sell to them. You know about his mom, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I met her.”
“For real?” He looks at me like I’m a puzzle. “He doesn’t really ever introduce people to his mom. But yeah, he was tryna help out.”
A restaurant employee drops our tray on the table. I pick up my soda and take a sip. The smell of the greasy food isn’t appealing, but I put a fry in my mouth and chew. I barely ate anything this morning and I have practice after school.
“But then he got in trouble, right?”
Mello nods, taking a bite of his sandwich. “He sold to some cop’s kid and got popped.
“Did he go to jail.”
“Did a few months in juvie far as I know, but that was like two years ago at least. I’d a thought living with y’all he wouldn’t need money like that.”
“You think maybe it’s because his mom’s in hospice?”
“I thought your stepdad was paying for that.”
“Did Brandon tell you that? He told me the opposite.”
“That’s my bad then. I asked him and he said somebody was taking care of it. I figured it was your dad, but now that I think about it, if he was gonna do that, he would have done it years ago and Brandon wouldn’t have gone to jail.”
“Did he ever, I mean, was he using?”
“I mean everybody smokes some weed. Weren’t you high the night I met you?”
“Yeah, weed, but he had pills and coke, too.”
Mello shakes his head. “Like I said he’s hanging with RVH. I mean, I get he’d want to make a buck off that cokehead, but that shit is expensive. I hope he didn’t get in with somebody dangerous.”
I hadn’t even thought of that.
If he was doing it to help his mom, that put a different complexion on it. It didn’t really excuse the lying, but at least he wasn’t just trying to make a quick buck.
“He and I…” I say, softly.
“I know,” Mello says. His smile is compassionate. “You all don’t hide it very well.”
“Do you think everyone knows?”
Mello shrugs. “I don’t think most of those kids can see past their own noses. I’ve never in my life met a group of people so self-absorbed. But I think a few people have noticed something.”
“I don’t know how to handle this. Last night I said I was done with him, you know.
He lied to me and he’s a criminal. But when I saw him earlier it was hard to look at him and think we weren’t going to be together anymore.
I’m in love with him, but I feel like I can’t be with someone who’s breaking the law like that. ”
“I understand,” Mello says. “But those kids you’re going to school with, the ones who are headed for Yale and NYU and Northwestern.
How many of them do you think will be running stock funds that cheat people out of their life savings in ten years?
Fifteen years from now, they’ll be running companies that dump toxic waste into the ocean and lie about it or use slave labor and pretend not to see it.
Would you feel like you had to give one of those guys up because he’s less than honest, or is it only because Brandon’s on the street and they’ll be in a boardroom? ”
“I’d have to—” I start to say, but then I get his point.
It’s all dirty. The entire system is dirty, we just pretend it’s not.
Rourke should have been expelled. Gio should have faced repercussions for hurting Mello.
Ivy League schools shouldn’t have legacy admissions and companies should have to pay for the environmental damage they do.
But top to bottom, society is unfair, and the winners are those that figure out how to get away with it.
Brandon selling a few thousand dollars’ worth of drugs to the sons of the people ruining the world is not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
Not bad enough for me to give up on the only guy I’ve ever loved.
Brandon
I pace the floor of my room, waiting for Anton to call me.
Since I texted him last night that I was kicked out, and got an “okay,” he hasn’t responded to my texts until 10 minutes ago when he finally said, “I’ll call you.
” Now I’m watching the second hand of the clock, each sweep around the dial feeling like an hour.
I’ve barely eaten today, and the soup I choked down half an hour ago is threatening to come back up.
I don’t even try to do homework; I know I wouldn’t be able to concentrate and after all that studying I did last night, I’m almost certain I failed my math test. As if that shit even matters now.
“Hello,” I say, as soon as the phone rings.
“I’ve got ten minutes. Tell me what happened—fast.”
“Devin went into my room last night and found my stash. He kicked me out.”
“Where’d you leave it that he found it?”
“In my room. He pretended they went to bed, but he was really searching my room. I was in Deja’s room. I need your help.”
“With what?”
“I tried to talk to her today and she wouldn’t listen, and she blocked me. Can you get me into the house? I know if I could be alone with her, I could—‘
“No.”
“But—“ I realize that I can’t catch my breath. What the hell is wrong with me? If I could only get her understand how I feel about her, I know she’d take me back. It’s not like I’m selling to drug addicts, just a bunch of spoiled rich kids. And it wasn’t even my idea to do this, it was Anton’s.
“So now we’ve lost access to the house. That should be what you’re worried about, not some little girl. If you had been guarding your shit instead of screwing her, Devin wouldn’t have had the opportunity to find your stash.”
“It was in the house the whole weekend. He could have found it any time.”
“But he didn’t get suspicious until you confronted him with those pictures.
That girl is the root of all your problems. You need to let her go.
” I don’t ask how he knows what happened when we got home on Sunday morning.
He has access to all the security cameras plus the extra cameras and microphones he asked me to plant around the house.
“I won’t,” I tell him, and I mean it. If I’m not letting Deja separate us, I’m sure as hell not letting his asshole do it. If he won’t help me get to her, I’ll find another way. “She’s my girl, Anton. That is not fucking changing. I don’t even fucking want you to talk about her.