19. Dee
Chapter nineteen
Dee
It took longer than I thought it would to fight my way through the crowd. But the horde of preteens finally relents, allowing me to find my way back to Emi and Dylan.
Except this is no longer Dylan, and I’ve clearly fallen into the Matrix or the Upside Down, or aliens have abducted Dylan and replaced him with one of their own, because Dylan Brooks is dancing…like humans have never danced before.
It dawns on me that I’ve never seen him dance until now…because I would fucking remember this.
The crowd has parted for him, giving him a good ten feet in every direction to do whatever the fuck he pleases. And Emi is right there alongside him, dancing her ever-loving heart out.
Emi spots me and yells, “Dee Dee, get over here before the song ends!”
Dylan smiles and shouts, “Yeah, Dee Dee. Are you going to make my night and dance with me?”
“With moves like that, Brooks, who could resist?” I shout back, jumping in, unable to resist my auntly duties, and unable to resist experiencing Dylan like this. The guy is uncoordinated, to say the least, and…fuck me, is it cute? No, it’s not cute.
Okay, it’s cute.
Dylan reaches for me, and I place my hand in his, finding my steps alongside him. Then he smiles at me—downright beaming with joy—and I realize it might not be the dancing that’s cute. Maybe it’s him.
***
“This was the most incredible, stupendous, magnificent night of my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Emi yells again as she twirls her spoon in the air before dunking it back into her bowl of ice cream, digging for another massive scoop.
Dylan, Emi, and I stopped by the twenty-four-hour convenience store down the street and picked up a tub of ice cream to celebrate a great show before huddling around the coffee table in my apartment, divvying up the dessert into a few bowls.
“I second that. Thank you, Dylan. For the tickets. For succumbing to the music as God intended. For worshipping the disco divas. For losing consciousness, falling into a vortex of space and time, and flailing as no one has ever flailed before.”
“Pretty sure I pulled my shoulder,” Dylan says, rolling his arm forward with a grimace.
Emi looks concerned for a moment, but he winks.
“It was worth a little pain cutting loose like that. You’ll have to keep an eye on the Bridge website, Emi.
Let me know the next time we have another band you like on the schedule so we can do it again.
” He rolls his shoulder backward this time.
“And so I can start training in advance.”
Emi smiles, all worries forgotten, and she nods around another spoonful of dessert. “You got it.”
“And if you have any trouble on Monday at school, you say something, okay? And remember what you taught me about embarrassment.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Why would you have a problem at school, Ems?”
She shrugs. “You know, because of those girls. The ones who don’t like me. They were there tonight, but it’s okay. After Dylan started dancing, they stopped pointing at me. I think you scared them.” She giggles before finishing off her ice cream. “Woof, I’m full and tired.”
“Oh, okay. You ready for bed?” I’m so confused, but if she’s not upset, I don’t want to dampen her good mood by harping on the issue. “Go ahead and brush your teeth. I’ll be right behind you.”
She skips off to my room to get ready in my attached bathroom.
When she’s out of earshot, I do my best to stay calm while looking for answers. “What happened, Dylan?” I whisper.
He abandons his own spoon in his bowl, leaning back, his palms on the carpet behind him, shoulders tense, and a worried look on his face. “Almost as soon as you were out of sight, that song she was waiting for all night started up.”
“Did she lose her mind?”
“In true Dee fashion. You would have been proud.” His smile lessens my worry for a moment before he sobers. “She must have spotted the girls somewhere between the dance moves you passed along to her, and she…Dee, she completely shut down. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“They were making fun of her?” I know it in my gut before he nods to confirm it. My eyes close and my heart sinks. Helplessness washes over me and I hate every second of it. “Fuck. She’s been having a hard time this year with a small group of girls in her class.”
“What’s going on?” The anger in his voice validates everything I’m feeling, but I can’t have him flying off the handle. I want to do that enough on my own without his encouragement.
“Just a couple of bullies. Kids can be mean, you know that. They’ve said some shitty things to her.
Excluded her from parties and hangouts.” I shrug.
“You know how it is. Morgan and Kai have talked with the teacher about it, to make her aware of what’s happening, but at the end of the day, they’re doing what they can to keep open communication with Emi.
To help build up her confidence and resilience because sometimes people are just going to be shitty, and we’re here to catch her when that happens and make sure it doesn’t go too far. ”
“I don’t remember kids acting like that when I was her age. It wasn’t that bad for us, right?” He seems genuinely confused. I don’t answer right away, watching my spoon as I swirl it around in my mostly melted ice cream. Dylan notices. “Dee? What’s going on?”
“I was bullied.” His head rears back, surprise written across his features. “I wouldn’t say it was anything necessarily worse than what Emi’s experienced. But it went on for a few years.” I shrug, not sure what to say. Not wanting to admit that even as an adult, some of those scars still ache.
“I never would have guessed. You’re so…” His voice trails off as he studies me.
“Annoying? Brazen? Outspoken? Opinionated?” I scoff.
“Confident.” His stare turns angry. “I was going to say confident, Dee. What the fuck?”
“Come on, Dylan. It was a joke.”
“Well, I’m not joking.” My heart races at the seriousness in his tone. He looks pissed. Turns out a little self-deprecation wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
“Yeah, well, when you hear the insults one too many times, you start to turn them into weapons of your own.” I shrug. “I guess I felt like if anyone saw me as not enough, I was going to become too much. Fuck them if they didn’t like it.”
“I don’t understand how anyone would see you and not love what they find.”
My startled breath hitches and my eyes catch his before he stands abruptly, taking his bowl and Emi’s to the kitchen, dropping them both in the sink, leaving me sitting on the floor alone. Left to wonder what the fuck he meant.