“Nothing,” I said.
We didn’t talk on the ride home. I tried to recreate the mood of the drive up by blasting Ariana Grande and belting out the lyrics, but with her eyes fixed on my face, Lennox reached over and flipped the dial to turn the stereo off. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say something, wanted to will her not to hold me responsible for the behavior of some cavemen in boat shoes who’d acted like animals at the zoo. The words just didn’t come, so instead I help my hands firmly at ten and two and tried not to cry.
Three hours later, we pulled up to her house. The sky was full of stars and the air smelled heavy of burning wood. It smelled like snow. Again, I felt the desire to do something, say something that would close this gap that had formed between us, but it had opened too suddenly and widened too deep.
“I hope you got what you wanted, Han. That was definitely an experience.”
I watched wordlessly as she unbuckled her seatbelt, left my car and walked into her house. She didn’t even walk, she trudged, slumped over like an elderly woman. It was like her trip with me had taken everything out of her and left her barely enough energy to make it into her own home.
Chapter Ten
Lennox
Under my skin, I could feel the rushing movement of each molecule that made up my body. My breath, previously caught in my lungs and resisting every effort to make it move, was now flowing in wide, rapid gulps that seemed to be coming faster than I could process them. It wasn’t my first panic attack, but it was the worst I had ever felt.
I lowered myself to the edge of my bed, my hands shaking as I gripped at my comforter for support. What had I been thinking agreeing to accompany Hannah on a trip back to Columbus? Why had I risked seeing people I knew? Why were those assholes at the zoo in the middle of the week without their parents?
The thought nagged at me that somehow they knew I’d be there, so they showed up just for another chance to torment me. Since we were kids, they’d been everywhere, every time I turned around, waiting to make my life Hell. On the street when I tried to ride my bike, in the halls at school, in the sanctuary at church. What a laugh that had been; the idea that anywhere could ever be called a sanctuary if I was there. There was no sanctuary for me.
The worst part was that I could remember when we’d been friends. We’d been neighbors our whole lives and our families went to the same church. Somewhere, in one of my mom’s falling apart, cracked seam photo albums, there were pictures of us splashing each other in the kiddie pool on some long past summer day. They might not have been my best friends, but they were constant, as present in my memories as my own parents.
In Kindergarten, they had broken the two brothers up, so only Dalton was in my class. I think it was probably the first time he and Nick had ever been apart. He had tried to act like Mr. Tough Guy at first, with his scrawny five-year-old chest puffed out, but as the day went on, it (and he) seemed to deflate. By snack time, he was pushing pretzel sticks around his plate without speaking and by naptime, he had started to whimper.
“Dalton,” I whispered from my cot, not caring if the teacher caught me. “Dalton, it’s okay. I’m here.”
He had looked over at me with his wide, bovine brown eyes and blinked rapidly. The tears started to fade, and he smiled a tight-lipped smile in my direction. “It’s just, Lenny, I have never fallen asleep without my brother.”
And I laid there, across the room on my tiny cot, trying to picture a time when I had ever seen them not in a pair. When I had ever spoken to Dalton or Nick instead of Dalton and Nick. Even when one went to the bathroom, the other had always trailed behind like a tiny, ineffective bodyguard ready to offer protection at a moment’s notice. I was jealous then of the idea that they’d been born a team when I’d always been so very alone.
When Hannah and I saw them that day at the zoo, it wasn’t freckle faced, crying Dalton I thought of, or the two little boys who loved nothing more than to sneak out of their house when it was raining so that they could catch raindrops on their tongues. It was the two boys from the alley who had outnumbered me so easily. Less team than small gang, waiting in the dark to prove something to me and themselves.
The sweet neighbor boys had disappeared not long after my dad had put his foot down about my tomboy ways. I guess it was natural; at a certain age boys and girls break into gender segregated groups. One has cooties while the other feels familiar. It’s the way it has always been. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that it was so sudden and so all at once.
I knocked on their door. The sky was the hazy oceanic blue of late summer, the air so thick it felt like you were drowning in it. After a couple of minutes, I started to pop my weight back and forth between my legs, skipping a little each time. I rang the doorbell again. Still no answer.
My shoulders sagged. There weren’t any other neighborhood kids close to my age; most of the other families in our subdivision had babies and toddlers. The idea of such a perfect lazy, hazy summer day passing me by without anyone to enjoy it with gnawed at me, but as I turned to go back to my house, I saw them at the other end of the block.
I called to them. Dalton turned his head to look at me, but quickly turned away when Nick smacked at his stomach.
I ran to catch up with them, but even when I was within spitting distance, they wouldn’t look at me.
“Guys?” I asked, voice quavering. Something was wrong. I must have done something, but I couldn’t remember anything happening when we’d played the day before. “Guys?” I asked again, my voice rising.
“Ugh,” Nick answered, even though he pretended his words were directed at Dalton. “Sometimes people just don’t get the hint. Like we would want to play with some girl who thinks she’s a boy.”
Then Nick got on his bike and started to ride away, Dalton following behind. I stood there, my feet frozen to the pavement. I knew I should just turn and go home, but I watched them until they disappeared from my view.
Something shifted inside me as I was hit with the realization that this was worse than a fight; whatever had passed between us was permanent. They weren’t my friends anymore. They were just boys I had known when I was little.
No matter how scared they’d made me, Nick and Dalton had done something good by showing up at the zoo. Before Nick and Dalton showed up, I had been under a spell. Hannah’s laugh as she belted out pop music and the whip of her long blonde hair that never seemed to stay out of her face had done something to me. It had lied to me, made me believe that I could be with her and have a normal life. Before they showed up, I had watched her point at gazelles and birds and wanted nothing more than to grab her, like in a movie, and kiss her.
When I heard Nick whisper Lennox, my name like a hiss that slid from between his lips, the lie dissipated. There was no easy ending for me that included a love story with another girl. There was no keeping Hannah from my parents but living my truth everywhere else. My truth was prying hands trying to make sense of my body. Sweet little boys that grew into monsters. Parents that forced glitter on me when all I wanted was metal. My truth was something that would scare the girl away before she could ever be mine.
Chapter Eleven