No one told me to feel that way—but I did get a long talk about how to behave, as though I was known for acting out of turn. I did get daily reminders to wait my turn to speak, whether I’d opened my mouth yet that day or not.
No one said I didn’t belong; they just treated me like I had to prove I did. And the first time I saw Cherish, she looked like she had a right to be there. So I walked right past her, the way I walked past everyone else, and when I saw her parents for the first time I decided she was like everyone else. How could I trust her?
I only studied her because I had to know whether there was someone else who could construct a mask that convincing. I had to know whether Cherish was a stunning performer, a rival where there had never been one before, or whether she was silly enough to really feel that safe.
I watched her for a week and she wasn’t perceptive enough to notice. She didn’t play at obliviousness only to send discreet signals that she was aware of my surveillance.
Cherish was genuine. She was that soft. Armorless. And like anything without a protective outer shell, pliable.
So I smiled at her.
“Your whole face lit up,” I say. “Like I’d never seen. Then I knew your calm hadn’t been the same as happy.”
“I thought you couldn’t see me,” she says again, “or you didn’t care. And everyone kept asking me about you, if I knew who you were, or if we were related.”
I guffaw against her.
“But then you smiled at me, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care if they thought we were cousins, or even sisters, because I did.” She laughs.
“You thought we were sisters?”
“Something like that. I knew we were kin,” she says. “I knew I needed you. Before my parents explained why. I felt it. In a way they could only know. They knew a lot of things that made them amazing parents, always. But I didn’t need them to tell me why you mattered so much to me. Why I needed to know you could see me.”
“I still can,” I say, but more quietly, in case there’s any part of her as upset as she was yesterday. In case she moved the tally mark journal because there’s something she doesn’t want me to see. “Always.”
She doesn’t answer me with words, but she turns and pushes off of the steps on her back without fully letting go of me. In a moment, we’re both on our backs, watching the sky and letting the raindrops fall on our faces while we hold hands beneath the water.
No one can tell me anything about Cherish and me that I don’t already know. Certainly not Kelly. And no one can come between us. Not even Tariq.
She isn’t just the home I’ve chosen; I’m the one who mattered. I’m the one who saw her. When she thought she was comfortable in the life her parents made for her, even with their hair- and skin-care classes, and their social awareness, and the way they’ve been intentional in raising a healthy, protected Black daughter. They made her vulnerable. They gave her a void, and I filled it. She needed me to see her, and no one can replace that.
I have to remember it. Brianne can’t ever be what Cherish is to me, even if she puts me first. Even if she shows me the secret side of herself that even Cherish doesn’t know exists, and gives me things that are just between us.
I will keep Cherish first in my heart, because I will always be that way in hers.
I want it to be night forever. This night, when Cherish thrust me underwater and I passed her test. I want to remember that I won this confession, no matter what happened in the moments I can’t remember passing, between the middle of the pool and finding myself on the steps with her. It doesn’t matter. Cherish and I belong together.
XI
I t’s clearly afternoon.
The sun is beating down outside, but on the pile of pillows and blankets Cherish and I assembled beneath the window last night when we came back in, we’re still comfortable. The glass is a hundred different kinds of energy efficient, so not even the rabid heat can come through. Just the sunshine, streaking across our wild and crisscrossed limbs. Just the spilling light that glows around us like a halo.
My parents would have woken us up by now, summer or not. For some arbitrary reason summed up in mantras like “Don’t waste the day away,” like leisure has to be constantly regulated or rationed or it’ll become unwieldy. It’ll turn against us somehow, however comfort can. But no one has disturbed us in the Whitman home, even though the morning’s come and gone. No one’s afraid of what might happen to us if we wile away the day fading in and out of dreams. No one thinks Cherish and I’ll spoil if we stay sealed away inside our bedroom. There’s even a tray on the unmade bed with what looks like muffins and fruit, because someone came in to offer us food instead of a lecture.
“I’m tired,” Cherish whines with her eyes still closed. “Turn off the sunshine.”
My limbs are still wobbly when I stand up to close the blinds and pull the white summer curtains together. I’m as unsteady on my feet as if I were still in the swimming pool, and I wonder if that’s because of what happened last night. I don’t think I’ve ever blacked out before, but I’ve been tired a million times. I take a few steps more to prove to myself that’s all this is.
“Someone brought us breakfast,” I tell Cherish while I retrieve the tray and spy the clock beside the bed. “Well. Lunch. Do you think they know we were up all night?”
“We cleaned up after ourselves.” She yawns, batting away the strawberry I press against her lips.
“Eat it,” I say, trying not to laugh.
“Stop,” and she folds her lips into her mouth and rolls her face into the pillows.
“Fine, none for you.”
“Save me some,” she says, but it’s muffled.
“Too late,” I tell her, and she can hear the fruit I’ve packed into my cheeks.
“RahRah,” she whines, and sits up quickly, yanking the bowl out of my hands and snatching both containers of yogurt and both of the spoons.
We’re laughing and wrestling things out of each other’s grasps and making at least as much noise as when we “cleaned up after ourselves” last night. We’d tried to mop up our footprints, hunching over onto our hands and bending our legs so that we could scurry the towels around the kitchen and toward the staircase in the middle of the next room, but we kept trying to run each other off track, or swiping our arms out from under each other before collapsing into a bellowing heap.
We could have woken the dead, so there’s no chance we didn’t at least wake Brianne and Jerry, and we were making so much noise, we wouldn’t have known. Just like we don’t hear whoever’s knocking on the bedroom door until they open it a crack to let their head in while they knock again.