“All right,” I say under my breath.
I don’t have to worry about anyone hearing me this time, because in reply, Cherish pounces. She’s got her arms around Kelly’s neck, her body strewn across the center console, and her lips muffling Kelly’s laughter.
“Um.” Tariq looks from the spectacle to me, but I look away.
It’s their first kiss, if what Cherish tells me is true, and we all got to be there for it. I’m sure that makes this little dalliance official, to my great disappointment.
When she pulls back, Cherish is playing coy, dropping her eyes and pretending to stifle a smile.
“That doesn’t count as my birthday gift, either,” she tells him like there aren’t two other people in the car, forced to experience this with them. “I gave it to you.”
“I got you,” Kelly says through a low, suggestive breath.
If I could reach the steering wheel, I’d drive us off the road.
“Please find someplace to go and let us out,” Tariq says, for both of us.
Cherish is insufferable, but only to a point, so she responds with playful laughter and goes back to her side of the car, before twisting in the passenger’s seat and smiling at me.
“RahRah’s choice,” she says, grasping the leather like if she doesn’t, fireworks might start shooting out through her fingertips. Her eyes are sparkling like there’s a light show in them, too, and I want to shake it out of her.
I don’t.
With a teenage girl as typical as Cherish, there’s a good chance that my disapproval of Kelly would drive her farther into his arms, and farther from me. I’d like to think she’s better than that, but it isn’t a hypothesis I’m willing to test.
Besides that, without Kelly to pine over, Cherish might’ve fallen for Tariq. It is admittedly a much less devastating concern, but it isn’t ideal.
“So?” Cherish grins at me. “Where are we going?”
“I wouldn’t mind some popcorn,” I say, shrugging one shoulder. “Wanna see a movie?”
If I’m lucky, two hours will fly by, and we’ll have to hurry back to the party when it’s done.
“Movie sounds good,” Tariq agrees, turning to look at me with a small, adorable smile.
“As you wish,” Cherish says, and lowers her head in reverence, or something, and then, to Kelly, in an overly loud British accent, “To the theater, my good man!”
* * *
—
CHERISH KNEW I wasn’t going to have a good time no matter where we went; letting me choose was a way to make that fact my own fault.
When we got to the theater, not only did the boys want to see a plotless collection of fight scenes, they insisted we watch it in the simulation seats. The only upside to being jostled in perfect sync with nonsensical action sequences for ninety minutes was that I was visibly queasy and miserable by the end. Despite clearly wanting to make it a long night with Kelly, Cherish insisted that she’d better take me home. Part of me hoped he’d resist, that he’d at least suggest they dump me on the Whitman porch and go on as a trio. I was disappointed he was able to muster the bare minimum decency required to acquiesce—even though he whispered instructions for her to text him later.
“Did you guys at least kiss?” Cherish asks when Tariq and Kelly are peeling back out of her driveway. A number of the guests have already headed home, including Judge Campbell in Tariq’s Ferrari.
“Who, me and Tariq?” I almost blush. “Of course not. We were watching the movie.”
Cherish lets me go into the house ahead of her.
“Okay, and? I watched the movie, too.”
I toss her a very unconvinced expression. I would love to erase the image of Kelly’s hand stealing toward Cherish halfway into the movie. I thought I couldn’t feel sicker, and then I saw reflected light bouncing off Kelly’s watch in the darkened theater.
“I did! It was about a singing pig or something. Who went on a journey, probably. To save a kingdom and his . . . friends. Who were elves.”
“Stupid.”
“Hey!” Mr. Whitman catches sight of us in the entryway and smiles, extending his arm like he’s either inviting us over or pointing us out to the guests he’s talking to at the foot of the stairs. “There are my girls.” And then to us: “I’ve been looking for you two.”
“Then how long were we gone?” Cherish asks with an abundance of nonguilt.
“An astute question. And one I would absolutely answer,” he says, nodding, “because I noticed your absence immediately, and boy are you in trouble—”
“Uh-huh,” she says through a laugh. Charisma is definitely a nurture, not a nature trait, and Cherish Whitman gets hers from her dad. The friends he was talking to when we entered are smiling between the two of them, clearly on the verge of audibly cooing.
There was a time I thought it was a performance, the way Cherish’s parents are with her. It’s playful and familiar in a way that’s different from my family. When Cherish and I were young, I wasn’t sure which differences to attribute to her parents being a different race, and to be honest, I’m still not always sure.
Now Jerry Whitman is feigning sternness.
“I’m gonna let you both off the hook this one time because I think Farrah’s mom would like to see her.”
“She’s finally here?” I clip, and then offer a tittering laugh that isn’t too belated.
“She’s around here somewhere, and I think she has something to tell you,” he says, looking around like she wouldn’t be easily spotted if she were anywhere in the open space near the stairs. Finally, he waves me off. “Go on, get out of here, go find her.”
I’m trying not to race around the downstairs like a giddy kid, and only barely succeeding. It’s silly, and I know it; it’s only been a couple of days since I’ve seen her, and if she had news, she’s had plenty of chances to tell me. If she was going to tell me my house belongs to me again, she could have said so earlier, in her multitude of texts—unless she wanted to see the look on my face when I heard it. Because they have had plenty of time and space to set this right. Two weeks without having to take care of me—not to mention all the times they dropped me off here before.
Now my mom is back, and Jerry Whitman says she has news.
My chest is warm at the thought; I cannot calm down.
“I’m gonna check out back,” I tell Cherish, and she nods.
“I’ll keep looking in here.”