But she doesn’t back down. She calls Andi a harlot again, to my face, and I’ve never itched so badly to hit a woman. I don’t let her finish talking, I just turn and walk away. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that to a sibling.
It feels much better than I wish it did.
I’m at work a few days later, on a conference call about isopods, when Elliott texts.
Elliott: Hey, did you get my note?
Elliott: I specifically told Reid to make sure you saw it, don’t tell me he forgot
“Shit,” I mutter out loud, alone in the office I share with the outreach coordinator, then immediately check that I’m still on mute.
I am. I’ve been on mute for fifty-three minutes. We’re not even talking about isopods in my district, but the higher-ups in my department wanted to make sure we had “a seat at the table,” so here I am, not quite paying attention.
I stare at my phone. I think about the note he left, the way he addressed the card Mr. Gideon Bell and Mr. Reid Bell, and I hate how much of a relief that was even though Elliott has always been one of the good ones. I think: if anyone understands why I can’t talk to our parents, it’ll be him. Even if Reid still doesn’t know.
I decide it’s a great time for a bathroom break.
“Hey,” Elliott answers the phone, half a minute later. “Finally.”
“Sorry,” I say, shoving my other hand into my pocket. I stepped outside for the phone call, into the grassy little picnic area the Forest Service offices have out back. It’s cool but not too cool, the sunlight weakening with the afternoon. “Thanks for the invitation.”
There’s a noise that might be static or might be Elliott in Boston, snorting.
“Yeah, sure, you’re welcome,” he says, blustery and almost sarcastic. I miss him. “I basically had to invite you two, right?”
“I didn’t say I was coming,” I tell him. “Maybe I’m busy that weekend.”
“Too busy to be a groomsman?”
“Oh,” I say, because that somehow hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t think he’d want me to be, not after I abandoned him for years. “No. I mean, yes? Fuck.”
That gets a real, honest-to-God laugh, the same one he’s always had.
“Perfect,” he says, and I sigh. “Reid didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That I was asking you two to be groomsmen.”
“He didn’t.”
“I guess the kid can keep a secret,” Elliott says. “Remember when he cut his own hair and somehow kept anyone from noticing for two full days?”
“He’d been wearing the hat anyway, so it wasn’t that weird,” I say, and Elliott laughs. “Who got in trouble for that one? It wasn’t me.”
“I think it was Beth,” Elliott says. There’s a short, cool silence as I stare into the woods and feel warm inside. “I’ll let you go, I know you hate the phone.”
“That was it?” I ask before I can tell myself not to.
“What, you want to be the ring bearer instead?”
“I’d be great at that,” I mutter.
Another pause.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”
Elliott waits, and I don’t know what’s happened to me lately that I can’t bear things any more, but I crack.
“I thought you wanted me to call because you were going to ask me to talk to our parents and maybe invite them,” I say.
“Oh,” he says, voice crackling a little as it comes down the line. “Oh. Fuck no.”
He says it so definitively. With such certainty. Like this is a matter that’s been decided years ago, like he barely thinks about it any more. It makes my voice stick in my throat. I stare at the trees. Somewhere inside me, a knot comes undone.
“Right,” I say.
“If there’s some sort of chance they might come, you have to tell me so I can hire bouncers, or security, or something,” Elliott says. “I will not have them ruining my big day.”
“Big day, Jesus Christ,” I mutter, and Elliott laughs.
“Someone asked me what color napkins we wanted,” he says. “I don’t fucking know, napkin-colored? Wedding planning is a nightmare and I’m in hell.”
“I can’t wait,” I tell him, and it’s true.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ANDI
I really hope the Sprucevale Sentinel-Star hires someone soon, because Lucia keeps asking me if I’ll cover school board meetings, and I keep saying yes, and it sucks. I get paid, yeah, but school board meetings are the worst.
Case in point: tonight’s. It started at 8pm on a Wednesday, which is fine, but they always start late and go late. They take place in the cafeteria of Sprucevale High School, which has bad acoustics, so it takes extra concentration to hear everyone. The chairs are uncomfortable. The lights make everyone look like zombies and the one in the corner by the front office keeps flickering, which is driving me mad.
Oh, and William and Matthew Bell are here, and I hate them. I haven’t covered a school board meeting since I started dating Gideon, but tonight, while the school board spends forty-five minutes discussing what brand of plastic chair they’re going to purchase for the middle school’s band room, I take a handful of notes and glare at the sides of their faces.
Last time I was here, they were trying to get sex ed out of the curriculum altogether. Never mind that the one week per year that kids learn anything on the topic is already abstinence-based, he thinks it should be gone. He’s also pushed for a stricter student dress code, a stricter teacher dress code, student-led prayers before football games, and the disbanding of the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, which has seven whole members. I hope they’re burning him in effigy.
Tonight, it’s books. He would like to ban a lot of them, and surprise surprise, they’re mostly queer kids’ books. Or, at least, he starts off there and then manages to get the entire school board into a flurry by bringing up Lolita. How, he demands to know, is a hypothetical parent supposed to explain the very problematic content of this book to a hypothetical first-grader who’s brought it home from Sprucevale Elementary?
It works. Everyone wastes twenty minutes arguing about a book that Sprucevale Elementary obviously doesn’t have in its library, and by the time we’re back on track everyone is thinking about creepy Humbert Humbert, and I’m furious. I’d be shocked if William Bell has even read Lolita, and I’m also trying to secretly text Gideon because he’s picking me up after this so we can go grab late-night snacks since I haven’t seen him in four days, but the meeting has gone thirty minutes over already.
At least the motion to ban the books doesn’t pass, though I’m sure we’ll all have to hear it again, and again, and he’ll eventually succeed at some part of his plan.
After the meeting I have to stick around a few extra minutes to clarify some stuff about the proposed school bus situation for next year, and then I get turned around finding a bathroom, so by the time I’m finally heading to the parking lot to wait for my boyfriend, the high school has mostly emptied out.