My friends and I sat with the car still running, the music still playing. I didn’t have anything to say, especially not to Maritza.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, getting out of the car. I didn’t bother to invite them in.
* * *
My brother’s room was the first off the upstairs landing. I stood in front of his door for a long minute, feeling the vibrations from his loud, blaring music. The hand-painted sign from my grandparents was still affixed to his door: a small wooden rectangle with footballs, trains, and Grant’s Room written in swirly, child-friendly lettering.
I did something I’d never done before and held up my middle finger to his door.
Alone in my bedroom, I looked around and took stock of my world. Maritza’s NASA sweatshirt that I’d stolen a month ago and kept forgetting to give back. A battered copy of a Doctor Who novel JaKory kept bugging me to read. Selfies of the three of us in my basement, in the school courtyard, in the Taco Bell drive-through.
No sign of a life any bigger than this. No wilted bouquets from the prom, no blurry photos from late nights I couldn’t remember, no movie ticket stubs from a date with a pretty girl. The burning embarrassment I’d felt in the car was gone, but now there was a furtive pit of shame in my stomach, threatening every idea I had about myself.
My brother was becoming a real Teenager. He’d met up with a girl at the movies tonight, had probably paid for her ticket and bought her candy from the concession stand and held her hand in the dark space of the theater, and after the movie he’d spun her away from his sea of friends and come so, so close to kissing her, and I had watched from my spot in my best friend’s car, fresh off an evening of playing with kids’ toys at the pharmacy.
How had I gotten to be seventeen years old without anything happening? Surely my dad had enjoyed his share of wild adventures by the time he was my age. And surely Mom had kissed a few boys by the time she was crowned homecoming queen. They always talked about high school with that wistful tone in their voices, with that mischievous gleam in their eyes. What had their high school summers been like? What had they gotten up to on those late nights, in those fast cars? And what had their friends been like? Were they anything like mine?
Maritza and JaKory. They’d always been the center of my life, but suddenly my life felt so small. How much of that had to do with them, and how much of it had to do with me?
3
I woke early the next morning. It was raining again, and for a while I lay there listening to it, letting the feelings from last night wash over me. My parents had come home late from their gala, speaking in low rumbles, their dress shoes clacking on the kitchen floor. I’d pretended to be asleep when my mom had poked her head into my room.
When I finally came downstairs, the rain had let up and the sun was reaching through the windows, pearly white and timid as it stretched across our family room. Grant was in the kitchen, eating Froot Loops. He made a show of clanging his spoon around the bowl and keeping his eyes on the kitchen TV. I ignored him and poured my own bowl of cereal, but when I opened the fridge, something was missing.
“Are we out of milk?”
Grant said nothing, but when I looked at his bowl, I saw he’d poured way more milk than he needed. His Froot Loops were practically drowning in it. The empty milk gallon was on the stool next to him. I shoved the refrigerator door closed and grabbed a banana instead.
JaKory called around noon, asking if I wanted to get coffee.
“Is this because you wanna talk about last night?” I asked.
JaKory sighed, long and pained. “Don’t you?”
The small pit of shame still hummed in my stomach. “Maybe,” I admitted.
“The sun’s out,” he said enticingly. “You could do some painting.”
I laughed. He knew how to hook me. “I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.”
* * *
The Chattahoochee River was the most underrated thing about Atlanta. It wound through the northwest side of the city’s perimeter, long and sprawling and glistening. No one really talked about it, but we drove past it all the time, even when crossing the interstate. It was like an open secret, something we forgot was there.
Our favorite coffee shop was right on the banks of the Chattahoochee, in a quiet little haven nestled behind the highway. The shop itself was in a huge, multistory cabin, and the grounds stretched out along the river, carefully landscaped with close-cropped grass that extended to the nettle-strewn tree line. You could walk along the river rocks or sit in one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the water, listening to the steady rush of the river sweeping past. Usually, when my friends and I came here, we’d take our backpacks and stay for hours. Maritza would spread a blanket and practice yoga, JaKory would sit at a picnic table and lose himself in a book, and I’d sit across from him, painting the brightest colors I could find.
Our usual table was still damp from the rain. I brushed off my side without caring too much while JaKory methodically dabbed every part of his bench with a napkin. By the time he was finished, I had already dug my sketchbook and watercolors out of my bag. There was a patch of vibrant marigolds by the water that I was excited to paint.
We were quiet at first, but it wasn’t strained—more like a gentle blanket. I could sense we were about to have a heart-to-heart. JaKory and I were good at those. We may have tried to save face with Maritza sometimes, but with each other, we always said exactly what we were feeling.
“Did you feel horrible yesterday, too?” JaKory asked.
I looked up from the colors I was mixing. “The worst I’ve felt in a long time.”
JaKory was silent. Then he screwed up his mouth and said, “I went home and wrote a poem about it.”
I smiled wryly. “’Course you did.”
“There was one line I really liked. ‘My youth is infinite but my fears are intimate.’”
I mixed my orange and yellow paints. Such bursts of color, such vibrant promises, like the infinite youth JaKory spoke of. And yet those intimate fears loomed larger.
“I’m scared, too,” I admitted. “Scared of … I don’t even know what.”
“I’m so pissed at myself,” JaKory whispered. “I always knew I was different … black, nerdy, queer … but that’s not why I’m missing out. It’s because I’m standing in my own way. I know it.”
I wilted. JaKory was speaking the same truth I felt in my bones. Did Maritza feel that way, too? Were all three of us stuck in a co-dependent friendship because it was easier than facing our individual inertia?
“What are we supposed to do?” I asked quietly.
JaKory held my eyes. “Maritza has a plan. She’s on her way to meet us so we can talk about it.”
I stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘a plan’? I thought this was just you and me hanging out. You know I don’t feel like talking to her after how she acted last night. Didn’t you hear what she said to me? He definitely doesn’t need your help.”
“She didn’t mean it.”
“You know she did.”
“We’re family, Codi. Families fight and make up.”
“So you invited her without telling me?”