It was the next day at school. Max and Toby had dropped the Connor thing, for now at least, and decided to let him eat with us at lunch. The courtyard smelled sweet from the budding eucalyptus trees. We were sitting there, the four of us, just hanging out and eating sandwiches, sunglasses on, when Lizzie and Jess strolled by in their tight high-waisted shorts, Lizzie in dip-dye orange and Jess a matching dip-dye pink.
Jess looked stunning. Her long, blonde hair was pinned back, revealing a face full of make-up, expertly done. She was like a girl out of a magazine, red lips and Betty Boop eyelashes. I tried to smile at her, but she just pressed her painted lips together and nodded once.
Toby, of course, couldn’t resist.
“Hello ladies!” he whistled, waving them over. He lifted his shades and Lizzie lifted hers in greeting, giving him a toothy grin. “What’s up?”
Jess trailed behind, one hand awkwardly gripping her arm. I could tell she really didn’t want to be here, and it hurt a little. They sat down in the grass beside us.
“Smoke?” Max asked, taking out a cig for Lizzie.
I opened my mouth to say something about potentially getting caught, but decided against it. Toby had already started smoking, his gaze trailing over the curve of Jess’s thighs as she sat with her legs folded on top of each other, letting Toby light her up.
“It’s so nice out!” Lizzie said, tossing back her super curly hair. She had new extensions in every other week. This time they were the color of cherry cough syrup.
“Very nice,” Toby agreed, putting his sunglasses back on to hide his sleazy gaze.
We sat there for a little while, chatting about mostly nothing. I’d been tuning out for a while, trying not to look at Jess while she tried not to look at me, nodding along to whatever someone said, watching people pass by us. My heart was thumping so hard that I started to sweat. I wanted to reach out to her, talk to her again, at least let her hear me out. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry was all I could think.
Then I heard Connor break his usually observatory silence. He always did that, waited and watched for a while until he caught a moment to say something good, something that would catch you off guard.
“No, you do not want to live in the fifties, Liz.”
“Why not?” Lizzie asked. “I think it would be awesome. Back then, girls didn’t have to work; we could just hang out and smoke and go to the beach. We didn’t have to go to college and everything. Like I know, obviously we’re supposed to think that’s important now, but I don’t see what’s so wrong about wanting to live an easy life. No bills to worry about, no pressure to be some huge success.”
“You romanticize that shit,” Connor countered. “You think you want to go back and live then, but trust me, you really don’t.”
Lizzie frowned, the freckles on her nose forming a crinkly pool. She looked over to Jess for support.
Jess just shrugged. “I think the old dresses are pretty.”
“Yeah, like vintage,” Lizzie gushed.
Connor rolled his neck around and leaned forward, ready to lay in on them, but Toby cut in before he could speak.
“Actually, I think I’d like to live in the fifties too,” he said.
“Really?” asked Lizzie.
“Really?” Jess asked, her voice thick with disbelief.
“Really,” he said. “Think about it. Muscle cars, open roads, pin-up girls. That shit was great. Who doesn’t love all that?”
Lizzie nodded. “Things were less complicated back then, I feel.”
“You’re both way off,” Connor said, though he had a way of saying things so smoothly that it never sounded like an insult. “It wasn’t a good time at all.”
“How do you know?” Lizzie teased, blowing a ring of smoke at his face. “For all you know, it was way better than now.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, and I could feel Connor bristle beside me. We all watched and waited for him to speak.
“You know, Lizzie, you say that, but you’re a woman, and women had almost no rights back then. They were getting beaten by their asshole husbands who were traumatized from the war. That was just on the cusp of the civil rights movement, when black people would get lynched and people like me were considered illegals even when they fought along white men in the trenches in their white man’s war. McCarthyism, race riots, police brutality. Are you kidding me? You have this candy-coated ideal of how the world was but do you know the first thing about the Los Angeles riots, which by the way, didn’t happen all that far from here? Segregation in the military?”
Damn, he was so smart. How did he know all of this stuff? I was about to ask more questions, but Toby laughed darkly, cutting me off. “Oh Connor, our history buff.” He patted him on the back. “This kid’s a riot.”
“I’m not joking,” Connor said.
Toby shrugged. “Whatever man, things suck now too. And if you ask me, a lot of those Mexicans deserve to be deported, stealing our jobs and shit. I mean, talk about bad times, our town getting clogged up with all kinds of illegals from south of the border, fucking crackheads and wife beaters too. No offense to you, man.”
I winced. Connor held Toby’s gaze for just a moment, his voice thick with venom as he said: “I’m not fucking Mexican, Toby.”
Toby’s expression grew cold for a moment, and then he feigned a laugh and said, “Whatever, dude.”
Then there was silence, a slow one that crept up on all of us, heavy and sinister.
Jess shivered. “I’m getting cold, are you, Liz?”
Lizzie, who’d been staring slack-jawed at this exchange, her cigarette ashy between her fingers, just nodded.
“Close your mouth,” Jess hissed at Lizzie under her breath. Her eyes met mine in what felt like a moment of understanding,
