I try to picture how her room is decorated and I can't. It's right next door to me. I walk by it every day.
If lending toothbrushes is sisterly, I should probably be giving them to her by the handful.
“Sure, sweetie,” I say. “What happened to yours?”
“I left it at Mommy's.”
“Why don't you have two?”
“I did but Bosco ate it.”
I have no idea who Bosco is. “Okay. Come with me.”
I lead her to the bathroom and she waits patiently while I scoot her stool out from under the sink. Our bathroom is decorated with dark green wallpaper with jungle animals all over it, and our mirror has puff-paint notes on it: Remember to smile! Sunny day! Alexis
This is where she grew up. She was born in this house. Her mother was the one who moved out when she and Dominic got divorced. Her house is nicer. I'm not really sure how that happened.
Now that I've settled in pretty well here, I keep forgetting that this is still more her house than it is mine, since she's only here every other week. We haven't spent more than a month total together since I moved here.
I'm just the girl who's here every time she comes home.
No wonder she hates me.
Elisha drives me to school; we picked that up again last week when I missed the bus one day, and I think she realized she liked the extra gas money. Usually I don't see Theo until between second and third period, at the earliest, and I'm already wondering how I'm supposed to concentrate on integrals and the judicial process until then, but I get out of Elisha's car and there they are in the parking lot waiting for me. Both of them together.
Did they come here together?
Did they spend the night together?
Did they have sex?
Why don't I usually see them in the parking lot in the morning? Where are they usually? Are they off somewhere having sex? Do we have a place for that? Does this school have a boiler room? On TV it's always in the boiler room.
I get out of the car, and Josey waves at me—she doesn't smile, but it's Josey—squeezes Theo's elbow, and heads up the steps to the building.
I guess it would have been awkward if I'd seen him without her. I would have been worrying if she knew they were together.
And it would have been crazy awkward if she stayed.
So she split the difference. The girl is good.
They've done this before. They know what they're doing. And you are a neurotic junior and you don't know the protocols and you will mess this up.
“Hey, Cipriano.”
“Hi.”
“How's your baseless panic?”
“Meeean.”
“I'm letting you know first thing in the morning that you have nothing to worry about. That's mean?” He reaches into his backpack. “I guess I shouldn't give you this cupcake, then. You'll probably take that as a sign of war.”
“Gimme.”
It's strawberry. My favorite.
He looks behind my shoulder and says, “Hey,” when Elisha's high-heels clack over to us. “Cool party.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Uh, thanks? See you at practice, Tay.”
“Uh-huh.” When she's gone, I turn back to Theo and say, “I'm not sure thanking my friend for a party you weren't invited to is making the best impression.”
“Sorry, Tay.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He kicks the ground a little and says, “Do you care what impression I make?”
“Hey, what?” I duck my head to make him look at me. “Are you actually scared of Elisha? Hey...” My Theo, my head says. Good Lord, head.
He shrugs. “Nah. It's a serious question, though. We gotta decide how we want to handle this. If you want to hide it at school or not.”
Yeah. “Which do you want to do?”
“We're good either way. Everyone already thinks we're freaks.”
“You could try dressing normally, that might help.”
“But then people would think I'm normal and I couldn't get away with stuff like this,” he says, and then does this very poorly performed jig over a a few square feet of pavement.
“I've never wanted you more,” I say.
“You're blushing.”
“Shut uuuup.”
We kind of push and pull at each other for a minute, pinching the hems of each other's shirts, nudging away, tugging back.
“We have to decide what we're doing before I just grab you up,” he says. “That might give us away.”
“Technically you did that at the party.”
“Yes, but I was cleverly concealed under green face paint.”
“You know you're still kind of green-tinged, right?”
“It won't go away! I scrubbed for ages.”
I open the bag that's holding the slightly-squished cupcake and lick some frosting off my finger. A few girls I sort of know run past us, yelling at each other that they're going to be late.
We ignore them, and Theo says, “See, if I knew if we were out, I'd know if I could lick that off your finger.”
“Oh, ew, you definitely could not. I already shared a toothbrush with my stepsister this morning.”
“You're avoiding the question,” he says.
“Because I feel like a coward.”
“Hey. You're not a coward.” He reaches out and tucks some hair behind my ear. “You don't want to deal with everyone staring at us and asking us questions and trying to imagine what we tell our parents or how we slow dance or how we have sex.”
Of course now I'm wondering all of these things.
“It's not like we can't change our minds later,” I say. “If we decide we don't care if people know.”
“Absolutely.”
“So for now, we just...”
“For now on school property we're just friends.” He offers his hand. “Cipriano.”
“Estival.”
