Oh.
Daisy was being her usual
considerate self. She’d been worried all along that Benton was
pressuring Riva.
“Yeah, because I want to,” Riva said quickly.
“With you. I think. I mean, I don’t know what it would be like.”
For a second, a question hovered in the air, and Riva became aware
of how very close Daisy was. She could smell Daisy’s sun-soaked
skin and the oil in her hair. “It wouldn’t be right to, like,
experiment when Benton wasn’t around.”
Daisy’s eyes came suddenly into view, as wide
as they could be. “But you think you might want that? If you
weren’t with him?”
Riva didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Not
when Daisy was looking at her like that and Benton was being a jerk
so often. “I don’t know,” she said again, embarrassed of how she
was copping out. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you this. I
don’t want to screw up this hanging out thing we’ve got going.”
Daisy shook her head. “I’ll do it.”
“What? You will?” Riva reeled. The world
tilted for a moment. Her visions of kissing Daisy became more vivid
than ever.
“Yeah. Like, when do you want to?”
Riva’s voice was a squeak. “Make out with
you?”
“Yeah.”
Now.
Riva shook her head, trying to
clear all the confusion. “Thursday?”
“Okay.”
“Wow, okay.” Then she thought again of Daisy
being
appreciated
by Benton, and her chest seized with a
possessive urge. She knew she shouldn’t give in to it, but Riva
couldn’t help it. “But what are you doing tomorrow night? Maybe we
can hang out or something. I want to make sure this doesn’t make
things weird.”
Daisy nodded, because she was Daisy and she
was easygoing and perfect beyond all reason. Riva knew in her guts,
though, that things were already weird because she’d done this all
wrong. She hadn’t shown Daisy a picture of Benton at all. She
hadn’t wanted to.
Given how much she’d resisted Benton’s
requests for this, she was amazed at how triumphant she felt, and
at how she couldn’t stop grinning as she gently pulled her wrist
away from Daisy’s hand.
* * * *
Emmy worked the clay slowly, focusing on the
way it conformed to the shape of her hand. It would flow with her
as long as she didn’t force it to be anything it wasn’t. As long as
she was patient with it.
That seemed like a metaphor for so many
things in her life right now.
Mrs. Figueroa came out of her office and
stepped over to take a look at Emmy’s project in progress. “That’s
nice,” she said, nodding her approval. “It’s much clearer this time
that the artist is in control of her process.”
“Thanks,” Emmy said. The word came out
softly, in time with her exhale. Even her breath had fallen into
tune with the rhythm of her work.
If only she’d been in this mood two days ago,
when Daisy had come to talk to her. On the other hand, that
conversation with Daisy was probably what had pushed her out of her
funk and into her current productivity. She should probably thank
Daisy for that, assuming they were friends now. It seemed like they
might sort of be getting there.
“Are you planning to spend all of Spring
Break here?” Mrs. Figueroa asked. “I admire the dedication, but I’m
concerned you’re not out having fun at all. Breaks are for resting,
you know.”
Emmy nodded. “I know.” But nothing in her
life was what it used to be. Not since Iris had gone. At least the
clay had started making a tiny bit of sense again.
“I’ve noticed you’ve been sad. And your
girlfriend never comes by anymore.”
Removing her hands from the clay with care,
Emmy tried for a casual shrug and failed miserably. Her shoulders
wound up twisted in the vicinity of her ears, stuck that way as she
tried to restrain her threatening tears. “She’s not my girlfriend
anymore,” she said, in a credible attempt at a normal human
voice.
Mrs. Figueroa took a seat. “Do you want to
talk about it?”
“I don’t know what there is to say.”
The art teacher smiled indulgently. “Probably
nothing and everything. Lots of things that are going to sound
familiar to anybody who’s ever had their heart broken. And a few
things that are so particular to the two of you that nobody but you
and Iris could ever understand them.”
That did it. There was no holding back the
tears anymore. She tried to respond to Mrs. Figueroa, but all that
came out was a tortured, waterlogged attempt at Nico Mathis’s
name.
Mrs. Figueroa’s forehead wrinkled and she
frowned. “What about him?”
Emmy shook her head and repeated the central
mystery. It wasn’t a question, it was a fact, but she still stayed
up every night as if she might figure out an answer for it. “She’s
with him now.”
“I see.” The teacher cleared her throat. “I’m
sorry.”
“I don’t understand how she could just…change
like that. And if she can, how come I can’t? I’m still here, still
in love with her, and she’s walking around like the last year
didn’t even exist.” She was howling. It was a bit of a surprise to
hear meaning in the noises she was making.
Mrs. Figueroa went and got her a tissue.
“Life is very confusing.”
Emmy looked up quickly, irritated. She didn’t
usually get condescending speeches from Mrs. Figueroa about being a
teenager, and she really didn’t want to hear one now. The teacher
raised a hand before Emmy could object.
“It’s confusing no matter what age you are. I
think one of the most confusing things is that people have all
sorts of feelings that don’t match. Events happen, and they mean
very different things to different people.”
“That sucks,” Emmy said.
“It does.” Mrs. Figueroa sighed. “I don’t
know what Iris is thinking or feeling, but I bet she’s confused,
too. I know that might not help your situation, but I don’t think
she’s found all the answers and left you with all the questions.
Know what I mean?”
“I guess.” Emmy remembered how Iris had never
wanted to come out. That hadn’t made sense to Emmy. After all,
they’d walked down the hall openly holding hands. Everyone knew
they were a couple. But that hadn’t meant the same thing to Iris as
it had to Emmy, just like Mrs. Figueroa said.
Iris had worried a lot about whether her
relationship with Emmy meant she was lesbian, bisexual, or a
straight girl experimenting. Emmy hadn’t had a lot of patience with
that. She got a quick, unsettling glimpse of what that might have
been like from Iris’s perspective, and what it might still be like
even though she was with Nico now.
“Yeah, I guess I do know.”
“Listen, I don’t want to interrupt you if
you’re really feeling inspired, but I have some errands to run. I
think you should spend a little time out of the studio. You could
come back this afternoon.”
Emmy looked at the clay laid out in her
workspace. It had been responding to her that morning, but
something told her Mrs. Figueroa was right and she ought to take it
easy this time. She’d been trying to force too many things.
Nodding, Emmy wrapped the clay in plastic to
keep it from drying out and went to wash her hands at the sink in
the corner of the room. Now that she’d given in to an explosion of
tears, she was surprised at how much better she felt and how brief
the outburst had been. She’d often feared sinking into a
never-ending abyss of tears, but today, crying had been no scarier
than an afternoon squall.
“Yeah,” she told her teacher. “I’ll be back
later this afternoon.”
She tried to think of somewhere to go. There
had to be places in this town where she hadn’t been with Iris. She
had to start trying to find them. Graduation might be soon, but it
wasn’t soon enough, and she was getting the idea that she couldn’t
wait until then to resume living her life.
Emmy walked out to her car slowly. Her habits
of thought remained. She still wondered where Iris was now and what
she was doing, and it still stung to imagine her in the passenger
seat of Nico’s car, the window rolled down, her normally perfect
hair getting tangled by the wind. She tried to just roll with that,
the way she’d let her hands flow with the clay. It hurt terribly,
but also the day was warm in the way Emmy liked best, breezy enough
that the sun didn’t feel too heavy on her shoulders. Her project
was finally going right. She wasn’t going to spend another morning
cooped up in the art studio.
She’d had things to work on, but she could
also see how she’d sort of been exiling herself.
Emmy was so caught up in her thoughts and
realizations that it took a while for her to notice the girl bent
over the hood of her car.
For a heart-stopping moment, she thought it
was Iris. Then sanity returned, and she recognized Riva, short hair
gelled tight against her head, looking like she ought to be way too
warm in the black T-shirt and black jeans she was wearing.
“What’s going on?” Emmy asked, walking
closer. She didn’t sound too hostile. That conversation with Mrs.
Figueroa must really have helped her.
Riva jumped about a mile. She couldn’t have
looked guiltier if she’d been trying to break into Emmy’s car. “I
didn’t think you’d come out here.”
“What are you doing to my car?”
Riva held up a piece of paper, covered with
scrawl on both sides. “I was writing you a note.” She shrugged, a
sheepish grin pasted on her face. “I didn’t think you’d want to
talk to me.”
Wordlessly, Emmy held out her hand for the
note.
Riva clutched it to her chest. “It’s not
finished,” she said.
“I want to see where you were going with it.”
Emmy raised her eyebrows. “Your last note didn’t sit well with
me.”
After a moment of staring at each other, Riva
relented. Emmy skimmed what she’d written. The note started with an
apology that sounded sincere enough—though Riva had obviously made
plenty of gross assumptions. After all, just because Emmy liked
girls didn’t mean she liked
any girl at all
, or that she’d
be willing to make out with every girl who gave her an opportunity.
It certainly didn’t mean she ever wanted to do anything for the
entertainment of a boy. Emmy wasn’t putting on a performance for
someone else’s benefit—she was living her life, falling in love
with the people she fell in love with, and dealing with plenty of
nonsense from those who couldn’t seem to focus on their own
stuff.
Riva’s apology showed she’d figured some of
that out, but not all of it. Not nearly enough of it.
Emmy tightened her hands around the paper as
she read, wrinkling the edges. She tried to think about what Mrs.
Figueroa had said, about life being confusing. Riva was obviously
confused as much as anybody else, but why did it seem like everyone
else’s confusion turned into yet another thing for
Emmy
to
deal with? It wasn’t fair.
The second half of the note wasn’t about
apologizing to Emmy at all. Riva was working out her own stuff
there, writing to Emmy like she was writing in her journal. She
talked about the questions she’d been asking herself lately, the
weird way she’d been feeling about some particular girl. It made
Emmy want to scream.
I’m not your therapist!
Why couldn’t anyone understand that? Every
person in school seemed to think she owed them her attention, her
understanding, and her time. Was it really true that this many
people had
no other way
to work out their own issues and
figure out what was going on with them?
She glanced up at Riva, handing back the
note. “You should have kept it to a simple apology. The rest of
that stuff is none of my business.”
Riva bit her lip and gave Emmy puppy dog
eyes. Emmy sighed. She’d been patient with this at some point in
the past, hadn’t she? The first dozen times or so? It had been
easier, too, when she’d thought people were looking for someone
just to listen to them, or that they honestly wanted to hear about
Emmy’s experiences. Later, she’d realized that, a lot of times,
what they really wanted was someone to blame if things went wrong.
She’d been compassionate and generous with way too many girls who’d
ended up pointing their fingers at her and claiming she’d given
them bad advice, pushed them too hard to consider themselves gay,
or discouraged them from claiming their true selves in some way. It
was exhausting.
“Can I just ask you something?” Riva’s voice
was plaintive.
Was the whole world really this full of need?
Emmy tried to think of people who gave something to her in return.
Mrs. Figueroa. Her dad. Maybe Daisy, now that Emmy had demanded it.
And, of course, there used to be Iris. There was a time when Iris
had given so much that Emmy wouldn’t have cared if everyone else in
the world just took.
“Fine,” Emmy said. She didn’t sound generous,
but she couldn’t do any better. “What’s
your
one
question?”
Riva blinked, obviously not understanding why
Emmy emphasized the word she did. “I just wondered…when did you
know? About yourself? How did you figure it out?”
“I always knew,” Emmy said impatiently.
“There wasn’t anything to figure out. I
couldn’t
be
straight.”
“Oh.” Riva’s face fell. She’d obviously been
looking for another answer, but that wasn’t Emmy’s problem. Emmy
had told the truth, and she didn’t see why she should have to read
Riva’s mind and figure out exactly the thing she needed to
hear.
Riva took back the note and shoved it in her
pocket. She looked like she might cry, and Emmy’s conscience
prickled again. She couldn’t spend the week making girls burst into
tears.
“Whatever you have to figure out,” she said,
“you’re going to have to be the one to figure it out. We’re
different people.” Emmy shrugged. “Thanks for apologizing, but the
next time you’re doing that, maybe try not to make it all about
you. It’s not my job to help you. It’s really not my job
considering what you did the other day in school. And maybe think
about how you can work out your questions without hurting anybody
else. Whatever girl you like, she probably doesn’t need to get
drawn into this nonsense with your boyfriend.” She shook her head.
“I’m sorry if that’s harsh.”