The Inside of Out (25 page)

Either the crowd fell into woozy silence or I went deaf from shock.

My arms were still pinned under QB's chest, my face stuck to his like chewing gum. His eyes were open, locked on mine in mute panic. He was enjoying this about as much as I was.

Natalie,
my brain gasped.
Trying . . . make . . . jealous . . .

And then, like a taut rubber band, he broke away—nearly dropping me in the process of trying to discern whether his grand gesture had had the desired effect on his ex.

He didn't even seem to notice when I slapped him across the face. And neither did the reporters. They'd become a fallen beehive, frenzied, crowding, shouting orders to their cameramen, attacking me with questions I couldn't hear, some staggering back as if repulsed, most buzzing with barely disguised glee.

I'd just handed them a new angle.

Famous lesbian caught kissing a boy.

Raina was at my elbow in an instant.

“Let's recamp,” she said, and not knowing what that meant,
I let her lead me away, her arms blocking one side of me while reporters swarmed the other. I ducked, my own hand raised, as we reached the edge of the square. The Secret Service were guarding Andy Lawrence's car. At the sight of them, most of the press dropped away, but the cameras kept rolling from a distance, getting footage of me leaving in disgrace.

I should stay,
I thought numbly.
I should explain
.

Lie,
you mean. Again.

It felt better to run.

I risked a glance back at the flagpole as we took to the sidewalk. Hannah was sitting on the flag's pedestal. Still crying. Natalie was gone. Had they broken up?

Raina's phone beeped with a text. She glanced down and quickly up, then tugged me faster down the block.

“Cal says good job, now go home and get some rest,” Raina announced. “The photo's popped up online. He says we'll figure it out in the morning.”

I stared at her phone as she pocketed it. The actual text read: “
SEND HER HOME
.”

“So, are you dating QB?” Raina asked the question past me.

“No.” We turned into an alley. “Definitely not. At all.”

“Then let's see about pressing charges.”

“No!” I stopped walking to face her. “He's an idiot, but no. We can't do that to him.”

“Why?
Why
can't we do that to him?” She dug her fingers into my shoulders. “That was
assault,
Daisy. Why won't you admit this to yourself? This seems to be a pattern with—”

“Trust me, this is totally different from . . . yeah.”

“Why? What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing!”

She let go and spun away, then turned back. “Maybe we say you're bisexual.” Raina ran her hand over her face. Paused. Peered past my shoulder. Voices rose up around the corner. “Come on, walk, this is about to get ugly.”

Sure enough, the reporters had doubled around the security barricade to corner us.

“Daisy, are you dating that boy?” “Daisy, does this mean you've broken up with your girlfriend?” “Daisy, were you
ever
gay?”—and that one was so asinine that I actually looked to see who'd asked it.

Instead, I turned to find Adam Cohen staring at me from the center of the press horde. There was a closed look in his eyes that I hadn't seen since that first day at the Moonlight Coffee Shop when I'd sent his computer hurtling to the ground. Just as I was about to bum-rush the crowd, grab his hand, and make a break for it, both of us, together, he took one step back, tucking his iPhone into his pocket, and disappeared into the sea of faces.

A warm arm wrapped around my shoulder.

“No more. We're going home,” Mom said into my ear, then turned to the reporters. “No comment, folks!”

Her hand shook as she walked us quickly away from Raina and the reporters, down the alley to the waiting Veggiemobile. My feet skipped every few steps to keep up with her. I could tell what she really wanted to do was sprint, but she was trying to preserve our dignity.

We had a second to breathe once the car doors slammed
shut, and then reporters surrounded us, shouting melodramatic questions, like
“What does this mean for America's Homecoming?”

Mom rolled her window down an inch, then thought better of it, yelled “Shoo!” and revved the engine. It worked. They scampered like rats, and away we drove. We'd made it two blocks, both of us still panting, when she turned to me with a painfully hopeful smile and said, “Your speech was excellent, sweetheart. I'm
sure
that's what they'll report on.”

I didn't dare look at my phone until the next morning. And then I wished I hadn't.

The first message was from Jack. “We're in trouble. The only thing they're talking about is that kiss. Call me back. We need to fix this.”

I peeked at the morning news. First headline:

GAY ACTIVIST DAISY BEAUMONT-SMITH CAUGHT WITH HUNKY BOYFRIEND

I couldn't tell you what was more excruciating, their use of “hunky” or the photo that accompanied the headline. They must have found the one millisecond in which my eyes had closed from the shock of having QB's giant head squished against my own, so it looked romantic, like that World War II photo of the sailor kissing the nurse, probably as unwilling a recipient of affection as I'd been.

The second voicemail was from Adam. “You could have told me.”

That was it. What the hell.

Third one from Mr. Murphy. Dear, reliable Mr. Murphy,
who was just “Calling to check in and see whether you might be able to finish that mural!”

I replayed that message three times as a distraction.

Fourth message. Hannah. Except she sounded more like the ghost of Hannah, her voice dry and raspy, wind through leaves.

“We broke up. Thought you'd like to know.”

I was right. I felt a shameful rush of glee.

And then, on the message, a sigh.

“
QB,
Daisy? Just a rumor? Really?”

She should have known better than that. And yet . . . was she that far off? I'd gone on three pseudo-dates with the fool. I knew about his childhood, his hopes and fears, his everlasting devotion to his one true love, Natalie Beck. We were— perversely—kind of going out.

The last message was from the man himself. Romeo. Casanova. Pepé le Pew.

“I'm really sorry, Daisy. I feel like an asshole. Yeah, okay, I am an asshole. Call me if you want to talk?”

QB meant well, but he also meant “
listen to me
talk.” I'd had just about enough of that.

I called Adam back first, partly because his beat poem of a message was by far the most intriguing, and partly because of reasons I wasn't willing to examine at this particular juncture. He picked up on the first ring.

“What
.
”

“Whoa,” I said. “I'm calling to find out what exactly I
could have told you
. You already knew I was straight, yes? Thus the speech dilemma?”

“So you're dating this kid?”

“Kid?” I snorted. “He's like a year younger than you, college boy. And no. I'm not dating him.”

“Just a casual thing, then. Were you with him last night? Is that why you're only calling me back now?”

“
What?
” I snapped, unwilling to dignify his crazy question with a rational answer. “Why do you even care? You've got your articles. Aren't you supposed to be maintaining a journalistic distance?”

I don't matter to you,
I thought.
I'm only a story. Tell me I'm wrong,
please
tell me I'm wrong.

I gripped the desk so hard it jolted, making that awful photo pop up again, this time in a new article questioning whether the whole event was a hoax.

“I will from now on, that's for damn sure.” While I was processing that, he started to sputter. “
College boy
? I'm
college boy
now?”

“Why is that insulting?” I stood from my desk chair. “It's what you are, remember? Or have you spent so much time on James Island that you've forgotten where your own campus is?”

“I'm there right now.”

He sounded confused. I made it clearer.

“Good. Maybe you can make some friends your own age.”

I leaned against the desk and waited.

“You're right,” he said.

Not what I expected.

“This whole thing . . . making friends, or whatever, with . . .” He sighed, cleared his throat, and when he talked again, it was with Reporter Voice. “It was inappropriate.
It won't happen again. So good luck with your event.”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice as polite as his. “Good luck reporting on my event.”

“Bye, Daisy.”

There was something wistful about the way he said my name, like he'd never say it again. I clutched the phone.

“Adam?”

But he'd already hung up.

Back to the news,
I thought, drawing a cleansing breath that felt like tear gas.
Let's face this head-on.

I made popcorn. Then I googled myself.

“Daisy's straight. She's been dating QB Saunders since . . .”

“The beginning of the year?”

“Yeah, at least. She's just doing this for attention.”

“Definitely for attention. I mean, the whole country's talking about her, right?”

Jenna Jeffers and Kim Shoemaker, freshmen at Palmetto High School, interviewed by the
New York Post

“She
was
gay. She was a lesbian with that Chinese girl—”

{Off-camera: “Hannah von Linden?”}

“I guess, yeah. They were dating for like forever and everybody knew it but nobody wanted to say anything. But then QB turned Daisy straight. She comes to all his games and they're always together. Like, making out everywhere. They're obsessed with each other. I don't know why she's pretending she's still gay. It's weird.”