Love Edy (28 page)

Twenty-six bones comprised the feet,
knitting together with thirty-three joints, delicate bits of bone
that shuddered in duress and shattered with abuse. Aches, breaks,
gritting teeth, and pained smiles—that was the truth of being a
dancer. Joy mistaken for meekness and flames mistaken for
smoldering cinders, she had passion fused down to the soul and
cells, passion that ruptured on stage. To think Edy Phelps weak was
their mistake. It was a mistake with consequences, though.

~~~

Wyatt stepped into the boys’ bathroom and a
wad of wet paper plopped upside his skull. He looked up to see
dozens of similar clumps, all affixed to the ceiling with little
more than water and a strong throw. Given the course his luck
usually took, it seemed appropriate that all of them should rain
down on him at once. That was life for Wyatt Green, one more blow
when he was down, ten more when he could take no more.

Edy. Hassan.
His
Edy with Hassan.

Not for the first time that morning, he bit
down on his bottom lip, hoping to supply real pain in the place of
heartbreak.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered to the face in the
mirror. “Not here. Not now.”

The face looking back at him made a
different claim, that he could do nothing but cry. So, He let it
happen, the shudders racking his body, the tears flooding and
spilling over, one after another until the trickle became a
river.

This was the way it had happened with
Lottie, the way he’d lost Lottie.

There could be no bearing that again, that
rupturing and emptiness, the aching, utter despair. He’d do
anything to avoid it.

He had nothing. He’d always been the boy
with nothing. Parents that couldn’t care. Bills they couldn’t pay.
Loneliness that never left.

As a kid, he made peace with his bitter
existence, with nights too cold and blankets too few. He’d never
tried for more, never even thought he could have more—more than
loneliness and hunger pains and words of impatience.

But then Lottie had come, with a smile for
him and hugs for him, and endless hours of walks and talks all
just for him
.

Then the other guy came and they weren’t for
him anymore—Lottie wasn’t for him anymore.

The accident happened soon after that. The
terrible thing he couldn’t explain, the need to just
be
with
her, the fog in his brain, the screams. Nothing else.

They’d had to move.

No one accepted Wyatt’s version of events
and he and his family
had
to move.

By the time Boston came, he’d given up on
smiles, hugs, walks and talks, given up until the moment he saw
Edy. Even a flicker of that smile had told him what he hadn’t been
able to believe: that life, love, even loving were all still his to
have.

But then Hassan showed up. The boy who had
everything wanted even her for himself. Hassan wanted his share,
and Wyatt’s share of Edy, even when Wyatt had so little to
give.

He couldn’t have it.

He absolutely couldn’t have the one thing
Wyatt had left.

~~~

Grateful for the bell that signified escape
from trig, Edy filed into the hall and stopped at the sight of
Chloe and Lawrence blocking her locker. She braced herself for
hysteria. Since there had been none at the skating rink, she
expected double the next day. They were warped that way.

“Hey, Cake,” Hassan said and wrapped an arm
around her in greeting. Around them, the hallway swelled to
capacity.

“Aren’t they gonna fight?” she said.

“Probably not today. They’ve been back
together for a week or so, so it’ll be another few days before they
fight.”

“But about what?” Edy said, as she followed
him in a short shot to his locker.

Hassan spun through his combination and
threw open the door.

“Now I wouldn’t be a good friend if I told
you that, would I?”

Lips pursed, Edy eyed the couple. Chloe
giggled about something, and Lawrence shifted, leaning in as if
wanting to be closer without detection.

A thought occurred to Edy. “Was it about
what went on this summer?”

Hassan stiffened. “Tell me. Are we talking
about Chloe and Lawrence or me and you?”

“Hassan.”

“Listen.” He switched over to Punjabi.
“This wasn’t the easy decision—you and me. I fought it, and you
know how stubborn I can be. Everything we know tells us this’ll
never work. Centuries of history say that we’ll have to grow up,
that we’ll have to accept who we are and what we’re not meant to
be.”

“But?” she said in English.

He turned to her.

“
But I haven’t thought about anything
more than I’ve thought about being with you.”
He hesitated, as
if considering how to proceed. “Whoever I’m meant to be,” he said,
switching over to gentle English. “Whoever I’m meant to grow
into—that person is supposed to be with you. I know that.”

He’d said it as if it were some bare
minimum, as if his being with her weren’t the thing she craved like
oxygen. Words tangled like brambles in her mouth. She gave up on
speaking and threw her arms around him instead.

“Mmm,” Hassan said. “I should have said that
back when I was naked and looking for towels.”

A burst of laughter tore from Edy, and she
shoved him, though his body didn’t budge.

“If you two are done . . .” Lawrence said,
appearing at their side. “I’d like to go. I’m starving.”

Hassan slammed his locker shut. “We’re done.
Just waiting for you two to finish rubbing noses and building your
nest or whatever it is you do.”

Lawrence scalded him with a look. Beneath
it, though, embarrassment reigned.

“Relax,” Hassan said and threw an arm around
his best friend. The words that followed were masked in a low
baritone. When Lawrence shoved him away, both were grinning.

“You never shut up, do you?” he said.

“Not when I can help it,” Hassan said.

Lawrence, Hassan, Edy and Chloe started down
the hall, only to have their path staved off by Wyatt.

“Oh. Hey,” he said, as if his meeting them
was accidental, despite the obvious intention in his cutting them
off.

“Hey,” Edy said when it became apparent that
no one else would answer. “How are you?”

What was with the thick feel of awkwardness?
The sudden weight of needing to apologize, though for what, she
couldn’t be sure?

“Well, I heard the news about you two. I
just wanted to . . . come over and say congrats, I guess,” Wyatt
said.

Hassan raised a brow.

Edy frowned. “But I thought—”

“I was being overprotective.” He shot a
smile at Hassan. “Turns out you guys don’t have a monopoly on that
after all.”

Hassan and Lawrence exchanged a look, faces
like granite. Wyatt’s smile melted.

“We got off to a rough start,” he continued.
“And I’d like to try again. You’ll find I’m not half as bad as I
look.”

He extended a hand to Hassan. A covert
glance left and right told Edy they had more attention than they
needed.

With a sigh, Hassan accepted Wyatt’s
handshake.

“Alright,” he said. “Second test drive. Sit
with us at lunch. We’re heading over now.”

The five of them took off again, picking up
the twins along the way. Seamlessly, the Dyson brothers and Hassan
fell toward the back, where remnants of whispers wafted forward.
She heard her name and Wyatt’s more than once.

It turned out he’d have to do a lot more
than shake hands to be one of the boys.

~~~

Edy hated lunch. She’d hated it ever since
the first day of junior high, when she’d sat down with Hassan, the
Dysons, and Kyle, and Sandra Jacobs had asked if five boys were at
the table, or six. It was a stupid thing, the equivalent of calling
her a tomboy, Hassan supposed, but Edy’d cried just the same. He’d
always meant to ask her why. Now, as Sandra Jacobs approached with
Eva Meadows and the redhead in tow, Hassan knew one thing: there
was no way in hell they were sitting with them. Not when he was
just getting somewhere with Edy.

Lawrence and Hassan exchanged a wide-eyed
and desperate look, but the twins were already on it. They stood
and slipped into the girls’ paths, mouths splitting with the width
of phony smiles. The group took another table a few rows down, made
up of the twins and those three girls. Kyle brought the twins’
lunch trays over and returned without a word. It seemed Hassan
wasn’t the only one who remembered that day.

Hassan looked up, mouth grim with the
promise of what might have happened, only to find Wyatt watching
him. He made a note of it, filing it away for later contemplation
as the group ate in silence.

 One of the earliest lessons Hassan’s father
had taught him was that man wrought consequences for all his
actions, whether they came in the moment or delayed until
later.

As it was, the consequences of lunch
barreled straight toward them, or rather, straight for the twins.
Mason’s gaze cut left long enough to recognize the danger before he
took a step toward the boy’s bathroom.

“Don’t you dare try to get away, Mason
Humphrey Dyson! I will come in that bathroom after you!” Alyssa
Curtis yelled.

Kyle mouthed “Humphrey” in amusement as she
sliced the distance between them, looming despite her slender
stature, jet-black locks like windshield wipers with each furious
step she took. All around them, people stopped for the show.

“Alyssa. Let me explain.” Mason glanced at
Hassan.

“You shut up!”

She rushed Mason, only to blast him upside
the head with her backpack, books hitting the floor as she struck
him again. Mason threw up his arms, fumbling and tangling in
backpack straps in the worst attempt to protect himself, as the
boys around him gave her the widest berth. Only Hassan, who knew
that he was inadvertently responsible for this attack, stayed
planted, as if his presence might somehow lessen the embarrassment
in the end.

“Would you stop playing already!” Mason
hollered. “That hurts!”

“You think I’m playing?” Alyssa cried. She
tanked him with another blow. “Didn’t I tell you that if you ever
hurt me again—”

“It was
lunch!
And you don’t own me.”
Mason straightened his posture in an attempt at decency and fare,
laughter wavering at the edges of his mouth. “Anyway, I’m a free
agent. I can do what I want.”

“Oh, you little tramp.” She hurled the bag
in face, but he swiped it away before she took to beating at his
chest like a wild woman.

“Lawrence,” Mason cried. “Matt? Hassan? A
little help here!”

“We are
done
,” Alyssa hissed. She
grabbed her bag and began hurling stuff into it. Edy, who had stood
a safe distance away across the hall, came over to help.

“Fine,” Mason said. “We’re done. You see I
don’t care.”

Alyssa stood, her mess of books forgotten,
with a face like the Maine lobsters they boiled in the summer.

“Don’t try and call me when no one’s
listening. Telling me you love me. That you’ve always been in love
with me. To hell with you, Mason Dyson.”

Grinning, Matt bent to hand her a book only
to have it snatched out of his hand.

“And you,” she said. “Don’t think I’m not
telling Jessica about how the two of you got all chummy with the
skanks at lunch. Every week you’re begging her to come to Georgia
with you, you trash. And to think we almost went. Both of you can
get lost.”

She filled her backpack, slung it on, and
shot a glare at Hassan that made him step back. Alyssa cleared a
path for herself by shoving Lawrence into a locker.

“Mason—” Hassan said in grinning
apology.

“Shut up, you coward,” Mason said and turned
away from the stares of a too-swollen crowd.

Four periods sat between lunch and practice
at the end of the day. Hassan spent them contemplating the
handshake he’d shared with Wyatt. How many ways was it possible to
turn over a single gesture, examining it for the truth beneath?
There were an endless assortment of possibilities, it turned out,
and reflection was what he did best. The cultivation of
anticipation was what separated him on the field from others, what
made him able to read tea leaves on each play, anticipating every
possibility like some master of divination.

People didn’t speak truth so much as wear
it, cloaked in veiled gazes, draped in deception. Wyatt Green had
extended a hand of friendship with a smile that started too late
and a palm damp to the touch.

Hassan’s initial reaction had been to slap
the hand from his face and call Wyatt for what he was, a sneak on
the aim to get closer to his girl. But it would have left him
looking like the jerk in what appeared to others to be a genuine
gesture of friendship.

He decided to take another approach.

After the final bell, Hassan stepped out
into the hall where he waited for his new friend. Fingers drumming
the straps of his backpack as he wore it, he considered the sort of
fool Wyatt Green took him to be. Slow enough to miss deception when
he saw it. Dumb enough to not know when a man wanted his girl.
Naïve enough to let him try something.

It occurred to Hassan to break him, to lift
the boy whose body resembled driftwood, snap him over his knee, and
toss him in the Charles River. His jaw tightened the moment Edy and
Wyatt emerged from class. The two weaved over.

“Long day, right?” Wyatt said. “A.P. classes
plus football must be a killer.”

The verdict was in. He definitely took
Hassan for a fool. No matter, they’d straighten that out in a
second.

A steady backwards count in Hassan’s mind
reeled in the last vestiges of nastiness. He replaced it with a
grin.

He was ready.

“Let’s take a walk,” Hassan said and clapped
him on the back. “Just me and you for a second.”

The sunshine façade Wyatt wore fell away
like papier-mâché in the rain.