When We Collided(40)
Sound needier, Jonah, seriously. But I won’t take it back. It’s true.
“Jonah.” Her whisper shivers in the air between us. “I’m trying to live to the fullest; I’m trying to feel everything. I prioritize experiences over anything or anyone, and maybe that isn’t easy for you to accept, and I’m sorry, but that’s who I am.”
A non-apology. I didn’t expect one anyway—not her style.
Vivi shifts across my twin bed, straddling herself over me. She looks right into my face. “Jonah, I think you’re a wonderful person with a soul that reaches so far beyond your years. And maybe the humane thing to do would be to leave you alone because I’m not ever going to be some kind of dutiful, well-behaved girlfriend. But I don’t want to leave you alone.”
It is very, very hard to think with her on top of me. “Dutiful? I don’t even want whatever you just said.”
“Okay. Then how about you just let me be me, and I’ll let you be you. We’ll feel everything we feel and not apologize for it. If we get mad at each other, we’ll have it out. And then we’ll make up.”
That’s just it: Vivi does allow me to be myself. She never shoves me out of my sad moods. She never tries to talk me out of my frustrations. Vivi is all action—let’s go to the beach, let’s write a play, let’s build an ice-cream sundae bar at the house and then play Candy Land while watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with the littles.
She leans close to me, offering her lips for the taking. “Jonah. Make up with me.”
I pull her in and kiss her. With teeth against her lips. Because I’m still mad. And because we fit together. And even when we don’t, clashing only makes more sparks.
In the movies, the music always starts up right about now, slowly louder with a solid beat. When a girl sneaks into your bedroom, it’s surprisingly quiet. But everything sounds loud for fear of being caught—mouths against skin, pieces of clothing dropping to the floor. Heavy breathing and the drone of the thought, This is happening, this is happening. And eventually the sound of your own voice asking, Are you sure? What you get in return is, apparently, a muffled giggle and the words, Yes. God, you’re so cute. It kills me. You try not to think that it seems so casual for her. You try to convince yourself you feel the same. But you don’t. Your feelings fill the room like an angry fire. Your feelings for her could blow the glass out of the windows.
When I wake up in the morning, she’s gone. The sheets are pulled back from her side, and there’s a black Sharpie on the floor that I guess fell off my desk when I was fumbling around for a condom. It takes me until I’m getting dressed to notice, on the wood of my headboard where it meets the mattress, tiny letters: Vivi was here.
As if I’d forget.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vivi
For two weeks after the bonfire, everything I paint is midnight and gold and maroon and ballet-slipper pink. Passionate and deep and metallic. I rip up an old dress—black with thin gold stripes—and sew it into a crop top and high-waisted shorts that look perfect on me. My mom decides I can keep the Vespa if I always wear my helmet and repay my account with money I make from my job. At the pottery shop, I glaze broken pieces from the kiln and make them into a mosaic for Whitney. I teach the littles how to swing dance using online videos and my own pizzazz. We have a picnic in the backyard, we decorate cookies in the shape of suns and palm trees and beach balls, we build a sand fortress at the beach.
I kiss Jonah Daniels four thousand times, every second his family isn’t looking. We bicker about everything on planet earth and beyond. I think jellyfish are so beautiful! Translucent and dancing underwater in fringed skirts. Jonah wishes they would drop dead in the sea. I like boxed mac and cheese with that gooey yellow cheese sauce. Jonah’s face turns pink with frustration, and he makes me homemade mac and cheese to prove his point. And of course I believe in extraterrestrial life! I bet they’ve already been here, I say, but Jonah shakes his head.
I drag him out to the beach late, late at night to see the sun rise. But we get all tangled up, tongues and skin and hands and gasps and yes, and, by the time I’m fully aware of the world again, it’s gone from dark to glowing. I don’t care that I missed the sunrise, because I’d much rather make one of my own.
My birthday dress arrives, and I hang it on a nail in the wall because it is art. I order white butterfly wings online, and it takes me three tries to mix the perfect blue paint.
On the day of my birthday, I open my eyes to the sound of my mom’s off-key voice singing me “Happy Birthday.” I wasn’t sleeping, but I was lying in bed, dreaming. She’s holding an oversize strawberry cupcake in her hands, and the tall gold candle flickers as she walks toward me.
“Make a wish, chickadee,” she says.
I sit up and blow it out and make my wish, and we relax against my pillows, devouring the cupcake and ignoring the crumbs that drop to my duvet cover. I open her glittery card, and a gift card for my favorite online art store falls out. There’s also a scrap of paper which reads: IOU, Save This Ticket.
“It’s not quite ready yet. I pick it up on Saturday.” Her smile is very self-satisfied, so I’m intrigued. “Oh, and I almost forgot! This came for you, too.”
She hands me a white envelope with my name in handwriting I know well enough to imitate. Return address: Ruby Oshiro, Seattle, WA, and I stop breathing.