Last Night at the Telegraph Club(32)
“Shirley went to school already,” Flora announced. “She asked me to tell you not to wait for her.”
Humiliation burned through Lily, but she tried to hide it behind cool resignation. “We should get going, then, or we’ll be late,” she said. She was distinctly aware that Shirley had sent Flora to do her dirty work, to show by her very absence that Lily wasn’t in her circle anymore.
She saw Eddie give her a curious look, but she didn’t meet her brother’s eyes as they proceeded up Grant Avenue. It was early enough in the morning that workers were still carrying crates of produce from the sidewalks into the markets. Lily sidestepped boxes of Napa cabbage and ginger, and narrowly missed two men carrying half a pig into a butcher shop. The skin was a waxy pink, the pig’s hoof jutting out at an obscene angle as if it was about to kick her. She hurried past, her stomach clenching as if the hoof had met its mark.
As they joined their other friends on the way out of Chinatown, the surreptitious glances cast in her direction told her they all already knew. If Lily had any doubt that Shirley was giving her the cold shoulder, it was squashed when she noticed that Will wasn’t waiting with Hanson. Will had gone ahead with Shirley, just the two of them.
Lily kept her head down and shoved her sweaty hands into her jacket’s pockets and followed Flora and Hanson and the rest of them, pretending she didn’t care. She let herself fall behind until she was trailing them all. She didn’t see anything but the dirty gray sidewalk a few feet ahead of her and Flora’s legs as she walked, and then she lost sight of Flora entirely and only gazed down at the ground.
At Francisco Street, Eddie turned right toward the junior high, and Lily turned left. As she trudged along the street, she allowed the gap between her and her friends to stretch until they were half a block apart, until she could only hear snatches of their conversation tossed back on the wind. Once or twice Flora glanced over her shoulder at Lily, slowing down as if she would wait for her, but she never slowed down enough, and Lily never made the effort to catch up.
When she and Shirley had been little, they had been very close. They’d liked all the same things: Smarties, which they pretended were medicine prescribed by Lily’s father; Bambi and Black Beauty; and later, Archie Andrews on the radio. Lily had always been the Betty to Shirley’s Veronica. They rarely fought, and when they did, Lily often felt like the petty one who clung to bruised feelings for too long. Shirley never held a grudge (at least, not openly) and was the generous and big-hearted one whom everyone sided with. Now Lily realized that Shirley never apologized for anything; she simply assumed that Lily would forgive her—and she did.
When Lily arrived at Galileo, there were only a few minutes left before the bell. At her locker, she saw Shirley and their friends gathered in a closed circle across the hall. Some of them eyed her as she passed; some of them whispered behind cupped hands. Had Shirley told them why she and Lily had fallen out? Had she started a rumor about Lily and Kath? The thought made her nervous, but it also made her angry.
Lily finished at her locker. Carrying her books in her arms, she turned her back on Shirley’s group and headed to Miss Weiland’s classroom. There was Kath coming down the hallway, carefully not looking at Lily as usual. And Lily suddenly knew what she could do.
“Kath!” she called. “Wait for me!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw everyone in Shirley’s group turn their heads to watch. She saw Kath stop and look at her in surprise. Kath’s gaze flickered behind her, then back at Lily.
“What’s going on?” Kath asked.
“I thought we’d go to class together.” Lily felt her heart beat a little too fast in her chest as she waited for Kath’s response, and for a terrible moment she wondered whether she had made a mistake. Maybe Kath didn’t want to be seen with her either.
But then Kath cocked her head in Shirley’s direction and asked quietly, “You’re not going with them?”
“No.”
For a moment, Kath’s expression opened. Something like hope, or happiness, passed across her face, and Lily caught her breath.
“All right,” Kath said. “Let’s go.”
They went together, and Lily didn’t look back.
17
The bowling balls were lined up on the rack like a series of planets: marbleized blue and violet, sparkling red and deep green streaked with white. Lily chose the red one for luck, because she suspected she’d be terrible at bowling, and slid her fingers into the deep finger wells.
“That one’s too big for you,” Kath said. “Try this one.” She pointed to the smaller green one. “And don’t use your fingers to lift it—it’s too heavy. Carry it with both hands.”
Lily was surprised by the ball’s weight. “How am I supposed to throw this?”
Laughter drifted from the mixed couples group a few lanes down. Lily glanced over to see one of the men placing his hands on his girlfriend’s hips, coaxing her into position while she tossed a flirtatious smile at him.
“You don’t throw it,” Kath said. “Come over here.”
Lily carried her green bowling ball over to where Kath was standing, several feet away from the start of their lane. She could still see the flirting couple out of the corner of her eye; the way the woman leaned into the man’s hands.