The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(30)

Shanika, who’s standing behind Gwen and Adonis, pretending she doesn’t realize she’s dripping water on them, says, “Never would’ve figured Dino for acting.”

“For real,” Jamal adds. “Sometimes it seems like the boy can barely play at being himself. Can’t see him pretending to be someone else.”

“He’s not a good actor,” I say. “But we needed more boys and I bullied him into it.”

Kandis’s eyes narrow, and she sits up a little straighter. “I heard his girl—” She snaps her fingers. “What’s her name?”

“July,” Dafne says.

“Yeah,” says Kandis. “July. I heard she made him do acting.”

Right. I did. Not Roxy. “Well, yeah,” I say. “But Dino called to ask my advice, and I told him he should do it. I mean, what’s the point of being gay if you’re not going to be in theater?”

Eight sets of eyes turn on me at once.

“You’re one of those, huh?” Jamal says.

“Stupid people from Tennessee?” I say, realizing I’ve done exactly what Dino expected me to do.

Jamal shakes his head. “One of those straight girls who talks about how much you love gays, but what you actually love is reading about or watching gay dudes make out so you can go on and on about how it’s so cute. You’re all for the cause until it means supporting girls making out or folks who don’t want to make out with anyone or people who don’t identify as boys or girls. You just want your cute boys kissing, and that’s it.”

The whole idea is ridiculous, but the others at the table are nodding, and my defenses snap up. “None of that’s true,” I say. “I support the cause because I love Dino.”

Now that Kandis has found her voice, she keeps raising it to cut me down. “Not because we all deserve to be treated like human beings?”

Charlie, who acts a little younger than the others and seems eager to please them, even jumps in. “You wouldn’t give a shit about none of us if you didn’t know Dino.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” I don’t know how I stepped in it so bad. I was telling stories and they were laughing and now I’ve screwed it up. Dino’s gonna be so pissed. “Can we go back to the first thing I said?”

Jamal throws me a frown. “The thing where you made a broad generalization about gays and theater? Sure, let’s do that.”

“I’ve joked about that with Dino before,” I say. “He thought it was funny. Why are you attacking me for it now?”

Kandis throws up her hands, and she’s not the only one. Shanika’s glaring at me, and Gwen’s shading her eyes like she can’t decide whether she’s embarrassed by or for me.

“First off,” Kandis says, “trying to frame this as an attack is bullshit. Don’t do that. Second, the shit you and Dino joke about in private isn’t the same as the shit you say to people you don’t know.”

“Anyone ever call you a fag?” Jamal asks.

“Or a dyke?” Gwen adds.

“No,” I say.

“Then those jokes don’t belong to you,” Kandis continues. “What you got with Dino is between you and him, but the rest of us don’t want to hear that shit from some girl who thinks she’s with us because she’s got a gay cousin and watches RuPaul and knows how to snap.”

My gut reaction is to storm off. These people don’t know me. They don’t know who I am or what I’ve suffered. They don’t know what I’ve been through with Dino. How I supported him and ensured that no one at school talked shit about or bullied him.

Jamal catches my attention. His eyes have softened a little. “Ask yourself this too: Was Dino really laughing with you? Or was he laughing ’cause he didn’t know how to tell you it wasn’t funny?”

The question might as well be a knife to the gut. Dino hates conflict. He’s the kind of person who’d eat food he was allergic to at someone else’s house to avoid insulting them. I assumed he trusted me enough to tell me when I crossed a line, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he never had.

Gwen and Adonis drift into the house, and Charlie and Andy and Shanika move their party to the hot tub, leaving me with Jamal and Dafne and Kandis. I have a lot of thoughts about what they told me, but I don’t feel confident discussing them. At least not now.

“What do y’all know about July Cooper?” I ask.

“She died,” Jamal says. “Some brain shit.”

Kandis smacks his arm. “She knows that. She’s here for the funeral.”

The dog keeps sniffing at me, so I finally pick him up. “I’m here for the wedding. Delilah’s?”

Jamal gives Kandis a look. “See?”

“He didn’t talk about her much,” Dafne says.

“With me either,” I say. “Did he mention why they stopped being friends?” Bringing this up might not be a great idea seeing as they could tell me things I won’t be able to unhear, but this is my chance to find out what Dino honestly thinks of me.

Kandis slides down in her chair a little and props her feet up on a side table. “I don’t know what that girl did, but it must’ve been pretty bad.”

“Why do you say that?”