The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(31)

“You ever met your cousin?” she asks. “He don’t get mad at nothing.”

I roll my eyes thoughtlessly. “Well, that’s not true,” I say. “He’s not a saint.”

“Nah,” Jamal says. “I don’t think he was pissed at her.”

“Why?”

“He never said a harsh word about her,” Jamal says. “Only thing he ever said was how she was fun and we would’ve liked her.”

This time Kandis rolls her eyes. “No one’s more fun than me. I doubt I would’ve liked her.”

“That’s because you’re a hateful troll who’d set the world on fire and watch it burn before you admitted liking anything or anyone,” Dafne says, but there’s a playful smile in her eyes.

Kandis nods. “True.”

“It sucks she died, though,” Jamal says, going on like the girls hadn’t interrupted. “Sudden like that?” He shakes his head. “I had a brother die quick that way, and I never stop thinking about the shit I didn’t tell him. Wondering if I could’ve saved him.”

Kandis and Dafne glance at each other and then at him, and I want to ask more, but I get the feeling this isn’t a subject Jamal needs me to drag out.

“What would you do if you died and then came back?” I ask.

“Like a zombie?” I turn around; it’s Adonis with Gwen.

“Not a zombie,” I say. “But everyone still thinks you’re dead, so you can’t see the people you love.”

Dafne grimaces. “Sounds horrible.”

“Yeah,” Kandis says. “If I’m not dismembering my enemies and eating their brains, what’s the point?”

I’m about to answer, even though I’m pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, when I feel a sharp pain where my stomach should be, followed by horrific noise that sounds like the lowest note of a trombone. Coming from me. Coming out of me.

The dog yelps and leaps from my lap, skittering across the deck. Everyone stops at once. Their heads swivel and turn toward me, and then Jamal raises his hand to his nose and says, “Holy shit, girl!”

I stand so fast and hard that I knock over my chair, and I run inside and lock myself in the bathroom.





DINO

LEON SPENDS THE WALK TO Rafi’s house ranting about Gwen and Adonis. I’m grateful to him for acting like a buffer between me and Rafi and keeping us from having to discuss what he said.

Rafi loves me.

Rafi loves me.

Rafi loves me.

The last one is the most difficult to parse. In a way, I expected him to say it sooner because Rafi’s full of love and he gives it away so easily. The kids at the community center are a perfect example. He’s their age, but he acts like he’s their big brother. They come from wherever they’ve been, dragging their problems behind them, and he offers them friendship and love and doesn’t ask for anything in return. And they love him back whether he asks them to or not. Most of the time they don’t even deserve him. But Rafi’s declaration is still a surprise, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

“I mean, who does she think she is?” Leon says for at least the tenth time. Leon’s squat but muscular, and he walks like he’s on his way to kill someone. The first time I met him, I thought he didn’t like me, but Rafi told me he always looks that way. Resting Serial Killer Face, they call it at the center. “She’s got nothing I don’t have.”

“You know it’s not about you, right?” Rafi says.

“How are you gonna say Adonis dumped me, hooked up with Gwen, and then she brought him here to rub it in my face, but it’s not about me?”

Rafi shrugs. “When you love someone and they don’t love you in return, it can feel like everything they do is an attack. But most of the time, they’re as confused as you are.”

“So I’m just supposed to let this happen?”

“Pretty much,” Rafi says.

Leon kicks a rock as we finally turn onto Rafi’s street. “That’s shit advice, Raf.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t get to control how other people feel,” he says. “The only thing we get to control is how we feel. So you can keep on hurting and letting that hurt turn into hate until you get to the point where you can’t even be in the same room with Adonis, or you can take the feelings you had for him and find some way to nurture them into friendship.”

“Why the hell would I want that?”

Rafi glances at me before answering Leon. “Friendship with someone you love isn’t a consolation prize.”

I’m a little anxious when we get to the house. I hope July hasn’t done anything stupid, but it’s July, so I have no idea what I’m going to find.

Jamal’s in my face the second we walk through the door. “Dude, your cousin locked herself in the toilet and won’t come out.”

Yeah, I did not see that coming.

Rafi follows me upstairs. Dafne and Kandis are standing outside the door.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Kandis is saying. “I’ve done worse; trust me.”

I clear my throat. “Hey.”

“Good, you’re here,” Dafne says. But Kandis goes, “We got this,” and I’m not sure what to do.