The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(56)

“Why were we friends, again?”

“Because you were a freak and I was a freak, and being two freaks together was better than being two freaks alone.”

“You should put that on a T-shirt,” Dino says.

“Maybe I will, but I doubt anyone would buy them.”

Dino drives to the park near his house, grabs a blanket out of his trunk that I’d used for a pillow earlier, and we lie on the grass under the moonlit sky.

“Do you know how much dog shit there is in this grass?” I ask.

“That’s why I brought the blanket.”

“Right,” I say. Then, “Hey, I’m sorry about your biology exam.”

“Okay?”

I sit up on my elbow and look at Dino. “I’m serious. I should have stolen the money from Momma or beat up a Girl Scout. Screwing over your bio grade, even to take you to the greatest concert of your entire life, wasn’t cool, and I’m sorry.”

Dino’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “It was a great concert.”

“Remember how the band came out wearing VR goggles?”

“Yeah. What was up with that?”

“I read that they’d rigged special cameras in the club to watch us in VR.”

“So even though they were on stage, they were watching us in virtual reality instead of with their eyes?”

“Basically.”

“That’s really odd or really awesome.”

“Why not both?”

Dino chuckles. “Wasn’t that the night I got a flat tire on the way home and that Jeep full of Dr. Frank-N-Furters on their way to a Rocky Horror Picture Show party stopped to help us?”

“No, that was the night we told our parents we were going to Homecoming but went to that weird interactive play that was Hamlet in interpretive dance held in an old hotel.”

“Yes!” Dino says. “I loved that play.”

“I hated it.”

“Only because they didn’t let you talk while we explored.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. True.” For this second, things feel the way they used to. Me and Dino against the world. We don’t need anyone else, we don’t want anyone else. We have each other, and that’s enough.

“Dino?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to die,” I say. “But I also kind of want to die.”

“Yeah.”

I slap his chest. “You’re supposed to say you don’t want me to die either.”

“What if I do a little?” I slap him again and he laughs and says, “Kidding!”

“Seriously though, I keep thinking if I don’t die, no one else will either. That woman in the hospital, countless others suffering throughout the world, your grandmother.”

“Hey!”

“Do you honestly want her annoying you about not becoming a mortician for the rest of eternity?”

“On second thought,” he says. “Go to the light, Grandma.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

Dino’s supposed to have the answer. I think I expected he’d solve this problem eventually. I get us into trouble; Dino gets us out. It’s the way our relationship works best. Without me, he never would have gone to concerts or skipped school, and without him, I would have wound up in jail. But he doesn’t have the answer this time. Maybe there isn’t one.

“Why’d you actually break up with Rafi?” I ask. Mostly to fill the silence.

“I don’t know that either.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you romantically and sexually attracted to him?”

“Do we have to talk about this?”

I turn toward him. “We used to be able to talk about everything.”

Dino sighs and then sits up and faces me. “Yes, I like him. He’s funny and brave and compassionate. He’s kind of conceited, too, but that’s only to hide how massively insecure he is. He’s handsome, and I think I’d be okay with him being my first but, truthfully, I’m not ready for anyone to be my first yet, not that he’s pressured me. He’s not like that.” He pauses thoughtfully. “I think Rafi makes me a better person.”

“Then why break up with him?”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a better person,” he says. “Maybe I liked me the way I was when I didn’t care about how I dressed or when I cared more about sleeping in than I did about waking up before dawn to clean the beach.”

I take Dino’s hand and play with his fingers. “Remember how I said you’d changed?” Dino nods. “I meant it. But I don’t think the changes are bad.”

“Aren’t they? I’m not me anymore, July.”

“You’ll always be you. This is simply a better version of you.”

“But what if it’s not who I want to be?”

I shrug. “Then you let it go. Become someone else for a while.” I pause for a second. “But I don’t think you broke up with Rafi because you disliked who you were becoming. I think you did it because you were afraid you didn’t deserve to become that person.”

“No,” Dino says. “That’s not—”