Freshman Year (17 page)

As soon as the bus pulls away from the front steps of Gila, one of the varsity girls suddenly shouts, “Stop the bus! I forgot my shoes!”

The bus driver hits the brake, the cards Kate's been dealing out for a game of Speed slide off the seat, and all the varsity girls laugh hysterically. Coach Stahl, the varsity coach, apparently forgot to warn the new driver of this obnoxious tradition. “Ignore them,” he says to the bus driver, and we're on our way, again.

While Kate recounts the cards, I remember my fantasy about Keeta talking to me and flirting with me, as we ramble through the never-ending desert in our yellow vessel of love. For a second, I hold out a secret hope that it might come true but then remind myself that Stef is on this bus to Nogales, too, so I quickly get over it.

Twenty minutes into the trip, Kate's beaten me twice at Speed, which is very rare, but I'm distracted because I have to pee and because I can't stand the thought of Stef and Keeta cuddling in the back. Then, a wad of paper hits my shoulder as I'm shuffling the cards.

“Hey,” I say then pick the note up off the floor and look toward the back of the bus.

Garrett blows me a kiss and laughs. “Read it,” she yells.

As usual, I do as I'm told.

The writing is nearly illegible, but as far as I can tell it says,
Abs, we want you
—then it skips a few lines, as if that's the whole note—
to give us some food. Bring us your stash or risk being pantsed during the game. We are not kidding, either. G and S
.

Kate wants to read the note and I let her, but I don't like the way my two worlds are colliding. I barely won Kate back, with my lies, and I can't stand to lose her again.

“They can threaten me all they want, but they aren't laying their grubby hands on my loot,” I say and shuffle my cards around in my hand. “Moochers.”

Kate doesn't say anything and I feel the tension creep up between us again.

“Too bad for them,” I say but look at Kate for a subtle sign of permission to go back there. It might kill me a little inside, but I like that they want what I have, even if it's just my junk food.

Stef calls my name and yells, “Hey, Abbey. Hope you wore your good
chones
today.”

“Oh my God,” I say. “Do you think they'll actually do it?”

Kate hands me the bag. “It's cool. You should give them some.”

I act nonchalant and shrug like I wasn't waiting for her approval. “Yeah, I guess I should.”

To avoid the embarrassing “Get in your seat!” announcement from our driver, I crawl to the back of the bus on my hands and knees with my bag in my teeth. “Hi, losers,” is all I can think of to say when I arrive.

“Yeah, Abbey!” Garrett cheers and grabs my bag. “Oh, Tai, this is Abbey.”

“Hi,” I say.

“Man, I've heard
all
about you. Nice to meet ya officially.” Then Tai smiles a little too big at me, and I can only imagine what Garrett has told her.

While Stef and Garrett pilfer the food, I try to keep my gaze down because it's weird to see them all sitting so close on that long bench seat, and it's especially painful to see Stef sitting between Keeta's legs, holding her hand. Keeta doesn't say anything to me or even look my way. She just stares blankly out at the desert on the other side of the dirty window.

I shouldn't be surprised, though. I've done such an amazing job avoiding Keeta in guitar. Besides, that whole locker room hand-kissing thing was probably just a moment of temporary insanity on Keeta's part, and maybe that “letter was for you” bit was just a lie. I mean, if I'm lying twenty-four-seven, why should I think everyone else is telling the truth?

After Garrett and Stef clean out all the good stuff, I go back to Kate with a near-empty bag and more questions about Keeta than ever before. But I shove them down and pretend that everything's okay. I have to act normal for Kate. I feel like I owe it to her.

*

I don't dress out for the game because Coach isn't convinced I'm healed enough. Maybe that's why our team kicks some serious Nogales butt. In fact, all three of our teams win, and like they promised, the coaches let us celebrate at the nearby Pizza Hut. We eat, drink large amounts of soda, and are merry. Then we all have to pee.

There's only one girls' toilet in the whole restaurant, and it seems as if all three rosters of players are lined up against the wall in the dark, cramped hallway with our legs crossed. Natalie's banging on the door demanding that Jenn hurry up. When Jenn finally opens the bathroom door, we all cheer, and Nat races in, barely shutting the door before her pants are down.

Since I'm caught up in the fun and trying not to pee my pants, I forget to avert my eyes when Keeta exits the bathroom a few minutes later and makes her way down the narrow hallway to go back to the dining room. There's only one naked lightbulb illuminating us, but I can still clearly see the glow of Keeta's entrancing brown eyes when she looks into mine. Then, just as she's squeezing by me, she slyly reaches out and runs her fingertips across my stomach.
“Perdóname, Amara,”
she whispers.

Her touch and smile make me feel like someone's pushed the pause button on the world and we're just silently floating in space, waiting to be put into play again.

I don't speak to her, but maybe I don't need to. It seems like she knows everything I want to say. Her hand lingers on my stomach for one second more, and then she's gone.

When I recover, I look at Kate to see if she noticed our clandestine exchange, but she's laughing with the other girls who are cheering and scooting along the wall. Maybe time
had
stopped.

On the ride home, I'm unable and unwilling to stop thinking about Keeta. Under the shelter of my sweatshirt, I press my hand onto my stomach like Keeta did an hour earlier, and a million butterflies take flight inside me. I want to jump into the aisle and scream, “Here I am! Big Gay Abbey Brooks! And I am falling for Keeta Moreno! And guess what! I think she might be falling for me, too!”

But, instead, I snuggle my face into the hood of my sweatshirt and smile the entire ride home. Ms. Morvay was right. My heart knows exactly who I am.

“Abbey, we need to talk.”

Nothing good has ever followed those words. When I was five, it was about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Then, at seven, it was time for me to start sleeping with the light off. At nine, it was the worst.

“Abbey, we need to talk. Your daddy was in a car accident.”

Now it's six thirty on Saturday night and I'm about to embark upon another pathetic night of attempting to play sappy love songs on my guitar, that I dream of someday playing outside Keeta's bedroom window.

But then, my mom says these five feared words to me, as I try to slip past her in the hallway on my way to my bedroom: “Abbey, we need to talk.”

“Is it the dishes? I'll do them later, I swear.” Another lie.

“As a matter of fact”—she puts her hands on either side of the wall—“it's about the dishes, and the laundry, and your homework.”

“Mom—” I try interrupting, but she's on a roll.

“And it's about me, and Kate, and your grades, and basketball.”

This last part makes my heart do a freefall to my feet. What does she know about me and basketball? Is she going to make me quit? I've finally found a team I can be proud of being a part of, and I think I'm getting pretty good at it. I can't lose basketball. Especially not until I know for sure about Keeta and me.

Then she takes my face in her hands, which is also always a bad sign. It's her I'm-serious-Abbey thing that she does. “I'm worried about you. It seems like all you do these days is hang out in your room. You don't even talk to me anymore. Why are you avoiding me, Abbey Road?”

She's right. I've been doing everything I can to avoid her, but I'm not the only one avoiding people. Kate has been doing an impressive job of avoiding me, which kind of makes sense since the latest rumor at school is that she and I hooked up in Nogales and are now dating.

After a long moment, my mom finally lets go of my face. “Abbey, I'm going to ask you something, and I just want you to tell me the truth.”

I break eye contact with her and look down at the carpet, a sure sign of a liar. “Okay.”

“Are you doing drugs?”

I laugh. “Drugs? Mom, are you serious?”

“Do I look like I'm kidding?”

No, she doesn't.

Then she says, “You've been distant, tired, cranky, and lazy in your schoolwork. What else should I think? You're not yourself, Abbey. There has to be something going on.”

Now I'm presented with an interesting conundrum. If I claim to be addicted to drugs, my odd behavior will be explained, the questions dropped, and I can go on with my life, overdosing on Keeta fantasies every night. The downside is the NA meetings and a possible visit to a drug rehab facility.

So I come clean, sort of. “Mom, I swear I am not doing drugs.”

She looks at me carefully. “Okay, I believe you.” But there's something different in her eyes. The thing I am seeing more and more when she looks at me: doubt.

“Don't you believe me, Mom?”

“Abbey, I do believe you. I just wish you could trust me. If you're not doing drugs, then what's wrong with you?”

There's no way I'm going to tell her I'm falling in love with the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, but what I do tell her has to be something believable. Then, thanks to Ms. Morvay, I come up with a good one. “I guess I'm just adjusting to high school. You know, friends, classes, basketball, and”—I look down again, as I say the last item on my list—“you know, boys. It's just hard to figure it all out sometimes.”

Success. My mom kisses my forehead and says, “So this is about Jake? I'm sorry about the house rule. Maybe we can work something out. After all, you are going to be fifteen in a week. I had my first date when I was fifteen.”

Man, I didn't see this coming at all. “Um, okay.”

“It's not good to keep everything all bottled up, Abbey Road. You know you can talk to me about anything. Especially about boy stuff. I dated boys in high school, so I know all about it,” she says, like she's relieved, or maybe that's just my warped interpretation.

“Thanks, Mom. From now on, I promise to be less emotionally constipated,” I say because I have been waiting for a chance to try out that expression since I heard Garrett yell it at Tai when they were fighting in the locker room about something stupid last week.

“Emotionally constipated?” my mom repeats, which makes her laugh. This is not my intention, but I'm glad she's smiling. “Honey, I'd settle for a ‘Hi, Mom' or ‘Love you, Mom' once in a while. And maybe when you're sad, you can talk to me and let me tell you everything's going to be okay. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal,” I say.

Then she hugs me close to her like I'm about to leave for summer camp or something.

After she finally releases me, she kisses my forehead again. “I love you.”

“Love you, too, Mom,” I say, and then I'm finally allowed to complete my hallway journey. I shut my bedroom door behind me and hope my fake truths will get her off my back for a while.

As I strum some notes to a Cranberries song I've been trying to learn, I think about the real truths I can't tell my mom. Like how I can't get through my forty-five minute guitar class without dreaming of kissing Keeta. And how I go to Spanish and Stef's all nice to me and I feel like the worst friend ever. When did I become a backstabber? The whole thing is wrong on so many levels and I know it. That's when I vow to stop drooling over Keeta, at least until Stef moves to Phoenix and things are settled between them.

I fall asleep with new confidence and determination.

*

Monday morning I feel Keeta's arm link around mine as I'm walking to guitar class, and she easily ushers me off to the side of the performance hall where no one can see us.

“Sorry I had to do this to you,” she says with a cute but mischievous smile on her face. “But you've been making it hard to talk before class, or after class, or before practice, or after practice.” She pushes me gently against the brick wall. “If I didn't know any better, Amara, I'd say you were avoiding me.”

“That's crazy,” I say, looking down into her eyes, trying to hide my satisfaction that she's noticed.

“Is it crazy?” She leans on the wall beside me. “Look, I know you're probably really freaking out right now, but you don't have to.”

I almost say she's crazy again, but I don't want to tell such a big lie, so instead I shrug and look down at our shoes; my purple Converse and Keeta's Nikes look better together than mine and Jake's.

She turns toward me, reaches for my hand, and holds it sweetly in hers; any coolness I have in me melts like gummy bears left in a hot car.

“The truth is, Amara, I can't stop thinking about you and I can't keep my eyes off you.
Dios mío
, all I want to do is kiss you.”

Kiss me?
She
wants to kiss
me
. I look away because if she doesn't kiss me I think I might cry.
Please, please, please kiss me, Keeta.

Now Keeta's standing so close I can feel her breath on my cheek.

“I've never felt this way about anyone before,” she says and runs the fingers of her free hand through her hair. “Damn, girl, you've got a hold on me. I can't explain it, but I also can't stand being ignored by you when I know you feel the same way.”

It's like I dreamed it would be. She likes me, too, and she's saying all the right things, but it's happening too early, before Stef has left. I should run, but I'm so tired of fighting it.

I take her other hand in mine and look into her eyes instead of at her shoes or the oleander bushes we're hiding behind. “I do. I mean, I like you, too,” I whisper.