Infinite in Between (20 page)

ZOE PUSHED BACK
her sheets. Even though it was midnight, she was craving sour cherries. She and Aunt Jane bought two pounds of them at the farmer's market in Santa Monica, and they were going to bake a pie tomorrow. Aunt Jane was out here for the opening of her mom's movie, an independent film with a summer release. It was the one she'd shot in France.
Sierra
had actually invited Aunt Jane out. Hopefully, that meant they were finally getting along.

As she started down the stairs, Zoe heard them talking in the kitchen.

“Tell her
what
, Janie?” Sierra asked. Her voice was high and fast. “You haven't said anything, have you?”

Zoe sat down on a step and hugged her knees.

“Has she been asking?” Aunt Jane said.

When her mom didn't respond, Aunt Jane said, “Has she?”

Zoe bit down on her bare knee. So much for the sour cherries. She should turn around and get back into bed, maybe wake up Dinky with a middle-of-the-night text. She wished Aunt Jane would stop pushing her mom. Her mom was stressed enough already with her movie coming out. She'd been to five AA meetings in the past
three days. Every time Zoe walked by her mom's bedroom, she was worried she'd find her crying in there.

“This is about you and me still, isn't it?” her mom finally asked.

“No, it's about Zoe. That's what this has always been about.”

Then again, if they were in any way discussing her father, she deserved to know. She hurried down the stairs and walked into the kitchen. They'd been sitting at the counter, drinking tea. As soon as they saw Zoe, their faces paled and Aunt Jane jumped to her feet.

“Are you talking about my biological father?” Zoe asked.

Aunt Jane looked at Sierra. Her mom reached for her tea but accidentally knocked the mug onto the granite floor. It broke instantly, shards of ceramic spraying everywhere.

As Sierra knelt down and began sweeping together the fragments, Aunt Jane stared hard at Zoe. She knew something. Zoe swore she did. But instead of anyone explaining anything, the two sisters began cleaning the mess while Zoe turned around and went back to bed.

MIA SPOTTED WHITNEY
Montaine in the pharmacy line at PriceRite. First she saw her braids, and then her model-gorgeous profile. Mia was picking up a prescription for her mom, plus mascara for herself. Also she'd tossed some Manic Panic in her basket. Maybe she'd put a few pink streaks back in. Nothing major. She didn't want to look too out there for college interviews.

Whitney was ahead of Mia in line. A year ago Mia would have split, come back later. But with senior year starting tomorrow, Mia didn't want to be terrified of popular people anymore. She wanted that to be over.

Whitney glanced backward. “Hey, Mia!” she said, waving with her fingers. “What's up?”

Mia tried to remember to breathe. “I'm picking something up for my mom.”

“Me too.” Whitney hesitated. “So, how was your summer?”

“Okay . . . what about you?”

“Pretty cool. I just got back from New York City. I did a summer theater program at NYU.”

“Is that where you want to go?” Mia asked. She was dying to
know who was applying where, how many essays,
U.S. News and World Report
ranking. Sophie called it Mia's college porn. Maybe it was a joke for Sophie, but for Mia this was her chance to escape. Three years ago, at freshman orientation, Whitney had written in her letter that she wanted to escape too. Mia wondered if that was still true.

“If I get into NYU,” Whitney said, laughing. “It's crazy competitive. What about you?”

“Swarthmore. I'm going to apply early decision.”

“Wow,” Whitney said. “I've heard Swarthmore's as hard to get into as—”

“Harvard,” Mia said, finishing her sentence.

“Whitney Montaine?” the pharmacist called out. “Your medication is ready.”

Whitney pressed her lips together. As she approached the counter, the pharmacist handed Whitney a white paper bag and asked if she had any questions. Mia pretended to be engrossed in her phone, but she was straining to listen. Whitney had said she was picking up something for her
mom
, but it seemed like this medicine was for her. It was strange to think how even people like Whitney had things to hide.

“See you around, Mia!” Whitney waved as she walked by. She smiled broadly, her usual perky self. “Good luck with applications.”

“You too,” Mia said. She'd give anything to read what Whitney was going to write in her college essays.

Ted: So . . . we need to chill.

Jake: Chill where?

Ted: No, us. Chill. I want to experience senior year as a single guy.

Jake: Hang on. Are you breaking up with me over TEXT?

Ted: I'm sorry. I would start cyring in person.

Jake: Cyring?

Ted: You're my editor now?

Jake: I can't believe it. We're happy, right?

Ted: You're happy.

Jake: You're not?

Ted: I need to chill on the boyfriend thing fro now.

“DON'T YOU FIND
it strange that you've only been with white guys?” Alicia asked.

They were sitting on the striped Ikea rug in Alicia's dorm room, waiting for their toenails to dry. Whitney pressed a ripple of maroon polish with her thumb. She never should have come to Oberlin to visit Alicia. When her mom proposed the idea of flying to Ohio by herself for Columbus Day weekend, it sounded cool. But she forgot that she and her sister couldn't stand each other. It was only the first night, and she already wanted to scream.

Whitney thought of Gus and Zach and Lucas and a few others. All white, but it wasn't like she was keeping track. “I've been with whoever I want,” she said sharply.

“But you've never been with a black guy. Admit it.”

Whitney chucked a cotton ball at Alicia. Just because her sister was suddenly hardcore about being black, why did she have to drag Whitney into it? When Whitney had driven to Oberlin last spring with her dad, she'd met a bunch of her sister's college friends. They were African American, biracial, white, Indian, Asian. But from the second she arrived today, it was a different story. All Alicia's friends
were black. She was only listening to music by African Americans. She had pictures on her wall of Kanye and Nelson Mandela and posters of Basquiat graffiti.

“Your silence is saying it all,” Alicia said.

“All I'm thinking is that I don't have to tell you who I've been with.”

“You've said enough.” Alicia reached into the mini-fridge for a bottle of water.

“Screw you,” Whitney said, rolling her eyes. She could hear music thumping in the room next door, and people shouting outside the window. It made her wonder about college and where she'd be next year.

“Also, you could have been nicer to my friends,” Alicia said. “You didn't even try to talk to them at dinner. What was up with that?”

The dining hall had been loud and hot, and Whitney had only focused on making it through the pasta bar without losing sight of her sister. Not to mention that Alicia and her friends sat on one side of the dining hall, and the white kids sat in a different area. College was supposed to be liberal, not back to the days of segregation.

“I was fine,” Whitney said. She unzipped her duffel to find a cute shirt. Alicia was taking her to a party tonight and maybe even a bar.

Alicia drained the water bottle and tossed it into the recycling bin. “Your problem is that you don't know how to hang around black people. Your little group of friends, Kyra and those girls, they're all white. That's your world.”

“What's that supposed to mean? Anyway, Mom is white and
Dad is black, so it's not like we're one or the other. It's not like we have to pick.”

“Is that really what you think?” Alicia asked. She was digging through her jewelry box for a nose ring. “Are you really that dumb?”

Whitney pushed up off the rug. She honestly wanted to smack Alicia. “What's your problem?”

“I'm trying to help. You obviously have some identity issues.”

Whitney yanked her phone charger out of an outlet. “You know what? I'm out of here.”

She packed her SAT math prep book and slid her feet into her Chucks. It was going to ruin her toenail polish, but screw it.

“Where are you going, Whit?” Alicia slammed her jewelry box shut. “Don't be stupid.”

“Will you stop calling me stupid?” Whitney asked, choking up. “Will you stop calling me dumb?”

“Will you stop acting like it?”

Whitney didn't even answer. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out the door. Tears were streaming down her face.

“You okay?” asked a guy with a long black ponytail. He was sitting cross-legged in the hall, using a spoon to eat hummus out of a container.

“Where's the common room?” Whitney asked him.

He pointed down the hall and then went back to his hummus.

Whitney flopped onto a stained couch and looked up Greyhound times from Cleveland to Hankinson on her phone. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose into a napkin. She felt strangely calm as she called for a car service to the bus station. The website said it was a forty-minute drive, which would be crazy expensive,
but her mom had given her emergency money. Maybe it was insane to take a twelve-hour bus ride in the middle of the night when she had a plane ticket for Monday morning. But she was sick of Alicia treating her like there was something wrong with her. Not that she even hung around Kyra and Laurel and Autumn anymore. Not that Alicia had cared to ask.

“You're too pretty to be on a Greyhound bus,” the guy next to Whitney said. It was past eleven, and they were zooming through eastern Ohio.

He didn't say it in a creepy way. Whitney had been watching him, too. He was maybe eighty, a grandfather type. He'd spent the first twenty minutes of the bus ride carefully peeling the tin foil off a picnic his wife must have packed for him, sampling each item before wrapping everything up again. Then he dug out an ancient flip phone and called to tell someone he was going to sleep.

“I just need to get home,” she said.

The man was white with thick gray hair and a small dollop of a nose. Whitney imagined him coming from a large Irish family. He'd married young and worked hard, like, as a carpenter, and he and his wife had raised four boys. They'd gone to church on Sundays and bowling on Mondays, and now they had ten grandchildren. Whitney guessed he was on his way to visit his first great-grandchild, who was born two months ago.

“Who made you that picnic?” she asked the guy after a few minutes.

He looked startled. He must have been dozing off. “What picnic?”

“The food you were eating before.”

“Oh,” he said. “I made it myself.”

“Your wife didn't?”

“I was never married.”

Whitney felt a stab of sadness for those four strapping sons and the ten grandchildren who never existed. “Then who did you call before?”

The man cleared his throat. “A social worker who checks in on me. I'm visiting my brother. He had a stroke. They're not sure he'll make it through the weekend.” Then he switched off his overhead light and closed his eyes.

“CAN YOU LOVEBIRDS
go get a hot glue gun from the art room?” Nadine asked.

“Ugh,” Zoe grumbled.

“Which part do you have a problem with?” Dinky stretched his arm around Zoe and tickled her waist. “The
love
part or the
bird
part?”

“Or the hot glue gun part?” Anna said, giggling.

Zoe scowled at Anna. “Don't make this worse.”

When Dinky had asked Zoe to work on the senior class homecoming float, she'd said no. She wasn't into the high school spirit thing. But then Anna signed up, so Zoe was tagging along. The theme was “Outta Here in Outta Space,” and it was a low-key group. Dinky's friend Gregor was there, and this girl Nadine who had a crush on Gregor. Everyone knew it except Gregor, which was kind of funny.

“I like hot,” Dinky said, squeezing Zoe's butt.

Zoe yelped and jumped out of the way.

“Glue gun,” Nadine said, rolling her eyes. “
Hot glue gun
. We need one. Jake . . . You know, Jake Rodriguez? He painted us a
bunch of meteors that we have to glue on tonight.”

“He's the senior class president,” Anna whispered to Zoe.

Zoe nodded. She had no idea who he was. It was lame how she still didn't have anyone in Hankinson figured out.

“Okay, boss,” Dinky said. “We're on it.” He grabbed Zoe's hand and tugged her down the dark hall.

As soon as they were out of sight, Dinky pressed Zoe against some lockers. Zoe ran her fingers through Dinky's hair, and they started making out. After a while he guided her hand down to his shorts, but she pulled away. There were still janitors mopping the halls. She didn't feel like getting busted.

In so many ways Dinky was the perfect boyfriend. He was funny and cute, and he didn't push Zoe to be a twenty-four-seven girlfriend. Zoe never wanted to be the kind of girl who texted with her boyfriend every time she left the house, every time she poured herself a glass of juice. Actually, that would be impossible with Dinky. He had a bit of ADHD, and he was always losing his phone or forgetting to charge it. Often he wouldn't even get her texts until the next day.

All that said, Zoe was having a tough time being with Dinky right now. She was moody this fall. She was snapping at the important people in her life. Aunt Jane and Anna, but Dinky was getting the worst of it.

Dinky squeezed Zoe's hand and then leaned in to her. She could feel him, hard against her thigh. “We could get out of here,” he whispered into her ear. “I don't think my parents are home tonight.”

“No, we should get the glue gun,” Zoe said, wriggling away.

He moved in for another kiss. “Just another minute . . .”

“Down, boy.” Zoe wiped off her mouth. “Take a cold shower.”

Dinky shrugged and started down the hall, shaking his head. She'd hurt him.
Fuck.
This was how it had been since she'd gotten back from California, a sour mood that she couldn't seem to shake.