The Last Dance (21 page)

“You sound a bit indecisive, but if Kellen feels that he’s recovered enough to resume his regular schedule then it’s fine with me.” He sat forward and wrote a note on a piece of paper. “I’ll let his parents know.”

My stomach sank into my shoes. I hadn’t thought about Kellen’s parents. Would they be upset?

Mr. Decker peered at me across the desk. “Thank you for all your hard work, Ivy. You’ve been very gracious with your time and I know it was a tough load for you to carry. But Kellen is an exceptional young man and I wanted to make sure he got back on his feet. I’ll be writing you a letter of recommendation and making the appropriate notations on your transcript.”

I stood up, suddenly sick to my stomach. I’d done it. “Thank you Mr. Decker.”

MY FEET DRAGGED all the way to first period. Now I
had
to tell Q. My mother’s no-nonsense voice echoed in my head.
“You must face life’s difficulties with your head held high, Ivy, and forge ahead.”
I thought about what my mother and father had overcome to live in America. To give me and Tuan a better life. I should be counting my blessings instead of being such a cry-baby. I’d be out of high school in less than six months. Time to grow up.

Q WAS ALREADY in class, facing the front of the room when I got there. No part of that was normal. At least the seat next to him was vacant. I marched up and whispered in his ear before I lost my nerve. “I need to talk to you after class.” He barely looked at me.

“Okay.” He didn’t say
whatever
but it was implied as clearly as if he’d shouted it at me. I sat down and felt like I was shrinking, like Alice in Wonderland. What had I done to make everyone I cared about hate me?

AS SOON AS we were out of the classroom I blurted it out. “I’mnotgoingtobeabletotutoryouanymore.” I said the words so fast even I couldn’t understand myself. My hands were shaking.

He frowned at me. “What?”

“I’m not going to be able to tutor you anymore.” I couldn’t look at him. “It’s too much with all my other studies plus—” I finally got up the nerve to glance at his face— “you don’t need me now.”

Q stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to face me. Kids streamed around us like fish swimming upstream in a river of bodies. One hand held his backpack strap over his shoulder and the other was shoved into his pocket. He was like some beautiful modern-day version of
the David
—except with clothes. But his presence was every bit as powerful. I clutched my books to my chest, feeling small and insignificant.

His lips pressed together in a bitter line and for a fleeting moment I thought he was trying not to cry. Then his eyes narrowed and he sneered at me.

“Ivy, you don’t have any idea what I
need
.”

He seemed so far away at that moment—so untouchable—it was like we were back at the start of school again and I’d only seen him from afar through Mira’s obsessed eyes. I didn’t know him at all. I don’t know why I ever thought he might care about somebody like me.

His eyes were cold as he glared at me. “At least you could’ve been honest about the real reason. But thanks for your help.” Then he turned and walked away.

Now I knew what it meant when somebody says a part of them died. A part of my heart died right in that second.

Chapter Forty-Four

Kellen

I
went straight to the counselor’s office and changed my schedule. There was no way I was going to practice piano with Ivy or sit in study hall and pretend everything was okay.

It wasn’t.

Nothing was okay.

Not football. Not school. Not my brain. Not my heart. Not my life.

I headed out to the parking lot to ditch school.
Everything
that I wanted was out of reach. I’d never felt so lost in my life.

“Kellen!”

I ignored the voice and kept walking.

“Wait up.” I could hear the clatter of boots behind me as Laurel ran to catch up. “Hi,” she said breathlessly as she pulled up alongside me. Her blond hair was blown back and her chest was heaving from her little run, making it hard to look away. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.” I forced my eyes away and kept walking.

“For the day?”

“Yep.”

She tugged on my arm. “Where are you going?”

I stopped and turned to look at her. “I don’t know. Just out of here.”

She still sounded breathless but her eyes were shining. “Can I come?”

Chapter Forty-Five

Ivy

Q
must have left school, because he wasn’t in any of his classes the rest of the day and he didn’t show up for piano.

Those terrible words he’d sneered at me echoed in my head:
at least you could’ve been honest about the real reason.
What did he think the real reason was? I didn’t know for sure, but I had a sick feeling he thought it was because of Brandon. I’d never told him that we’d broken up.

Q had left his sheet music sitting on the piano when he’d walked out the day before. I’d tucked the pages into my bag, intending to give them to him today. Instead, I pulled the music out and sat down at the piano. I could see where he’d lined through the title and written
Ivy’s Song
in block handwriting. A pang went through me.

I played the piece slowly, savoring the bittersweet melody that seemed to pierce my heart. Every note of the song was like a secret message from Q. When it was over I closed my eyes and played other songs from memory, sorting out my feelings through the black and white keys.

When I’d made up my mind in New York to stop tutoring Q—to fix the problem between me and Mira at any cost—I never dreamed it would be this painful. I’d been so consumed about not upsetting Mira that I’d forgotten to consider that Q might be in need, too. He’d not only lost significant motor skills, but he’d lost the ability to play football, the game he loved and had planned his future around. And he’d lost his girlfriend. All in the same moment.

At a time when he probably needed somebody the most—I’d walked away.

My heart broke and shattered into a thousand pieces, but I knew there was no other way.

WE WERE EATING dinner when my phone buzzed in my pocket indicating an incoming text. Then it buzzed again. My mother didn’t allow cell phone use at the table. I swear, curiosity will be the death of me one day. I slowly pulled my phone out of my back pocket. No fast moves around my mother. I even took a bite of food as a diversionary tactic as I juggled the phone around to my lap. I dropped my eyes to see who was texting me.

“Ivy, put your phone away. You know the rules.” I don’t think my mom even looked at me. That woman could keep me under surveillance from the corners of her eyes.

“I just want to see who it is.” I risked it and took a quick peek. Dang! The screen just read TEXT MESSAGES (2). That didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I slid the bar across my phone and punched the text message button. What a rebel I’d become.

“Ivy Thi Ly.” My mother was looking directly at me. “What is so important that you have to interrupt dinner?”

“Binh.” My father spoke to her in Vietnamese. “Let it go.” My father didn’t stand up to my mother very often, but when he did, everyone paid attention. To my surprise, he leaned over and patted my arm. “You’re a good girl, Ivy.” Then he went back to eating.

My mom and I looked at each other in surprise. Then my mother looked away first. I couldn’t believe it. We’d just had a seismic shift in the Ly household, but unbelievably, I was more curious about who was texting, which was a different kind of seismic shift. God, what was happening to the world?

I glanced down to read the texts. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the first one was from Mira:
Can we talk?
Followed by a second message:
I’ve got Twinkies.

AFTER DINNER I replied:
Sure. When?

MIRA PICKED ME up in Jefferson an hour later. If my mom knew Mira and I were having a fight, she didn’t let on.

“It’s a school night, Ivy. Is your math done?”

“Yes, Ma. And I practiced my piano at school.” I didn’t tell her
what
I’d practiced, however. “Plus, I’ve already done violin.” I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I won’t be too late.”

“Is Mira still dating that nice boy we met at your concert?”

I turned back in surprise. There had to be something strange in the water. Or maybe—and this thought scared me a bit—my mother knew a lot more about my life than I gave her credit for. Sneaky, that woman.

“No, Ma. She never dated him. They’re just friends.”

“Ummm hmmm.” My mother was knitting a sweater for Tuan. She didn’t look up from her flying knitting needles. “Don’t be late.”

“I gotta go, Ma. Love you.” I ran for the door. I couldn’t possibly decipher the coded messages my mother might be sending me right now. I was already on emotional overload.

I ran down the porch steps toward Jefferson, excited and nervous, too. It was so weird— everything was just exactly the same as always, but it was all so different, too. I was going to let Mira do the talking first. Hopefully, she wouldn’t yell at me. Or call me names. Inside my mittens I crossed my fingers. On both hands.

I opened the door and peered into the car. “Hey.”

Mira looked over at me and smiled. Even though she’d re-done her makeup I could tell she’d been crying. “Hey.”

I gasped. “Mira, what are you wearing?”

Mira looked down at her outfit as if she couldn’t remember. Regular skinny leg blue jeans, a plain black hoodie—even her hair was all one color: sort of a blondy-brown. I’d never seen her look so bland before. I hated to admit it, but she was dressed like me.

“Oh yeah. Q said the same thing the other day.”

I stiffened at the mention of Q.

She waved her hand, motioning for me to get in the car. “Are you going to get in? It’s freezing out there.”

I slid into the seat and slammed the door shut. Mira shifted into gear and glided backwards out of my driveway.

“Wow.” I looked at her in surprise, forgetting I was going to let her talk first. “That was smooth.”

She braked to a stop and pushed the clutch in as she ground the gears into first. “I know,” she grimaced. “It only seems to happen in reverse though.” Then she let the clutch out and we jerked down the road.

It was dark, but not as dark as normal because we had a snow sky. When it snowed around here, it was like there was a big light on above the clouds, that illuminated everything, so you could see perfectly well, even though it was normally pitch black at nine o’clock at night.

I sat with my hands on my lap, my fingers crossed inside my red mittens, and waited for Mira to start talking. I had no idea where we were at in the fight. She had to give me a sign.

She turned the corner and shifted into third as we motored past the high school. The stadium, which was used as a community sports field, was lit up for a soccer game. I could see people huddled in the stands.

She took a deep breath. “Q asked me to apologize to you.”

I froze. This was not what I’d expected. “He did?”

“He told me that you told him that you wouldn’t date him because I liked him and that I was being a selfish pig for being mad at you for no reason.”

I frowned as I tried to decipher what she’d just said. “Q said that?”

“Well—not exactly. But that’s what he meant.” We sailed past the dark windows of the South Street mini mart where kids went to buy candy and pop during lunch, even though Griffin was a closed campus. “And he was right.”

I unclenched my fingers a little bit. Not all the way – but a little.

“I was wrong, Ivy and I’m sorry.” She stared straight ahead as she drove. “I shouldn’t have acted like that. I shouldn’t have said those things. Q’s never been interested in me. Not even for a minute. It’s always been you.” We turned and drove past the graveyard. I could see all the grave markers stretching across the field in the milky light. “I guess I’ve always known it, too—I just didn’t want to admit it.” She peeked a glance at me. “Can you ever forgive me?”

I was silent. I wasn’t sure what to make of all her ramblings about Q. Since when did she have a window into his soul? Based on this afternoon, not only did Q not have any interest in me, I don’t think he even liked me. I pulled at the end of my mittens. “Will you take back the slut remark?”

“Oh yeah, that.” She gave me a guilty look. “That was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I looked out the window. It still hurt to think about it.

Mira gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead. “You know I didn’t really mean it. I was distressed.”

“As Ron would say, you were completely mental.”

“Harry said that.”

“Whatever.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay.”

Mira jerked her head toward me, her face lit up with hope. “You forgive me?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, get the Twinkies out of the back seat! It’s time to celebrate.” She stared talking fast, suddenly sounding like the old Mira. “I’ve been sick to my stomach the whole entire break.” She downshifted to make a turn and we jerked around the corner. “I didn’t have anything to do, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to and there was this terrible night with Tank and CJ was there and he had to save me—” she groaned— “it was like I didn’t even know who I
was
anymore.” She waved at her jeans. “And look at how I’m dressed!”

I uncrossed my fingers and reached for the screamer strap. “Yeah, I missed you too.”

At that moment snowflakes drifted down out of the sky and landed on the windshield.

Chapter Forty-Six

Kellen

F
irst period Calculus was weird without Ivy there but Jesse sat by me again. He kept a running dialogue of cracks about Mrs. Cooper that sort of made me laugh. When I wasn’t thinking about Ivy. Which was never.

Science was science—enough said. I walked into French and scanned the room for Mira. She was sitting on the far side again, doodling in her notebook. I walked over and sat next to her. She wore a green fitted jacket over a short checked skirt. Purple striped socks stretched over her knees and her hair was pink. I took her bizarre outfit as a good sign.