This is me trying, p.14
This Is Me Trying, page 14
“It wasn’t that simple.” He doesn’t sound like he believes himself.
That speech in the supply closet. The blame I’d accepted after everything that already burdens me. My words at the funeral were his excuse, and I took it, so desperate for salvation from my self-imposed loneliness. Right now, I don’t even know which one of us I hate more. But one thing is certain, Bryce was right to throw that key away.
I stand and brush the night off me. The air stings, the only proof I can still feel anything. “Don’t talk to me ever again.”
chapter twenty-four SANTIAGO
When I made the decision to come home, I promised myself there were two secrets I’d always keep from Bea. Half of this was me being selfish, hoping to shelter us from my lowest moments, though my brain does a fine job of dismantling that shelter every chance it gets. The other half, though, the other half was for her.
I thought I was doing her a favor, but that was before she looked at me the way she did on the edge of a new year. In that moment, I would’ve wished on the entire galaxy to be anyone else, someone who deserved it, but the unfortunate reality is that I was and always will be me.
She was leaning in and I was leaning in and I couldn’t lie anymore, not even because of her or me, but because of Bryce and the look and request he gave me the last time he saw me.
I already feel like a failure, so fifty percent isn’t too bad, all things considered.
* * *
Dustin drives us to school on the first day back from winter break. I’d like to say it’s because I feel bad that we’ve barely seen each other outside of work lately and I miss my friend, but the reality is that I needed a ride. Since New Year’s, Bea and I haven’t spoken.
The tow came, bad ’90s pop blasting the entire time it took to get us and Bea’s car back to Greensville. When the driver dropped me off at my house, Bea mumbled a happy birthday, and it’s been silence since.
The tables have turned, the last three texts in our thread all coming from my phone, all unanswered. I can’t tell if it makes me a good or bad friend for not listening to the newest request to never speak to her again.
“So your holidays were nice?” Dustin asks as we pull into the student lot. Abby got a ride with Whitney this morning.
“Yeah, mostly laid around watching movies with my abuelo.” It’s a half truth, all I’m good for these days. “What about you?”
“Pretty much the same.”
“I didn’t know you and my abuelo were close like that.”
He chuckles and we get out of the car, his face souring as we spot Rick.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Not as long as I keep seeing him around. After getting supremely fucked up at our house on New Year’s, he tried to ask Whitney to put in a good word with Olive again.”
“What is Rick’s obsession with them?” I ask. Olive is cute and sweet, but Rick’s insistence doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Olive themself.
Dustin shakes his head. “He doesn’t like rejection. Honestly, I feel like we let too much shit with him slide over the years. It was just easier, you know? Having him as a friend than the other way around.”
In my memories of Rick tormenting Bryce and me as middle schoolers, targeting us in dodgeball and, once, tossing our PE clothes in the showers so we had nothing to change into, I suddenly see Dustin too. One of the only Black kids in school, just as much a victim of the bullshit as us, realistically way more.
“Fuck that guy,” I say.
“Amen.”
Bea and I don’t have class together until third period calculus, but she shows up right as the bell rings, so I don’t get the chance to talk to her. The seating chart isn’t alphabetical, so we’re on opposite sides of the room, and with the advantage of being by the door, she manages to dart out when class ends before I can even finish packing up my notes.
I sigh on my way to lunch, not even bothering to search for her, and when I drop down at my old table, Whitney smiles.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” she teases.
I try to return the smile, but it feels as rubbery as the mac and cheese the caf is serving today. We’re joined by a few additional people, so I don’t have to contribute much to the conversation, everyone talking about their break, what they got for the holidays, their respective experiences at Dustin and Abby’s New Year’s party.
“I didn’t ask, how did your New Year’s go?” Whitney says. She texted me a little after midnight for my birthday, but it came in while I was riding in the world’s most uncomfortable tow, so I forgot to reply.
“Your dad came up, right?” Dustin asks between bites of mac.
“Yeah,” I lie. “It was the perfect birthday.”
chapter twenty-five BEATRIZ
I’ve slipped up before—that summer between sophomore and junior year leading into the fall—but I know how to course correct. We survived that almost-accident. I can survive this one.
I spend the rest of break doing homework, taking Lottie on icy walks in neighborhoods where I won’t run into anyone I once called a friend, and dodging Mom’s questions about how Santiago is doing. The truth would only make her worry about us both.
When we get back to school, I make things right again. PE was always going to be tricky, so I feign cramps and ask to go to the nurse’s office. I only leave for last period because we have essays due in English. I arrive as the bell rings, like I did with calc, but Ridley doesn’t bat an eye. The things people in this town let me get away with.
Santiago’s gaze is heavy as I pass him. The alphabet chopped us apart for once, so I sit at the end of one row and he sits at the start of its neighboring one. Ridley, still clinging to the past in a way I can almost respect, asks us to turn in hard copies of our essays at her desk.
Everyone shuffles their way over. A few kids already have theirs out while others dig through their bags. I fall into the latter.
When I stand, Santiago is on his way back from Ridley’s desk. His eyes hold a question. I thought I knew the answer. I stand corrected.
He sits. I turn in my work. When I walk by him again, I take a page out of his book and pretend he doesn’t exist.
* * *
The roof is still my sanctuary. Winter makes it a dangerous one though, a frustrating oxymoron. So I do my best to watch the stars from behind glass, hand wrapped around my key. I’d open the window and stare from my bed if it wouldn’t waste Mom’s warmth. This house is doing everything it can to provide me shelter, but the thing actually keeping me inside is self-preservation. Realizing I still have any left chills me all the same.
chapter twenty-six SANTIAGO
It’s September in January and I’m back to having friends. Sitting with Whitney and all of them again reminds me of trying on the clothes I’d left in Vermont when I first moved back. There were things I swore still fit, shirts and pants that in the confines of my room felt totally fine, but proved difficult to navigate actual life in when worn to school or work. All stiff, restricted movement. Anyone could’ve looked at me and not seen the discomfort, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
On the bright side, Rick is unofficially out of the group as basketball season takes over and saves us the effort of banishing him in any formal capacity. Unfortunately, two weeks into term, after Dustin darts off to talk to Mrs. Ridley before school about his essay revision, the seal of mutual silence is broken as Rick chases me down the parking lot, shouting my name.
“Just the man I was looking for,” Rick says, slapping me on the back hard enough that it feels intentional. “Been a minute. How’ve you been?”
I shrug him off. “I’m all right.”
“Nice, nice. So what are you doing this weekend?”
“Probably just my homework.”
“Look at you, Mr. Studious,” he says, nudging me, slightly too hard again.
I rub my shoulder. “Yeah, well, I need to go to my locker—”
“Before you do that, I wanted to tell you about a little get-together I’m throwing this weekend.”
“Can’t make it.”
“Well, I kinda need you there.”
I keep trying to head toward the main hall, the chilling air as uncomfortable as this conversation. “Why?”
“You and Olive are cool, right? Like, if you come to my party, Olive will too?”
I blink at him. “They already said they weren’t interested in you, and Whitney—”
“Whitney is so dramatic and blew Homecoming way out of proportion. Which, by the way, you still owe me for.”
I realize I’m not getting out of this. I shove my gloved hands into my coat pockets. “How so?”
His brows furrow. “I was this close to getting with Olive that night until you spilled your drink all over me.”
I scoff. “Right.”
“Look, don’t be such a pussy,” he says, and I almost laugh at the lack of creativity. “I’m not that guy. Do you see anyone else asking Olive out? It’s a compliment.”
I clench my jaw. “It’s not. It’s fucking weird and embarrassing. Let it go.”
“Oh, I get it.” His face shifts to a condescending pout, and he steps close enough that his breath clouds my vision. “You have a little crush, don’t you?”
You’re taller, you’re stronger, you’re not the little kid you used to be. I run over the facts like mantras in my mind, but none of them stick because even though Rick is looking up at me, I still feel like I’m in middle school again, staring at my shoes and waiting for his bullshit to be over.
But the mindset reminds me of Bryce, and how maybe if he were here, he’d be better at this than me by now. Braver, stronger, more protective. Am I just projecting on the blank canvas that is his unreachable future? Probably, but it at least inspires me to pull my gaze off the ground where I dropped it and step closer. Rick rests below my chin.
“Let. It. Go.”
“Oh, sorry.” He bumps my chest and it takes effort not to stumble backward. “Wouldn’t want to insult your real girlfriend.”
I flinch, and he catches it.
“Yeah, I’ve seen the way you’ve been staring down Miss Doom and Gloom. Say whatever you want about me being weird, but at least I’m not the one horny for my dead friend’s girlfriend.”
It isn’t snowing, but the stark white of the day is hypnotic and confusing, blending this moment with a million others, the most prominent ones being New Year’s and the last time I saw Bryce, both of them gutting me with the same sick hollowness. It doesn’t matter if Rick is a piece of shit, if the people pausing to watch this ordeal instead of going into the comforting warmth of the school are just nosy assholes interested in the latest drama of Bryce’s fucked-up friends, it doesn’t matter that Bea and I aren’t even talking anymore, because right now, I feel alone and awful enough that I can’t convince myself I don’t deserve this.
“Did you always have a thing for her?” He tilts his head, jutting his chin out to the side. “You did, didn’t you? I bet you were happy when that loser killed himse—”
Something blurs past me.
Rick is down, one hand pressed to the concrete, the other to his mouth.
Bea stands over him, clutching her crimson fist, nails splintered with their jaggedly snapped-off tips littering the icy parking lot.
She looks up at me, eyes bright and wide and in shock as her palm drips blood. “Fuck. That hurt.”
* * *
Bea sits on the bench outside of the principal’s office with her left hand and its accompanying ice pack cradled to her chest, melting. I sit down beside her, offering the fresh one I got from the nurse’s office once I remembered how high they keep the indoor heating. “Figured that might be liquefied by now.”
She switches them out, exposing her mangled hand in the process. It looks worse already, the glaring red crescent moons sliced into her palm blooming bruises to match the ones decorating her knuckles. “I should’ve worn gloves today,” she says, her quiet voice loud in the empty hall. “I can’t believe I punched him.”
“I wanted to.” I look down at my unmarred hands. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
She adjusts her ice pack.
“Did you hear what he said?”
“No, I just punched him ’cause I was in a bad mood.”
I snort.
“Olive doesn’t deserve all of that,” Bea says. “No one does.”
I take a second. “And the rest of it?”
She sighs. This is our first conversation since New Year’s, and it takes effort not to look at her mouth. I can’t believe what almost happened. I’ve known Bea basically my whole life, and now part of me wants to know what it would’ve been like to kiss her. The other part hates me for even considering the idea.
“People broke into the old house,” she says suddenly.
“Dustin told me.” The series of break-ins trashing the place enough that it did the impossible and made a house a kid died in even harder to sell. A kid who is reason enough for me to ignore my curiosities about Bea.
“Rick started it.”
My blood goes cold. “What?” I ask. Her right hand clenches tight, and for a second, I worry she’ll snap those nails too. “Does Whitney know?”
Bea shakes her head. “I told her I had something on Rick if she ever needed it. I wanted to give her some protection. But also wanted to protect her from it.” She blows out a breath, leaning against the wall. “I’m surprised she never guessed it was him with the way he used to treat you and Bryce and half this town. I think she just hates seeing things for what they are.”
“How’d you find out?”
“I saw him leaving once, in the middle of the night. I never saw anyone before that.”
“What were you doing there?”
She sighs again, resigned to honesty, too pained to lie. “Trying to find your key in the backyard.” Before I can ask, she answers. “I never did.”
Principal Jefferys steps outside before I can decide how to respond to this admission. “Kim tells me the two of you attacked Mr. Bruno?”
“No, no, I—”
“I punched him,” Bea interrupts, standing. “He and Santiago were just talking. I escalated it.”
“I see,” Principal Jefferys says with a sour twist of his thin lips. “Mr. Espinosa, you should get to class, then. But we’re going to have to call your mother, Miss Dougherty. Follow me.”
He slips back into his office and Bea moves to follow, but my hand reaches for her before I can stop myself. “What are you doing?”
She shrugs, knocking me off her shoulder. “I hit Rick. You didn’t.”
“Well, you barely beat me to it, so.”
This earns me another smile, one wide enough I’m surprised her dark lipstick doesn’t crack. “Maybe next time.” And then, as quickly as her smile came and went, so does she.
chapter twenty-seven BEATRIZ
“Beatrice, this is a very serious matter,” Jefferys says. It’s almost funny that his scolding voice sounds so similar to his fake grief voice. He gave a speech to the school after Bryce died. It wasn’t moving.
“I’m aware.” It never feels worth the effort to correct my name.
“So you’re aware that punching another student is unacceptable behavior?” he asks. I want to be a smart-ass so badly right now. But Mom wants me to graduate.
“Sir, I know my actions were … distasteful,” I say. He looks like he’s trying not to roll his eyes. “But Rick was being incredibly distasteful himself.” Technically, punching Rick doesn’t negate the firm stance I took a few weeks ago to never speak to Santiago again. If I’m being especially technical, though, talking to him in the hallway does.
Jefferys clears his throat. “Yes, well, I will be speaking to him about this matter as well. But whatever he did or said does not excuse your actions, which are grounds for suspension, if not expulsion.”
“For punching one guy? This is rid—”
The door flies open and Whitney storms in, looking more disheveled than she’d ever normally allow. To the public eye, at least. I’ve seen her far more unkempt.
“Miss Ocampo, you cannot just waltz in here in the middle of an important meeting, especially when you should be in class right now,” Jefferys scolds.
Whitney takes a breath as she approaches the desk. “I know, sir, and I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I think I can shed important light on today’s events.”
Jefferys looks at me. I look at Whitney.
She takes my neighboring seat. “Rick brought up my brother. The one who…”
Jefferys softens. “Yes, of course I know all about Bryce.”
Whitney smiles gently. It’s an act, but I’m one of the only people who could ever see that. Jefferys didn’t know shit about Bryce, but few people did.
“The thing is, sir,” Whitney continues, “Rick bringing up Bryce right now, of all times, hit hard for Beatriz. For all of us, really. You see, it was his half birthday this week.”
I hold my face still. Nostalgic laughter bubbles up my throat, but I swallow it down with the reminder that this is a joke he doesn’t get to make anymore. We shouldn’t be able to either.
Jefferys looks back and forth between us. “His half birthday?”
Whitney nods vigorously. “Bryce loved his half birthday so much. It was a really special day for him.”
“I see.” Jefferys adjusts his collar. “Well, of course I empathize with your loss, young ladies. But that doesn’t change that what Beatrice did was against school policy.”
“What if we talk it over with Rick and his family?” Whitney asks.
“‘We’?” I question, wondering when this became a team effort.
Whitney ignores me, still playing lawyer. “If his family accepts an apology, will that settle things?”
Jefferys rubs at his temples and groans. “Beatrice will be suspended for the rest of the week and attend after-school detention for two weeks, starting Monday. I want to be formally notified of Rick’s acceptance. If his family wants to press charges, I have no power there.”
