I MISS HER THE MOST when it’s quiet. The air conditioner kicks in and a low rumble fills the media lab with background music that I hate, and there it is. Loneliness. Not that I’m alone. DeAndre is rendering some footage from the Winter recital right next to me, headphones blasting something I don’t recognize. His right hand, still a little dirty from automotive class, moves the mouse smoothly while his left is buried elbow deep in a bag of Wise dill-pickle potato chips. He chews with his mouth open and then licks his fingers.
“Want some?”
I shake my head. Nasty.
I’ve been staring at the same footage for nearly an hour, turning my rosary beads over in my pocket like a worrying stone. Dre set up a few GoPros before the dance started, so we got some great stuff: the dance-off between the freshmen and the juniors, Cathy Tran’s promposal. But what I’m obsessing over won’t even make it into the final cut for our channel. It’s about a half hour after I arrive with T. She gets up from her seat at the table and then falls back down. I’ve got my head turned, mouth wide open, mid-laugh over something stupid, I’m sure. I didn’t see her. I wasn’t paying attention. I zoom in closer, looping the strained pull of muscle in her jaw when she rises, the look of panic in her eyes as she gets to her feet, and finally the plastered smile she gives me when I eventually turn back around.
It’s the smile that’s the problem, because I didn’t see it for the paper-thin mask that it was. I remember wanting her to dance and even resenting her for being so bougie. I thought she was bored. I lean back in my chair and let the loop play over and over on the screen, as if on the next play it’ll be different: I’ll notice how much pain she’s in and take her out of the auditorium and to Finlay Park instead, carry her down the steps and let her watch the waterfall at night, wrap her in my mom’s old FAMU blanket I keep in the trunk. Or I’ll realize how dumb the whole dance idea was from the beginning and take her to Cool Beans, that coffeehouse on USC’s campus. We’ll sit in front of their fireplace and sip hot cocoa from cups the size of cereal bowls until curfew. I imagine all the scenarios that don’t end up with her staggering out of the gym on the arm of a girl whose name I can’t remember.
“You can watch it loop like that forever. It won’t change what happened,” DeAndre says as tiny bits of chip fly out of his mouth. He pulls his headphones off and pauses the track. “Just go over there. It’s obvious you want to apologize.”
“I called. She won’t answer. I texted. I get one-word replies. I’m iced out.”
“You know my instinct is to say”—he pauses and flips me the middle finger—“but I know how you feel about T. I don’t understand it, but I acknowledge it. If you want my advice—”
“I don’t.”
“Nevertheless, I’m gonna give it to you. Use your resources. Plebeians use lame stuff like telecommunications networks and social media. You a king or you a buster?”
“Be plain. I’m not in the mood for your riddles, Dre.”
“What I’m saying is that T is no ordinary girl, so you can’t go about this in an ordinary way. In Little League, what did Coach Barclay teach us about defeating your opponent?”
“The three Ds?” I ask, not following his metaphor at all.
“That’s right. T’s avoidance is your enemy, and you attack your enemy by distraction, deception, or destruction. Which is it gonna be?”
“You know we lost nearly every game.”
“Nevertheless. Which is it gonna be?” he urges, fully invested in this piss-poor advice. I gotta give it to him, though. He is trying.
I shake my head. Dre’s got a sports analogy for every situation, and I don’t know why this would be any different, but he does give me an idea. It’s wild, but it is something. I shut down my computer and throw all my other equipment and books in my bag. It’s Wednesday. Bible study night. If I move fast, I just might make it.
“Thanks, Dre.”
“No prob! Don’t get arrested! Wear protection.”
“I don’t think that applies,” I say carefully.
He stuffs another wad of chips into his mouth and chomps down loudly. “It always applies!”
Sarah-Ann’s already got her seat belt on when I squeal into the parking space right next to her at Shining Point Church. I knew that as head of the Teen Ministry, she’d be the designated driver for the Bible-study carpool. She’s the church’s oldest Girl Scout and co–troop leader for the Daisies. The parking lot is full of the tiny girls in their uniforms. I jump out and give a silent thanks to God the meeting ended early enough to let Sarah-Ann drive. Her twin brother, Bo, is the backup driver for the Bible study pickup. My plan would be dead in the water before it even set sail if he’d gotten the job.
She’s about to slam her car door shut when I stick my arm out to catch it.
“Hey!” I say too loudly and too brightly, but Sarah-Ann smiles back.
“Hey to you! I haven’t seen you around in a while,” she says.
“I—I know. I have, uh… been doing a lot of silent study in my, uh… prayer closet. You’ve got to have a personal relationship with Christ.”
For a second I think she’s going to sniff out my bullshit, but she nods enthusiastically.
“Oh yes, definitely. But you’ve also got to consult people who’ve spent their lives in prayer and study like Pastor Roberts. Sheep need a shepherd.”
That is not the analogy I would use, but I don’t have time to get into that with her.
“Well, I was in prayer, and God put it in my heart to volunteer more at the church.”
“You should! And the Teen Ministry would love to have you. We’re cleaning out Deacon Riley’s gutters this weekend, and then we’re going to delouse Mother Bolden’s three cocker spaniels,” she says excitedly.
“Oh, wow. That does sound, uh, enriching, but I was hoping I could start today. As a service to you personally, I could do today’s carpool,” I say as earnestly as I can muster.
“You don’t have to do that!”
“I’d love to! I want to! You serve God by serving others, right? And that includes you.” I plaster on another big smile.
“Well, I could use that time to put an extra coat of disinfectant on the toys in the playroom,” she says, more to herself than to me, as she thinks it over.
“Great! When one door closes, God opens a window. Is that the list of pickups?” I slide the list out of her hands and make sure the Christian hug I give her once she steps out of the car is just a tad too long. A soupçon of guilt to keep her from telling anybody I stole her job for the day.
There are four people on the list. Just enough to fit in my car. They’re all kids I know, and they all live so close to one another that I could get the lot and still be thirty minutes early for service. So when I idle the car in front of T’s house and walk up to the door, I’ve got reinforcements.
The bell rings and I can hear her yell “got it” from inside. I thought I was prepared for when she opened the door, but I’m not. She’s in a pink T-shirt that says HOPE DEALER on the front and jeans that hug every curve. It’s just jeans and a T-shirt, but to me she couldn’t look better if she was in diamonds and lace or some luxury-brand stuff from the mall. She’s water in the desert.
“H-hey,” I say, and watch her lips quiver as she smiles. I surprised her, but she doesn’t look mad about it. She leans over to the side to look past me at the car full of kids from our Vacation Bible School days.
She rolls her eyes and laughs a bit. “Clever.”
I shrug. “Still coming?”
“You know it. Can’t let the devil keep me from church.”
“I’m not the devil,” I say, giving her my arm so she can lean on me as we walk down the steps to the car.
“So you say.”
Dina Slater leans half her body out of the back window to whistle at us. “Don’t y’all look cute.” Her brother Philip pulls her back into the car.
“Shut up, Dina!” he mumbles as he opens the car door on his side for T to slide in.
“Nice to see you again, Tamar,” Bernard says in his uniquely formal way from the front seat.
“Thank you, Bernard. It’s nice to see you, too.”
“Fayard, did you know Tamar’s name is biblical? The biblical Tamar’s two husbands were killed by God for their wickedness, so she disguised herself as a prostitute to deceive her father-in-law Judah so she could bear a child,” Bernard recounts.
“Uh… wow… uh. I did not know that,” I reply.
I catch T’s face in the rearview mirror: Her hand is over her mouth, trying to stifle a laugh. Bernard’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and board games. I went over to his house one Memorial Day for a BBQ and promptly got my ass handed to me in chess, checkers, Monopoly, and Clue.
Everyone but T files out of the car when we make it to the church parking lot.
“Loop around a few times,” she says as soon as we’re alone.
She doesn’t have to ask me twice.
“You got it.”
“So?” she asks.
“So . . ,” I say back, suddenly at a loss for words.
“You have my attention. This was cute. It’s nice to see you, and not in the same way that it’s nice to see Bernard.” She smiles, and the world slows down and clicks back into place again. I don’t feel right when she’s not around. I can’t even remember what it felt like not to know her, and if all I get is this bit of time in a church carpool, I’ll take it. Even if she’s still in the back seat and I’m chauffeuring her around the parking lot.
“It’s good to see you, too. I promise not to compare you to a prostitute,” I tease.
“Well, let me do a praise break for that.”
I keep glancing at her in the rearview mirror, grateful for the distance. Otherwise I might just stare at her the entire time and let the minutes tick by as I memorize each divot in her collarbone or try to calculate the degree at which each of her eyelashes curls.
“Pay attention to the road,” she says softly, chastising me.
“I want to apologize,” we say in unison, and then laugh.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I say, and she stops me.
“No, please let me say this,” she says. “I left you stranded. I didn’t say goodbye. It was rude. I’m sorry. And you didn’t deserve to be ghosted.”
“You’ve been avoiding me too,” I add softly.
“I’m sorry for avoiding you.”
“That’s it?” I ask, and she rolls her neck a bit at my tone, a little nonverbal WTF. I quickly backtrack. “Nah, nah, it’s not like that. I’m just stopping you ’cause you know you don’t have anything to apologize for. I should have never suggested the dance in the first place. I wasn’t paying attention to what you wanted, and I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I need you to.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“You’re not gonna ice me out anymore?” I ask.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying I accept your apology. How long did it take for Brianne to tell you where I went?”
“Brianne! That’s that girl’s name!” I shout as I slap the steering wheel. “I’ve been trying to remember her name for days. Uh, I don’t know, two songs, maybe three. It was unseemly what I offered her to tell me where you went, but she didn’t break.”
“Brianne’s cool, despite her choice of best buddy. You and Joo looked good together.”
I pull the car back into the church parking lot and turn to face her.
“Joo could sprout wings and I wouldn’t fly anywhere with her. You know that.”
She chews her bottom lip, trying to keep the smile she’s suppressing from cracking wide across her face. Her eyes meet mine for a second, and there’s that thrum in my chest that starts to warm my entire body. It makes me want to touch her, sit next to her, and think unholy thoughts on holy ground.
“I’ve got a lot going on, Fay. It’s not fair to you that—”
“You don’t get to decide what’s fair to me. I do. I’ll make that decision. Flip the coin, roll the dice, I’ll always choose you. Even if I have to sit through Pastor Roberts’s warbling through ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”
“That sound ain’t sweet at all,” she laughs, but there’s something sad in her eyes. I want to press, ask questions to make sure that I’m still on her good side, that everything is smooth now. But I’m afraid that this truth is as fragile as the soap skin on sink bubbles.
“C’mon, then,” she says, and opens the car door. “I’ll get a stack of envelopes and let you pass notes to me through the service.”
“What if I want to listen?” I joke.
“I stopped listening a long time ago.”
“Then why do you keep going?” I ask, knowing how hard it is to hold on to your faith once God takes away something you thought was a given.
“The motions, bae. Sometimes you just have to go through the motions.”