8

Mondays are always long, hard days. Mondays with a five-hour rehearsal tacked on to the end of the school day are even worse. It’s just after nine when Grant and I climb the stairs to my room for a quick bite before he goes home. Grant always goes up the stairs in front of me. He tried for years to convince me I should go up first in case I trip over nothing—which, frankly, could happen.

He proposed that he’d “catch me.”

Even before I was plus-sized, I felt like a big, clumsy thing. I scoffed and told him that my ass being at the level of his face while climbing stairs was simply not going to happen, and he eventually dropped the subject.

So, he’s in front of me, taking the stairs two at a time, holding a tray at shoulder level, like a waiter.

As we get to the landing, he pauses by the bannister so I can pass him and enter my room first, but before I can cross the hallway, the bathroom door flies open and steam billows out in a gush that makes me feel like I’ve stepped into a sauna.

Right on cue. God, it’s like she’s been waiting in there with a steam machine for this exact moment.

“Oh, hi, Grant.” Carmella steps through the doorway wearing the actual smallest shorts that I have ever seen in my life and an oversized T-shirt that has been artfully hacked so that it falls off one shoulder and only covers down to her ribcage. Her hair is twisted in a white fluffy towel and her skin glows. She doesn’t have a drop of makeup on, but she is absolutely gorgeous. And she’s ninety percent legs and ten percent clothes and she’s standing a foot away from Grant. My Grant.

I’m so distracted by the fact that my upper arm and her thigh are approximately the same size I don’t realize she spoke to Grant by name until he responds to her.

“Hey, Carmella—”

“It’s ‘Ella.’”

“Ella. Sorry.” Grant swallows and turns toward my door and then sort of scampers toward it, abandoning me in the hallway still unable to move properly.

“Hey, Imogen.” She reaches up and fans the bottom edge of her shirt, flashing her flat stomach at me and then looks over my head into my room.

Don’t look at him.

Don’t look in my room.

Don’t look at what’s mine.

Please don’t take what’s mine.

“Grant—don’t forget to send me those notes from third period over the Constitutional Democracy ideals and practices, okay?”

Apparently, Grant is in my room, hiding in the dark. I glance to my door, and the lights are still off. His voice comes eventually, and he mumbles, “Sure, okay.”

Carmella pauses at her door and calls back over her shoulder to Grant. “And think about what I said about the Rally. I’m sure we’d have a really good time.”

The Rally?

She was talking to Grant about the Rally?

“Well, that was awkward,” Grant says as I enter my room and turn on the light. He’s sitting on the ottoman in front of the squashy chair in the corner by the window, and he’s set the cardboard tray in front of him.

“Yeah. Awkward.”

I think I somehow expected I’d be able to keep her out of my life, even if she lived right beside me. But clearly I was wrong. Grant isn’t an object to own, and they’ve got a class together, and she knows his name.

It killed me when she said his name.

I feel totally deflated. No wind in these sails.

Grant gestures to the tray and pulls off the tea towel that was lying across it. I see a sad little pizza with hastily placed pepperonis and questionable cheese distribution. “Okay, it’s not delivery…but it’s DiGior—forget it. I’m starving.” He laughs way more than he should at his own joke.

I perch myself on the foot of my bed, the ottoman and the pizza between us. He grabs a slice. “Chow down, Gen.”

Chow.

I’ll bet Carmella doesn’t “chow.” Ever.

Silence.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“No, if you can believe it. I mean, I know this is breaking news, but I’m actually not perpetually hungry, so…”

I lie back on my bed and pull myself around so I can see out the window.

“Whoa,” he says as he sets down his crust, which he usually saves for me. “What’s the matter, Gen? I’m a little confused here because everything was okay in the car, and then we came upstairs and now you’re all weird.”

“Right, and nothing else happened when we got upstairs? Like, you didn’t see Carmella, fresh from the shower, water dripping down her ten-foot-long legs? Right. That didn’t happen.”

“Hey.” He scoots around and kneels on the floor beside the bed. He reaches up and puts his hand on my back and rubs in large, gentle circles. Instantly my eyes fill with tears.

It’s like magic.

Sadness (mine) plus kindness (his) equals tears. Always.

The light through my window has faded to the color of a bruise. Deep and purple, with tinges of yellow still lingering at the horizon.

“Grant, trust me. I am being ridiculous. I am being immature and weird and petty and gross, and you won’t understand, okay? You won’t like me if I say it out loud.”

“Dude, just tell me,” he says.

At his “dude,” my spirit sinks another notch.

I watch as the silhouette of a bird flies past my window and settles on the roof next door. I wait for her song, but she never sings.

“Is there any chance of you not making me talk about all the crap that happened today?”

“No,” he says. “There’s not.”

“Fine. But you’re going to think I’m a drama queen.”

“I know you’re a drama queen.” He brushes a hair off my face as he repositions himself on the floor. He puts his back to the window and faces me where I lie sideways across the foot of my bed.

“She was in my English class.”

I pause.

For effect.

I roll onto my back and let out an exasperated, “See? You don’t get it.”

“Gen, I know you think there’s some real drama between you and her, but if you don’t tell me, how am I supposed to understand? All I know is you say she decided she hated you last Christmas. Other than that, you’ve shut the Carmella door and locked it.”

“Only because I don’t want her getting to you. I don’t want her to ruin you.”

He laughs. “Ruin me? How?”

“What if she uses her feminine wiles to make you hate me, too?”

“Did you just say ‘feminine wiles’? Please tell me you did not just use the phrase ‘feminine wiles.’”

I reach up and pull my hoodie out from under my neck and bring it over my head and face.

He reaches up and pulls the hood open and brings his face horribly, soul-crushingly close to mine. “Gen, I could never hate you. Never.”

I close my eyes because staring at him that close is making my heart break, and I can’t handle more cracks in there.

“Now tell me what really happened today.”

I speak slowly and force myself to look at the ceiling so gravity won’t pull my tears out and so I won’t be tempted to look at his hair when I’m trying to focus.

“She was in my class. And she came in all gorgeous and perfect. And I don’t care that she’s gorgeous, but it was like she was doing this super-sexualized flirting thing or something. And all of the boys were making gross comments, and she seemed to like that.”

“Well, maybe she enjoys attention,” he says reasonably, as if that somehow is supposed to make me feel less like a Judgy-McJudgerson.

“That’s not really even the bad part. I mean, if she wants attention, more power to her. I don’t care about that. The bad part is that she came in while Mr. Reed was taking roll, and he called her last name first…”

Grant is sitting, watching and listening with his most attentive face, but he has no idea why that is a problem. I’m going to have to say it.

“He called her Cinder-Ella, Grant. In class, he called her Cinderella.”

In a burst, I recount the wet towel-under-mysheets incident and what she’d said in class today and how Jonathan had come to my rescue. When I finish, I take a giant breath and try to regain my composure.

“But, wait,” he says. “Her name is Carmella.”

I roll over to face him and ask, “How is that the only thing you took away from what I just said?” He pushes back with his feet and props himself up against the wall below the window. The increased distance between us makes it so I can finally breathe properly again. “Of course her freaking name is Carmella, but I guess Evelyn let her register as Ella. There’s no other explanation ‘cause Reed’s official roll sheet said Cinder-comma-Ella.” I pause. “If she’s Cinderella, just who does that make me? Ugh! I wanna hit her.”

Grant holds up his hands and cowers against the wall. “Easy tiger, no need for violence.”

“Stop making fun of me, I’m serious.”

“I’m not making fun of you!” He crawls to the foot of the bed again. “Okay, I am making fun of you, but just barely, so it doesn’t count.”

He’s close again, and I can smell his hair and I just cannot.

“You know what we need?” he says as he stands up and grabs my hands, pulling me up into a sitting position. “We need some Mythbusters.”

“I hate Mythbusters.”

“Blasphemy! How could you say that? It’s our show!”

“It’s your show, but I endure it because I love hearing you say, ‘Myth: BUSTED!’”

“Well.” He crosses his arms and raises his chin. “That makes it our show.”

He grabs the pizza box while I scoot back to the headboard and turn on the TV. He sits next to me on my bed, his legs over the covers, but right next to mine.

“Grant, Mythbusters is not the answer to all the world’s problems.”

“Isn’t it, Gen? Isn’t it?”

We eat some more pizza. I keep it to a preposterous two slices, even though I’d slap a baby for a couple more. We watch as myth after myth is unceremoniously busted, and as the team is building some sort of catapult contraption, their gear reminds me of all the crap Grant carried into school today.

“So how was your meeting this morning? Was there any news about the competition?”

“Well, Mr. Simmons keeps hounding us for our sign-up money, but I’m not worried about it. If I do okay at the preliminary meet this week, I’ll earn my way in.”

“That’s a good point.” I lean over and bump his shoulder.

“Plus it’s the same day as the Rally, so even if I don’t get to compete, I’ll have something to distract me from the misery of defeat later that night.”

As soon as he mentions the Rally, the sound of Carmella’s voice in the hallway earlier rattles around my head like a penny in a jar.

She said she’d spoken to him about the Rally.

That’s the dance.

Our dance.

I mean, we don’t actually dance, but it’s still ours. Like Mythbusters.

“So, um…” I swallow. “In the hallway before, she mentioned the Rally. I mean, I don’t want to intrude on your conversation or anything, but—”

Grant’s face flushes red.

My heart falls to the pit of my stomach.

“Um, well, we’re in the same AP History class, so, you know…third period. I mean, she was just asking me about the school and, you know, the clubs and groups, and, like, the Fine Arts Rally came up,” he says without looking at me.

I think he hears me gulp because he looks at me so intensely. The familiarity of his perfect eyes surrounds me, and I’m asking him—with my dull ones. I’m begging him to tell me I’m wrong about the answer he must have—that almost any boy would have—given to a girl who looks like her.

My voice sounds flimsy as I speak. “So did she, like, ask you to go to the dance with her?”

“She just…yeah. Like, if I wanted to go with her and show her around or whatever.”

My mouth dries out, and my tongue feels like it’s choking me. I look down at the bed and see Grant’s skinny ankles next to my giant clubbed feet. I follow our legs up the bed toward our hips and I see that my side of the bed is sagging lower than his and I can’t be next to him anymore. I sit up quickly and then scoot off the bed.

“Right.” I knew it before I’d asked it. My sadness at the news quickly boils into anger. I want to be angry at her, but I can’t. She’d be stupid not to ask him. He’s beautiful and kind and funny. I can’t be mad at her because it’s the one reasonable thing I’ve ever known her to do. But in my chest, the ache turns to fire and I connect all of the dots that I see in my mind, and when I’ve drawn the last line, I’m left with him. He’s like any other average, seventeen-year-old, straight guy being asked by a beautiful girl to stand inches apart and sway together for three sweaty hours. Who could blame him for saying yes?

“Well, you’ll have an incredible time with her.” I begin rationally, but quickly derail. “I’m sure if you ask really nicely, she’ll let you carry her purse and might even let you see a boob!”

His face scrunches up, and his brows come together as his mouth purses into a tiny circle before opening wide. “Yes, Gen, yes! I’m going to go with her to the Rally and ask to see her boob! Dear, Cinderella, even though my best friend is your sister and you make her have all of these horrible feelings, I’d like to spend more time with you! And also, please let me see your boob!”

He’s waving his hands around and saying every word with such ridiculous emphasis that I know in a second I was wrong. The words could never have come out of his mouth any other way. He stands and holds one palm up to the ceiling.

“Oh, Cinderella, wherefore art thy boobs?”

“Grant, that doesn’t even make sense! And stop saying boob!” I’m laughing and also trying not to cry, but I can’t figure out why. I’ve managed to confuse myself, so I walk toward my window.

“You said it first! How do you expect me, a mere male mortal of seventeen, to let it go when someone just starts screeching about boobs?”

“Stop saying boobs!”

Our laughter dies down, and we’re both just standing there. He’s at the foot of the bed, and I’m to the side. The air between us thickens, and the silence swells and pushes against my skin. We’re standing there, and I know I have to turn away from him or move or jump out the window or something. He scares me when he speaks into the quiet.

“You could show me your boob.”

The spell is broken, and I lurch forward and smack him on his chest. “Grant, you’re such an ass.”

“I know. That’s why you love me.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s one reason.”

Out of a million.

We sit again on the edge of the bed, but the weight of the unanswered question is still on my shoulders. I bump his knee with mine and hate myself as I open my mouth to speak.

“Did you really tell her no?”

“Gen, of course I told her no. I told her—and I quote—I wasn’t interested in going with her. And I told her I’d be going, as I do to every school function, with my best girl, my best friend, Imogen.”

Oh, my heart.

“Case closed. No lasers in her eyes or talons or animal sacrifices or anything. Honestly, Gen, she didn’t really seem to care.”

“You told her I was your best girl?”

His best girl. Not an ugly stepsister.

He nods. “How could you doubt me? Do I need to remind you that I just asked to see your boob?”

I reach over and punch him just above the knee. “Thanks. For, you know, not falling for her siren song.”

“You shouldn’t have had to ask.”

“But, I did, Grant. I did have to. I know it’s hard for you to get it because you’re not a girl, but there’s something about the way she treats me that I can’t figure out. Like with the towel thing. That’s not just nothing. That was mean. Like, really, really mean.”

“I can’t figure out what would have made her do that. And you’re right, that wasn’t cool.” He uses his most assuring tone, but I’m not soothed.

“I would have been so sad if you’d decided to go to the dance with her, but I think more than that I would have been scared.”

“Of what? What do you have to be scared of?”

“I don’t know how to say it, but it’s, like, I’m afraid that somehow having her here, in the house I grew up in, asking my best friend on a date, being all of these things that everyone sees as wonderful…I’m worried I’ll just fade away. Like she’ll scoop up all the good things that might have been mine if I’d been her.”

“Gen…” He smirks my favorite special-occasion smirk, the one that reveals the secret dimple on his left cheek. “You are not her, and you would never have been her.”

“I know that. But, without all of this…” I make a vague gesture to my belly and my legs and my scarred-up arm and my head. “Without all of the messed-up parts, maybe I could have been.”

There is a giant pendulum. And every person who lives with it looming above them knows how it feels when the weight is suspended in mid-air, waiting for the next opportunity to drop and change everything again in the blink of an eye.

The bird finally sings outside my window, drawing my attention. Her song is too sad. I see the sky has blackened, leaving only the faintest traces of indigo around the edges of the world. The weight drops.

The pendulum swings.

As it moves through my insides, it sweeps heavily through every small pile of joy that I’d gathered and saved up tonight. Every joke, every moment. Every smell of his hair. Every quip that left me feeling smart. Every smile that made me feel like something beautiful might have shined from behind my eyes. Every joy is knocked down.

And I know in my gut that Carmella is the one that let it loose.

If I were stronger, maybe others wouldn’t have that control, but I’m not.

And she is.

“I’m super-exhausted,” I tell him numbly.

I know he can see the old, familiar sadness that has reclaimed its usual spot behind my eyes.

His whole face is different as he reads mine.

He knows this face, this tone of voice.

He gets up from my bed, walks to the bedroom door, and swings it open wide. In two short strides, he’s back at my bedside, taking the tray and pizza scraps and moving them to the floor. He pulls off his shoes and flops himself into my overstuffed chair, props his feet on the ottoman, and lays my red fleece throw over his legs.

Over the years, when things were bad, Grant would sleep in my chair to keep me company. More than once, he came to the floor by my nightstand and held my hand as I cried in my sleep soon after Mom was gone. As the medicine got stronger and therapy went better, eventually I stopped dreaming at all. The last time he parked in that chair was last Christmas. And the time before that, I can’t even recall.

“Well, it’s been a while, but you know the drill, Gen. I’m not going anywhere.”

I look at him again before pulling my legs under the covers and rolling over onto my side. I’m still wearing jeans, and I don’t care enough to change. Frankly, I don’t feel like doing much at all. As the creeping pang of sadness that I fight off with sticks and snacks and a spiral notebook claws at the back of my brain, I look up to the top shelf of my bookcase and feel a tickle whisper across the top of my left arm. I reach over and rub it away.

The sound of the TV stops completely, but the colors from the muted screen still dance across my wall. I let my lids close. I hear Grant reach up and flip off the lights before muttering his regular words of assurance. My lips almost move along with his as he whispers to the darkness—both the room’s and mine.

“I’ll stay, Gen. I’ll stay.”