The heart and mind are such fickle creatures. Strong new emotions for one person can make you forget your feelings for someone else.
DAY: 22
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 2700
It’s shocking, really, how much less horrific high school becomes when you can walk down the halls and the song your heart is singing isn’t “Please God Don’t Let Me Get Jumped Today” or “I Wish All These People Were Dead.” How much better when the song shifts from a minor to a major key, when the lyrics you’re silently lip-synching are instead to a heretofore undiscovered track called “A Beautiful Boy Is in Love with Me”?
I didn’t see Tariq all day, but he was with me. Every time I blinked, I saw his afterimage, a ghost-outline burned into my retina, and when I licked my lips I could still taste his. Every time my mind wandered away from whatever unspeakably boring nuance of precalculus or the Civil War was being droned at me, I smelled the musk of his sweater. Every time someone muttered something in my general direction, his hot sweet breath was in my ear whispering, Forget them. They have no power over us.
Eighth period he texted me, Ride home from school? Meet me in the parking lot at 3
Yes! I texted back.
And yet: fear was what I felt when I slammed shut the door of his truck and buckled my seat belt and heard him say, “Hey,” and felt myself quiver.
“I want to kiss you so bad.”
His hand found mine, gripped it hard. “Not where people might see us.”
I nodded, even though my lips burned with frustration.
“Shall I take you home?” His thumb pressed into my palm, triggering a secret button that turned me into a drooling fool. “Or shall we . . . not?”
“Not,” I whispered.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “You?”
And when he asked, I was shocked to see that I was, that I wanted food, and that I wanted to eat food with him. Food is love, I had learned, kneeling before our fridge, looking at all the dishes brought by worried neighbors and friends who loved my mother and my sister.
“McDonald’s,” I said. “Take me to McDonald’s.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“My mother never let us get food from here,” I said ten minutes later when we were parked at the back of the Fairview Plaza strip mall lot with our laps full of drive-thru food. “Said she didn’t trust meat killed so far away.”
“Your mom’s a smart lady,” he said, scooping fries into his mouth. “This stuff is terrible for you.”
“But so, so good.”
I ate. I loved eating, and I loved watching Tariq eat. He bit down on three fries so they protruded from his mouth, then leaned across the cab of his truck to stick them in my face.
“You’re gross,” I said, then bit down on the offered fry stubs. Our teeth clinked together. We chewed, swallowed, laughed, kissed. I touched his face and his stubble tingled, electrified my fingers. He reached out his arm, draped it over my shoulders, pulled me in tighter. By the time he sat up straight and put his hands back on the wheel, I was grateful for the paper sack hiding the significant tenting of my lap.
“So how is this going to work?” he asked, shifting the truck back into drive.
“How is what going to work?” I asked—even though from his hard, distant tone I knew where he was taking this.
“Us. You and me.”
“What do you mean?”
Tariq looked at his greasy fingertips. “We can’t let anyone know about it. If my dad finds out he’ll throw me out of the house so fast and hard . . .” He pulled out of the parking lot, sped up into the gathering dark.
“Of course,” I said, because hadn’t I known already that it could never be like it was in my fantasy? That the world wasn’t ready for us to hold hands in the halls of Hudson High? That Tariq had a lot more to lose than me? “Although if he did throw you out, you could come stay with us.”
“I’d be staying in the hospital, actually,” he said, and I heard his voice crack. “Because he’ll beat me within an inch of my life.”
“If anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll break them into a million pieces.”
Tariq laughed, but I wasn’t joking. And I wasn’t exaggerating. Tariq had no idea what I was capable of. How I felt—who I was—who he was.
“I know I can’t make you understand,” he said. “You’re different from me. Plus your mom, your sister, they love you for who you are. And fuck everybody else. But I’m not like that.”
“Okay,” I said, and felt my immense happiness shrink just a little. I’d imagined, stupidly, that being Tariq’s boyfriend would validate me in the eyes of my peers. That being with him would help me step out of the shadows of shame. But that was a childish fantasy. “I’ll be your deep, dark secret. Your friends will never suspect.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m just not ready to . . . ” He shivered, and I knew that shiver, that fear I’d lived with for so many years, the terror of admitting, even to yourself, that you’re gay. How did he know—how had I known—that as soon as you say it, a door closes, and you step into a whole other life that looks nothing like the one you’ve spent every day up until then expecting?
Tariq headed toward my house. Mom hadn’t been home when I came in the night before. According to her schedule for the week, penciled in on the kitchen calendar, her shift should have been over two hours before then. Maybe she’d gone grocery shopping, I’d thought, or maybe she’d gotten assigned an extra shift. But she always texted me when those things happened, so I wouldn’t worry.
And it was only here, now, remembering this, wondering What if she went to a bar, that I realized: I hadn’t thought about Maya once all day.
“Wait. Drive us to the river,” I said. “There’s something I have to ask you.”