“Why not?” Lily asked.
Shirley looked genuinely shocked. “I just told you why. I’m trying to do you a favor.”
Lily knew she was about to make a mistake, but she felt a recklessness taking hold of her. “I don’t want any favors,” she said curtly.
Shirley looked stunned. “Well,” she said, but she didn’t continue.
Lily couldn’t take the words back. She wouldn’t. The gym doors banged open, and a group of Caucasian students surged out—several couples arm in arm, the girls giggling. Lily and Shirley didn’t know them well, and they stepped aside to let them pass. The band started playing “I’ll Be True,” and Lily was sure that everyone would be heading to the dance floor, but she and Shirley didn’t move. She wondered if the two of them would stand there facing each other forever, each unwilling to yield, but at last Shirley gave a tiny shake of her head as if she were disappointed in Lily and went up to the gym doors.
“Are you coming?” Shirley asked.
Lily knew that if she didn’t, there would be consequences. Shirley had said as much, hadn’t she? Jean’s queerness was contagious, like a cold, and it could be transmitted through Kath to Lily by nothing more than rumor.
“No,” Lily said.
As soon as she spoke the word, a panic went through her—she shouldn’t have said that—but Shirley was already opening the door and going back in. The door slammed shut behind her.
Lily took a shaky breath. There was nothing for her to do but go home, so she went to get her jacket from the girls’ locker room, and left. Outside the gym she almost expected Kath to be waiting for her, but the street was empty. Only the fog moved across the pavement, silent and disembodied as a ghost.
16
On Monday morning, Lily and Eddie walked to the intersection of Washington and Grant as usual, but Shirley wasn’t there to meet them. Instead Flora stood on the corner, flushed with self-importance.
All weekend, Lily had wondered how exactly Shirley would punish her for leaving the dance early. She hadn’t seen Shirley at church on Sunday, and Shirley hadn’t phoned to discuss the dance the way she normally would have. Lily had known that Shirley would do something, but she hadn’t expected this.
“Shirley went to school already,” Flora announced. “She asked me to tell you not to wait for her.”
Humiliation burned through Lily, but she tried to hide it behind cool resignation. “We should get going, then, or we’ll be late,” she said. She was distinctly aware that Shirley had sent Flora to do her dirty work, to show by her very absence that Lily wasn’t in her circle anymore.
She saw Eddie give her a curious look, but she didn’t meet her brother’s eyes as they proceeded up Grant Avenue. It was early enough in the morning that workers were still carrying crates of produce from the sidewalks into the markets. Lily sidestepped boxes of Napa cabbage and ginger, and narrowly missed two men carrying half a pig into a butcher shop. The skin was a waxy pink, the pig’s hoof jutting out at an obscene angle as if it was about to kick her. She hurried past, her stomach clenching as if the hoof had met its mark.
As they joined their other friends on the way out of Chinatown, the surreptitious glances cast in her direction told her they all already knew. If Lily had any doubt that Shirley was giving her the cold shoulder, it was squashed when she noticed that Will wasn’t waiting with Hanson. Will had gone ahead with Shirley, just the two of them.
Lily kept her head down and shoved her sweaty hands into her jacket’s pockets and followed Flora and Hanson and the rest of them, pretending she didn’t care. She let herself fall behind until she was trailing them all. She didn’t see anything but the dirty gray sidewalk a few feet ahead of her and Flora’s legs as she walked, and then she lost sight of Flora entirely and only gazed down at the ground.
At Francisco Street, Eddie turned right toward the junior high, and Lily turned left. As she trudged along the street, she allowed the gap between her and her friends to stretch until they were half a block apart, until she could only hear snatches of their conversation tossed back on the wind. Once or twice Flora glanced over her shoulder at Lily, slowing down as if she would wait for her, but she never slowed down enough, and Lily never made the effort to catch up.
When she and Shirley had been little, they had been very close. They’d liked all the same things: Smarties, which they pretended were medicine prescribed by Lily’s father; Bambi and Black Beauty; and later, Archie Andrews on the radio. Lily had always been the Betty to Shirley’s Veronica. They rarely fought, and when they did, Lily often felt like the petty one who clung to bruised feelings for too long. Shirley never held a grudge (at least, not openly) and was the generous and big-hearted one whom everyone sided with. Now Lily realized that Shirley never apologized for anything; she simply assumed that Lily would forgive her—and she did.
When Lily arrived at Galileo, there were only a few minutes left before the bell. At her locker, she saw Shirley and their friends gathered in a closed circle across the hall. Some of them eyed her as she passed; some of them whispered behind cupped hands. Had Shirley told them why she and Lily had fallen out? Had she started a rumor about Lily and Kath? The thought made her nervous, but it also made her angry.
Lily finished at her locker. Carrying her books in her arms, she turned her back on Shirley’s group and headed to Miss Weiland’s classroom. There was Kath coming down the hallway, carefully not looking at Lily as usual. And Lily suddenly knew what she could do.
“Kath!” she called. “Wait for me!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw everyone in Shirley’s group turn their heads to watch. She saw Kath stop and look at her in surprise. Kath’s gaze flickered behind her, then back at Lily.