“Do you belong here?” he asks quietly.
Some part of me wants nothing more than to say I’ll go with him. I want to be there to watch over Kiki and, if I’m honest, to be close to him. I don’t know what’s happening between us, exactly, but I wouldn’t mind more time to figure it out.
But some other part of me knows that I will stay. And that it’s the right decision. Maybe it’s because I’ve already made up my mind to go back and check on the mission hospital in Kasisi once Mr. Greyhill’s “donation” goes through. Maybe it’s because while I want the opportunities that school will give Kiki, I know that life isn’t for me. Even before I was a Goonda, I didn’t really like school. I know that’s not great, but it’s just who I am. I can’t imagine spending every day on lockdown, on someone else’s schedule, even if it’s good for me. Wearing a neat uniform, being told what to do, where to go, when to be there—it all sounds like being slowly smothered. I would chafe at being made to sit up straight in a classroom. And I wouldn’t last long with people bugging me to figure out where I want to go to college and decide what I’m going to do with my life.
But mostly, the reason why I am staying is simple: I already know what I’m going to do with my life.
This morning I woke before dawn and crept out of bed. I knocked on Michael’s door and exacted a promise just shy of a blood oath from him to make sure Kiki stayed safe. Then I left. I needed to talk to Boyboy. He was already at my roof by the time I got there. He said he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t stop shaking. “What happens next?” he’d asked. He knew as well as I did that everything was different now. For one, we were on the Goondas’ shit list. We were going to have to go underground. I needed to find a new roof . . . or maybe a basement. I promised Boyboy we’d set his family up somewhere nice and new and safe. An island maybe.
But two, even if the Goondas had wanted us back, we knew we couldn’t operate like before, robbing people blindly, not caring whose lives we affected.
We talked until the sun was up. We came up with plans, Boyboy and I, that may or may not involve more of what he calls “redistributive justice.” The world is full of bad men with hackable bank accounts.
And after all, I can’t give up being a thief entirely.
“It’ll be like Robin Hood,” Boyboy said. “Prince of Thieves.”
I bumped shoulders with him as we looked out over the city. “Come on, we can do better than that. We’ll be the Queens of Thieves.”
And he laughed, for the first time in a long while.
I face Michael. His eyes are the same color as the leaves behind him. I think he gets why I can’t go. I think, actually, he might get it better than anyone else. He may not know the details, but he knows me. He trusts me to know what’s right for me. I can tell that he wants to ask what this is between us, what it might be. Our friendship is solid, a bedrock I never knew I needed, that I never knew I had all along. But is this more than that? I’m not sure either of us knows yet. But he seems to understand that letting the questions remain, letting the messy, unpredictable future happen is maybe the only way for us to go forward.
He brings his hand to my face, his fingertips grazing my hair. I can feel his warmth. “Just . . . don’t disappear again, okay?”
“You’ll always know where I am,” I say, and tentatively lay my palms on his chest. Under his shirt I can feel his heart beating hard and fast.
He watches me like he’s taking in every millimeter of my face. I know the feeling. I want to memorize everything about the way he looks right now, with the sun so bright on his skin and little insects doing lazy circles around his head. And then he reaches around my back and brings me closer, and I’m framed within his arms and I smell him and I can feel how tense he is, holding me as delicately as a wild thing that might launch out of his hands and run away.
And something in me suddenly cracks open like an egg, and I let go of everything except for this ache for him that is so sweet and so powerful and so good. Tomorrow doesn’t matter, I realize. Not right now. Who knows what will happen? All we have is this. Here. Now.
And our mouths come together, and he holds me so close, and in this moment I can’t tell if I am quenched, or more thirsty for him than ever. We kiss and it’s like we’ve invented kissing, like no one can possibly have ever kissed like this in the history of forever. And all around us the world fades away, except for the buzzing of the bees in the flowers, like a thousand strings vibrating.
FORTY-FOUR
Rule 18: A last rule—maybe you can’t be all things to all people. You might not ever be a proper boarding-school girl. Or a perfect thief. Not always the daughter they want or deserve or the sister or the friend. Rules will break you as often as you break them. But I guess that’s okay.
Maybe I’m done with rules.