She went to their house after school again on Friday, but this time it was just the three of them.
They made grilled cheese sandwiches, stuffing them with bacon and tomato. Eli heated up three cans of spicy tomato soup and they ate in front of the TV, where Micah queued up online videos of some of his favorite choreography.
Sunday expected Eli to complain about the videos or Micah’s overall presence, but he seemed to be in good spirits. She’d been skeptical about coming over, but she was glad she’d decided to. Everything seemed to be normal, or at least the normal she’d been used to for the last two weeks.
Micah scooped up the dishes, carrying an armful to the kitchen. Sunday turned to Eli.
“Can I look at the Aaron Douglas painting again?” She’d been trying to be patient, but this was the reason she’d come over, after all.
“The who?”
She rolled her eyes and pulled him up from the couch by his arm. Eli happily followed her to the staircase and up to the painting.
“He was a Harlem Renaissance artist,” Sunday said, leaning in closer to inspect the piece. “He was a painter and an illustrator who—”
Suddenly, Eli’s face swooped in front of hers, and he was kissing her. His lips were too wet and his breath was too hot, and everything about it was wrong. Sunday put her hand on his chest, pushing him away.
“What are you doing?”
Eli blinked at her, as if this reaction wasn’t something he’d ever considered.
“Eli, I . . .” She bit her lip and chewed for a moment. “I like you, but . . . not like that.”
“Oh.” He swallowed hard, his dark eyes focused on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry if I . . .” But she trailed off, because there was nothing to apologize for. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d been nice to him and hung out with him after school. She hadn’t flirted with him or led him to believe she liked him. “I’m sorry, but I just want to be friends.”
“Sunday!” Micah shouted from downstairs. “I found another video I want to show you!”
She looked at Eli, who was standing with slumped shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s—” He brushed past her, thundering down the stairs.
A few seconds later, she followed, but Eli had already disappeared. She didn’t see him again that night, not even when she tried to find him to say good-bye before Micah drove her home.
*
Sunday had art class during fourth period, just before lunch. On Monday, like every day, Bailey greeted them at the start of class, going over what they should be working on and when it was due. Then she left them to their own devices, strolling through the room to track their individual progress and see if they needed help.
Sunday was still working on her charcoal drawing. Bailey had asked her to start with the bowl of plastic fruit sitting on the table up front. It was a pretty basic assignment, but she knew Bailey wanted to see what she could do in her room, and Sunday planned to give it to her farmer’s market–loving father when she was done.
Sunday was moving a little slower that day, still groggy from the weekend. She couldn’t get Eli and the kiss out of her mind, though. She hadn’t seen him since he’d run away from her at his house, but she hoped they could go back to normal. She hadn’t told Micah. She’d bet money that Eli was too embarrassed to have said anything, either.
“How’s the charcoal going, Sunday?” Bailey was at her elbow, holding a paper cup of coffee from the faculty lounge.
“Pretty good, I think?” Sunday unzipped her portfolio, rooting around for her sketchbook among the loose papers and class handouts.
She pulled out the book. There was something squeezed between the pages, leaving a gap in the middle. Sunday flipped it open, thinking one of her pencils or gum erasers had gotten wedged inside.
She didn’t understand what she was seeing at first. It was a plastic sandwich bag, the kind that zipped closed along the top. That much was clear. But as for what was inside . . .
“What’s this?” Bailey frowned, setting her coffee cup on the corner of the table. She picked up the bag between her index finger and thumb, only looking at the contents for a few seconds before she sighed deeply. “Is this yours?”
“I don’t . . . I mean, this is my book and my bag, but I don’t know what that is.”
“Pack up your things and come with me, Sunday,” Bailey said, her voice harboring what had to be every ounce of disappointment in the world.
The room was completely silent. Everyone was watching, eyes wide and mouths open. Others were already on their phones, texting furiously.
Magic mushrooms. They looked like regular old mushrooms, with stems and caps, but these were the sort that made a person hallucinate. That’s what the head of school said when Bailey dropped the bag on her desk.
“Sunday, the Brinkley School has a zero-tolerance policy,” Ms. Ashforth said. She didn’t seem livid, like Sunday had feared, but she was unsmiling, and one of her eyebrows appeared to be permanently furrowed. As if Sunday didn’t already know how serious this was. Zero tolerance meant expulsion.
“They’re not . . . I’ve never done a drug in my life,” she said in a voice so soft she wasn’t sure they could hear her. “I’ve never even seen any.”
Ashforth exchanged a look with Bailey. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Then tell us where you got them or whose they are, and we’ll go from there.”
“I didn’t get them from anyone. They just showed up in my bag, I swear.”
Bailey sighed. “This will be so much easier for everyone if you tell us the truth, Sunday.”
“I am telling the truth,” she said, though she knew they didn’t believe her and probably never would.
“Do you have any idea who could have put this in your bag, then?” Ashforth again. “If it wasn’t you, we need to know where else to look. Otherwise, we’ll have to call your parents to come down here to talk about next steps.”
She didn’t even want to think about how angry her father and Ben would be. They trusted her, but more than that, she knew how much her father expected from her. She couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t explicitly stated how differently people viewed them because of their skin color—how she had to work twice as hard at everything she did, simply because she was black. There was a huge list of activities that Sunday had always known were not an option, no matter how forgiving other parents might be: getting pregnant, drinking and doing drugs—even bringing home a grade lower than a C (which, to be honest, he was pretty peeved at anything below an A). Getting caught with drugs—hers or someone else’s—was certainly at the top of that list.
Sunday knew without a doubt where the shrooms had come from. She wasn’t positive who had placed them in her bag, but in that moment, she felt Eli’s hot breath on her skin, his unwelcome lips pressing against hers. . . .