Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own mind.
DAY: 21, CONTINUED . . .
Okay, I straight up stole that rule from the Buddha.
It’s one of those things you see on the internet when you’re a sheltered small-town idiot who is trying to learn some incredibly complex concepts—one of those glib little meme-ready sayings that sticks in your head without making a lick of sense, lurking there like a land mine, waiting for someone or something to trip it, so the bomb-blast epiphany will blow you to bits.
“I’m sorry,” Tariq said, pulling his lips away from mine. And then: “I’m not sorry.”
His eyes bored into mine from inches away, alive with the setting sun. Wind whispered in the tree branches, reminding me to breathe.
“Say something,” he said, his voice soft and husky.
“I . . .”
I had lots of somethings to say.
I don’t understand.
This can’t be the Secret.
This? That you’re—gay?
No. The Secret is that you’re a monster. That you hurt my sister.
It has to be.
I’ve put so much energy into hating you.
If I have no reason to hate you, what has all of this been for?
“Do you know I’ve wanted to do that since the eighth grade?”
“What?” I asked.
Tariq frowned. “Kiss you.”
At that—inexplicably, irrationally, infuriatingly—I giggled. “Eighth grade? What happened then? You found that stained blue sweatshirt I wore every single day particularly sexy?”
Tariq laughed. “I remember that sweatshirt. But no. It wasn’t that.”
We stared at each other. I shut my eyes to smell him, to see the image of him as my mind’s eye held it. The wide nose, the lustrous black hair swooped up, the dimpled grin—he was too fine, too beautiful for this planet, let alone for me.
“You didn’t—you never . . . but you’ve had girlfriends!”
He shook his head. Shrugged. Looked scrumptiously sad.
“Then . . .”
“You do the things you have to do. My friends? My father? I hide it. I have no choice. But you? You are who you are, and you never pretend to be anything else.”
I sat down on soft sharp pine needles. Tariq followed.
“I feel like my whole life is me trying to hide who I really am.”
“Well, I know who you really are,” he whispered.
I shut my eyes. I breathed.
How bright the world was suddenly. How cool and pleasant the night. How light my heart was, once I’d set down the heavy burden of hate.
I’d been such a fool. I’d been so focused on what I wanted to see and learn and smell and feel that I’d missed . . . everything.
I’d seen Tariq’s shame, his Secret, but I was blind to its true nature. In my anger I’d turned it into proof of harm, assault, conspiracy. My senses had been sharp, but subject to the dictates of my treasonous, ignorant mind.
All that time I’d believed my body to be the enemy, when it had been my mind all along.
“Say something,” he said, and I could see that the euphoria of his confession was wearing off, the relief of sharing his secret was giving way to fear and worry about what I’d say in response.
Once I’d taken pleasure in making Tariq suffer, making him afraid or uncomfortable or disoriented. Now his fear hurt. It hurt like fire, searing away the Thirst for Bloody Revenge.
I leaned forward. I kissed him. A chaste, closed-lips, fairy-tale kiss on the lips. The kiss that awakens the enchanted princess.
“Don’t play with me,” he said gravely.
“I would never.”
He laughed, and it was a glorious sound. He stretched out on the ground and pulled me to him. We lay there, on our backs, pressed together side to side, on a soft carpet of cold earth and fallen needles, and looked up at where the stars began to glimmer between the black mountain-peak tops of pine trees. The universe was a cold dark place. Tariq’s body was the only warm thing in it. But that was enough.
Questions, though. They bubbled up no matter what I did. Why did my sister meet you, the night she ran away? What do you know about what happened to her? What didn’t you want her to tell anyone when I sent that text you thought was from her?
Tariq had questions, too. “So why were you in the hospital?”
“Food poisoning. Bad chicken. I’m fine now.”
“You swear?”
“Triple swear.”
“Can we just . . . not ever leave here?” he asked.
“I was going to suggest the same thing,” I said.
And then, because rage dies hard, another voice hissed from the basement of my brain.
If you didn’t hurt my sister, who did?
RULE #28
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.”