boi-k Also, Mom FYI. The video’s attaching itself to us. On side: I have 10k new friends. On side: video comes up when you G-Search StitchBtch. It’s the second link after your website.
My mom had been talking with her lawyers about going public. A new string of stores were set to open in France. She’d given this company her all since her twenties. And now I’d ruined everything because someone at school had it out for me. It was like I’d proved her right.
There was a long pause where no one wrote anything. Then:
mama This is what lawyers are for.
Then her avatar went red. Do not disturb.
When I got home, I didn’t bother going inside. The mini blizzard of two nights ago had shifted right into a warm front. The temp had steadily risen all day. At eight o’clock it was sixty degrees out. Sorry, Fawn, I guess no white Christmas after all. Fine by me. I needed fresh air and exercise stat. As I sloshed down the steps from the sidewalk to haul my bike out from under the stoop, a shadow separated from the tree next door.
“Excuse me, miss?” It was a soft voice that belonged inside a white van with tinted windows. “Do you live here?”
His Doc gave off a silver glimmer. I couldn’t tell if he was pointing it at me or simply holding it. I quick tried to think of how I’d describe the man to police. Tallish. Dark clothes. Light skin. Twenties? Thirties? Tell him you’re only the babysitter! Tell him it’s your friend’s house! my brain shouted. Don’t tell him you live here!
“Yeah, this is my house,” I said.
Why do we feel obligated to tell perfect strangers the truth? If I ever have kids, I’m encouraging them to be good liars.
“Cute.” He paused, like I was supposed to fill in the uncomfortable silence. “I was hoping you could tell me what your Doc digits are. Just kidding. Which way is Seventh Avenue from here?”
“Straight up the hill. Can’t miss it. Especially if you use your Doc.”
He seemed surprised to find it in his hand.
“I’m suffering through the Series Twenty-Three.” He laughed softly. “The map app gives you 3-D directions. It’s the most confusing thing. I think it gives me motion sickness.”
I’d read that the Series 23 did that to people, but this guy didn’t look sick. He took a step forward, as if to show me the maps feature. I took a step back. He stopped.
“Sure, I get it. Don’t talk to strangers, right?” Now a longer, weirder pause. “Anyway, happy holidays. Hope you’ve been a good girl and Santa brings you everything you asked for.”
Two houses away, he looked back, stared at me, then waved. Part of me wanted to run inside. Part of me didn’t want to be anywhere near my house right now. That part won.
There was only one place I could conceive of going. And even if he wasn’t home, or wouldn’t let me in, or I had to knock down Rupey to see him, being in the vicinity of Mac would be better than being anywhere else. I made it to his house in twenty minutes flat. A new record.
I always teased Mac that he couldn’t do anything unless he had enough guys with him for a pickup soccer game. So I wasn’t surprised that he was outside on his stoop with a handful of his cousins when I rode up. Cans of beer and bags of chips took up the empty spaces on the steps between them.
I skidded to a stop in front of his house and dropped my bike.
“Kyla?” Mac made to stand up, but Rupey put a hand on his arm and he stayed seated. “What do you want?”
I pulled a wadded-up tissue from my pocket and threw it at Rupey.
“I came to tell your primo it’s rude to spit in public. That’s what tissues are for.”
And then because I couldn’t take one more mean comment from me or anyone else, I put my face in my hands and sobbed. Again. I’d cried more in the last hour than I had in a decade. With a quick, annoyed glance at Rupey, Mac untangled himself from the stoop.
“What happened?” He walked me a few paces away from his cousins. Pulling my hands from my face, he brushed my bangs back from my forehead. This was the reaction I’d been expecting yesterday, when the video dropped. We hadn’t spoken in nearly a day and a half. I’d been afraid I’d never see this side of him again. “You’re shaking.”
“I pedaled standing up the whole way here.”
“How come? Qué pasa, chiquita? Tell me.”
“There was a guy. Outside my house. I don’t know if he was one of the guys who have been messaging my CB with pics of their wieners or if he was AnyLies or if he was a total nobody and just lost, but he had a Doc so how could he be lost? And I didn’t know him, but he knew me. And, Macky, it was muy scary and I don’t know what to do. About any of this.”
Mac pulled me into a hug. He smelled like beer, clean T-shirts, and cheesy tortilla chips. Just like that, all the bullshite of the previous thirty-six hours fell away.
“Okay,” he said stroking my hair. “I got you. It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Come sit down. What have I told you about not wearing your helmet? Muévense, pinches primos. We have a girl in distress here.”
Normally he would have said “my girl’s in distress here.” Still, the primos begrudgingly cleared a space for me.
Without exception, Mac scorned the boys at school. He called them kickback, cutback lobbyists in training. It was his primos who were his true clan. So it was kind of a big deal that none of them liked me. Granted, I’d only officially hung out with them once, for like, a half hour. Mac had brought me to his house and introduced me the second week of our not dating. His cousin Victor had appraised me in Spanish. My EarRing’s Translate had whispered that it meant something like “This must be the little [unrecognized word] who thinks she’s too good for you. She’s got small breasts, no?” (For the sake of accuracy, I’m pretty sure Victor had not said “breasts.”)
Both Mac and I knew it hadn’t gone well. I was supposed to stay through dinner, but instead we grabbed banh mis and rode our bikes to the park to eat them. And, I mean, Mac called in sick anytime there was a new batch of tamales in the house. It was no small thing for him to opt out of his mom’s cooking.
I hadn’t been around his cousins other than in passing since then.
Mac quickly reintroduced everyone. And for the first time since AnyLies set their sights on me, with these people who I knew despised me, I felt safe. Which is maybe why my tongue unspooled and then, like we’d all been BFFs for years, I told them everything.