He smiles down at us. He has a nice smile, wholly untouched by the mismatched hues of his skin, and I think again about what Kai said, about Ringo being fragile, and wonder if it can be true.
“‘Come Together,’” he says.
“I…still don’t know that one,” I confess, but Vance is already retrieving his laptop and handing me one of the earpieces he had been sharing with Kai. He scans down a list on the screen, selects the play button, and I try to relax to the new sound of the Beatles, to live just for a moment as if the weight of everyone else’s expectations and my own need for Penny and Will weren’t crushing the air from my lungs.
I listen until Margaret slides a scrap of paper with a name on it over to me, and the lovely tune that had been drowning out my worries turns off-key in my ears, and the juggling balls of Ringo’s coffee shop friends come crashing down around me.
In middle school, my best friend was Jenny. A best friend was an important thing to have in middle school. Anyone who was anyone had a best friend and Jenny was a good one to have because she bought us matching bracelets, linked arms with me whenever we walked to class, and called me her BFF in a loud, brassy voice that made people pay attention. But I didn’t really like her. If I spent longer than two hours with Jenny, that loud, brassy voice began to drive me insane. And she was always wanting to choreograph dance numbers to songs that I didn’t like. In fact, given the choice between hanging out with my mom and hanging out with Jenny, I’m embarrassed about how often I’d choose my mom.
That wasn’t the case with Penny and Will. Penny has this theory that soul mates don’t have to be romantic, and so that’s what the three of us are. Soul mates.
Three months after I started at St. Theresa’s, we’re huddled together on the floor of Will’s bedroom. My back’s pressed to the closed door and I’m listening to the muffled sound of his parents’ screams.
“Her name’s Linda,” I report back solemnly.
“Linda?” Penny wrinkles her nose. She’s seated cross-legged with the backs of her hands resting on her knees, like she’s meditating. Her printed silk pants drape onto the carpet. Her bangles are silent. “Linda,” she repeats. “That name has a very cold energy, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve never really spent much time on the energy of the name Linda,” I whisper. Penny mouths the name Linda again, like she’s still considering it.
Will drops his head between his knees. “That’s his secretary. God, could he be any more cliché?”
Penny and I share a worried look.
“I think this calls for the snack stash,” I say.
“I’ll man the door,” Penny volunteers.
I crouch on my knees and pull out a plastic tub from underneath Will’s bed. A limp sock comes out with it and I chuck it back under the dust ruffle. I toss the bags of powdered donuts and potato chips into the center of the space between Will and me and hand the dehydrated kale chips and almonds over to Penny.
“Thanks,” Penny says in a hushed voice, popping a kale chip into her mouth.
I watch her munch as I tuck my knees under my chin. Something happened earlier today, something I haven’t told either of my friends. Matt spoke to me. It was right as I was finishing getting dressed to come over to Will’s. Matt seemed nervous. He made small talk, something about a pelican he had watched dive into the ocean and come up with I-can’t-remember-what in its mouth. I was in a hurry, barely listening, trying to get over here because Will, I knew, was in crisis. But Matt had memorized the night’s showtimes at the local movie theater, memorized them so that he could tell them to me, so that we could go see a movie together. And I didn’t pay attention. I realize that now on the floor of Will’s room with the lights turned off. “I’ll be back later tonight, Matt, or tomorrow,” I told him as I scooted around his wheelchair to leave. There’s a spoiled-milk feeling in my stomach when I linger on the image of Matt’s face too long.
But as I watch Will, sitting inches from him—the boy who has been there for me and made me feel like I belong somewhere—I think, What else could I have done?
“I hate him,” Will is saying and I try to tune back in. Because we are a family too. “How can he leave my mom like this?” There’s a crack in Will’s voice. I scoot nearer to him so that our hips are pinched together. I let my head fall against his shoulder. Penny gives me a sad smile. Will sniffles and I push the thoughts of my brother aside for the sake of the people who don’t make me work so hard, or make me feel so terrible, just for the privilege of loving them. That’s what family is. Will’s and my families have just somehow forgotten. “What if it’s, like, hereditary or something?” Will says. “Being a lying cheat. What if it is?” I know that what’s happening is a tragedy in Will’s life and I feel terrible about it, but at the same time I have a deep sense of rightness because he feels he can reveal this side of himself to me and to Penny. It’s my most promising sign that the weeks we’ve had since the bird won’t be just a passing phase. Will and I are here to protect Penny and I’m just now learning that Penny and I are here to protect Will.
“It’s not,” Penny says softly.
I feel Will shift underneath me and I move my head from his shoulder. When I do, I see that his deep-brown eyes are trained on me. “Promise me that I’ll never be like him.”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. A shiver races up my spine. I tried with Matt until I could no longer try any harder and when I stopped I found this. “I promise.” My words are almost too soft to hear. And right then, I know that it’s official. I’m falling in love with Will Bryan.
“Ssssh, sssssh, you guys.” Penny flaps an arm at us. She leans in and presses her ear to the door. She’s holding up a finger, telling us to wait. The finger slowly lowers. “Will, you’re going to have a sister,” she says.
Margaret figures out the name of the anonymous poster in under an hour. I don’t need to take the scrap of paper on which she’d written it. I’m not going to forget a name I already know: Harrison Vines.
He’s the same year as me at St. Theresa’s. It’s common knowledge that he’s had a crush on me since the second I set foot on campus and that I think he’s a sexist pig. As far as I know, this in no way makes him think we are any less compatible. So there’s a better than 80 percent chance that Harrison has made up the whole thing because he hopes that Will’s death will leave a vacancy…in my pants.
But then again, that would be pretty dark, even for Harrison.