The Inside of Out (19 page)

I stood with Chief Beck, surprised by how warm, how understanding he seemed to be. Whatever genes he'd passed on to Natalie had obviously been recessive.

He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Look after him until his folks show up. He's putting up a good front, but he'll need a friend tonight.”

I nodded.

“Good girl,” he said. “Nice to see you again, Daisy.”

The EMTs decided to take Kyle to the hospital to make sure his ribs weren't fractured. I rode along, perched beside his gurney. He looked so young lying there, like he'd been tucked into bed for the night. His brow was furrowed with pain or worry or both.

“This is weirdly fun, right?” I said to lighten the mood, rocking onto my heels as we rounded a corner. “I've never been in an ambulance before.”

“Me neither,” Kyle said, with a flicker of a smile that fell with the next turn. “Did the cops call my parents?”

“I think so.”

“I want them to be happy. They were so happy when I came out. This is going to ruin it.”

“No, it won't,” I said, but I must have had a tell of my own, because he rolled his eyes. His good eye, anyway.

“Thanks for coming with me,” he said.

In the next blink, his brow contorted and his skin went mottled. I half rose, thinking something new was hurting him—his ribs? Internal bleeding? But then he let it out. A sob.

“I can't believe this ha-happened. Everything was supposed to work out o-okay. I didn't think—”

He was crying too hard to talk, really shaking now. I glanced at the young EMT, anxious about his breathing, but she just smiled sadly and murmured, “Almost there, kiddo.”

“I'm sorry, Kyle,” I said, my own voice staccato with tears. “I didn't think . . . I'm just so sorry.”

We didn't talk again until we got to the hospital, where his parents turned from statues to sprinters at the first sight of his gurney.

My mom picked me up a few minutes later, her face a terrified mirror of the Hornsbys'. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

“I'm fine,” I said bitterly, fastening my seat belt. “Not a scratch on me.”

“You're shaking.”

I didn't answer. I'd caught Kyle's shock, I knew, and added some of my own. The kind that made my stomach roil, made my chest constrict and burn.

Made me want to hide from my reflection in the dark car window.

Just yesterday, Cal had called me brave. The memory felt like a taunt right now. An accusation.

That night, thank goodness, the late local news didn't report on Kyle's attack. They did report on me.

“Teen gay advocate Daisy Beaumont-Smith bravely cheered on her home team at tonight's match-up against—”

I turned it off and stared at the dead screen. Suddenly, it was another face I saw, her bottom lip split, her beautiful green eyes smashed shut, or worse or worse or worse—

My phone rang, jolting me awake.

It was Hannah. I'd forgotten to call her. What could I possibly say now?

I silenced my phone, buried it under a pillow, and went upstairs to where my dad was fighting bad guys with red circles drawn on their chests so you knew exactly who they were.

“Ease off the clutch. Gently!”

The gears ground and the engine sputtered out. Again.

I let out a primal roar.

“It's fine,” Adam said. “You're getting it.” His voice was soothing. But when I glanced over, he had one hand on the dashboard and the other on the ceiling.

I yanked the brake, tossed the keys at his chest, and got the hell out of the driver's seat. Thankfully, the Sears lot was empty, so there was no one to witness my disgrace. Just Adam.

“What are you doing?” He craned his head over the Jaguar's roof. “Let's try again.”

“I'm done. Drive me home.”

He raised his eyebrows and I realized how princessy that sounded, especially given that I'd insisted we hold our lesson in my ridiculous vintage Jaguar.

“Sorry.” I removed my hands from my hips and tried to calm my breathing. “What I meant to say was, please, please, please don't make me try again?
Dear
Lord, please?”

Adam shrugged wildly, lifting his hands, then rounded the car to the driver's seat, watching me the whole time with a slow, disappointed head shake. I buckled my passenger seat belt, feeling like a slimy speck on the bottom of the universe's
shoe, but also deeply relieved about actually making it home alive.

Except Adam didn't start the car. “You're not yourself today.”

“You don't know me that well yet, so let me fill you in.” I pivoted in my seat to glare at him. “I'm Daisy. I suck at everything. Nice to meet you.” I smiled sugar-sweet and turned away, but Adam leaned over to catch my eye again.

“Something's up. Tell me.”

“Kyle got attacked,” I said, my voice blunt, ugly. “It's my fault.”

And my eyes were spilling over. Awesome.

“He . . . what?” Adam leaned in, and my guard went up. “Is Kyle from your group?”

“You can't report on this. He doesn't want anyone to know, so when I say off the record—”

“Of course,” he said, squeezing my hand, letting go. “Just tell me.”

“This online troll collective dug up the Facebook pages for all of the Alliance members to try to shame us. Some guys at the football game recognized Kyle and went after him. Total strangers.” I swiped my face, angry at it for being wet. “He's a freshman. He's the nicest kid in the universe. He thought we'd be a support group. I'm the one who made this into a headline and now he's got two broken ribs, bruises just—” I waved my hands from my head to my knees. “I checked on him this morning, and he said he's okay and I didn't need to keep guarding his house—”

“Guarding his—?”

“But I can't stop thinking, what if those guys who found him were even
worse
people? This is real now, Adam. I should never have made it this real.”

I closed my eyes, the closest I could get to taking it all back.

“But Daisy . . .” Adam put his arm on my headrest. I could feel his wrist's warmth, centimeters behind me. “This is how change works. It's not smooth, it's not easy, but that just shows you how important it is. This event—”

“It's not going to happen. Or it's going to be terrible. Like hugely humiliating.”

He leaned away, apparently amused. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it's me! Because I screw things up. Hannah's right, it's the Stede Bonnet opera.”

“Stede . . . ?” He blinked. “Okay, I'm confused.”

“I promise things and I can never deliver them. I can't even drive. I can't do anything. And this interview is going to be a disaster.”

“Interview?”

I let out a leaden sigh. “I'm going to be interviewed on
The Evening News with Shawna Wells
. On Monday. So like, you know, just a couple days to prep. No big deal.”

Adam shook the headrest. “This is amazing! A national platform!”

“I'm already freaking out enough, thank you!” I covered my face with my hair, a wall of yellow and blue protecting me from reality. “The producers are coming to my house at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow to figure out where to put the cameras. I'm gonna be the little box on the screen she talks
to.” I drew it in the air, as if he couldn't picture it for himself.

“So is this an exclusive?” Adam nudged his glasses up.

“On-air exclusive, I think,” I answered, trying to remember details from the flood of information Cal had thrown at me over the phone this morning. “We're not doing any print exclusives. I'll talk to anybody. Talk talk talk.”

“Oh good!” Adam laughed a nervous “ha” when I turned to stare at him. “I'd love to keep interviewing you, is all.”

“Yeah, well, make sure you put in your next article that the only thing I'm capable of doing is shooting my mouth off.”

“Daisy?” His mouth crinkled at the corners. “Isn't that all they're
asking
you to do?”

“Shoot my mouth off?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Um.” I tucked my hair behind my ears, thinking. “I mean, this is an interview. So yeah, talking will be involved.”

“You've got this, then. Stop freaking out.”

I must not have looked like I was taking his advice, because he sighed.

“Just think about Hannah. How much she means to you.”

I managed to nod.

“Good.” He started the car. “Let's take a break from driving. We'll try again another time.”

He'd given up. Harrumph. Yeah, okay, I was the one who'd insisted we stop the lesson, but Adam was supposed to urge me to try again and he didn't.

“Thanks for the lesson,” I grumbled as we reached my house.

To which he answered, “You're welcome,” with no apparent
irony. Then he parked the Jaguar, got in his racer-striped sedan, and smoothly, elegantly drove away.

It wasn't until that night, after replaying and dissecting our conversation no less than twenty times, that I was able to process the silver lining in my afternoon with Adam. He'd given me a new mantra.

“It's just talking,” I chanted to myself, panic swelling and ebbing in my chest. “I know how to talk.”

Having gotten through Monday morning without heart palpitations, I headed to lunch with renewed confidence. I'd planned to have a prep session at the now semi-official Alliance lunch table, but as I was nearing the cafeteria, a text came in from Hannah.

“Lunch today? Meet you on the stoop?”

My phone did a happy dance in my hand as I texted back a quick “Yes!” But a second after I hit
SEND
, I wished I could take it back and write something a little less exclamation-pointy. We'd eaten there for the past two years without the need for invitations or planning, and now I was elated to even be asked.

By the time I'd bought my lunch and emerged outside to stretch my legs against the cement steps, my mood was in serious need of boosting. I gazed out to the faculty parking lot and watched as the noonday sun danced and glittered against a field of windshields. It was such a calming sight that it took me a few seconds to realize that Hannah was standing behind me. I startled, then laughed and scooted over to make room for her, wondering how long she'd been there.

“It's Taco Monday,” I said, showing her my tray. “I got you one.”

“It's okay,” she said, sitting down.

I held it out, confused. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm good.”

This was a first. Was she suddenly watching what she ate? Did I need to be worried about her? Skinny though she was, something told me this wasn't a food thing. More a her and me thing—worrying in a completely different way.

“Sorry about Friday night,” I said. “I tried to get you on Saturday, but—”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I was . . . yeah, it was a crazy weekend.”

“That's cool,” I said. And then we sat in silence, like now that we'd run out of tiny apologies, there was nothing left to talk about. I drew a determined breath. “So I have an idea.”

She raised her eyebrows, her eyes locked on the parking lot. “Okay?”

“Sleepover night!” I tucked my legs under me. “It's been forever, right? Things are a little nuts right now with homecoming, but once it's done, my place—UNO, popcorn,
Triplecross
marathon.”

Hannah was too studiously unwrapping her gourmet sandwich to reply. Was she really this pissed off? I'd failed to return one phone call. In five years.

“Friday after homecoming?” I tried.

“I can't.” She looked away, unscrewing her water bottle with intense focus, while the two inches between us solidified into Plexiglas.

“You can't because you're busy, or . . . ?”

“It's not appropriate, Daisy.” Hannah finally turned to me, her face flushed with exasperation. “I mean, dinner's dinner, but sleeping over? I have a girlfriend.”

I coughed an incredulous laugh. “Is she
jealous
? She knows I'm straight, right?”

“Yeah, but . . .” Hannah's brow relaxed. “Okay, so think about it this way. How would you feel if QB had a sleepover with a platonic friend who was a girl? It would be weird, right?”

It took me what felt like a year to realize what she was talking about, why she would think QB's weekend plans, however odd, would affect me one way or the other. Then it hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me.

“You think I'm dating QB.”

“Aren't you?”

I stared at her. “I would tell you something like that.”

“Oh. Well.” She picked at her crust. “There's a rumor.”

“So why didn't you ask me about it?”

“I'm asking you now.” Hannah's eyes flicked to mine and then away. She knew exactly how ridiculous this conversation was. “Anyway. We're too old for sleepovers.”

I balled my napkin into a marble in my clenched fist. She took a tiny bite of her sandwich.

“What about when we're roommates?” I asked. “Is Natalie going to find that
inappropriate
?”

“No.” Hannah sighed, mussing her hair. “I mean . . . there's no point in thinking about that now. Who knows what's going to happen, right?”

My breath stopped, my heart stopped, traffic stopped.

Meanwhile, Hannah shrugged, lifted her sandwich to her mouth, put it back without taking a bite. This was a simulation of a meal. A simulation of a friendship.

She didn't mean that the future was unclear for her and Natalie. She meant us. Our plans for college and everything that followed, sitting in sorted stacks in the corner of my bedroom, untouched as promised, gathering dust.

While I sat staring at the rusted bumper of my history teacher's car, too wounded to find any more words to offer Hannah, she pepped back up like a toy with its battery replaced.

“Listen, I wanted to talk.”

I guess talking's on the appropriate list,
I thought, turning my attention to my lunch.

“I heard about Kyle.”

And the taco in my mouth turned to dust. I swallowed.

“Awful, isn't it? He's pretty banged up, but he'll be back in school tomorrow.”

I figured that was safe—a way to tell the truth while still keeping my promise to him. Then I caught the wince creeping into Hannah's smile. I noticed the Moleskine in her hand, her thumbnail anxiously flipping the corners of the pages. And I knew what was next.

“Are you sure all of this is a good idea?” A cloud shot across the sun and the parking lot went dull. “I mean, I know I told you it was too late for you to back out, but I think maybe I was just feeling trapped that day and frustrated and . . .”

I focused on the dead horizon, trying to steady myself enough to talk, while she kept going in her Hannah-rambling
way, so familiar and so alien at the same time that it made me want to scream.

“. . . It's just such a big thing and it's junior year, right? We should be worrying about our grades and our futures, not, I don't know, politics. Especially
this
kind.” She swallowed. “Don't you think they can take it from here? Without you?”

She blinked. Set the Moleskine aside, so I guess she'd come to the end of her poorly reasoned speech.

“I actually have a question for
you
.” My voice was so low that I barely recognized it. Hannah raised her eyebrows. “Why is it that the only time you want to talk to me these days is to discourage me from doing something? Or tell me how unreliable I am?”

“Whoa.” Her cheeks went rosy, two pink circles. “That is
not
what I'm—”

“Then what?”

Hannah huffed.

I put my tray neatly aside. “My mistake, Han. Finish what you were going to say.”

“You don't understand what it's like. For them.”

“For you, you mean.”

She raised her chin, an acknowledgment.

“Well, I'm trying!” I threw my hands in the air. “In case you haven't noticed, I'm putting
everything
into trying to understand. And to help. But I guess it doesn't matter.
I
don't matter, now that you've got Natalie.”