Ramona Blue

  I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, I’m sorry if I’ve complicated things for you.”

  “I can’t give you what you want.” Her voice is firm and completely sober for a moment.

  I shake my head furiously. “Maybe I tried to make us something more, okay?” My voice is desperate in a way I barely recognize. “I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t just me in this, okay, Grace?” There are only so many more words I can get out without breaking down. “Every . . . every time I kissed you, you kissed me back.”

  “I liked kissing you!” she shouts, reminding me that she’s had too much to drink, too quickly. “It was fun. But Christ, Ramona, the summer is over. Maybe in your world summer lasts forever, but not for me. You know, it’s like you get to live in that little town and work your little jobs and never really grow up. You don’t have to face the future in the same way I do.” She turns and stomps down to the bottom of the hill.

  “My little town? My little jobs?” I shout at her, but she doesn’t turn around. She leaves me up here to bleed out.

  I lie down in the soft grass of a yard belonging to a girl I’ve just met as my whole body fluctuates between rage and despair, skipping up and down like a heart monitor.

  After a few moments, I hear steps in the grass and Freddie plops down next to me.

  “Hey, where’s Viv?”

  “Inside,” he says as he rips up little fistfuls of grass.

  “How’d she like her present?”

  “She liked it.” He sighs. “But she didn’t want to keep it.”

  “That sucks.”

  He lies down next to me. “She thinks we should just be friends. And according to her, friends don’t give each other outrageously expensive headphones.”

  “Oh.” I loop my arm through his. “I’m so sorry, Freddie.”

  “Everyone else saw it coming. In fact, I saw everyone watch it coming. Even Gram said that maybe we should take a break. See where things are after graduation. And it’s not like Viv didn’t give me plenty of hints. I didn’t want to see it, so I ignored it.”

  “I think I know how you feel,” I tell him.

  “Can I tell you something?” he asks. “Something I didn’t tell anyone else. Well, not any of my friends.”

  “Of course.”

  “Gram gave me the option of us waiting to move until after I graduated.”

  “Wait.” I try not to sound as shocked as I am, but based on everything I know about Freddie, I just can’t fathom this. “Why wouldn’t you just tell her you wanted to wait?”

  “For selfish, stupid reasons,” he says. “I was tired of watching everyone succeed without me. Blame it on ego. I thought whatever I had with Viv was strong enough to survive a year spent a few hours apart. We could pick up right where we left off in college. Maybe I’d find something new to be good at. Something that could make me extraordinary like swimming does for her and our other friends.”

  “Wow.” I don’t even know what to say.

  “What about you?” he asks. “Where’s Grace?”

  “It’s over.” The words fall out of my mouth like two drops in a bucket. “Is it bad that I was hoping it’d work out for you and Viv, because if it worked out for y’all it might work out for me and Grace?”

  “If it is, I’m guilty of the same.” He shakes his head. “The universe is such an asshole. Or maybe we just have really shitty luck.” After a minute, he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if bringing you both here triggered it in some way.”

  “Was bound to happen,” I tell him. “I guess it was good to get it over with at least.”

  “Freddie?”

  We both sit up and turn around.

  Viv hovers behind us, a few feet away. “You can still stay here tonight if you want.” She looks at me and smiles. “And your friends, too.”

  He looks to me briefly. “Nah. We better not.”

  “Um.” I shouldn’t interject myself, but if we don’t stay here, where are we going to go?

  She nods quietly. “Be careful.”

  As she walks back inside, and only loud enough for me to hear, Freddie mumbles, “Happy birthday.”

  We walk to the car in silence. I glance at the time on my phone. It’s past one in the morning and Freddie and I are both exhausted. Driving home tonight is not in the cards—not to mention that Agnes would kill Freddie for driving home so late. I’m trying to map out in my head what we’ll do for the night. Maybe we can find a cheap hotel or hang out in a diner.

  Grace is waiting for us.

  Freddie sees her sitting on the curb beside the car with half the contents of her purse spilled out on the pavement, including ChapStick, tampons, her phone, loose dollar bills, and a handful of emptied mini liquor bottles. He turns to me. “I guess neither of our nights went as planned.”

  I walk around to the front seat and slam the door shut behind me.

  “Grace, we gotta get you in the car,” I hear Freddie say.

  I watch in the side mirror as she puts her purse back together one piece at a time. He reaches down to help her up. The minute he closes the back door behind her, she’s snoring.

  Freddie sighs and leans his head against the steering wheel after pulling his door shut.

  “Thanks for that,” I whisper.

  “Yup.”

  “Um, I hate to bring this up, but if we’re not staying with Viv, where are we staying?”

  “Well, I hadn’t really gotten that far.” He sits up and reaches for his wallet in his back pocket. After flipping through his cash, he says, “I’ve got sixty bucks and Gram’s emergency credit card. Which I’d rather not use.”

  I open the center console, where I’d stowed away my wallet, which is actually just a Lisa Frank pencil bag. “I’ve got eighty.” Eighty dollars that I didn’t intend to spend and only brought for serious emergencies. I don’t think Freddie understands what a sacrifice it is for me to fork over this wad of cash, but I don’t think I have much of a choice at this point. Between hotel, food, and gas, what we have won’t get us far.

  Vacancies aren’t easy to come by on a Friday night. We end up at a motel in a room with two double beds and a broken hot-pink Jacuzzi. Like, it’s just sitting there in the middle of the room next to the television, which might be older than me and Freddie combined.

  Freddie helps Grace into the room and forces her to drink an entire bottle of water before going to bed, while I bring our bags in.

  She plops back on the bed. “You’re cute,” she says to Freddie, in between sips. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Do what you gotta do,” Freddie says as he helps her pull the blankets back.

  “I’ve never dated a black guy. Does that make me racist?”

  Freddie looks at me, and I shrug and shake my head. He laughs, because I think it’s all he can do, but I can see the clear discomfort in the way his posture goes rigid. “Not last I checked.”

  It’s a gross thing to say, and I would tell her so if I thought she would even remember it in the morning, but instead I roll my eyes in Freddie’s direction.

  His lips spread into a thin smile.

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t,” Grace says. “Just that the opportunity never presented itself.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Bedtime.”

  Grace spreads out like a starfish and gets as far as unbuttoning her shorts before passing out again. Freddie turns her on her side, and when he sees my questioning look, he explains, “Don’t want her to choke on her own puke or something.”

  “Sure, don’t want that,” I murmur sarcastically as I lock the door—three deadbolts and a chain.

  “I can sleep in the Jacuzzi,” he volunteers.

  “That thing looks like a giant bowl of herpes.” I shake my head. “Besides, if I’m getting bedbugs, so are you.”

  He cracks a smile, but just for a second.

  I take the bathroom first, but the grimy floors and rusting sink have me moving quicker than normal. I hover above the toilet to pee and am car
eful not to swallow any water when I brush my teeth. I bet people might walk into my trailer and be as grossed out as I am by this hotel room, but I guess at home at least I know whose butt has been where. If anything, this gross room is a distraction from the elephant in the room. The very drunk elephant.

  While Freddie takes his turn in the bathroom, I slip into a pair of old boxer shorts and one of Dad’s old undershirts. I take one last look at Grace and pull the blanket at the foot of her bed up to her chest.

  This is not how I expected tonight to go. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is Grace leaving me there at that pool. Her voice rings in my ears, telling me I’m just a phase. I try to block it all out, but even when I force my head to bite back the memories of tonight, I can hear her breathing. Right here. Less than three feet away from me. I force myself to breathe through the tears.

  By the time Freddie comes out, I’ve turned off all the lights and have decided to play Russian roulette with the bedbugs by sleeping underneath the covers.

  “Fuck,” whispers Freddie as he stubs his toe on the corner of the bed.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper back. “Sorry, I should have waited to turn the lights off.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Follow my voice.”

  His silhouette shuffles along the side of the bed, careful of his other nine toes. “I can sleep on top of the blankets if you want.”

  “Scared you’re gonna get me pregnant or something? Come on. Get in.”

  He does, and I immediately realize how small a double bed actually is. And how weird it is to sleep next to someone with hairy legs.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say.

  “Okay.” His voice is slow with hesitation.

  “I’ve never dated a black guy either.”

  “Har, har,” he says.

  “I’m sorry about tonight,” I tell him.

  His breath is warm and minty. “Yeah, I guess we both had high hopes.”

  I feel tears rolling down my face and onto the pillow. But it’s so dark that I don’t care, and I hope that Freddie feels like he can cry, too. I can feel the pain we both share like a cloud hovering over us.

  I wonder, for a moment, what it would be like if we could take these feelings we have for other people and pour them into each other, like that could in some way fill the empty space eating the both of us up. It’s not that easy, though.

  It’s in that moment, in that moldy, decrepit motel room, that I realize how much we have in common. We are both so much in love . . . or lust or infatuation—whatever you want to call it. And it doesn’t matter how much either of us wants to make it work. We have to be wanted back, because this shit is a two-way street.

  Sleeping in the same room with Grace but not in the same bed is a stark realization. It’s like hearing someone has passed away, but not being able to believe it until you see their body for yourself. This is the moment when I know once and for all that I’m searching for something—something I can’t even articulate. The only thing I can say without a doubt is that whatever I need, it’s nothing Grace Scott can give me.

  I fall asleep with my knees tucked into my chest and Freddie only inches away.

  FOURTEEN

  In the morning it’s not an alarm that wakes me, but the sound of Grace puking.

  Freddie and I both stay there in bed for a moment before he says, “You think she’s okay?”

  I groan. “I’ll check on her.” I get out of bed and knock on the bathroom door. “Grace, you okay?”

  “I need to go home.” I hear her cough and spit into the toilet. “Please just get me home.”

  I nod. My mouth is too dry to talk and my eyes are swollen from crying. For a moment, I have to force myself through the horrible ritual of remembering what happened last night.

  We get ready quickly and in silence. Without me asking, Freddie turns around so that I can slip my shorts on. When Grace comes out, she’s wearing her huge sunglasses, but they can’t hide her stringy hair or chalk-like complexion.

  The drive back to Picayune, Mississippi, is only an hour and a half, but the stale silence in the car makes me feel like our travel time has been doubled. When we finally do drop Grace off, I get out to help with her bag in the trunk.

  “Thanks,” she says as I hand it to her.

  I don’t look up to meet her gaze. “Yeah.”

  Her mom swings the front door open. “Morning, girls! Ramona, would you and your friend like to come in for breakfast?”

  I clear my throat and put on a smile so painful it makes my jaw ache. “No, ma’am. We oughta head home!”

  “Next time!” she calls. “Y’all have a safe drive home.”

  I wave as she steps back inside, leaving the door open for Grace.

  I don’t know what to say to her. Bye? See you never? Thanks for breaking my heart? But Grace speaks first.

  “I know we . . . I was drunk last night.” She takes a deep breath and then exhales harshly. “But sometimes the truth comes out, even if it’s not the right time. I’m sorry. I wish it hadn’t ended this way. Take care of yourself, Ramona.”

  Any lingering hope I’d had of last night being a drunken mistake evaporates.

  I watch her walk to the front door, her purse in one hand and her flip-flops in the other, and I wonder if this is the last time I’ll ever see her.

  “You want me to wait until she gets in?” Freddie asks gently.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to start crying again.

  On the way home, we share war stories. I tell Freddie about my explosive fight with Grace in the yard, and Freddie tells me about Viv wanting to date other people and about how she wants to be able to go to dances and parties and not worry that he’ll be upset or jealous. He blames himself over and over again for ever choosing to leave, but I have to trust that everything happens for a reason. I have to.

  “I’m done with this,” he says.

  “With Viv?” I ask. “For good?”

  He shakes his head. “Not just her. All girls.”

  I laugh. “You’re not alone, my friend.”

  His speed slows as we enter a construction area. “I’m serious. No more girls. At least not until after graduation. You in?”

  I shrug and roll down the window so I can drag my fingers through the thick morning humidity. “Why the hell not?”

  OCTOBER

  FIFTEEN

  I keep thinking it will take a lot to keep my pact with Freddie, but it doesn’t.

  Grace disappears from my life like the most careful burglar, leaving not even the whisper of a fingerprint behind and stealing only parts of me I can feel and not see. I feel the impact of her absence during every lull in conversation and in the quiet morning hours when I ride my paper route. It’s only been a week since the party, but already it feels like months.

  As Hattie and I hike up the stairs to our mom’s apartment, she stops on the landing, a little out of breath.

  “Shit,” she says. “My feet are killing me.”

  I glance down and can see that her ankles are chubbier than normal, straining against her strappy sandals. “Too many hours on your feet.”

  She inhales before exhaling through her nose and starting back up the stairs.

  “You’re telling her tonight, right?”

  “Get off my dick about it.” And then a second later, she adds, “And yes. I’m telling her. As if it’s any of your business.”

  In the last few weeks, Hattie’s body has really begun to show the evidence of her pregnancy. Last Tuesday I found her crying in the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror in a neon-green bra and her favorite denim shorts, her hair dripping wet. Her little stomach had popped out recently, making it impossible for her to button her shorts.

  “At least you don’t have to deal with your period right now,” I said, trying to comfort her.

  That just made her cry harder, which made no sense to me because our periods were always one step below a crime scene. (Thanks, Mom.)
>
  Unsure what else to do, I snuck into her room, where Tyler was still sleeping, and retrieved a pair of gym shorts for her to change into.

  Hattie would never say so out loud, but when things like that happen, I wonder if she wishes she could go back and make this decision over again. I would have understood, and no matter what Dad believes, he would have left the choice to Hattie. He said as much when she told him she was pregnant. But Hattie was insistent that she was keeping this baby. Even if she had wanted an abortion, we only have one clinic in the whole state and it’s all the way up in Jackson. Plus it’s a lot of money up-front. So I guess the logistics of that decision wouldn’t have been all that simple either.

  Upstairs, our mom’s door is cracked open, smoke curling out the top.

  “Mom?” Hattie calls as we let ourselves in.

  “I burned the casserole,” she yells from behind a wall of smoke. “Don’t worry! I already ordered Chinese!”

  Hattie coughs into the crook of her arm as I run around opening every window that isn’t broken.

  “Y’all wanna eat down by the pool?” Mom asks.

  I turn to Hattie, who I know is annoyed that she just walked all the way up here for nothing.

  I shrug. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Mom grabs a twenty from her purse and tucks her scraggly old cat, Wilson, under her arm. The three of us sit on the steps, waiting for the delivery guy.

  When he finally arrives, we stake out one of the rusting patio tables. The pool is a cloudy, unusual shade of blue and the tiles trimming the edge are cracked and faded, like the rest of the property. Wilson sniffs around but stays within a few feet of our voices.

  “Oh shoot,” Mom says. “I forgot plates. Y’all mind eating out of cartons?”

  Neither of us answers, but just reach for the plastic silverware in the bottom of the bag. Wilson lies out on the concrete beside us, catching any bugs that dare buzz too close to his paws.

  It’s business as usual as Mom drones on about the casino and all her friends there as if we know them. Hattie and I pass the orange chicken and beef and broccoli back and forth between mouthfuls of fried rice. At least the food is better than usual.