Chapter Twenty-Eight
Friday, January 21st
“What’s going on?” I whisper as Gabby slams the palm of her big black hand against my skinny tan locker. We’re in the crowded hallway. At school during the daytime, we act like acquaintances, while in the back seat during the night, we get entangled in each other. We never ever talk like this in public.
“Carson, how could you?” Words squeeze from her mouth through a frozen jaw.
“What did I do?” I ask. I know I’m getting called for my charging into her home life foul by talking with her father.
“Don’t speak to me.” The words sharp, the laser beam narrowed eyes sharper still.
“The thing with your dad?” I laugh. She blows our cover and pokes me hard in the chest. A few people turn and stare. Do I hear the Fenton High rumor machine starting to whir?
Her non-answer is her answer. She’s got on her game face. Gabby stares at me like I was an opposing forward. She’s nothing but muscle, intimidation and scorn.
“Sorry I didn’t write the whole article about you, Gabrielle,” I say way too loud as she stomps away from me. Each smack of her Chucks against the floor feels like a slap in the face.
“Good thing she didn’t slam dunk me into my locker,” I say to those watching the scene. Nobody laughs. I don’t blame them. I’m shaken up since Gabby’s never been mad at me before—getting her angry makes me sad and scared. What if I’d, for once, just shut my mouth? What if.
“Carson, you okay?” Tim asks, arriving at our shared locker. I’ve got bags under my eyes from not sleeping, worrying about Caitlin. He’s got a full book bag from prepping for the future. Hearing Caitlin talk about life has made me more anxious for a happy ending to her story.
I’ve kept most everything about Gabby to myself and away from Tim since he’s still mateless. There’s no need to rub romance salt in those lonely guy wounds, in particular around Valentine’s Day. A day that never mattered before—a day I probably just ruined. “I’m all good.”
“Let’s find some time to hang out,” Tim says, more than a little hurt in his voice.
I nod, promise him and myself. Like the other promise I made, to bring Caitlin home, turned out to be a lie, I’m sure this will be, too. Is a promise a lie if it doesn’t come true, or is it something worse?
“Sure, Tim.” Another promise I say that I’ll slay. Although from the tone of Gabby’s voice, I should have white space on my calendar for Tim since Gabby’s burning red. No wonder in porn people go right to fucking after saying hello. It is easier than relationships in real life.
* * * *
“I messed up,” I tell Charlotte in the last few minutes of journalism class, which has broken down into cliques—photographers, other staff and seniors like me, Kirk and Charlotte. Kirk’s reading Josh’s column aloud to anyone who will listens. If Gabby’s steps were slaps, each laugh at Josh’s sarcastic Valentine’s Day essay—’YVD?’—is a kick below the belt. I’ve never been in a fight, but this morning gives me an idea of what it feels like to get beat up.
Charlotte and I huddle near Mr. Jakes’ desk. He’s out among the people, well, mostly the nerdy freshman girls hanging on Josh’s every written word. I finish telling Charlotte about Gabby being mad at me. Charlotte’s shaking her head like she had a swivel instead of a neck.
“So, I need you to broker peace,” I whisper. “Just get Gabby to talk to me.”
More head shakes. I should get a basket to catch Charlotte’s head when it twists off.
“Charlotte, say something, or maybe you agree with her dad that this is all nonsense.” Like school dances I can’t attend, like jobs I can’t get, like sisters I can’t rescue, like all of my life.
Charlotte takes a quick look at the clock—two more minutes—and snatches the two hall passes from Mr. Jakes’ desk. “Let’s go outside,” she says, and motions for me to follow her.
We slip out of the door—Mr. Jakes oblivious as usual—and stand in the hall. Inside the room I hear laughter, while I’m fighting to hold back tears. “Is she breaking up with me?”
“Look, Carson, I don’t know anything,” Charlotte says. Our backs are against the wall, hers literal, mine metaphorical. “Gabby and I… It’s just not that kind of friendship. Since you two got together, she’s never confided in me about you. So, I wish I could, but I can’t help you.”
“Yes, you can. At lunch, find her. Ask her to meet me in the library.”
Charlotte pauses, keeping me waiting and frustrated, something she excelled in for years. Above us, a clock clicks off time way too loudly. “Okay, but you need to do something for me.”
“Anything,” I blurt.
“Stop hating on Josh.”
The bell rings right on time. Josh is the bell telling me that I’ll never make it. Josh is to me what Dwayne was to Caitlin, the destroyer of my distorted dreams. Caitlin’s unreachable goals landed her on a stripper pole and in porn. Where will my unquenched thirst leave me?
“I’ll do my best,” I say, wondering if I even know what that word means anymore.
* * * *
“Carson, I’m so angry at you.”
Charlotte got her to meet with me. It’s a start.
I’ve apologized now into the double digits, but it’s getting us nowhere. We’re in one of the small study rooms. In the library, people study for tests. In here, I’m failing at life and love.
“When I got home, my dad asked all these questions about you.” She makes eye contact with the table. She sniffs, but doesn’t sob. She bends, but doesn’t break. “And I had to tell him so many lies. I hate, hate, hate having to do that. I feel like I’m letting him down, again.”
“Gabby, it’s your life, not his,” says the man who has let another person’s life shadow his decisions for the past three years. “Why don’t you tell him the truth?”
“No.”
“But then we could go to the dance in February, be a normal couple.” I reach my hand across the table. Gabby responds by folding her arms across her chest, tucking her hands in her armpits. “I mean, are you ashamed of me? Am I too weird? Too normal? Too whatever?”
“The world is not all about you, Carson Banks.” Her hands stay tucked away yet she can still slap my face. “I have my reasons and I have—”
“No, Gabby, you have your secrets. I want you to share them with me.”
Her arms uncoil like two brown snakes and her hands slam against the table so hard the glass of the room vibrates. “My body is all you want me to share with you.”
I make the timeout sign, but she’s revved up. “You think I’m a slut, right? ‘Cos of the stuff we do. Guy does it, he’s a stud, but a girl does it, she’s a slut.” Another timeout sign, the fingers on my left hand jabbing into the palm of my left. “It is my body. I decide, not you.”
I flinch like she’s thrown a punch because it reminds me of the message Caitlin sent to me when I saw her in LA. “Gabby, where is this coming from?” I ask.
“I guess after the thing with my dad, after you telling me that you told Tim about us, that maybe, maybe, Carson, I cannot trust you. If I can’t trust you, I don’t want you to touch me.”
I wipe my hands against my sweating forehead then press down my uncombed hair. I’m not male model material, but this morning I look like an unkempt icon. When Gabby wouldn’t pick up the phone last night, I knew something was wrong, so little things like sleep and hygiene got hijacked by worry. I suspected bad, but not this—the worst.
“What do you have to say?”
“Gabby, I love you, and I know that sounds so cliché, but it’s true, so it’s natural that I should, I mean, that we should…” I run out of words, not a good trait for a would-be writer. Oh, wait, I’m a failure at that, too. “Tell me what I need to do to earn your trust.”
“You’re suspended for four weeks, Carson,” Gabby sighs. “Benched from my body.”
“Suspended?”
“You can look, but you can’t touch. We can talk, but not like before. If this is really about me—Gabby Gibson, the whole person—then you can prove it, but if it’s just about you…”
I reach my hand out and dramatically offer her a handshake. “Last touch for four weeks.”
For the first time today, she smiles. For the last time in four weeks, I feel the press of her skin against mine. “Well, I guess the only person happy about this will be my father.”
“Your father?” Gabby asks.
I’ve yet to let go, our palms both sweating. “It will lower our energy costs, as I predict four weeks filled with cold showers.”