“No, let’s do this,” I said. “Come on, I’ll buy the tickets.” I started to step around him. “Where are we going—”
The shove caught me off guard. He was so much stronger than he looked, and I almost lost my balance. Where his hands had connected with my chest, a blunted ache was already taking shape, and I realized with something like shock that I was going to have bruises.
“You’re not going with me,” he said, the words so low I had to strain to hear them.
Another laugh worked its way out of me, shakier than the first one. “It’s a free country, Keme, I can go wherever I want—”
When I took another step, he shoved me again. Harder this time. I stumbled, my sneaker caught a crack in the sidewalk, and I fell. I landed hard on my tailbone, and the thud sent a jolt of pain up my spine.
“Hey,” the bus driver shouted, but his voice was muffled. “What’s going on down there? I’ll call the cops.”
Keme stared down at me. His eyes were blank, like he wasn’t seeing me. Rage made his features almost unrecognizable. I’d joked a lot over the last year and a half about being scared of Keme, but in that moment, the emptiness of his expression was the first time I’d truly felt afraid of him.
My chain of thought was automatic, the result of years of telling myself the same thing over and over again—because it was so often true, and because it had become truer, or seemed truer, the more I thought it. I was bad at relationships. I was bad at people. I could never read a situation right. All the years I’d spent with my anxiety spiking every time someone texted to invite me out, or every time I got cornered at a party, every interaction that made me question what I was supposed to say or do, what the other person wanted from me. It had been worst with Hugo, because there had been so much at stake, but that feeling of confusion and uncertainty and lack of confidence in my ability to have a healthy relationship—romantic or otherwise—went back as long as I could remember.
So, this was my fault. Again. I’d tried. I’d shown up for Keme, literally. I’d been brave, pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, because of what Indira had said. And what had happened? I’d made a fool out of myself. Keme hadn’t been waiting for someone to show up and love him. He hadn’t wanted a friend—or, at least, he hadn’t wanted me. The doubts from the last few days crept in again: we’d never really been friends, and all the bullying had been because I was exactly what he’d told me—a joke.
And then, through the pain of a bruised butt and bruised pride, I heard myself saying only a few minutes before,It feels like everyone has abandoned you.
His dad, who had died when he was a child.
His mom, who was always disappearing into her pills, or into the next man, or into herself.
Bobby.
Millie.
And Indira saying,He’s not trying to tell you something.He’s trying to ask you something.
I planted my hands on the sidewalk.
“Stay down,” Keme said. He was opening and closing his fists at his sides, and in the cold air, his breath burst from him in white shreds.
“No,” I said. The word came out sounding surprisingly confident—surprising to me, anyway. But everything in that moment felt surprising: the rawness of my scraped palms, the frozen grit of the sidewalk as I pushed myself up, even the ache where I’d landed. “I’m going with you—”
Before I could get upright, Keme shoved me down again.
“Hey!” The Greyhound driver honked the horn. “Hey! You don’t knock it off, and I’m leaving without you!”
“Go home,” Keme said. He’d moved. Or I had. Or maybe the bus. Because now he was standing in front of the headlights,and his silhouette was crisp-cut against the rest of the night. “Go away! Leave me alone!”
I shook my head. I gathered myself. “I’m going with—”
He shoved me down again. Harder, this time. And when I hit the ground, the force of the push flattened me, and my head cracked against the sidewalk.
Shadows moved over me. Clothing rustled next to me. Someone’s breathing sounded close and wet and labored. In the distance, air brakes popped, and gears made a grinding noise. There was something hot at the back of my head, but my neck was cold.
“Just leave me alone,” Keme said, his anger thinned out by—what? “I just want you to leave me alone.” And then he rose from his crouch, and I realized the shadow over me had been him, and I stared up at the ice sheet of stars.
He was asking me a question.
Over the rumble of the bus, the sound of his steps clipping away came back to me very clearly.
The thought came again with dreamlike lucidity: He was asking me a question.
Somehow, I rolled onto my side.
His dad.
