The look she gives me is the moment right before anger, the moment of understanding, when the facts assemble themselves into a picture of betrayal.
“You…”
I drop my gaze because it’s obvious what I did.
“You unlocked my…” Her voice is the stillness that comes right before something breaks. “I can’t believe you…”
“June, I’m?—”
“You hadno right.” Her hand closes around the phone and she pulls it against her body, screen pressed to her stomach.“You had no right. That was mine. That was my decision. How could?—”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Because the text made me want to tear someone apart with my bare hands. Because you walked out of here looking like you’d been shocked out of your skin and I couldn’t sit here and do nothing. Because I’m wired wrong when it comes to you, and the part of me that wants to protect you is louder than the part that knows I need to stay away.
Instead of a real apology, or the truth, all I say is, “I don’t have a good answer.”
“No. You don’t.”
She sits down, puts her phone in her bag, and zips it shut. Then she turns to the canvas and begins yanking mirror pieces off, scattering them across the table. She grabs the wire cutters and starts snipping randomly so now wires are just sticking out of the canvas, a cage that’s been chopped open. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t speak. And I let it all happen because I deserve it.
I pull my gloves tighter on my hands. The leather is cold, even though its job is to warm my fingers. I press my fingers together inside them and feel the familiar tightness, the way the material holds my hands in place, keeping them safe from everything bad in the world, even though they’re still ice.
When June is done with her wrath, even the canvas is chopped up. Our collaborative piece is simply in ruins, and we both know we’ll send it to critique that way because neither of us has the heart to try to fix it.
Class finally ends. While June packs, her face turned away from me, my mind drifts backward. I don’t want it to, but the weed isn’t here to turn the volume down.
I was nine. And it was before the summer that changed everything. I was at the Belrose house on a Saturday because our mothers were having lunch and I had nowhere else to be. June and I were in the backyard, sitting in the grass near the tree line, and she was teaching me how to braid. She’d pull long blades of grass from the ground and weave them into these flat little strips, and I kept messing up mine because my hands were clumsy back then. She’d laugh at me and say, “You’re going to be a terrible sculptor,” and I’d reply, “You’re going to be a terrible teacher.” And we’d keep going.
We sat there for an hour. The sun was warm on the back of my neck and the grass had stained my fingers green. She showed me how to fold the ends so the braid wouldn’t unravel, and when I finally made one that held, she took it from me and tied it around her wrist like a bracelet. She wore it for a week until it fell apart.
There were no boundaries then. I could pick up her things and she never cared. I could read her diary and she’d see the random things I wrote down on sticky notes. We shared everything because it never occurred to us not to. We were just kids who trusted each other the way kids do.
Whitman announces that critiques are next session and reminds us to bring finished pieces.
June zips her bag and stands. She picks up the canvas with the wires, and scoops mirror fragments into a paper towel, like she doesn’t trust me with the mess. She even picks up the bag of extra mirror shards. She takes everything, even my personal wire cutters.
She doesn’t look at me.
She leaves.
I stay at the worktable and stare out the window while everyone else leaves. The tall windows frame a stormy sky beyond the glass.
I get it. I don’t deserve her trust. I’ve known it since the day I chose wrong and someone paid for it, and every day since has been a reminder that my instincts, when it comes to those I care about, only lead to wreckage.
I tried to protect her today and all I did was prove why she shouldn’t let me close enough to try.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JUNE
The park has food trucks every Friday, lined up along the gravel lot behind a row of old maples with leaves that are barely,barelyturning yellow at the edges. The canopy is green with the faintest blush of ochre creeping in, backlit by a sky that can’t decide between blue and flat gray. Below the trees, the trucks are lined up in a row: the taco one with a hand-painted menu in vermillion and gold, the Greek truck under a faded blue awning, and the newest one selling crêpes has the longest line.
And at the far end of the lot, there’s a truck selling bougee ice cream. It’s white with a pastel-striped awning and a menu board painted in bubble letters.
The white assaults me first, then the shape, and then my skin goes cold from my scalp to the soles of my feet. Nothing about it screams “childhood ice cream truck,” but I’m gripped with terror anyway.
