Bright Lights, Dark Nights (27 page)

“It's really strange,” Dad said, hunched over in his chair. He grabbed one of the Boston cream doughnuts but didn't eat it. “Half of my team at work is black or Hispanic. My partner's Hispanic. They know me. I just don't get it.”

Samantha's son Jack ran up to me and tugged on my pants leg. “Are you
gay
?” he shouted at me.

“Do you even know what that means?” I asked him.

“
No
,” he shouted, before punching me in the balls and running back to the living room.

*   *   *

Thanksgiving left me feeling outside of everything, outside of my own body. Disconnected from my family, from Dad, from my school, and from the world. I sat in my room, on my bed, listening to the phone ring, hypnotized by the intermittent tones.

“Hello?” a voice on the other line answered.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. I wasn't sure exactly why I'd called her, why I hadn't just called Naomi. I guess I wanted to save her from Melancholy Walter. So I reached out to Mom instead, since we were all about messy feelings and alienation. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.

“Hi, Walter, that's a nice surprise,” she said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. What did you do today? Did you go see Dad's family?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Did you go to Seth's family or somewhere else?” I didn't really have any idea what my mom did for Thanksgiving, or Christmas or any holiday. Maybe they were the hosts; maybe they did nothing. I'd been out of the loop for a long time.

“We did,” Mom said. “Mel came with us, so that was nice. It gave me someone to talk to, anyway. It was a nice dinner.”

“You needed Mel for company?” I asked. “Do you not get along with Seth's family or something?”

“I do, it's fine, and they're all very nice,” Mom said, and then paused. “It's just a little weird. How do I even explain it? Let's see. We were both grown adults with marriages behind us, so it's not like bringing your high school prom date over.”

“He's not sitting right there, is he?” I asked. “Don't incriminate yourself or anything.”

“Oh no,” Mom said. “He's downstairs painting. He paints these tiny little figures with a tiny brush. He has to use a magnifying glass to do it. It's a hobby.”

Was Seth a nerd? This definitely called for some future investigating, but I had other things to figure out first. “So today was a little weird for me, too,” I said. “I wanted to ask you something. Did you get along with Dad's family? It seemed like you did, right?”

“Sure I did,” Mom said. “Aunt June and I used to go shopping together every weekend, and we'd laugh so much. We'd go get our hair done after. We had a ball.”

“Oh,” I said. Not exactly what I was looking for. “I'm not sure I fit in there.”

“Well, you're pretty different from them, huh?” Mom asked. She sounded like she was settling in somewhere, getting more comfortable. I normally didn't like calling people, except for Naomi. I never knew what people were doing when I called, if they had time to talk or if I was being a bother. But this was going well. I hadn't been sure I'd ever talk to my mom again for a while. And now it wasn't even difficult. “You do take after me,” Mom said. “We're sensitive types, masters of empathy. Not a lot of that on your dad's side.”

“You think so?” I asked. It sounded like the opposite of what I was feeling. I didn't understand anyone and I hadn't empathized at dinner. I lay down in bed, getting comfortable.

“Sure,” Mom said. “Remember when you stayed home from school and we saw the rabbit in the street? It got hit by that car and ran off into the woods. You were distraught all day over it. It's a good thing. It just means you can relate to others. You could have it like I do. Or did. I'd take on everyone's pain like it was my own. But that was different.”

“Is that why you'd get depressed?” I asked.

“Well,” Mom started, and paused. “Understanding someone's pain and actually being in pain are different things,” Mom said. “And the lines got very blurry for me. Do you feel depressed?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, good, then!” Mom said, uplifted. “Ta-da! Fixed!”

Maybe that fixed something. I felt less alone, anyway. “Just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Mom said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you.”

*   *   *

I waited for Naomi on Friday morning outside the imaginatively named Café by the Park around nine. I sniffled. My cheeks felt like ice packs, but the sun was out and yesterday was a memory. I watched the traffic light turn green and red and back to green until Naomi arrived. And when she did, when I saw her walking fast with her winter hat on, I got up off the window ledge and nearly ran to her. I surprised myself by how much I missed her already. Only a month ago I barely knew her, and now she was a part of me, something I could feel when she was missing the way I'd know my arm was gone if I woke up in the morning without it. We gave each other a big hug that lasted somewhere in the vicinity of infinite time and space, and then we went into the café.

The café wasn't full, but there were a few people there. A group of five was sitting near the window; there was another couple there. A few people were there reading or on their laptops.

I ordered while Naomi got our seats. As I brought our heated-up pastries over, Naomi was looking at her phone.

“Friggin' Lester keeps texting me lately,” Naomi said. “When have we
ever
hung out? And now he keeps asking me. It's getting really annoying, but I feel bad saying that.”

“Really?” I asked, wanting to get a glimpse of whatever he was texting. I sat down across from Naomi. “That is kinda weird, though, right? I don't think you need to feel bad. It's a little disrespectful to us, too.”

“How's that?” Naomi asked, and put her phone on the table. She took a sip of coffee.

“Well, he's been weird around me, too,” I said. “I think he's jealous of us. He didn't say anything, but I definitely caught a vibe.”

“No,” Naomi said. “I don't know what it is, but it's not like that.”

“I'm serious. I think it is,” I said. “He's always asking me about you. It's not crazy to think he's jealous. He sees me with you, and he wishes it was him.”

“Stop making it weird, okay?” Naomi said. “We do have some history. Maybe he's just going through something. I should probably see what's up.”

I didn't say anything. It seemed naïve to completely discount it as a possibility, but I could see this wasn't going to be a productive conversation.

“Are
you
jealous?” Naomi asked, and then shook her head. “I'm sorry, forget I said that. I didn't mean it. That was mean.”

“No, I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know Lester that well. I'm jumping to conclusions. I just know I'd be jealous if I saw me kissing you. I'd kick my ass.”

Naomi smiled. She picked her phone back up. “My parents are freaking out over the picture. It's one thing to have a bunch of nasty people talking about your daughter, and it's another to see a picture of her making out with her boyfriend. They think I'm going to pull an Alicia and go nuts, rebel child or whatever.”

“Ugh,” I said. My coffee cup was still really hot. I hadn't even sipped from it yet. Naomi was owning her coffee—she didn't care if it was hot or anything. That coffee was good to go. “I guess this wouldn't be a parent's ideal scenario for their daughter's first relationship.”

“They're worried about your dad, too,” Naomi said, sipping her coffee. “Worried about you. Worried about me. They're basically shedding years off their lives every day—it's out of control.”

“Ugh,” I repeated. I wondered what their worries were, if they lined up with my worries or Naomi's. There was getting to be a lot of worries to keep track of. Maybe we could meet up and swap worries and chart them out on a piece of paper.

“This is disgusting,” Naomi said, eyes still on her phone screen. I wished she'd stop looking at the comments. “You see this? There's a hashtag on Twitter. My parents would kill me if I responded to any of this.”

She tilted the phone to me, showing me the search results for “#racistcop.”

So she responded in person, to me. “
Give him life or he keep on doin' it,
” she read. “
Hashtag racistcop.
Ignorant.

“
Leaving America over hashtap racistcop
,” another one read. “Boy, bye,” Naomi said.

“Let's see.” She scrolled for another one. “
Kid's got jungle fever, funny as hell
. What does that even mean? Who says that, ‘
Jungle fever
'? Give me a break.

“
That girl in the pics, tho
,” she read, referring to herself. “That girl's gonna beat your ass if she ever sees you. Hashtag pissed-off Naomi.

“
This hashtag racistcop ho, getting nasty in the theater
,” Naomi read. “‘Ho'? I'm kissing my boyfriend—so what? Who the hell expects their picture to get posted on the Internet? I'm tired of these no-brain cretins online, can't think for themselves!”

“Don't look at that stuff,” I said. “You're right, it's all idiots on there, and who cares what idiots say?”

“If it's about me,” Naomi said, “then I care.”

Even one comment like that can stick like a leech and worm its way into your brain. I felt now like Naomi did when she sat in the middle of a restaurant, like we were being watched or whispered about. Naomi was embracing the negativity with vigor. She actually insisted we sit in the middle of the room now.

I took a sip of the coffee. I grimaced.

“Is it bad?” Naomi asked. “Did you put any sugar in it?”

I shook my head. I had never ordered coffee before, so I didn't put anything in it. I took it to the counter to add some cream and sugar to it. “Mmm,” I said, taking another sip. “Tolerable.”

Naomi sipped her coffee and looked at her phone again. It had become addictive, for both of us. There was nothing good on there, just arguing and bile and hatred, but we were involved now. If there was ugliness around, we should at least know it was there.

“Who asked these idiots for their opinions, anyway?” she asked. “Why do they care who I date, or who you date? They don't know either of us.”

“Bothers me, too,” I said. “I wish they'd find something else to debate. I don't want the attention.”

Naomi put her phone in her pocketbook. She took a deep breath and looked at me for a second. I raised my eyebrows. “Can we talk?” she asked.

“Yeah. We aren't talking now?” I asked. “That whole time you had the phone out, that was talking. Don't worry about it. I'll catch you up later.”

“Do you like me? Like, really like me?” Naomi asked. Something must have popped in her head because her mannerisms were all different suddenly. “None of this was going on when you first kissed me and I don't want you to feel like you're stuck in it. With the websites and opinions everywhere. It feels different now.”