Chapter 10 - A Million Rainbows

The last of the stragglers finished their five laps, and Mr. Clark blew his whistle, gathering the class around the baseball diamond for a game of kickball.

I hated gym. Hated it. Every game included some kind of ball designed to be kicked or thrown at you, and I was worse at catching than Kyle was.

Kyle. I thought about him way too much. Thankfully, he wasn’t in this class.

Mr. Clark had this stupid idea that wearing matching outfits elicited a team spirit, and he had us all wearing ugly, green gym shorts paired with coordinating green T-shirts emblazoned with the school logo. And I swear, everybody looked better in them than me.

Well, maybe not everyone. But Lyndsay did.

She was playing for the other team, standing in the infield next to first base.

I was trying, but it was hard not to notice her. I didn’t know much about Lyndsay except that she was top of the class and that she was, had been, Kyle’s girlfriend. I didn’t even know how long they had been going out, because I used to not care, and I wasn’t sure when they first got together. It seemed like they had always been together.

And why wouldn’t they be? They were both perfect.

And damn, Lyndsay looked hot in her gym clothes. How did she do that? She either had perfect boobs or a really great bra, but either way … it was so unfair.

I had picked out a frumpy, size large T-shirt, attempting to hide all of everything under it. It wasn’t that hard. There wasn’t much to hide.

“Just ignore her,” said Emily. She had been sentenced to this gym class with me. She hated it as much as I did, and we pined away our time together.

We were standing in the back of the line waiting—dreading—our turn to kick.

I pivoted to face her. Her red lips were frowning at me. “I am ignoring her,” I grumbled.

“No, you’re not. And you’re being a little too obvious about it.”

“It’s not just me. She keeps looking over here. I’m not imagining that, am I? I can feel it.”

Emily shook her head. “Nooo,” she said, dragging out the word until it had too much weight to it. “No, you’re not.”

I puffed out my cheeks, shook out my hands. “Okay. This is stupid. Let’s talk about something other than Mrs. Roberts over there.”

Emily laughed. “Yeah, okay. Oh, actually, I wanted to see if you and Charlie wanted to go to the mall with me on Saturday? I need to get supplies for my next post.” Emily ran a somewhat successful—twenty thousand followers—beauty account on Instagram. “I also have those gift certificates to the theater, and I wanted to stop at LensCrafters and check out some new frames.” She tapped her red glasses.

Emily was just normal-person rich. She didn’t have everything, but she got good stuff on her birthday.

I was instantly lifted. “Yeah, we’ll go to the mall.” I loved it when she asked me to go to the mall. Her mom drove us, and she would drop us off, and we’d get stuck there for hours. It was amazing.

“Yay,” said Emily with a little bounce. She tapped my shoulder, turning me around. “Bree, you’re up.”

“Wish me luck,” I mumbled.

Emily’s throat and smile were very tight. She was thinking of her turn coming next. “Luck,” she whispered.

I stood at home and took a nervous breath, kicking the pitched ball. Damn it. The kick was good. What the hell? I usually struck out. Now, I would have to run past Lyndsay.

Why was it so much harder not to look at people when you’re actively trying not to look at them? It was like my brain was refusing to obey this very important life or death command: I would die if I looked at her.

I was running with my head down, focusing on not focusing on Lyndsay, when several voices shouted, “Stop!” They were yelling at me, telling me to stay on first.

Great. Lyndsay was guarding first. I backtracked and touched the base, facing forward, waiting for Emily to kick the ball. She was worse than I was and kicked a foul.

“Look who it is,” said Lyndsay.

She had been throwing silent daggers at me for a month now. That, however, was the first thing she’d ever said to me. Her voice was low, barely audible. But she must have taken three steps forward because I swear, I could feel her breath on the back of my neck, hot and sharp.

Ignore her? Or say something? I had to say something.

I twisted around to her, my eyes low, looking at her very cute, silvery gray Adidas sneakers.

It had been nearly a solid month since the rumors about me and Kyle had gone around, and for everyone else, they had completely died out and were absolutely forgotten, I was sure. I was back to being a nobody. No one even looked at me anymore.

And Kyle didn’t talk to me at school. It was exactly like it was back before we knew each other. He acted like I wasn’t even there. And I was trying really hard to do the same thing. It was nice, actually. I didn’t have to worry about Kyle at school, and I could focus on my work.

I now worried about him showing up at the library uninvited, but he hadn’t done that again either.

For three whole weeks, the only interaction I’d had with Kyle was the loaf of bread he gave to the volunteer lady on Fridays. I never saw him do it, but it was always in the bag she set aside for me.

After the second time, I had slipped her a small thank you note to give to Kyle for me. It didn’t have our names on it. I simply wrote, Thank you, Sue, and drew a heart around it.

So maybe it wasn’t exactly back to normal, but the kids at school thought it was.

But obviously, that wasn’t true for Lyndsay.

I hesitantly raised my eyes, meeting her gaze. Her eye makeup was gorgeous, smokey gray with a touch of shimmery blue, her lashes long and lush. She really was very pretty.

“Lyndsay, they were just rumors. I barely even know Kyle.”

She snorted. “That’s obvious.”

If it was so obvious, then why was she breathing fire at me?

“Okay, then,” I said, letting my annoyance with her filter through my breath. I turned back to the front, silently pleading for Emily to Just. Kick. The. Damn. Ball.

Mom waited at the door, dressed and ready, smoking a cigarette. I guess she had started up again.

We didn’t have a car, and at some point, Mom had let her license expire. But Mrs. Patterson let her come along with her on her weekly shopping trips.

Mom always looked nice on Saturdays when she went to the store. No, her Goodwill outfit wasn’t fabulous. It was always the same knee-length, gray cardigan with outdated Levi’s, paired with some simple black clogs. But she had showered and had done her makeup, and her curly hair was brushed and pinned back, giving her a lovely humanlike appearance. It was much nicer than the scraggly, lifeless, feral creature that usually lurked in our apartment.

Unfortunately, the downside to Mom getting dressed on Saturdays to go shopping was that it then gave her the motivation she needed to get her ass out of bed and go to the bar on Saturday nights. You never could win with Mom.

“Hey,” I said. “Charlie and I are going to the mall with Emily today.” I was standing in the doorway near the entry with a towel tucked under my arms, about to hop into the shower.

Mom sucked on her cigarette, blowing the smoke through the partially opened storm door. It was cold and rainy out and the smoke puffed white and hot in the air. “What about Sunrise Hill?”

I shrugged. Sunrise Hill was just a volunteer thing. I kept it that way for this very reason. I couldn’t be tied to it. “Not today.”

“How about your homework?” she asked, tapping out her cigarette and letting the ash fall on the welcome mat.

I laughed, quietly and to myself. I found it funny how Mom always took these opportunities, the times when I told her stuff, to remember she was a mom. She never asked about my grades or school otherwise. She had no idea how school was going for me. She only knew I was doing well enough not to be bothered by the school over anything. And that’s all she cared about.

I let it slide.

“Yep,” I said, answering her about the homework.

I hadn’t finished all my homework, but today was Saturday. I still had Sunday. And I only had a history paper to complete and a math test to study for. It would take me two hours, tops.

It wasn’t worth explaining any of that to Mom, though. This was small talk for her. She didn’t actually care.

“Okay. Well, don’t be too long.”

I laughed again. Mom was telling a lot of jokes today. “We’re staying over Emily’s,” I said, not sure why I bothered with this courtesy.

I hated the way she lifted with that news, her posture, raising two inches, her chest deflating with relief as she blew out a stream of smoke. She was happy we weren’t coming home. Now she could bring home any asshole she wanted tonight. Yay.

I gulped down vomit and left Mom at the door.

Charlie was in the living room, watching one of her movies. I wrapped the towel around my arm, using it as a cushion, and leaned against the wooden doorframe.

I stared in wonder as she went from intently studying the screen, focused and serious, to smiling and giggling at the oddest moments, so easily amused, and entertained. Sometimes, I got the jokes these kid shows thought were funny, but mostly they went over my jaded, cynical head.

I often wished I could go into Charlie’s little mind. See the world or the many worlds that she saw and see them through her eyes. Because, somehow, Charlie always saw the good. She always saw hope. And I wanted to grasp hold of just a tiny strand of that and have it for myself.

But Charlie was seven. I had to remind myself of that. I remembered being seven. I remembered believing in impossible things like Santa Claus and tooth fairies and clouds you could stand on.

I also remember that at that age, I still loved my mom.

I stepped back into the hall, going into the bathroom and shutting the door, trying to breathe through the dark moment, trying to find my way back.

It was a move that wasn’t working that well these days.