Chapter 20 - A Million Rainbows

“So he really hasn’t talked to you?” Emily and I were sitting at lunch. She glanced over her shoulder at Kyle, who was sitting five tables down from ours.

I reached across my tray, swatting her arm. “Oh my god, Em. Cut it out. No, he hasn’t talked to me. I told him not to.”

Kyle had come into math a few seconds after me this morning. When he saw me sitting alone in the room, he smiled (it was big, dimpled, and sweet). He took his seat a couple of rows over from mine, and then he kept throwing small wads of paper at me until someone else walked in—it was so mature.

He didn’t talk to me, though.

“So tell me about your night? What did you guys do? Is it official?”

I took a swig of my water. “I don’t know. How do you know? What makes it official?”

Emily gave me a look. “You knowwww,” she said, drawing out the word until I did know.

Since getting off the phone with Kyle on Saturday night, and then all day on Sunday, and all today up until this point, I had been pretty big with happiness. Huge, actually. Like all puffy and floating with the clouds huge.

In that one instant, I was deflated. A withered balloon. “That makes it official?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be official before that?” Long before that?

Emily offered an unhelpful shrug. “I don’t know. You’re talking to the wrong girl, Bree. Have you seen any cute, popular guys swarming me lately?” She frowned and took a bite of her salad. Emily always brought a salad. “I can’t believe he got you a phone …” she said. She then immediately went into talking about her Instagram page, a topic of conversation which I sometimes, with a tiny tinge of guilt, zoned out for.

I would only have to raise my eyes a little in order to look at Kyle. He was a few tables down from us, directly in front of me. Emily’s comment was getting to me, making my stomach all sticky and knotted. And I just wanted to look at him. For a second.

I had the feeling that with just one glimpse of his smile, my worries would dissolve. It was Kyle, after all. Kyle would want to rescue me from this feeling. He wasn’t to blame for it.

I lifted my eyes, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t see a damn thing. He was too far away. His features were blurry. If he was smiling, I couldn’t tell.

He was facing my way, though, maybe even looking back at me, but I didn’t know for sure.

I sighed and looked away.

“What about this one? We could add your white sweater. You know, the one with the pearl buttons? It would look just like Elsa.”

There was a small thrift shop in the basement of the Unitarian Church a few blocks down from the library. Charlie and I were in a stuffy room, sifting through the racks of clothes, trying to find something we could turn into a Halloween costume.

The only actual costumes they had were a couple of superhero ones: Iron Man and Thor. Charlie, of course, wanted to be Elsa.

I was holding up a light blue Easter dress with white daisies on it. If you really used your imagination, it could (possibly) pass as an Elsa dress.

She scrunched up her face, complete with big pouty lips, and shook her head.

Charlie wanted the costume from the mall, and she was being scrunchy about it. That dress had indeed become problematic.

That was not Kyle’s fault.

His urging her to try on the mall dress didn’t cause this. The costume that had been on display in the window would have been enough to induce this emotional attachment Charlie had for it. But it was still kind of nice to pretend to have someone to share my Charlie burdens with. So I was unfairly putting some of the blame on Kyle.

“This one!” shouted Charlie.

She had moved out of the kids’ section, to a rack of women’s dresses. The dress she was tugging on was a shimmery, light blue prom dress. It was way too big. But I might be able to make a skirt out of the bottom portion and the sparkly top could be shortened and pinned.

I turned over the handwritten price tag. Dammit. It was ten bucks. We were in a freakin’ church basement, and the thing was ten bucks.

“Um … hold on,” I said to Charlie, folding the dress over my arm.

I brought it to the front of the room, where two elderly ladies were sitting at a table. One lady was more elderly than the other one. By the looks of her wrinkled, time-worn skin, she had at least twenty years on the younger one. They looked alike, though. Family. It was their green almond-shaped eyes, and I thought they might have been a mother-daughter team.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Would it be possible to hold this for me? I’m short by a few dollars, but I could come back on Saturday with the rest.”

I’d have to score a babysitting job, but with my new phone, it would be easy to call around.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the elder of the two ladies. Her voice was just as wrinkly and sweet as her soft skin. “That dress just went on sale. How much do you have, dear?”

“Oh my god, thank you.” I dug into my purse and pulled out my seven bucks, placing it on the table.

The younger of the two ladies took the five and handed me back the ones. “What do you think, Mom? Five?”

“Sounds fair.”

“Oh my god, thank you so much,” I said, putting the dollars back.

“You are going to look very pretty,” said the older woman, whom I now knew was the mom.

“Oh, well, it’s not for me. I’m making a costume for my sister.” Charlie was at the other end of the table, playing with a basket of hair ribbons. “A princess dress,” I explained.

“I think she’s going to need a pretty ribbon to go with that dress,” said the daughter. She got up from her chair and stood across the table from Charlie, who was already clutching a light blue bow in her hand.

The lady reached for it. She brought the sides of Charlie’s unruly curls up, clipping the bow in place. “Don’t you look beautiful?”

Charlie beamed with the compliment. And she did look beautiful.

“That bow’s on me,” said the lady, leaving the bow in Charlie’s hair and going back to sit down.

“Thank you,” I said, turning to them with the prick of tears in my eyes. “Thank you.”

I probably should have taken Kyle up on the offer to split the cost of the new phone, because I loved the thing. Although I still had it for Charlie, there was no way I was ever going back to my crappy flip phone.

I was sitting on the living room floor watching a YouTube video on how to make a skirt. I had been on this task for hours, neglecting everything else I should have been doing: an English paper, my calculus assignment.

But because of the easy access to the internet on my phone, the skirt was coming out so nicely. I’d sewn a few times before, usually just altering Goodwill finds. But this was my most dedicated project, and I was pausing and unpausing the video every step of the way, making sure I got it right.

Charlie watched me as I worked, the movie, Frozen, playing in the background the whole time. By the end of the night, I had made her a really cute, puffy skirt that flowed and twirled with her as she danced.

I still had to finish the top portion of the dress, but I was happy with how it was coming along, and so was Charlie. So much so, she wanted to sleep in it.

I didn’t let her, but I clipped it to a hanger and hung it on the bedpost near her pillow.

I was up late finishing homework when Kyle called. His and Emily’s numbers were the only ones on my phone, but I still got excited when I saw his name pop up on the screen.

“Shit,” I said into the phone as I picked it up, disappointment crashing down on me like a cartoon anvil. “I can’t talk to you.”

“You can’t?” Kyle was laughing.

“Dammit, no. I’ve been working on something for Charlie all day, and I’ve barely had a chance to start Mr. Lord’s assignment.”

“I finished that,” said Kyle. “Do you want the answers? I can’t promise they’re all correct, but they’re yours if you want ‘em.”

“That’s tempting … but no. Thank you, though.”

“Okay,” said Kyle. “Well, if you’re busy, I won’t keep you. I was just calling because of lunch?”

“Oh right, lunch.” I blew out my cheeks, regretting my weird stare in the direction of Kyle’s table earlier.

“Is everything okay? You looked upset about something.”

“Oh yeah, no, it was nothing.”

“Well, the way you were looking at me … I kind of thought it was something?”

I was quiet, not knowing what to say.

“Okay. So it was something,” said Kyle, reading my silence. “We won’t talk about it on the phone, though.” He made a popping sound with his lips. “Uh … so this weekend I’m going to my dad’s. I tried to get out of it, but he bought Bruins tickets. I’m free on Sunday, though. Do you and Charlie want to come over?”

“Yeah, I would love that.”

“Okay. Sunday, then.”