If It Makes You Happy Read online

  I really hated thinking about things that I had no control over after midnight, because while everyone I cared about slept, I was still at work in Goldeen’s, suffering through my mental anguish alone at my podium, staring out the front window and waiting in vain for customers that never showed up on Sunday nights.

  Time machines didn’t exist (yet). I couldn’t change what had happened and my brain refused to let it go, replaying the photo shoot over and over. It had been great at first, talking to Dallas, who had decided to forsake his living puzzle-box ways, and then it got awkward. Outside, Dallas hadn’t said anything to me. Clearly mad, but again unwilling to tell me why.

  Had it been the photo shoot?

  Me recoiling when he tried to touch me?

  Shelley assuming we were dating?

  Oh, he really didn’t like that last one. What stuck out the most and replayed in vivid Technicolor with nary a way to change the channel? The way he had said, “No.”

  Sure, if someone had rudely assumed I had started dating someone, I’d get upset, too, if it wasn’t true. On some level that made sense to the rational parts of my brain, but those parts had been regulated to the corner, nose against the wall, the same way Sam tried to discipline the kids she watched.

  Because boys like Dallas didn’t date fat girls. For a second there, I had truly lost my romantic mind. No matter what my mom said or might say in the future, it would never erase what I’d seen firsthand at school.

  Valentine’s Day: War in the Time of Commercial Romance.

  A certain population of people had become notorious for sending fake proposals through the school-sanctioned flower-giving spectacle.

  Meet me after school behind the gym.…

  I’ve had a crush on you forever.…

  Text me, please. I want to get to know you.…

  The innocent carnations with cards attached had been used as humiliating weapons of mass emotional and romantic destruction. No one could be trusted. I had made it out unscathed. Not a single fake flower had ever been sent to me.

  But one of my friends had gotten one. Two years in a row.

  That had been my initial thought when Dallas had volunteered—it was for a joke. But I’d dismissed it quickly because I at least trusted him enough to not be that kind of douchebag.

  But more to the point, according to Nadiya, who heard it from Michelle, who heard it from Megan, who saw a text from Lacey, Dallas didn’t date Black girls. Which, okay, hurt. A lot. A special kind of hurt right in my metaphysical jugular that I didn’t want to poke at or examine too closely. Admittedly, that rumor was a few years old now, and people could change, but.

  I’d already lived through that in school, too, and the opposite: whenever someone transferred, there would be literally zero point in getting a crush.

  It started like this: “Oh. They’re really cute.”

  And then common sense donkey-kicked its way through the front door: “He probably doesn’t like Black girls.”

  Again, the rational part of my brain knew everyone couldn’t possibly think like that, but man. Hear it enough, see it enough on the internet, and that stuff starts to sink in after a while. Rom-coms were fantasy—the real dating playing field was sloped and ravaged by weeds, doubt, stereotypes, and unavoidable Eurocentric beauty standards.

  But it was cool. Whatever. I’d meet a lot of different kinds of people with different mind-sets in college.

  Hopefully.

  I’d be happy if Dallas wanted to be friends. I wanted to have that with him. Funny. Snarky. Kind. Perceptive. Nice to look at, which probably shouldn’t be on this list, but whatever, here we are.

  A car pulled into Goldeen’s parking lot, the engine roaring even as it idled before the driver cut it. Standing up, I stretched to wake up and shake myself out of my brain fog of escalating and borderline irrational worry.

  You would think watching Dallas get out of the car, walk toward the door, enter the diner, and make his way to the podium would be enough time for me to prepare some kind of witty greeting to counteract the obscene levels of surprise pelting my brain cells. But no it wasn’t.

  I stared at him. That’s all. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared.

  “Can I sit?” He gestured to a table.

  “Are you going to order something?” Did it matter, Jesus, really?

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” I grabbed a single Midnight Oil menu and led him to the second booth from the door.

  He sat down. “What do you recommend to eat?”

  I could have handed him the menu, like a normal waitress who knew how to do her job, but no, I clutched it to my chest. “Depends on how you’re feeling.”

  He looked relieved. “Pretty shitty, actually. Will you get in trouble if you sit with me?”

  “Probably not.” I slid into the booth across from him.

  “Please don’t make fun of me for this.” He kept his eyes on his hands, folded on top of the table. “I tried to tell some of my friends and they didn’t—they were assholes about it. I feel like I can trust you, and I think if we’re going to be hanging out all summer we should try to get along, you know?”

  “Okay.” I didn’t even need to think about it. “I won’t laugh.”

  “I’ve been working on not ignoring the way I feel about things. People.” His earnest, slight smile jolted me to the core. I’d never seen him look like that, let alone look at me like that. “I don’t want to hide who I am anymore, and I feel like you’re someone that would understand me.”

  “Wait, so, your friends laughed at you for that? For wanting to feel your feelings, if I’m understanding that right?”

  A memory of Winston popped into my head—him crying, my dad saying, “Cut that out. Men don’t cry,” and my mom threatening my dad within an inch of his life for belittling Winston and “putting that poison into his head.” It made sense.

  “Well. I can certainly try to understand you,” I added. “No promises or anything, but what I do know about you, I like.”

  “So about the photo shoot. I want to apologize.” His sincere stare pinned me in place. I clutched the menu tighter. “It was a clusterfuck from beginning to end. I was mad before you even got there. Shelley wouldn’t stop, and it got to me, even though I tried not to let it. I don’t want you to think you had anything to do with that.”

  “What did she do? Before I got there, I mean.”

  “Same thing she did while you were there. Making it seem like we were dating because she heard we went for a fucking walk, and how glad she was that I had given you a chance because not everyone would have, and that I was a real man because of it.”

  “Oh.”

  In those kind of moments, the less I said, the better. I had only said something because I felt like I had to. A tiny acknowledgment to let him know I had understood his words, his anger, and Shelley’s meaning.

  “It was so fucked up. I kept telling her we were only friends, but she brushed it off, like I wanted to keep it a secret because it was too soon or something. I don’t know. Rush kept trying to distract her, but she kept finding a way to bring it up again.”

  Elation and disappointment rolled together in a writhing mass, crushing me from the inside out. Both feelings blended together until I couldn’t tell them apart. Perfectly equal. Perfectly awful.

  Friendship was the bee’s fucking knees. Great, wonderful, amazing, spectacular. And dating friends felt like an honor straight from on high. It’s why things with Kara had always been so magical. “We’re a recipe made with all the best, most expensive, and rarest ingredients,” she had said once.

  I had tried so hard to keep my hopes in check, secreted away in a lockbox and buried so deep down not even Pandora and her twitchy disobedient hands could find it. In a matter of days, my resolve had shattered, and I let myself think it was okay to truly want something. Someone. Him. That I had a chance.

  Dallas wasn’t required to like me. I knew that. Divine matchmaking or not, he didn’t o
we me anything.

  But at some point, only being seen as a friend had stopped feeling like an everyday, average part of life, and more like a targeted part of my existence. I’d seen plenty of movies and countless shows where funny fat friend morphed into always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I didn’t know how to explain that without sounding like an entitled broseph complaining about the mythical friend zone.

  “No offense, but it sounds like it has a lot to do with me.”

  “I meant I wasn’t mad because of you. You didn’t do anything. You were just an innocent bystander.” He wrestled with what he wanted to say next. “And it’s like that keeps happening. Kara and I don’t really get along.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “That’s not about you either. Well.” His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, face scrunched up in thought. “Not exactly.”

  “Are you going to explain that, or are we playing more word games? Because I really don’t like those.”

  “She hasn’t told you? Anything?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “I don’t want to make it worse, but”—he paused—“she wants me to stay away from you.”

  “She said that? When?”

  He nodded. “A while ago.”

  Well, that wasn’t true. Not a chance. I decided to humor him anyway. “And did she say why?”

  “It’s been a standing agreement between us that I kind of broke when I volunteered.”

  “Okay, but why? She wouldn’t just ask you to do that out of nowhere. Make this make sense.”

  “That’s why I thought she was your girlfriend, but like you said, she’s not, and it didn’t make sense anymore, so I decided I wanted to win.”

  “Rewind, rewind. You didn’t know she was my ungirlfriend until after you volunteered. Why did you do it if your agreement was intact?”

  “I wanted to be king. I’m not really friends with my friends right now. I broke up with Lacey. I wanted someone to hang out with before I moved away instead of spending all of my time alone in my room.” He began to wring his hands. “And then it was you, and it felt like my last chance.”

  Looking at him felt like the equivalent of Superman voluntarily swallowing kryptonite. “Chance for what?”

  “I’ve always liked you. I like the way you don’t ignore your brother. I like the way you’re always helping people. I like your jokes and your laugh and the way you look at people like you can cut straight through them when you know they’re bullshitting you. But then I made that deal with Kara, so I’ve always just stayed out of your way. I figured if you wanted me around, you’d come get me. Swoop me under your wing like you did with Kara.”

  And there it was.

  Dallas had noticed me. So much so that he could list out all of his favorite things. I exhaled in a hard, shocked huff. And he wanted to be like Kara—well maybe not that intense, but he wanted me to choose him. He’d been waiting. For me.

  The last time I had felt this special, Kara had been the cause.

  “I dive-bombed that girl.” Still stunned, my voice sounded too soft. “You wouldn’t have wanted me to.”

  “Yeah. I would have and she knew that.”

  “I’m gonna talk to her. It’s just you can’t really push her, you know? She has to be ready to tell you something or she’ll shut down.” I nodded, willing myself to believe in it, in this moment. “If we’re all going to be friends, I want her to be on board.”

  “Friends.”

  “Thank you for being honest with me. I like you, too—I don’t know why I didn’t say that earlier, because I do.” I covered half of my face with my hand, half embarrassed but too happy to care. “I want to be able to put whatever happened between you two behind us.”

  Dallas’s smile faded as I spoke, until it disappeared completely. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. I want it to be, but”—he shook his head, eyes sad—“you really need to talk to her.”

  Kara (Kara Kara Kara Kara) Chameleon

  Winnie: We need to talk.

  Kara: What did he tell you?

  Winnie: Why would you assume it’s about that?

  Kara: What /else/ would it be about?

  Twenty-One

  The Twilight Zone was a real place. I would know, because somehow I had ended up there.

  Lying on my bed, and ignoring the alarm Sam had set for me, everything looked normal. The room—immaculately clean and decorated in shades of white, slate gray, and deep blue—began to warm up as the sun rose. My sheets still felt soft and smelled like Granny’s favorite fabric softener. The goldfish swam in their bubbling tank.

  But talking candidly with Dallas, the recurring fights with Granny, Kara keeping secrets, agreeing to run with Sam? Nothing about any of that could be considered normal. My world had begun to shift in strange, parallel-universe ways.

  Summer in Haven Central had always felt like one long slog of time. Days blurred into midnights. Weeks and months were interchangeable words. I’d arrive one evening, and a blink later it’d be time to go home again. It had never been like this, where each day felt a thousand years long, punctuated by some life-altering event.

  I’d have to handle the situation with Kara delicately. That more than any of the rest sat at the forefront of my brain, demanding that I fix it.

  “Are we quitting yet?” Winston asked from the doorway.

  I sighed. Then got up to start getting ready.

  Five. Three. Five.

  Walk. Jog. Walk.

  In the last Harry Potter movie, Winston’s favorite character said dying was “quicker and easier than falling asleep.” That’s how I convinced myself the extra minute wouldn’t be the death of me—it wasn’t quick, it wasn’t easy, but man, did I need a nap. Rolling over and running after only three hours of sleep would get really old, really fast.

  “Good job, today.” Sam held up her hand for a high five as we walked back to the car.

  “No.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that.” She lowered her hand, placing it on the small of my back. “You’re doing fine.”

  “I’m sweaty. Don’t touch me.”

  “I hate this.” Winston’s singsong voice sounded out of place amongst all of the agitated goose-honking. “Everything hurts. My legs, my back, my chest—everything. Why do people voluntarily do this? How do they do this without their bodies falling apart?”

  “Sheer force of will, probably.” I eyed Sam for an answer.

  “You’re not completely wrong.”

  “Masochists.” Winston clutched his side. “I don’t feel good. I never feel good after this. I was promised endorphins. Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.”

  “Happy people don’t kill their cousins. They just don’t.”

  Sam frowned. “Y’all are so weird.”

  When we got back to the diner, I had the bright idea to ditch the other two, who walked in through the front door. Too tired and too cranky to wiggle out of another one of Granny’s Special Breakfasts, I took the coward’s way out and crept up the back stairs to the apartment. I had a date with a bathtub, my bed, and some unused sick time collecting dust in my employee coffers.

  Exhaustion, thy name was Winnie.

  And it was only day two.

  I woke up several hours later, stomach rumbling and dying of thirst. Halfway to the kitchen, I nearly jumped out of my skin when Granny called my name from the living room. She was sitting in her recliner, knitting, and I hadn’t seen her. Tunnel vision for the refrigerator would do that.

  “I just woke up.” My code for please don’t talk to me yet. Which she never cared about. I poured a cup of water from the refrigerated filter jug, gulping it down before going back for seconds. A dehydration headache pulsated rudely in between my eyes.

  “There’s some oatmeal in there. Put a little water on it and cover it with a paper towel before you microwave it.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What are you going to eat?”

  “Not that
.” I rubbed my forehead. Pain made my temper nonexistent. But if I didn’t answer her, that would set her off, and I just—

  Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?

  “Stop being ridiculous.” The clicking from her knitting needles sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “Have a yogurt, too. They’re on the refrigerator door.” So, so close to letting it go and giving up, my hand in mid-reach for that damn yogurt, she just had to add, “But only have one. They’re not fat free.”

  I slammed the refrigerator door shut, turning away and staring out the window. My hands perched like claws on the sink’s edge. Eyes closed, I tried breathing and counting and breathing and counting. I didn’t want my food to be measured, calculated, and monitored. My body, my rules. If I wanted to eat dry, lumpy oatmeal with extra flax seeds and fat-free yogurt, then I would do that, but it would be my choice—same as if I wanted to eat gluten-free pizza and ice cream.

  Maybe Winston, bless his baby brother heart, had been right. Granny did want to control me. Both of us, actually. The Starlight contest: the one thing he had ever wanted to do, the only thing he had ever asked her for, and she wouldn’t let him.

  My thought process shifted like a train switching tracks and barreling through a tunnel. Purpose filled me as I walked across the room, moving quickly before I lost my nerve. Unsure of what I’d say before I said it, I trusted myself to find the heart of what needed saying before long.

  “Can I talk to you about something?”

  Granny glanced at me over the rims of her reading glasses. “About what?”

  I sat on the ottoman in front of her. “About the contest.” Start small. Work my way up to potential devastation.

  “Contest? That Starlight thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I said no.”

  “Yes. No to me. But Winston—”

  “No.”

  “Can’t you just—”

  “I already know about Winston. He’s too young. People in that competition have been cooking for years. He isn’t going to win. No point in putting him through that. There’ll be plenty of opportunities for him when he’s older and more experienced.”