Page 49 of The Wrong Side of Kai
“Vanessa?” Dad’s voice pleads at my bedroom door as he quietly knocks once, wary and apprehensive. And so he should be.
“GO AWAY!” I scream.
His footsteps fade down the hall and a few moments of silence pass where all I can focus on is my ragged breathing. Then I hear the click of my door opening and a sliver of light from the hall shines into my room. I grit my teeth, prepared to yell at Dad for having the nerve to barge into my room, to carenow. But it’s not him.
“Vanessa?” Kennedy gently says, but I’m crying too hard to reply.
My entire body is trembling and I’m squeezing my pillows with my fists. I hear the door close again, then sense movement in my room. My mattress shifts as Kennedy sits down on the edge of my bed. She doesn’t say anything for a while, but then she finally asks, “Why did you explode like that?”
“Everything sucks. Couldn’t get much worse,” I mumble.
“Even that hot guy sucks?”
I lift my head from my tear-soaked pillows to look at her. “Especiallythat hot guy.”
Kennedy frowns. She’s left Theo downstairs, and now she’s looking down at me with concern. It’s like our roles have been reversed. Suddenly, my little sister is the one looking after me. “What happened?”
“He turned out to be just like everyone else,” I whisper, then bury my face back into my pillows and pull my comforter up over my head. I want to disappear off the face of the earth right now. I don’t ever want to go back to school. I don’t want to ever face Dad again. I never want to see Harrison, or Noah, or Anthony again.
And I definitely never want to see Kai Washington again.
Kennedy climbs under my comforter with me and cuddles up close. She wraps her arms around me, squeezing me tight, and she doesn’t have to tell me that she loves me because her actions say it for her. She stays quiet, never saying anything more, and holds me until I cry myself to sleep.
20
Every Saturday, I have breakfast with the Tates. It’s become a weekly tradition over the years, ever since they first began inviting me after Mom passed away. It reminds me of what a loving, close family feels like. Rachel makes giant, fluffy pancakes from scratch, and always has too many toppings to choose from, and Tyrone always makes his own fresh orange juice. We all sit together around the table, stuffing our faces between the laughter. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
“And turned out, that girl he was dating? She’s his distant cousin,” Isaiah says, finishing his story about his buddy from college who’s unknowingly been in a relationship with a family member, and we all share a chuckle around the table.
It was hard to drag myself out of bed to come here this morning. But if anything were to make me feel better, it would be breakfast with Chyna. I left my house and drove over here before Dad was even awake. I can’t bring myself to face him after everything I said last night.
“Vanessa, what’re your funny stories from this week?” Rachel asks, offering out the plate of fresh pancakes to me. I hold up my hand to decline – I’m already on my second – and give her a tight smile. Not only do we follow tradition of having pancakes every week, we also follow the tradition of sharing anything humorous that may have happened in our lives recently.
“Nothing new,” I lie, exchanging a quick glance with Chyna. I fork up another mouthful of pancake, banana, and Nutella, hoping if I chew for long enough she won’t press me. The truth is, so much has happened this week – but it’s all totally inappropriate to share over the dining table. How do I find the humor in a sexual video of me being released to the world? Or the humor in me running around town seeking revenge on Harrison? Or the humor in fighting with my father? And how do I even begin to find the humor in catching feelings for the very first time for a guy who doesn’t deserve them?
Rachel lets out a sigh of dismay. “But you always have something to tell us!”
“I have something,” Chyna cuts in from beside me, and I shoot her a sideways glance, silently thanking her before I continue to chomp down on my food. We all listen to her as she talks. “Okay, so the other day, I got paired with Malik Dorsey in Chemistry. Mom, do you remember him? He used to live across the street when we were kids and we’d play together in our yard and I was kind of in love with him. He finally confessed to stealing a bracelet of mine and he gave it back to me the next day, so maybe wewillend up getting married after all.”
Did that really happen this week or is she making it up just to save me from having to share a story of my own? If it did happen, she hasn’t mentioned it to me. Or maybe she did and I was too self-absorbed to remember. I think of my and Chyna’s conversations over the past week, and I realize most of them have all been aboutme. My life. My plans for revenge on Harrison, my thoughts on Kai. . . Have I even asked Chyna anything aboutherlife? Did I even ask her how her college application went?No, I think,I didn’t. If I needed another reason to hate myself this morning, this is it.
“Oh, I’ve got a good one!” Tyrone exclaims, and he dives into telling his dramatic story of an awkward misunderstanding he had yesterday with a coworker, but I tune out and miss all of the details.
When we’re finally all excused from the table ten minutes later, Chyna is quick to hook her arm around mine and pull me away. Another of the great things about Chyna’s parents? They don’t ever need us to help clean up. Chyna and I head upstairs to her room, and I collapse onto her bed and stare at the ceiling.
“Are we still going to Maddie’s party tonight?” I ask. I’d pushed the thought of that party to the back of my mind over the past couple days, but now the time has come to decide whether or not to show up.
“I don’t know,” Chyna says. She mutes her TV and sits down on the bed next to me. “Do you want to? I do. Malik could be there.”
“Would it make me look weak if I didn’t turn up?” I sit up and look back at her, chewing my lower lip. Noah doesn’t ever miss a party, and that means his sheep will be there too – like Harrison and Anthony and the rest of his asshole friends. And if the party is anything like last weekend’s, then half the senior class will be there. . . All of the people who have laughed at my expense this week, all of the people who have posted cruel things about me online. But isolating me is what they want. It’s how they win. “Like, would everyone think I was too scared?”
Chyna thinks for a moment. “If you want to go to the party, I’ll come with you. If you want to miss it, I’ll skip it too. We could catch a movie instead or something. Just you and me.”
I don’t deserve to call Chyna Tate my best friend. She’s everything I want to be – quietly intelligent, caring and loving, with a strong moral compass. She has the crappy end of the bargain. Her best friend is selfish and self-centered, and reckless and corrupt. I don’t appreciate her enough.
“Hey,” I say. “How did your college application go?”
Chyna’s expression turns puzzled. It’s a drastic change in subject, that’s for sure. I don’t miss the way her eyes light up, though, like she has been waiting all week for me to ask that exact question, and it makes my chest ache. “Mrs. Moore said my application is great and there’s nothing more I could do to improve it, so I finally sent it off. She thinks I’m in with a real shot. I have a good feeling, but maybe I shouldn’t get my hopes up. . . Ahh, I don’t know.” She covers her face with her hands and releases a muffled groan.
