Page 1 of The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar
1
When He’s a Ten but You Already Dumped Him
Lack Of Foresight
I watch the air leave Jamal’s mouth when he lets out a nervous breath—but no, it’s not because I was staring at his lips. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s New Year’s Eve, and in less than an hour everyone inside will be paired up sharing their midnight kisses. The thought of using the new year as an excuse to kiss my ex-boyfriend/current best friend has absolutely not crossed my mind, and I’m definitely not thinking about it right now.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks as he crosses his arms and rubs his biceps. I can’t tell if he’s doing that out of nerves or because he insisted I wear his jacket while we’re standing on the curb outside the party.
“It’ll be fun,” I reassure him. “Besides, I already paid for it; I’m not going back now.”
Jamal turns his head when he spots our hookup coming around the corner.
“You have a leaf,” I say as I reach out to pluck it from the ripples of his dark hair, careful not to mess up the waves he’s been training recently.
“Thanks,” he says with an almost-shy smile. That’s when I realize I leaned in a little too close to get the leaf, and he didn’t back away.
Before I can read too much into it, though, the black Dodge Challenger with tinted windows makes its way to the curb we’re waiting at. The window rolls down, and my friend Hunter nods at us from the driver’s seat. He was one of my best friends last year, before he graduated. Now that he’s in college and free from Catholic school, he’s able to get his hands on the kind of stuff us mere minors would have to practically sell our kidneys for.
“You’re late,” I say as I step closer and lean forward, resting my forearms in the window.
“Well, yeah, this shit wasn’t easy to get. I had to go all the way across town!”
Jamal steps up next to me, looking guilty. “Shit, sorry you went out of your way. Do you want to join the party?”
Hunter grins. “Hell yeah. I didn’t go out of my way for nothing. No way I’m letting you guys try this shit without me.”
“Cesar, what the fuck!” I jump as the gate leading to the backyard slams and a voice shouts from a few paces behind me.
I whirl around to see my sister, Yami, marching angrily over to us. I hadn’t heard her open the gate, but it seems like she just overheard some of our conversation with Hunter.
“You better not be in the middle of a fucking drug deal right now. How am I supposed to cover for you if you don’t even try to hide your own tracks? Mom and Bo’s parents are literally right inside!” Yami yells as she pulls me away from the window and then throws her arms up in exasperation when she sees Hunter inside the car. “You couldn’t have pulled up like a block away from Bo’shouse? Our parents are in there!”
I burst out laughing at Hunter’s deer-in-headlights look as he stumbles over a frantic denial.
“What? I’m not... It’s—it’s not like that!”
I’m laughing too hard to offer an explanation, so Jamal chimes in. “We bought fireworks for New Year’s. It was supposed to be a surprise. Still potentially dangerous, but nothing illegal.”
I almost want to be annoyed at Yami for being so overbearing about literally everything I do. Still, the reminder that she has my back if I ever get in trouble is kind of nice.
Just then the front door to Bo’s house opens, and Bo walks over to us, followed by our friends David and Amber, who were also invited to Bo’s family New Year’s Eve party. Hunter parks the car on the curb, and after we explain the situation to everyone, Yami laughs it off and agrees to have some fun with fireworks.
Hunter and David jump at the chance to unpack the fireworks, but Jamal stops them. “Wait, wait! We have to read the instructions!”
“Eh, I feel like fireworks are pretty intuitive,” Amber says, without looking away from David’s thick black hair as she tries to pull it up into a tiny pigtail. He’s been growing it out just enough for it to feel like a rebellion from our Catholic school dress code, but not enough to actually get a violation.
“I respect you for being able to access the intuitive part of your brain, but I’d rather rely on clear instructions than a gut feeling of how not to blow my hands off.”
Maybe I’m too protective, but I do a quick scan of the group’s reaction. Jamal might have come off a little sarcastic, which doesn’t always land well if you’re not close enough to the group. Hunter, Bo, Amber, and David met Jamal at Slayton’s anti-prom last year,but they probably don’t know him well enough to know he’s not making a jab at them. Jamal’s body language, tone, and general personality all prove to me that he’s genuinely trying not to offend anyone right now. Hence the whole I-respect-you thing. Luckily no one looks annoyed.
“I’m with Jamal,” Yami says. She’s the only other one here who knows Jamal pretty well, since he lived with us for a while after he got kicked out last year. “I’msogood at being intuitive. Like, my intuition is talking to me right now. It says we should read the instructions so no one gets blown up.”
Yami, on the other hand, is definitely being snarky on purpose. She takes the box and starts reading the instructions out loud. Once she and Jamal are satisfied it’s all safe, she holds the box up.
“Who wants to do the honors first?”
David eagerly volunteers, so Yami hands him the box. But before he’s able to set off any fireworks, Bo looks worriedly at her phone.
