Page 31 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“Yeah. Also, now I feel like an asshole because I actually passed.”
“You did?” Ellery sat up. “Whaaat? Little Tulip, certified driver.”
Grinning, I took out my temporary license and brushed it flat on my lap, admiring it. Ellery plucked it out of my hands. “Hey!”
“Tulip Meiyue Chen. Hey, I didn’t know you had a middle name.”
“It’s pronounced May-yeah, not May-yoo-ee.” I reached out for the license, but Ellery pulled back.
“May-yeah. It’s pretty. What does it mean?”
“Well, the character Mei usually means ‘beautiful,’ but my mom said most girls with that character in their name aren’t actually beautiful, so she thought maybe it was bad luck to name your daughter Beautiful. So the Mei in my name means ‘plum.’ Uh, and Yue means ‘moon.’ ”
“Plum Moon.” Ellery’s mouth quivered.
“Areyoutrying not to laugh?” I mock-glared at her. “You can’t laugh at my Chinese name, that would be racist.”
“Tulip Plum Moon.”
“Give that back now, you are not worthy.” I made a grab for the temporary license, and Ellery quickly held it up above her head, out of my reach. Without thinking, I rolled over on top of her, still laughing, stretching my arm out. It was hopeless, of course, Ellery was so much taller than I was, and her limbs a lot longer. The next moment, I realized I was lying on top of Ellery, the length of our bodies pressed together. No space in between, the distance that we were used to keeping with each other annihilated just like that.
The second this sank in, my laughter caught in my throat. Ellery’s face was mere inches from mine, and I could see the way the humor had left her eyes too, the way her mouth suddenly closed, then parted again, ever so slightly. Her smell was all around me, the rise and fall of her chest palpable underneath mine, our hearts beating as one. And I felt it then, her other arm around me, her fingers splayed protectively across the small of my back. I didn’t dare move, didn’t want to break whatever spell it was we were under.
But then she blinked, and it was as though she’d been underwater and had just broken through the surface. She tossedmy temporary license on the floor and smirked. Disappointment crushed me. I rolled off her and bent down to retrieve the license. “You’re so dumb, Bellery.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her. My face was burning, and I felt utterly stupid. I had breached the boundaries of friendship and made everything uncomfortable.
“We should celebrate you passing your test,” Ellery said, her voice easy-breezy.
I made myself take a deep inhale. “Yeah.” Maybe she hadn’t noticed the weird moment. We were always horsing around, grabbing each other, tussling innocently. This to her was merely one of the many times we messed around. I turned to look at her and found her rifling through her papers. God, I hadn’t felt as much like a child as I did right then. I’d just made up that whole moment in my own head, whereas Ellery had already moved on, probably already forgotten about it. “I need to go,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about it, just let the words slip out of my mouth. “My mom’s waiting for me at home.”
“Cool. See you around.” Ellery barely looked up from her papers.
I didn’t go home. After walking out of her studio apartment, I couldn’t bear the thought of going home and having to pretend to Mama and Iris like everything was fine, so I slipped out the side gate and went for a walk. I hated walking on my own. It left me with too much space with my own thoughts. Nothing good ever came out of that. I was never someone who could be at peace with myself. There was no knowing where my thoughts would delve, and even when they started out happy, they rarely stayed that way. It didn’t take long for them to gnash their teeth and hiss their acid into the rest of me:How could you have beenso brash? You ruined everything. Ellery must hate you now. Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just finds you pathetic. Maybe she’s calling Trish now and laughing about you.
A sharp pain made me look down; I’d chewed my thumbnail down to the quick, and blood was seeping out. I licked it off and chewed on the next fingernail. There was a whirlwind inside me, and I didn’t understand why I found everything so confusing. Why couldn’t I be more like Iris? How was it possible that we were sisters raised by the same people, and yet we were polar opposites? And just what was it exactly that I was confused about? I liked James. James was handsome, and a demon on the court, which made him even hotter, and he was kind and funny and attentive. I wanted to be his girlfriend. I wanted him to call me “baby” and no one else. I wanted his lips on mine, and his hands on my waist, and the thought of him doing that made my knees go weak. I was attracted to James the way girls were supposed to be attracted to boys. That much, at least, was clear.
But then, what the hell did I feel for Ellery? What was that moment back there? No, there was no moment. At least not for her. But, did that really mean there wasn’t a moment? There had been one for me. Did that not count for anything? Did I want it to count for something? And what was that something?
It felt as though there was a stone lodged in my lungs, jagged and harsh. I placed my hand on my chest, grabbing hold of my shirt and squeezing, and still my breath came out ragged. My steps slowed to a crawl. I stopped on the sidewalk, my vision blurring as I gasped to get some air. Somehow, I was drowning on land.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
I barely registered the words. Iris’s face swam into view, a frown creasing it.
“Dude, what’s going on?”
I shook my head, wanting to tell her to leave me alone, but the words wouldn’t come out.She’ll leave anyway, the tiny part of me that was still functioning thought to itself. Instead, Iris placed her hands on my shoulders and said, “Breathe, Magnolia. Breathe with me. In and out.” She took a deep inhale. I struggled to do the same. She let it out. I exhaled shakily. “Again.”
After a few tries, I finally managed to get my breathing under control.
“What triggered it?” she said.
“What triggered what?”
“Your panic attack.”
It took a moment for me to digest what she said. A panic attack. Was that what that was? What even was a panic attack?
As though reading my mind, Iris said, “It’s what it sounds like. An attack brought on by panic or anxiety or stress.”
