There are soft footsteps, and then the bells above the front door chime. Vi is filled with a potent rush of relief and disappointment. She turns the giraffe over in her hands, her mind whirring. It can’t be a coincidence that Cece’s read all of those books, can it? There aren’t that many YA books about girls falling in love with other girls. There are more than there were two years ago, when Vi was figuring out her sexuality, but still not enough.
Her sister’s round, freckled face appears in the porthole, and Vi jumps. “Jesus, Des!”
“She’s gone,” Des says with a smile. “You can come out now.”
“I wasn’t hiding; I was reading.” Vi drops the stuffed giraffe and snatches up her book, which is about two princesses who fall in love. She’s only recently started branching out into YA fantasy, but she’s digging this one.
Des rolls her brown eyes. “Uh-huh. Right.”
Vi frowns as she crawls out of the pirate ship. So much for her crush being top secret. “Am I that obvious?”
She isn’t sure she wants to hear the answer.
Des wraps an arm around her waist and squeezes. “Probably only to your big sister.”
“Yeah, it’s the ‘probably’ that concerns me.” Vi sighs. She is both desperate for information about Cece, carefully filing away anything that Gram mentions from Cece’s abuela or any gossip she hears at school, and terrified to betray her interest. She’s not afraid that Cece would be mean. Cece would never; she’s super nice. But Vi could not bear it if Cece felt sorry for her. She has had enough pity to last her a lifetime.
She knows what people in town say about her, even though it’s been ten years since the accident. Gram’s friends still treat her like a fragile, breakable thing. They ask her how she is in soft, careful voices, and as she walks away, they remind each other of what happened. How she was in the car the night her parents were both killed by a drunk driver. How she didn’t talk for almost a year afterward.
“What do you think it means?” Vi blurts out, then glances over her shoulder to confirm there’s no one else in the store. There isn’t. It’s a lazy, sunny Friday afternoon, and most tourists are out on their sailboats or still making their way over the Bay Bridge and up Route 213 to Remington Hollow.
“That Cece’s reading about girls falling in love?” Des straightens some board books about trucks. “I mean…I guess it could be a Pride reading challenge?”
“Right. I mean…maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t want to assume…” Vi flushes.
Des raises one feathery eyebrow. “That she’s gay? Or bi? Or pan?”
“She has a boyfriend,” Vi points out. Ben. Tall. Handsome, she guesses; other girls seem to like boys with floppy dark hair. He’s the school’s best soccer forward.
“That doesn’t mean she’s straight,” Des says.
Vi feels a tiny pinprick of hope.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. Even if she was interested in girls, Cece wouldn’t go from handsome, popular soccer star to strange, bookish little Vi Garrett. “Nothing’s ever going to happen between Cece and me.”
“Well, not if you keep running away every time you see her, no.” Des tucks a wayward strand of hair behind Vi’s ear.
Vi jerks away, annoyed. Maybe if her sisters weren’t always babying her, Cece would see her. Really see her. Not as the weird girl next door with the tragic backstory, but as someone who’s smart and interesting, who loves dogs and the same books she does.
“You should talk to her. You two have so much in common!” Des says. “Remember what Mom used to say? ‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel.’ You have so much light in you, Viola Garrett.”
Vi rolls her eyes. Des has to say that, because she’s her big sister.
Vi doesn’t feel like she’s full of light. She feels weird and bored and lonely.
Chapter Five
DES
Late that afternoon, the bell above the door chimes, and Des looks up from her tattered copy of Murder on the Orient Express.
“Hey, stranger!” Emily Kim bounces in. “What’s new?”
Em is Des’s best friend. Or at least she used to be.
“Nothing,” Des says, dog-earing her page. “What’s up?”
“I was texting with Bri and Alyssa, and I have an amazing plan.” Em flips her shiny black hair out of her face. Sometime this spring, she cut it into a long, asymmetrical bob. A lob, she calls it. It makes her look older. Less like the girl Des used to spend every Saturday night watching British mysteries and splitting a pint of Ben & Jerry’s with. Less like the girl who threw a murder-mystery dinner party for her seventeenth birthday and went to an escape room in DC for her eighteenth. More like the girl who spent her nineteenth getting trashed with her new friends at the University of Maryland.
“Is Alyssa the blond with the nose ring?” Des has trouble keeping Em’s college friends straight.
“No, that’s Lauren. Alyssa is the blond with the cute glasses. My lab partner. You’d know that if you ever came to visit,” Em snarks, tapping her glossy pink nails on the counter. Since when does she paint her nails? “Anyway, Bri’s having a party next weekend up in Pennsylvania at her parents’ cabin. It’s going to be epic. Lauren and Alyssa are coming, and so are Alex and Devonte…and Hunter.” Em grins as she mentions the guy she’s been crushing on all spring. “My parents said I could go, and I was thinking… Why don’t you come with me?”
“Me?” Des asks, stalling for time. Em is so excited, she’s practically vibrating. She definitely doesn’t need the mint chip Frappuccino she’s carrying.
“Yes, you. Bri said it’s totally fine. Come on, Des! I was so bummed when you got sick and couldn’t make it for my birthday. I can’t wait for you to meet everybody! Then you’ll finally be able to keep Lauren and Alyssa straight. And I know you’ll love Bri. She’s the best.”
A little splinter of jealousy slices its way beneath Des’s skin. She used to be Em’s best. “I can’t. I have to work next weekend.”
Em’s shoulders slump, and she sets her Frappuccino on the counter with a little more force than necessary. “You have to work every weekend.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I do story time Saturday mornings now.”
Em rolls her eyes. “Let Kat do story time! She loves being the center of attention.”
That’s true. Em knows Des’s sisters and all their annoying traits, just like Des knows that Em’s brother Mase takes forever in the bathroom every morning and her brother Jacob leaves dirty socks all over his room.