“Truth.” Vi wonders if Cece is especially interested in that representation, not in an academic way, but because she wants to see herself in more books. “Ooh, I’ve got an even more evil question. Who’s your favorite dog?”
Cece’s eyes widen. “That is evil. There are so many adorable floofs!” She drums her pink fingernails against her chin. “Okay, no, I do have a favorite: Algernon.”
“Aw, Algernon! He’s so sweet!” Vi says. Algernon is Mrs. Ellinghaus’s three-legged white terrier. He has the run of her flower shop, In Bloom, and he’s super friendly. “I have to go with Juno. At least until I get my own dog. I love Des, but she has to move out eventually, right?”
“What kind of dog would you want? Would you rather have a big dog or a little dog?”
“Both!” Vi laughs. “I want to rescue all the dogs who need homes. When I have my own house, I’m going to have three or four.”
“Me too.” Cece grins at her, and Vi can’t help thinking about an episode of Riverdale—okay, she happens to know it was the second episode, actually—when Betty and Veronica got milkshakes at Pop’s and vowed never to let a boy come between them. It was totally adorable. After she saw it the first time, she wrote a fic where Betty and Veronica had their first kiss and then held hands across the table as they drank their milkshakes.
Vi looks at Cece’s hands, at her slightly chipped polish. She wonders what it would be like to hold hands with her here, at the Daily Grind, where anyone could see.
“I like this game. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to,” Cece says.
“You have a zillion friends,” Vi points out. At lunch or walking to and from class, Cece is always surrounded. Everyone wants to partner with her on group projects because she’s smart and responsible and kind.
“I have a lot of friends, but since Shaniyah moved away, I haven’t had a best girl friend,” Cece confesses. Shaniyah Washington and Cece were inseparable from kindergarten through seventh grade. They both played soccer, and both of their families own restaurants in town; Shaniyah’s grandmother, Miss Evie, runs Mama’s BBQ. “No one I trust to share my deep dark secrets with, you know?”
“You have deep dark secrets?” Vi teases.
Is she flirting? Oh God, she thinks she is.
“Don’t we all?” Cece retorts, smiling. “Don’t you?”
“Well.” Vi sits back in her chair, bracing herself for Cece to laugh and think she’s a total nerd. “I write fan fiction.”
Cece leans forward. “About Riverdale?”
Vi nods. “About Beronica. That’s the ship name for Betty and Veronica. I post it on Tumblr and AO3. I think my favorite part is getting feedback from other Beronica shippers. They have the best requests.”
“Like, they request that you write certain stories?” Cece asks.
“Yeah. It’s a big fandom. People write fics about lots of different characters and couples. Some of them follow the official canon, and some of them—like Beronica—don’t.” Vi can’t believe she’s explaining this to Cece. She doesn’t talk about this with anybody.
“But…how is it secret, if people read it?”
“Nobody knows it’s me. It’s all anonymous.” Vi’s careful to sign out of her accounts in case her sisters borrow her tablet. And her phone is password protected. She hides her notebooks too, because Kat is a total snoop.
“What about your sisters?” Cece asks, and Vi shakes her head. “How come?”
“I don’t know.” She shifts on her stool. “It’s super fun to take characters I love and write stories for them. But Bea’s the real writer. She was the editor of the school paper, and now she’s interning at the Gazette. She’s going to Georgetown for journalism. Telling them I write fanfic sounds kind of…I don’t know…silly, in comparison.”
“No, it’s not,” Cece says, and Vi falls a little more in love with her. “Do you think it’s silly?”
“No.” Vi is blushing again. “I love it.”
Cece shrugs. “I bet your stories are great. And there’s no rule that only one of you can be a writer, is there?”
“I guess not.” Her sisters think she keeps a journal. She let them think that. If they found out she was actually rewriting scenes so that her favorite TV characters kiss…What if they laughed at her? She would die.
“Okay, your turn,” she says. “Tell me a deep, dark secret.”
“Oh. Um.” Cece fiddles with her straw, and Vi’s breath comes faster. Is this why Cece started the question game, looking for permission to share a secret? To confide in Vi about something more than her favorite TV show and her favorite color?
“My abuela had a brother who was gay,” Cece says finally. “Her parents disowned him back in the sixties. She hasn’t seen him for almost sixty years…since they were only a little older than us.”
“That’s really sad,” Vi says. This is not what she was expecting.
Cece nods. “She doesn’t even know if he’s alive. I wonder sometimes, if I were gay—or if my brothers were,” she adds hastily, “if my abuela would disown us too.”
Oh. Vi’s heart squishes at the fear written across Cece’s face. She doesn’t think this is actually about Cece’s brothers at all. “No. I mean, she might be Catholic, but—”
“She’s really Catholic. Like, she has an altar to la Virgen in her bedroom.” Cece’s brown eyes widen. “And Mami says that even if we don’t agree with her, while we’re living under her roof, we have to respect her beliefs. So, if I’m reading a book with two girls on the cover, I read it in my room. And when I go out, I bring it with me or hide it in my bra drawer, because I know my brothers won’t snoop in there.”
Vi bites her tongue to keep from saying something ugly about Cece’s abuela. It is unfair that Cece feels ashamed about what she reads and maybe about who she is. Her parents should stick up for her, even if that means moving out of the elder Mrs. Pérez’s house.
Coming out was pretty easy for Vi. Gram was kind of a hippie back in the sixties; she went to all kinds of civil rights and anti-war protests. She took Vi and her sisters to the Women’s March last year. She put a sign in the front window at Arden about how everyone is welcome there. Vi doesn’t want to criticize Cece’s family or minimize her fears. She knows there are still people who kick their gay kids out of the house or send them to conversion therapy. But she can’t imagine the Pérezes would really be that cruel. Gram wouldn’t be friends with Julia Pérez if she was so close-minded, would she?
“Your abuela is so proud of you,” Vi says, choosing her words carefully. “She’s always bragging on you to Gram: how good your grades are and what a good cook you are and what a big help you are with your brothers. I think she would accept you…or, um, your brothers. I have to believe that even if she doesn’t think marriage equality is okay, in theory, she would feel differently if it were her own granddaughter…or grandson. But…if she didn’t, or if she needed a little time to get used to the idea, you—or they—could always stay with us.”
Cece nods, her lower lip trembling. She stares down at the table, avoiding Vi’s gaze. “Thank you. And I mean…it’s hypothetical anyway. Let’s do an easier question. What’s your favorite subject?”
You, Vi thinks. You are endlessly fascinating to me.
“Language Arts,” she says.
Chapter Seventeen
DES
Monday night, as Des is about to change into her pajamas, Paige texts her to get ready; they’ll pick her up in five minutes. Des assumes that “they” are Paige and Dylan.
On Saturday night, at Des’s second farm party, she and Paige hung out with Dylan down by the river, smoking and talking. Paige showed them pictures of her artwork—these cool, impossibly small, incredibly complex wire sculptures she’d been working on. Then, as they were leaving, Dylan grabbed Paige’s hand and pulled her close and kissed her. This afternoon, Paige’d met him
for coffee at the Daily Grind, and he’d shared a sketchbook with ideas for a comic. He’s not half bad for a kid, Paige had texted Des, ignoring that Des and Dylan are the same age.
Now Paige leans out the window of a dented blue car. “Desdemona! Are you ready for an adventure?”
“No?” Des says, hesitating on her front porch. Honestly, she doesn’t like adventures. She has tested Hufflepuff in every Hogwarts sorting quiz she’s ever taken. She doesn’t like surprises either. Em tried to throw her a surprise sixteenth birthday party, but she got so stressed about the mysterious surprise and whether she would react appropriately that Em gave in and told her about it three days before her actual birthday.
Paige opens the door and scoots over to make room. “Get in the car.”
Des slides in. Dylan’s friend Ty is driving.
“You know Ty, right?” Paige says, as though she’s the one who’s been living in Remington Hollow her whole life. Of course Des knows Ty. They were in the same grade, and they had a U.S. history class together junior year and some other classes before that. Earth science in eighth grade. Wood shop in seventh. “And, Ty, you know Desdemona?”
“Desdemo—? Yeah,” Ty says, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“Doesn’t she look amazing?” Paige strokes Des’s blue curls. “I love the blue.”
“She looks different,” Ty says.
Des can’t tell whether he thinks that’s a good or bad thing. She isn’t sure she cares.
“Next week, I think we should get tattoos,” Paige says.
“Like…permanent tattoos?” Des asks.
Paige cackles. “Yes. Come on. Tell me there’s not some quote from a book you’re dying to get engraved on your skin forever, you nerd!”
Des hides a smile. There is, but she’s never been brave enough.
“I knew it!” Paige says triumphantly. “You need me around, Desdemona.”
“I think maybe I kind of do,” Des admits.
They park on a quiet, tree-lined street behind the Episcopal church and the library, which—like almost everything else in Remington Hollow—closed three hours ago. Paige pulls out a glass pipe, packs the bowl, and then lights it. She smokes and passes it to Dylan. After his turn, Dylan passes it to Ty, who hesitates and looks at Des.
Des looks up and down the shadowy, tree-lined street. This seems like a bad idea but—
“Okay,” she says quietly, accepting the bowl.
They pass it around the car until they’re all giddy. When Paige pronounces it kicked, Dylan throws his door open. “All right, let’s do this.”
“Do what?” Des asks. No one answers her. They’re cutting through the church’s back garden, not through the parking lot or down the sidewalk. “Seriously, guys. What are we doing?”
Dylan points. “We’re going up there.”
Des tilts her head back and looks at the clock tower, five stories above them. She gets a little dizzy and stumbles.
Ty puts a hand on her arm. “You okay?”
Des pulls away. “I’m good.”
“You’re so good.” Paige wraps an arm around her and pulls her away from the boys. “I told Dylan to bring Ty for you. What do you think?”
Des looks at Ty, who’s leaning against the red brick wall of the church. She looks at his blue polo shirt, his khaki shorts, his ugly boat shoes, his shaggy brown hair. She has never understood why he and Dylan are friends. Dylan works on his parents’ farm but, she thinks, reluctantly; he only ever seems interested in comic books and skateboarding. Ty is a preppy rich kid who played tennis and goes to college for free because his dad is a professor.
Maybe it’s as simple as Dylan and Ty both like getting stoned. Still, she isn’t sure what Paige thinks she and Ty would have in common.
“What do you think?” Paige asks again. “Is he cute?”
Des shrugs. He is cute, but she doesn’t have any desire to grab his belt loop and pull him close and kiss him, like Paige just did to Dylan, or thread her fingers through his. She isn’t attracted to him like that.
Paige laughs. “I mean, he’s not as cute as Dylan, but…”
Obviously, Paige finds Dylan, with his shoulder-length corn-silk hair and skinny jeans and that vintage Grateful Dead T-shirt, irresistible. And he is pretty, with delicate, almost elfin features and green eyes. Like the slacker version of Orlando Bloom in The Lord of the Rings movies. But Des doesn’t want to kiss him either. She doesn’t want to kiss anybody.
Paige squints at her. “Desdemona, have you ever had a boyfriend?”
Des shakes her head. She isn’t embarrassed about it.
“Are you a virgin?” Paige asks. Des nods. “Oh my God. Okay. Well. You can do better than this kid. We’ll find somebody better.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Des says. “I mean—I don’t want you to do that.”
Paige looks at her for a minute, and then she nods. “Okay. You’re the boss.”
Dylan and Ty are at the back door of the church. “Wait, are you serious?” Des demands, charging toward them. “Oh my God, we’re going to get arrested!”
“We are not going to get arrested,” Paige says.
“We are. We’re going to get arrested for breaking and entering, and our grandmas are going to have to come bail us out of jail.” For some reason, that is suddenly hilarious. Des doesn’t even know where the town jail is. Is there a town jail? There are town cops, right? And county sheriffs. And state troopers. And…park rangers? Are there any park rangers in Remington Hollow?
“We’re not going to get arrested.” Dylan holds up a little brass key. “We’re not breaking in. My brother gave me the key. He and his friends used to smoke in the cupola all the time. It’s no big deal.”
Des cocks her head. “It’s a church. It’s Father Daniel’s church. We can’t smoke weed in his church without his permission. We’re gonna go to hell.”
“Hell is other people,” Paige says. “Someone famous said that, right?”
“Sartre,” Des supplies. “It’s from his play No Exit.”
Paige hugs her. “Aw, you’re such a little nerd.”
“Kat read that play last summer and wouldn’t shut up about it,” Des explains. But it’s nice to be the smart one for a change. Usually, that’s Bea.
Thinking about her sisters makes Des feel weird and guilty. She is not being a good big sister. She is not setting a good example. Smoking weed and then breaking into the clock tower—entering the clock tower without permission—is not behavior she would want them to emulate.
Dylan unlocks the back door. Inside, the hallway is dark and shadowy. Paige uses her phone’s flashlight to scan the room. The alarm beeps, but Dylan presses four numbers into the keypad, and it goes silent. Ty moves to flip on the lights, but Dylan catches his arm. “No lights, dude. The rectory is right next door.”
“We’re so going to get caught,” Des says. “How did Aaron get that key? Did he steal it?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Dylan jokes.
Paige elbows him. “Just tell her before she freaks out, okay.”
“One of Aaron’s friend’s older brothers volunteered here and duplicated the key. It and the alarm code got handed down to Aaron and his friends and then to me. I’m not naming any names.” Dylan leads them up the stairs, past the church offices, and into the choir loft.
Des’s family doesn’t go to church. Gram used to go to Catholic Mass on Christmas and Easter. But after the accident, Des thinks she sort of lost faith in God.
Des has been in this church before, though. The Kim family attends services here every Sunday. She was Em’s plus-one last spring when her brother Jacob got married, and she was here three summers ago for Em’s dad’s funeral. One summer in middle school, she even came here for church camp. It was mostly arts and crafts and some songs about J
esus, but she wanted to go because she wanted to go everywhere with Em.
Dylan is heading through the door at the back of the choir loft. It leads to a stairwell that winds up through the clock tower into the cupola. Dylan goes first, then Paige, then Ty, then Des. As they climb, the bells start to chime eleven. It’s loud. Loud enough that it vibrates through Des’s whole body. She’s glad when they reach the top.
The cupola, with its white arches and domed roof, is the tallest point in town. There aren’t exactly any skyscrapers in Remington Hollow. Up here, Des can see the whole town spread out before her: the marina, with the sailboats bobbing in the dark water; blocks full of colorful Victorian houses and green lawns to the east; the shops and restaurants that make up the little business district to the west. She gazes out over the town, and she feels curiously disappointed.
From up here, Remington Hollow looks so small.
Chapter Eighteen
BEA
“Okay, I’ll email the minutes from tonight’s meeting with everyone’s to-do lists. Don’t forget to get your money for supplies to Sierra. Thanks for coming, everyone!” Bea says.
The raft team—Bea; Erik; Chloe; Erik’s tennis doubles partner, Drew Bishop; Drew’s girlfriend, Faith Ellinghaus, who was the layout editor for the yearbook; and class treasurer Sierra Alvarez—is finishing up its meeting. It’s a gorgeous evening, sunny and mid-eighties, and Chloe insisted on moving from the Daily Grind to Bishop Park.
“I’ve got to get home for dinner.” Erik stands and stretches and cracks his neck.
Bea winces. She hates that sound. But as she peers at him, worry pierces her heart. There are dark circles under his blue eyes, and a slump to his shoulders. He looks almost as exhausted as she feels. She touches his forearm. “You look tired.”
Erik shrugs, grabbing his messenger bag. “Early morning.” He’s interning this summer for his uncle’s law firm. “Text you later?”