I start ripping pages out of the binder. Scenes tear along their three-hole punches. Blocking charts crumple in my hands. Copies of Denise’s elevations drift to the floor like autumn leaves.
I take everything and dump it into the nearest recycle bin. For the first time in forever, my binder is empty, except for the color-coded plastic dividers.
After a moment, I toss it into the trash can.
When I turn back, I find Bowie staring at me, a stack of flyers clutched in their hands.
“Jackson? What are you doing?”
I open my mouth to tell them, but nothing comes out. My hands are too shaky to sign it. Every feeling inside me has calcified, cracked and crumbled until my insides are nothing but dust.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
I bite my lip because if I don’t, I think I’m going to explode. But my eyes burn with the start of fresh tears.
Bowie stares down at their stack of flyers, but only for a moment. Then they dump them into the recycle bin—I catch a glimpse of an advertisement for StuCo’s “Festive Egg Hunt”—and take my arm.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
43
I follow them to their car like a lost puppy. The sun is out, which seems mildly homophobic since between the brightness and my tears, I can barely see. They pull out of the parking lot, headed vaguely toward home. My home or theirs, I’m not even sure.
Eventually I get my crying under control enough to say, “I got kicked off the play.”
Bowie doesn’t look away from the road, but their eyes bug out. “You what?”
“Jasmine posted my breakup lists all over the Theatre Board.”
“What? Why?”
This is the hardest part to say.
“She found out about me and Liam.”
“Oh.” Bowie chews their lips, hits their blinker. “Yours or mine?”
“Huh?”
“Your house or mine?”
It takes me a moment to decide. Not only because I’m trying to calculate when Jasmine will get home, but also because I’m not sure if I deserve Bowie’s friendship. Not when I’ve been such a butt.
“Yours.”
“Okay.”
The drive is quiet. I don’t know what else to say, and Bowie’s concentrating on getting around a traffic jam caused by a car pulled over on the side of the road. It’s on fire, actual fire, with huge billows of black smoke coming from the front. At first I panic, thinking it might be Liam’s—a fire is about the only thing that hasn’t happened to his car yet—but it’s not the color of cargo pants.
Itdoeshave a Riverstone student parking sticker on the rear windshield. Along with a bumper sticker for one of the more conservative churches in town. And then, next to the firefighters, I spot—
“Was that Dominic?” Bowie asks as we drive by. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
“Maybe Jasmine’s gone on a vengeance tour.”
“At least you’ve still got your sense of humor.”
I’m not sure if I’m joking or not.
