CHAPTER NINETEEN

I HATE YOUR FACE

XENA

          I took great pride in knowing I was doing the best I possibly could as the captain of the volleyball team. Ironically, I had just hit someone in the face and interrupted practice.

          After it had happened to me, I vowed to be extra careful on the court, knowing it was my responsibility to be a good example for the rest of the team, but I had failed miserably at that. It hadn't been anyone else's fault but mine, but, as I stood there with shaky fingers and vibrating palms and Lauren Lorenzo tried to cover her bloody mouth, part of me wished she hadn't been in the way.

          Sofia, standing next to me, wobbled back and forth in her heels. "That hit hard. I hope you haven't knocked down any of her teeth."

          I let out a nervous laugh, rubbing my arms. "Let's hope not."

          Lauren's parents just so happened to be two of the most prominent lawyers in Palo Alto, two of the people one would, with reason, reach out to in case they wanted and needed to win a particularly difficult case. They charged ridiculously high sums of money per case and weren't doing that much work pro bono, but their results were obvious, not to mention that the great majority of the Palo Alto residents had the money to afford their services.

          Naturally, I wasn't trying to get sued for knocking off their precious daughter's teeth. I hadn't even hit her on purpose, but the fear that things would get twisted was growing exponentially as time went by.

          As most of the team gathered around Lauren, grabbing paper tissues, and asking Coach for help, Sofia stood by my side, which didn't surprise me that much. Even though we were supposed to be a team, and being a team implied having plenty of trust in each other, I knew the girls weren't big fans of me being the team captain. They'd much rather have Sofia, but alas, her priorities were far away from the team.

          "Are you okay?" she asked, dropping down to one knee to fix the black pad protecting the other one. I looked down at her in incredulity, confused about what she was talking about, and she returned the look, with a bead of sweat running down the side of her neck. "Your hands. Are you hurt?"

          "Ah." I stared down at my reddening palms. "They hurt a little bit, but I think I'm fine." Sofia straightened. "We need to get Lauren some help as soon as possible."

          "I guess." We watched as Coach marched from her booth and made her way towards Lauren and the commotion surrounding her. "I'll go get you some ice in the meantime, okay? Try to stay calm."

          "I don't want to get sued," I stupidly blurted out, as though that was the biggest of all my current concerns, but Sofia didn't laugh. I expected as much, as she'd always been understanding and empathetic, but I still felt like a massive douche. There was a girl—one of my girls—bleeding from a busted lip and I was worrying about the consequences it would bring me. "My moms are going to kill me."

          "I highly doubt that." She fixed her ponytail. "We all know it was an accident."

          I chewed down on my bottom lip, examining all the possibilities I was being faced with.

          It could very well have been an accident, but what if it hadn't? What if I had slammed the ball right into her face simply because I felt like it and simply because I could? Even though this wasn't the right time for an ethical dilemma—if there even was a right moment for that—I couldn't help but question my decisions.

          "Go check on Lauren," she advised. "I'll be right back."

          I did just that, aware she was acting more like a team captain than I was and let her leave. After she closed the gym door behind her, I carefully approached Lauren and the rest of the team, along with a livid Coach O'Pry, sincerely hoping I hadn't blown the team into pieces and that Lauren wasn't as hurt as I feared she might be.

          "It's not that bad," Coach O'Pry pointed out. "You're just in shock."

          "Do I still have all my teeth?" Lauren blurted out. She didn't speak with a lisp, even though her voice was quieter than usual, and we all took a step back when she bared her teeth at us. "Well?"

          "Your teeth look fine, Lorenzo," Coach O'Pry dryly reassured. It was her way of showing affection, in her own twisted way, but it was more comforting than if she randomly decided to hug us and be all sorts of caring. "Go sit on the bench until your mouth stops bleeding."

          "I'm so sorry, Lauren," I quickly said. "I didn't measure my strength properly."

          She frowned. "I know. It's okay."

          "We might as well cancel today's practice," Coach complained, wiping the sweat from her brow. She was a small woman, smaller than anyone in the entire team, yet we were all scared to death of her—and her temper. "Everyone, you can go home. Your focus is elsewhere, and I don't want you here if your head isn't in the game or in the court." She shot me an accusatory look. "I don't want any more accidents to happen, not on my watch. Where the hell is Sofia?"

          I retreated to our locker room, defeated, and ran into Sofia on the way. I filled her in on what had just happened and, needless to say, she wasn't amused. We had a big match coming up soon, against one of the strongest teams in Palo Alto, and we couldn't afford to miss out on any opportunities to train.

          I had to confess part of me was glad we were being sent home early, even though it was definitely going to hinder our performance by the end of the week. I'd been having a truly horrendous day from start to finish, with my bad mood having reached its peak during lunch, right after Sofia showed us that stupid key.

          I didn't want to go to San Francisco. 

          I had my doubts we'd find anything remotely relevant to the mystery June had left behind after her death, in spite of her many references to it—which Sofia talked us all through as patiently as though she was trying to teach a child how to do math. If they all wanted to go, I wasn't going to be the one to hold them back or the one to not go, but I needed answers.

          What if San Francisco was just a red herring? What would we do then?

          "Do you want to stop by for dinner at my place?" Sofia asked me, as we walked towards the parking lot. We'd both taken quick, cold showers to ease our aching muscles—and my stupid hands—and I was shivering under the thin fabric of my blouse. "My mom's making that tofu Bicol Express you like."

          My mouth watered just by thinking about that. Joyce Wineheart's tofu Bicol Express had been the first thing I ate at Sofia's house—and the first Filipino dish I had ever tried—and she insisted on cooking it for me whenever I visited. Warmth spread across my chest, branching into my nerves, and I couldn't find the words to properly tell me how much that actually meant to me.

          I felt lonely, unbearably so. I felt like a stranger in my own house, the daughter of two women who never saw her.

          "Sure," I said. "Sounds great."

          Her face lit up. "Awesome."

          Sofia gave me a quick hug before making her way—almost skipping—towards the parking lot and towards Meridian. I wasn't surprised when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders when she was close enough or when she pulled him down for a kiss. After what happened on New Year's Eve, I should have expected as much, but she hadn't even told me about it.

          That stung. Weren't friends supposed to talk to each other about things like that, especially after everything that had happened during the current school year? After losing June?

          Gritting my teeth, I shuffled towards my car and tried to find my keys in the mess that was the inside of my backpack. I fumbled with everything I grabbed, including my house keys, a tampon, and a loose pen, but my car keys were nowhere to be found.

          "Damn it!" I cursed, slamming my knee against the door, as if that would unlock the stupid thing.

          "Xena?"

          I instantly froze. Out of every voice on the planet I wanted to hear at the moment, that one was the very last of all of them, yet there was nowhere to run. Even if there was, it would be incredibly childish of me to do so and wouldn't solve anything.

          Staying where I was wouldn't solve anything either, but what choice did I have?

          "You okay?" Felix asked, with his jacket thrown over his shoulder, and my blood boiled in my veins. I loathed having to look at him, having to take in the way the afternoon sun poured all over his brown skin, having to count all his idiot freckles, yet there he was. "Why are you hitting your car?"

          "Be glad I'm not hitting you," I spat, through gritted teeth. I wasn't an angry person, but I still hadn't forgotten all the fury seeing him kiss Georgina had built up inside of me. It was bubbling up like hot water and, boy, I was ready to scald someone. "What the hell do you want, Felix?"

          He knitted his brows. "I was on my way to my car when I saw you beating up yours."

          I huffed, blowing my hair away from my face, and threw my hands up in the air in frustration. "Fine. I'm having a bad day. You can go now, okay? There's nothing for you to see here." I shooed him. "Go home. I just need to find my keys."

          "I'm guessing you're still mad at me."

          "Gee, I wonder why!"

          "Actually, yes, I'd really like to know why! What the hell did I do?"

          I stepped forward, chin held high, shoulders squared, and firmly crossed my arms. "You kissed Georgina. You skipped Grace's competition because you had to work on the newspaper, but I saw you at the mall with her and I know you saw me too. You kissed her when you knew I was looking! You lied to us! That's why I'm pissed at you!"

          Felix pinched his nose bridge, never understanding the severity of the situation. "I didn't lie. I was, in fact, working on the newspaper; Georgina wanted to write an article about consumerism during Christmas, so we were doing fieldwork. She kissed me. Besides, since when do you care about whether I'm kissing people or not? I wasn't okay with it, not by a long shot, but why does it bother you?" I narrowed my eyes at him, convinced one person couldn't possibly be that daft. "I kicked her out of the team and wrote that article myself. I apologized to Grace."

          "Oh, real classy, Felix. Kick a girl out of a mostly male team, steal her article, and vilify her. Tell me, how did Grace take it, huh? I'm sure she loved that weak excuse."

          "She didn't care, Xena. She has bigger things to worry about."

          "Great! That makes one of us." I threw my backpack to the concrete pavement of the parking lot, as it was digging into my shoulder from how tightly I'd been holding the strap. "I can't believe I have to go to San Francisco with you. We're all talking about it like it's the goddamn holy grail, or something, yet I'm standing here, looking at you, and all I can think about is how much you infuriate me. I hate your face. I hate your stupid face, Felix Cavalari. I hate it."

          Felix stepped closer to me. "You hate me."

          "I sure as hell do!"

          "You're staring at my lips, Xena."

          "You're staring at my lips, Xena," I mocked. "What do you think I'm going to do now, huh? Kiss you? Because that'd be stupid. I'm not stupid, Felix."

          He sighed. "No. No, you're not."

          "Then I'm going to kiss you. I'm going to kiss you and you're going to see how s—"

          Felix never let me complete that sentence.

          His lips crashed against mine like a tidal wave, hands gripping my waist before I could think properly about where to place mine, and my back pressed against my car. I was definitely no longer thinking about my dumb keys, that was for sure.

          His tongue tasted like orange, probably from all the Tic-Tac candy he'd spent the afternoon snacking on, and everywhere he touched me made me ignite. I knew we were in the middle of a parking lot and there were still people at the school, people who would see us and comment and point, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

          When he broke the kiss to catch his breath, I clenched my fingers around the fabric of his sweater. "Don't run around and kiss other girls," I pleaded, sounding a lot sadder than I actually felt, and it was pretty pathetic. "I hate it."

          "So I suppose that's why you were mad."

          "I still am. God, I'm still so pissed." He kept his arm wrapped around my waist. While it was appropriate in terms of what we had just done, it still felt out of place considering the tone and the subject of our conversation. "You knew, Felix. You knew I've liked you for years now."

          "Then why didn't you tell me? Why wait until it blew up?"

          He knew. I knew he knew. I had told him why I wasn't doing anything about it or why I hadn't told him during that Physics class.

          I didn't want us to end up like June and Leon. I didn't want to fall in love with someone only to lose them over something I couldn't have foreseen or maybe stopped. I didn't want to live with the guilt, day after day after day, and I didn't want to live in a world where he no longer existed.

          June's death had brought me clarity in a lot of ways—the fragility of things, the limits of our power, the ephemerality of life.

          "I don't know," I answered.

          "Okay." He just nodded, then leaned forward to kiss me again. "There's something I have to tell you, though. About San Francisco. About June."

          My heart skipped a beat—and not for a good reason. "What?"

          "She was pregnant when she died. Did you know that?"

          That skip turned into a goddamn flatline. "No."

          Felix let out a sad sigh. "Yeah. I remember Leon had to be the one to clean up her locker and we were talking about it after lunch, but I didn't . . ." He took a deep breath. "She wanted to go to San Francisco for Spring Break with Leon, but those plans got canceled. There was a calendar in her locker. Spring Break marked the ninth month. She wrote it down."

          My eyes widened. "That's what ruined her plans?"

          He wrinkled his nose. "Depends on which plans she was talking about, doesn't it? We have no idea what she meant; not even Leon knows."

          I groaned. "Guess we really have to go there, huh?"

bad chapter is bad

did you know ephemerality was a word? neither did i