Chapter XVIII

Police Officer: What happened when the phone rang?

Me: Disaster.

***

When Sunny came back, Lyssa was standing on the edge of the doorstep, waiting eagerly for her grand arrival. The mother wrapped herself in a huge gray shawl and stared at Sunny walk up the steps, head ducked low. I followed, realizing that this was the beginning of Sunny's yucky situation. Lyssa, with her arms crossed around her chest, had the still, deeply penetrating gaze of a seventeenth-century portrait. There was only one explanation: she had found out about the smoke.

"You're in trouble," Lyssa said, her voice so fierce it made Sunny pee a little. Sunny turned to face her but found it impossible to make eye contact. "Big high school student now. You think you're so cool?" Sunny's face browned, guilt poured out of her as she waited for the big slap in the face. It was coming, and she could feel it.

"Mom, I"m so sor-"

Lyssa was not going to let Sunny talk. She raised her voice slightly and took off Sunny's book bag. Then she went on and on in a tantalizing talk, while Sunny stayed quiet and listened. She chewed a hangnail on her pinkie. It bled into the crevasses of her finger.

"What did I say about answering your phone? You can go with your friends but you have to call me." Sunny looked up, confused.

"What?"

"You got me so worried."

"You mean… this is about not answering your texts?" It was then that Sunny realized her mother was incapable of believing that Sunny would do such troubling acts of disobedience. The thought hadn't even crossed the woman's mind. Immediately, Sunny appreciated the way Lyssa wore her madness casually, like a loose summer dress. There was even some elegance to the way she yelled, and Sunny's face flushed pink, an act of appreciation of Lyssa's motherly devotion. Sunny waved her hand as if she was swatting off whatever guilt was floating around in her head, and immediately allowed Lyssa to continue her affectionate and protective rant towards her.

Lyssa started asking all sorts of sideways questions about Selena's parents to figure out if she was the kind of friend she wanted for her daughter. She asked if she did any sorts of bad things like drugs or alcohol, and Sunny answered no. She wanted a whole summery of her hobbies, her grades, her family, her siblings. That's when Sunny's guilt disappeared when through the dullness of her eyes, I knew she longed for her mother to return to her paperwork-filled afternoon behind the walnut desk.

It was then that Lyssa's lecture was interrupted by a call from Fred. Sunny, excited by her new gained freedom, hurdled up the stairs and jumped on her bed. Flipped open her phone. Her Instagram feed was burbling with all sorts of things— likes, comments, messages. Was it another embarrassing video that had gone trending? She opened the app and saw her post. Sunny's first selfie, yet she looked completely unlike herself. That's what they were probably making fun of. Just a Chinese girl trying too hard to be white.

***

Come over. Come over. Come over. Sunny read Selena's Snapchat over and over. She looked at the ceiling. Then at the lock screen of her phone. A photo of Hiram, Lyssa, and Sunny on the beach of San Diego stared back. Sunny tilted her neck, squinted her eyes, and proceeded to change the smiling family photo to a light pink screensaver that read: love, kitties with a white heart next to it.

Selena called.

"Let's link."

"Sure."

***

Selena quickly got up from the couch and went to paint her nails on her desk. She blathered. Sunny was here to learn. She kept a mental note of the way she talked, acted, walked. Occasionally when Selena rambled on, Sunny would nod, shake her head and say, "I know what you mean," when she didn't, and "That's horrible," when it wasn't. Sunny was a great friend. She had a whole range of smiles and comforting glances. But Selena wasn't stupid. She pushed her books to the floor and knocked the nail polish on the sand-colored carpet.

"Repeat what I just said," said Selena. Sunny quickly rushed to the bathroom to get a bottle of nail polish remover. She soaked up the stain while Selena continued about "fake friends". The stain spread bigger. She circled the room and took a box of tissues and another bottle of remover. Then, she bleached the carpet a light white. Sunny's face turned blue as if she were about to confess her great big sin but Selena didn't seem to care. She was talking about a mysterious cute boy.

During their time together Sunny had come to know Selena more than most. Though she could never quite understand how that came to be. Selena was a mystic who never saw the deeper meaning in common things, while Sunny pursued the secrets of the world like it was the fascination of a detective. Selena was a talker, the comedic quality of hers that could never be concealed and any conversation with her always seemed to conclude with a laugh on both ends. She walked the streets like it was home, and spent most of her days in large groups where she found herself quite admired.

While Sunny, in those days, was a little shy of her emotions and in her timidity would wander into the woods, relying on those trees who had her back. Selena was respected in this community, a celebrated person. And Sunny was just starting to be heard.

Selena's mother was best known for her apple cobbler, and so for dinner, she handed the girls a gigantic cobbler pie. The delicious pie had a rich biscuit dough on top and fruit underneath and was served with a swirl of vanilla ice cream on top. But mostly all they ate was smoke. Sunny followed instructions because she dreaded being made an example of, a spectacle she feared precisely because she knew she deserved it.

Suddenly there was a dinging noise, the noise of a phone receiving a text message from Lyssa, and Sunny fumbled to silence the device.

"Who was it," asked Selena, sharp and hostile.

"Nobody," said Sunny, taking a whiff into the vape.

***

Sunny reached home and her frustration with her eyes and nose and skin, her critical insecurities, gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got her curling irons and turned on the music and went to work playing dress-up with the girl in the mirror. It was more than a hobby; it took the shape of a tool in which was more than necessary for survival. That made her more like Selena.

Within forty minutes, her head was covered with large, loses-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a taunt schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. Her outfit was made by generosity added to love. Then she started to doubt herself. Oh no, they'll say that I look like a Coney Island chorus girl!

Then she realized that she needed to study. Suddenly it was hot in the room. The hotness came from a sudden shock of truth that reared through Sunny's nerves. The truth that she was no longer capable of completing the assigned worksheets. I could sense that she had an ethical duty to serve Lyssa by trying. But a competing force told her not to do such 'nerdy' acts, as the Kitties would call it, but instead, work towards devolving her survival in such foreign territory called high school popularity.

Sunny shuffled papers and stared at the highlighted passages without absorbing their meaning. Then, concluding that it was too hot to do homework, she shut her binder and stole a glance at the clock. Her stomach started to grumble and she raced to the toilet. Oh god, it was a big one.

She sat with her legs spread in the act of expelling a turd. A makeup palette was open on her lap as she was about her business in the bathroom. She reached her pocket for her phone. Her hands, however, were greeted with empty pockets.

It began to ring, and buzz, and ring. The noise of the cellphone came as a distinct irritation. To answer it promptly would mean getting up without wiping herself, and she was loath to walk across the hall in that state. Yet, if she had finished what she was doing at her normal speed, she would not make it to the phone in time. Sunny found herself reluctant to move, and she ended up missing the call.

Bad luck because it was the Kitties. Sunny felt a fear, jeopardy. It was quiet and could go unnoticed but it told Sunny that danger was in the air, and it held the potential to ruin all that she had going for her. But she pushed the instinctual warning away and went about her day like that feeling ceased to exist. Maybe they'd let her go.

***

The next day, all the Kitties arrived at school wearing matching shoes: Golden Goose Superstar Sneakers in white and gold. They must have gone shopping together. Sunny didn't match. She wasn't invited. At lunch, they all brought baby peas and carrots and laughed louder than before.

"What? We're not buying today?" said Sunny as a look of worry spread helplessly across her face, the clownish tell of embarrassment and rejection.

"Was it the phone call?" she persisted. They didn't notice her. In the bathroom stall, Sunny dug her nails into her palms. She shut her eyes for a moment. She sat stupidly and silently stumped for a good ten seconds before returning. Her smile was back in place. But they didn't smile back.