Page 23 of Furious

As I stand up, too, I know exactly what my mom meant, in more ways than just on the racetrack.

CHAPTER EIGHT

El

This is not a date.

One failed stakeout and a run to the Shake Shack doesn’t make JoJo and me anything but coconspirators who can finish off three orders of spicy cheese fries. Tonight is just another strategic meeting of the Find Maxine Blum Club.

So ask me why I’m running around my house like an anxious chicken at quarter to seven. Picking stuff up only to put it down an inch to the left, setting drinks on the counter next to the pickle chips just to shove them in the fridge a minute later to keep the cans cold, tucking away anything particularly embarrassing in my bedroom. I plunge my granny underwear to the bottom of my laundry basket. The only moment I stand still is to text Zaynah back, belatedly:

Zaynah: What are you up to tonight? Want to go to the Fry Basket?

Zaynah: ?

Zaynah: Helloooo El?

EL: Sorry, my parents want me to stay in. Tomorrow?

I drop my phone back on my nightstand, not sure why I’ve lied to my best friend, except that I don’t think my nerves could handle a bunch of looky-eyes emojis and question marks. And because this is not a date.

By the time the doorbell rings, I’ve worked up a sweat even with the AC roaring to keep up with the heat wave outside. I towel my forehead on the hem of my cropped floral tank—but not like kitchen-curtains floral, like I don’t assume there’s anything happening here just ‘cause we’re girls and we’re gay but I can’t help it if I look pretty tonight floral—and catch my breath before opening the door.

Of course, JoJo looks exactly how she did at Clearview this afternoon in cut-off denim shorts and a faded, oversized ringer tee, hair half-fallen out of its jumbo claw clip, a fabulous new beaded bracelet still tied around her wrist. See? This is definitely not a date. But she beams up at me from my porch like she’s skipped dinner and I’m a welcome helping of spicy cheese fries, which makes my heart do silly things.

I guess I stand there trying to quiet it for a moment too long, because JoJo has to ask, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Stepping aside, I tug an elastic out of my back pocket and scoop my hair into a super-short ponytail, undoing the half hour I just spent baking beneath the iron to curl it, while JoJo kicks off her sneakers. “Did you eat already?” I ask. “We have pickle chips.”

The height of romantic gestures.

“I ate,” she says, “but I could drink. I rode over, obviously, and it’s hotter than hell’s ass out here.”

Behind JoJo’s shoulder, I see her bicycle on its side on our front lawn. “Oh my God, I should’ve offered to pick you up!”

“Well, pour me some soda and make it up to me,” she says. And then she winks.

I wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts as I lead her toward the kitchen. JoJo glances around us at everything I stopped noticing long ago, but now, I wonder what she thinks of it all. The SHALOM cross-stitch in the hallway. Mom’s yoga candles (which I’m pretty sure she bought from a white woman’s Etsy shop). The bowl on our kitchen counter overflowing with Dad’s freshly picked onions, even though nobody in the house likes them very much. JoJo stops in front of the fridge to look at a photo of me and Zaynah that’s been there since sixth grade. “Eliana Blum, you were adorable,” she declares.

“Look away,” I insist, wincing at the version of me in the picture. All braces and elbows and my long, frizzy hair before I discovered leave-in conditioner. “We’ll take some stuff up to Max’s room—if my parents come home early, they won’t bother us up there.”

I’m anxious, all of a sudden, about showing her the attic. What if JoJo hates it? What if she sneers at the egg yolk–yellow walls the way she once sneered at Dell’s Hollow? I think that might kill me.

But she doesn’t. Loaded with Coke cans and snacks, we make our way up the attic’s spiral staircase and shove through the shower curtain, and JoJo whistles appreciatively. “Wish I had a space like this. It’s pretty tight at Grandma’s right now. Like I’d sell my soul for a closet. Or a nightstand that didn’t double as a sewing table. But this is really cool.”

“It is,” I agree, relieved. “And look.” I crawl across the daybed to tap the poster behind it, where a few clippings and pictures cling to the wall.

“Our girl!”

It is, in fact, our girl: Leticia “Letty” Ortiz, arms crossed and smirking in front of her bike from F9—the Harley-Davidson Sportster Iron—against a backdrop of billowing red smoke.

“Why’s it in Japanese?” JoJo asks, and laughs.

“They didn’t make this one in America. Max had to order it from some fan site, and bring it home from school for me at Hanukkah, but I wasn’t brave enough to put it in my room. So she hung it up here and said I could visit Letty when I wanted.”

JoJo picks up one of the leftover World Market candles still clustered atop the old bureau by the door, giving it a sniff—that’s a good one, clementine and honey. “Do your parents … Do they not know?”

“Now they do,” I’m quick to reassure her, not that it should matter if they didn’t. “Not back then. That was, like, four years ago? I was in my brief Aaron Fuller era. Max knew, obviously. I still thought maybe I was bi?”