gesture again toward the locker rooms.
“Kayla,” he fills in.
“Thank you. Kayla. She’s the shrimp cocktail.”
“Actually, I’m allergic to shrimp,” he says.
“Goodbye, Leo,” I say. I push off from the wall and run for the door.
This time he doesn’t run after me.
I’m halfway through the parking lot when I think of more I want to say. About how if you kiss someone regularly, if you go on (I do the calculations in my head) twenty or possibly twenty-one dates with a boy, over the course of five fucking months, it should be safe to assume that he’s your boyfriend. And about honesty. And about communicating your expectations.
I turn around and march back to tell him this, to make sure that he understands I don’t accept his half-assed excuses. But then I see Leo walking with the other girl—the hilarious and talented Kayla—and his arm is around her, and he’s clearly trying to talk her down, too. And for some reason I duck behind a car to eavesdrop on them.
“I met her at one of my mom’s art shows,” Leo says as they pass me crouched behind a VW Bug. “I think she got a crush on me because she was obsessed with my mom’s sculptures—and so many of them are of me. She’s a nice girl, but we don’t actually have a lot in common.”
Subtext: unlike Kayla, who clearly has so much in common with Leo. Kayla is likable. A good swimmer. Funny. Athletic. Undeniably attractive.
“She looked upset,” Kayla murmurs. “I felt so bad for her.”
Oh, and great, Kayla is nice, too.
Leo smiles, a kid-seeing-a-baby-kitten type smile, because he’s come to the same conclusion. “That’s so sweet. You’re a really good person, Kayla.”
It’s too much. I stand up. “You know what, fuck you, Leo,” I scream, and everybody in the parking lot turns to stare at us. I shoot a killing glare at Kayla, nice or not. “And fuck you, too.”
I’ve never said that before to anyone: fuck you.
Which is literally about sex.
Which is something I’m not going to be having anytime soon.
7
When I arrive home an hour later, I’ve calmed down a little, but not a lot. My first stop is the kitchen, where I find Afton and Abby at the table watching Moana on Abby’s iPad in preparation for Hawaii. Pop is out somewhere, thank god, because this afternoon’s developments call for drastic action. I grab a heavy-duty trash bag out of the pantry and head upstairs. A few minutes later I come down again lugging the trash bag, which is now full. I slip out the back door and into the yard.
By the time Afton comes outside to see what’s going on, I’m halfway through the process of building a fire in the large cast iron bowl our family uses as a firepit. I found some firewood in the garage and gathered up dry grass and weeds to use as kindling. Once I have a good fire going, I open the trash bag and pull out a shirt. Leo’s. It’s a blue-and-green-plaid flannel. It’s comfy. Even holding it away from myself I can detect Leo’s boy smell on it, mixed with his musky cologne. Which I used to think was sexy. I used to hold this shirt to my face and breathe in and think about him.
I throw the shirt on the fire.
Afton sidesteps over and puts her hand on my shoulder, to let me know she’s on board with whatever. “So we hate Leo now?”
I stare into the flames. “Yes.”
“What happened at the swim meet?”
“I surprised him.” I take another shirt from the trash bag. The wine-colored tee. I took it off upstairs. Afton instinctively reaches out to stop me from burning it, but she’s too late. Onto the fire it goes.
“You surprised him, and . . .” prompts Afton.
“And he was kissing Kayla,” I say.
Afton obviously doesn’t know who Kayla is, but she understands sisterly loyalty. “Well then, screw Leo.”
I smile grimly. “I think Kayla’s got that covered.”
I burn several other things in quick succession: photos of Leo and of Leo and me together, a few ripped-out pages from my sketchbook, the pair of red lacy underwear I bought today, so new they haven’t been washed yet, the dried rose corsage I wore at prom a few weeks ago, followed by my prom dress, which takes a surprisingly short time to burn. Lace, it turns out, is highly combustible.
Then I get to the final item, the stuffed white horse that Leo won for me at the