Page 88 of Catch and Cradle
The rest of my sentence gets stuck in my throat when I look up and see Kala—dressed in a Daenerys Targaryen costume consisting of a long blonde wig and a toga-like dress that seems to be made out of a twisted-up bed sheet—standing in front of me.
“I’m Leonardo,” I finish. It comes out all squeaky, and I hope my bandana hides some of my cringe at my own voice.
I don’t want to sound scared of her.
“Oh of course, yeah. I see it now. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” She laughs, but I don’t join in. “I’m, uh, I’m Kala.”
“I remember.”
I deepen my voice to avoid the squeak and end up overcompensating. I sound like a pre-pubescent boy trying to do Christian Bale’s Batman voice.
Kala gives me a confused look. “Are you, uh, okay?”
She probably thinks I’m drunk out of my mind. I would too.
“Perfectly fine.” That at least sounds like it was said by a normal human.
“Look, I get why you might be pissed at me—”
“I’m not pissed at you.”
I feel pissed at her, but right now, I’m pissed at everyone. I don’t really have a reason to be mad at her—as far as I can tell. Becca couldn’t even bring herself to give me enough information to know if I should be mad Kala.
“Hope, I...Look. Do you mind if I sit down?”
I was getting pretty into scrolling through Instagram over here in the dark by myself like a true angsty teenage reptile, but she seems like she’s got something to say. I might be grumpy, but I’m still curious.
“Uh, sure,” I answer as I look around the yard. “I’m not sure you should sit on the ground, though. It’s too dark to tell what might be going on down there.”
It seems like a dangerous choice considering the state of the house. I can only imagine what people may have wandered out to this lawn to do.
“This will work.” Kala walks over to the tiny front porch and reaches under the edge to retrieve a neon green inner tube. She drops it onto the ground beside me and plops into the middle like she’s floating around in a pool. “Comfy.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Is it?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, not really, but it will do.”
We fall silent for a moment. I reach for my ginger ale and finish it off. Kala drums her fingers on the sides of the inner tube.
“I really do feel like you’re pissed at me, and I can see why,” she announces. “I’d probably be pissed at me too, if I were in your position.”
“Why would I be pissed? You’re Becca’s friend. You guys were hanging out. Nothing to be pissed about there.” There’s a challenge in my tone, like I’m waiting for her to contradict me.
She doesn’t say anything for a while. The inner tube squeaks as she resettles herself. We both watch a big group of girls dressed as sexy Disney princesses walk by on the sidewalk, shivering and clutching their arms.
I’m shivering too. I wish I had more than papier-mâché and a bustier covering my upper body. I was planning on spending minimal time outside tonight.
“There’s some stuff I’d like to tell you about Becca,” Kala says once the girls are gone. “If you want to hear it. You two haven’t talked since Thanksgiving, right?”
I nod. We’ve exchanged a few necessary words during practices and games, but nothing more than that. Just being near her makes me feel this searing combination of anger, pain, and tenderness. I want to hold her as much as I want to yell at her, and it feels like it’s splitting me in two whenever I see her, never mind talk to her.
“Becca and I met when we were kids,” Kala begins. “We played on the same lacrosse team in our city, and we started going to the same high school a few years later. We went all the way to the U-nineteen team together. She’s my best friend. I’ve known her longer than almost any other friend I have. Becca is...She’s intensely loyal. She’s fiercely loyal. She’s quiet about it, so I don’t think most people even notice, but if she chooses to let you in—really let you in—you become one of the most important things in her life.”
I’ve noticed that about her. She’s loyal to the team, yes, but it’s different from that. The way she talks about the people who matter to her is like nothing else. She loves just like Kala said: fiercely.
“It’s true that we got together in high school,” Kala continues, “but it was more about finding ourselves than finding each other. We both started realizing we were queer around the same time. I think dating each other was a way to make it real. I knew I couldn’t come out to my family. I still haven’t, and Becca was there for me through all of that. I mean, we were teenagers. We just felt so much about everything, and so of course we ended up directing that at each other. It only lasted a few months, and it was really awkward the whole time. We kissed like...four times, and by the fourth, we just laughed and decided we never needed to do that again. I’m still glad we shared that, though. She made me feel safe when I needed it. She’s good at that.”
She made me feel safe too. Whether we were in her bed or wandering around Montreal, she made me feel like she was there for me. I knew there was so much she was scared of, but she still always came through and told me what I needed to hear.