Chapter 24: Chapter XXIII
Police Officer: How did Selena get away with the twisted narrative?
Me: She's Selena.
Police Officer: So what happened after?
Me: Everybody turned their back on Sunny. You know how people gossip.
Police Officer: And Sunny?
Me: She was at the point where she was going to do something about it.
***
Sunny: Can we talk?
Tate: Why?
Sunny: Just, please.
Tate: Fine.
Sunny: Afterschool at your place?
Tate: Sure.
***
Sunny found her alone. Tate's black dress, simple to austerity, suggested her tasteful condition. Sunny was astonished that she could dress with such elegance in a time of disarray.
"You said you wanted to talk," she said, turning around.
"Do you believe me?" Sunny's voice trembled a little as if feeling brute even to hesitate.
"What?"
"I didn't cheat."
"Oh, honey. Of course," said Tate, handing Sunny a vape. Sunny denied.
"What?"
"Selena doesn't do homework. Everybody knows that."
"Then why are you on her side."
"We're Kitties, we support each other."
"What?"
"You knew that when you joined." Sunny placed her hair into her palms and started pacing around the room.
"What am I going to do," said repeated. "What am I going to do."
"Stop," said Tate. Sunny looked up.
"What."
"Do you want to be a Kitty or not."
"Of course."
"Then apologize."
"What? To Selena?"
"Yeah."
"She should be the one apologizing to me!"
"You don't get it, do you."
"What do you mean?"
"Kitties fake it till they make it. You either apologize and make it, or you don't and die trying." Tate was solid. There was about her an air of well-satisfied prosperity. Sunny, on the other hand, towards the end of the conversation, held a look of fatigue over her naked face. She was finding herself heavy, uncomfortably forced to neighborly accept. The conversation had come to an end. Time passed. Tate went on, talking somewhat at random, now of the recent past, then of her first meeting with her boyfriend. Sunny began to form a fairly coherent picture of their lives when she spun the conversation around and asked Sunny, "You guys doing it?"
"What?" Tate had a pleasant gift for keeping the conversation tied to sex.
"Don't play stupid. I've seen you guys sneaking around."
"Nah," Sunny said, her voice rather sallow. "Well, not yet."
"Omigod!!! You like him?" Sunny's eyes turned light brown as the wavering image of Josh rushed into her mind. His charming example of the style, his sensual personality, his talent captured within his camera. She thought about confessing her love for him right then and there but then realized Tate was talking about Cole.
"Don't worry," she said, placing one hand over Sunny's. "I won't tell Selena." Sunny paused, conscious of her ignorance.
"Let's not talk about me," Sunny said, encouraging Tate to continue with her love story.
"Well, you know…" her voice lowered to minimum volume. "You know that thing… that thing… that I was doing?" Tate leaned in closer to Sunny. Then she pulled away.
"Never mind."
"What?"
"I shouldn't be talking to you." Sunny wanted to know. She wanted to know everything.
"I won't say a word," she said. "I promise."
"My business," said Tate, too shy to express the fullness of her dirty work.
"You still doing that?"
"It makes good money and the boys love it."
"What about your boyfriend."
"He's a boy, he don't understand shit."
"He's fine with it?"
"Well I come home all tired from all that dick, and he happens to be over sometimes, legs spread out on the couch watching some Netflix."
"Mhm."
"When he asks me where I've been, I tell him, oh I tell him all of it. Don't blame me for being an honest bitch. I tell him, I be doing my job, going round and round getting it in the ass.
"And?
"I tell him that I earned the big bucks for him."
"So he's fine with it?"
"Well, he comes to me all puffy-eyed and says some crap about how he doesn't care about no bucks. He tells me to stop."
"What about his habit?"
"Exactly. Somebody's gotta pay for that. And sometimes, he stops at that, and don't fuss no more. But other times, he won't stop whining until I put my hair up, get down on my knees."
"Knees?"
"Yeah. So I end up on the bed all naked, even when I don't got half the interest. I mean four five times in a row, that's some tiring shit. Sometimes, he'd ask some stupid question about why I wasn't in the mood, and that's when I think to myself, how dumb can this kid be?"
"Gosh."
"Such a duty."
"And then what happens?"
"He lays there, flat on his stomach, waking up every few minutes to his snoring," she said. "I don't care no more though. Job done for me." Her expression was blank and her eyes were exhausted.
"And what about the money?"
"He did nothing to earn it, yet he gets most of it. That's why it's so fucked up."
"What do you mean?"
"He can't go half a day without snorting something."
"Where do you all get this stuff," said Sunny.
"Ha-ha, silly child," she said, wrapping her arms around her as if a mother to a child.
"I got a plant in the backyard but that shit's too weak for him."
"Your lying," said Sunny, lowering her voice. "I mean, that's gotta be illegal. And your parents? How do you keep them from finding out?"
"I couldn't care less if it were illegal. But just saying, it's not." She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a little baggie of grass. "Trudeau says it's legal now, haven't you heard from the news?"
"Well, I know. But he never said anything about planting it."
"Silly head, yes, yes he did. I remember something about it in there," she said, lighting a cigarette. "Ah, whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do."
"And your parents?"
"What about them."
"Don't they disapprove?"
"It was their idea." I was puzzled by the contradictions that I saw in her behavior. Tate was very unhappy, yet was able to excite herself to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident that she had been prepared to discuss the tongue of scandal. Sunny admired her forethought for it made her words more moving.
"I think I'm going to dump him," she said.
"Really?"
"I don't know."
"But I thought you said you wanted a boyfriend."
"I do," she said. "I found a replacement."
"Already?"
"He's so beautiful. I met him from one of my jobs."
"From our school?"
"Nah. But we've been flirting for months.
"So, you've found someone knew?"
"Yes. He likes photography too. You know what he said to me? He said that he likes to take photos of pretty things and that he wants to photograph me."
"Mhm." Sunny turned her head sideways. She held her tongue at once as she saw herself sitting on the side of the rock with Josh. His arm around hers, the wind whispering sounds of youthful paradise, the smell of the earthy pines behind them. She suddenly remembered it all, and it was clear that she missed him.
"Sunny?"
"Yes."
"I think… I think I might be in love with him."
"Why?"
"He told me," she said, spirits rising to flush her cheeks, "that a portrait of me would need no photoshop at all."
Sunny let out a cold laugh to make up for her loss of words. She was perturbed by the anguish of love. It would be difficult to make her exit with dignity for her young mind was of wounded vanity as she realized that she and Tate had been sharing a lover all along.
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