Love & Resistance by Kara H.L. Chen

Author:Kara H.L. Chen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

Winter Break, Broken

Griff followed me out.

It didn’t matter. I knew exactly what was going to happen because this was exactly what had happened at my old schools, before I had implemented my isolationist policies. I opened my mouth and blurted out some things. People got uncomfortable. And then the invitations stopped coming.

It was the natural order of things, like the summer follows the spring, or the promises that my dad made were inevitably broken.

Griff put a gentle hand around my wrist. “Hey,” he said. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“I—” I said. “Do you believe what Peter was saying back there? So the VIPs are secretly, what? Kind-hearted saints or something?”

Griff tilted his head. “That wasn’t what he was saying.”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

I don’t know why I was trying to pick a fight with Griff, one of the few people who had ever wanted to be my friend. But I had been at the bottom; I had been tormented while the Lake View sheeple stood and watched. No one helped me. They just let it happen.

“Peter is just saying sometimes it’s not simple,” Griff said.

“Do you think so? Really?”

Griff’s hand was still around my wrist, his fingers in a loose circle. “I don’t know.”

I wouldn’t know why he would, after what had happened to him at his last school.

“But,” he said, “it might be something to consider. For both of us.”

“Why do you want to spend time with me?” I should just know now. Get it over with. “If Peter’s right, and I’m so condescending and reductive?”

“He didn’t say you were condescending and reductive. He said your comments were,” Griff said. “There’s a difference.”

Was there? I didn’t think so.

“One is something that you’ve said. The other is who you are,” Griff said. “He’s not saying that you’re a terrible person. He’s just disagreeing with you.”

That distinction had never occurred to me. Maybe because no one had ever made the effort—or had the patience—to point it out before.

Griff slid his hand around mine. “Come next week. Only once. We’re on break, so we have plenty of time.”

I remembered the other boys I had known, at my other schools. Luke-from-the-bookstore had invited me to a basketball game. I had been excited—I thought it might be my first actual date—but when I mentioned I didn’t like basketball and wanted to do something else, he just took someone else. He didn’t ask me again. And that was that.

“I’ll pass,” I said.

Griff didn’t look mad, like I’d expected. And he didn’t pull his hand from mine. “That’s fine. But I might ask you again.”

“I’ll still say no.”

“Okay.”

But I knew it wasn’t. It never was.

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