Illusions

Chapter Fifteen

WITH THAT, LAUREL WENT FROM AVOIDING TAMANI because she was mad at him to avoiding him because talking to him was awkward and confusing. But the plan for the dance was made, and Laurel had a job to do. She stopped by Chelsea’s house the next week, feeling guilty that she hadn’t been making enough time for her best friend lately. She apologized profusely and blamed the SATs.

“So you think you did better?” Chelsea asked brightly.

“I do,” Laurel said, still half in awe at just how much easier the test seemed after studying properly. “And I’m going to do it. I’m going to apply to some colleges.”

“I think it’s really great, Laurel,” Chelsea said, her tone strangely off.

“Really?” Laurel said, prodding a little.

Chelsea looked up at her, a smiled pasted on her face. “I do. David’s totally right about the options thing.”

“Options are good, but it would be easier if I just knew,” Laurel said. “You’ve known exactly what you wanted to do since you were, what, ten?”

Chelsea nodded and then, to Laurel’s surprise, burst into tears.

“Chelsea!” Laurel said, rushing over to the bed and hugging her friend, who was hiding her face in her hands as she gulped for air between sobs. “Chelsea,” Laurel said more gently. “What’s going on?” Empathetic tears sprang to Laurel’s own eyes as Chelsea continued to cry. After several minutes she took a deep breath and laughed as she began to scrub the heels of her hands across her eyes, trying to dry them.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

“What is?”

Chelsea waved aside Laurel’s concern. “Man, you have so much to deal with right now, you don’t need to hear about my little issues.”

Laurel put both of her hands on Chelsea’s shoulders and waited for her to look up and meet Laurel’s eyes. “If the world was ending tomorrow there would be nothing more important than listening to your problems,” Laurel said, her voice steady and strong. “Tell me.”

Chelsea’s eyes teared up a bit again. She took a deep breath and rubbed at her reddened lids. “Ryan got his SAT scores back a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh no, do they suck?”

Chelsea shook her head. “They’re pretty good, actually. Not as good as mine, but even David’s aren’t quite as high as mine.”

Laurel smiled and rolled her eyes. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I was in his room the other day — he had to go downstairs and talk to his mom — anyway, the printout of his scores was sitting on his desk. And I may have been snooping a little and I looked at his college profile and—” She hesitated. “He didn’t send his scores to Harvard.”

Harvard was Chelsea’s first choice of schools — she’d wanted to go there since she was in grade school. Everyone knew that. Everyone. “Maybe there just weren’t enough slots,” Laurel said, trying to reassure her friend. “The SAT people only do like, four automatically, right?”

“He put down two,” Chelsea said morosely. “UCLA and Berkeley. He didn’t even try and send them to Harvard — I mean, I always knew we might not go to the same school, but he said he’d at least apply!”

Laurel wanted to offer some encouragement, but she didn’t know what to say. She remembered Chelsea telling her that she and Ryan had agreed that they would both apply to Harvard and UCLA, then wait and see what happened with acceptances. Ryan had apparently changed his mind. “Did you… ask him about it?” Laurel finally asked. “Maybe he just didn’t want to let his parents know he was planning to apply to Harvard. You know how pushy his dad can be.”

“Maybe,” she said, shrugging.

“You should ask him,” Laurel said. “Come on, you guys have been dating for more than a year. You should be able to talk about stuff like this.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.” Chelsea refused to meet Laurel’s eyes.

“Chelsea!” Laurel said with a grin. “You are the ultimate proponent of brutal honesty!” She paused and giggled. “Proponent. That’s an SAT word.”

Chelsea raised one eyebrow. “Seriously. If our relationship is going to end soon anyway, maybe I’d rather not know how early he knew. And if he’s just doing it to appease his dad, maybe it’ll be a good surprise.”

“Maybe,” Laurel said. “But is it going to eat you up inside if you don’t know?”

Chelsea grimaced. “Apparently.”

“So ask.”

They sat in silence for a while and Laurel marveled at how effectively worrying about someone else’s problems stopped her from worrying about her own. Even if only for a little while.

“Hey, Chelsea,” Laurel said softly as an idea began to form in her mind. “Are you busy tonight?”

“Now?” Chelsea asked.

Laurel glanced out the window. “We’ve got an hour if we hurry,” she said, slipping into her sandals.

“Um, okay…”

They headed down the stairs and Chelsea yelled to her mom that she was leaving for an hour. Her mom yelled back that it was spaghetti night and to please be back in time for dinner. Laurel had rarely seen a conversation take place in Chelsea’s house that didn’t involve yelling. Not angry yelling, but the kind of yelling that happens when everyone is rushing around and can’t take the ten seconds that would be required to stop what they are doing and get close enough to hear the other person talk in a normal tone of voice. Then again, in a household with three boys under the age of twelve, yelling probably was a normal tone of voice.

“So where are we going?” Chelsea asked as she pulled her seat belt across her chest.

“Yuki’s,” Laurel said.

“Yuki’s?” And after a pause, “Are we going to spy on her?”

“No!” Laurel said, although she knew the question was entirely rational. “I thought we could go pick her up and take her to Vera’s.”

“For… smoothies?” Chelsea asked. Vera’s blessedly nondairy blended fruit drinks had made it Laurel’s favorite whole foods store.

“Yeah, sure,” Laurel said, flipping on her turn signal as she approached Yuki’s street. “Klea wants me to keep an eye on her, Tamani wants me to keep an eye on her. I was thinking we could all go to that autumn dance together.”

“So we show up on her porch out of the blue, kidnap her, feed her frozen fruit, and ask her on a date. Genius,” Chelsea said sarcastically.

“I’ll buy you one of those carob chocolate truffles you like so much,” Laurel said with a grin as they pulled up in front of Yuki’s house.

Chelsea clapped her hand over her heart, melodramatically. “Using my love of chocolate against me. I have no choice but to crumble like a… chocolate cookie. Or whatever,” she said when Laurel eyed her. “My metaphors suck. Let’s go.”

Yuki’s house was about the size of Laurel’s garage. It was set back from the road and mostly hidden by two shaggy elm trees growing at the front of the walk. According to Aaron, Yuki was almost always there alone, but so far nobody in the neighborhood had made a fuss. It was possible they simply hadn’t noticed.

If so, they were a lot less nosy than Laurel’s neighbors.

They rang Yuki’s doorbell, which could be heard clearly through the flimsy front door and single-pane windows. Despite Klea’s claims that Yuki was here for her own protection, security didn’t seem to be a major priority.

“I don’t think she’s home,” Chelsea said in a whisper.

Laurel nodded toward the bike Yuki sometimes rode to school. “Her bike’s here. And I don’t think she has a car.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t go for a walk,” Chelsea countered. “She is… like you.”

Laurel sucked in a breath and held it for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Obviously this isn’t going to work.”

“Do I still have to go to Vera’s?” Chelsea asked as they turned.

The click of a deadbolt made Laurel look back. She suppressed the urge to smooth her khaki skirt and straighten her hair. Yuki’s face appeared in a narrow crack in the doorway and she stared in obvious surprise for a moment before opening it all the way.

“Hi,” Laurel said, trying to not sound too chipper. “Are you busy?”

“Not really,” Yuki said warily.

“We were going to Vera’s and thought you might like to come along,” Laurel said with what she hoped was a welcoming smile.

“The grocery place?” She didn’t look any less nervous. If anything, she looked more suspicious.

“They make really great fruit smoothies. Nothing but frozen fruit and fruit juice.” Laurel wondered if describing the smoothies in detail was too weird. “They’re so good! You should come.”

“Um.” Yuki hesitated and Laurel could tell she was looking for a way to say no.

“I’ll drive,” Laurel said helpfully.

“Yeah, okay, I guess,” Yuki said, mustering a smile that didn’t look entirely fake. Laurel could only imagine how lonely it must be for Yuki, staying here all by herself. Laurel had seen her talking to a lot of different people in the hallways at school, but Aaron assured Laurel that no one ever came to Yuki’s house.

“My treat,” Laurel said, stretching her arm out toward her car.

Yuki stayed quiet on the drive over as Laurel and Chelsea tried to keep the conversation going, talking about the psychology class they had together — which proved duller than actually sitting through the class. At least once they got to Vera’s they would have food to put in their mouths to excuse the silence.

After everyone selected a dessert, they sat outside at a table with an umbrella that did nothing to block the setting sun — just the way Laurel liked it.

“This is really good,” Yuki finally said, with a hint of a smile.

“I thought you’d like it,” Laurel said, scooping up a small spoonful of her mango-strawberry slush.

“So,” Chelsea said, obviously trying to be conversational, “what’s school like in Japan?”

Yuki looked suddenly bored. “Pretty much like here, but with uniforms.”

“I hear you guys have cram schools and super-long hours and stuff. Your friend, um, June? He’s really smart.”

“Jun,” Yuki corrected, softening the “J” and making Chelsea blush. “I don’t really know him. And I never went to juku. A lot of us never do.”

“Tell us about you, then,” Laurel interjected.

Yuki shrugged, glancing away. “Not much to tell. I like to read, I drink way too much green tea, I do ikebana, and I listen to music from the seventies that no one has ever heard of.”

Laurel laughed. She and Chelsea both knew there was so much more to Yuki than that, and Yuki knew it too. But Yuki didn’t know how much Laurel knew, and she didn’t know that Chelsea knew anything at all. It was like a supernatural “Who’s on First?”

“What’s ikebana?” Chelsea asked, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

“Flower arrangement. Artistic. You’d probably find it dull.”

Flower arranging? Laurel thought, sitting up straight. She wondered if that could possibly be a euphemism for some kind of faerie magic — but it could just as easily have been a sign that Yuki was as drawn to nature as any other faerie.

“No, it sounds interesting,” Chelsea said, but it was clear that she had no idea what to say next.

All three busied themselves with their food.

“Oh, hey,” Laurel started. It was now or never. “Tama… uh… said you asked him to the Sadie Hawkins? Or Autumn Hop? Whatever they decided to call it.” The posters going up around campus were confusing, to say the least. Laurel got the impression that someone in student government had looked up Sadie Hawkins on Wikipedia after half the posters were printed.

Yuki nodded. “I did. How do you know Tam?” she asked, gazing intently at Laurel.

“He, um, sits near me in Government,” Laurel said. “I was telling him how Chelsea and I usually double to stuff like this, and he seemed pretty interested. Maybe we could all go together?”

“Absolutely,” Chelsea said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice that Laurel hoped Yuki didn’t catch. “I think that would be fascinating.”

Fascinating? “Great. It’s a date, then!” Laurel said. “If that’s okay with you, I mean,” Laurel added, turning her attention back to Yuki.

“Sure,” Yuki said, smiling at Chelsea now. She sounded totally sincere. Enough that it pricked at Laurel’s conscience. “I think it would be fun to do a group thing. Less pressure, you know. I mean, I don’t even really know Tam very well yet so… yeah.” Her voice trailed away.

With a pointed glance in Laurel’s direction, Chelsea picked up her spoon, licked it, and said, “Well, I think he’s hot.”

Both faeries looked studiously away.

“Okay, seriously, what was that?” Laurel said, after dropping Yuki off following the rather painfully awkward half hour they’d all just spent together.

“What?”

“The ‘Tamani is hot’ thing?”

Chelsea shrugged. “He is.”

“The last thing I want to talk to Yuki about is Tamani.”

“Why?” Chelsea asked, smirking.

“Because she’s a faerie and I don’t want her getting suspicious,” Laurel said, almost nonchalantly.

“Suuure,” Chelsea drawled. “What is up with you and Tam, anyway?”

“Please don’t call him that,” Laurel snapped, knowing it was completely unwarranted. “His name is Tamani, and I know you have to call him Tam at school, but could you please use his whole name when it’s just us?”

Chelsea sat silently, looking at Laurel.

“What?” Laurel finally asked, exasperated.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Chelsea said seriously. “What is up with you and Tamani?” she said, stressing his full name.

Laurel gripped the steering wheel. “Nothing,” she said. “Befriending Yuki was supposed to be my job. I failed. So Tamani had to do it and I guess I feel guilty. I hate letting him down. He’s my friend.”

“Friend,” Chelsea deadpanned. “That’s why David turns into a fire-breathing dragon whenever they’re in the same room.”

“He does not.”

“He does a really good job of hiding it when you’re around because he doesn’t want to be the jealous boyfriend. But trust me, he tenses up the second Tamani gets anywhere near him.”

“Really?” Laurel asked, guilt creeping in.

“Yes. You think that blow-up last week was an isolated occurrence? It’s been building since the first day of school. Don’t you guys talk about this kind of stuff?”

“How is it always my fault that Tamani is in love with me!” Laurel said, louder than she intended. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Come on, Laurel,” Chelsea said, softly now. “I get that Tamani likes you, but honestly, that doesn’t really matter. Half the guys in our class like you. You’re gorgeous. I’ve seen them stare. It doesn’t bother David. If anything, I think it makes David happy. He’s dating the hottest girl in school and everyone knows it.”

“I’m not the hottest girl in school,” Laurel said stiffly, pulling up to the curb in front of Chelsea’s house. She knew she was pretty, but there were a lot of beautiful girls at Del Norte. And Chelsea was one of them.

“You are the hottest girl in school,” Chelsea repeated, “and Captain Science is your boyfriend. You didn’t know David before high school, so let me spell it out for you: The moment you gave him the time of day, you changed David’s life. He would do anything for you. And he’s not really the jealous type.”

“I’m starting to think all boys are the jealous type,” Laurel grumbled.

“I’m telling you, David isn’t mad at Tamani because Tamani’s jealous. David’s mad at Tamani because you’re jealous.”

Laurel leaned her forehead against the steering wheel in defeat.

“Is he really in love with you?” Chelsea asked after a long, silent moment.

“Yes,” Laurel admitted, looking up at Chelsea but leaving her head against the wheel.

Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “Well. Good luck with that.”