Eighteen The Colony

Beckett passes through the main part of Greenville, eventually turning right between a pair of tall stone columns that read The Colony in vertical wrought iron letters.

The Colony is a gated community of big stucco houses with balconies and stone walls. Trees and flowers grow in the yards, not just cacti. These Colony houses are a serious one-up on the houses in Justin Tadeo’s neighborhood, and that’s saying something.

One more left turn onto a cul-de-sac called Emmanuel Way.

There are only seven houses on this dead-end street. Beckett pulls up to the one at the very center, the biggest one, the macro-mansion with three mini-mansions flanking it on either side.

She parks out front, drops the kickstand, takes the helmet from me and slides it over the handlebar opposite hers. She doesn’t lock any of it up, or put anything away, or take anything inside with her. But this is Greenville. Over in my part of town, you wouldn’t leave your shoes out front if you still wanted them to be there later.

We cross the driveway to a massive front door, so big you could practically drive an eighteen-wheeler through it. As we walk inside, my line of vision goes vertical—up the sweeping staircase to the balcony that spans the length of the second floor. Our whole house could fit inside the space of this entryway with enough room to copy/paste a second one on top of it.

As Beckett leads me toward the kitchen, I see a common biblical theme in their home decor.

Her mom kisses her on the cheek when we come in, and Beckett goes, “Mom, this is my friend Daya.”

“Welcome, Daya,” Mrs. Wild says. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.”

In my artist’s mind, I was drawing Mrs. Wild as an older version of Beckett. And she is, sort of. The alt-universe version. Tall and lean. Sporty, like she plays a lot of tennis. Not artsy, which I guess kind of tracks too.

I turn at the sound of a metallic clink-clink coming into the room. A fluffy dog bounces straight over to smell my hand. I recognize him from Beckett’s Insta page.

“This is Marshall,” she says. “Who’s a good boy?”

“Aw, he’s sweet,” I say, running my hand over the dog’s thick, curly fur. “Marshall?”

“Named after our beloved Pastor Marshall,” Mrs. Wild says. “May he rest.”

“Marshall Mathers,” Beckett whispers, squatting down to give the dog hugs and scratches.

I smile.

“Are you staying for supper, Daya?” Mrs. Wild turns to Beckett. “Daddy won’t be joining us tonight.”

Her mom’s words are a blender-whirl of confusion. Staying for supper? Daddy?

“Oh, uh. No,” I say. “I don’t think so. Thank you, though.”

“Can I at least get you girls a snack? I have carrot sticks and hummus.”

Beckett raises an eyebrow at me.

“That’s okay,” she says. “We have a Spanish project we need to get to work on.”

“Well, you have to eat something. Daya, do you like hummus?”

Beckett pops to her feet and blurts, “We don’t want anything.”

“Becky.” The word comes out one part surprise, one part warning shot, and Beckett shrinks slightly under her mother’s blistering gaze.

The room begins to fill with the worst kind of silence.

“I apologize,” she finally mumbles. “Can we just... go now? We have a lot of work to do.”

Mrs. Wild gives me a quick look, then turns back to Beckett. Her smile goes thin and tight.

“Nice to meet you, Daya,” she says before turning her back on both of us.

The uncomfortable silence follows us as we head to Beckett’s room, but on the way, I’m distracted by the vastness of this house. It feels like we’re extras in a commercial for Sun Brothers Furniture Emporium in Phoenix. A world of elegant and refined home furnishings, the voice-over on the TV ad says. Every room in the Wild family macro-mansion could be its own Sun Brothers showroom. Everything shines like it’s new. Everything’s coordinated and ultra-matching. And unlike the secondhand picture frames at our house, the family photos along their fireplace mantel and up the stairway contain photographs of Beckett’s actual family. I bet there isn’t a single thing in this house that came to them secondhand, besides maybe a complete set of her grandmother’s china.

My heart races as we climb the stairs. I’ve imagined being in Beckett’s room a million times, but nothing could prepare me for the chaos of colors and textures as we walk inside. Macramé wall hangings, vintage glass lanterns dangling from the ceiling in clusters, pillows everywhere, some big enough to sit on. And Beckett’s framed artwork on all the walls.

“Whoa...” I whisper, taking it all in.

“Is that whoa in a good way?” she says. “Whoa, as in, you like it?”

“Yeah.” I take a slow spin. “I do.”

She smiles, but her face quickly shifts from sunlight to shadow.

“My parents hate it. There’s a shocker. They constantly threaten to bring in the interior designer and turn it into some urban farmhouse nightmare.”

“What’s urban farmhouse?” I ask.

“You know, all pastel and white, and just distressed enough to be trendy. I hate that whole vibe, y’know? There’s no life in that. But... that’s what they consider ‘appropriate for a girl my age,’ so.”

Something in her laugh is dry and brittle as she nervously rearranges the pillows on her bed.

“Also, just so you know? Try not to say God in front of my mom, unless you’re praying or praising.”

I set my bag down on the seat of a vintage-looking velvet chair in the corner.

“Whatever you say. Becky.”

Her cheeks do a slow burn, and for a beat or two, I wonder if she’s actually mad. For all I know, Becky is her super-secret, family-only nickname, and she despises it, and now the painful truth has been revealed.

She moves in my direction, armed with a small pillow from her bed.

She swats me with it.

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Yeah,” I say, blocking with my arms. “A little.”

“You’re in so much trouble.”

This time her laugh is not dry or brittle. This time, her laugh is as full and sweet as a ripe berry as she pushes into my personal bubble. I slide my fingers around her arms and pin them gently behind her to stop her all-out pillow assault on me, and we stand there in the middle of her room, eye-locked and smiling.

“I surrender,” she whispers.

I let her go but she doesn’t move away.

“Can I ask you one thing?” I say, low and soft.

“Okay.”

I tip my head. “Did she really say: Daddy won’t be home for supper?”

Beckett rolls her eyes. “They’re from Texas. East Texas. It’s an east Texas thing.”

“Is that why you’re blushing?”

“I’m not blushing,” she says, imitating her mother’s slight drawl. “That’s just my natural peaches-and-cream complexion.”

I shake my head. Smile. Drink in her light like sweet tea.

“What?” she says.

“You’re like... a house with all these secret rooms.”

She laughs. “What do you mean, secret rooms?”

“Like... I never know what to expect from you.”

“So, what if I said...” She’s blushing for real now. “What if I said I want a do-over.”

Beckett pushes against me, and I want so badly to lean all the way in. I want her hair to fill the spaces between my fingers. I want her breath in my lungs. I want her lips, her tongue, her hands to be an answer instead of a million questions. But we’re in her room. We’re standing next to her bed where she probably kneels and says her prayers at night. I can’t know if that’s really what she does. But this? What’s happening now, what happened the other day in my room? I’m one hundred percent sure this isn’t what she really does either. And I’m one hundred percent confused about why she chose me for her first sapphic experience.

She slides her arms around my neck, and I close my eyes, waiting for the touch of her lips against mine. Her mouth lights me on fire everywhere it lands, flaring like the matches I threw at the moon the other night from the deck of B’Rad’s boat. She dusts my jawline with kisses. The side of my neck. She pulls the collar of my shirt aside so she can run her tongue across my shoulder. My skin dissolves to nothing, turns me transparent. Everything inside me is out in full view for Beckett to see. The air in my lungs. The heart thrashing in my rib cage. The endorphins speeding through my bloodstream.

A sharp knock on the other side of the door zaps the energy between us into oblivion.

“How’s it going in there?” Mrs. Wild calls from the other side. “I brought you girls some snacks.”

I dash over to the chair in the corner, my heart thrashing with excitement and fear. I pray Beckett’s mom won’t notice the thickness of ache and want in the room.

Beckett checks herself in the stand-up mirror next to the door before opening it, and when she does, her mother peers inside, surveys the space. She lands on the velvet chair and puts a smile on when she sees me sitting in it. Then she steps inside, a wooden tray gripped in both hands, filled with little plates of cut fruit and vegetables and dips and two unopened bottles of bougie Italian soda.

“Let’s keep this door open,” she says, taking one last look around. “It’s a little stuffy in here.”

Neither of us moves a muscle or even exhales until the tapping of Mrs. Wild’s footsteps disappears down the stairs. I wait a few seconds longer before I can work up the courage to finally look at Beckett.

All the light in her face is gone. The blood feels like it’s drained out of mine as well.

“I don’t get it,” I say. I’m not whispering, but my voice is low enough to stay contained inside the room, even with the door open. “You can decorate your bedroom like this, dye your hair, paint your Vespa any way you want. But you have to keep the door open when you have a friend over?”

She sits down on the edge of the bed, unzips her backpack, starts taking things out one at a time.

“They worry about my choices.” She slaps a notebook down on the bed. “Not like they let me have any.” The pens she tosses next to her roll onto the floor. “I do everything they want. My choices are their choices.” She turns her backpack upside down and dumps everything out at her feet.

“Okay, but... it’s not like you locked yourself in here with Cason. You’re just doing homework with a friend from school.”

“Yeah.” She drops the empty backpack on top of its contents and looks up at me. “Except I’m not.”

My ears crackle the way they do sometimes when I’m in trouble, only right now I don’t know who I’m in trouble with. Myself? Beckett’s mom? Beckett? Is she the one lying to herself about who she is? Or am I lying to myself about who we are?

“What are you thinking?” she asks, cutting her eyes sideways at me.

I lean forward in the chair, weave my fingers together so she can’t see them shaking. I want to tell her every thought I’ve ever had about her. About us. Every private moment we’ve shared in my mind. I want to tell her not to care what her parents think, but I can’t even do that with my own mother. I want to say all the quiet parts out loud.

But when I open my mouth, all that comes out is, “I guess I’m thinking we should work on our project.”

Beckett goes dark. Five minutes ago, she was full of light and fire.

Now she looks like a match I snuffed out and tossed at the moon.