‘I don’t have any answers for those questions,’ I replied defensively.
Jinka threw a pillow at me. ‘You’ll figure it out,’ she coaxed. ‘You always do.’
I looked around at Scarlet, Olive, and Ivy. They looked between Jinka and me. Jinka’s ultimatum was clear. Figure this out or one of them will be my new best friend.
I went over to my bag and pulled out my journal. I opened up a fresh page and started to write while I spoke.
‘It’ll have to be a club. A club that helps welcome people from foreign countries,’ I said, but I was just vamping because the pressure was on.
And then I had what I thought, at the time, was a brilliant idea. I actually smiled while I wrote and spoke aloud. ‘It’s a club that not only helps introduce foreign kids to American students so they can make friends, but a club that helps American kids learn more about foreign cultures. The Cultural Outreach Club.’
‘The Cultural Outreach Club?’ Olive said, nearly squealing the words, she was so excited. ‘That’s brilliant! My parents would literally force me to join that club if it were real.’
Confidence flared in my chest as I wrote down the bullet points. ‘We’ll need a charter if we’re going to register the club with school so we can cut classes,’ I said. ‘And we’ll need to make up a teacher from another school to be the advisor. We don’t want to have to choose an advisor from our school, for obvious reasons. Oh. And a web page. Yeah. We need to upload lots of pictures.’
‘Of what?’ Scarlet asked. I could hear the challenge in her voice, and it only pushed me harder.
‘Of our dear friend Ali in a sari for some Indian festival, or Django from Angola doing whatever rite of passage people in Angola do. The club is just a blog, really.’ I shrug and keep writing. ‘I’ll just write a few lines about some lesson learned, download tons of culturally diverse pictures from the web, and post them in between pictures of us dressed up like we’re attending some function. Cultural outreach achieved.’
A slow clap started. I looked up to see Jinka beaming at me while she clapped, Scarlet glaring at me with barely repressed envy for impressing Jinka, Olive giddy with the thrill of danger, and Ivy shying away with a hint of fear in her eyes that this elaborate lie had come to me so easily. Ivy was the only one who had it right.
The Cultural Outreach Club is where we proved to be more racist and more classist than our parents. We treated other people’s cultures as if they were there solely for the purpose of serving our most frivolous whims – fake proof we were enriching lives when really we were somewhere else partying. At least when our parents threw one of their charity balls that were really just an excuse to wear couture gowns and make the society page, some deserving cause got a fat cheque at the end. We served no one but ourselves.
And I poured myself into it. Writing that blog became my un-journal. It was an account of exactly where I hadn’t been and the people I hadn’t met.
I stopped writing in my real journal and wrote lies for the Cultural Outreach Club instead. But even before the blog for the Club, I used to write things in my journal that weren’t true. They weren’t better or worse; they just weren’t what happened.
Silly stuff, like I’d lie in my journal about getting a deli sandwich when really I’d had pizza. Or that I’d got into an argument with Jinka when I hadn’t. I’d lie about the most random things. Maybe it was to embellish my life a little. To smooth out the uglier bits. But sometimes I’d just substitute one ugly truth with an equally ugly lie. Honestly, I don’t know why I did that. It’s not like I expected anyone else to read my journal, not before the blog, so I don’t know what the lies were for. Maybe they were for me. Maybe they were what I’d wished I’d done and hadn’t. Or maybe it’s easier to own up to an ugly lie than the ugly truth. I can’t remember.
It’s easy to forget what’s real when you’ve spent so much time and care describing what isn’t.
24 JULY
I’m early getting there again. But Bo is already waiting for me.
The saying is that your heart leaps, but to me it feels like all of my insides do, which is disturbing. Uncomfortable, even. I have to stop myself from skipping, because skipping is lame. I almost skip, though.
His lips part in a crooked-toothed smile, and I can see his chest bellow in and out with deep, fast breaths. I’m in the river and freezing from the thigh down, and he’s already at the bank to take my hands and help me up the other side. He’s so close to me, but still straining just a few inches closer, and then away from me again before his chest touches mine. He does this towards-me/ away-from-me vacillation over again, and it’s like I can see two halves of him running in opposite directions.
So I kiss him to answer that silent question he’s asking me. Yes, my kiss says. You may.
But he has no idea how.
‘I’ve never kissed anyone before,’ he admits, frustration and embarrassment flushing his skin. I giggle a little and open his mouth with mine. His hands come up to my face and then drift down to my shoulders. He slips the straps of my bag off them, and he laughs when he finally gets my body free from my backpack. Now he can hold me against him, and now I can show him how to kiss me, but I don’t need to any more because he’s already figured it out. He makes a noise somewhere deep inside. It sounds like waking up or remembering.
I don’t need anything but this. This kiss is big enough to fill a whole day – a whole day doing one thing, so completely it’s like you’ve done everything.
When we finally break apart, Bo helps me open my pack and spread out the blanket. He’s still so nervous, I can see that his eyes are unfocused like a sleepwalker’s.
‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.
He nods, and I start to pull out some trail mix I have in my pack, but he catches my hands and draws me to him again. We lie down together, food forgotten, and I rest my head on his shoulder.
He looks up at the canopy and touches my hair. I can feel him getting shy again. I feel shy. I’m never shy.
‘This is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me,’ I say.
He chuckles uncertainly. ‘Strange good, or strange bad?’ he asks.