Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [31]
On the top step, we stopped. The doors slammed behind us. Our hair exploded around our faces in the sudden wind.
I gasped.
The air in front of us stormed white. Not with snow, but with the early harvest from the grove of cottonwood trees. Like dandelion down, the cotton whirled and tumbled in the wildwinds, catching the sunlight.
Sure, the cotton fell every year. But I’d never seen so much at once. This was a blizzard, a snowstorm from another world, littering the lawn with clouds.
Mandarin grinned at me, her cheeks pink, and I could tell: she knew I got it. If we’d turned back right then and gone to class, that shared understanding would have been enough to make me happy forever.
But it wasn’t over. “So?” she said.
“So what?”
“So … what are we waiting for?”
She winked at me. Then she charged down the steps.
I stood there, clutching my stone, while Mandarin spun with both arms out, like she had in the canal, her hair wild with wind, the cotton lighting on her upturned face before swirling away. A piece landed in her mouth, and she laughed and spit. She scooped up fistfuls of cotton and flung them over her head. Finally, she turned to me.
“You, now,” she called. “Come on!”
I tossed my bag aside, dropped my stone onto the steps, and ran to join her.
The cotton flickered around me, dancing off my skin. I stomped on the grass, sending flurries back into the air. I spun with my arms out, my head back.
“Watch out for the trees!” she shouted. “A concussion would ruin our party.”
Dizzily, I came to a stop and leaned against a cottonwood with one hand. When I glanced up, I noticed movement in the school windows.
Faces were pressed up against the glass. Dozens of students, opening and closing their mouths like aquarium fish, whispering to each other.
“They’re watching us,” I said.
Kids in Washokey had never learned to stare with subtlety. Like whenever the rare plane flew over town—usually a tiny charter carrying tourists to luxury ranches near Cody—they would all crane their necks to have a look at it.
I felt mortified. Appalled, thrilled, every kind of emotion. But Mandarin didn’t even glance up.
“Do you honestly care what they think? They can all go to hell.”
But I did care what they thought. I always had. And this time, I knew exactly what they were thinking: that Mandarin Ramey (town slut, scandal-plagued celebrity, Washokey’s real beauty queen) and I, Grace Carpenter (just five minutes earlier nobody at all), were friends.
In a decisive second, I tipped my face toward the students in the window and stuck out my tongue.
Mandarin screamed with laughter. Unexpectedly, she rushed toward me and threw her arms around me. Before I could react, she pulled away. “Gracey, I have something to ask you. And you have to say yes. If you don’t, I swear to God I’ll die.”
“What? What is it?”
She took both my hands in hers and looked carefully into my eyes. Cotton shimmered in the air between us.
“Will you go with me?”
For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. A million miles away, a hall monitor called to us from the top of the steps.
“What? Do you mean—”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I mean. I want you to go with me. To California. I know it’s crazy. But the more I think about it, the more I think that together we can be something better, Gracey, something big. Please, please say yes. I need you.”
And just like that, my world burst apart. I was careening through the universe. Each bit of cotton was a speeding star. My head was dizzy, my mouth was dry. Stop, I wanted to cry out. You’re moving too fast for me. You’ve got to slow down. I’m going to fall—
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes? You’ll go with me?”
“Yes!” I laughed helplessly.
“You’ve got no idea how much this means! Now it doesn’t matter that you didn’t win that stupid trip. We’ll be long gone by then. Right after graduation, we’ll go. We’ll have an unbelievable time, I promise. What a fucking gorgeous day!”
We spun like