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They hit the windshield with a satisfying splat, opening up against the glass, their white fragments scattering and sliding in their own viscous fluids.
Around him, Harry’s friends snicker, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the egg shells and splattered goo on the Toyota. Even if it looks like there’s been a mini yolk explosion, he feels no release, not the one he had been hoping for when he took his pitcher’s stance and aimed. Through the windshield, a stuffed chick watches him sadly, and maybe judgmentally, keeping any laughter trapped in his throat.
Suddenly, the door—a bright robin’s egg blue door—flies open at the house with the Toyota in the driveway. Someone must have heard the crack. . His friends Roscoe and Bentley drop behind the shrubs faster than a rock kicked off a ledge. Roscoe clasps his fingers around Harry’s wrist to bring him down with them, as Harry’s legs stay planted in the pavement.
Harry doesn’t duck fast enough to keep Macy Kinney’s eyes from landing on him, and her mouth from taking a downturn.
“Shit,” he mutters into the leaves. Bentley jabs in him the arm to shut him up, like his cover hasn’t already been blown.
Macy’s shoes pat against the driveway, their pace determined. “Are you kidding me?” she says.
The regret creeps in, and somehow, the act meant to make Harry feel better has him wanting to vomit into the Kinneys’ dirt.
“Harry,” Macy calls in the same way he imagines a predator would call out for its prey. He has only heard that tone from his best friend when Noah McCallan made a bigoted comment during a discussion on the Stonewall Riots—a reaction which was half because she’s a decent human being, and half because her best friend is bisexual. Harry never thought he’d be on the other end of it, or at least hoped not to be.
“Harry Milton Redmond, get your ass over here.”
“Milton,” Roscoe mouths with a smirk, and if Harry didn’t think Macy was going to kick him so hard he wouldn’t remember his middle name, he would tackle Roscoe into the bush’s thorns for it—and for even seconding Bentley’s idea in the first place.
Slowly, Harry rises out of his squat, and peeks over the shrubbery.
On the other side, Macy stands along the vandalized car, arms crossed against her yellow sweater as tightly as a coiled snake. Her lips are the same shade of red that comes from a make out, and it makes his entire body clench. “Hey, Mace,” he says, trying his hand at nonchalance, but falling flat.
“Oh yeah, hey,” she retorts. “Care to explain why you’re hiding in the bushes like a real-life Simpsons meme?”
“Well, I mean…” There’s no point in lying, really. If she can’t put together his presence and the globs of yoke on the windshield, she’d be incredibly dim, and Macy is anything but dim. Oblivious, though, is a different story, particularly when it comes to what’s going on in Harry’s life.
“I think you can tell.”
“Damn right,” she says. “I just don’t understand. Why? Like, what the hell?”
He can’t tell her the real reason.
If Harry felt like he could, he would’ve told her everything from the time the first domino was set. But, even that felt like too much to tell the person who knows as much about his personal history as he does. Almost.
Harry’s gaze shoots to Bentley and Roscoe, who look up at him helplessly, and shake their heads. They may be friends with Macy, but they also don’t want to get on her bad side. She can hold her own as well as a 300-pound wrestler made of all muscle, and right now, they’re all 100-pound beanpoles who haven’t had a nourishing meal in months.
“What are you looking at?” she asks. “Are Roscoe and Bentley with you?” Before he can utter a word, she closes the distance between herself and the shrub, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to see onto the other side. The severity rating of her frown jumps by 10. “Of course they are. So, three of your brains couldn’t work together to tell you this wasn’t a good idea?”
“We just thought it would be a funny, welcome to the group thing,” Roscoe offers.
“Yeah, because egging my boyfriend’s car—actually his mom’s car— even though neither of them have done nothing to you is a hilarious way to make someone feel welcome,” she says and points her finger at Bentley. “Why do I feel like you were behind this?”
“Me?” Bentley squeaks. “Why me?”
“I don’t know, because you’re the same guy who wanted to see how many chili peppers he could eat without drinking anything and ended up in the hospital, and it seems like this fits into that line of thought,” she says, and she’s not wrong. It’s the exact reason Harry is mentally kicking himself for listening to Bentley in the first place when it came to ways to go after Macy’s new boyfriend.
“Hey, I provide inspiration. It was Harry that wanted to do it,” Bentley says, and looks like he wants to swallow the words back down; but he can’t, and refuses to meet Harry’s glare.
Macy rounds back on him. “So, you’re a willing participant in this?” The anger is still there, in the set of her lips, and her hands on her hips, but now, it’s mixed with betrayal. “Why? What is this? Like a jealousy thing?”
“What? No!” Although it kind of is, but not in the way she’s meaning. “Why would I be jealous?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m spending more time with Quinton and maybe you don’t like that?” She says, hesitancy popping into her voice.
She’s alluding to what he’s heard from the others, a line that has been said to him increasingly in the past few weeks as Quinton has gone from being a guy they knew to the guy Macy’s dating—that he doesn’t see his best friend in a strictly platonic light. He’s denied it over and over, and not because he himself is in denial of his feelings for her, but because it’s the truth.
“That is not it,” he spits back.
“Then what is it? Because you wouldn’t do that just for fun. You’re not that person,” Macy says.
The door opens again, and on the small porch, the source of all these issues appears.
Quinton stays close to the grey siding, leaning into it with hands tucked into his sweatshirt pockets. He tucks his head to his chest, so all Harry can see is his mass of chestnut curls, and the ivy green of his eyes, which keep flicking up to his and away.
It’s enough to flip all the circuit breakers in Harry’s body, both the ones that make his heart skip beats, and his vocal cords fight themselves to keep one another silent.
Because Quinton did do something to him. Because this is all Quinton’s fault.
He’s the first domino, the part of Harry that he kept even from Macy because keeping each other’s secret than telling the whole world theirs. He’s what sent them toppling down, when suddenly, after a talk with his parents, he became a ghost in Harry’s life, and chose to reappear attached to Macy’s hand, having left most of himself in the shadows. He’s why Harry became the person to pick up an egg and hurl it at a window, because Quintion didn’t only take himself away from Harry, but he took Harry’s safe place with Macy, too, so he could have one of his own.
Harry’s not jealous of Quinton for having Macy. No, he’s jealous of Macy for having Quinton, for being the person he used to be.
“Maybe I am. Maybe you don’t really know me,” Harry says to her, and turns his gaze at the porch, where Quinton is now staring back. “And you sure as hell don’t know him either.”
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