Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Chapter 8

Thus with a Kiss I Die

2004

GENEVIEVE’S TEMPLES WERE THROBBING LIKE CRAZY. THE TUSSLE WITHLizette’s pedo boyfriend earlier that morning had wrecked her head. And the sunlight beaming brightly on the schoolyard wasn’t helping.

It was the first Monday in June, and her first day at this Washington, DC, high school.

Admittedly, being new at the tail end of senior year was awkward. But Genevieve was a pro at not fitting in. At her previous four high schools, she’d been either catnip for generic mean girls or ignored. But each night, with clockwork regularity, she’d whip out her steno pad and fix it. She’d rewrite the day in her favor. Turn herself into a superhero. Get them all back in fiction.

It’s my own fault. Who’d want to be friends with me?

Her face was usually contorted into a pain-induced grimace. In terms of conversation, she had two settings: searingly blunt or deeply sarcastic. She didn’t giggle. Genevieve didn’t mean to be off-putting, but just like today, she’d usually lived five lives by the time she got to school. She hadn’t yet learned how to put on a mask of being fine, despite her personal disasters.

And so far, twelfth grade had been a disaster. She’d always managed to maintain a 4.0. But this year, her migraines had blossomed into gothic territory. Hurting too badly to focus on school, she’d started skipping, spending multiple days in bed—either in paralyzing agony, high from painkillers, or a nauseating combination of both. Her As had become D minuses, causing Princeton to rescind her admission. Princeton was supposed to save her. What would save her now?

In the tub that morning, Genevieve had had an epiphany. It was time for a friend. She wanted to know someone’s secrets. And she needed someone to know hers.

Washington, DC, would be a fresh start. She’d just pick someone and dive in. How hard could it be? Horrible people had friends. O. J. Simpson had friends.

Her last school, back in Cincinnati, had been tough. But West Truman High was way tougher. The schoolyard was erupting with kids in utter chaos, with no teachers in sight. The crowd was G-Unit-video fresh in throwback jerseys, Timbs, and candy-colored weaves. Percussion-frenzied go-go beats were blasting from a boom box, and half the school had on Madness tees.

In contrast, Genevieve’s look was “Tomboy” meets “I Don’t Give a Shit.” She was wearing an ancient Nas Illmatic concert tee, sweatpants she’d cut into shorts, and Air Force 1s. Her curly coils were piled into a massive pony atop her head. As usual, she hid her scrawny frame in an oversized men’s work shirt.

She stationed herself by the bleachers, in a cigarette graveyard. Operation Friend looked bleak. The schoolyard crowd seemed impenetrably cliquey. There were some lone students scattered on the bleachers, though. Squinting in the sun, she surveyed the rows for a friendly face.

He was sitting in the top row of the bleachers, leaning against the heavily tagged brick wall. White tee and Timbs. A book was balanced on his lap, and he was reading it with his brow furrowed in concentration, chewing his lip. He looked like he was living the words.

That’s how I read, too, she thought.

Then he turned a page, and she caught a glimpse of his gold-flecked chestnut eyes. The sun caught them, and they shone bronze. Was it a trick of the light? This boy radiated such peacefulness. An angel among mortals.

Genevieve trusted beautiful boys. She was safe with them, because they wanted prom queens, not her. Boys in her league were the ones to worry about.

She headed up the rickety bleachers. That was when she noticed the fraying cast on his left arm. No signatures. She got a bit closer and saw a fresh scab slashed across his nose. A step closer, and she saw that his knuckles (on both hands) were bruised purple and green. And his pupils were really, really dilated.

Okay, he was looking less angelic. But now that she was standing in front of him, it was too late to turn back. He peered up at her with mild curiosity and then went back to his book. James Baldwin’s Another Country.

“Hey,” she said. “Can I sit here?”

Silence.

Before she lost her nerve, she plopped down next to him.

“I’m Genevieve Mercier.” She pronounced it John-vee-EV Mare-see-AY.

He frowned at her.

“It’s French.”

He gave her a look like no shit.

“Is it cool that I’m sitting here?”

“No.”

“Are you an asshole?”

“Oui.”

Social experiment, failed. Genevieve knew better than to equate beauty with perfection. She lived with a former Miss Louisiana who looked pristine but had once dusted their entire apartment with a Neutrogena face wipe.

She still had fifteen minutes until the bell would ring—and in the meantime, the sun was slaughtering her head. Clumsily, she rifled through her backpack and pulled out a palm-sized roller vial of lavender-peppermint essential oil and rubbed it over her temples. It tingled pleasantly.

Then Genevieve noticed he was watching her, his book abandoned.

“I get migraines,” she explained. “It’s so bad, I barely ever move my head. For example, if I want to look to the right, I have to move my whole body. Like this.”

She swiveled from her waist to face him. His expression was cloudy with distrust and confusion.

“Is this a setup? Is someone about to jump me?” His voice was drowsy and bored. “You a dealer? My bad if I owe you money.”

“I look like a dealer to you?”

“I’ve had girl dealers.” He shrugged. “I’m a feminist.”

“I wouldn’t set you up to get jumped. I’d do it myself.”

He checked her petite frame. “You’re the size of a Jolly Rancher.”

“I have a Napoleon complex.”

“Girls can’t have that.”

“Okay, feminist.” Genevieve rolled her eyes, causing a small tornado in her temples. Two girls walked by, glanced up at them, and giggled before scurrying away.

He scowled at her. “Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to make friends,” said Genevieve.

“I don’t have friends.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“I don’t know what to say to people.” He stuck the eraser end of a pencil into his cast and, in slo-mo, dragged it back and forth. “What do normal people talk about? Prom? Murder Inc.?”

“Fuck if I know,” she admitted. “It’s all good, though! We can sit in silence.”

“Knock yourself out.” He returned to his book.

So he wasn’t super welcoming. But at least now she knew someone at this big, intimidating school. At a loss for what to do now, she shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand and rubbed more oil into her temples.

Genevieve sensed the guy watching her. She was about to explain to him the tension-relieving benefits of lavender, when he pulled Ray-Bans out of his jeans pocket and handed them to her. She put them on, stunned by his generosity. Then he exhaled (with resignation?), shut the book, and leaned back against the brick wall, eyes closed.

Genevieve couldn’t help but stare. She’d never seen a face like his. Her stomach fluttered a bit, and she bit her lip. No. She couldn’t get a crush. She didn’t trust herself; she always went too far.

But looking at him wouldn’t hurt. She studied his dreamy, far-out expression, wondering what he was on.

“Morphine?” she asked. “Ketamine?”

He opened one eye. “You sure you’re not a dealer?”

“I have legal prescriptions. I’m basically an apothecary.” She paused. “‘Oh true apothecary. Thy drugs are quick.’”

“‘Thus with a kiss I die,’” he replied reflexively. “Keats?”

“Shakespeare!” exclaimed Genevieve. “Remember which play?”

“Romeo and Juliet,” he grumbled.

“You a writer? Or just an AP English ho?”

He shrugged.

“I write, too. You any good?”

Same shrug.

She smirked. “I’m better.”

And then he chuckled. And it was an unlikely, surprising thing, like being trampled by a unicorn stampede in Narnia. Jesus, he was a lot. She needed a distraction.

“I’m…hungry,” she blurted out awkwardly. “You want a peach? I have two.”

He shook his head. Genevieve unzipped her backpack, unearthing a peach and a delicate, razor-sharp pocketknife. Propping her elbows on her knees, she clicked open the blade and angled it along the seam of the peach. It was always so satisfying, feeling the tautness of the skin under the blade. The tension. With a gentle press, the skin burst and juice dribbled out. She caught it with her tongue. Then she cut off a piece, using her thumb as an anchor, and popped it into her mouth.

Chomping, Genevieve glanced at her new friend. He looked like he’d just seen his first natural rainbow.

“That’s how you eat peaches?”

“I like knives.”

He blinked. Once. Twice. Then rapidly shook his head, as if descrambling his brain.

“Nah, man,” he said. “You gotta go. I’m trying to stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble? But…”

“You’re dangerous. And I’m worse. I’d be hazardous to your health.”

“I’m already a health hazard.” Genevieve ripped off the sunglasses for emphasis. “We’re friends now! You said you don’t know how to talk to people, but you’re talking to me!”

“I said I can’t talk to normal people.” He eyed her. “You’re not normal.”

She wasn’t sure, but it felt like a compliment. She felt understood. This was new. There was that stomach flutter again.

“How do you know I’m not normal? We just met.”

“What are you, then?”

Genevieve rested her chin in her hands, her elbows on her thighs. She didn’t know how to answer. What was she?

She was tired. Tired of being sick, tired of her mouth getting her into trouble, tired of moving, tired of fighting off the kind of men who thought mothers and daughters were a package deal, and tired of hating who she was.

Maybe she shouldn’t tell him the truth. It was too ugly. But maybe honesty was what it took to make a real friend.

Be nice. Be good.

“I’m not nice,” she admitted quietly. “Not good.”

He nodded slowly. Then he scratched his jaw, peering down at his Timbs.

“Neither am I.”

That was how it started. That small confession. Genevieve had never told anyone she wasn’t okay, and it sounded like he hadn’t, either. She turned her face toward him to speak. And froze. Because his eyes were already on her.

Something crackled between them, an understanding, a mutual pull—and it was so extraordinary, so involuntary, Genevieve actually gasped. Stunned, she parted her lips a little. And then she couldn’t breathe at all, because slowly he dragged his drowsy, drugged-out gaze from her eyes to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. A sure, satisfied smile crept across his face. Hesitantly, she smiled back.

Then it was over. He went back to his book, like that incredibly intimate look hadn’t even happened. And Genevieve’s world was knocked off its axis. But of one thing she was certain.

I’m supposed to know him, she thought.

“Soooo,” she breathed, “what’s your name?”

“I told you, I don’t have friends. Let me brood in peace.”

“Don’t fight it. What’s with the cast?”

He sighed. “I keep breaking my arm.”

“Damn. Calcium deficiency?”

“No. I do it on purpose.”

Genevieve gawked at him. The bell rang. A baritone voice shouted something over the loudspeakers, and the bustling student population filed into the redbrick building. Neither one of them moved.

“You don’t break your own bones,” she whispered. “You’re just antisocial and trying to freak me out so I’ll go away.”

“Is it working?”

“No.” Genevieve was thunderstruck. “What’s wrong with you?”

He sighed. “A lot.”

“I can’t imagine doing something so sick.”

“No?”

She followed his eyes, which had traveled down to her right arm. Her men’s shirt had slid off her shoulder. And the rows of shallow, horizontal slices on her upper arm were visible. A few were covered with Band-Aids, the rest were scabs, and some had grown into scars. Genevieve wore her big shirt daily to hide this—but it had slipped at school a few times. She’d always been prepared to say it was eczema. No one had ever asked.

She yanked her sleeve back up on her shoulder.

“You don’t know what my life’s like,” she spat.

“Try me,” he said, his galaxy eyes eating her alive.

A wild current charged through her, something primal, dirty, desperate, confusing. Was this being seen for what she really was? Being witnessed? It was heady and terrifying. Genevieve had hoped for someone to share secrets with. But she hadn’t bet on someone beating her, crazy for crazy. And she hadn’t bet on the person being a boy, a boy who looked like that, who looked at her like that.

Somehow, he’d snaked into her head and sunk his fangs into her brain, poisoning her with hope. A cruel trick.

Genevieve lurched forward and grabbed his tee in her fist, yanking him down to her level.

“Stop looking at me like your dick’s in my mouth,” she said, seething, still clutching the peach in her left hand. “You like me now? Think you’re original? Boys love to torture the weird girl, the freak. But guess what? I’m already in pieces, so—”

With feral quickness, he plucked her fist from his shirt and pinned her arm behind her back. Genevieve arched, drawing a breath. A delicious tremble tore through her.

He held her like that for a beat and then brought his mouth to her ear. “Don’t.”

“D-don’t what?”

“Call yourself a freak.”

He let her go. Then he grabbed the peach out of her hand and took a deliberately indulgent, wet bite. He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand.

“I’m Shane,” he said, a spark of triumph in his eye. And walked away.

Genevieve found her classroom. Peering through the doorway, she saw chaos. A couple of kids were in a cypher, one girl was unbraiding her hair, and a boy was banging his desk on the floor. Four kids were napping in their chairs; another, on the floor. At the chalkboard, the teacher was explaining photosynthesis, which Genevieve had learned in private school in fifth grade.

In a far corner, tipped back way too far in his chair, was Shane.

She wasn’t ready to see him after whatever monumental thing they’d just experienced. She’d staggered away from the bleachers, feeling like she’d toppled into a tornado.

She wiggled the nicked vintage cameo ring she’d once stolen from Lizette’s jewelry box. It usually calmed her. But not now.

With a deep breath, she entered the room. The class gradually quieted to watchful silence. Thirty pairs of eyes followed Genevieve to an empty desk in the front. She sat down.

Reacting to the sudden stillness, the teacher turned around.

“Who are you?”

“Genevieve Mercier. Sorry, I got…lost.”

“We’re all lost.” Mr. Weismuller was whippet thin with a sallow complexion. He looked like he had mono. “Class, welcome Genevieve.”

“The fuck’s that name, though?” a girl shouted.

“Young, why her name sound like Pepé Le Pew?”

Genevieve sank lower in her chair. Mr. Weismuller turned to face the chalkboard.

“This bitch think she Aaliyah ’cause she got a half a cup of hair.”

“That ain’t hers,” said a tall girl in Apple Bottom jeans, sitting behind Genevieve.

She turned around to face her. From his corner in the back, Shane caught her eye. And shook his head. A warning that Genevieve ignored.

“What’d you say?”

“I said that hair ain’t yours, ho. And what?”

“Yeah, and what?” said a slight boy who materialized next to Apple Bottom, presumably her boyfriend. The whole class was watching Genevieve. She was surrounded. The only person she knew was four rows back. She wasn’t going to win.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“I thought not,” said Apple Bottom, and the class resumed cutting up. Behind her, Genevieve heard The Boyfriend whisper “Yeah, do that shit” to Apple Bottom.

There was an electric calm. Suddenly, Genevieve’s neck snapped back, hard, and her head felt eerily weightless. She turned around, and Apple Bottom was grasping three-fourths of Genevieve’s ponytail in one hand and scissors in the other. The Boyfriend cackled.

“I’m getting Principal Miller,” Mr. Weismuller said with a robotic lack of urgency and left the room.

Genevieve felt behind her neck, where her hair no longer was. A red fury raged through her, and she pushed Apple Bottom’s desk violently, knocking her backward. Apple Bottom shrieked, unhurt but tangled under a chair.

“Kill this new bitch,” screamed The Boyfriend to no one.

“No,” said Shane, standing up. “You. Fight me.”

Everybody looked at The Boyfriend. It was clear he didn’t want to do this.

One girl went, “Nope. When Shane starts with his shit, I’m out. Y’all ain’t gonna fuck around and get me suspended right before graduation.” She grabbed her backpack and left.

“Fight me, nigga,” Shane repeated. They were nose-to-nose now. The crowd formed a wide circle around them.

The Boyfriend threw a weak punch, knocking Shane across the nose. Shane folded his arm across his chest. He hit Shane harder. Then Shane whispered something in his ear, causing him to really rear back and crack Shane on the temple. Then the class was shouting “Fuck him up, fuck him up,” and The Boyfriend shoved Shane to the ground, fists flying. Shane’s nose and lip were bleeding, but he didn’t fight back.

“Stop!” Genevieve yelled. “Jesus Christ, Shane, it’s just hair!”

Abruptly, Shane heaved the kid off him and stood up. His breathing was jagged, erratic. And then he lifted up his hurt arm, the one in the cast, and whacked The Boyfriend across the cheekbone, hard, with a sickening thwack. The Boyfriend dropped.

Shane clutched his ravaged arm to his chest, the bone rebroken. He stood there, trembling, gritting his teeth, radiance draining from his skin. Then he shot Genevieve a bloody smile and crumpled to the ground. It was the most terrifying, graceful thing she’d ever seen.

“Someone get help. He’s…”

The last thing Genevieve saw was Apple Bottom’s fist inches from her nose, and then a zillion bright lights.

Six hours later, Genevieve and Shane lay in cots next to each other in a curtain-enclosed space at United Medical Center’s emergency room. They’d been there all day with the school guidance counselor, Ms. Guzman, perched between them in a foldout chair. The Boyfriend was discharged and went home with his grandmother, sporting a fractured cheekbone. Apple Bottom left with her aunt and a bruised shoulder. Shane’s arm was reset with a new cast, and between his upper lip and left eyebrow, he had a total of fourteen stitches. Genevieve got off easiest, with a ghastly black eye and an even ghastlier bob.

She and Shane were suspended, but as seventeen-year-old minors, they couldn’t legally be discharged until a parent or guardian picked them up. Ms. Guzman couldn’t reach Lizette, which was no surprise.

Ms. Guzman couldn’t find Shane’s guardian, either. Apparently, he lived in a foster-kid shelter, and no administrators were reachable.

Now they were just lying there. Waiting. While Ms. Guzman dipped outside for her thirty-seventh smoke break.

Genevieve was in agony. That punch had rattled her brain. The ER docs had treated her bruised eye, but despite her increasingly panicked pleas, they’d given her only Advil for her head. At her pain level, this was as helpful as an M&M.

Shaking badly, she’d curled into a ball, clawing into her forearm with her nails as a distraction.

“Genevieve?” Shane whispered from his cot.

“John-vee-EV,” she groaned, through gritted teeth.

“You good?”

“No.”

She watched him peer out into the hallway and then shut the curtain. He dug in his jeans pocket, yanked out a baggie of pills, and grabbed a Dixie cup of water. He handed both to her.

“Will OxyContin help?”

“Grind it up,” she rasped.

Shane pulled an ATM card (name unknown) from his magic pocket and cut the pills into four lines of chunky powder on a metal medical tray. Gently, he held the tray under her nose, steadying the back of her head with his good hand, and Genevieve sniffed each line. It went down rough but worked fast—the hurt dulling, her face slackening, muscles going gooey. So good. Oxy didn’t kill the pain, just made it so it didn’t matter.

He smoothed her ruined curls from her face. She tucked his hand under her cheek. It belonged there.

“You’re my bestbestbest friend,” she sighed, groggily and goofily.

“Better learn how to pronounce your name, then.”

“Don’t care what you call me,” she slurred. “Just call me.”

Shane smiled. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I know a place. But no one gives a shit where I am. You got parents who do?”

Genevieve thought about Lizette at home, waiting for her daughter to wake her up for her gross job at her disgusting boyfriend’s lounge.

Her answer was obvious.

They walked down the hallway, cool, calm. But the second they hit the exit doors, they linked hands and ran. Wherever Shane was going, she was going, too.