Love Edy

Love Edy

by Shewanda Pugh

Copyright 2014 Shewanda Pugh

Smashwords Edition

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Dedication

For Caleb, who renews me daily

“
Whatever our souls are made of,

his and mine are the same.”

Emily Brontë

One

Friday night. The sky hung heavy, seamless,
with heaven’s stars blotted out by overbearing skyscrapers. Shrieks
and a cacophony of cheers rang out, hysteria supreme in a
microscopic stadium rocking on the edge of Boston’s South End. Thin
and buckling bleachers rattled with the stomps of impending mania,
shrill whistles and hefty shouts: those were the true sounds of
redemption. Fourteen years and not a single touchdown against
Madison High; fourteen years, but no more.

It had come at the hands of a freshman
running back who couldn’t stop moving, a last-minute, fidgeting
substitution. To others, his appearance must have seemed a
concession, but Edy Phelps knew better. Edy Phelps knew
him
better.

He was hunger and discipline, jittery and
ravenous, so rattled that nerves kept him shifting and stretching
and pacing along the sidelines. Obsession fueled him, and kept him
keen on an opportunity unwilling to come. Except that night,
chance
came to Hassan Pradhan. His chance. Finally.

It happened in a breath. A snap of the ball.
A fake pass and Hassan thundered downfield at a speed only fear
could sustain. His moment. His only moment. Take it. Take it. Run.
Fly.

He could hear
her
thoughts—no,
feel
her thoughts. Edy was sure of it. They’d always had a
connection. And it was in that way she aided him. Fists pressed to
her lips, teeth slammed together, screaming with her soul.
Soar.
I know you can do it.

Just as the clock whittled to nothing,
Hassan vaulted into the end zone.

A collective roar swallowed Edy and the
crowd leapt as one. A win. Few would recall the last.

On her left, Hassan’s parents cheered:
mother in a starched linen suit and pumps too prim for a game,
father in a white button-up, belly pressing the fabric, sleeves
rolled to the elbow. His mother, Rani, was without the brilliant
red bindi she couldn’t do without, giving her forehead that naked
look. On Edy’s opposite end were her parents, their absolute best
friends, in the long-sleeved alumni tees reserved for football
season, mother free of the skirt suits that dictated her days. Edy
abandoned them all for the sidelines, for Hassan. She weaved round
patches of shrieking upperclassmen, hopped over rows of empty
benches, apologized to the fat man whose cocoa she sloshed, and
ignored the slice of a sudden, early winter wind.

He’d done it.

All those nights, all those talks, round and
round about the possibility of getting in a game, the two of them
in bedroom shadows, careful to keep their voices low. Some nights
he thought a chance would never come; others, he insisted it had
to. Either way, he always said that if it did,
when
it did,
he would do something worth remembering. And he had.

At the sidelines, Edy’s gaze swept a team
clustered so thick, so honeyed together with the sweetness of
victory, that she worried she might never find her neighbor, her
best friend.

Ice cut the air, and the glare of stadium
lights had her like an ant under a magnifying glass in the noonday
sun. She remembered the way the Dyson twins would burn insects and
snicker, and she thought no, she’d be hot if she were a tortured
ant, not cold. The fog of her breath seconded her motion.

She spotted him.

Edy had come to hug someone already
occupied, someone surrounded by sweeping blonde curls, dark
curtains of perfect hair, nestled by an endless supply of short
skirts. Hassan draped an easy arm around a cheerleader with
shimmering flaxen locks, mouth curling into a grin when a brunette
of with pouty lips cried foul and claimed him as her own. Soft tans
and the curves of certain womanhood donned them both. Edy looked
from them to her own angular body and knew what she would find: all
edges and sharpness, slender, muscles sculpted from a life of
dance. The baggy jeans, football jersey, and sloppy poof of a
ponytail she wore didn’t give her much to run with either. That
hair used to be the brunt of Hassan’s endless jokes. Big enough to
tip you back,” he’d say, before tugging it in absentminded
affection. She fingered that hair with the same sort of absent-
-mindedness, before looking up to see a blonde plant rosy lips on
Hassan’s cheek.

Ugh.

Edy didn’t care about the movies, the books,
the popular culture that insisted football player and cheerleader,
jock and pretty girl, were a natural sort of fit. It wasn’t.
They
weren’t. It absolutely couldn’t be.

A girl like that couldn’t understand what
made him
him
. So what if he was . . . obscenely gorgeous,
with sun-licked bronze skin, silken black locks, and eyes an
ever-glimmering, gold-flecked green. He had a quiet sort of beauty,
made for old Greek sculptures and timeless works of art. Not that
he was quiet.
He
was explosive, with good looks and
athleticism. But beyond that were pleasures and disappointments,
what he loved and could not bear. Imprinted on Edy’s mind were the
crinkles at the corner of Hassan’s eyes when he smiled, the clench
of his jaw when irritation set in, the rich and sonorous laugh that
had slipped octaves lower in recent years. A girl like that blonde
could be nothing to him—could know nothing
of
him. She knew
a moment and a touchdown. That was it.

Edy’s hands made fists.

The blonde moved in to kiss his cheek again,
just as a teammate shouted his name. Hassan jerked back, only to be
caught at the corner of his mouth by her lips.

A whoop rang out from the guys.

Heat flushed Edy’s veins and her fingernails
dug, digging, digging, until tears blurred her vision.

Wait.

He was her best friend, family really, if
you considered the way they were brought up. So, she really had no
reason to—

The blonde threw her arms around Hassan. The
team swarmed and the two disappeared from sight.

They were kissing, weren’t they?

Edy closed her eyes, forcing back the
hottest tears and the bitterest taste of sudden envy.

She loved him.
Dear God, she loved
her best friend.

It fell down on her at once, uncompromising
truth and the weight of reality like a cloak too heavy to bear.

The boy that had grown by her side, promised
to another in a tradition as old as marriage itself, another girl
of his ethnicity, religion, beliefs: that’s the boy she loved. A
single line existed between Edy’s family and his, between the
Pradhans and Phelps, who otherwise acted as one.

But Edy loved him.

And, of course, there was no recourse for
that.

Two

Friday night. Three weeks since the Madison
win, two hours since annihilating Charlestown. Another victory at
Hassan’s hands. Time to celebrate, Edy supposed.

Edy slipped the door of her home library
closed behind her, tucked their oversized family medical guide
under her arm, and gripped the front of her fuzzy pink terry robe
in a fist. Her gaze swept left, then right, before dashing straight
to her bedroom—a short scurry down the hall and up the stairs. She
had minutes to spare before the party, maybe less.

Once inside, she locked the door and tossed
the book onto her bed, joining it with a bounce. Edy flipped to
Chapter Sixteen, “Sexual Development and Puberty,” and took a deep
breath, then another.

Moments ago, she thought she’d felt a small,
tender lump while thumbing around in the shower. It should have
been the first sign of breast development, but at fourteen, she’d
jetted a full four years past the average age for debut. So she
aimed to look now, with a pseudo instruction manual in sight. Edy
patted her chest; thumbed, jabbed, grunted, and let her arms drop
in defeat.

Nothing.
Flat as a freaking
tortilla.

Seven signs of puberty existed, six of them
absent in her. Edy’s chocolate skin ran smooth and hairless, her
body curve-less and acne-free. She had no period to speak of and
were it not for her distinct need to double up on Secret
antiperspirant before ballet, she’d swear herself relegated to
childhood forever.

Edy sat up and folded her legs Indian
style—
Native American style?—
on her bed, frowning at a
diagram claiming to be her insides. Since ten, she’d been squinting
at books like this, books that told her first to be patient and
later that something had to be wrong. Girls began puberty at ten or
twelve, finishing at sixteen, seventeen at the latest. Even if she
did begin that year, the year she’d turn fifteen, it would mean
she’d still be developing at twenty or twenty-one according to the
pace of these charts. Was it possible? Or was she broken, faulty in
some way?

Edy took a peek at her body. Stuffing her
bra could be an option. If she didn’t move around much, it might
hold. Chloe Castillo had stuffed her bra for close to a year,
stopping only when breasts grew instead. In doing so, she’d left
Edy as the only girl in the ninth grade with a washboard chest and
hips as attractive as a spine. When coupled with owlish brown eyes
and only the slightest swell of a bottom, she wasn’t exactly runway
material.

The bedroom door rattled and Edy started.
Heart athump, she chucked the book under her bed, turned a circle
in search of clothes and squeaked at the sound of Hassan Pradhan’s
bark.

“You walk in four minutes! Twins said it, so
you know it means three.”

Edy jumped into matchstick jeans, struggled
into an unassuming white turtleneck, and cracked the door open with
forced indifference. Hassan raised a brow at the creak she made,
paused, and then nudged the door further with two fingers.

“We lock doors now?” he said.

No. Yes.
Definitely yes
.

He pointed a finger at her chest.

“Something on your shirt,” he said.

Edy shook her head, slow. No way. She knew
the trick. Knew it well.

“Really,” he insisted. “It’s right
there.”

She refused to look down. Nothing could be
there and both of them knew what would happen if she did hazard a
glance.

“Fine.” He laughed. “Go out looking like
that. Don’t stand near me.”

And he turned for the stairs, giving her an
inkling of opportunity.

She looked and Hassan snapped back, faster
than the thought that followed, the one telling her she knew
better. Even as the laugh burst from her, his finger snapped up,
zipping over her chin, mouth, and nose before flicking the space
between her eyes with its dampness.

He whirled for the stairs, dismissing her as
a non-threat, only to have her foot plow squarely into his
backside. Hassan stumbled for a stair or two, grabbed the railing,
and broke his fall.

He turned back to face her. “You lock the
door on me again and I’ll tell you kicked me.”

With Edy’s pacifist father the threat had
serious consequences—if he meant it, which he didn’t. Never mind
that Hassan elected to take pummelings on the football field far
more severe than any her dancer’s foot could render. Telling her
father she’d hit him meant enduring hours of him reading aloud
about the philosophical beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther,
Jesus, and Henry David Thoreau.

Satisfied at having reprimanded her, Hassan
bounded downstairs, down stairs he’d chased her endlessly on,
everyday, since learning to walk. His shoulders were broader than
she ever thought possible, back straight, waist wasp narrow. At
fifteen, he stood eye-to-eye with his father and a head above her,
body hard, and kept by the assurance of athletic grace.

He ran a hand through limp black hair, damp
and clinging to perfect skin.

Edy exhaled and hurried after him.

Downstairs, they threw her father a pair of
cursory hand waves. He rose from his favorite arm chair to hurl an
avalanche of restrictions meant for them both. They ranged from
returning home at a respectable time to resisting the urge to
sample ecstasy, heroin, and cocaine. When Hassan scoffed at the
latter, her father followed them, all the while citing a recent
Columbia University study that said one in three teens would have
the opportunity to sample drugs at a party.