Don't Cosplay with My Heart, page 16
“Did you steal money from our club?” she asks.
“What?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
She hands me the phone, and I scroll through and I see a bunch of posts that have picture snapshots of me shuffling money around in PayPal. Emails to Yuri about giving him cash. Numbers that I’ve never seen before.
And when I look at all of that on paper, I can see that it looks as though I have betrayed SEW.
“No,” I say. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Well, it looks pretty bad,” Kasumi says. “Like you were short on cash and took some for yourself.”
“That’s Yuri,” I say. “He’s the treasurer.”
“He’s not the one making all of these deposits and withdrawals.”
And I realize I have been set up. And I can’t defend myself because I look guilty. And my father’s crime, now public, makes it all the easier to believe that I am like him.
When that happens in a story, it is like whoa. You are telescoped out and you can see it all. But when it happens in your own life, it is completely shocking.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“It wasn’t me,” I say. “I didn’t do this. You know how Yuri has it out for me right now.”
“Yeah, he does, as a stupid boy, but this is dollars and cents. This is real, not just him making stuff up.”
“I didn’t do this,” I say. “Remember at the movies, with the candy, I gave him cash. Maybe he took it? Maybe it didn’t all go in.”
“No, look at these emails,” she says. “These log-ins from your account.”
“I gave him my password to make things easier,” I say. “It wasn’t me.”
“You know me,” I say, appealing to her as my best friend of many years.
“Do I?” she asks. “You didn’t tell me about your dad, and now this?”
And there it is. The thing that I wanted to tell her and should have and didn’t. And now it looks like I have something more to hide.
Then I get a bit angry, but not because I’m mad about it, but because I’ve been so wrapped up in my stuff that I haven’t been paying attention to Kasumi’s stuff.
When Gargantua left the Team Tomorrow fold, she forgot about a lot of things. And even though she thought she was trying to make things better by removing herself from her world, she made things worse.
Maybe if she had ever figured out how to find that one time thread and go back, she wouldn’t have messed things up.
“I wanted to tell you,” I say. “I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”
“You knew my dad was probably affected,” she says. “I cried to you about it. You should have told me.”
I can’t argue with her. She’s right. I wish I had the power to go back to tomorrow and change today.
“I was embarrassed, and when I found out that maybe he’d hurt you, I was mortified.”
“Edan, I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t think I want to hang out with you for the next little while.”
“Come on, Kasumi,” I say. “Don’t freeze me out.”
But it’s like I’m Green Guarder begging Gargantua to not leave. Impossible.
Kasumi looks at me and then closes her eyes slowly. She just stands there, silent with her eyes closed. She’s not even crying, she’s just like a statue. And that is what gets me the most scared, because she’s so calm.
“I’m sorry, Kasumi,” I say. “I’m going to fix this. We’re friends. We’re best friends.”
She snaps her eyes open and looks right at me. Right in me. Right down me. She’s got a superpower in her look; it is the power of thinking you’ve found the truth.
“Don’t call me your best friend anymore,” she says. Then she turns and leaves me standing by myself. I collapse to my smallest state and watch her retreating body.
I messed things up by keeping things from her all this time. I look guilty and I feel guilty even though I’m not guilty.
I’m a girl without a tomorrow. I’m a girl with a bad yesterday. I’m a girl with a terrible now.
Heroes fix their own problems. They shoulder the burden of it and then they attack it head-on, even when the odds are against them. That is what I’ve learned from comic books, so I try to do the same.
When I get to school, I walk tall. I nod hello to everyone who turns away from me. I try not to take it personally when people dash down corridors and turn about-face when they see me.
The first thing I muster up my courage for is to confront Yuri.
I find him outside, playing hoops with some boys.
“Yuri,” I say, trying to keep my voice totally steady, even though I think I’m going to crack. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I don’t talk to criminals.”
“I don’t know what happened and I’m sure there is an explanation,” I say. “I was hoping that we could figure it out together.”
“It’s pretty obvious what happened,” he says. “The evidence doesn’t lie.”
“I didn’t steal any money,” I say. “I wasn’t the treasurer.”
“Are you accusing me?” he says, bouncing the ball so that it bounces right near me. I can feel it whizzing by me. His friends are hanging back, observing. Snickering. I have the distinct feeling I am in an evil lair. It makes me appreciate how brave heroes have to be to go somewhere they know they will be attacked.
“I’m not accusing you,” I say. “I just want to figure it out so that I can repair whatever happened.”
He comes over to me and picks up the ball. He leans in close.
“I don’t help villains,” he says. He turns and bounces the ball in, and the boys start playing, and the conversation is over.
It’s a club day, so I head to the costume room early. I have things prepared that I want to say to the group.
Nadine, Joss, Gwen, and the others start rolling in and they kind of don’t know what to do. I say hello to each one of them. They just go and grab whatever it is that they were working on and take a seat.
Kasumi finally comes in; she’s talking with Sophie and they are both laughing and holding hands. She sees me and stops. Then looks around like she’s looking for someone else. Kasumi is making a big show of not looking at me. It’s weird how not looking at someone is like looking at them.
“Hi,” I say. “I thought that maybe I could address the club since I think there has been a misunderstanding.”
“You can’t be in SEW anymore,” Kasumi says. “We had an emergency club vote.”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” I say. “Can’t there be an inquiry or something?”
As much as my life is going into the toilet, I am not expecting the club to confront me as hard as they do. They are all in various states of costume; it’s like I’m standing in a superhero tribunal.
No one looks up from what they are doing. Joss quietly leaves the room. Everyone is there but Kirk. He seems to be nowhere. Maybe he’s just really good at being invisible. There is a part of me that wants to reach out to him, but also, it hits me. He probably voted against me as well. And he hasn’t tried to reach out to me. I’d rather be alone than desperate. Even though I feel desperate. I’m determined to defend myself.
“It seems as though there has been a misappropriation of club funds,” I say. One or two people look up for a second. I wonder if they think I’m going to confess. I wish I could confess; then at least there would be a way to fix something. But since I didn’t do it, I can’t.
“Where’s the money, Edan?” Gwen asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Yuri is treasurer.”
“He quit the club today,” Kasumi says. “And when I asked him about it, he said that he transferred all the funds to the club account a few weeks ago, but when I checked, the account was empty.”
“He never told me that,” I say.
“It has your signature,” she says, holding up her tablet to show me.
“That’s my name, but not my signature,” I say.
“It is,” she says.
“No, that’s someone’s finger squiggle, but not mine,” I say.
“Look,” Gwen says. “The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“It means that your dad embezzled money,” Kasumi says. “So why wouldn’t you?”
I suck my breath in. This can’t be happening. But it is.
“No,” I say.
“Give us the money back,” Gwen says. “And we can call it a day.”
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I say.
“Then you have to go. We voted to kick you out of the club,” Nadine says. “So you have to go.”
“But it’s my club,” I say.
“That’s the thing; a club is a group, not an individual.”
Everyone in the room is staring at me and not helping me. I look around for any friendly face, but they are all stone cold and hard. I realize that Kirk is not there to lift me up with his secret way of doing, so I’m really there all alone.
“I’m going to straighten this out,” I say.
“Miss Kupferman.” I hear a voice. It’s Mrs. Grant, the club faculty advisor. “You’re going to have to vacate the premises.”
“But I didn’t do what they are accusing me of,” I say. “I want to address the problem.”
She comes up to me and gently leads me out of the costume room.
“You’re going to have to go home,” she says. She looks like she feels bad for me. “We’re already bending the rules by not taking action against you, because of your special difficult circumstances.”
“I know it looks bad,” I say.
There is no solace there. My eyes keep looking around for the missing Kirk. With Kasumi out of the picture, there was only one person who might understand and help me navigate this whole thing, but he’s not around.
I can see Kasumi standing in the doorway, watching what is going on as I am talked to by Mrs. Grant. I wish she would step out and talk to me. I wish she would let me explain how it’s impossible that I did it. Even though I don’t know how to explain it. I wonder if that is how my dad feels? As though he got caught in something bigger than him and now he’s unable to make his way out of it.
I suppose the difference is that he really did something, and I suspect I only accidentally enabled someone to do it. For the very first time, I feel a pang of empathy for the situation he’s in.
I go home because I don’t know what else to do.
My room is my lair. And I feel evil.
“Do you want to skip school and come to the trial with us?” Grandma Jackie asks, coming into my room. She thinks that everything I am being emotional about is because of my dad. And it’s funny, because it is and it isn’t.
“No,” I say. But I don’t want to be at school, either.
My mother and grandmother have been going to the trial every day. I get updates on my phone, which I check constantly when I can at school. The big news this week is that his partners have sold him out. He is taking the fall and it doesn’t look so good. They all have plausible deniability and he has none.
One week turns into two, and then the weeks go by and it feels like the whole thing, my whole life, is crawling by like centuries. I’m only glad that we are creeping closer and closer to summer break so that I can stop feeling miserable on a daily basis. Grandma Jackie is trying to keep everything normal at home despite how south the trial is going. Grandma Jackie and mom are always there when I get home and she has ordered dinner and set the table. My mother is a ghost at the table. Soon she will disappear, she is so translucent. I am a ghost at the lunch table at school. Becoming thinner by the silent treatment I get every day.
Kasumi and I aren’t talking to each other. It’s been weeks now and it feels terrible. We pass each other at school and she just crosses the quad or turns around and heads in another direction.
Brutal.
I tried texting her a few times. To tell her that I didn’t take the club money, but I stop after I hear nothing back, because there is nothing that makes a person look more guilty than overtexting. I have to deal with the fact that no one wants to believe me.
With no Kasumi around, I have no one to tell me that I’m being ridiculous.
Somehow, even though he thinks I did it, I am brave enough to email Kirk the truth. I show him what I found about how Yuri framed me. Even though it looks desperate. I need Kirk to believe me.
But I get no response.
My feeling is that if you confess a big thing to someone, they should at least ping you back. With an acknowledgment. With a got it. Or yeah. Or uh-huh. Or something.
And the silence is the thing that makes me cry the hardest. Like trying still meant there was hope that Kirk would understand.
Then I wonder if I allowed it to happen. If I am guilty by liking Yuri and not following up with him about things that seemed strange. In a way, I let it slide. Like my dad did. He just turned a blind eye and allowed nefarious things to be done and he got caught and is paying for it.
But I know that if I had known, I would have said something. Because I don’t want to be like my dad at all.
It’s like when Gargantua didn’t express her feelings for Green Guarder for that one arc. She bottled it all up and said nothing. And then, when it finally burst out of her, it came out like a violent energy that destroyed things in its path. What could have helped her became something that harmed her.
The worst thing about losing a friend is seeing how great their life is on social media. I read somewhere that we curate our lives online. That we show only our best parts. And how you have to take it all with a grain of salt. Stuff still is going on behind the scenes. People can post a pic of a happy-looking day and have sobbed in the shower. I certainly do it.
The only reason I know that one day Kasumi and I might be friends again is that she did not unfriend me. She did not block me. She may have hidden me. But I’m not unfollowed. Sure, I have no idea if she’s seeing anything that I am doing. Although to be honest, I don’t post much lately. I do an occasional geeky craft project, which nobody likes or comments on. I work on my costume in hopes that I’ll go to San Diego Comic Con. But I don’t really want anyone commenting on my stuff. Or seeing me. I feel as though I am already too exposed.
But I like and heart everything that Kasumi posts. I don’t comment, because that would be crossing some kind of invisible line. But I heart away. Her cute new sweater. Her winning a science award. Her eating ice cream with the other kids from SEW. Her and Sophie holding hands.
I am hit with a wave of happiness because my girl Kasumi has found a girlfriend. And they look cute together. And I wish we could talk about it.
But when I see her latest picture up there, my heart freezes.
It’s her and Sophie dressed up as Magnetic Pole and Lady Bird at the Team Tomorrow Fan Event.
They have their arms around each other like girlfriends. That part makes me happy. It’s the fact that they are holding up Team Tomorrow swag bags. They are smiling big. The caption says, THE PERKS OF HAVING A CINEMATOGRAPHER DAD! A GOLDEN TICKET TO THE TEAM TOMORROW PREMIERE AT SAN DIEGO COMIC CON!
I am overcome with a wave of extreme jealousy. The worst green kind of envy. The worst, most horrible kind of fury. The worst, most ugly kind of thoughts.
That should be me, I think.
But of course it shouldn’t. We aren’t friends right now. Just because I am a bigger fan than either of them, it doesn’t mean that I should be there. The fan event looks fun, and it looks like an anyone-could-have-fun kind of fun. It makes me miss Kasumi. Not for the event. For her.
My cursor hovers over the button. I hesitate. Then I heart it.
Good for her, I think.
And then I cry.
Even Gargantua can’t help me as I shrink.
I hover over my computer to try to get tickets for San Diego Comic Con and I fail. They are sold out within minutes. How are things ever going to get better?
They don’t.
I sit there with my purple hair, depleted. And then later that morning, I’m in the middle of English class when I get the news. A monitor comes in and pulls me out of class and brings me to the office. Like I’m the one in trouble.
When I get to the office, I see that Grandma Jackie is there. I don’t even hear her when she tells me that the verdict came in. My dad got a sentence of fifteen to twenty years. I just take my arms and push everything off of the desk and let it fly to the floor.
Gargantua also has a temper. It is her weakness and her strength.
My grandma tries to restrain me, but I shake her off, so a security guard is called in to hold my arms behind my back because I am writhing. The security guard is not holding me because I’m in trouble, it’s to protect me. And in my fury, I know that they are not upset that I am upset. They are sad that I am so upset. They are saying things to me. “We’ll get you counseling.” “You can stay in here until the end of the day.” “Do you want a glass of water? Or some juice?” “Is there anybody that we can pull out of class to sit with you?”
That’s when I wail. There is no one to sit with me. I just have to sit with myself.
Grandma Jackie puts her arms around me and hugs me really tight.
I have no strength. I am weak. I need help. Even though Grandma Jackie is there with her arms all over me. Blocking me from other people so I have space. Standing in front of me when photographers try to take my picture when my grandma leads me to her car to take me home.
I am in shock.
There is so much paperwork to do when your parent goes to jail.
“Why haven’t you filled out your questionnaire?” my grandmother asks me about the paperwork I have to fill out in order to visit my dad in jail.
“I keep meaning to,” I say. “But schoolwork.”
“It’s been a few weeks now, and you still haven’t visited your father, and you haven’t done what you have to do in order to go,” she says.
