Page 5 of The Snake in the Grass: The Prequel

Lamely, I offered, “Sorry.”

“Oh.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “The great Brenna Wilder issorryshe ran away when the security guard came. Well, I guess if you’ve said the word we’re all good now. Come on into my house and let’s pretend like it never happened.”

There was scorn dripping from every word, so acerbic it made me wince. But I couldn’t back off, couldn’t turn around and walk away. I had to buckle down and face the storm. Whatever she had to give to me, I deserved it, and so much worse.

“I know you’re mad.” This seemed self-evident, but it bore observing out loud. “I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought... I thought even talking about it would just...”

“Explode in your face?” The snort that left her nose was disdainful. “I guess you’re not exactly used to disagreements repairing things. Your family isn’t really experienced in conflict resolution.”

Unlike most of my friends, Jade knew everything. She’d been there during the late nights when I curled around myself and cried; hers was the house I ran too, back when I was still in the habit of running. There was no sugar-coating Silas’s bruises or the dark circles under my eyes. Jade knew all of it, every dirty secret the Wilder family held close to their chest, and my father hated her for it.

“Maybe you can teach me.”

“Maybe I can,” she acquiesced. “And maybe I could stand to hear you apologize a few more times.”

“I’m sorry, so sorry, really very sorry.” Biting my lip, I stared up at her and asked, “Can I come in?”

In response, she stepped into the cool shadows of the air-conditioned house and left the door yawning wide behind her.

It was an invitation, not just into her house but back into her heart. I approached it with the reverence it deserved, taking the stairs one at a time and staring hopefully into the depths of the reborn house, certain that I’d find salvation within those four walls.

“Do you want lemonade?” Jade called from the kitchen, trusting me to waltz in and close the door behind me. “The trees out back are dripping with lemons, and Mom won’t stop juicing them. We have enough to whet the thirst of a whole football team.”

“I’ll have a glass.” I followed her into the kitchen, which was wallpapered with a feminine floral pattern that I knew was bought in the past decade but still looked like it came out of a 1970s Home & Garden magazine. “Is your mom around?”

“She has a shift down at the diner.” Jade eyed me as she poured two tall glasses of lemonade from a pitcher fresh from the fridge. “You picked a perfect moment to come over. I’m sure if she were home she’d box your ears.”

I winced at the thought. “She’s that mad?”

Jade made an indelicate noise that was half-snort, half-laugh. “I’ve spent the last three weeks picking up trash on the side of the road in full view of all the PTA parents and half the rest of the city. Of course she’s mad. She thinks you should be standing right there beside me.” She slid one of the glasses in my direction. “And you would be, if you weren’t the world’s greatest coward.”

I swallowed a too-big mouthful of the sour-sweet lemonade. “I resemble that remark. And a whole lot of others beside it. But Iamsorry, Jade. I didn’t think that it would become a whole big thing.”

“Yeah, well, you live on the other side of the levees,” she pointed out. Unsaid beneath her sentence was:You’re a white girl, and I’m a black girl.“The rules are different for you. If they’d caught us together, I bet we both would’ve had ten hours max. Instead I got a hundred all by myself. It’ll be a miracle if I finish them before school starts up.”

I winced, swallowing the instinct to apologize again. I knew it wouldn’t help. “You’re right, I’m sure.” The glass sweated against my hand. “Is there anything I can do? Other than perform hara-kiri.”

“I have a sword,” Jade said menacingly. “I’m sure you could disembowel yourself if you found sufficient motivation. Yukio Mishima committed seppuku, after all, and he almost won a Nobel Prize. You haven’t achieved nearly so much.”

“There’s that lit fic talk again.” I stared at her with wide, mournful eyes. “Next thing you know, you’ll be saying ‘ain’t’ ain’t a word, and correcting all our grammar. What’s next—Yale? Harvard? NYU?”

Jade laughed, the sound a balm to my injured soul. “If I go to an ivy league school I’ll never see you again.” Tapping her chin, she added mischievously, “Though maybe Silas and I will get into one together. And of the Wilder twins, he’s the one most likely to give me a happily ever after.”

I glowered at her. “That’s like, a step away from incest.”

“Is it?” She widened her eyes, all faux innocence. “Because my melanin check tells me you and I don’t have a drop of blood in common.” Jade stretched her arm across the kitchen counter and pushed it against mine, her brown skin a contrast to my deathly pale. “Pretty sure Silas and I can get down and dirty without our kids getting hemophilia.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Gross and grosser.”

We laughed together, and drank lemonade together. After a long, happy moment, I sobered up and asked her, “Do you forgive me? Can you forgive me? I never thought you’d get arrested.”

“I know.” She studied my face. “But, Brenna, you have to understand that the rules are different for you and me. What gets you a reprimand gets me hours of community service. We live on opposite sides of the river for a reason, and those reasons didn’t die with our grandparents.” Motioning towards her arm, she added, “Melanin.”

I nodded my head in acceptance, the bitter truth settling inside me the way adulthood tends to. It felt like growing up, and I didn’t like it at all, even though I knew I had to—just like Jade. “Next time I’ll stand right beside you when the hopped-up power-tripping security guard gets his cuffs out, and they’ll have to deal with the both of us together.”

Jade snorted. “Thanks, but I’d rather there never be a next time. No more stealing lip liner and ponytail holders for me. We’re not that far from being eighteen and graduating from high school. One way or another we’ve got to face adulthood together.”

I didn’t like the way that sounded, as true as it was. So I busied myself with drinking Jade’s mom’s lemonade, and then I dragged her to the living room and made her binge watch the latest streaming show with me, our mouths opening wide with incredulous laughter.

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