Audre & Bash Are Just Friends(8)

Audre blinked several times. “But… but… I have an internship at a Malibu mental health clinic. They chose me over two hundred candidates.”

“I know you’re disappointed. But guess what? You’re getting a baby brother!”

Audre didn’t hear that last part. She’d turned to stone.





Chapter 4


Bash Henry’s party was already out of control. Some kid had to be Ubered to the ER when a weed gummy got lodged in his ear canal. Two unknown girls were brawling on the kitchen floor over Chance Cross, who was in a corner sexting his camp girlfriend. Oddly, someone had stabbed a potted cactus with a huge steak knife—and left it sticking morbidly out of the plant. It was 6 PM. The sun hadn’t even set yet.

Technically, it was Bash’s party. But he wasn’t there. He was outside of it. For the past thirty minutes, he’d been sitting on the stoop of his mom’s luxury apartment building that overlooked Prospect Park. The party had become too rowdy for him. So now, he was leaning back on his elbows, disassociating, and trying not to doze off behind his sunglasses.

“You know what your problem is? You’re stubborn as hell,” said Clio Rhodes, who was perched next to him. “It’ll be your downfall.”

“My downfall already happened,” Bash pointed out with a faint smile. He didn’t feel like debating his stubbornness right now. But he also didn’t want to be rude to Clio. He always tried to maintain an agreeable, friendly attitude—no matter how he was feeling on the inside.

“What happened to you wasn’t a downfall,” said Clio. “It was a setback.”

“A setback suggests you still have options,” reasoned Bash. “Like when you want chips but the bodega’s closed. Sucks, but there’s always DoorDash.”

“But you do have options.”

With a groan, Bash slid his sunglasses up into his overgrown curls. He began counting off his issues on his fingers. “My dad disowned me. So, I had to relocate to Brooklyn in February of my senior year. To live with my mother, a virtual stranger.” He chuckled lightly, shaking his head. “There’s no DoorDash to order a new past.” He paused. “That’d be a fire app, though.”

“You need to call your dad.” Clio took a drag from her vape and offered it to Bash. He shook his head. He was high enough.

“I need a nap.”

“If you don’t make things right with him, you’ll regret it. I know you, Bash. You’re a softie. I know it’s killing you.”

This conversation was killing him.

How did I get here? he wondered to himself, hearing a loud crash through his mom’s second-floor window. Was that the vase or the chandelier? Who even are these rich-ass kids? What would make someone who has everything go to a stranger’s house and stab a cactus? And am I perversely thrilled by this ’cause it’s something I’d never do? At what point did I get uncomfortably high? When can I go home? Where even is home?

That was the problem. He had no home. He was currently living in his mom’s home, but it certainly wasn’t his home.

Bash Henry didn’t belong anywhere.

And right now, he really wanted to be alone. But if he had to be in the presence of anyone, he was glad it was Clio. His favorite person. She was eleven months older than Bash, but she’d always been light-years ahead of him, maturity-wise. They’d connected on Instagram years ago, and it was cool that they were finally in the same place. (She lived in Queens, and he’d lived on the West Coast, so they’d only spoken through FaceTime and texts before he moved to New York.) Clio was the only person who knew him before his life imploded. Before he had to leave everything behind. Before he’d become Brooklyn private school gossip fodder.

The kids upstairs at the party? They pretended to be cool with Bash but then turned around and spread over-the-top lies about him. The latest rumor was that he was a drug dealer. At the Nitehawk movie theater, he’d overheard some girl saying he’d sold shrooms to a Midwood High kid (Kyle? Kai?), which unfortunately led to him having a psychotic break on the B69 bus. Yes, Bash did sell him the shrooms, but not because he was a drug dealer. He worked at a novelty gift shop that had a license to sell shroom-infused chocolates!

No one bothered to ask his side of the story.

Rumors were annoying, but truthfully? There was a safety in realizing that no one knew the real him. It was like hiding in plain sight. So, he let the gossip fly. He had no intention of staying in Brooklyn past the summer.

Bash couldn’t have stopped the rumors anyway. Without trying, he’d always pulled attention. In his experience, Black and brown kids always stood out at elite private schools. Especially when they were new. And especially when they were new, tall, tatted, and carried themselves with the “self-assured swagger and grace of a nationally ranked track star” (as LA Times sports reporter Jerome Radke had written about him back in November ’23).

But no one in Brooklyn knew about his track and field stats. He never mentioned his past. He couldn’t talk about it without mentioning his dad, Milton. And at the thought of Milton, a veil of darkness cloaked him. He was terrifying.

Good or bad, though, Milton was the only parent Bash knew. He had raised him since he was a baby. It was crazy to think about the turn his life had taken. Now, his sole guardian was a woman who gave him up when he was in diapers.