But the more I pulled away, the steadier he became.
Ocean had made a choice, and he was so willing to stand by that choice that it made everyone angrier. He was alienated by his friends and he shrugged it off; his coach kept harassing him about me and he ignored it.
I think it was that he showed them no loyalty—that he seemed to care so little about the opinions of people he’d known for far longer than he’d ever known me—that finally pissed them off so much.
It was the middle of December, a week before winter break, when it all got really ugly.
It was just a prank, in the end.
It was a stupid prank. Someone had wanted to mess with Ocean and the whole thing spun so far out of control it threw our entire world off its axis.
Some anonymous person hacked into the computer systems and sent out a mass email to the entire school district’s database. All the students and teachers in the entire county—even the parents who were on school mailing lists—got this email. The note was terrible. And it wasn’t even about me. It was about Ocean.
It accused him of supporting terrorism, of being anti-American, of believing it was okay to kill innocent people because he wanted access to seventy-two virgins. It called for him to be kicked off the team. It said that he was a poor representative of his hometown and a disgrace to the veterans who supported their games. The note called him horrible names. And the thing that made it even worse, of course, was that there was a picture of the two of us holding hands at school. Here was proof, it seemed to say, that he’d made friends with the enemy.
The school started getting angry calls. Letters. Horrified parents were demanding an explanation, a hearing, a town hall meeting. I never knew people could care so much about the dramas surrounding high school basketball, but holy hell, it was apparently a very big deal. Ocean Desmond James was a very big deal, it turned out, and I don’t think even he’d realized just how much until any of this happened.
Still, it wasn’t hard for me to understand how we got here. I’d been expecting it. I’d been dreading it. But it was so hard for Ocean to stomach that the world was filled with such awful people. I tried to tell him that the bigots and the racists had always been there, and he said he’d honestly never seen them like this, that he never thought they could be like this, and I said yes, I know. I said that’s how privilege works.
He was stunned.
We’d run out of places to find privacy—even just to talk about all that had transpired. We talked at night, of course, but we rarely had a chance to connect during the day, in person. The school was still so abuzz with all this bullshit that I couldn’t even stop to speak to him in the halls anymore. Every class was an ordeal. Even the teachers looked a little freaked out. Only Mr. Jordan seemed sympathetic, but I knew there wasn’t much he could do. And every day people I’d never once made eye contact with would lean over and say things to me when I took my seat.
“What does he have to do, exactly, to get the seventy-two virgins?”
“Isn’t it against your religion to date white guys?”
“So are you, like, related to Saddam Hussein?”
“Why are you even here, if you hate America so much?”
I told them all to fuck off, but it was like a game of Whac-a-Mole. They just kept coming back.
Ocean blew off basketball practice one afternoon so that we could finally find a moment alone together. His coach was suddenly drowning the team in extra, unnecessary practices, and Ocean said it was because his coach was trying to keep him busy—that he was trying to keep the two of us apart. I knew that Ocean’s decision to ditch practice would probably blow up in both our faces, but I was also grateful for the moment of peace. I’d been dying to see him, to speak to him in person and see for myself that he was okay.
We were sitting in his car in the parking lot at IHOP.
Ocean rested his head against the window, his eyes squeezed shut, as he told me about the most recent development in this shitstorm. His coach had been begging him to make the whole thing go away, and he’d said it would be easy: the school would issue a statement saying it was a stupid hoax, that the whole thing was nonsense, no big deal. Done.
I frowned.
Ocean looked upset, but I couldn’t understand why. This didn’t seem like a terrible idea. “That actually sounds like a great solution,” I said. “It’s so simple.”
Ocean laughed then, but there was no life in it. And he finally met my eyes when he said, “In order for the statement to stick, I can’t be seen with you anymore.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “Oh,” I said.
In fact, it would be best, his coach had said, if Ocean were never publicly associated with me in any way, ever again. There was already school drama circling the two of us, and now this, the picture of us together, he said, was just too much. It was too political. All major news outlets seemed to indicate that we were about to go to war with Iraq, and the news cycle, though always insane, had been perhaps especially insane lately. Everyone was on edge. Everything was so sensitive. Ocean’s coach wanted to tell everyone that the photo of us together was just another part of the prank, that it had been photoshopped, but this explanation would only have been believable if Ocean also promised to stop spending time with me. There could be no more photos of the two of us together.
“Oh,” I said again.
“Yeah.” Ocean looked exhausted. He ran both hands through his hair.
“So, do you”—I took a quick, painful breath—“I mean—I’d understand if y—”
“No.” Ocean sat up, looked suddenly panicked. “No—no, hell no, fuck him, fuck all of them, I don’t care—”
“But—”
He was shaking his head, hard. “No,” he said again. He was staring at me in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’d even— No, it’s not even a discussion. I told him to go to hell.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I felt anger and heartbreak and even, suddenly, an immeasurable swell of joy, all in the same moment. It seemed impossible to know which emotion to follow, which one would lead me to the right decision. I knew that just because I wanted to be with Ocean didn’t mean it would—or should—work out that way.
And my thoughts must’ve been easy to read, because Ocean leaned in and took my hands. “Hey, this isn’t a big deal, okay? It seems like a big deal right now, but I swear this will blow over. None of this matters. They don’t matter. This doesn’t change anything for me.”
But I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t care. I really don’t. I don’t care if they cut me from the team. I don’t care about any of it. I never have.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. But I’d have been lying if I said I didn’t think my presence in his life had only made things worse for him.
He didn’t care.
But I did.
I cared. Things had been snowballing, fast, and I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t scared anymore. I cared that Ocean was about to be blacklisted by everyone in this town. I cared about his prospects. I cared about his future. I told him that if they cut him from the team he’d lose his chance at getting a basketball scholarship, and he told me not to worry about it, that he didn’t even need the scholarship, that his mom had set aside some of her inheritance to pay for college.
Still, it bothered me.
I cared.
I was shaking my head, staring into my open hands when he touched my cheek. I looked up. His eyes were anguished.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Don’t do this, okay? Don’t give up on me. I’m not going anywhere.”
I felt paralyzed.
I didn’t know what to do. My gut said walk away. Let him live his life. Even Navid told me that things had gone too far, that I should break things off.
And then, the next day, Coach Hart cornered me.
I should’ve known better than to talk to him alone, but he caught me in a crowd and managed to bully me, loudly, into coming into his office. He swore he just wanted to have a friendly chat about the situation, but the minute I stepped inside he started shouting at me.