Authors: David Levithan
Ryan is waiting just outside the doorway, just out of Mr. Peterson’s line of sight. He looks eager to see me. And, despite everything that happened Saturday night, this eagerness makes all my hopes feel a little more justified.
“Well well well,” he says, smiling and shaking his head. “It looks like both of us had nights to remember.”
If he were just my friend, I would smile back at this. I would be curious. I would want to know everything.
But I don’t want to know what he means. And I can’t think of any way to tell him that.
From the direction he starts walking, I know we’re headed to the cafeteria, not the library.
“Taylor told me—he said that when he saw you dancing on the bar like that, he knew you’d have no problem finding some trouble. I was a little worried, when I saw you weren’t in the club anymore, but he told me you’d be fine. And then, you know, he was kissing me, and I didn’t worry as much.”
“Taylor was the one with the tattoos?” I find myself asking.
Ryan nods. “Yeah. Some you could see. And some weren’t apparent until … later.”
I don’t want to know what this means. I have to know, but I don’t.
“But holy shit, me getting to know Taylor is nothing compared to you partying it up at the Facetime Mansion. Do you know how many of my favorite authors hang out there? Please tell me Zadie Smith spilled her drink all over you.”
I try to give him my best Mona Lisa Smile. His question, in my mind, doesn’t count as asking. He’s not asking to hear about me. He’s asking to hear something that would reflect back on him.
We’re at the cafeteria now, but instead of going outside like we usually do, he steers us to a table. No one is around, except the staff starting to put lunch together.
“I have to tell you, Taylor was awesome,” he says as he sits down—but not before double-checking that even the lunch ladies can’t hear us. “I promised him I’ll be there for the real Pride Week festivities, now that kickoff is over. So we have to go back. It is absolutely imperative that we go back.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” I say.
“I owe you my life for covering for me. I don’t know what you told your mom, but it worked—she didn’t rat me out. I didn’t get home until about three o’clock on Sunday, and I was sure my mom was going to be waiting in the front room with this huge magnet, and she’d make me watch as she fried my phone and my laptop. Or she’d make me read only James Patterson until I left for college. Something really cruel like that. But she wasn’t even home! She’d left me a note—
Hope you and Mark had a good night.
I’ll say we did!”
He is happy for me. I remind myself that he is happy for me.
The first time something happened between us, I wasn’t expecting it. We were in his basement, playing some game that was half racing and half mortal combat. I was handing his ass to him, and he wasn’t taking it too well. The bloodshed on the screen started to spread into the room. I’d slam his vehicle into a ditch and he’d poke me in the ribs. I’d crash into his vehicle’s side and he would use his body to crash back into me. Finally, the fifth or sixth time this happened, I threw down my controller and attacked full on. Laughing and shoving, ducking and pushing and yelling out hyperbolic threats. Before I knew it, we were rolling on the floor, and he was on top of me, and we were still laughing, but there was also something serious in the way he was looking at me, and something serious in the way I was feeling that look. He had me pinned, and then he eased up a little, settled down a little. And now it was something else. I had wanted it for a long time but had never imagined I would get it. I kissed him first—I know I kissed him first—but it didn’t feel like I was kissing him first, because I was only confirming what I had already seen, what I suddenly knew. We kissed, and it was awkward afterwards, awkward when we were sitting up again, awkward when our minds had to give what we were doing a name. I thought it was the end of the world, but it wasn’t. I thought it was the start of the world, but it wasn’t. Instead it was an introduction to the halfway world where we’d spend the next two years.
And now … he’s so excited, he’s practically beaming that we didn’t get caught, and I don’t want him to be happy for me.
I want him to be happy
with
me.
But I don’t know how to get there. I’ve never known how to get there.
“I swear,” he goes on, “I had no idea how much fun that was going to be. Leave this place behind and try something else on for size. Or some
one
else, ha ha. You know how I am. More than anyone, you know how I am. So I’m sure you can appreciate it when I tell you that you have one hundred percent won me over.”
“To what?” I ask.
“To adventure! To the city! To
pride,
ha ha.”
I know I should be asking him more about his night. But the best I can do is, “So you told Taylor you were in college?”
“Nope. I told him the truth. How weird is that? And even weirder? He skipped kindergarten, so he’s only a year older than me. Not that he was looking for someone from high school. Honestly, I think he made his approach partly because he saw me with you and was sure you had to be in college to be on the bar like that. You wild man, you.”
He’s being playful, even appreciative. But it feels just as crummy as snarkiness would.
“You know what?” I tell him. “I almost forgot. I actually have to go to the library. For this report. About Sylvia Plath.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll have a Plathora of material for you,” he says. I get up, but he doesn’t do the same.
“You coming?” I ask. I still want to be with him. I just don’t want to be talking about his weekend right now.
“Nah,” he says, taking out his phone. “I’m going to stay here and chat a little with Taylor. He was texting me during first period, but Ms. Gold’s ruthless when it comes to phones in her class.”
I should leave him to it. It shouldn’t really matter. But it matters. Some pride in me won’t allow me to pretend it doesn’t.
“So are you two, like, together now?” I ask.
He raises an eyebrow. “Because we’re texting? Are you with Katie Cleary now because you went to a party together? It is what it is, and I don’t know what it is yet. I’m just trying to get to the point where I see if I can find out. ’Til then, it’s just flirting.”
“And what about us? Do we just stop?”
He looks at me, genuinely mystified, and says, “Stop what?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Never mind.”
I walk away before I can say anything else. I wanted him to be the jealous one. But now I’m the jealous one. The jealous and confused one.
I head to the library because I can’t think of anywhere else to go. I wish I knew where Katie was. I wish there was a way I could text Ryan and have him be as excited by that text as he’d be by one from Taylor.
Dave Hughes, a guy from the team, sees me walk into the library and waves me over. I wonder if he’s going to ask me about the party and the mansion, but it ends up he’s just being friendly. He asks me how my weekend was. I tell him it was fine. He clears off some of his stuff so I can sit down. I put my head down and try to sleep.
“Good ol’ Monday morning,” Dave says.
I nod on the desk.
“It’s gonna get better,” he tells me. Because that’s what people say.
I am already mapping out the rest of the day. Usually lunch would be the next significant part, because that would be the next time I’d see Ryan. But now I’m not sure. I’m thinking I should skip it. I wish Katie had the same lunch period as me. But I’m going to have to wait until sixth period to see her.
I hope she’ll have better news than I do.
Kate
When we were little kids, Lehna and I painted a mural in my garage. It’s a fairy-tale scene, a little too Disney for my taste now. There are towers and dragons and a multitude of girls with long hair. There’s a prince, but I swear the prince is really a girl in disguise. I’ve never seen such a delicate boy. In the sky, hovering over a castle, is my name. On the other side, over one of the dragons, is Lehna’s. It’s that simple. No
and,
no
friends forever
. Just this:
KATIE LEHNA
Right now—as I stand in front of my locker knowing that Lehna will show up at hers any second and that when she does we’ll have to either look at each other for the first time since I drove away or, even worse,
not
look at each other—I think of all the tiny details we painted. The rings on the fingers of the princesses. The scales on the bodies of the dragons. So many rays of the sun, and so many blades of grass, and so many tiny pairs of shoes that hover above the ground because we didn’t want the colors to mix or smudge.
I spent most of yesterday in the garage, staring at it. I had to move all these boxes and plastic bins away from the wall so that I had a clear view. My parents had no idea what I was doing. They kept walking past the open garage door and pretending not to look in, maybe hoping I’d taken on an epic task of organization, only to discover that I was sitting on a bin of Christmas decorations, staring at a wall.
I took a break for lunch. Ate a sandwich in the driveway in the sun.
At around three, my mom came in carrying her laptop.
“Aunt Gina just called. Your photo is on
The Daily Dish
! It’s not
of
you—don’t get too excited—but you’re in the background.”
She kept holding the laptop out, trying to show me, but there were so many boxes between us that eventually she just held up the computer and pointed. The screen was at the wrong angle. I couldn’t see anything, let alone myself.
I smiled.
“Cool,” I said.
And then I turned back to our mural, unsure of what I was hoping to find there.
And now, here is Lehna, spinning her combination next to me.
“You wanted to see me?” she asks, because just as we both know she has History next period and that tome necessitates a trip to her locker, we also know that I have Volleyball and need precisely nothing from mine.
I nod, but she isn’t looking.
“So what do you want to say?”
My mind is blank.
“Did you see me in
The Daily Dish
?” I ask, without meaning to.
She slams shut her locker and narrows her eyes at me.
“I mean, it doesn’t really matter. The picture wasn’t even supposed to be of me. I didn’t actually even see it; I just wondered…”
She looks past me, down the hall.
“I have to go. Class starts in, like, two seconds and I need to text Candace.”
“Candace!” I say. “So what happened? I can’t believe I forgot.”
“I can,” she says.
“Lehna,” I say. “Really. Can’t we just get over whatever this is? I want to hear about Candace.”
“I really have to go. I can tell you at lunch. Unless, of course, you’re going to be hanging out with your new best friend.”
“Mark isn’t in our lunch period,” I say, which I guess is the wrong response, because Lehna shakes her head and stomps down the hall with such finality that I don’t even consider going after her.
* * *
On my way to the gym I see Ryan leaving the teachers’ lounge, carrying a stack of literary magazines.
“Last issue of the year,” I say, catching a glimpse of the cover. I recognize the work of Elsa, a quiet girl in my AP Studio Art class who makes intricate collages.
“Oh wow,” Ryan says. “I’m no longer invisible.”
I laugh and continue walking, but he stops me.
“Hey, um, actually…”
And I know where he’s going to go with this, and I realize there was a scenario Mark and I didn’t plan for.
We know that we aren’t going to volunteer information about Saturday night unless Ryan and Lehna ask us directly. But we were assuming that Ryan would ask
Mark,
that Lehna would ask
me
. What do I do if the reverse happens? I am not good with quick decision making. I’m much better at obsessing for so long over a decision that the answer becomes irrelevant.
“Did Mark say anything about writing an essay on Sylvia Plath?”
“Oh,” I say, confused. “An essay? It’s a little late in the year, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” he says. “At first I was like,
Yeah, Sylvia Plath puns!
But then last period I thought,
Wait a second. It’s review week. No one’s writing essays.
”
I shrug. “You probably just misunderstood.”
“Probably,” he says, but I can tell he’s unconvinced.
“All right,” I say. “Volleyball time.”
“Okay, but one other thing.”
Shit.
“What exactly happened Saturday night? I mean, not that it’s a huge deal, but…”
He looks self-conscious, and I understand why. Mark is his best friend; he shouldn’t need to ask me. The way he’s trying to be casual while actually looking desperate is embarrassing to both of us.
I fight the urge to run away.
I decide against lying.
But I decide, also, against telling the whole truth.
“Magic,” I say. “A cat named Renoir. A whiskey bottle. A typewriter. Ferns. High-heeled shoes.”
He arches an eyebrow.
I smile.
“Volleyball,” I say again.
I step past him, and I don’t look back.
* * *
I take my time changing out of my gym clothes after Volleyball is over. Some girls loiter around me, wanting to ask me questions, but maybe the worry on my face is enough of a deterrent. They give me shy waves and goodbyes as they leave, and then it’s just me in the empty locker room. Two minutes of silence.
I wish I knew why I felt so sick.
I wish my brain wasn’t constantly counting down the days until high school is over.
Or, if that’s inevitable, I wish every day that passed lessened the pressure in my chest instead of intensifying it.
I finally get myself back outside, onto the path that will take me to the senior deck where Lehna and Uma and June will be basking in the sun with their lunches. And soon there they are, at a distance. I slow down to look at them.
What will I say?