“—But it was just one kiss. She won’t make it a big thing. Right?”
“I don’t know, Jenna,” I said, lying back on my bed, wrapped in a towel. “I feel like if you kissed her, it’s your job to make it ‘not a big thing.’”
“Yeah, well. She kissed me back.” I heard cars rush by in the background. Jenna was the only one of my friends from home who actually called, instead of texting or Snapping, and she only ever called when she was walking home from school. People were slightly less likely to say shit to you on the street if you were on the phone, and Jenna had it rough with catcallers. You could see the girl’s curves from three blocks away no matter how shapeless her outfit was.
“Still,” I said. “You kissed her first, right?”
“I guess . . .”
Something unsaid lurked in the pause. I grinned. “You liiike her, don’t you?”
Jenna let out a jumbled stream of embarrassed-sounding consonants. “Forget it! Whatever. I’ll figure it out.” A car horn beeped in the background, a male voice yelled something indistinguishable, and Jenna’s yell came through, muffled: “Grow up!”
I smiled. “Okay, well, keep me in the loop.”
“Are you sick?” she asked.
“What?”
“Your voice sounds kind of weird.”
I cleared my throat, lifting my voice. “Oh, yeah, I’m kind of getting over a cold.” I had to be more careful—I kept slipping, speaking in Julian’s voice during classes by mistake.
“Aw, okay, get some rest,” Jenna said. “Talk later?”
“Later.”
“Love you!” she sang, and hung up.
I rolled off my bed, adjusting my towel. These days, I’d been showering infrequently enough to disgust even myself. A bit of a journey separated my room and the bathrooms, and where I was going, my wig could not follow. That chamber of pure humidity would have made it soggy and sad for the rest of its lifespan. Burgess’s floor plan didn’t exactly help, with its seemingly random map of twists and turns. You never knew who was waiting around the corner, waiting to discover you wigless.
Shower caddy swinging from my right hand, I cracked my door and peered out.
All clear. I dashed forward, flip-flops clapping between the teal carpet and my heels. I stopped at the corner, peered around it to make sure the next stretch was clear, and accelerated back into a run. The decorations on doors flapped in my wake.
I slowed at the water fountain, tight grip on my caddy. One last turn.
As I peered around the final corner, Katie Woods shouldered through the bathroom door, looking down at her phone. I whipped out of sight. She was heading right for me. There was no time to make it down the hall—I only had seconds.
My eyes lit on the door labeled TRASH to my left. I barged in. My momentum brought me crashing into the unforgiving edge of the wooden trash container, which held a heaping tower of knotted white bags. I lost my balance, my arm flew up, and my caddy sailed into the infinite depths of trash mountain.
The door clicked shut behind me. As I breathed in, the foulest of stenches washed through my nostrils, so strong I tasted it. I gagged. What the fuck? What were people putting in their trash-cans, sacks of rotting produce? Literal feces?
Trying not to breathe, I extracted my caddy, which had landed between two bags, one seeping a horrible liquid. My shampoo had escaped, sliding all the way to the back, near the wall. I reached up with both hands, one for levering bags out of the way and the other for shampoo retrieval, which meant dropping my towel, and that was how I found myself naked in the trash closet digging through the garbage like a sad hairless raccoon.
My fingers collided with smooth plastic. I tossed the shampoo bottle into my caddy and snatched up my towel. I fled my garbage realm and dashed into the shower without a look back.
Disguised, vigorously cleansed, and out of Burgess, I headed for the dining hall. I was breathless, having left the quad as fast as possible, as usual.
My phone buzzed. I unlocked it to find a text from my mom:
Hi sweety . Good news and bad news . Bad news first, I was late to a shift so , Pattons said that was my 3rd strike . But good news, we r approved for calfresh ! Ebt card came today . Hope everything is good w u .
I stopped dead on the sidewalk, my breathlessness switching registers. Bewilderment washed cold down my back.
She’d said it so casually, as if this were the last in a long line of messages about losing jobs and reapplying for benefits. Like this wasn’t completely out of the blue.
It was so typical of my parents, not telling me anything until it was so late in the day that my opinion felt totally irrelevant. What should I say? Did it even matter?
I forced myself to start walking again, past the hulking film dorm, up toward the picturesque colonial houses.
Why didn’t you tell me you were applying? I texted back.
We’d been on CalFresh before, for ten months, back when it was still just called “food stamps.” I’d been seven and hadn’t understood. Back then, the EBT card—that special debit card, the Electronic Benefit Transfer—had seemed like an exciting gift from a mysterious helper. I didn’t get that it meant something bad had already happened, that the layoffs had reached us and we were scrambling to catch up.
Dad found a new job, though—his current job—after the better part of a year. Sure, the hours were shitty, mostly night shifts, but it was something. Then a part-time position had fallen into Mom’s lap like a gift from God, and we clawed our way over the poverty line. Paid off our debts, started getting bills in on time. For half a decade, we were normal-poor, instead of missing dinners. Regular-tired, instead of exhausted. And then the hospital bill from hell.
Good news, I reread, feeling sick. Good news? Without Mom’s job, were they going to have enough to make rent, or pay the bills for the phone in my hand, let alone make payments to the hospital? How long would they have to stay on SNAP?
Growing up poor meant getting intimate with acronyms. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. FNS, the Food and Nutrition Service. CalWORKs. LIHEAP. On and on. Dad’s disability had its own list: SDI, State Disability Insurance. SSDI, Social Security, which had denied my father’s application because he wasn’t quite disabled enough. SSI, Supplemental Security Insurance, the benefits that had disappeared because my parents had saved a little too much. Honestly, the only thing more sobering than being poor was dealing with it. Everything needed paperwork, interviews, renewals—and strict, merciless verification. Are you sure you’re poor; are you sure you’re disabled? How much do you really need this? How much do you still have left to lose?
My phone buzzed. Mom’s next text said, Didn’t say anything bc did not want to make u worry !
Okay well, I typed, I’m worried now… so are you going to find another job? Are you and Dad talking about this?
My finger paused over the Send button. After a moment, I reread her text. did not want to make u worry !
I closed my eyes and exhaled a long, slow breath.
Then I selected my reply and deleted it.
Are you okay? I asked instead.
Fine, Mom said after a minute. That was all. Fine. Sure.
The muscles in my stomach were tense. I looked up from my phone. The dining hall had come into sight, perched on an incline. On the lawn spilling down from its doors, clusters of people lounged in the late afternoon, a stippled landscape of brightly colored backpacks and summer clothes. They all looked free, and free sounds tinged the air, careless laughter and energetic exclamations. In the same breath I felt entirely outside the world and as if I were drowning in it. I listened to flutters of crows’ wings from the trees and the distant whir of car tires over asphalt.
When I felt inside my body again, I started to walk, and I thought determinedly about the homework I’d partitioned into hours for tonight. I thought about keeping my head down along the back wall of McKnight. I didn’t let myself think about the way Mom and Dad might simmer over the dinner table tonight without a word to each other, because there was no use torturing myself over something I couldn’t change. I was going to learn this one way or another: If you can’t fix it, leave it behind.
That night, I lay in bed, turning over again and again. My legs weighed too heavy on each other; my hands felt too empty; my eyes wouldn’t stay shut. Snatches of tonight’s arrangement cycled in my head. “Your touch is heaven falling, heaven, din din dah dat, fall, whoa way ah.” As if it weren’t bad enough hearing these songs on repeat. When the nonsense-syllable version got stuck in your head instead, you couldn’t even sing it out loud, at the risk of seeming seriously deranged. Your eyes so starry, jah wah! Bow! Your eye-eye-ah-bah bow.
After what felt like hours of trying to sleep, my phone buzzed on my desk. I sat up at once and checked it. It was past midnight, and Isaac had texted to the group, Meet at the side gate in 20 min or be condemned to everlasting suffering!
Replies from the others rolled in. If you insist, from Nihal. Roger that, from Trav. A hands-to-God emoji from Jon Cox.
More texts rolled in, but I didn’t stop to read them. My feet hit the floor of my dorm, sheets thrown aside. Live energy hummed in my veins.
I didn’t think about the two-day suspension kids got for sneaking out. The only thing on my mind was how isolated I’d felt since my mother’s messages, how restless. My heart was on the other side of the country and I had no control. It took every ounce of energy not to slip into dismal hypotheticals—but maybe the best way to get distance from yourself was to never be alone.
The side gate peeked out of the woods behind Marden Cathedral, guarding an old maintenance road. When I got there, Nihal and Trav manned the pillars, hands in their pockets. Trav looked cold and thin, a beanie pulled down over his forehead, his dark skin turned slate gray by the scant moonlight. Nihal wore pajamas. Button-up red flannel, top and bottom, his kirpan slung around his waist as usual. The ceremonial knife never left his side.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly, breaking from my jog.
“Where is everyone?”
Nihal pointed past the gate. “Theodore, Isaac, and Jon went on ahead.”
Two silhouettes appeared by the hulking outline of Marden Cathedral. Erik’s slight frame moved with its usual cocky swagger. Marcus hurried afterward and muttered to Erik as they approached, a low, nattering stream of words. Erik had his arms folded and met my eyes with exasperation. I kept getting that vibe from Erik during rehearsals: that because Marcus talked too much, and wore cargo shorts, and, okay, was kind of a suck-up, Erik thought he belonged at the “humiliating” end of the uncoolness spectrum. Maybe Erik would grow out of it. Being earnest wasn’t the disease people made it out to be.
“Let’s go,” Trav said. He grabbed the bars of the side gate, planted his sneakers on the wrought-iron crow motifs peeking out, and grappled his way to the other side. His forearms flexed past the rolled-up cuffs of his sweatshirt.
I grabbed the bars, the first to follow. Up and over. The burst of activity lit up my muscles, made my vision clear. I’d barely hit the ground before Trav was striding down the side road into the woods.
I waited for Nihal before following. “What is this?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. No hazing.” Nihal gave me a serene smile, and looking at it, I felt a wave of gratitude that he was here, that he was reliable and kind and himself.
The maintenance road was more pothole than actual road, the asphalt cracked and crumbling as if there’d been an earthquake. The moon bobbed along overhead, a waxing gibbous following us through the trees. Eventually, the path turned to gravel, and we emerged from the trees into the scattered weeds beside a country highway. Across the road, a field was chock-full of moonlight. White wildflowers drooped in clusters throughout the grass, glittering diamonds laced into green embroidery.
Isaac, Jon Cox, and Mama sat in the middle of the field, waving. We jogged across the street, picked through the field, and settled in a circle. Surrounded by long grass stalks and knotted flower stems, Jon Cox had abandoned his usual uniform of pastels and crisp khaki, slouching in an oversize hoodie. Isaac’s hair was down, thick and wild and dark, and he lay on his side, stripping the leaves off weeds. Mama was setting out a line of glasses in the grass, his big arms pale and bare in the moonlight. The dewy ground dampened my jeans. The breeze cut through my jacket. I shivered.
“Gentlemen!” Isaac said, sitting up. He looked, as always, as if he hadn’t expected to see us but we were the best surprise all day. “It’s time to celebrate a victory over our mortal enemies.”
Trav’s expression darkened. “What did you do?”
Isaac held up his hands in a wait-there’s-more gesture. “As we all know, I’m sure, ammonia plus matches equals ammonium sulfide, which smells so bad, it makes Jon Cox smell amazing in comparison.”
“Wait, what?” Jon Cox said, sniffing his own armpit.
“Tonight,” Isaac continued, “sixteen terrible people are going to find their mattresses saturated with this smell. Will their noses ever recover? Who knows?” He lifted a bottle of whiskey with an aged honey-brown label. The liquor glowed tawny in the starlight. “Courtesy of Jon Cox, a toast to vengeance.”
He started pouring, and I eyed the bottle, uneasy. I’d been drunk all of once—Shanice’s fifteenth birthday party, the summer between freshman and sophomore year—and it hadn’t gone well. Jenna had kept flirting with me, and alcohol, I learned, made me uncontrollably happy about everyone and everything. So when she kissed me, it lasted a minute or two before the alarm bells in my head blared, reminding me that, oh, right, I had a boyfriend. And I was straight. At least, I’d thought so.
Michael and I fought about it for hours the next day. It had been one of our dumbest fights. He freaked out at me, stunned that I’d never told him I might be into girls. That’s because I don’t know if I am into girls! I’d yelled back.
How can you not know? he’d demanded.
I hadn’t had an answer then. I didn’t have one now. I just didn’t know. I’d never been sure if I was attracted to girls, or whether it was a too-strong awareness of how attractive I thought girls might be to other people. Three or four times, I’d had what I chalked up as weirdly intense friend-crushes: I’d meet a girl, get flustered, get fascinated, and for months, I’d want only to be around her.
Where was the line, though? Did I want to be around her, did I want to be her, or did I want to be with her?
“If you’re bi, that’s so much more competition, babe,” Michael had said at the end of the fight, sounding exhausted. I’d spent the following weeks convincing him that he didn’t have competition. That nobody would ever compete.
I took a glass and stuck it out. Isaac let the neck of the whiskey bottle clink to the glass and tilted. Amber liquid rushed out. “That’s good,” I said quickly.
“Lightweight?” Isaac said, a hint of a challenge in his voice. I didn’t rise to the bait. He grinned and moved on.
“Cheers, gentlemen,” Isaac said, after pouring Marcus’s drink. He lifted his glass, and seven hands followed suit. Nihal and Trav, who hadn’t taken glasses, mimed the toast.
“To us,” Isaac said, “for being handsome and brilliant.”
Nihal’s merry chuckle punctured the declaration. “I think maybe 50 percent of us meet maybe 50 percent of those requirements.”
Laughs rippled around the circle. We drank. The whiskey was as bitter as rust and burned all the way down my throat. My face screwed up. By the time I untwisted it, the conversations had broken open again, low voices filling up the night, and gratitude flooded me for this field on this night with these boys, who knew so little about me and somehow seemed to know everything that mattered.
To my left, Trav spoke quietly to Isaac. “There’s going to be hell if anyone finds—”
“Nobody’s ever watching the side gate,” Isaac said, low and careless. “And if someone does show up, whatever. We’ll run.”
“I was going to say, if anyone finds out it was you who poured that on their beds.”
“Oh, well, they’ll obviously know it was me.” Isaac smiled. “But that’ll be it. The Minuets aren’t going to say anything, or I’ll tell the school they broke into Jon Cox’s car, and that’s no good for anyone, right?”
Trav wasn’t satisfied. “Right, well, no more of this. We should focus.”
“We are focused. We’re ahead of where we thought we would be.” Isaac’s voice softened, and in the space of a second he became someone I hadn’t seen before, who used words like they mattered, who knew how to wield them to push away or edge a little closer. “Hey, look at me, Trav.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re on top of all this. I promise.”
Trav took off his beanie and scrubbed his hand over his shaved head. “Yeah,” he muttered, almost too quiet to hear. “I know. You’re right.”
Isaac clapped him on the back and met my eyes. I glanced away, embarrassed. I shouldn’t have listened in.
The night wore on. I sipped my tiny amount of whiskey down to nothing, but the others poured more and more for themselves. I had drunk just enough to turn the world to gold. I looked over at Trav around one thirty, while the others looped a song into existence, making up parts as they went. They folded in snatches of popular songs every so often. Da-dah, hmm, yeah. What do you love? What do you love? What do you love? Trav’s eyes were shut. He looked peaceful.
I closed my eyes and felt it, too. That potent thing distilled out of familiar voices, hidden in the lovingly painted strokes of rural New York, nestled in the lazy weeks before the cold cut down. Peace. We’d locked the world out, frozen time, trapped a little idyll in the isthmus of the hourglass. As for Michael, and my life in theater, and the big bold question mark of my family’s future—the competition, even, sitting ahead like a bull’s-eye at the center of a target—gone, gone, gone.