Monday, July 4

AMSTERDAM

Rae hated to admit it, but Leah was right. Jonah and Clara were shit-faced.

The sun had set completely by the time she, Aubrey, and Gabe got back to the party. Leah was standing outside the houseboat, smoking. Clara spun to the music still coming from inside while Jonah tried to climb onto someone’s bike.

“Jesus,” Aubrey said under her breath.

“How much did they have to drink?” Gabe asked.

“Too much,” Leah said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.

“Yeah, but they never drink this much,” Aubrey said.

Rae smirked. “Oh, come on, Aubs. Have you forgotten the graduation party already?”

Aubrey shot her a not-helping look. Clara spun over and into Rae. They both lost their balance, and Rae’s camera bumped against her hip as she held on to Clara’s arms to keep her steady.

“You’re here!” Clara said. And in that single moment, Rae let herself imagine what it would be like to slide her hands around Clara’s back, to feel Clara lean into her grip.

“Yeah.” Rae dropped her hands, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops. “I am.”

There was a crashing sound as Jonah tipped the bike over. Leah, Aubrey, and Gabe rushed over to help him, all of them yelling over one another.

“I keep not recognizing you,” Clara said. “Your hair—it’s so different.”

“That’s what I was going for,” Rae said. “Full-on disguise mode.” She didn’t want to think too much about how close they were standing, so she scanned the row of houseboats instead, counted each of their lit-up windows. The water was much glossier and blacker than it had been a few hours ago.

“Forget the fucking bike, Jonah!” Leah was saying.

“Don’t snap at him!” Aubrey said. “He wouldn’t even be drunk if he hadn’t come here.”

“Sure, Aubrey. He’d probably be home right now knitting a sweater.”

Clara leaned forward, her breath in Rae’s ear. “Don’t tell,” she whispered, “but everyone here is an asshole.”

Jonah talked loudly the whole bus ride back to the hostel, leaning heavily against Aubrey. She and Gabe led him back to his room while Rae took Clara to theirs. They’d only been there one night, but already, dirty clothes and pajamas were lying across the floor; pots of glittery makeup and bags of trail mix cluttered the windowsill. Rae closed the door behind her, and Clara skipped over the mess, collapsing onto Rae’s bunk. “Where were you guys?” she asked, splaying her arms out. “You missed the whole party. You didn’t even dance.”

Rae put her camera down and took off her sandals. “I don’t dance where people can see me.”

“But you danced in Paris. And at the Sleater-Kinney concert!” Clara cried. “You can’t fool me, Rae Preston. I have seen your moves.”

Rae rolled her eyes. But she remembered the concert, too. Aubrey and Clara had schemed with Lucy to buy tickets for Rae’s sixteenth birthday, and they’d all danced so hard, every muscle in Rae’s body had throbbed for days. “That was different,” she said. “Sleater-Kinney is a badass feminist band. This was just some college kids swaying on a boat.”

Clara sat up, hair messy and cheeks flushed. Her lips were stained blue from so many Jell-O shots. “Do you ever think we should have applied to college together? All five of us?”

“I don’t know.” Rae was surprised. “Applied where?”

“It doesn’t matter. As long we were all in the same place. As long we could live in the same dorm and eat breakfast every morning and go to all the same parties. It would be just like high school.”

“Oh goody,” Rae said.

Clara chucked a pillow at her. “You’re such a bitch.”

“That’s an antifeminist term!” Rae tossed the pillow back, and Clara moved over so Rae could sit on the bed, too. “The thing is,” Rae said, “I don’t think college is supposed to work that way. It’s supposed to be a fresh start.”

“Is that why you cut your hair?” Clara reached over to touch one of Rae’s curls.

“Something like that.” Rae’s words sounded fuzzy in her ears. She could feel her heart rate increase.

“Well, whatever,” Clara said. “Everything’s perfect right now, and that’s all that matters. In fact, you know what? We should take a selfie. I need to be in one of your Amsterdam pictures so you remember I was here.” She gingerly picked up Rae’s camera. “How do you work this thing again?”

“I’ll do it,” Rae said, laughing. It was hard to take a selfie with her heavy camera. She had to hold it with both hands and guess at the right angle.

Clara placed her arm around Rae’s waist, pulling them together. “Smile!” she said, reaching over Rae’s hand to press the button. A flash popped in their eyes. Rae turned into Clara’s shoulder.

“Christ!” Rae said. “That was awful!”

“No, it was great,” Clara said. “It’s my new favorite picture ever.” Their arms were still around each other, their faces inches apart. Rae saw Clara’s blue lips and soft eyes, the strands of hair that fell next to her mouth. It would have been so easy for Rae to fall into that, to let herself believe that they were this close and touching because it meant something to both of them.

But that wasn’t the truth. And Rae couldn’t pretend it was—she couldn’t torture herself like that. She moved away, pretending to examine the sets of initials etched into the bedpost. She wondered why they’d been carved there in the first place—what had happened to make someone feel the need to sit here and scratch and scratch until the letters became permanent.

“Rae?” Clara asked.

“Yup?”

“Do you think Leah’s a bitch?”

Rae bit the inside of her cheek and wished she didn’t feel so disappointed at the change in subject. “I think you know her better than I do. So I shouldn’t comment.”

“Okay. But she ignored me all tonight.”

“In that case, yeah. She’s a bitch.”

“Antifeminist,” Clara teased. Then she lay back on the bed again. “Honestly, I’m not surprised. It’s always been obvious that she likes Jonah more than she likes me.”

“Why does everyone care so much what Leah thinks of them?” Rae asked. “She smokes, like, a thousand cigarettes a day. She makes annoying references to books that might not even be real. All in all, I’d say she’s pretty terrible.”

“I know.” Clara sighed at the underside of the bunk above her. “But why does she act like she never even kissed me?”

The room lurched and started spinning. Rae dug her fingers into the mattress, trying to hold herself still. “Leah kissed you?”

“Last year.” Clara yawned. “A few months before her graduation. It was fun, but now she seems determined to pretend it never happened.” She sat up again and scooted down the bed until there was only a sliver of polka-dotted sheets between them. “Who was the first girl you ever kissed?”

Rae blinked hard. “Dana Silverstein. Eighth grade. But you knew that.”

“Yeah, I did.” Clara’s knee was almost touching Rae’s thigh. Her blue lips were slightly parted. “But you were sure then? You were definitely sure you wanted to kiss girls?”

The room kept moving. All Rae could think to say was “Yes.”

Clara pressed her palm against the bed and leaned in. And this time, Rae didn’t think she was making it up. Because she’d been in positions like this before. Because girls had looked at her in exactly this way before. Clara’s voice lowered to a whisper. “If you could kiss anyone right now, who would it be?”

The door opened, and Aubrey walked in.

Rae jumped off the bed. “Aubrey! You scared us.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Aubrey took off her shoes, placing them neatly by the door. She went to the sink and pulled her contact case out of her toiletry bag.

Rae’s skin was still tingling from what had just happened. She could still feel the warmth of Clara leaning toward her and the certainty that they were about to kiss. But that was impossible. Because—Clara was straight!

Or was Rae the one being heteronormative now?

Because Clara had kissed Leah, so how straight could she be?

“Why is this place already such a mess?” Aubrey asked.

“It’s a mystery for the ages.” Rae tried to sound upbeat. “Scientists will study this room for years to come.”

Clara yawned again and dropped back onto the pillow. “Too tired for talking. Night night.”

Since Rae had nowhere else to go, she climbed to the top bunk. She didn’t want to focus too much on how these bunched-up sheets were the same ones Clara had slept in the night before. Or on how Clara was currently sleeping in Rae’s sheets. Or on how Clara had potentially, maybe, almost kissed her.

Seriously, though, Rae thought. How straight could she be?!

“Is everything okay?” Aubrey asked.

Rae slid off her armful of bracelets and tucked them next to the wall. “Why? Does everything seem not okay?”

“I don’t know,” Aubrey said. “You just look—awake.”

If any other girl had almost kissed her, Rae would have told Aubrey all about it—she would have sat up through the night with her, drinking coffee in the hostel lobby and obsessing over every detail. But Rae couldn’t talk about Clara like that. Not with Aubrey, not with anyone.

“It’s the vodka I drank,” she said. “Maybe it had Red Bull in it? I should probably sleep it off.”

Aubrey opened her contact case. “Is it okay if I leave the light on for a minute?”

“Yeah, go for it.” Rae plumped up the pillow and kicked the covers farther down the bed. She closed her eyes, but her mind refused to go still. She heard Aubrey turning on the sink. She heard cars speeding down the road and trees rustling. Her thoughts bloomed with full-color images—canals and houseboats and bridges over jet-black water. But mostly they bloomed with Clara—Clara’s hand on the polka-dotted sheets; her hair brushing the crook of Rae’s elbow; her voice asking—again and again—who she would kiss if she could kiss anyone.

The light clicked off, but Rae couldn’t sleep. She climbed down the ladder as quietly as she could and padded across the room to get her sketchbook and a pen. When she got back to bed, she tilted the sketchbook toward the window so it would catch a thin stream of moonlight, and she drew until the sun began to saturate the room. Until, eventually, she fell asleep, her bed filled with dreams made of ink.