NEW YEAR
“IS THIS CRAZY?” I whisper, my cheek against Dani’s shoulder as we stare at the ceiling of her bedroom, lined with soft, white twinkle lights. The falling snowflakes make tink-tink-tink tapping sounds against the windowpane, accentuating the deep, middle-of-the night silence that has washed over the world. I imagine the snowflakes crystallizing way above the surface of the earth, beginning as specks of dust and water droplets, like Caroline said.
“You don’t have to whisper,” Dani tells me, her voice sounding extra loud. “It’s just us up here.” That’s true. Her parents are tucked away downstairs, fast asleep, no idea that after dinner we snuck a bottle of champagne up to Dani’s room and toasted everything we could think of—us, Tyler, Bonnie and Clyde the guinea pigs, New Year’s Eve itself. We even drank to a promise that since we were starting the new year together, we would end it together as well, and the year after that, and the year after that. We were laughing so loud for a while, her parents were probably downstairs wishing, hoping, pretending, we were giggling over boys and not each other.
But now we’re calm. Lying here, breathing together—her exhale is my inhale, my inhale her exhale—is so perfect I can almost pretend that I live here with Dani, that we have our own little loft apartment, that it’s two years from now and we’re both in college, living out life exactly as I’ve planned in my dreams. I can almost convince myself that I really belong here. That life is okay. Dani lifts her head from the pillow and looks at me. She traces the tip of her finger along the necklace she gave me for my birthday—a thin silver chain with a sparkly snowflake charm dangling from it—her touch sending shivers throughout my whole body.
“Why would this be crazy?” she asks, her voice strained from all the talking and laughing and champagne and kissing.
I shrug. “I don’t know,” I whisper again. “Just never thought . . .” I realize I’ve started this sentence without actually knowing the ending. I stop talking.
“Never thought what?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure. I guess I never thought I . . . ,” I try again, but still the ending isn’t there.
“Never thought you . . . were . . . gay?” her voice lifting on that last word. “Because you really, really are, Winters,” she says, losing the voice to a new bout of giggles.
I feel myself smile. “ ‘Really, really’?” I repeat, raising my head to look at her. “Really?”
“Oh, big-time, yeah,” she tells me, still laughing as she pulls the covers up around us.
I kiss her cheek and lay my head back in its spot—that soft curve between her shoulder and her collarbone. Then I kiss her neck. And she kisses my forehead. “That wasn’t what I was going to say, though.” I take her hand in mine, and our fingers wrap around one another. “I was going to say I never thought I’d be this happy.”
This time she whispers, “Me neither.”
We listen to the microscopic symphony of snowflakes and silence. Neither of us speaking, neither of us sleeping. As if time is standing still once again. Only this time I never want it to pick back up. I want to stay just like this forever. I want to tell her I love her. Love. It’s so huge, so monstrous, so dangerous and unknowable. No. Not now, I tell myself, don’t ruin this moment. Her breath spaces out to an even, steady rhythm.
“You know,” she says, her voice sleepy and scratchy, “you still never said why this would be crazy.”
I close my eyes tighter and I wonder how much longer she’ll let me get away with not answering her questions.
“What’s it like?” she whispers, even though she just said we didn’t have to be so quiet.
“What’s what like?”
“What’s life like? What’s life like for you, I mean? You realize you’re still frustratingly private, right?”
“I am not,” I lie.
“What? Please, you don’t talk about your family or what’s going on at home—you always say ‘family drama’ or ‘it’s complicated.’ I mean, I wanna know this stuff. I want to know what it’s like with your father being gone. That. What’s that like?” she asks. “I can’t imagine how I’d feel if my dad died. I’m not trying to pry; I just want you to know that I’m here.”
Being so close to her seems to loosen my grip on all those things that should never be said out loud. Or maybe it has something to do with the half bottle of champagne getting warm in my stomach. “You know those tightrope walkers you see, like at the circus or something?” I ask.
“I’m serious,” she says, exasperated, her whole body tensing.
“No, I am too.”
“Okay. Sorry, go ahead.”
“It’s like you’ve been walking along on this tightrope your whole life. And you always thought you were doing it all on your own. Keeping your balance, putting one foot in front of the other. You look down sometimes and see the ground, but you never really worried about it. One minute you’re walking along, same as always, and then the next it’s like suddenly you can’t find your footing and you realize that you weren’t doing it all alone like you thought. Something was there keeping you up—someone.” I stop and wonder if I’m telling the truth; sometimes it’s hard to tell.
“Keep going,” she whispers.
“But pretty soon you swing your weight an inch in the wrong direction, only to realize there’s nothing there anymore. You see yourself teetering from side to side, but there’s nothing you can do. And then, finally, you just fall. And it’s like you keep falling and falling through the air and there’s nothing to hold on to, and all you want is to hit the ground so you know where you are again, but you don’t—you can’t.” There’s this pang in my chest, interrupting the dull, steady ache that always seems to be there, making the words get caught in my throat. I swallow hard. “It’s sort of like that, I guess.”
“Brooke?” Dani pulls me closer and whispers into my hair. “You can hold on to me.”
So I do. I hold on, tighter and tighter.
“I used to think that if my dad died, I wouldn’t really care, I wouldn’t feel anything. It wouldn’t really be any big loss.” I volunteer this information, not so much because I want her to know, but because I need to say it. Out loud. Just once. Need to own it.
“Why?” she asks softly. I listen for it, but I don’t hear any hint of judgment behind her words.
“He wasn’t . . .” I stop because I’m treading dangerously close to the truth, to letting her see all my hiding places. “He wasn’t the greatest person most of the time. I was pretty much scared of him my whole life—everyone was. Sometimes I thought it would better if he just died. But it’s not.”
“I don’t know how to ask this, but was your father abusive or something?”
I’ve never really assigned a word to what he was. There were never any words that quite fit. No words that could ever explain enough. “I—I guess,” I whisper. “I mean, it’s not that simple.”
“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t.
“You think I’m a horrible person?”
“Never.”
It feels like I’ve only blinked when Dani’s shaking my shoulders, whispering my name. “Brooke, wake up. Wake up, your phone.”
I open my eyes. Dani’s shoving my phone into my hand. I look at her alarm clock. It’s 3:17 in the morning. I look at the screen on my phone: Jackie. My brain puts the pieces together too slowly. But once it does, I bolt upright. “Hello? Jackie? What’s wrong?”
“Brooke, hi. I’m here with Callie.”
“Why? Is she okay?” I ask, struggling to get out from under the sheets.
“Yes, yes. Everyone’s okay. We’re at the apartment. Callie said she’s been trying to reach you—she’s fine, just a little upset, is all.” She pauses. “Brooke, Aaron’s not here. Have you spoken to him? Is it unusual that he wouldn’t come home?”
Her words echo in my head and something twists inside of me like a snake coiling up through my abdomen, constricting around my lungs, making it hard to breathe, then around my throat, strangling my voice.
“What is it?” Dani whispers.
“No, I—I told him—I mean, I texted him—that I was staying over at Dani’s house. No, he—he should be there,” I stutter through the words; I feel the world tilting. “Something’s wrong. He should be there. I’m coming home.”
“No, Brooke, calm down. That’s not necessary, I promise. Have your sleepover. Everything’s . . . under control,” she says, but she’s distracted by something that’s happening over there, across town, where I’m not—where I should be. “I’m sorry I called. I didn’t need to bother you with this. I thought maybe you knew something. Look, I’ll leave a note for Aaron. And Callie’s going to stay at my place tonight. Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeat. “Thanks, Jackie, I’m sorry.”
Dani turns her bedroom light on and stands in front of me, wearing only her underwear and a thin spaghetti-strap cami. She wraps her arms around herself like she’s scared and cold—like she needs a hug.
“It’s not your fault,” Jackie tells me. “It’s no one’s fault.”
Yes it is, I say to myself.
“We’ll talk in the morning. Go back to sleep. Don’t worry, please. Bye, Brooke.”
My hands are shaking. I open my mouth, but she hangs up before I can tell her that she needs to check up on the rooftop.
“What’s going on?” Dani asks as I hang up and scroll through my missed messages.
Callie, 11:55: Did you tell Aaron you weren’t coming home? Just woke up and he’s not here.
Callie, 12:34: I’m fine by myself, but thought you should know
Callie, 1:45: Hello?? Now I’m worried abt both of you . . .
Callie, 2:12: You guys suck. I’m calling Jackie.
Nothing from Aaron.
Dani’s following me as I pace her room. She’s saying my name, but I can’t even answer because I’m trying to get dressed while calling Aaron at the same time. I’m muttering to myself—I might even be muttering to myself that I’m muttering to myself. I’m pressing all the wrong buttons. I feel like I’m losing it. I manage to pull on my pants one-handed. I need to find him. His phone goes straight to voice mail.
“God damn it, Aaron! Where the hell are you? Call me back the second you get this—the second you get this! I need to know you’re okay. All right? Call me back, just call me back.” I hang up. I throw the phone into my open bag on the floor—it bounces out and makes a noise too loud for three o’clock in the morning at a nice family’s house. “God, fuck!” I whisper-shout as I bend down to pick the phone back up, checking to make sure it’s still on. I stuff it into my pants pocket instead.
Dani reaches out to grab my hands, but I twist away from her, pulling my shirt over my head, not caring that it’s on inside out. “Sorry, I—I just need to get home.”
She stands in front of me and turns her head, this concerned look on her face, and she walks toward me even though I’m backing up. “Come here, sweetie. Come here—okay, just slow down.” She pulls me in with both of her arms, crushing me against her breasts and ribs and stomach. I bury my face in her neck, craving the softness of her, and without warning, without permission, I feel my lungs contracting, my throat constricting, my eyes welling up. My body wants to cry. But my mind cannot let that happen. She holds me tighter and tighter, until it stops feeling good and starts to feel like she’s suffocating me, drowning me, pulling me under.
“Stop, okay?” I whisper, my mouth next to her ear, my words crashing, hard, against her neck. I close my eyes. “Please, I can’t breathe!” I yell. And as I pull away, too roughly, I catch the look on her face. Her eyes are wide, stunned that I yelled, because I’ve never let her see that side of me before, the side with all the secrets.
“Okay, you’re scaring me now,” she says, crossing her arms.
“This isn’t about you!” I snap. “I mean—God, can you just give me some space for a minute?”
She doesn’t say anything. I’m hurting her and I know this and still all I want to do is yell at her for not understanding. Even though I know it’s not her fault for not understanding, because I never told her the things that she would need to know to understand in the first place. I want to climb back into bed and feel her breathing and listen to the silence and her heartbeat and the whispers of falling snow. But I’m not allowed to have any of those things. And I hate the world, and my life, and me, and even her a little bit, for that.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dani. Okay? I really, really need to go home. Now. It’s an emergency. For real. Please, can you just take me?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, looking at me like she’s not sure she knows who I am. “Okay,” she whispers, reaching for the clothes she wore yesterday, scattered across her bedroom floor. “Okay,” she repeats to herself as she gets dressed.