Another Day (15 page)

Something is off the next day. Justin barely speaks to me. Rebecca looks at me curiously. Even my teachers seem more aware that I’m in the room, and won’t stop calling on me. I have an English report I have to finish during lunch, so I spend it in the library.

After sixth period, Preston texts to see if I want to do something after school. I feel like I haven’t talked to him in a while—and I’m grateful that someone is actually trying to make plans with me.

We decide to drive to the outlet mall—Preston has a cousin at Burberry who’s let him know the coat he’s been crushing on is getting marked down today. He still can’t afford it, but at least he can try it on one more time before it’s sold.

I think the coat’s going to be the top priority in our conversation, but then Preston jumps in my car, plugs in his iPod to blast some Robyn, and says, “So…spill!”

“What am I supposed to be spilling?” I ask as I pull out of the parking lot.

Preston sighs theatrically. “Must I spell it out for you? I have it from
very
reliable sources that you were walking the halls yesterday with a rather attractive gentleman who nobody’s ever seen before. You may have even sequestered yourself in an empty classroom with him—although when you emerged, there was no evidence of untoward behavior. Apparently his hair is very swoopy, which has led at least fifty-eight percent of my reliable sources to believe he may play for my team. Which would be the most exciting news to hit my world in about a decade. Every night I pray for a lovely, swoopy-haired homosexual to come to our school, in the same way that Margaret prayed for boobs and my grandfather prays for my eternal salvation.”

I remind myself I need to keep driving. I need to focus or I know I’m going to swerve.

Caution. My first instinct is to say,
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But clearly someone saw me. Many people saw me.

My second instinct is to think,
Justin’s heard. Justin knows.

My third instinct is to scream.

My fourth instinct is to cry.

My fifth instinct is to deny all these other instincts and say, lightly, “I’m sorry, Preston—I have no idea if he swoops your way. He was just a prospective student—I’ve started showing them around, like Tiffany does. He lives in California—he’s not even sure his dad is going to get the job here. And even if he did…the whole question of straightness or gayness didn’t come up.”

“Oh.” Poor Preston looks so disappointed.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. A boy can dream, can’t he?”

I want to tell him maybe it’s better that way. Maybe real life is never going to live up to his daydreamy kind of love.

“So who saw me?” I ask delicately. “I mean, us.”

“Kara Wallace and her group. Lindsay Craig thought you were macking on him—but then they saw you leave and said everything was in the right place, if you know what I mean. Kara was all excited, because her gaydar was really going off.”

“Do you really believe in that gaydar stuff?”

Preston nods. “You can tell. There’s an energy that travels between you. I can’t say whether it’s body language or if there’s an actual chemical reaction. But you can feel it. He puts it out there, you put it out there, and you can feel it.”

I think about A. About the way I knew it was him.

Then I put that thought away.

“And has word of this spread? I mean, should I be worried about Justin hearing the gossip?”

“Does Justin even
do
gossip? He doesn’t strike me as the type.”

No, but I can imagine Lindsay going up to him and sharing her theories—
I just thought you should know,
she’d say, gossip’s good little helper.

It could explain his noncommunication today. But a thousand other things could also explain it. And calling him and making a big deal of some rumor could seriously backfire if he hasn’t heard anything.

“Really,” Preston says, “don’t worry about it. The only reason I brought it up was…well, for selfish reasons. Woe is me. I am woe.”

He’s only kind-of joking, and it’s only kind-of convincing.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He smiles ruefully. “I’m fine. Although I’d be much more fine if you’d said you’d already given the swoopy-haired boy my number.”

“What happened with Alec?”

“Not swoopy-haired.”

“And that guy in Massachusetts you were chatting with?”

“Not swoopy-haired. And not local.”

“So swoopy hair is the thing? You can’t be with a guy unless his hair swoops?”

“If there’s an exception, I haven’t met him yet.”

“I’m serious. Do you really believe that much in a ‘type’? Is there really only one kind of person for you? Couldn’t you be open to someone outside your type if he or she was great enough?”

“Or she?”

“I’m just saying—if you loved someone enough, would it really matter?”

“I know you want me to say no, but let’s be real here. We’re all wired to like certain things and to hate certain things. A lot of these things are negotiable, but some of them are fundamental. Don’t ask me why—I’d need a PhD and a really powerful microscope to begin to tell you why. Could I love a guy without swoopy hair? Yeah, sure. Could I love a guy with a mullet? Much harder. Could I love a girl with a mullet? As a friend, sure. But—how to put this?—would I want to have
relations
with her? No. Not interested. At all. Nuh-uh.”

“But don’t you wish it were possible? I mean, don’t you wish anything were possible?”

“Do I wish it? Sure. I mean, why not? But do I think it’s true? Nope. Sorry. Not by a long shot. I have two years of being in love with our mutual friend Ben to show for that. Not everything is possible. Falling for a straight boy is thus inadvisable.”

I don’t steer to the side of the road at the breaking of this news, but I do turn down the radio to focus in on it more. “Wait—you’re in love with Ben?”

“I
was
in love with Ben. The torture chamber kind of love. Oh, Lord, what I would have done for, to, or with that boy. This was before he was with Rebecca. Well, the beginning of it was before he was with Rebecca.”

I picture Ben two years ago. His swoopy hair.

“But you knew he wasn’t gay, right?” I ask. “I mean, he wasn’t, was he? I’m not missing that, too?”

“No, you’re not.” Preston stares out the window. “It was just something I tried to convince myself could happen. It was easier for me to come out if I thought there was someone to be in love with. A destination for my trajectory. I know that’s silly, and I know he did nothing to deserve it—but I had to picture some kind of future, and while I was at it, I decided to cut him out from reality and paste him into my fantasy. I felt a lot of things at that moment, and I needed to feel every single one of them. Then I had to tell myself I was done. He wasn’t going to suddenly like boys, any more than I was going to suddenly like girls.”

I know Preston won’t understand where the question’s coming from, yet I have to ask. “But what if he could’ve changed? I mean, what if Ben could’ve changed into a girl, and you could have been with him that way?”

“Rhiannon, if I’d wanted to fall for a girl, there were
plenty
of awesome girls around to fall for. That’s not how it works.”

Silly. I feel silly.

“I know, I know,” I say. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Then he takes a good look at me. “What’s on your mind?”

I can’t tell him the real reason, but I wonder if I can try to keep it vague and still have a conversation.

“I’m just wondering why people stay together,” I say. “Why they connect in the first place, and what keeps that connection strong. I want it to be all the things inside—who you are, what you believe. But what if the things on the outside are just as important? When I was little, I was always worried I’d fall in love with someone ugly. Like Shrek. Then I figured that love would make anyone beautiful to me, if I loved them enough. I want to believe in that. I want to believe that you can love someone so strongly that none of that will matter. But what if it does?”

We’re at the mall now. I pull into a parking space. Neither of us makes a move to leave the car.

Preston is looking really concerned.

“Is this about Justin?” he asks. “Are you no longer attracted to him?”

“No!”

“Is it about…someone else?”

“NO!”

Preston holds up his hands. “Okay, okay! Just checking.”

“It was just something I was thinking about. That’s all.”

I’m letting him down. I’m letting myself down. Because I’m shutting down this conversation. I’m making it clear we’re done.

We get out of the car and head to the Burberry outlet. Preston tries on the coat and I tell him it looks amazing. We talk about clothes and classes and our friends. But we don’t talk about what’s really on my mind. Preston knows this. I know this.

I keep waiting for a text from Justin. Either he’s heard the gossip and is going to want to know who the guy was, or he hasn’t, and he’ll text to see what I’m doing.

One of the two.

Or, in the end, neither.

I think about writing to A, but I convince myself not to. I don’t want to encourage him too much. I can’t have him show up again. I need to figure things out. But how can you figure out something that doesn’t have a shape? It’s the shapeless things—like love, like attraction—that are the hardest to map.

I give in and text Justin as midnight nears. I’m sleepy and vulnerable. The night won’t let me settle down until I get rid of at least one thing that’s unsettling me. I decide to keep it simple.

Missed you today.

He doesn’t write back to me until the next morning.

Did you?

I get the message while I’m already waiting at his locker. The tide of emotions rises in me too fast. When he shows up a minute later, it crashes over all of the walls I’ve put up.

I hold up the phone. “What do you mean, ‘Did you?’ ”

He doesn’t look mad. He looks bothered. I am just this girl who’s in the way right now.

“If you missed me so much, then why avoid me all day?” he asks. “I feel if you were actually missing me, you would have made some effort.”

“I was with Preston! We went to the mall! Are you saying you wanted to go shopping with me and Preston? Really?”

I don’t know why I’m yelling at him, why I sound like I’m fighting when I don’t want to be fighting.

“I’m not talking about your
shopping trip.
” (He says
shopping trip
the same way he’d say
gay.
) “I’m talking about everything. You’re not here.”

Is he still mad at me for Ashley? Or has he heard about the mystery guy and the empty classroom?

“I’ve been around,” I tell him. “I’ve been here.” Then I decide to address things sideways. “I’ve been busy, for sure. Tests and showing new students around and everything. But I’ve been here, and if you’ve wanted to see me, all you had to do was call.”

He slams his locker door so hard it hits the locker next to his. I startle back—more at the movement than the noise.

“Can you hear yourself? All I have to do is call? Is that how it’s going to be? Should I start making
appointments
with you? Jesus.”

People are looking at us now. We are that couple fighting in the hall.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m not sure what for. I’m just sorry.

“Do you even care that I had a shit day? Did it even occur to you to ask?” he challenges.

“What’s wrong?” I ask now.

“This conversation,” he says, this time slamming his locker in the direction of closed. “That’s what’s wrong.”

It’s not just this conversation. I have done a hundred things wrong. I have become the kind of person who worries about being caught, not about what she’s done.

I don’t want to be that kind of person.

“Can we talk about this?” I ask quietly.

“I’ll see you later” is Justin’s response. Which is something, but not very much.

The bell rings and people start to hurry. A few take a moment to look at me, to see if I’m going to give them a meltdown worth talking about.

I disappoint them in the same way I disappoint everyone else.

Lunch is tense.

I missed Justin between first and second periods—I don’t know if this was deliberate on his side, or if my timing was just off. When I saw Preston between third and fourth, I asked if he’d managed to contain all the rumors. I made it sound like I was joking, but he saw right through me. He assured me that the gossip had moved on, as gossip tends to do. I know this is true, but it would be just my luck to be the exception.

I want to save the seat next to me for Justin, but when Rebecca brings over her tray and sits there, I can’t think of how to ask her to move down without sounding weak. When Justin comes over, I can see him looking at that taken space as if it’s evidence. He sits a couple of seats away.

At the very least, I want a hello from him.

Our friends notice this. They notice it, but they don’t say a word.

I should be figuring out a way to save things, to make him feel better about me. But instead I have the stupid, unhelpful thought:
A would never do this to me.
Even if we disagreed. Even if we fought. A would never ignore me. A would never make me feel like I no longer exist. Whatever body A is in, A would always find a way to acknowledge me.

There’s no way for me to know this as a fact. But I’m certain of it as a feeling.

“Rhiannon?”

It’s Rebecca’s voice. She’s asked me something.

I leave my thoughts for a second, return to the table. I look over to Justin and see that he’s paying attention to me now. He saw me drift off. Once upon a time, he would have assumed I was thinking about him. But I don’t see any of that in his face now. He lowers his eyes back to his lunch.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. But this time it’s to Rebecca, for not listening to whatever it is she has to say.

You have to fix this.

That’s what I’m telling myself all through the rest of the day.

A is going to leave me. A will never be mine. A will never be able to be a normal part of my life.

Justin is here. Justin loves me. Justin is a part of me. I cannot ignore that.

He is angry, but he is angry because he’s confused, because I’m making him miserable. He knows something is off. He knows me well enough to know that.

He is not making things up. I am really doing this to him.

Which is why I have to stop.

Which is why I have to fix it.

He doesn’t seem surprised to find me at his locker at the end of the day.

“I know I’ve been out of it,” I say before he can dismiss me. “I know I haven’t been paying attention a hundred percent. That has nothing to do with you, I swear. And I’m grateful to you for calling me on it, because sometimes I’m so out of it I don’t even realize I’m out of it, you know? But I’m back. I’m here now. I want to know what’s going on with you. I want to be a part of it. I want us to take as much time as we need to get back on track.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

I watch as he puts his books in his locker. The back of his neck taunts me. His shoulders draw me in.

“Do you want to do something?” I ask.

He closes the locker. Turns back to me.

“Sure,” he says. And in his eyes, in his voice—I sense it.

Relief.

I ask him where he wants to go.

He says his house.

I know makeup sex is supposed to mean making it up to each other after having a fight. But right now I feel like it’s makeup sex because I’m making it all up. I have transformed myself into such a devoted, pretend girl that even I can believe the imitation is real. I know actions speak loudly to Justin, and he is speaking loudly back. I am grateful for the communication, for the way the intensity makes my body feel. But my mind is in another room.

In the heat of it, in the rush of it, he feels safe enough to say, “Don’t leave me.”

And I promise. I recognize how vulnerable he is, and I swear.

Afterward, I ask him about his shit day yesterday, and he barely remembers why it was so bad. Just the usual reasons, and the weight of them feeling so usual. He doesn’t mention me with another guy, and I don’t find it underneath his words, either. I think I’m in the clear.

He asks me to stay for dinner. I call my mother, who seems irritated but doesn’t say no. Justin’s mother also seems irritated when she comes home and Justin tells her I’m staying—but that irritation is directed at him, not me. I tell her I don’t have to stay, that I know it’s last-minute, but she says she’s happy to have me here, and that it’s been too long since she’s seen me. When Justin and I first started dating, she treated me like this stray he’d picked up. Now that we’ve been dating awhile, I’ve been upgraded to pet status—part of the family, but not really a member.

Justin’s father likes me more, or at least wants more for me to like him. He manages to come home exactly five minutes before dinner is ready, then acts like he’s at the head of the table even though the table is square. Justin and I are perpendicular, and we answer his father’s questions like it’s a joint interview. Our bland answers about school and homework go unchallenged by his bland responses. I risk asking about Justin’s grandmother, and am told she’s doing as well as can be expected. Everyone tenses up, so I change the subject and compliment the food. Justin’s mom tells me she’s sorry that there won’t be enough for seconds, since she wasn’t planning on cooking for four.

In the beginning, I’d wanted Justin’s house to become my second house, and Justin’s family to become my second family. But I only made it halfway. This makes sense, because Justin barely wants his family for himself. Part of me was disappointed that my second chance at a decent mom fell short. But mostly I decided to claim the absence in Justin’s life. I can remember thinking that if he didn’t feel like he had a family, I would be his family. If he didn’t feel like he had a home, I would make our space together a home. I believed love could do this. I believed this was what love was for.

Now I’m not sure what we have. What kind of family we are. I used to imagine us in the future—getting married, having kids—and then play it backward until it reached us now. But I haven’t done that in a while.

Justin is uncomfortable all through dinner. And I know I am the comfortable part—I know that I am the person at the table who brings him the most happiness, who he feels closest to. When dinner’s over and I’ve helped his mother do the dishes, I find him back in his room, playing a video game. He pauses it when I come in, then pats the space next to him, beckoning me over.

“Sorry to put you through all that,” he says, kissing me.

“Dinner was good,” I tell him, even though it wasn’t really.

I know we’re not going to go beyond kissing with his parents in the house. It’s like every move we make is amplified straight to their ears.

He passes me a controller and we play awhile. If we were different kids, we’d be doing our homework together. Instead, we avoid our homework together. I realize how irresponsible this is. I don’t think it occurs to Justin at all.

I’m glad we’re back to normal. I don’t know if I’ve missed this, but it feels right for right now. It’s like A has never existed. A is a story I told myself.

Justin is better at this game than I am, which is true of most of the games we play. I keep dying, and he keeps passing me new lives.

At nine, I finally beg off, tell him I have to get my bio work done so I don’t fail out. I’m bringing it up partly because it’s true and partly because I want him to remember to do his work, too. He’s much more at risk of failing out than I am.

“Okay—I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. His eyes don’t leave the screen.

I make sure to say goodbye to his parents on my way out. His mom says again that it was good to see me. His father walks me to the door.

When I step outside, I don’t feel I’ve lost anything by leaving. Like when I leave my own house, there’s always a part of me that stays behind, waiting for me to get back. That’s what makes it my home—that feeling that a part of me is always waiting for me there.

As I walk to my car, I don’t turn back to see if Justin’s at the window, watching me go. I know he isn’t.

The part of him that waits for me isn’t that strong. Not when he knows he has me.

When I get back to my room, I’m not worried about our fight anymore. This morning seems like ancient history.

It’s A I’m worried about. It’s A who I think is waiting for me. I haven’t sent word all day, and it’s feeling, now that I acknowledge it, like an abandonment. Which is wrong—it’s A who abandons me in the jump from place to place, body to body.

But I know I’m guilty here, too.

I check my email and am almost relieved to find that there isn’t anything new. This excuses some of my silence, if A is being silent, too. Although if A is being silent, it may very well be because I told A to stop.

I get ready for bed, then sleep for eight hours. When I wake up, the first obligation I feel is to end the silence. So I write:

A,

I’m sorry I didn’t get to write to you yesterday. I meant to, but then all these other things happened (none of them important, just time-consuming). Even though it was hard to see you, it was good to see you. I mean it. But taking a break and thinking things out makes sense.

How was your day? What did you do?

R

I know this is in two different places at once—
I meant to write to you, but let’s keep taking a break.
But it’s an accurate reflection of where I am. Or where I think I am.

Even though I know it’s impossible, and I know it won’t help, I still want to know where A is.

Does this mean I’m waiting for A?

I don’t know.

At the very least, I’m waiting to see what happens next.