THE FIRST OF our college apps were due at the beginning of November. Eric Hsu figured out some hack to add most of the senior class to a WhatsApp group he named Rager!!!!, and we used it to complain en masse when for a week straight probably a third of us all set our alarms for two a.m. to wake up and work on our essays—you’d pick up your phone at three in the morning and there’d be fifty new messages, which was gross but also kind of nice. After the five of us turned in our first applications, Mrs. Nakamura sent us cookies via Grace, triangles made to look like college-y pennants with each of our names written in icing, like this was supposed to be a celebration. But each application—BU, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell—represented a different shade of separation: Would you rather lose the people who mean most to you to a redbrick campus with fall foliage and snow, or to a campus studded with palm trees by the ocean? Would you rather their new world be full of thirty thousand potential friends to replace you with, or an intimate four thousand?
Wednesdays were late start days, and for years now we’d had standing plans to meet at Grace’s before school for breakfast. Mrs. Nakamura was a real estate agent, and their house always looked Instagram-ready—Brandon had joked once that cooking in their kitchen made him feel like British bakers were waiting to judge him. That week we made ricotta pancakes, a recipe Sunny wanted to try. She and Brandon mixed the batter, and then Jason meticulously flipped them while I sliced strawberries and Grace whipped cream. Sitting at the Nakamuras’ kitchen island, the light streaming in through their windows and our silverware clinking softly against the plates and my friends all laughing together, I thought how cruel it was that no one in the world could stop this all from ending.
“It’ll be better than you think, Beth,” Grace said. “You’re still thinking about next year, right?” She reached over the bowl of strawberries to pat my hand. “Everyone ends up loving college. You will too.”
“Speaking of,” Sunny said, before I had to answer Grace, “Except not speaking of, I just didn’t have a good segue, who wants to go to something next week with me?”
“I do,” Grace said. “What is it?”
“It’s this thing on Tuesday at the LGBTQ Community Center downtown. Crafternoon.”
“Me,” Jason said. “I love crafts.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You love crafts?”
“Like friendship bracelets and popcorn strings and yarn balls? So meditative. I love that shit.”
“Sun, I didn’t know there was an LGBTQ center in Congress Springs,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve been wanting to go for a while. I kind of want to meet people.”
“I’ll be your wingman,” Brandon said.
Sunny rolled her eyes. “Who has time for a relationship? No, just meet other queer people.”
“What about the GSA?” Grace said. “Didn’t you used to go?”
“Mrs. Welton asks me that literally once a week.” Mrs. Welton was the vice principal who advised the ASB and also the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. “I went like four times. And every time she’d give me this huge weepy hug and tell me to call her Mama Kat, which, ew. She definitely thinks it’s like, my parents don’t know and are going to disown me. One time she started telling me how she knew honor was an important value to my family.”
“Ooh, like she just watched Mulan?” Grace said, laughing. “Who else was in the GSA?”
“Mm—Liam Chadwick. Missy Straub. Then mostly younger white kids you probably wouldn’t know. Oh, that one junior girl that hangs out with Chase’s group. Emma something. Moffat? They’re all great, but honestly, it’s like eighty percent Mrs. Welton talking about her gay son and then crying and telling us all we’re beautiful the way we are. Which—thank you, I know that. But I want to meet like—other Asian and POC queer people. One of the times I went I said we should talk about intersectionality and race and Mrs. Welton literally was like oh, no, we don’t see color here.”
“Gross,” Brandon said. “Let’s all go with you.”
“Boo, I can’t,” Grace said. “I promised my mom I’d help her stage. The rest of you go.”
Sunny made a face. “I can’t show up with three straight people. I’m picking Beth.”
Brandon pretended to be wounded, but maybe he wasn’t completely pretending, or maybe I was just projecting—I thought it would be better with all of us, because everything was; because we had such limited time left for that.
The day of Crafternoon the next week, when it had started to get cold again and the hills had turned brown as all the grapevines in the vineyards dropped their leaves, I was walking with Grace at the beginning of lunch. In AP Gov, fifth period, Mr. Markham had gone off on a bizarre tangent about Kennedy’s assassination, and as we left class together afterward, Grace had said, “Okay, ooh, this will be fun—which conspiracy theory is everyone in our group?” and now she was trying to convince me that Brandon was The Government Faked the Moon Landing, and we were both laughing, and so I didn’t notice right away that Chase Hartley was waiting in front of her locker with a bouquet of red roses.
My heart sank. I did not want Chase Hartley in our limo, Chase Hartley around for the whole night of Homecoming. When Grace saw, she put her hands to her cheeks.
“Chase!” she said, almost scoldingly. “Are these for me?”
He handed them to her, a little sheepishly. “Yeah, I wanted to ask you—you want to go to Homecoming together?”
Grace was so delighted I felt chastened that my initial reaction hadn’t been to share in her happiness. She stood on tiptoes to fling her arms around his neck, and the cellophane around the roses crinkled between them. He patted her on the back a little awkwardly and said, “Okay, awesome, well, uh—I guess we’ll—talk about details and stuff later?”
“I give it a two,” Brandon said, when Grace recounted the story. “Maybe a two-five. Zero points for creativity, but I’ll give him the two for at least buying flowers ahead of time.”
From where we were eating lunch, we could see Chase across the rally court, drinking a bottle of something unnaturally blue. The five of us had been eating in the same place since we were freshmen, a gap between two cement planters at the edge of the rally court across from the gym. The campus had been built to look like someone’s idea of an East Coast school, brick buildings and ivy everywhere, except the hallways were outdoors because it was California, and the murals on the gym walls were all of apricot orchards and a giant pitchfork, which was, inexplicably, our school mascot.
Grace readjusted her flowers. “I thought it was sweet. He looked nervous. He used the word awesome.”
I tried to avoid looking directly at Jason, worried that my longing would be nakedly visible if I did. “So—Chase will come with all of us, then?”
“I guess so? Or I guess I’ll see if he wanted to go with his friends.”
“Are we all going with dates?” Brandon said. “Maybe I’ll ask—”
“I don’t think we should,” I said quickly. “We were going together, right? I got us the limo.”
“Oh,” Grace said, frowning a little, “you did? I didn’t realize that was something we were definitely doing.”
“I thought we—”
“Come on, Nakamura, go big or go home,” Brandon said. “It’s Jason’s big night, after all.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Beth, how much do we owe you?”
“You can pay me after.” I was afraid to tell them how much it cost, but it would be easier, afterward, if the night went well; hopefully either Chase wouldn’t come or somehow wouldn’t ruin everything, and it would be a good memory, and it would be worth it.
Sunny wanted to leave a little early for Crafternoon to make sure we weren’t late and the whole time we were driving Grace messaged us screenshots of her and Chase’s conversation, which was almost exclusively him flirting in a way that felt entirely devoid of substance. I wrote back lol and 
, but as we walked into the building, I said, “I think I’m a bad friend.”
“Why?”
We were in a big room papered brightly with posters and paintings, split into different zones: couches, coffee station, bookshelves, a grouping of tables where the craft was set up. We were a few minutes before it was supposed to start, but it had the feel of a room where people had been hanging out for a while. There were maybe twenty people, a diverse-looking group. As we stood there, unsure where to go, a smiling Black man wearing dangling plasticky rainbow heart earrings came over to welcome us.
“I’m Robert,” he said. “You folks haven’t been here before, have you? Important question—how do you feel about Perler beads?”
There were two clusters of people bead-making and talking animatedly with one another, and a few people looked up and smiled at us, but after we finished talking to Robert, Sunny led us past them to an empty table. Tubs of Perler beads were set out along with squares of parchment paper and a mismatched selection of irons, and someone had made a sample set of rainbow earrings like the ones Robert was wearing. Something about the way the papers were cut—clearly by hand, but also carefully—made my eyes well up. I think it was imagining someone taking that care for Sunny.
“Should we go sit with other people?” I said.
“Maybe in a little bit.” Sunny pulled out one of the plastic pegboards and ran her finger through the beads. “So how come you’re a bad friend?”
“You don’t want to talk to anyone?”
“Yeah, I will. What were you saying earlier, though?”
I told her how my initial reaction to Chase hadn’t been happiness for Grace, how even now I wished we didn’t have to factor him in. It was funny thinking sometimes how much Sunny used to scare me before we were friends—part of the reason I told her everything was that I always trusted that our friendship would matter more to her than even the worst things I told her. “On a scale of one to ten, how guilty should I feel?”
“Like a negative four.”
“Really?”
“I don’t think we’re required to, like, hardcore ship her and Chase just yet. He has to prove himself first. Also—” She made a short line of blue beads. “I feel like at least eighty percent of the guys who think they’re in love with Grace couldn’t tell you the first real thing about her. Like, they’re like, ooh, she’s so cute and bubbly, and they build some whole fantasy around that.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that I’m worried he isn’t good enough for her.” Although I was; there was no one like Grace, and she deserved more than grocery-store roses by her locker. “It’s also that—you know how it is when you have some specific hope about how something’s going to go?”
“Yeah, I don’t think you have to beat yourself up over not actively fantasizing about riding in a limo with Chase Hartley for Homecoming,” she said. “You’re just lowkey type A about some things, which is fine. Like—birthdays and stuff.”
“I’m type A about birthdays? That makes me sound incredibly fun.”
Sunny laughed. “Fun is overrated. You just always want to make sure everyone’s happy. Seriously, Beth, don’t worry so much. In fact, if anything, you should be pettier. Like, in life.”
I didn’t want to be pettier. I wanted to be open and generous and uncomplicated, welcomed and embraced by the world. I wanted to be, I guessed, more like Grace—as easy as Grace to love.
“Anyway,” I said, “You didn’t come here to talk about straight drama. You should go meet people.”
She immediately pretended to focus on her beading. “Everyone’s so much older.”
People did look older, but not impossibly so. “What about those people over on the couch?”
“They’re probably in their twenties. And they all know each other already, and also I’m sure they have more important things to talk about than my extremely bland high school life. I don’t even know what I’d say.”
It was so unlike her to be insecure. “But you were so excited to come. You shouldn’t come all the way here and then not meet—”
“Actually, I think I’m ready to go,” she said, pouring her beads back into the tub and standing up abruptly. “Ready?”
“Wait, Sun—”
“It’s fine. I’ll come another time. Come on.”
A few people said goodbye as we were leaving, and I saw Robert register us walking out. He rose to catch up, but Sunny ignored him. In the car, I said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She made a face. “Ugh. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Nothing’s wrong with you at all. Was it not what you wanted?”
“No, it was exactly what I wanted. That’s the thing.”
“Well, it’s hard to meet new people.”
She handed me her phone to put on Google Maps—we always teased her for how she always got directions even to places she knew well in case there was traffic—and a message popped up, from her friend Dayna: Hey Sun, I’m thinking of you. You got this. I’ll check in w you after to hear how it went.
“I had this really stupid argument with my mom last week,” Sunny said, backing out of the parking space. “I’ve told her like three times what pansexuality is and the other day she was like, okay, well, why don’t you just wait to see who you marry, and then it doesn’t matter who else you like?”
I winced. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“Nothing. I tried explaining why that’s not how anything works and then she was like, well, it doesn’t matter now because you’re not going to date anyone of any gender until you’re thirty. I was like, okay, Ma, fine, my sexuality is I need to get into college. But it’s been messing with me. Like, obviously being in a relationship or not doesn’t change anything, and I know that, but then I also started spiraling over like—does it count if my life is basically indistinguishable from a straight person’s life? I guess I just started worrying I was a fraud, or not queer enough, or something. And I told myself I’d magically fit in in the right queer space that wasn’t our GSA and then everything would make sense, but then today was like, perfect, and I didn’t even know what to say to anyone.”
“They would’ve loved you,” I said. “You should go back. They’d be lucky to have you. Anyplace would.”
She made a grumbling noise, but it was tinged with affection. Still, the rest of the drive she was a little sad, so I was too. Every summer we went to Pride in SF with her—this year Brandon had flown home two days early from his family vacation to be there—and it was always electric and beautiful just to be there together, and I didn’t feel useless in the way I did now. I wished I knew all the right things to say.
Or maybe my wish was bigger than that; maybe it was more about the pressing sense of insufficiency. I wanted her to have everything, and I wanted us to be home for her—not her non-queer friends or her in-person friends or her friends from home; her friends, full stop, without qualification. I wanted to always be enough.
For Thanksgiving, as we’d done the past six years, my mother and I went to Boston Market. Before we’d left, I’d spent ten minutes staring at my open closet, trying to decide whether it was worse to look like I’d just rolled out of bed or like I had actually gotten dressed up to go get takeout. Oh, tough call, Sunny said, when I messaged her and Grace about it. I think dressed up. My father usually went to Idaho for Thanksgiving. I’d texted him earlier that day with a picture of my common app, and I’d edited the picture so UC Berkeley was highlighted. He’d written back right away: great news, keep me posted. Then he added, See you for Christmas Eve, if not sooner, and all day I carried that around with me, the or sooner clanging against my heart.
My mother and I selected two servings of turkey and four side dishes. When we got home, I set the bag down on the table and started to open it, but my mother said, “Oh, Beth—let’s at least put everything on plates.”
I closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t glare. “Why?”
“It’ll look nicer. Here, bring the bag back into the kitchen. It’ll feel more like Thanksgiving this way.”
She plopped all the side dishes onto salad plates and arranged them around a mini pumpkin she’d bought the week before. She’d gotten a bottle of sparkling apple cider, and she poured some in wineglasses as we ate.
“I thought,” she said, and cleared her throat, “that it would be nice to say what we’re thankful for.”
I chewed a piece of turkey. It was dry and salty, tough between my teeth.
“I’m thankful for a stable job and a roof over our heads and food,” she said. “And for Asheville to look forward to. And most of all, I’m thankful for such a wonderful, beautiful daughter.” She smiled at me. “A beautiful daughter almost in college.”
I swallowed the turkey and reached for my cider. My face was burning. I should have watched more carefully when my father was still here, I told myself. I should have watched exactly what she’d done to drive him out, so that I could make sure I never made the same mistakes.
“What about you, Beth?” she said softly. “What are you thankful for?”
I looked at her smooth, pale face and tried to picture my father looking at her the same way, noting her short eyelashes and the way her skin without blush was flat and shadowy, the wrinkles forming under her eyes. I felt something ugly bubbling up. “My friends.”
“Ah,” she said. “Of course. You’re a very good friend to them too.” She studied a few stray kernels of corn on her plate and pushed at them with her fork, then looked up at me.
“Your friends…,” she said, and her voice trailed off as though inserting a comma, beginning a list.
I stood, pushing my chair back so it probably scratched the hardwood floor. “I’m finished,” I announced, though half my plate was still uneaten. “Thank you for dinner.”
She let me go. Later, I heard her washing the dishes downstairs. Much later, when she was in her room for the night, I was hungry and came downstairs to the kitchen, and when I opened the refrigerator I saw she’d neatly piled all my leftovers in a covered bowl and had affixed a little Post-it note on top that said Beth. I stuck everything in the microwave and burned my tongue on my first bite.