I get a rushed email from A as I’m driving to school. I read it in my car, before I go inside. A tells me he (she?) spent yesterday in the body of an immigrant girl who had to clean toilets to make a living, and the day before A wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home at this other girl’s house and watched TV. Today A’s another girl who has this big track meet, so she has to stay where she is. Even though I told him not to come here, I’m disappointed.
I want to contradict myself. I want to overrule my hesitations. I want A to be here.
But I can’t steal that girl from her track meet. And when I picture A as some runner girl, I slow myself down. What if she’s another Ashley? Or even just normal-looking. What would we do then?
I think about writing back to A, but if I’m not telling him (her?) to drop everything to see me, I don’t have much else to say. I am not going to tell A about Justin—not about the fight, not about the making up. And what else do I have in my life that’s worth talking about?
I turn off my phone and head into school.
I go through the motions. I try not to talk in class, but talk when I have to. I say hello to friends, but not much more. I give Justin what he wants—enough distance to be himself, but enough closeness to know I haven’t gone far. I eat lunch without tasting it.
I find myself thinking of Kelsea, about her notebook containing all those ways to die. Not because I want to kill myself. I am nowhere near wanting to kill myself. But I can understand feeling so detached from your own life. To feel that your connection to everyone else is so thin that all it would take is one decisive snip to be separated completely. If I don’t cling, I drift. I feel that no one is holding me. In my life, I am the only one who holds.
Except for A. But A is not here.
Rebecca and Preston try to reach me. They see the thin thread and tie messages to it, sliding them my way. Preston invites me to another round of buyless shopping. Rebecca tries to bribe me into a coffee excursion after school. Both of them remind me that Daren Johnston is having a party tomorrow night. I’m sure I’ll end up going.
Plans. I realize I’m not making plans because I want to see where A is living tomorrow, if A will be free. It’s the weekend. I can drive far if I have to.
No. I see Justin and I think, Stop it. He asks me if I want to go to a movie. He even lets me choose.
Once upon a time, this would have made me happy.
I can’t be bothered to tell my mother I’m not coming home for dinner. This will make it two nights in a row, and she’s going to give me hell for it. So I figure I might as well do what I’m going to do and get the hell after, instead of getting the hell before and not being able to go.
We drive around for a while, then get some Taco Bell and head to an earlyish movie. As we’re waiting for the coming attractions, I find myself looking at all the other people in the theater. Most of them are my age, and I can’t help but wonder if one of them might be A. Her track meet would be over by now. Maybe she decided to go to a movie with friends afterward. It’s not impossible.
A few girls catch me watching. Most turn away. A couple confront me, staring back to make me feel uncomfortable.
Justin is fidgety, maybe sensing how my attention is wandering. I lean into him, hold his hand. He shifts the popcorn in his lap so this can happen. But when the previews start, he pulls away.
I don’t think the movie is what he expected it to be. The posters promised it was a horror movie set in space. But soon it’s clear that the most horrific thing the astronaut is fighting is the endlessness of his boredom and the pointlessness of his life. Justin’s eyelids start to flutter. I want to use his shoulder as a pillow, but he told me once that if I lean there for too long, it kills his circulation. So I go back to looking at the audience as much as I can, picking out which person I’d be most attracted to, if A were inside.
I know the answer should be all of them.
It is not all of them.
It’s not as simple as saying all the guys are yes and all the girls are no. It’s more complicated than that. Although mostly it’s the guys I consider.
The answer—the real A I want—is sitting right next to me.
When I get home, it’s my father who’s waiting in the kitchen, looking disappointed. He tells me Mom’s already gone to bed, and that it was inconsiderate of me to ditch dinner without a call. I lie and say I told Mom ages ago that this was going to be a date night with Justin. I call it a “date night” so my dad will imagine we went for ice cream sodas and gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes the whole time.
He falls for it completely.
I check for a new email from A, but don’t find anything. And I don’t write back, since I still don’t have anything interesting to say.
The next morning, my mother says she isn’t speaking to me. I know I’m supposed to feel bad, but mostly I’m happy not to deal with her.
I’m worried that they won’t let me go to the party tonight, so I make a big production of doing my homework and completing some random chores. It’s very easy to win my father over this way.
Before I leave the house, I consider emailing A and letting him (her?) know where I’m going to be. Then I remember what happened to that poor guy Nathan the last time this happened, and I decide to stay silent. Still, I wonder where he (she?) is. I also wonder why I haven’t heard anything.
I pick Justin up, because I know he’s planning on drinking. I ask him what he did all day and he barely remembers. I think maybe his life is as uneventful as mine, and that’s why we’re together. To be each other’s eventfulness.
Or maybe that’s why we go to parties, to find some eventfulness there. Or wastedness. Or both. Preston’s also driven, so he and I sip Diet Cokes as I tell him about the movie, which is more interesting to make fun of than it was to watch. While I’m talking, Preston keeps his eye on the door, waiting for his gaydar to go off. It stays silent for a while until this James Dean wannabe strides in. Preston comes to attention like a hunting dog that’s spotted the prettiest duck to ever fall from the sky.
“Really?” I say. “Him?”
Preston nods once. Twice.
“Do you want me to find out who he is?” I ask.
Preston shakes his head once. Twice.
A minute later, Dirk Nielson bounds in, car keys dangling in his hand. He looks around, spots James Dean, heads over, and kisses him hello.
“Shit,” Preston says.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
“Well, it was nice for the five seconds it lasted.”
James Dean looks over at us—looks over at me. For a brief second, I feel connection. But then I really look into his eyes and I know: It’s not A. It’s nothing.
I talk to Preston some more, then Rebecca and Ben come join us. I’m telling them about the movie when Stephanie comes tearing out of the kitchen, looking like she’s on fire. Steve follows her for a few feet before stopping and yelling “WHAT THE FUCK?” at least three times at her back.
“Who wants to take this one?” Rebecca asks. When no one else makes a move, she sighs and bolts after Stephanie. Ben and Preston head over to Steve.
I walk around them and find Justin doing shots with Kara Wallace and Lindsay Craig, the girl who was so certain I was up to no good with the guy I was taking around school.
I steel myself and walk over. “So what happened with Steve and Stephanie?” I ask.
I am clearly asking Justin, but Lindsay answers. “She saw him eating pepperoni and said it was really rude of him because she’s been vegetarian for, like, the past three minutes.”
Kara finds this funny. Justin just shrugs at me, like he stopped trying to figure Stephanie and Steve out years ago.
Lindsay’s staring at me in a way that makes me wonder whether I wore the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, or am just the wrong person. I decide not to ask.
Justin seems taken care of, so I head back out of the kitchen. Once again, I find myself wandering around all of the conversations, avoiding all of my friends. I am this body, I think. When my friends see this body, they assume they know a lot about the person inside of it. And when people I don’t know see it, they also make assumptions. No one ever really questions these assumptions. They are this layer of how we live our lives. And I’m no different from them. When I saw James Dean walk in, I felt I knew as much about him as I’m sure he felt he knew about me when he looked my way. It’s like an instant form of reading, the way we define each other.
The house isn’t that big. There’s no dance floor in the basement—I’m not even sure there is a basement. There’s a line for the bathroom off the living room, so I walk upstairs, hoping to find a bathroom there. And also because it’s quieter upstairs.
All of the doors on the hallway are closed. I open the first and see it’s a bedroom. I’m about to close it when a voice says, “Hello? Can I help you?”
I poke my head in and see Daren Johnston cross-legged on his bed, reading The Outsiders.
“Oh, hi, Rhiannon,” he says. “The bathroom’s the second door on the right. I left it open, but I guess someone closed it. I mean, there might be someone in there, so you should probably knock.”
“Thanks,” I say. But I don’t leave. “Why are you up here reading? I mean, it’s your party.”
Daren smiles slightly. “I guess I like thinking about throwing a party more than I actually like having people over. Lesson learned.”
“Why don’t you tell everyone to go home?”
“Because they’re enjoying themselves, I think. They shouldn’t have to suffer just because I’m feeling antisocial. I needed to leave, so I allowed myself to leave.”
I nod to the book. “First time?”
“Nah. More like my twelfth.”
I remember when I read it—Justin and I were in the same English class last year, and we read it together one Sunday afternoon, lying in his bed. It was a race to see who would finish first, but I slowed myself down because I loved the feeling of us turning the pages at the same time, being in the same part of the story. When we were done, he said how he was blown away by the line “Nothing gold can stay”—he really felt it was true. Then he smiled and said, “So I guess we’ll have to be silver,” and he called me Silver for days after.
“Do you think gold can stay?” I ask Daren now.
His smile is different from Justin’s—a little more knowing, a little less eager. “I don’t think anything can stay,” he tells me. “Good or bad. So I think the important part is to not get caught up in worrying about whether something will stay, and instead enjoy it for the time it’s here.”
A door opens in the hallway and a guy calls out, “Daren! Where are you hiding?” He sounds like a construction foreman calling workers back from lunch.
Daren doesn’t move. “For the record,” he says to me, “I’m not hiding.”
“DARRRRRREN!” the voice bellows. Then the door to the bedroom opens wider and James Dean walks in. I had imagined his voice would be…sexier.
“There you are!”
“Here I am,” Daren admits.
“Come party!”
“I will when I’m finished with this book. I only have a hundred pages left.”
James makes a move to manhandle Daren up. Then another voice calls, “Charles! Where are you, Charles?”
“It was so much more enjoyable when people used telegraphs,” Daren says with a sigh.
“I guess Dirk wants me,” Charles/James says. “I’ll see you when your book is done.” Then he turns to the door and hollers, “COMING!”
Daren hasn’t put down the book.
“You see, Rhiannon,” he says after Charles has left. “Nothing dumb can stay.”
After using the bathroom (which Charles has left surprisingly tidy, even putting down both seat and cover), I return to the kitchen. When I walk in, I find Kara’s disappeared and only Lindsay is with Justin now. He looks drunk and she looks determined. As if she can sense me coming, she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder, then moves it down to his chest. His reaction is so fast you could almost call it instinct—in one smooth move, he’s removed her hand and pushed her away. There’s no way for her to save face, the rejection is so complete. And the best part is I know he hasn’t seen me yet. He didn’t do it because I was watching.
He did it because he’s true to me.
I let a minute pass, and let Lindsay slither off. Then I make my presence known. Justin doesn’t exactly light up to see me, but he doesn’t dim, either.
I tell him how I found Daren reading The Outsiders upstairs.
“I love that book!” Justin says.
“Remember when we read it?” I ask.
He’s probably had too many shots to know what I’m talking about. Or at least that’s what I figure. Then he calls out, “Heigh-ho, Silver!”
Not quite as romantic as its origin. But I’m happy he remembers.
He steps away from the kitchen counter. “Let’s see what’s going on,” he says.
I follow. We find our friends, we shoot the shit, and I no longer feel like the hidden girl in the visible body. Now I am Justin’s version of me—that’s who I am, and that’s who people see. And it’s okay. It helps me navigate the party. It helps me know what to do. It helps me see who to be.
I stop looking for A. I turn back to these people, because they’re my life.