Adam (31 page)

“Don't knock it if you haven't tried it,” said Brad with a lip-sneered smile.

“Oh, I've tried it,” said Nadia.

“Yeah, I've been trying to lift a little, even though my doctor told me not to yet,” said Lionel. “I'm just ready to get ripped. What's your dose?”

Jesus, he would not give up.

“I'm gonna sing a song!” said Gillian, jumping out of her seat. “Lionel, will you sing it with me?”

“Uh, sure, what are we singing?”

Gillian grabbed Lionel's hand and dragged him over toward the karaoke DJ. They stopped midway, and Gillian whispered something in Lionel's ear. Lionel nodded and looked at Brad.

“I'm buying a round of shots,” said Adam. “Hey, Gillian, you guys want shots?”

“Thanks, baby,” she said.

“Straight edge!” said Lionel, and he drew an X across his chest with his finger.

The music for Gillian and Lionel's song came on, and Lionel started in.

Adam strolled confidently up to the bar and slapped down Ethan's ID. Ethan had loaned it to him before they went out. He'd done that a few times. Adam loved using Ethan's ID.

“Five shots of whiskey,” he said. “Jameson.”

Ethan Karl Anderson from 90 Field Point Circle, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830, grinned back up at him and winked.

Adam looked around and realized the bar had become packed, buzzing with loud, rowdy hipsters, their gang a natural part of it.

“‘You cry . 
.
 .'”

Adam's head turned to the karaoke stage, where Gillian was singing the cheery, '60s-sounding song. She was usually so nervous and bumbling, but now, smiling up at the lyrics on the screen, this perfectly pitched, startlingly bold music just rolled out of her mouth like it wasn't anything. He'd sometimes heard her singing softly along to music in the background but had no idea she was actually this good. Why hadn't she told him? Her voice was beautiful. All he wanted to do was stand there and listen to her.

“Whoooo!”
someone cheered behind Adam.

Adam looked around and saw that people had stopped talking to step closer and watch her. Everyone could tell she was amazing. Adam's chest seized. She'd never even said she liked singing. Let alone that she was good at it. Adam felt a desperate, wild neediness. She was
really
good. A crowd had formed at the front of the stage. These people loved her. They wanted her. But she was
his
, right? She belonged to him. The separation between them seemed suddenly vast, insurmountable. Gillian and her talent on one side of the world, Adam on the other.

Gillian turned away from the screen, and her eyes met Adam's. She put her hand to her heart as she sang, and his body fluttered. She was his. He was the one she wanted.
You can't have her. You can't have her. You can't have her.
He flung these thoughts at the various patrons watching her.

Gillian handed the mic back to Lionel. His voice was embarrassing in contrast. Weak and strained. Tentative and pathetically hopeful.

Adam looked back at the booth. He could tell Brad was frustrated by the Nadia situation but, at the same time, fueled by some inexhaustible optimism, still hadn't given up. It was kind of hilarious actually, the way he kept that cocky grin on his face. Nadia and Jackie were clearly fucking with him, and Brad was just riding along, bouncing up and down with no seat belt in the back of their janky-ass car. It was sweet, his earnest perseverance in the face of pure shit.

When they were kids, he and Brad had been equals. Everything was after-school snacks and Knights and Swords for hours, chasing each other all over the house. And then in middle school that had stopped, and Brad's crude asshole side had emerged, which impressed Adam and made him fear Brad because, for some reason, Adam couldn't do it too. But watching Brad now, it all seemed so obvious. That asshole persona—what had always made Brad so cool and old and inherently
better
than Adam—was really just another dumb play sword for Brad to swing in front of himself.

Gillian and Lionel finished, and everyone in the bar whistled and applauded. Gillian's face went back to being bashful.

Another song came on, some aggressively rhythmic thing Adam didn't recognize but that caused Jackie and Nadia to shriek and jump out of the booth.

“Oh my god, they have
Ani?!
” said Gillian, equally excited by whatever was playing.

Jackie and Nadia joined Gillian and Lionel onstage.

“Adam! Sing it with us!” Gillian called to him.

Adam reddened.
No way.
He shook his head.

“Please?”

Oh god, please no.

“Just this one!” she pleaded.

His gorgeous girlfriend. So Adam hustled over to the stage, where the four of them were singing.

“‘I cannot name this . 
.
 .'”

Gillian grabbed Adam's hand, but he saw Brad looking awkward, left alone in the booth, so he broke free and ran and grabbed Brad's hand too.

“I'm not doing this shit alone,” said Adam.

“Fucking kill you, Freedman,” said Brad, but he was grinning, and they ran back on the stage, where the rest of them were really going at it, and Adam and Brad had no idea how this fucking song went, but they bounced up and down, and Nadia even threw her arm around Brad, and by the second time the chorus came on, Adam and Brad winged it and sang too, and soon they were just screaming along with whatever words they could, and Gillian kept kissing Adam, and Brad was doing his dumb-ass dance moves, and it was just so much fun—
it was fun, it was fun, it was
fun.

Adam looked at Gillian and at goofy Brad, and he thought of Ethan at home and his sister, Casey—Casey who had made all this possible!—and he was filled with such intense love for each of them, it felt like he wanted to cry or maybe laugh or some absurd expression of emotion he'd never performed before, but then Nadia was punching him in the shoulder and saying, “Shots! Shots!” and so he got himself together and ran through the people back to the bar where the shots were waiting.

“That's you, honey?” said the bartender.

“Yes!” said Adam, and he cupped his hands around the shot glasses—balancing two on each side, one suspended in the middle—and carried them carefully back to the stage.

***

“You're sure?” said Gillian.

They were all standing outside the Canal Street subway deciding who was going where. Gillian was taking the C back to Fort Greene and wanted Adam to come home with her. She was drunk and had those loose, drunk eyes, looking him up and down, not caring how obvious it was she wanted him. It was so fucking sexy.

“I can't . . .” said Adam.

“Brad doesn't care, right, Brad?” Gillian said.

“Dude, I don't give a shit if you spend the night at her house—just give me your keys. I'd rather sleep in your bed than on that futon anyway.”

Adam hesitated.

“I mean, don't make me twist your arm . . .” said Gillian. “God, I feel like some nympho girlfriend.”

Brad gave Adam a look like,
What the hell is wrong with you?

“Let's go-o-o-o-o,” said Nadia, hanging off Jackie. “I'm sleepy. Wanna go home-home.”

“It's just we told Ethan we'd hit that bar with him,” said Adam. “Remember?”

This idea appealed to Brad, so he nodded his head. “Oh yeah, we did.”

“We're gonna walk to the J,” said Adam. He leaned in to kiss Gillian goodbye.

Gillian gave him a confused smile. He could tell she was hurt but trying to play it off. He wanted nothing more than to go home with her right now. But he couldn't. He wasn't wearing the ACE bandage. Wearing it around Brad made him want to kill himself so he hadn't. And he was too scared to go home with Gillian and into her bed without it.

“I'll call you tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, boys' night out . . .”

Gillian and her friends headed down the subway steps, and Adam and Brad continued on the street.

“So is there a cool bar in your neighborhood that doesn't card?” asked Brad. “Somewhere you and Ethan usually hang? I'm feeling restless! You think he'll be up for it?”

“Sure!” said Adam absently. He was still thinking about Gillian. She thought he didn't want her.

“Dude, I'm texting Colin and telling him I hooked up with that Nadia girl. You'll back me up, right? I think he's lying about fucking some girl in San Francisco. I think he's still a virgin, actually.” Brad's head swiveled to Adam. “You're fucking Gillian, right?”

“Um, duh,” said Adam.

Brad threw some boxing punches into the air. “Man, I hope Ethan's up to go out. I'm feeling fuckin'
restless!
”

***

As soon as Adam opened the door to the apartment, he knew something was wrong. He could tell Brad sensed it too, the way his blathering abruptly trailed off.

Casey, June, and Ethan sat around the television, watching intensely. Casey looked like she had been crying.

“Quiet!” Casey said, as Brad shut the door. She hadn't seen Brad since he'd arrived in New York—hadn't seen him since she'd left for college a year ago actually—and this was apparently her way of greeting him. Brad didn't seem to notice or care. Things were as the two had left them.

“What's going on?” said Adam.

“Nelly Chua,” said June, with a somber face. Then turned back to the television.

Adam and Brad sat on the floor to watch. It was a news channel, and a reporter was explaining how they'd found the body of a teenage girl that had been missing the past couple weeks.

“A witness brought police to the site in Wyandanch, New York, where Nelly Chua was found hogtied and buried in a shallow grave.”

They cut to an image of somewhere in the woods. The way the reporter said “shallow grave” bothered Adam. As if they were trying to make it sound like a cool horror movie or something. But he guessed if the grave really was shallow, that's how you describe it.

The screen switched to an image of Nelly Chua's smiling face. She was really pretty. Casey started sobbing. The news did that thing where the reporter starts the whole story over from the beginning,
“We're here at the West Babylon, Suffolk County, police station, where three hours ago the two-week search for Nelly Chua came to an end . 
.
 .”

“I hope they fucking die. I don't give a shit. I hope they get the fucking death penalty,” said Casey.

“I hope they fucking die,” echoed June.

Casey's phone, which was in her lap, rang. She answered it, jumping up from the couch. “Hey,” she said in a soft, nervous voice.

“Hazel?” mouthed June.

Casey ignored June. She turned her back to everyone and paced while listening into the phone. She stopped and hovered by the entrance to the kitchen. “But you're OK?”

June watched Casey with the same intensity she'd previously been giving the television. Her fists were tight little balls under her stomach bulge.

“I just—thanks for calling me back,” Casey continued. “I'm just, I'm just so upset and I—you're sure you're OK?” She started crying again. “I know . . . I know . . .”

“Shit. Did Casey, like, know this girl?” said Brad.

As Brad said this, Adam saw the words “transgender teenager murdered” on the screen, and he knew it wasn't that Casey knew her.

No one answered Brad. He hit Adam lightly on the knee and said in a low voice, “Wanna go back out? Should we ask Ethan?”

Adam glanced at Ethan. He was just watching the news, his face expressionless.

“Just hold up,” said Adam. He had a horrible feeling in his stomach.

Casey closed her phone. “There's going to be a candlelight vigil at Union Square tomorrow night,” she said to everyone.

“Are you going with Hazel?” said June.

“She's going with her friends. But of course I'm going.”

Casey took her seat on the couch and resumed staring at the television. June put her hand on Casey's leg, but Casey moved away. Adam saw June lightly punch the offending hand with her other hand.

“So you knew this girl?” Brad asked Casey.

“No,” Casey snapped.

Brad gave Adam an exaggerated “Jesus, what'd I do” look.

“It's just like Brandon Teena,” said June. “The bathroom, everyone crowding in to see . . .”

Adam wondered if Gillian had found out yet. If she was going to call him the way Casey had called Hazel. It wouldn't be as intense for Gillian because this was a trans girl, like Hazel, not a trans guy, like Adam. But she still might call. The horrible pang came back in his stomach.

The murdered girl's mother was on the screen now, crying,
“I'm going to bury him in the prettiest dress I can find. With makeup.”

“It's
her
,” Casey said to the television.
“Her.”

“Shut
up
,” said Ethan. “Her mom obviously loves her.”

Casey got really awkward and quiet. She looked into her lap and wiped at her wet nose.

Adam's phone dinged.
gillian
. His heart twitched, the way it always did when he got a text from her. The text read:
just found out about Nelly. You? Are u OK?
He texted back:
yeah just found out too, watching on TV now . . .
He added a sad-face emoticon and then quickly deleted it. He hit
SEND
and looked back up at the television. His stomach was killing him.

Someone was being interviewed.
“It's messed up, man. This is tragic, no other way to put it. It's tragic. He shouldn't have done that. Leading people to believe you're a girl when you aren't. Letting them have sex with you. But it's tragic.”

“Fucking asshole,” said Casey. She looked back down at her phone.