You Know Me Well (21 page)

I’m not running away from anything anymore.

It’s a promise I’m making to myself.

You can keep doing what you’re supposed to, what you’re expected to, and tell yourself it’s what you want. Sit with the same people at lunch, pretending you still have things in common. Read the shiny college brochures, go on the tours, buy into the myth that one of them is meant for you. Believe, at eighteen, that you know what your life will hold and how to prepare for it.

But if you don’t really believe it, if all that time you’re harboring a doubt so deep it creeps into even your best moments, and you break the rules and step away, then there’s going to be a reckoning. You are going to have to explain yourself.

As I sit in the driveway and wait, last night rushes back, takes me over. I’m sitting in that uncomfortable chair, already wrecked by Quinn’s poem, by Ryan’s exit, by Mark’s defeat. And now here’s Lehna.

“I don’t usually write poetry,” she says. “But I had this in my journal from the other night and I figured, I don’t know, why not.”

She blinks against the lights into the audience. “Go, Lehna!” Violet shouts. June and Uma wave with great enthusiasm. But I just watch her, bracing myself for what might come.

“Okay,” she says. “Here it goes.”

We were swimming downstream, always.

We were all scales and fins,

all gleaming in the sun,

all carefree and careless.

We never had to try hard

or even try at all.

You and me,

me and you,

and the water,

and the sun.

Or, no.

What we really were,

were twins.

The kind that feel it

when the other is cold.

The kind that always hears

two heartbeats

instead of one.

Pinch me

and you’d say

ouch
.

Or maybe

I imagined all of it:

the water,

the sun,

even our scales and fins.

Maybe it was just circumstance

and nothing profound

or anomalous

or even

unusual,

the way you’d eat a strawberry

and I’d say

yum
.

Because all it took

was for you to step away

for me to hear

a single heartbeat.

It was always

just me.

It was always

just you.

We thought we were special,

but we were always

the subjects

of two separate

sentences.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s it.”

And I know things happened after that. The rise of applause, everyone’s teary eyes. Mark leaning over to me, saying, “Wow. So she
is
human.” Violet’s questioning look and whatever it is I must have told her. But everything that happened after, it was a blur, because all I remember is Lehna, blinking into the bright light, and the way it sank into me, burrowing, festering: Whatever this is that’s happening between us, it’s another part of the tower that I have to burn down.

19

MARK

I dare you.

Why do we think this is okay? Why do we always feel the need to push and push and push? Don’t we know that pushing is never a way to get a person to come closer?

And yet.

There is something powerful about the shedding of comfort. There is something intense about feeling that person push, knowing that the force behind it is the force of their caring, of their genuine belief that the push will get you to a better place.

I’m not ready.

As I’m walking up the stairs to Ryan’s room, I’m thinking the only real response to this statement could be:

Who is?

*   *   *

He’s still in his pajamas. Which isn’t fair, because in Ryan’s case pajamas means boxers and a ratty old Queen Amidala T-shirt that is much sexier than any late-nineties relic should ever be.

But that’s not what’s being drawn into my focus. What I’m seeing is a boy so lost in the world that he can’t get himself out of bed. The tiredness from lack of sleep, the tiredness of too many thoughts without hitting on the right one. He looks like a balloon that once touched the ceiling brightly but now, weeks later, stumbles along the floor.

“Thanks for coming,” he says. And the fact that he feels the need to thank me makes me sad. It should be understood that I would be here, that I will always be here.

“I know it’s ridiculous,” he goes on. “The timing, I mean. For fuck’s sake, there are only
two days left
in school. You would have thought I could’ve stayed in the closet for two more days. But no. That, apparently, was not the plan.”

“So this is it?” I ask. “Today’s the day?”

He pats a space next to him on the bed, then clutches a pillow to his chest. I sit down where he’s gestured me to sit, facing him.

“Today has been the day for a very long time,” he tells me. “Today has been something I’ve told myself often without ever really believing it. But this week—today actually became
today
. No more looking at a wall and pretending it was a mirror. No more shelving the fiction in the nonfiction section. No more thinking I could get away with it. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it was Taylor who called my bluff. With you and me, the secrecy was part of the story—at least the way I was writing it. I know you would have written it differently. But with me and him—I had to leave the world I’d created. I had to walk into the world that really was. The feelings I’m feeling—they are not tomorrow feelings. They’re today feelings. With you and me—it’s just so…”

“Complicated?” I volunteer.

“Yeah. Complicated. Can I tell you another thing you don’t want to hear?”

“Sure.”

“If I hadn’t seen you up there on that bar—I never would have had the courage to talk to Taylor. To dance with him. To let all this happen. You gave me the inspiration I needed. Part of it was competition, I’m sure—you did that thing so I had to do something even riskier. But part of it was sheer admiration. So I flirted with him so openly—and doing that made me realize what open felt like. I got to that point. I’m at that point. Now I just have to figure out the other ninety-nine percent of it. And you know what? That other ninety-nine percent is
fucking scary
.”

I nod. It is.

I see how truly terrified he is. In a twisted way, I am glad that I am part of it. And in an equally twisted way, I am sad that I am only a part of it and not all of it.

But that is not what this is about.

I know that is not what this is about.

My heart goes out to him, but in a different way from before. It used to want affection. Attention. Recognition.

Now it just wants for him to find his way. And it knows that his way and mine might not be the same.

I know him well. There was a blind spot in my knowing. But now I’m looking around it. I am knowing him more truthfully.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and what he’s apologizing for is the fact that he’s upset, that I am seeing him upset. He knows me well, too.

“There’s no need to be,” I assure him.

Now he says something else—another kind of apology. “I really like him.”

“That’s okay. Really, it is.”

I look at him in his Star Wars T-shirt and anchor-print boxers, clutching a pillow on this bed we have spent so much of our time in, and what I realize is that somehow, without even knowing it, I have stepped out of love with him, and where I’ve stepped instead may end up being the better place. I
have to
step out of love with him, because the ground I’ve always wanted to be there was never really there. He is capable of giving that ground, but I am not the one he wants to give it to. Instead I have the ground we’ve grown all these years. I love him indestructibly, and I care about him at a root level, but in this three-breath-long moment I can understand that the two of us will never be boyfriends, never be husbands, never be everything to each other in that way. I can let that go, and hold tight to everything else.

It should feel like a retreat. It should feel like my love is diminishing and my feelings are contracting. But instead I have a sense that they’re expanding. And they are doing it because they have to.

I am sure that later on I will doubt this. I know that I will regret it, that I will wonder if this sudden understanding was just a trick of the light. But there are no illusions here. Today is finally today. We are no longer what we were. We are now what we’re going to be.

“I know you’re not ready,” I tell him. “I’m not ready, either. But you know what? It’s happening anyway. And we’re going to be okay. We’ll risk the good thing for the better thing. We’re really, truly going to be okay.”

I feel nearly empty as I finish this sentence. I’ve pulled out as much of myself as I can, and I am offering it to him now, no longer a part of me but not entirely relinquished. And in return, he lets go of the pillow. He opens his arms and says my name over and over, as if at long last he’s found me, as if at long last we understand that this is what we needed to learn.

*   *   *

Katie is still waiting for me outside.

Of course she is.

I get into the passenger seat, but I don’t close the door. I don’t want her to drive away.

“How’d it go?” she asks.

“I don’t think either Mark or I will be going to school today.”

“Oh wow. Meaning…?”

“Meaning that although for some reason National Coming Out Day is not, in fact, a part of Pride Week, we are rearranging the calendar so Ryan can have his own Coming Out Day. Movies like
Pride
and old episodes of
Glee
will be watched. Ice cream will be eaten. There may be some wild dancing to Robyn and Rihanna. You never know.”

“Ice cream? Is that really part of the coming-out process?”

“Hells yes. Ben and Jerry have lasted so long together—they’re our role models.”

“And then…?”

“And then we might invite Taylor over. So I can get to know him, since it looks like he’s my best friend’s boyfriend.”

I try to say this casually, but I stumble a little. After all, it’s the first time I’ve ever had to say it.

“Oh, Mark,” Katie says, concerned. “Is that really smart? You don’t have to do that.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m told that if you’re going to fall in love with someone, it’s always best to fall for someone who’s going to love you back. That’s never going to happen with Ryan, and I am strangely okay with it. At least for now.”

“The heart is a treacherous beast.”

“But it means well.”

Katie smiles. “Yes—
the heart is a treacherous beast, but it means well
. That just about sums it up.”

“What they never tell you is that it’s actually the friendship part that’s harder. Kissing is easy. Kissing has its own politics, but at the end of the day, it’s kissing. It’s the real stuff—the being-part-of-each-other’s-lives piece of it—”

“—being close to twins without being twins—”

“Yes! That is both the challenge and the reward.”

I look at Katie and know that sometimes it isn’t all that hard, that sometimes you can just fall into step with someone and keep pace for a good long time. Again, it amazes me that a week ago we barely knew each other’s names. Now we’re on this journey together. I know I can only help her so much and she can only help me so much—ultimately, we have to solve our own problems. But it helps to have someone else in step. It helps to have someone to talk to when it’s time to take a break from solving everything.

“So,” I say, “do you think you’ll be talking to Lehna today?” It was obvious last night from her shell-shocked reaction to Lehna’s poem that Katie needs to resolve some of the sentences they’ve left dangling.

“I will,” she says. And then she says it again, as if the first time wasn’t certain enough. “I’ve already talked to my parents about taking a break from the whole college plot. And I still need to talk to Violet about where the hell we go from here. I’ve loved her wandering heart for so long … but I have no idea what all that wandering means for her and me. I feel the urge for going, but I have no idea if it’s meant to be a solo exploration or not.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I say. Not because it’s this vacuous space-filler of a thing to say, but because I genuinely believe it. Katie is going to figure it out. She has enough of the world in her hands to do that.

“Thank you,” she says. Then she leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Now go help that boy find his way. And remember—as supportive as you want to be, if he and Taylor start being all boyfriendly, you have every right to leave the room and get some space. Empathy is wonderful, but you can still overdose on it if you try too much too fast. Noted?”

“Noted.”

“And while I will turn a blind eye to your willful disregard of your educational responsibilities today, I shall fully expect to be seeing you tomorrow for the grand finale, and again for the full host of Pride Weekend activities, not the least of which is the parade on Sunday. For all her worldliness, Violet’s never seen a pride parade, and I swear by Tegan, Sara,
and
the Holy Ghost that we’ll be showing her the best one ever.”

“It will be Ryan’s first as well.”

“How lucky they are to have us!” Katie says.

I kiss her back on the cheek and say, “How lucky indeed.”

20

Kate

Making my way toward Lehna at lunch, I feel the closest I’ve ever felt to being one of those lonely freshmen in the first days of school. The unfortunate boys and girls whose families have uprooted them just in time for high school, or the quirky, formerly homeschooled kids, or the kids who live in nearby, more dangerous towns and have found their way, through lottery luck or parental cunning, to our suburban haven of a school.

Lehna and I use to say blessings for them.
Let purple backpack kid with the scarf find his people. Pigtailed girl with brand-new white Converse, head north to the circle of girls with their Sharpies out and make those shoes your own.