“Okay,” Ezra says. It pisses me off, that he sounds like he’s trying to soothe a kid throwing a tantrum. “Okay. Say it was him. What do you want to do?” He glances around. “Tell Jill? Go to the dean?”
“No,” I tell him. “Fuck that. Declan Keane? They’d call his dad, let him off with a warning maybe, but they wouldn’t do shit to him. No, I’m not going to tell the dean.”
Jill comes around the corner. She strolls behind us serenely as she looks over our shoulders to observe our work, which is nonexistent.
“Less chatting, more painting,” she says with a smile.
When she moves on, Ezra glances at me.
“So what’re you going to do?” he asks.
Isn’t it obvious? “I’m going to fucking destroy him. That’s what I’m going to do.”
Ezra shrugs, smirk twitching on his face. “Well, whether it was Declan or not, I wouldn’t mind seeing that.” He starts a sketch with the black paint, brushstrokes loose. “What’s the plan?”
Four
EVEN THOUGH I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO DESIRE TO GO TO Dean Fletcher and tell her what’d happened with the gallery, word must’ve spread enough that the teachers overheard, because right as acrylics ends, a student pops his head into the classroom and says I have to go to the office. Dean Fletcher, with her Afro and single silver streak, is a no-nonsense, terrifying badass in a business suit and six-inch heels. Her office—all rich, deep mahogany panels except for the single glass wall—is surprisingly bare and minimalist. Not exactly what you’d expect of an arts school. She waves me inside, asks me to sit on the hard chair in front of her heavy wood desk, and wastes no time asking about the gallery.
“Do you know who might’ve been behind it?”
“No.”
“Has there been anyone bullying you, or making remarks about your identity?”
“No.” God, I just want to leave.
Dean Fletcher folds her hands together. “It was unacceptable, and installed without the permission of this administration,” she says, and I get the hollow feeling that this was really why I was called into her office—to cover their asses. She’s afraid I’ll sue St. Catherine’s or something. “I’m sorry that this happened to you, Felix. Do you want to speak with the summer counselor?”
“No,” I say, a little too quickly. The counselor would just ask a whole bunch of questions, and eventually those questions would veer into abandoned-by-mother territory, and that’s definitely something I don’t want to talk about. “No,” I say again, “thank you.”
Dean Fletcher pauses and looks like she might want to pressure me into some counseling sessions, but she finally gives me a single nod. “We’ll begin an investigation.” I stop myself from rolling my eyes. The most they’ll do is ask a few students if they saw anything, and when those students say no, the gallery will be declared a cold case. “If you hear anything, please tell me right away,” Dean Fletcher says. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for this sort of hateful behavior.”
And even if I’m annoyed, and the school won’t do shit to find who it was, it still feels good to hear her say that.
It’s after the fourth I’m so sorry, Felix and the third question about my deadname that I take Ezra up on his offer to peace the fuck out of classes and head to his apartment early. We stop at the Chinese place that’s on the corner one block down for two cartons of what are the best chicken wings and French fries in the entire city, and then hop into the wine shop that’s right next door, using Ezra’s fake ID to grab two bottles of cheap chardonnay because, as he says, it’s time to get fancy. At the counter, the owner looks from the ID to Ezra’s face and back to the ID, like she knows it’s total bullshit. She takes Ezra’s credit card and tells us this story about when she was sixteen and sneaking off into her neighborhood bar in Paris. We take that as permission to escape with our illegal bottles, taking the wine and chicken back up the block to Ezra’s apartment.
There’re men with bulging muscles and white tanks across the street, shouting in Bajan accents and standing around cars that have their rumbling engines on, blasting an old Dixie Chicks song. Ezra unlocks the front glass door and lets us into the asphalt-gray-tiled and scuffed-white-walls hallway. We stomp up the three floors, Ezra muttering a prayer that his neighbors aren’t home—“I don’t know what the fuck they’re doing—no one has sex like that at three in the morning, they were rolling around and slamming shit on the ground, seriously”—before he unlocks his apartment.
The apartment has a single brick wall, dark wood floors, and a pretty nice kitchen area with granite countertops, along with a stainless-steel refrigerator and gas stove—but other than that, the place is basically empty. Ezra’s been here for almost an entire month now, but he hasn’t bothered buying any furniture with the exorbitant amounts of money his parents gave him to spend. So far, all he has is a mattress out in the living room, facing a tiny-ass TV stand with a 12-inch flat screen. He doesn’t even have any lightbulbs. At night, we’ll just turn on Netflix and use the orange of the streetlights outside to see. The bright sunlight shines into the apartment now. There are some plotted plants over by the window—one mint, one basil, one cannabis. Two of those are more for aesthetics.
Ezra drops the wine and food next to the mattress and flops onto it, kicking off his shoes. “Think we’ll get in trouble for ditching half the day?”
I sit down next to him, pulling the chicken to me. “Uh, no, probably not.” Literally the only teacher who’s ever cared about schedules and tardiness has been Jill.
“Okay, look, I hate the guy,” Ezra says, “but do you think Declan had a point?”
“About being late?” I say, mouth full of fries. “Fuck no.”
“What if we get in trouble? Or we end up—I don’t know, getting kicked out or something?”
“Everyone’s always late to everything, Ez. Declan’s just singling us out because he’s a dick.” I try to ignore the tingle of fear in the back of my mind—not that we’d get kicked out, but that Declan was right about one thing, at least: I’m fucking around, procrastinating on my portfolio because I’m too afraid to actually get started—too afraid to try, only to fail. Terrified that I won’t get into Brown. I’ve worked hard these past three years so that all my dad’s sacrifices wouldn’t go to waste . . . but what if none of that matters in the end?
Ezra grabs the wine and twists off the screw cap. “Cups or no cups?”
“No cups.”
I’m a little annoyed at Ezra for even saying Declan’s name. After all, he’s the one I can thank for that fucking gallery. The pain isn’t as sharp as it was earlier, but it’s still there, echoing through me.
Ezra snuggles his head into my lap, like a dog trying to get comfortable. As if he’s read my mind—I don’t know, maybe he really is an empath or something—he says, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“S’okay.”
“Should we not say his name anymore?” he says. “I wouldn’t argue with calling him something else. Asshole Motherfucker. Shitty McShitterson.” He sits up to take a gulp from the wine, then lies back down. “Commander Dickwad.”
I lean my back against the wall. “No, I don’t mind saying his name,” I say. “As long as I get to fuck up his world.”
“Fucking ruin him.”
“Destroy his life as he knows it.”
“He won’t see it coming.”
“No, he fucking won’t.” What might’ve started as a joke feels a little more serious to me now. “He won’t even recognize himself when I’m done with him.”
“You’re such a Slytherin.”
“I know,” I say, grabbing the second bottle of chardonnay, “but you love it.”
“I do love it,” Ezra says, sitting up to grab a piece of chicken, then hisses and pulls his hand back, saying it’s too hot. “Thought more about what you’re going to do yet?” he asks.
“What did Jill say earlier?” I ask. “That thing about craft.”
“Use cr
aft as a tool,” he says, “to find your creativity.”
“I guess the craft is Instagram. Declan figured out how to hack into my account and find my pictures. He must’ve looked at the photo’s tags, figured out my old name.” The photos were taken and uploaded before I’d even begun to think about transitioning, back when I still had to lie about my age to join any sort of social media.
“Okay,” Ezra says slowly. “So what’re you suggesting?”
I shake my head. “Not sure. If there was a way to—I don’t know, do the same thing that Declan did to me . . .”
It wouldn’t be the same as posting my photos and deadnaming me. Not even close. But if I could learn a secret of Declan’s and use that against him—post his secret, and hurt him like he hurt me . . . That’d definitely be a start.
“Maybe I can find a way to talk to him. Get a secret out of him, something he doesn’t want anyone else to know.” I begin to think of the possibilities. What dark shit might Declan Keane be hiding? Maybe there’s even something I can use against him. Something so bad, he’ll have to give up on his Brown application. Without Declan in the running, I’d pretty much be guaranteed the spot. My grades and my test scores aren’t the best, but I’m pretty fucking talented, and there isn’t anyone else on our level that’s applying for that scholarship.
I hear Ezra’s earlier question—What if it isn’t him?—but I push that shit to the side. I’m pretty positive that it’s Declan . . . and if it isn’t, Declan Keane still 100 percent deserves whatever’s coming to him.
“Get a secret out of him,” Ezra repeats. “Like—what? Catfish him?”
I snap my fingers. “Yes. I can make a fake account on Instagram. Declan’s always posting stupid shit. I’ll start commenting and messaging him. Try to start up a friendship. Get him to trust me.”
Ezra squints at me. “Uh—I mean, it sounds like a good idea. In theory. But I can’t think of anyone who’s less trusting than Declan Keane.” He bites his lip. “He didn’t mind—you know, the physical stuff. Making out and all that. But whenever I tried to get him to talk about his life, his feelings? You remember. He’s like a brick wall.”
I always try to forget that Ezra and Declan used to go out. For an entire seven months during our first year at St. Catherine’s, it was the Ezra Patel and Declan Keane show. It took exactly one day of hardcore flirtation on Ezra’s part before they were all over each other. Inseparable. Hand-holding, cheek-kissing, the works. I accepted my role as the third wheel—and to be honest, I didn’t even mind. Not really. I’d considered Declan my friend, too. All three of us would hang out. Talk about our future, our plans. They were the first two people at St. Catherine’s I came out to as trans. That pretty much says it all, when it comes to how much I trusted Declan Keane.
Then, suddenly—seriously, out of fucking nowhere—Declan broke up with Ezra and became the mightiest of all assholes. One day, he was hanging out with us, like he always did—and the next, he broke up with Ez via text. Ezra didn’t cry or anything, but I could practically feel the confusion and hurt coming off him in waves. To this day, he has no idea why Declan suddenly ended things like that. But, I mean, we’re mature enough to hang out with our exes, right? That’s what Ezra and I thought when we walked up to Declan the next morning. He was sitting with James and Marc, who were already the two most popular bro-jocks at the school . . . and when we tried to say hello, Declan just stared at us blankly, as if he didn’t even know who we were.
Ezra had wanted to ask if he’d done something wrong—to see if they still had a chance to make things work. “Can we talk?” he’d asked.
I still remember the disgust on Declan’s face. “I’d rather not.”
James and Marc were sneering at us. I could feel Ezra’s embarrassment, but he only nodded. “Okay. I guess I’ll just . . . leave you alone, then.”
You’d think Ezra leaving Declan alone would be enough, but no. Declan would roll his eyes whenever Ezra and I had something to say in class, would complain to the teacher whenever we were late, would talk shit about me and Ez to anyone who would listen. He made it clear that he thought he was better than us—that he wanted nothing to do with us. He never said why. No explanation. Nothing.
Ezra shrugged it off and acted like he wasn’t really hurt. He decided to move on. But I’ll admit it: Declan really made me feel like shit. I know he made Ezra feel like shit, too. I’ve never forgiven him for that. I probably never will.
Ezra tests the chicken out again, breaking a wing in half. “I’d ask him, you know, about his family, or what it was like growing up in upstate New York, but he’d just sidestep all of those questions. Trying to get a secret out of him is a good idea,” he says again, “but I don’t think Declan would tell anything to a stranger he met online.”
Crap. I know Ezra’s right. “But I don’t know what else to do,” I tell him. “I’ll just have to try.”
He shrugs. “All right,” he says with a Good luck tone.
I pull out my phone. “What should my username be?”
“Shit, this chicken’s so fucking good,” he says, mouth full.
“That might be a little long.”
He takes a second to think. “Felix is a thing in Harry Potter, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, racking my brain, trying to remember—it’s been a while since I read the series. “It was that thing Ron thought he drank for luck in that Quidditch match.” Felix means “lucky” in Latin. Its meaning is why I chose it to be my new name in the first place. When I figured out that I’m not a girl, and I started making all the necessary changes, I knew I’d lucked out.
Ezra nods at me. “How about Lucky?”
“Oh—what about Lucky?”
“That’s what I just fucking said.”
I type on my phone, trying a bunch of different iterations of Lucky, until I finally have a username that hasn’t been taken: luckyliquid95.
“Sounds dirty,” Ezra says with a smirk.
“Whatever.” I enter the username. I hate that I remember Declan’s username, but I do—I type it in the search bar: thekeanester123. (Honestly, that name should’ve been a red flag for me and Ezra from the start.) I swipe through Declan’s images. A bunch are pretentious black-and-white photos of himself, set up with severe lighting from antique lamps and gauzy curtains. A couple are of food, cityscapes with the sun shining in between buildings, some of him and James standing in front of graffiti, him and Marc at Yankee Stadium.
But most of the posts are of his illustrations.
I hate Declan Keane. Like, really freaking hate him. But even I have to admit that the guy’s got talent. Real talent. The kind that can’t be taught. The kind that can’t be imitated.
I’ve always leaned more toward acrylic portraits, and I know that I’m good. But Declan’s artwork is . . . indescribable. There’s no label to put on it. Collage, maybe? He uses so many different mediums. Charcoal sometimes, pastel others, simple pencil or ink. But it’s really his use of negative space that’s so stark. It seems simple, at first glance—but it’s the kind of negative space that reminds me of looking up, through the branches of trees, to see the sky shining behind it, or the space that’s between something as fine and intricate as lace. The subjects of his pieces are always interesting—a bird with a broken wing, a woman with traditional neck rings and modern hoop earrings, a simple hand. But it’s always—always—the negative space that he builds around the subjects with his designs and pieces of newspaper, leaves or crumpled-up tissue, what seems like literally anything he’ll find on the ground—that puts his artwork above everyone else’s.
What makes him a better artist than even me, really.
It pisses me off to admit it. I hate that it’s true. But it is. Declan’s a better artist than me.
With his artwork, and his Ivy League pedigree, and his impeccable grades, Declan is definitely going to get a spot at Brown. He’ll probably get that scholarship, too, even though he doesn’t need it. Even though he’s an ass
hole and he doesn’t deserve it.
I scroll through his artwork and start liking a bunch of the posts at random. I comment on one piece. Great use of negative space! I comment on another. What materials did you use for this?
Ezra’s decimated an entire carton of chicken and fries and begins to start in on mine, so I grab a wing. “I don’t know if I want to look at my dad for at least another twelve hours,” I tell him. Especially now, after the gallery—if my dad calls me by my birthname, I might just flip out on him. “Okay if I stay over tonight?”
“You ask that literally every time,” Ezra says, “and literally every time, I say yes.”
“I don’t want to be presumptuous,” I say. “What if you—I don’t know, have a special friend coming over or something?”
He lets out a barking laugh. “Special friend? Felix, you’re with me twenty-four seven. When am I supposed to meet this special friend?”
I shrug. “Or what if you get tired of me, but don’t know how to say it?”
Ezra rolls his eyes, grabs my phone, and turns it to Spotify. The Fleetwood Mac station is still on, so “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum begins to play. Ezra gets up and starts pirouetting around and around—he’s been classically trained since the age of five. I pick off a couple leaves of the weed, grab some of the paper that’s waiting beside the TV, and roll while Ezra kicks his leg all the way up to the beat, toes pointed and all. The lighter is at the edge of the counter in the kitchen—I click, click, until the paper sizzles and smoke wisps into the air. Ezra slides to my side, and I pop the bud in his mouth. I yank open the window that faces an empty alleyway, and we crawl out onto the fire escape, legs dangling. The sun is starting to make its way down. The sky’s darker, purple hues off on the horizon.
“You ever wonder,” he says, squinting up at the sky, “why we’re here?”
Oh, God. High philosophical Ezra is the literal worst. “There’s no reason why we’re here. We just exist. That’s all. That’s it.”
“No. Not like that.” He screws up his face in frustration. “Why here, in Brooklyn? Why this program? Why art?”
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