She seems to consider, shine in her eyes—seriously, it’s too early for anyone to be this excited. “But isn’t the craft all about expressing the creator’s point to the best of their ability? Does morality have anything to do with the craft of the piece itself?”
Declan is leaning back on his stool, at danger of falling off, but somehow managing to balance himself and look relaxed at the same time. “Besides,” he says, “who gets to be the judge of what’s evil and what isn’t?”
“Great point!” Jill says, nodding. “Yes, great point. Should the question of morality be kept out of art?”
Declan throws a fake smile my way. I roll my eyes. “Morality, at its essence, defines what is human,” I say. “Keeping questions of morality out of art suggests keeping humanity out of art itself.”
Jill nods slowly. “Yes, that’s an interesting point as well.”
“So you would restrict artwork?” Declan asks me. “Censor it?” He nods his head at Ezra’s Judith I and the Head of Holofernes Klimt tattoo—Ezra blinks at Declan with a blank face, still half-asleep. “It isn’t exactly moral to cut someone’s head off. Should that piece never have been created?”
I shake my head. “No, but there’s a line.”
“What line is that?”
“A line that could hurt people.”
“Hurt people?”
“Yes. Propaganda against different races, illustrations depicting groups of humans as lesser than others. Art for the sake of art, without any regard to other people—”
I pause. There’s too much emotion in my voice, and everyone’s staring at me now, people turned in their seats to watch me over their shoulders. Ezra’s waking up, glancing between me and Declan. I sit straighter in my seat. “There needs to be moral judgment in creation.”
It could’ve ended there. Should’ve ended there. But Declan Keane—he never knows when to just fucking stop. “I guess this is in reference to that gallery of you,” he says.
The room goes still. Silent.
Ezra gets tense beside me. “Shut up, Declan.”
Declan shrugs. “If that’s what you’re talking about, you should just say it.”
“I said shut up, Declan.”
“It’s hard to say who the artist is, or what their motive was, but—”
My foot swings out before my brain even registers what I’ve done. I kick Declan’s stool, and he falls backward, crashing to the ground. There’s a scream from our table—Leah—and Jill rushes forward as Declan sits himself up, hand to the back of his head. He checks his palm. There’s no blood, but that doesn’t stop him from looking up at me with full-on rage.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouts.
“Okay, all right.” Jill tries to help him up, but he pushes her hands away, jumping to his feet.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “Accident.”
“Bullshit!” Declan tries to get in my face, but Ezra’s between the two of us in a heartbeat, hands out.
“It was an accident!”
Jill’s shaking her head. Fuck.
Declan points at me, still trying to get around Ezra. “You kicked my stool. I could’ve gotten hurt. I could’ve died.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“Fuck you, Felix—”
“Enough!”
Jill’s voice echoes across the classroom, all hints of her earlier enthusiasm gone. Everyone’s eyes are wide. Austin’s hand is to his mouth, and Hazel has her phone out, filming the whole thing from across the room. My heart drops. St. Cat’s has a zero-tolerance policy for violence, and Declan is just about the worst person I could’ve fucked with. His dad could have me kicked out in about three seconds flat—especially if me getting kicked out means Declan won’t have any more competition for a spot at Brown. I can kiss both Brown and that scholarship goodbye.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse—a whisper in the otherwise silent room. “I swear, it was an accident.”
Declan’s jaw and fists clench, unclench, clench.
“Dean’s office,” Jill says. “Both of you. Now.”
“I said I was sorry—”
“Why me? He’s the one who—”
“Now,” she says again.
Ezra looks the way I feel—terrified—as I grab my backpack and walk out of the room, Declan trailing behind. Fuck. I wasn’t thinking when I kicked. I didn’t mean to do it—it’d barely been a thought. He just wouldn’t shut up about the gallery, and he was talking about it so smugly, like he was rubbing it in my face, the fact that he’d been the one to post my photos and my birthname in the first place, had sent me that message on Instagram—
The halls have brick walls, dark wood floors. There aren’t any elevators, so we have to stomp down about three airless staircases, my shirt sticking to my back in the heat. Declan follows, but not closely behind, as if he can’t trust himself not to shove me down the steps if he gets too close. We make it to the first floor where there are a bunch of offices, including the dean’s. The secretary listens to our oversimplified story—“we were sent by Jill”—and she tells us to wait on the metal bench outside the dean’s office.
She leaves us there. I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. I need to have a level head when I walk into the office. I need to get my story straight. It was an accident. I kicked out without meaning to. My foot slipped. Anything.
Declan sits at the edge of the bench, knee bouncing up and down. He checks the back of his head again, as if he thinks he’ll have magically produced blood this time around. He won’t look at me. I’m having a hard time looking at him myself.
“You’re such a prick,” Declan mutters, arms crossed.
“Kettle. Black. Et cetera.”
“I’m a prick because I disagreed with you about the place of morality in art?”
He watches me, and I hesitate. It’s weird, but—right here, right now, I remember the conversation we’d had last night. Remember that the guy in front of me had been the one typing those messages into his phone. I bite my lip, look away.
“No,” I say, “you’re a prick because you always treat me like shit.”
“How’s that?”
The gallery. That Instagram message. I almost say the words. He waits, staring at me, and I could say it—could reveal that I know it was him—but then I’d also be giving up on my payback plan. If I tell him, he’d probably figure out that I’m the one he’s been talking with online. I could go to the dean as a last resort, but the most he’d get is a slap on the wrist. He wouldn’t get any of the shit he deserves, not until I manage to find out his darkest secret, something I can use to destroy him. I can’t tell him that I know it was him—not yet.
“How, exactly, have I treated you like shit?” Declan demands again.
“Seriously?” I say. “You’ve treated me and Ezra like shit for the past two years for no fucking reason.”
He rolls his eyes. “I may treat Ezra like shit,” he says, “but I don’t treat you like shit. And it’s not for no fucking reason, either.”
“You’re kidding, right?” He takes in an impatient breath, turning away, but I keep going. “You’ve been a condescending asshole to me any chance you get. You talk shit about me and Ez, you’re always trying to get us into trouble—”
“You’re just pissed because we’re both applying to Brown, and you know you’re not going to get in.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, fuck off.”
“What?” he says, looking at me again. “It’s the truth, right? You know I’m going to get in. Might get the scholarship, too. And you can’t get your shit together. You’re never on time, never working on your portfolio, and you’re pissed about it, so you’re taking your shit out on me.”
I shake my head, staring at the closed dean’s door. “I have my shit together.”
He snorts. “Okay. Whatever you say.”
We’re quiet for a long time.
“You don’t even need the scholarship,” I tell him.
“It’s not exactly your place to say whether I need the scholarship or not.”
“From what I know of you, you don’t need the scholarship. Not in comparison to me.”
His voice is quiet. “You don’t know shit about me.”
Before I can say anything else, the dean’s office door opens, and Dean Fletcher, with her silver-streaked Afro, waves us into her office of wooden panels. We take our seats in front of the heavy desk.
She holds her hands together as she watches us. “What happened? Ms. Brody called me to say there’d been a fight.”
I stare at my marked-up sneakers, waiting for Declan to jump in, but he’s quiet also.
“Come on,” she says, “let’s hear it.”
“We had an argument,” Declan says slowly.
“And?” she prompts. “I heard you fell?”
Declan takes in a deep breath, not looking at me. “It was a freak accident, I guess. His foot slipped, I was leaning back . . .”
I glance up at him. The dean raises an eyebrow, looking between the two of us. “An accident?”
Declan doesn’t say anything else. I nod slowly. “Uh—yeah,” I say. “An accident.”
The dean looks from me to Declan and back to me again. “All right,” she finally says, clearly not believing either of us, but there’s nothing she can do unless there’s an official complaint. “I urge you both to work through your problems so that you won’t be disruptive to your future classes. In the meantime, can I see a handshake and a truce?”
She’s taken things too far. Declan’s roll of eyes shows he agrees with me.
“Let’s go,” she says. “A handshake and an apology, from both of you.”
Jesus Christ, let’s just get it over with. I swivel in my seat to Declan, hand stuck out. His arms are crossed, but he uncrosses one and plants his hand in mine. It’s larger, an artist’s hands with dried paint in the creases of his skin. Declan meets my eye.
“I’m sorry,” he says, squeezing my hand a little as he shakes.
“I’m sorry, too,” I tell him.
We let go immediately.
The dean stands, scratching her chair back. “That’s a start.”
Declan is out the door first, several paces ahead of me, not bothering to look over his shoulder. I don’t know why I do it, why I even bother, but I struggle to keep up, striding down the hall beside him.
“Why’d you say that?”
He doesn’t look at me. “Say what?”
“That it was an accident.”
“So it wasn’t an accident?” he says. “Shocker.”
I don’t speak—just keep walking down the wood-paneled hall, until he throws open the door at the end, letting us out into the lobby. My heart tightens and my stomach twists. Declan finally stops walking. He turns to look at me.
“Listen,” he says, “I didn’t mean anything by bringing up the gallery. I was just making a point—”
“You don’t get to use my pain to make your point.”
He lets out a sharp breath. He stands there for a second, moving his jaw back and forth, and I stare at him, waiting, all too aware of the fact that I’m facing Declan right here, right now, in the very space he used to hurt me.
“I said it was an accident because it wouldn’t be worth going through four months of disciplinary hearings just to get you expelled.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
He takes a step forward. “And I also want you to know that, when I get into Brown over you, it isn’t because I got you kicked out of school,” he tells me. “It’ll be because I deserve it more than you.”
I stare at him blankly. “I’m always amazed by the depths of your bullshit.”
A smile twitches on his face, and for a flash, he looks as surprised as I am. Declan Keane, laughing at something I said?
He recovers quickly, looking at the white tile. “Sorry, I guess,” he says, “for mentioning the gallery.”
He turns on his heel, leaving me in the lobby with nothing but an echoing sensation of What in the holy fuck just happened?
Eight
DECLAN KEANE HAS NEVER APOLOGIZED. NOT ONCE, NOT ever, not for anything he pulled with me and Ezra.
“Maybe he’s just not as much of an asshole as we like to think he is,” Ezra says, eyes closed. He sounds bored, like he’s already over talking about Declan for the day—and, I mean, if I’m going to be honest, I think Ezra’s been tired of talking about Declan since the minute they broke up. It’s kind of impressive, actually: when Ezra’s feelings were hurt, he said he would move on, and that’s exactly what he did. Unlike me. When someone hurts me, I either obsess over how to convince them I’m worthy of their love or obsess over how to destroy them.
We’re lying down in the park grass with warm cans of Pabst hidden in our backpacks. Classes are over, and it’s a quiet Tuesday—no cookouts, no barking dogs or screaming children. Just the breeze and some faraway chatter from an older couple sitting on a park bench. Ezra’s phone is playing Solange and SZA and Mila J singing about how she’s in airplane mode and don’t need no drama, and it’s so calming, so relaxing, the heat from the sun beating down on my face and my shoulders and my arms.
“I mean,” Ezra continues, “no one likes to admit it, but we can all be assholes. We all fuck up sometimes. As long as we learn and grow and do better next time. Right?”
“It almost sounds like you’re trying to make excuses for Declan.”
He frowns a little, eyes still closed. “No. I’m just saying—I don’t know, maybe we don’t know the full story. Maybe he’s not as bad as we like to think he is. It’s easy to assign roles to people. Easier to just think that Declan Keane is an asshole, and that’s that.”
I squint at him. “Are you high?”
He opens one eye. “No. Why?”
“You just sound a little high.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Wasn’t a compliment, but okay.”
He reaches up and hooks an arm around my neck so that in about three seconds flat we’re wrestling in the grass. Ezra wins, of course, pinning me down, grinning at me—until he just collapses, cackling as I struggle to push him off. He rolls over onto the grass again. The elderly couple is watching us with a smile.
“I guess I kind of understand what you were saying, though,” I tell Ezra. “With locking in an idea of someone in your head.”
“Yeah?”
The words are coming out faster than I can keep up with them. “Yeah. And, like, I think we do that for ourselves, too.”
“How so?”
I’m not sure I’m even ready to talk about this. It’s hard, maybe even impossible, to articulate the feelings I’ve got swarming through me—all of these questions about my identity. But I’ve already started, and Ezra’s watching me expectantly, and—I don’t know, maybe speaking about all of this will help me understand.
“With me, for example,” I tell him. “I locked in this idea of who I was. I told myself I’m a guy, and that’s that, nothing else to really think about.”
Ezra goes quiet. He props his head up as he watches me, waiting.
“And I mean, for a long time, that’s what I thought, no questions asked, since I did the whole coming-out thing, and I put my dad through so much.”
“Okay, sorry, just—let me interrupt you real quick,” Ezra says. “You didn’t put your dad through anything. But okay. Yes. Continue.”
“Well, whatever,” I say. “I mean I made this big deal about being a guy, and now . . .”
“And now?”
I shrug a little, embarrassed to actually say it. I feel guilty—ashamed, that I’ve been questioning my identity all over again. “Sometimes I feel like I’m definitely a guy, no doubt about it. But then other times . . .” I take a deep breath and let the words out. “There’s just this niggling.”
“Niggling?”
“Yeah. A niggling. Like something isn’t quite right, you know? I’ve been doing research online, trying
to figure it out, and . . .”
Ezra’s nodding slowly, but I don’t think he really gets it, and now I feel embarrassed and ashamed and stupid on top of that.
“Never mind,” I say quickly, hiding my head in my folded arms, lying down on my stomach.
“No, hey,” Ezra said. “Okay, I don’t really know what you mean, because I’ve never really questioned my gender identity before—but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. It’s okay to keep questioning, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say, a little hesitation creeping into my voice. “I guess it’s just kind of like—I don’t know, when Declan called me a fraud . . .”
“Oh, come on. No, really. You’re going to let something that asshole said get in your head?”
“I thought he wasn’t an asshole.”
“I said he might not be as much of an asshole as we think, not that he isn’t one.” Ezra grins at me, but even as it fades, he keeps watching me carefully. “Seriously. Forget him or what anyone else thinks. Do what you need for yourself.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“You guess I’m right?”
“You’re definitely right.”
Ezra smirks at me and plops a big hand on top of my curls. “I love you, Felix. Okay?”
I glance up at him, and Ezra’s watching me without looking away, just staring at me, waiting for me to say something—for any sort of reaction—but what the hell do I say to that? Ezra’s never said I love you like that before. I know it’s supposed to be something friends who love one another can say, in theory, but . . . it makes me feel a little too vulnerable right now.
“Thanks,” I say, a little uncertain.
He pinches my cheek and lets go when I swat his hand. “Just let me know if I should use different pronouns for you.”
I nod. “Yeah. Okay.”
We drink enough cans of Pabst until we’re a fair amount of drunk. The sprinklers on the kids’ side of the park are on, and we go running through them, shouting and chasing each other until we’re soaked through. We dry off on the swings, going back and forth, the metal chains creaking.
“God, I’m so excited for Pride,” Ezra says. “All the parties . . . and the march, too, obviously.”
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