Mabel and I caught up on the phone every week. I’d walk out into the yard while we were talking and make circles in the grass, kicking my sneakers through the growing piles of fallen leaves. Everything would be flat and yellow in the light from the streetlamps. Mabel said there was a girl she maybe had a crush on.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Alice,” she told me. “Alice Starr.”
She sounded small and far away, a voice in my ear.
The following Friday night Tracy and I were hanging out in my room. We’d just come back from getting ramen. I leaned against my pillows, and she sat there on the edge of the bed, looking at me.
“Do you still like doing what we’re doing?” she asked, out of the blue. “Do you still want to be dating me?”
I sat up and looked her in the eye. I wasn’t used to seeing her so uncertain—insecure, almost. Her eyes were full of worry.
“I do!” I said, and swallowed a startled laugh. “Of course I do! Why are you asking?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve seemed a little weird lately. Like, a little angry.”
“I’m not angry,” I said, and sighed. “I’m probably just tired.”
I lay back, shuffled over toward the wall, and invited her to lie down beside me. She did, and I wrapped my arms around her. I pressed my nose into her hair and breathed in. Her hand was resting lightly on my shoulder, and she hooked an ankle over mine. She asked me to promise that I’d tell her if I started to have a crush on someone else. I told her of course I would.
“I like you, Tracy. I promise.”
“That’s a weird thing to promise.”
I didn’t say anything to that, but eventually her breath slowed down and mine did, too, and our breaths and heartbeat fell into something like a rhythm.
It was almost Halloween.
No matter the cold, at least once a week Tracy and I would lie together in the hammock in her backyard. I’d entwine my legs with hers and we’d talk and not talk and look up at the sky. We’d watch the leaves fall down from the big maple tree above us. We were like two pieces of rope that had been frequently knotted; even when we were separate, our bodies held the shape of the knot we made together.
Chapter 9
Tracy said that real couples had nicknames for each other, so she decided to call me “Mister Alexi.” “Is that okay?” she asked, with a teasing half smile. At first I shrugged and said, “Sure, of course.” But mostly it made me think of my other name, Sasha Masha. That made my chest squeeze and my throat throb, like my body wanted to cry but my eyes wouldn’t.
I told myself it was because I missed my friend. That was all. But one day, the week before Halloween, after a phone call with Mabel that had me very full of the joy of talking with my friend, I still felt down and lost. I could only think of that picture, and I started to wonder whether I really just missed myself.
You miss yourself? How can you miss yourself? You’re right here.
I was lying on my bed, trying to think through the feeling.
I missed the person I used to be. The person I was when I was with Mabel.
Who was that person, though? Was that person really all that different from who you are now?
Things felt freer with Mabel, things felt sillier. I felt more alive.
I rolled onto my side and stared at the blue carpet on my floor.
Okay, but let’s be honest: Mabel was the one who seemed alive. She was the silly one, she was the fearless one. You were the quiet, smiling, hardworking, compliant, friendly, likable, nice, good kid who tagged along with her and laughed at her jokes. If this was a movie, you were the sidekick. You were the boring one. You say you miss your old self, but what old self was that? You never had an old self. You never had a self the way Mabel had a self. You just followed other people around and enjoyed the ride.
I sat up.
In all the fairy tales, there’s always a dream. A voice, a castle, a prince. What was my dream? I hadn’t even been able to tell Tracy what I wanted to do after high school. What did I know about myself? What did I want?
When I closed my eyes, all I saw was that velvet dress, and the only words I thought of were: Sasha Masha. Sasha Masha. It was a feeling in my body, a look in my eye, maybe the texture of the velvet and the lavender smell from Agatha’s trunk. I couldn’t figure out much else about it.
What kind of a dream was that?
* * *
I was already feeling weird and sad when I came downstairs. My mom was in the kitchen.
“How was your day, sweetie?” she asked.
“It was all right.”
“You had Ms. Lewiston today?”
“Yeah, I have her every day.”
“What are you guys reading?”
“I already told you.”
I was being obnoxious, I knew. But when my mom thought I was upset about something, she would just start asking a lot of questions. And the more questions she asked, the more upset I got, and the more upset I got, the more determined she was to figure out what was upsetting me, and the more she tried to figure it out, the more determined I was to get her to stop.
“You seem upset, sweetie,” she finally said.
Then something snapped inside of me, and I turned and faced her and roared, “I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO LEAVE ME ALONE, OKAY!!”
It sounded mean and stupid leaving my mouth, even I knew that, the way my voice cracked like a little kid’s, but in a haze of frustration and shame, I ran upstairs and slammed the door.
I needed to get out of here. Where could I go? I didn’t want to go to Tracy’s, and Mabel didn’t live here. What other actual friends did I have? Then I had an idea. What about the Lavender Ladder? What if they were doing another screening? I could watch a movie and be by myself.
On their website it said no movie. But tonight was Queer Talk for Teens, and that was Mabel’s old group. There would be people there. It was somewhere to be.
Why not?
I put on my shoes.
“I’m going to the movies!” I shouted, and didn’t wait for an answer.
* * *
“I think we’re going to get started,” someone said in a loud voice, and the fifteen or twenty people in the room began to find their way to chairs. These were all young people, a different crowd than had been at the screening. They could have been high-school age, they could have been older. I couldn’t tell. I stood in the doorway.
“Hey, boo!” The person who’d spoken was looking at me. “Come on in. You can shut the door behind you.”
I shut the door and moved toward the ring of chairs. Why was I so terrified?
“Queer talk, yah?”
“Sorry?” I asked.
“That’s what you’re here for, right?”
I nodded. I found a chair and folded my whole bulky body into as small a shape as I could.
“How’s everybody doing?”
Mutters and nods. A comment I couldn’t make out. Some laughter.
“Most of you know me. I’m Shaz. I’m covering for Raquel. I’m not official or anything, none of us are, but I’m officially running this meeting today. Yes? Nothing too fancy. That’s how we roll. I see some new people. Maybe we can go around and everyone can say hello, introduce themselves. Maybe let’s do zodiac signs, too. And pronouns. And … what would be good?”
“Bumper cars.”
“Laser tag.”
“How about … if you had to be an animal, what kind of animal would you be? Is that dumb? That’s dumb but we’re doing it.”
We started to Shaz’s left.
“Hey, everyone. I’m Taidgh, like tie-dye. I use they-them. I’m a lizard, I guess…”
Taidgh turned and gestured to the person beside them.
“Hey, everyone.” I immediately recognized the blue hair. It was the person I’d seen at Querelle. “I’m Andre. He-him. I’m a grasshopper.” He flipped an invisible ponytail off his shoulder. A few people laughed. “And a Gemini.”
“Hey, everyone,” I said, in a voice that was probably too quiet. “I think I’m probably an eagle?” I cleared my throat and tried to talk louder. “I’m a Leo. Um. What else?”
“What’s your name, dear?” Shaz prompted.
I swallowed.
“Sasha Masha.”
A pause. “Can you say that again, dear? I don’t think we caught it.”
“Sasha Masha. My name’s Sasha Masha.”
Shaz’s lips parted a little bit, as if she wanted to smile, but then someone else in the circle called out, “Yes, Sasha Masha, werk, Sasha Masha,” and everyone burst out laughing.
But no one questioned it.
“And what pronouns do you use, Sasha Masha?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Seventeen years of reflex kicked in.
“Oh, um. He-him, I guess.”
“Great. Thanks.”
For most of the next hour I tried to listen, but my heart was racing. I was stuck on the name thing.
I asked myself: Did I feel any different?
I couldn’t tell. It did feel good to say aloud.
Sasha Masha. My name is Sasha Masha.
I didn’t feel like I had been reborn, but I felt different.
During a final announcements section, Andre asked if anyone could give him a ride home. I raised my hand. Andre nodded, gave a thumbs-up.
“Thanks, Sasha Masha,” Shaz said, like it was no big deal.
Chapter 10
I tripped on the sidewalk and Andre caught me by the arm.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
My hand was shaking as I put the key in the ignition, and as soon as the car grumbled to life, so did the Spanish radio in a blast of drums and synth. I switched it off as quickly as I could. What was he going to think of this white boy blaring Spanish radio?
“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t sure for what.
“You’re fine,” Andre said, and smiled. He put his address in my phone, and we drove for a while in silence.
“Were you obsessed with Querelle or what?”
It took me a second to register what he was saying.
“You were there, right? When they showed it? This was like, a while ago. I saw you there. You were there, right?” Andre said. He was turning his head to look at me, but I kept my eyes on the road.
“I was there,” I replied, allowing a half smile at the corner of my mouth.
“Okay, thank God,” Andre said, and flopped back in his seat. “I was worried I was losing my mind. I spent that whole meeting staring at you, thinking, Where have I seen that face? I’m sorry if I was creeping you out, Sasha Masha.”
“No, not at all.”
“But were you not obsessed? Did obsession not follow?”
I smiled a little more. “Obsession followed.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that Fassbinder would be the most natural match for Genet.” The names were coming a little too fast and I wasn’t sure I knew what he was talking about. “’Cause a lot of Fassbinder is very … German.” He looked to me. “I guess partly because Fassbinder is German. Genet is French. But not French like fancy. Have you seen other Fassbinder?”
I gathered that Fassbinder was the person who had made the movie. Maybe the director or the writer. Genet was someone else, also involved somehow.
“No.”
“Have you read any Genet?”
“No.”
“Okay, stop the train, I’m sorry, right now. Right now. No Genet? What kind of a queer are you? Pardon my French. You don’t actually have to pull over the car. But you have to know Genet! Jean Genet? Saint Genet? Our Lady of the Flowers? The Thief’s Journal?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t help but get swept up in Andre’s excitement.
“I’m bringing you my copy of The Thief’s Journal. No—Our Lady of the Flowers. That’s the place to start. God, what else? No, okay, I’m making you a reading list. I already have like … three … things on it. Five. I’ll bring you my copy of Our Lady of the Flowers and I’ll write a reading list on the inside front cover. If your parents are weird about things like that, you can pretend you’re reading Harry Potter or something. Though—and riddle me this, Dumbledore—why is no one talking about how queer that book is?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Harry Potter is queer?”
“It’s, well—no, it’s not really that queer. I get carried away sometimes.”
He took a deep breath. Andre was a senior at another high school, Patterson, though he was a year older than most of the kids in his class. He’d taken a semester off sophomore year, then another one junior year (“health stuff”). Most of his friends were in college now. I asked if he’d ever met Mabel at the Lavender Ladder, but he said he didn’t think so. He hadn’t been coming to meetings that long.
Soon we were outside his house. We swapped numbers, and I said I’d try to come to the next meeting.
“Tell me—one good thing about tonight. One thing you’re holding on to.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess I’m holding on to how nice it can be … to say who you are.”
“Definitely,” he replied. “Always a plus.”
“And how about you?” I asked. “One good thing from the meeting.”
“That’s easy,” he replied. “A new friend.”
I turned and looked him in the eye. Sasha Masha might have wanted to kiss him. A wish big and bright as a sun rose inside of me, and it only got brighter, warmer, hotter as I looked at his face, his lips, his smile.
But I was Alex still, not Sasha Masha, and I was dating Tracy. I said good night.
Chapter 11
The next day in school, a Wednesday, Tracy was in a great mood. She swooped into English class and dropped a postcard on my desk.
“It’s back,” she said. “Have you ever been?”
The postcard was advertising the twenty-seventh annual Apple Cider Festival, somewhere out in Anne Arundel County. I hadn’t been, no.
“It’s super cheesy, but I kind of love it,” Tracy said. “There’s bobbing for apples and cider doughnuts and pig races. And lots of really stupid apple puns. It’s this weekend. Want to come with me?”
“Of course,” I told her, and smiled.
Except now that I was seeing her, my mind was racing with what had happened the night before. What had happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. I shouted something and ran out of the house. I went to a meeting. I tried out a name. I made a new friend. My parents were worried when I got home, but not too worried. Everything was the same. Nothing had to change. Did I want things to change? I couldn’t tell. Or, no. I didn’t. Not yet. How could I want things to change if I didn’t know what changing meant?
“This coming week is basically my favorite week of the year. The apple festival and Halloween. What more could a person ask for?” she said, and the second bell rang, and she rumpled my hair and went back to her seat. Ms. Lewiston was lecturing on the background for our next book, but I couldn’t focus long enough to pay attention. I was waiting to feel my phone buzz, hoping Andre would text me.
I felt weird and distracted at lunch. Jo, Jen, Tracy, and James were having an involved debate about whether people were essentially one way or another. They were talking about serial killers at one point, and then at another point they were talking about whether men were always aggressive and women always wanted to come to consensus. My dad loved to point out that “science showed” how men had one evolutionary strategy and women had another; how men were conquerors and women were consensus builders. But I didn’t particularly feel like volunteering that factoid on his behalf.
“Apparently seahorses a
re hermaphrodites,” I said, since I felt like I should contribute.
“Interesting,” James replied.
* * *
The next night I went over to Tracy’s to do homework and have dinner. Tracy’s mom usually made a big salad and this roast chicken that was a little sweet and a little spicy. We’d spend the time before the meal sprawled on Tracy’s bed, or Tracy’s couch, working and talking; talking about work, sometimes, but also just talking. Planning dates or speculating about the future. Tonight, though, something felt off. It was almost like I could tell we were going to have a fight.
She closed her laptop and sat up suddenly on the bed.
“Mister Alexi! We have to figure out what we’re wearing for Halloween!” she said.
“Do we?” I asked. I lifted the corner of my mouth in what I thought would be a coy smile, but I knew there was an edge of sarcasm buried under there somewhere.
“We do, we do,” Tracy said. “Are you a big costume person?”
“Not really,” I replied.
Tracy looked off into space for a bit, and then apologized. “Sorry. I just think I’m hitting a work wall.”
“That’s all right,” I said. There was a pregnant pause. I wondered if I should tell Tracy about my name. Maybe that would help. “I’m gonna keep going on this history outline, if that’s okay.”
“Sure,” Tracy said, without much conviction. I stared into my history textbook and then at my laptop screen. I could feel her watching me.
Then she got up and started picking up clothes and folding them.
“Do you mind if I put on some music?” she asked.
“No, that’s fine,” I said, without looking up.
“I think food will be ready soon.”
“Cool. I just want to try to get to the end of this section.”
“Okay. I’m not trying to stop you.” And she turned on the clock radio by her bed, the music low.
Neither of us said anything to each other, and pretty soon her mom called us downstairs. We filled our plates. Tracy’s dad wanted to know how the debate team was faring. Antony kept saying, “Whatsup, cuz?” It was his response to everything, and eventually he got sent to his room. Tracy barely looked at me all dinner.
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