“Who knows?” I shrugged, and made myself smile.
Chapter 15
At lunch, I couldn’t quite bring myself to sit alone. When I saw Jake Florieau on the other side of the room, I headed toward him.
“Hey, Jake.”
“What’s up, Shapelsky?”
“Okay if I join you?”
“Surely.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. I had felt pretty lousy all day, so the way he slid his tray over to make room felt almost tender. It struck me that there could be something gentlemanly about Jake Florieau.
“What’s new, Shapelsky?” he asked. “Seen any good movies lately?”
I sighed a chuckle of a sigh because all the movies I’d seen lately I’d seen with Tracy. “Eh,” I replied. “Nothing that changed my life. You?”
“Nada,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Hollywood must be dead.”
From there we started talking about our favorite music documentaries. Then we were laughing about some of the concerts we’d gone to when we were freshmen. Jake remembered sitting with me outside some venue under the expressway scrubbing the back of his hand to get rid of the X that meant he was under twenty-one.
“And you were pretending the whole thing didn’t make you nervous.”
I smiled. “You’re not wrong.”
“Who were we?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, who were those people? Are those people us?”
“I guess so,” I replied, and took a mouthful of sandwich. I mumbled through bread and tuna. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t know what I was doing then, but I’ve got it all figured out now,” Jake said with a sigh.
“Oh, sure.”
We laughed. I wondered, a little ashamed, if I might have gotten in the habit of treating him coldly since we’d stopped hanging out freshman year. If I had, I’d made a mistake. I was especially grateful that all of lunch went by and he didn’t once ask why I wasn’t sitting with Tracy.
That night my parents put me on candy duty. I sat by the door with a big bowl of mini chocolate bars. The doorbell wouldn’t stop ringing. Half the people were dressed as characters from some movie, in costumes they’d bought at a store. Didn’t people make their own costumes anymore? Probably five people looked at my hoodie and jeans and judged my lack of Halloween spirit. “Who are you supposed to be? Yourself?” they’d say, as if that were some kind of original joke.
* * *
The next day after school I raced through math homework and scarfed down dinner so I could meet Andre. I knew I’d have to tell my parents eventually that Tracy and I had broken up, but I wanted to get one more night out of the lie. So I asked to borrow the car and said I was going to Tracy’s.
“Say hi for me,” my dad called as I headed out the door.
It was after nine, but the Papermoon was crowded. I didn’t see Andre, so I got a booth. The walls were painted bright colors, and there were mannequin limbs hanging from the ceiling like chandeliers. The whole place smelled like french fries and maple syrup. Andre slid into the booth across from me, a few minutes late, and flopped his head on the table.
“Sasha Masha,” he said, face in his arms. “What a day.”
I laughed. He sat up and smiled back at me.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Well,” he began, “I don’t know how things were at your school, but at my school it was a messy Halloween. This big group of sophomores had a plan to dress up as a school of dolphins, and they were going to swarm the stage during the assembly. But the thing is the soccer team also had a plan to be sea creatures, except like vampire sea creatures, so they had all this fake blood. Then they got in a fight with the sophomores. At first it was a joke but you have to picture like twenty-five people in big bulky dolphin and whale and octopus suits trying to get off a stage and all slipping and sliding in fake blood. This one kid got a concussion.”
“Oh no!” I said, trying not to laugh.
“Yeah … he’s okay,” Andre concluded. “And otherwise none of the teachers made us do anything, so that was cute. Did you dress up?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I … didn’t really feel like it,” I said lamely.
He smiled anyway, shrugged, and looked around. “Have you been here before?”
I hadn’t. Andre said that everything was excellent. We both ordered decaf coffee and dessert. Bread pudding for me and apple pie for Andre.
“So, but I don’t know anything about you, Sasha Masha,” Andre said, once the waiter had cleared the menus. “What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know. I’m a junior. I like movies.”
“And do you come to the Lavender Ladder all the time, or…?”
“Not all the time. But I like it there. My friend Mabel used to go a lot.”
“You mentioned this person. But they don’t go anymore?”
“She moved. To Pittsburgh.”
“I see. And you have a girlfriend?”
“We, um, broke up. Actually.”
“Sasha Masha! I’m sorry to hear. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing all right,” I said.
“When did this happen? Like, yesterday? I feel like you were just telling me about plans to hang out with her.”
“Yeah.”
The waiter brought us coffee, steaming in heavy porcelain mugs with a spoon in each one. Between us he placed a small pitcher of milk with condensation beading on the metal surface.
“Can I ask,” Andre began, licking the spoon as he pulled it out of his coffee, “the story of your name?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to think where to start.
“Is it a family name?”
“Oh! No,” I said, laughing. “It’s, um, just something I picked for myself.”
“And what made you pick it? Does it have a special meaning?”
“No, I just…” And I took a deep breath. “It came to me one day when I was hanging out with Mabel. We were trying on these clothes her aunt gave her, and I put on this dress and it just … it was like something huge clicked into place. And it came to me. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, that name. For a while I thought it was because I missed Mabel, but I think it’s actually trying to tell me something about myself.”
“The name is?”
“The name, yeah.”
He nodded. “And what is it trying to tell you?”
“I don’t know, really!” I threw my hands up. “That’s the part I feel confused about.”
“Well, you’ve just got to listen to her, babe. She’ll tell you what she wants to tell you.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Do you want to know my full name?”
“Sure.”
“Andrew Charles Nickleson Norteño III. Which, yeah, is great. Very, like, imperial. But as a kid I was Andrew. Always Andrew.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. Two years ago I was a different person than I am now.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. The whole package needed a little zhush. You seem like the strong and steady type, so maybe you won’t relate to this. But I feel like every two years is good for a little zhush.”
“Sure.”
“And I feel like teenagers get a bad rap for changing things up all the time. We’re fake, or we’re insincere, or we’re superficial. But if you do it to please yourself, what’s insincere about that?”
I must have looked a little concerned, because Andre asked me why I was scrunching my eyebrows.
“No, I just…,” I started to say, and wrapped my hands around my warm mug. “I know what you mean. And I feel a little dumb, because even just thinking about this name, it’s been so intense, weirdly. Why does it feel so important? And why does it feel so hard?”
“But of course it’s hard, Sasha Masha. There’s this thing that matters to you. For whateve
r reason, it does. Doesn’t it?”
I nodded acknowledgment, with a little bit of a shrug.
“So? That’s what it is,” he said.
“But what does it mean?” I wanted to know.
“I don’t know, Sasha Masha. That’s a question for you.”
“I just feel weird thinking about it so much, because it probably makes zero sense to most other people I know.”
“Sure,” he said. “People are gonna laugh. They’re not gonna get it. They’re gonna tell you you’re making a fuss. Or trying to shove something in their faces. But you’re not trying to be heavy about it, you’re just trying to be you.”
“I know! But why do I feel so heavy about it all the time? I don’t know what I’m doing…”
“You know what you’re doing,” Andre said, and leaned across the table. He put his finger down in front of me. “You know exactly what you’re doing. There’s just too much noise from all around here.” He indicated the restaurant and beyond it the world.
Our food came. With whipped cream.
“Speaking of noise…,” Andre muttered.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Right now it seems important to focus on the dessert situation.”
For a while we did just that.
I felt self-conscious that we’d been talking so much about me. So when we’d both had a chance to dig in, I changed the subject.
“Um, can I ask when you first came out? Not to assume that you’re queer, or, I just…”
“I don’t know if I was ever in,” he said, and laughed. “I used to cut out pictures of boys in swimsuits and tape them to my wall. This was like fourth grade. It was probably clear, if you know what I mean.”
“I wish I’d been like that!”
“What, gay?”
“Well, that too,” I said, and blushed a little.
Andre laughed.
“I think what I mean,” I said, “is that I feel like I was on autopilot for most of my life. That I just took for granted the person the world told me I was. And I feel like it might have been easier to shake that up a little when I was a kid.”
“How old are you now, ninety-two?”
“No, I know, I just…”
“I don’t know about easy or not easy. It’s just different.”
“Or, not easy, but…”
“You’re just doing this now, Sasha Masha. Now’s your time. And you’re doing it. So what else do you have to worry about?”
“I guess,” I said, and sighed.
“Don’t sigh at me. You’re too pretty to sigh.”
I blushed and muttered something like you’re very kind.
“Can I try some of your bread pudding?” he asked, pointing with a fork.
“Of course. But only if I can try some of your apple pie.”
* * *
Eventually we paid and headed to my dad’s car. Andre had taken the bus here, so I told him I’d give him a ride home. This time I felt less stressed about what was Alex and what was Sasha Masha. As we drove, we rolled the windows down and let the cold air blow against our faces.
“So, but do you have any sense,” he asked me, once we were on the road, “who it is you want to be, beyond the name? Or that’s a bad way of asking it. What else do you know about Sasha Masha?”
“It’s all a little fuzzy,” I said. “And I think I want to figure it out a bit more before I tell too many people. I don’t have the clearest idea for myself yet.”
“Sure,” Andre said.
“So we’ll see.”
We drove for a while in silence. I could tell he was considering something.
“One little bit of advice,” he said, after a moment. “If I may.”
“Sure, of course.”
“You seem like you’re a real brain person. You keep it all in here.” He gestured to his head. “Don’t think about this one too much, okay? Just … let it happen.”
When we got to his place, the street was dark, and there was a dog barking somewhere. A light glowed from under the front blinds, then flickered and changed colors. Someone was probably still up, watching TV.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said.
“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“Are you kidding? Now that you’re missing a Mabel, I want you to meet everybody. What are you doing Thursday?”
“Oh—um. Nothing. Why?”
“I’ll see if my friends Coco and Green are around. They’re amazing. They’re my fairy godmothers. Want to meet them?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Great. Thursday then. And also—wait—fuck.” And his eyes lit up. “Miss Thing. Is Saturday.”
“What’s Miss Thing?”
“Miss Thing is…” He tapped the dashboard. “Just don’t make any plans Saturday night. We’re going to Miss Thing. Will you come?”
“Sure,” I said, my face hot and my smile probably too big.
“Not that you have any choice,” Andre said, smiling back. “All right. I’m leaving.”
I watched him make his way up the walk. My whole body was tingling.
I pulled out my phone for the first time since I’d arrived at the Papermoon and saw that I had a voice mail and two texts from my dad: “Pls call me,” one said. The other was, “Will you please confirm that you are still alive?”
“Yeah,” I texted back.
“Sorry”
“On my way now—had to drop somebody off.”
“Drive safe,” he replied. “See you soon.”
* * *
“Sorry,” I said again, as I came in the door. It was 12:32. He was sitting up reading. The house was quiet. He put down his book.
“All good?” he asked. Which was what he said when he was mad at you but didn’t want to say it yet.
“Yeah, I just…” And I trailed off.
“You just what?”
“No, I’m sorry it’s so late.” I realized that I might have just painted myself into a corner. I had told him I was going over to Tracy’s. And then I’d said I was dropping someone off. Who was I dropping off twenty-five minutes away?
My dad sighed and pushed himself forward in his chair. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses.
“There is the issue of your provisional license, and the issue of a ticket if you’d gotten caught driving after midnight. But mostly I was just a little rattled to find out you weren’t telling the truth about where you were going tonight, Alex.”
“Oh,” I said lamely. “Why? Did you…”
“I ran into Tracy’s dad at the grocery store, and we were just chatting, you know, being proud of our kids, and all that.”
“Oh,” I said, even more lamely. My heart was in my ankles. “Yeah.”
“And it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about your relationship with us, you know? That’s your business. But I’ll just say that the thoughts that went through my head when I didn’t know where you were—I was doing my best not to sensationalize, but when you have kids, you’ll understand that it’s not a great feeling.”
“I … yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Another half hour and I would have gone into panic mode.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Will you tell me, in brief at least, what the hell is going on?”
“I just…,” I began. “I met this friend. And we went to a diner and had pie and coffee and we were just talking. I lost track of the time.”
He stared at me a long moment.
“All right,” he said, and looked at his lap a second like he was thinking. Then he inhaled and heaved himself out of his chair.
“I’m going to go to bed now, and you probably should, too, but I hope you’ll tell me a bit more about what’s going on at some point,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad you seem relatively sober…”
“No, Dad, I’m totally…”
“Great. No. I believe you.” He stood and came toward me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I feel like I know you pretty we
ll, Alex. And it just threw me, I have to say.” He turned to go upstairs. “I started to wonder if I had you all wrong.”
Chapter 16
“You have a glow to you, Shapelsky,” Jake said as I sat down. “A good night last night? Or you just get your English paper back?”
“You think you’re very funny, don’t you?”
“I know I am.”
Lunch with Jake was becoming the only part of the school day I actually enjoyed.
“Have you ever been to this place, the Lavender Ladder?” I asked him.
“No, what’s that?”
I explained meeting Andre there, and told him that he was who I’d been hanging out with the night before.
“Would you believe it,” Jake began, “if I told you that I literally don’t know any queer people?”
“Wait, really?”
“There’s Tyler Lort and Jae Holron the year below us, but I’d say they are only marginally out.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know about them…”
“And I get the feeling most people think I’m this homosexual demon boy with vast sexual experience. But actually I’m like Drew Barrymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never been kissed.”
“Jake!”
“Don’t act so horrified.”
“No, I’m not horrified, I’m just surprised.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult? I’m not sure.”
“No, you just always seemed so confident. I figured…”
Jake shrugged.
“So take me out,” he said. “Is all I’m asking. Take me to meet your queers.”
“I will,” I said, looking at him, and realizing how much I’d assumed.
We ate for a while in silence.
“Hey, Jake?” I asked. “Do you have any advice about talking to your parents?”
“Like about what?”
“About personal stuff, I guess. Stuff you’re nervous to talk about.”
“I don’t tell my parents anything. What do they need to know about my life?”
“I don’t know, if it’s a big thing. Like, what was it like coming out to your parents?”
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