Sugar Summer

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “Then let's get out of here,” she says.

  “What?”

  “We've been cooped up here for a week. Pretty soon we're gonna kill each other. Let's get out of here and we'll work on the lifts, okay?”

  “That actually worked?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Sure do. Here.” She opens up her gym bag and throws me a pair of soft shorts and a tank top. “Put on something more comfortable before you cook yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I'll meet you at the parking lot?”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey,” she says as she's leaving. “Why do they call you Sugar, anyway?”

  I unstick my shirt from my body and pull it over my head. “Because I'm sweet.”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “I was sweet when I was a baby,” I say.

  “Sure you were.”

  “Hey,” I say. “My mom thinks I'm playing charades right now. I'm an angel.”

  “You're topless in a room with a twenty-year-old lesbian,” Mara says, and shoots me a thumbs-up on her way out the door.

  I don't know where we're driving and I don't ask. I just open up the passenger window and enjoy the feel of the wind, even if it's hot and muggy.

  “So how'd you end up here?” I ask her.

  “I was working at this Chinese food place in Brooklyn and taking night classes and the school had this career night, I guess?” she says. I just asked her a question and she's answering it like a normal person. This is a big step for us. “And they kind of presented us with all these options, stuff we might not have thought about. And this woman's there and she says, if you know this dance and this dance and this dance, you can get a job teaching rich white couples.”

  “And she was from here?”

  “No, no, but once I knew I could do that I got online and started looking at stuff. This place was hiring.”

  “How's the pay?” I ask.

  “Honestly? Unbelievable,” she says. “The problem is it's just for summers. During the year I gotta scramble again, every year.”

  “Where do you live when you're not here?”

  “In Queens, with my mom.” She pauses. “It's a very weird transition.”

  “Living away from your mom?”

  “No, just...” she shrugs. “In Queens, we've got a lot of girls like me. Didn't come from much, moms worked their asses off, we're working our asses off. And nobody really thinks about it, it's just what we do. And then I come here and I'm, y'know, the exotic salsa dancer from the streets or some shit. At home I'm just me, and here I'm...a symbol.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I say.

  “Everyone wants to groom me and pull me up or something, except they don't actually, y'know? Because then I wouldn't be this scrappy Latina American dream story anymore. And God forbid I do better than their kids, right? They have to make sure I don't forget there's a ceiling there.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, the way these people look at me, you'd think I crawled my way here from out of a garbage heap.”

  “I don't think you're that impressive, if that helps,” I say.

  “Oh, bullshit, you think I'm amazing.”

  I grin.

  She pulls onto some dusty road and we bounce down it for a while, then she says, “You know what, though?”

  “What?”

  “You are different.”

  My chest feels funny. “Really?”

  “Yeah, people will do this thing where like...they fall all over themselves to show that they think I'm worthy of respect. They call me Miss Del Olmo when they'd call a white girl teaching them salsa, I don't know, Lauren or whatever. It's just this...”

  “Overcompensating,” I say.

  “Yeah. And you know that if they actually felt like calling me Miss Del Olmo, they wouldn't be so damn awkward when they did it. And you never really did that. You were never scared of me.”

  “I am fucking terrified of you,” I say.

  “Okay but see, you admit it! You think aaaany of the other people at this resort are gonna admit that I scare them?”

  “Well,” I say, “They might not be scared of you for the same reason.”

  “And see, that too,” she says. She doesn't make me elaborate. “That's different too.” She glances at me, then back at the road. “So how'd you end up here?”

  “What, at Sideling?”

  “Yeah. Not a lot of people your age come. Mostly kids too young to say no, if any kids at all.”

  “Yeah, most of my friends don't do family vacations anymore,” I say. “Or if they do it's like, to see Europe.” I shrug. “I don't know. Sol's a patient of my mom's, and I think my mom wanted an excuse to go away with my sister and me before I go off to college.”

  “And then you ran off with me,” Mara says.

  “Yep.”

  “You're close with your mom?”

  I nods. “She's like...I mean, she's a surgeon and she still was just there for us, all the time. How do you even do that? But she did it.”

  “My mom was the same way,” she says. “Working double shifts and always checking my homework.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So see, you get me,” she says.

  “I do.”

  “You don't think I'm some symbol of struggle, do you?”

  “You're working a cushy job at a resort, you want me to feel sorry for you?”

  She grins. “That's my girl. We're here.”

  Here looks like a field that's seen better days, but we park in the middle of it and she leads me away like she knows where we're going. The rain's stopped, or maybe we just drove out of it, but the air is still heavy and wet.

  “A girl I dated used to take me here,” Mara says. Now she's just volunteering information? This must be what being famous feels like.

  And all I can think of to say is, “Oh.”

  “My first summer here,” she says. “She was a boating instructor. Anyway...there's this bridge across the creek...” She leads me across the field and through a patch of trees to a little creek. Bridge is an overstatement, but to be fair, so is creek. It's a half-rotted two-by-four over a little bit of water.

  She walks out onto it and says, “Okay, come here.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Come on! We gotta work on your balance.”

  “It's gonna break.”

  “And then what, we'll fall six inches?”

  “You're the one always accusing me of trying to break your ankle,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes. “Can you just come here? We're burning daylight.”

  “We're seriously gonna dance out on that thing?”

  “Yeah, look,” she says, and she starts running through the steps without me. She gets to the first big turn before the bridge wobbles and she has to stop and windmill her arms and run a few steps back and forth to keep from falling. She looks up at me and grins when she finally stabilizes. “I did it.”

  She looks so much younger than she smiles. Like younger than me, even.

  “Come on,” she says, and this time when she holds out her hand, I listen.

  I wobble my way out on the bridge and we dance facing each other, slowly, our palms hovering in front of each other. It reminds me of one of the first days we started, when I practiced mirroring Tristan.

  “See?” she says. “You're not thinking about the steps. You're just trying not to fall.”

  “That's good?”

  “That's good.”

  “Please don't make me lift you on this thing.”

  She laughs.

  We go back to the field to actually learn the lift.

  Here's the gist of it: she runs towards me and jumps in exactly the right spot, so I don't actually have to pick her up. I grab her around the ribcage and hoist her up so she's above my head. She stretches out, facing behind me, like some sort of ballet-oriented Superman. We hold it for as long as we can.

  Which right now is zero seconds. />
  Everything has to go exactly right for it to work. She has to come to me at exactly the right speed, and hold her body the exact right way, and I have to get her in exactly the right place around her ribs and hold her up, even if I don't have to lift her. I have to balance her on my palms, all of her, just in my two hands, in exactly the right way. And she might be small, but she's still a human-sized-human, and I'm still...not on testosterone.

  “Ready?” she says, from a few feet away from me. Our sixth try.

  I shake loose. “Uh-huh.”

  She runs to me, jumps, and I get my hands under her ribs and guide her up above my head. My arms quake. “I don't have it,” I say. “I don't have it.”

  “Okay, put me down,” she says, but I'm tipping backwards. I fall down on my ass and she comes crashing down on top of me.

  “Shit, are you okay?” I say.

  “Am I okay, are you okay?”

  I rub my neck and spit out some grass. “Yeah.”

  “Y'know,” she says. “I know a better place to learn this.”

  “Water is the best place to learn lifts,” she says. We're at the lake the little creek feeds into, and she's stripping down to her underwear. “People don't weigh as much.”

  “They do once you lift them out of the water,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you still get the head start. And it's less scary to drop someone.” She hops in. “Come on.”

  “Jesus Christ, why is it so cold?”

  “You've been complaining you're hot for a week. Get in.”

  She has a point. I keep my clothes on—her clothes—and follow her in. We wade out until the water's at my hips, her waist.

  She runs, I left, and water drips off her bra onto my head, but I close my eyes and keep holding her. “This is it,” she says. “This is how it should feel. Don't move. Don't move.”

  “No, I'm losing it.”

  “Don't!” she says, but I wobble sideways and she goes splashing into the water. She comes up for air, laughing a little, and hangs onto me to catch her breath.

  “That was really good,” she says.

  Her arms are wrapped around my neck.

  My arm is around her waist.

  I'm still kind of holding her, in a way.

  “We should, um,” I say.

  She just looks at me.

  “We should try that again,” I say.

  She nods and says, “Okay,” but she doesn't let go for a few more seconds. I'm shivering.

  Chapter 6

  “I think I'm getting pretty good at being a boy,” I say.

  Tristan crosses his arms and looks me up and down.

  “I'm not saying as good as you,” I say. “I just think I'm, y'know. Getting into the mindset.”

  “And now we get you into the clothes set,” he says.

  It's the morning of the performance and of Tristan's surgery, so Mara gave me a ride to the hospital for him to do one last check on my costume. He doesn't have to stay overnight, but he did have to get here early today and doesn't get to leave until right about when we're onstage. He doesn't have a real room, just this curtained-off section, but we're across from a nurse's station with a sink and a mirror so I can sort of see at least part of myself in the tux.

  I look pretty good.

  He checks the length of my sleeve. “Is one of your arms shorter than the other?”

  “Yep.”

  “All righty. I'm gonna hem this real quick then.”

  “Okay.” I take it off and hand it to him. “Do I need a binder? Mara said I could borrow one from you...since y'know, youuuuu won't need them soon.” I poke him in the side.

  He flashes a quick grin and then looks me over. “Nah, your boobs are small and you'll have a jacket on. You'll be fine with a good sports bra. And you'll actually be able to breathe, so that's a bonus.”

  “Yeah, that seems important for dancing.”

  “You can learn to work around it.”

  “Work around breathing?”

  “Yep. You can work around anything with enough willpower.” He sits down on the bed and pulls the sewing kit out of the bag I bought and gets to work on the sleeve. He's wearing pajamas, not a hospital gown, which is somehow reassuring. I was kind of worried I'd get here and he'd look all scared and sick.

  “Are you nervous?” I ask him.

  “For you to possibly lose me my job? Yep.”

  “Ha.” I sit down on the foot of the bed.

  “A little,” he says. “But I've read so much about it and talked to so many people...I know what to expect. I know every single thing that can go wrong.”

  “Oh yeah, that sounds really reassuring.”

  “Exactly.” He sews a few stitches. “So you're a fantastic guy after a week, is that right?”

  “That's probably kind of offensive, huh.”

  He shrugs. “No amount of time in drag is gonna make you a guy if you're not one.”

  “No, I'm not saying I...”

  “How weird a discovery story would that be, though?” he says. “You had no idea you were trans and then you just happen to agree to be a guy for a night and all of a sudden all your dreams come true. That'd be a cult classic movie.”

  “I'm an actress,” I say. “I'm getting into character.”

  “Actor,” he says.

  “I wasn't really a witch this spring either,” I say. “But I was very convincing onstage.”

  “Are you calling me a witch?”

  “I mean, kind of, have you met you?”

  He bites off the thread and ties a knot. “Here, try this now.”

  I pull the shirt on and button it up.

  “So what,” he says. “You're having boy thoughts?”

  “I...yeah. I'm like...you know. If I were a boy version of myself. The things I would think.”

  “Well don't get too attached,” he says. “Unless you're willing to make a big lifestyle change, it's back to normal in eight hours.”

  I crane to see myself in the mirror and straighten my collar. “I know.”

  He slips the jacket onto my shoulders. “There. Go ahead and tie your hair up...”

  I put it on a bun on top of my head and he slips on the hat. “There.”

  “I look like a magician.”

  He laughs.

  “Any last words of advice?” I say.

  “Just try to relax, have fun. It's just a bunch of old drunk people who want to see some Mambo. They don't know what's good and what's bad. So have confidence and they'll never know if you mess up. Let's try the tie.”

  “I'm just gonna have to undo it to get out of here. I can't exactly be walking around Sideling in this.”

  “Mara can do it before the show,” he says. He stands behind me and ties it over my shoulders.

  I imagine Mara standing in front of me, wearing her sparkly red dress, sliding the knot up to my throat.

  “You okay?” Tristan says. He finishes the tie and steps away.

  “I....yeah.” I turn to the sides and look at myself. “I guess I was expecting to...feel something.”

  “Not a guy after all?”

  “I didn't think I was actually a guy, I just...”

  “Because plenty of guys don't wear suits,” he says, and he sits back on the bed.

  “I just thought it would feel right or wrong or something,” I say. “And it doesn't feel like anything. It's just a suit.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “It's just clothes.”

  “But I wanted...” I turn away from the mirror and towards him. “I thought having the suit on and having the boy feelings and it would all mesh together. But it just...feels like I'm in a costume.”

  “But your boy feelings aren't like you're in a costume.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe they are. How do you know?”

  “You gonna tell me what these boy feelings are?” he says.

  I shuffle around in my shiny boy shoes.

  “This about Mara?” he says.

  “I don't know,” I say, way too fast.
>
  “So maybe not boy feelings and maybe...y'know. L-word feelings?”

  I don't know if he means love or...that other l-word.

  He says, “She likes you, you know.”

  She likes me. She likes me. It's like everything around me just came into focus. I'm suddenly so aware of all this stupid stuff like a crack in the floor and the pattern of Tristan's pants and the nurse's voice over the loudspeaker. Everything's in high-definition and my feet feel like they don't weigh anything.

  This is ridiculous.

  I say, “What if she likes me because she thinks I'm the kind of girl who's going to wear a suit?”

  “Hmm,” he says, which is not actually the response I wanted, thank you.

  “Rory is kind of...she's got that androgynous thing going on,” I say. “Is that the kind of girl she usually goes for?”

  He shrugs in a way that definitely means something.

  “So what if after tonight it's just...and what if I'm just in character or something and I don't actually...”

  He gets up and comes over and gives me a hug. Just this gentle hug around my neck, and it is possibly the kindest way anyone has ever touched me.

  I didn't see that coming at all. I thought he didn't really like me.

  I rest my chin on his shoulder. “You're having surgery. I should be hugging you.”

  “Well, hugs are two-directional.”

  I squeeze him around the waist. “Yeah.” After a minute I say, “Do you ever feel like you're in costume all the time?”

  “I used to. C'mere.” He pulls a tissue out of the box on the bedside table and wipes my face off. I didn't even know I was crying. This is so embarrassing. I'm going to be all blotchy-faced on my way out of a hospital and people are going to think I have actual problems. “It's not forever,” he says.

  “Does everyone figure it out eventually?”

  He plants his hands on my shoulders and looks me dead in the eyes.

  “You will,” he says.

  My mother is waiting in my room when I get back. I try to be extremely casual setting the paper bag holding the suit behind my suitcase in the corner. “What's up?” I say. “I thought you'd be at that decoupage thing.”

  “I was waiting for you,” she says, and she sits down on my bed like she's heavy.