Sixteen

by Megan Mccafferty

  It rained the entire next day, a constant downpour. I loafed around the cabin, cranky and depressed. By mid-afternoon, my mom offered to take me into Ithaca. In an effort to cheer me up, we swung by the Department of Motor Vehicles and got a driver’s manual so I could start studying for my learner’s permit. Then we went to an art-supply store and she bought me a new sketch pad and some pastel crayons. As we were walking out, she gestured to a bookstore and said she wanted to look for a guidebook to insects, so we held up our umbrellas and raced across the street.

  While my mom was in the animal section, I browsed the art books. I was thumbing through a book about Renaissance painters when I came to the chapter on Leonardo da Vinci. I flipped a few pages until I came to the portrait of Mona Lisa. I leaned against the bookshelf, studying her black hair and dark eyes and flushed cheeks. I skimmed the text underneath—about how it’s oil paint on pinewood and was most likely done around 1506—until I came to a paragraph that jumped out at me:

  One of the most highly discussed aspects of the Mona Lisa is her delicate smile, which blends into the gentle atmosphere. To achieve this, da Vinci invented a technique called “sfumato,” which he applied to the corners of her mouth. “Sfumato” is the gradual blurring of forms. It lessens the perception that a still image is entirely still and therefore suggests that we are observing her face as the expression is changing.

  I closed the book and returned it to the display table. I couldn’t stop thinking about the profile I tried to draw of Mona Lisa—my Mona Lisa—the day after my birthday, when I couldn’t figure out how to do her lips, or even what expression she was making. Maybe I needed to use sfumato. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to capture her on paper, unchanging, forever and ever. Maybe I had to accept that she’s changing, that I’m changing, that we’re all changing, and that’s just the way it is.

  By Sunday, Mona Lisa and I still hadn’t talked, not since she’d told me I was going to hell. Chad drove down from Rochester that morning and we headed right to the water. We crawled under a willow tree and I let him undo my bikini top. Around noon, he was lolling in an inner tube, his eyes closed and his head tilted back. I was sitting on the shore, sketching his shoulders and arms, blurring the charcoal where his elbow kept dipping in and out of the lake.

  I glanced at Mona Lisa’s empty dock. Chad had said that when he was driving in on the dirt road, he’d passed Mona Lisa and her grandparents heading out in their car. He said she was wearing her prairie dress again, so I had a feeling they were going to church.

  “Watch out, Emmy!” Chad shouted.

  He slapped his hands into the lake, pelting my legs with water. A few droplets hit my sketch pad. I was about to yell at him, but then I noticed that he was grinning irresistibly, so I flung off my straw hat, set my pad aside, and bolted into the lake. I drenched Chad with water. He kicked water back at me until I squealed for mercy. Then he grabbed my hands and pulled me toward him. As I leaned down to kiss him, I realized that it didn’t even hurt my feet anymore, standing on the sharp rocks. At least some things about summer hadn’t changed.

  The Alumni Interview

  David Levithan

  It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. Would I have applied to this university if I had known that of all the alumni in the greater metropolitan area, it would choose Mr. Wright to find me worthy or unworthy? Maybe. But maybe not.

  Thom took it worse than I did. We had been making out in the boys’ room, with him standing on the toilet so no one would know we were in the stall together. Even though I was younger, he was a little shorter and had much better balance than I did. Dating him, I’d learned to kiss quietly, and from different inclinations.

  He found the letter as he searched through my bag for a Certs.

  “You heard from them?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “An interview?”

  “Yeah,” I answered casually. “With your dad.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The bell had rung. The bathroom sounded empty. I looked under the stall door to see if anyone’s feet were around, then opened it.

  “No, really,” I said.

  His face turned urinal-white.

  “You can’t.”

  “I have to. I can’t exactly refuse an alumni interview.”

  He thought about it for a second and then concluded, succinctly, “Shit.”

  I had almost met Mr. Wright before. He had come home early one day when his office’s air-conditioning had broken down. Luckily, Thom’s room is right over the garage, so the garage door heralded his arrival with an appropriately earthquakian noise. Thom was tugging on my shirt at the time, and as a result, I lost at least two buttons. At first, I figured it was just his mom. But the footsteps beat out a different tune. I did the mature, responsible thing, which was to hide under the bed for the next three hours. Happily, Thom hid with me. We found ways to occupy ourselves. Then, once the family was safely wrapped up in dinner, I climbed out the window. I could’ve gone out the window earlier, but I’d been having a pretty good time.

  The trick was getting Thom to enjoy it, too. I wasn’t his first boyfriend, but I was the first he could admit to himself. We’d reached the stage where he felt comfortable liberating his affections when we were alone together, or even within our closest circle of friends. But outside that circle, he got nervous. He became paralyzed at the very thought of his parents discovering his—our—secret.

  We’d been going out without going out for three months.

  I’d picked my first choice for college before Thom and I had gotten together, long before I’d known his father had gone to the same school. Thom couldn’t believe I wanted to go to a place that had helped spawn the person his father had become.

  “Your dad wasn’t in the drama program,” I pointed out. “And I think he was there before Vietnam.”

  It helped that my first-choice college was in the same city as Thom’s. We’d vowed that we wouldn’t think or talk about such things. But of course we did. All the time.

  We were trapped in the limbo between where we were and where we wanted to be. The limbo of our age.

  The day of the alumni interview, we were both as nervous as a tightrope walker with vertigo. We spun through the day at school, the clock hands spiraling us to certain doom. We found every possible excuse to touch each other—hand on shoulder, fingers on back, stolen kisses, loving looks. Everything that would stop the moment his father walked into the room.

  Thom gave me a ride home, then drove back to his house. I counted to a hundred, then walked over.

  He answered the door. We’d agreed on this beforehand. I didn’t want to be in his house without seeing him. I wanted to know he was there.

  “I’ve got it!” he yelled to the study as he opened the door.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  He leaned into me and whispered, “I love you.”

  And I whispered, “I love you, too.”

  We didn’t have time for any more than that. So we said all that needed to be said.

  I’d never been in Mr. Wright’s study before. The man fit in well with the furniture. Sturdy. Wooden. Upright.

  It is a strange thing to meet your boyfriend’s father when the father doesn’t know you’re his son’s boyfriend—or even that his son has a boyfriend. It puts you at an advantage—you know more than he does—and also puts you at a disadvantage. The things you know aren’t things you can let him know.

  I was not ordinarily known for my discretion. But I was trying to make an exception in this case. It seemed like an exceptional situation.

  Thom stood in the doorway, hovering.

  “Dad, this is Ian.”

  “Have a seat, Ian,” the man said, no handshake. “Thank you, Thom.”

  Thom stayed one beat too long, the last beat of linger that we’d grown accustomed to, the sign of an unwanted good-bye. But then the situation hit him again, and he left the room without a farewell g
lance.

  I turned to Mr. Wright as the door closed behind him.

  I can do this, I thought. Then: And even if I can’t, I have to.

  Mr. Wright had clearly done the alumni interview thing a hundred times before. As if reciting a message beamed in from central campus, he talked about how this interview was not supposed to be a formal one; it was all about getting to know me, and me getting to know the college where he had spent some of the best years of his life. He had a few questions to ask, and he was sure that I had many questions to ask as well.

  In truth, I had already visited the campus twice and knew people who went there. I didn’t have a single question to ask. Or, more accurately, the questions I wanted to ask didn’t have anything to do with the university in question.

  Thom says you’ve never in all his life hugged him. Why is that?

  What can I do to make you see how wonderful he is? If I told you the way I still smile after he kisses me—the way my head feels like helium and my heart feels like a song, not because it’s a sexy kiss, but because it’s a kind kiss—is there any possible way you’d understand what he means to me?

  Don’t you know how wrong it is when you wave a twenty-dollarbill in front of your son and tell him that when he gets a girlfriend, you’ll be happy to pay for the first date?

  And then I’d add:

  My father isn’t like you at all. So don’t tell me it’s normal parent behavior.

  I am not by nature an angry person. But as this man kept saying he wanted to get to know me, I wanted to throw that phrase right back at him. How could he possibly get to know me when he didn’t want to know his son?

  Taking out a legal pad and consulting a folder with my transcript in it, he asked me about school and classes. As I prattled on about AP Biology and my English awards, I kept thinking about the word transcript. What exactly did it transcribe? My life. No, not that. It was a bloodless, calendar version of my life. It transcribed nothing but the things I was doing in order to get into a good college. It was the biography of my paper self. Getting to know it wasn’t getting to know me at all.

  Sitting in that room, talking to Mr. Wright, I knew I had to get all of my identities in order. I realized how many identities I had, at a time when I really should have been focusing on having one.

  “Have you taken economics?” Mr. Wright asked.

  “No,” I answered. It had never occurred to me to take economics.

  “Why not?” he harrumphed.

  I explained that our school offered only one economics class, and I had a conflict. A complete lie, but how would he know?

  “I see.”

  He wrote something down, then told me how important economics was to an education, and how he would have never gotten through college—not to mention life—without a firm foundation in economics.

  I nodded. I agreed. I succumbed to the lecture, because I really didn’t have any choice. Judgmental. I considered the word judgmental. The mental state of always judging. His tone. I knew he wasn’t singling me out. I knew this was probably the way he always was.

  There were times I had gotten mad at Thom. Argument mad. Cutting-comment mad. Because his inability to be open made me a little closed. I didn’t want to be a conditional boyfriend. I didn’t want to be anybody’s secret. As much as I said I understood, I never entirely understood.

  Can’t you just tell them? I’d ask. After they became the excuse for why we couldn’t go out on Saturday. After they became the reason he pulled his hand away from mine as we were walking through town— what if they drove by? But then I’d feel bad, feel wrong. Because I knew this was not the way he wanted it to be. That even though we were sixteen, we were still that one leap away from independence. We were still caught on the dependence side, staring over the divide.

  Now, bearing the brunt of his father’s disapproval, I understood. Not all of it. But a little more.

  “. . . too many of you students ignore economics. You dillydally. You spend your time on such expendable things. Like Thom. You know Thom, right? No focus. He has no focus. He wouldn’t be right for this university. You show more promise. But I have to say, you need to make sure you don’t spend time on expendable things. . . .”

  And suddenly I was sick of it.

  I looked to the door and saw something. A shadow in the keyhole. And I knew. Thom had never left. He was on the outside of the door, holding his breath for me. Trying to keep quiet. Stay quiet, because his father was around.

  I was sick of it.

  The economics lecture was over. Mr. Wright didn’t alter his tone when he asked, “What are your interests?”

  “Your son in my room,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The sun and the moon,” I said. “Astronomy.”

  Mr. Wright looked pleased. “I didn’t know kids liked astronomy anymore. When I was a child, we all had telescopes. Now you just have telephones and televisions instead.”

  “You couldn’t be more right, sir.” I nodded emphatically, as if I believed for a second that he hadn’t watched television or spoken on the telephone as a child. “A telescope is a fine instrument. And there’s something about the stars. . . .” I paused dramatically.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, there’s something about the stars that makes you realize both the smallness and the enormity of everything, isn’t there?”

  Thom had first told me this as we lay on our backs on a golf course outside of town, too late for the twilight, but early enough to catch the rise of the moon, the pinprick arrival of the stars. His words were like a grasping.

  Now here was his father, agreeing with him, through me.

  “Yes, yes, absolutely,” Mr. Wright said.

  I looked to the keyhole, to Thom’s shadow there. Knowing he was near. Speaking to him in this code.

  Saying to his father what I’ve said to him.

  “Sometimes I wish we could open ourselves up to each other as much as we do to the sky. To the smallness and the enormity.”

  “I see,” Mr. Wright said, looking back at his notes. “And do you have any other interests?

  Must interests be interesting? That is, must they be interesting to someone other than yourself? This is why I hate these interviews, these applications. List your interests. I wanted to say, Look, interests aren’t things that can be listed. My interests are impulses, are moods, are never-ending. Sometimesit’s as simple as Thom holding my hand. Sometimes it’s as complicated as wanting to be able to hold his hand in front of his father. That want is an interest of mine.

  “I swim,” I answered instead.

  “Are you on the swim team?” Mr. Wright looked vaguely interested.

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I like to do it alone.”

  “I see.”

  He wrote something else down. Not a team player, no doubt.

  “Thom is on the swim team,” he added.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Very competitive.” As if that was the marker of a fine activity.

  “So I’ve heard.” I had grown so tired of competitions. Of sacrificing the nights of stargazing in order to make the paper self as impressive as possible.

  “Do you know Thom well?”

  “We’re friends,” I said. Not a lie, but not the whole truth.

  “Well, do me a favor and make sure he stays on track.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  He picked up my transcript again, frowned, and asked, “What is the GSA?”

  It had now gone from uncomfortable to downright fierce. I tried to imagine him coming to one of our Gay-Straight Alliance meetings. I tried to imagine that if I told him what it was, he would understand. I tried to think of a way to avoid his shiver of revulsion, his dismissive disdain.

  Thom had tried to signal him once. I’d placed a pink triangle pin on his bag after a meeting, and he didn’t take it off when he got home. Instead he put the bag in a spot where it could be seen. But it didn
’t work. Mr. Wright brushed past it. He didn’t notice or didn’t say. When all Thom wanted was for him to notice without being told.

  “GSA stands for God Smiles Always, sir,” I said with my most sincere expression.

  “I didn’t know the high school had one of those.”

  “It’s pretty new, sir.”

  “How did it start?”

  “Because of the school musical,” I earnestly explained. “A lot of the kids in the musical wanted to start it.”

  “Really?”

  “It was Jesus Christ Superstar, sir. I think we were all moved by how much of a superstar Jesus was. It made us want to work to make God smile.”

  “And the school is okay with this?” Mr. Wright asked, his eyebrow raising slightly, a vague irritation in his voice.

  “Yes, sir. It’s all about bringing people together.”

  “It says here you were on the dance committe for the GSA?”

  I nodded, imagining Thom’s reaction behind the door. “I was one of the coordinators,” I elaborated. “We wanted to create a wholesome atmosphere for our fellow students. We only played Christian dance music. It’s like Christian rock music, only the beat is a little faster. The lyrics are mostly the same.”

  “Did Thom go to that dance?”

  “Yes, sir. I believe I saw him there.” In fact, he was my date. Afterwards, we had sex.

  “It also says you were involved in something called the Pride March?”

  “Yes. We dress up as a pride of lions and we march. It’s a school-spirit thing. Our mascot is a lion.”

  He did not look amused. “Do you march in costume?” “Yes. But we don’t wear the heads of costumes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re proud to be wearing them. We want people to know who we are.”

  He looked back down at my application.

  “It says the Pride March is tied to Coming Out Day.”

  Damn. The transcript might as well have been written in lavender ink.

  I faked a laugh. “Oh, that. It’s another school-spirit thing. First day of the football season, someone dresses up as a lion and comes out from under the bleachers onto the field. If we see its shadow, we know the season will be a long one. If not, we know it’s pretty much over before it’s begun. The whole school gets really into it.”