“What is that?” Aubrey asked her.
“Cranberry juice,” she said over the music.
“With vodka,” Gabe added.
“You never drink vodka,” Aubrey said.
Rae shrugged. “Just trying something new.”
“I can see that.” Aubrey eyed her hair. Across the room, a girl in a straw hat and pinstripe pants kept glancing in their direction, checking out either Rae or Gabe.
“Look,” Aubrey said. “Is it okay if we go somewhere else?”
“Like, now?” Rae asked.
“Yes, please,” Gabe said loudly.
Rae looked at the girl in the pinstripe pants, who’d taken off her hat and was placing it on a boy wearing aviator sunglasses. She took another slurp of her drink and fixed her camera bag on her shoulder. “Yeah, fine. Anywhere’s got to be better than this heteronormative wonderland.”
They stepped off the houseboat and onto a gravel road, leaving behind the thrumming beat of Arcade Fire and watching the area turn quiet and residential. A little girl and her mom walked their dog, and a man haphazardly balanced an armful of groceries as he unlocked the door to his apartment building.
“This is the way back to the bus stop,” Aubrey explained.
“You want to catch a bus?” Rae asked.
“I was with Leah all day, and I didn’t get to go anywhere I’d planned. So, yes. I want to catch a bus.”
Rae scrubbed at her hair. “You’re in charge, I guess.”
Gabe shoved his hands into his pockets. “Okay, Tour Guide. What’s on your list?”
“A lot of museums. But they’re probably closed by now. I guess we could walk around the city center. See what’s open.”
They arrived at the bus stop just as one was pulling in. Rae headed straight to the last row and flopped down, resting her legs over the two seats beside her.
“You’re one classy lady.” Gabe pushed her feet off so he could sit down.
“And you’re a bastard,” Rae said, but she made room for him.
Aubrey sat with them but turned toward the window. He and Rae were already wrapped up in a debate about the best albums of an all-girl punk band they both liked, and Aubrey didn’t want to interrupt. She watched their bus crawl over a bridge. From here, it looked like there was nothing but water beneath them, stretching toward the horizon, trying to cover the whole city.
It made her feel like she was floating.
They arrived at Centraal Station in the heart of town. As soon as they got off the bus, Aubrey checked her phone, but Jonah hadn’t texted. Which meant he wasn’t pissed at her for leaving. Or that he hadn’t noticed. Or that he was getting spectacularly wasted. (Or probably all three.)
“Guys,” Rae said. “Look at this. Drunk British people as far as the eye can see.”
“I think some of them are American,” Gabe said.
“My two countries are truly representing themselves.” Rae held up her camera, catching different scenes. A woman with dyed-blond hair sung in a slurring voice while her friends carried her down the street; a group of guys stumbled from a bar, toasting each other with the pint glasses they must have stolen. Last night, Aubrey hadn’t really been able to look around the station since she’d gotten straight on a bus that took her to the hostel. But now she was looking, and honestly? The city center wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined.
“I assumed it would be cuter,” she said.
Rae patted her on the back. “Now you know what happens when the museums close.”
“Oh!” Aubrey veered toward a green-painted entrance. “A coffee shop. Let’s stop in there for a minute, figure out where to go next.” She opened the door of a dimly lit café and stepped into a cloud of overly sweet air and soft electronic music. The tables were all taken up by people having mumbled conversations. Before Aubrey could head to the counter, Rae put a hand on her elbow.
“Wait,” Rae said. “I don’t think this is a coffee shop. I think this is a coffee shop.”
“What do you mean?” Aubrey asked.
Rae mimed smoking a joint, even though Aubrey knew she never had. Or, at least, she was pretty sure she hadn’t. She’d also been pretty sure Rae wouldn’t chop off all her hair at a moment’s notice.
Gabe made a coughing noise under his breath. “I think people are staring at us.”
It was true. A group of twentysomethings was definitely giving them stink-eye, and Aubrey realized they were still holding the door open.
“This might be a good time for a hasty exit,” Rae said, taking Aubrey’s arm and sprinting outside. Gabe called out an apology as he left, too. They kept running, passing neon-lit bars on one side and a canal on the other. A few clearly intoxicated people cheered and clapped for them, and Aubrey waved back for no other reason than it seemed polite. She looked up at the signs on buildings, at a red-and-blue one with a woman’s figure in silhouette. All of a sudden, it clicked—she knew exactly where they were.
She stopped dead in the street and doubled over with laughter.
Gabe and Rae stopped, too, and Rae took a second to adjust the straps of her tank top. “Should we have looked at a map or something?” she asked. “Because I think maybe we’re in the—”
“Red Light District!” Aubrey collapsed against the brick wall beside her, laughing so hard her stomach cramped.
“What gave it away?” Gabe asked. “Was it the incredibly explicit window displays in all of the sex shops?”
“I can’t.” Aubrey hiccuped. “I just… I can’t.”
“You’re both such prudes,” Rae said.
Aubrey scoffed. “Says the girl who made us run out of a coffee shop.”
“I was protecting your delicate sensibilities.” Rae climbed the stoop of a building and took a picture of the street. Aubrey smoothed back the flyaways from her face. The area was still raucous, but she didn’t find it intimidating anymore. She felt as if she were at a party—the kind of party where she didn’t have to try to fit in. Where she could just stand and observe and feel like she belonged anyway.
She took the step below Rae’s. “I can’t get over your hair!” she said. “I thought you liked it long. It was your thing.”
“Not anymore.” Rae looked down and took a picture of her.
“What do you think Lucy will say?”
“She’ll tell me I don’t look like her daughter anymore. Or maybe that I look like my own evil doppelgänger.”
“I mean, that’s the obvious reaction,” Gabe said, stepping up to join Aubrey.
“Well, I hope she’s not too mad,” Rae said. “Or she might refuse to come with me when I get my tattoo.”
“Hold on,” Gabe said. “You were losing your shit over a haircut, but you’re getting a tattoo?”
This time, Rae took a picture of him. “Needles don’t scare me.”
“But scissors in your hair?” Gabe said. “That was terrifying?”
“Maybe you were nervous because it was a metaphor,” Aubrey said. “It represented the transformation from childhood to adulthood.”
“Exactly!” Rae said. “Thank you.”
Gabe shook his head at Aubrey. “You’re such an English-lit major.”
She smiled out at the canal, watching it slide peacefully down the center of the wild street. If someone had asked her right then, she would have said this moment was perfect: She was out with two of her closest friends, talking and joking around, exactly the way they used to. Standing in a city that—for the moment, anyway—felt like it was theirs.
“So, Preston,” Gabe said. “How did you convince your mom to let you get a tattoo?”
“Are you kidding?” Aubrey said. “Her mom designed it.”
“Okay.” Gabe laughed. “That’s pretty badass. What are you getting? Where?”
Rae stretched out her left wrist. “It’s going to be these two shadows standing together. Mom drew it from one of her favorite movies, The Big Sleep. She named me after Raymond Chandler, because he wrote stories for all these
old film noirs she’s obsessed with. She thinks the cinematography in those movies is, like, the best thing ever.”
Gabe examined Rae’s wrist, as if the tattoo were already there. “What about you?” he said to Aubrey. “What’s yours going to be?”
Nothing about him seemed hesitant. He wasn’t talking to her because he thought he should. He was talking to her because he wanted to.
“Probably a skull,” she said. “You know, a big one.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“And you should get something outdoorsy. Or Oregon-themed. A lumberjack?”
“How about a flannel pattern?”
“On both your arms!”
“With buttons down my burly chest.”
Aubrey cracked up. She felt her whole body lighten. And even though she didn’t know exactly what had changed, she knew he wasn’t the Gabe he’d been in Paris. He was the one he used to be. The one who would ride his bike along the Thames with her to pass the time after school; the one who would sit at her kitchen table showing her Wikipedia pages of national parks in Oregon; the one who made her listen to P. J. Harvey on his family’s record player, both of them sitting on his living room floor, eyes closed, talking about her scratchy voice and her guitar that grumbled like an engine.
On a balcony above, someone played a loud punk song. Gabe cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted along with it. Rae held her camera above her head, taking a picture of the street, the night, everything. And Aubrey caught herself wishing that the party at Leah’s would carry on and on. She wished that they could stay out here for hours, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for the glimmering canal to turn pink, red, yellow.
And then her phone chirped, shocking her back to reality. She saw Jonah’s name pop up on her screen along with a message she didn’t expect: this is leah. jonah and clara are fucking trashed. take them home NOW.
12
Rae
Monday, July 4
AMSTERDAM
Rae hated to admit it, but Leah was right. Jonah and Clara were shit-faced.
The sun had set completely by the time she, Aubrey, and Gabe got back to the party. Leah was standing outside the houseboat, smoking. Clara spun to the music still coming from inside while Jonah tried to climb onto someone’s bike.
“Jesus,” Aubrey said under her breath.
“How much did they have to drink?” Gabe asked.
“Too much,” Leah said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.
“Yeah, but they never drink this much,” Aubrey said.
Rae smirked. “Oh, come on, Aubs. Have you forgotten the graduation party already?”
Aubrey shot her a not-helping look. Clara spun over and into Rae. They both lost their balance, and Rae’s camera bumped against her hip as she held on to Clara’s arms to keep her steady.
“You’re here!” Clara said. And in that single moment, Rae let herself imagine what it would be like to slide her hands around Clara’s back, to feel Clara lean into her grip.
“Yeah.” Rae dropped her hands, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops. “I am.”
There was a crashing sound as Jonah tipped the bike over. Leah, Aubrey, and Gabe rushed over to help him, all of them yelling over one another.
“I keep not recognizing you,” Clara said. “Your hair—it’s so different.”
“That’s what I was going for,” Rae said. “Full-on disguise mode.” She didn’t want to think too much about how close they were standing, so she scanned the row of houseboats instead, counted each of their lit-up windows. The water was much glossier and blacker than it had been a few hours ago.
“Forget the fucking bike, Jonah!” Leah was saying.
“Don’t snap at him!” Aubrey said. “He wouldn’t even be drunk if he hadn’t come here.”
“Sure, Aubrey. He’d probably be home right now knitting a sweater.”
Clara leaned forward, her breath in Rae’s ear. “Don’t tell,” she whispered, “but everyone here is an asshole.”
Jonah talked loudly the whole bus ride back to the hostel, leaning heavily against Aubrey. She and Gabe led him back to his room while Rae took Clara to theirs. They’d only been there one night, but already, dirty clothes and pajamas were lying across the floor; pots of glittery makeup and bags of trail mix cluttered the windowsill. Rae closed the door behind her, and Clara skipped over the mess, collapsing onto Rae’s bunk. “Where were you guys?” she asked, splaying her arms out. “You missed the whole party. You didn’t even dance.”
Rae put her camera down and took off her sandals. “I don’t dance where people can see me.”
“But you danced in Paris. And at the Sleater-Kinney concert!” Clara cried. “You can’t fool me, Rae Preston. I have seen your moves.”
Rae rolled her eyes. But she remembered the concert, too. Aubrey and Clara had schemed with Lucy to buy tickets for Rae’s sixteenth birthday, and they’d all danced so hard, every muscle in Rae’s body had throbbed for days. “That was different,” she said. “Sleater-Kinney is a badass feminist band. This was just some college kids swaying on a boat.”
Clara sat up, hair messy and cheeks flushed. Her lips were stained blue from so many Jell-O shots. “Do you ever think we should have applied to college together? All five of us?”
“I don’t know.” Rae was surprised. “Applied where?”
“It doesn’t matter. As long we were all in the same place. As long we could live in the same dorm and eat breakfast every morning and go to all the same parties. It would be just like high school.”
“Oh goody,” Rae said.
Clara chucked a pillow at her. “You’re such a bitch.”
“That’s an antifeminist term!” Rae tossed the pillow back, and Clara moved over so Rae could sit on the bed, too. “The thing is,” Rae said, “I don’t think college is supposed to work that way. It’s supposed to be a fresh start.”
“Is that why you cut your hair?” Clara reached over to touch one of Rae’s curls.
“Something like that.” Rae’s words sounded fuzzy in her ears. She could feel her heart rate increase.
“Well, whatever,” Clara said. “Everything’s perfect right now, and that’s all that matters. In fact, you know what? We should take a selfie. I need to be in one of your Amsterdam pictures so you remember I was here.” She gingerly picked up Rae’s camera. “How do you work this thing again?”
“I’ll do it,” Rae said, laughing. It was hard to take a selfie with her heavy camera. She had to hold it with both hands and guess at the right angle.
Clara placed her arm around Rae’s waist, pulling them together. “Smile!” she said, reaching over Rae’s hand to press the button. A flash popped in their eyes. Rae turned into Clara’s shoulder.
“Christ!” Rae said. “That was awful!”
“No, it was great,” Clara said. “It’s my new favorite picture ever.” Their arms were still around each other, their faces inches apart. Rae saw Clara’s blue lips and soft eyes, the strands of hair that fell next to her mouth. It would have been so easy for Rae to fall into that, to let herself believe that they were this close and touching because it meant something to both of them.
But that wasn’t the truth. And Rae couldn’t pretend it was—she couldn’t torture herself like that. She moved away, pretending to examine the sets of initials etched into the bedpost. She wondered why they’d been carved there in the first place—what had happened to make someone feel the need to sit here and scratch and scratch until the letters became permanent.
“Rae?” Clara asked.
“Yup?”
“Do you think Leah’s a bitch?”
Rae bit the inside of her cheek and wished she didn’t feel so disappointed at the change in subject. “I think you know her better than I do. So I shouldn’t comment.”
“Okay. But she ignored me all tonight.”
“In that case, yeah. She’s a bitch.”
“Antifeminist,” Clara teased. Then she lay back on the bed agai
n. “Honestly, I’m not surprised. It’s always been obvious that she likes Jonah more than she likes me.”
“Why does everyone care so much what Leah thinks of them?” Rae asked. “She smokes, like, a thousand cigarettes a day. She makes annoying references to books that might not even be real. All in all, I’d say she’s pretty terrible.”
“I know.” Clara sighed at the underside of the bunk above her. “But why does she act like she never even kissed me?”
The room lurched and started spinning. Rae dug her fingers into the mattress, trying to hold herself still. “Leah kissed you?”
“Last year.” Clara yawned. “A few months before her graduation. It was fun, but now she seems determined to pretend it never happened.” She sat up again and scooted down the bed until there was only a sliver of polka-dotted sheets between them. “Who was the first girl you ever kissed?”
Rae blinked hard. “Dana Silverstein. Eighth grade. But you knew that.”
“Yeah, I did.” Clara’s knee was almost touching Rae’s thigh. Her blue lips were slightly parted. “But you were sure then? You were definitely sure you wanted to kiss girls?”
The room kept moving. All Rae could think to say was “Yes.”
Clara pressed her palm against the bed and leaned in. And this time, Rae didn’t think she was making it up. Because she’d been in positions like this before. Because girls had looked at her in exactly this way before. Clara’s voice lowered to a whisper. “If you could kiss anyone right now, who would it be?”
The door opened, and Aubrey walked in.
Rae jumped off the bed. “Aubrey! You scared us.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Aubrey took off her shoes, placing them neatly by the door. She went to the sink and pulled her contact case out of her toiletry bag.
Rae’s skin was still tingling from what had just happened. She could still feel the warmth of Clara leaning toward her and the certainty that they were about to kiss. But that was impossible. Because—Clara was straight!
Or was Rae the one being heteronormative now?
Because Clara had kissed Leah, so how straight could she be?
The Summer of Us Page 8