Picture Us In The Light

by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  “Well, hi,” she said, giving me a cold smile, her lips pressed together. “So nice of you to let me join you.”

  I could feel my face going hot. “I thought—” And then there was nowhere to go with that one, obviously. I mumbled something about being glad she could make it. She ignored me the rest of the walk as much as you can ignore one of the two people you’re with. But—I always think about this—she could’ve made a scene in front of Harry, she could’ve revealed me as the person I was, and I would’ve deserved it, and she didn’t.

  We had homeroom together the next day—it’s alphabetical, and at MV there are so many Changs/Chens/Chengs I barely made the cutoff—and she cornered me while everyone was milling around inside before the bell rang.

  “Why did you ditch me like that yesterday? I thought you hated Harry, anyway.”

  “He’s—” I hesitated. “He’s not the worst person ever.”

  “Not the worst person ever. Right.” She crossed her arms and glared at me, for so long I felt the rest of the room fade back, all those new binders and new outfits and all that first-day-of-school energy. I wished we were outside so I could squint, hide my eyes under the guise of it being too bright. My mouth was dry. The irony was that in basically every other circumstance I always wanted to talk about Harry, wanted to feel his name on my tongue and fill the room with my thoughts of him. Sandra said, “Why did you say you were busy? I was just sitting at home. We were supposed to hang out.”

  I’d had the past night to come up with a better story now. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to walk. It was hot. You hate sports.”

  “Walking’s not a sport. Are you serious?”

  “Well, it’s not with that attitude.” I forced a smile. She didn’t. “Fine, next time if we walk somewhere I’ll tell you. Okay?”

  “I just think it’s weird you didn’t want me there. And by weird I mean you were being a dick.”

  “It wasn’t you, I just—”

  “I also just really didn’t want to be alone.”

  She’d been like that as long as I could remember, the kind of person who gravitated toward noise and commotion and who scored off the charts in those How Much of an Extrovert Are You? quizzes online. In elementary school she used to always get in trouble for talking to other people during class, and in high school she’d go to anyone’s party even if she didn’t know a single person there. I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Keep it.”

  “I’m just—”

  But she was done with the conversation; TianTian Chien had come in and Sandra was bounding over to talk to her without a backward glance, which was a rebuke, I knew, even if no one else in the room would notice. I sat down heavily, a simmering feeling in my chest. It had been one afternoon, I thought. And for all she knew I was going to hang out with her later in the day. She was overreacting. But even at the time, I think, I knew that what was masquerading inside me as pure resentment was more complicated than that, something maybe closer to a form of guilt. Which made it worse, actually. I held that against her.

  Later, by the time Harry’s and my friendship was pretty widely established, Sandra told a bunch of people she thought I was a social climber. I never got past it, and a coldness filled the distance between us. If I was talking with Regina and Sandra showed up I’d usually go somewhere else, and a few times Sandra had made a big deal out of it. “It’s okay, go ahead,” she’d called after me once. “Go find someone better to talk to. Go for it. That’s right, keep walking. You’ll get more popular that way. Keep going.” That was the time I’d turned around and snapped, “Bitch.” I hate myself for it still.

  By that point, Harry and Regina were going out, which seemed like a double standard given that she and Sandra were still best friends (hadn’t we both chosen Harry?), but I guess it wasn’t; it was more that Sandra thought I’d been a hypocrite, I think. Regina liked Harry from the beginning, so Sandra never judged her for that the way she did me. And maybe Regina didn’t make her feel like she’d chosen against her; I’d always suspected Harry came second for her, after Sandra. Or maybe we all just forgive the people we love, because we love them, and for no other reason than that.

  But anyway, so Sandra had made it clear what she thought of me, and someone’s opinion of you isn’t the kind of thing you can exactly confront someone over or defend yourself against, especially when that would mean bringing too many things you’d rather keep hidden out into the open; it’s just that every time from then on when you see them (which in my case was kind of a lot) you know that they think you have no principles, which, cool. Especially because loyalty matters a lot to me. I’d still do Ethan any favor he asked, and it’s been twelve years. But as far as Sandra was concerned I was someone else completely, and I’d always resented her for it.

  I told myself that, anyway, because it let me off the hook. But maybe it was always more that I couldn’t ever quite face her. Maybe it was just that she was a witness to a part of myself I’d rather bury. That’s probably why I let things stay that way—I was always afraid she’d expose me, even if just to myself.

  I was hanging out in the library after school waiting for Harry to get done with a lab group meeting one day after school last year, right in the middle of the ASB elections, when Sandra came and slid into the chair next to me. I was drawing (I was forever working on my RISD portfolio; I probably slept five hours a night all year) and I looked up. She said, “Hey.”

  I probably couldn’t quite hide my surprise. “Uh—hey?”

  “Could you sound less excited to talk to me? That would really make my day.”

  “I wasn’t—” I pretended to clear my throat. It was probably no use pretending. “What’s up?”

  “I have a proposition for you.” She leaned forward. “Who are you drawing?”

  “No one. Just doodling.”

  “Regina said you’re just applying to art schools.”

  I put my pen down. “Yeah. Ideally just one, actually.”

  “Oh, gross, you’re doing early decision? If I only applied to one school I literally don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed in the morning. Just thinking about that kind of pressure makes me want to die. It’s like colleges were like, wait, how can we possibly determine your self-worth in a way that’s even more stressful and even more degrading than it already is? Boom: early decision.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. The truth is that I missed her—all along I’d missed her. I was just too much of an ass to do anything about it, too much of a coward to make a first move. “So you’re applying more than one place, I take it. You know where?”

  “Everywhere. Like literally everywhere. I have no chance.” She laughed a little, not like she actually found it funny. The sad thing was, it was possibly true. Sandra worked hard, but she wasn’t someone everything came easily to, not a Harry or a Regina, and her parents refused to forgive her for it. She’d probably get into the lower UCs. Irvine might be a stretch. “But I’m avoiding thinking about it. Anyway, I’ll save you the suspense. I wanted to talk to you about the float.”

  “Oh, right.” It was homecoming season, and Sandra was in charge of our class float. Sandra loved floats. She’d spearheaded the efforts every year since we were freshmen, one reason I’d always avoided it. The theme that year was Around the World, which I knew because a side effect of Sandra being in charge meant Regina spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about homecoming, and for a few weeks we all had to pretend we cared about our preternaturally ungifted football team. (Should’ve made homecoming during a badminton game. At least then we might’ve won.) “What about it?”

  “I want you to design it.”

  “You want what now?”

  “Design it. I think we have a really good shot at winning this year instead of the seniors. Their float last year sucked—remember their sixties theme and it was, like, three girls in poodle skirts? That whole class is super mediocre. So if you design it and we build it, there’s no
way anything they come up with will—”

  “Who’s going to build it? You know there’s probably like ten people in each class who even care about winning, right?”

  “But I count as twice as many people at least. Hence, our win. You’ll help, right? I’m wearing you down?”

  I was never going to say no to her. I mean, she was offering me a chance to literally stick my art on a wagon and parade it in front of hundreds (okay, dozens) of people. Of course I was going to say yes.

  The three years since we’d talked had given me a while to pretend she was someone she wasn’t—someone it didn’t matter if I lost, I guess. But I understood: this was a peace offering, after I’d proven I didn’t deserve one. I said, “Yeah, whatever you need.” I should’ve said more.

  “Perfect. Draw something and give me plans by Friday.” She’d picked up her purse and turned to go when I said, “Can I ask you something?”

  She turned back around. “Maybe.”

  “Why—This is going to come out badly. But how come you’re running for president instead of vice president again?”

  She looked evenly at me. I thought she wouldn’t answer. After a while she said, “Does Harry think I’m a bitch? I asked him if he cared before I decided to run.”

  “Nah, he doesn’t think that.” It was news to me that she’d asked him. What was he going to say—No, don’t run? Yo, I actually need this to feel good about myself? “I was just wondering, that’s all. Forget it.”

  “Oh, you know,” she said finally. She smiled; I don’t think I realized it at the time, but there are people who always smile when they’re upset, and she was one. She pitched her voice in an imitation I knew was supposed to be her parents. “You don’t win. Too lazy. Never best in anything. Don’t waste time trying if you don’t win. College don’t want to read about number two.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “Well.” That smile again. “It’s not a big deal either way. I probably won’t win, anyway. Everyone loves Harry, right?”

  It felt like a loaded thing to say, and I think she meant it that way. I could feel my face turning red and I mumbled something about the float, how I’d get ideas and draw up plans, and then I pretended to have to check my phone so she’d take off. Which, I mean—she was probably teasing. How hard would it have been for me to just laugh it off, or say the truth, which was that everyone says stupid shit when they’re freshmen and it’s not something you’re supposed to carry with you?

  The election was a week later—speeches in the gym while all of us were cramped in on the bleachers, Mr. Hartwell getting on the mic to remind us this was supposed to be about people whose achievements we admired and trusted and not just a popularity contest (one of the white stoner sophomore guys sitting near the front booed, which made everyone laugh). Harry’s was about the importance of inclusivity and kindness and diversity and all the other things he’s been saying our whole lives (in other words, practice for if he ever runs for political office someday). Sandra’s was about how whatever else we did that year, we should make sure we also did things to just relax and live in the moment.

  Mr. Davidston, who taught my Honors History class, taught the Leadership class too and was giving extra credit for the first five people to sign up to help tally the votes, so I signed up. I didn’t know Regina had, too, until I walked into the teachers’ lounge and she was there.

  “At least your civil war’s almost over, right?” I said. And Regina said—I’ve never forgotten this—“I’ve been getting stomachaches thinking about how one of them’s going to lose.” Then she looked around the room. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I might break up with him.”

  “You’re what?” I grabbed her sleeve. “When?”

  “I don’t know. My parents would kill me if they found out I had a boyfriend. And I always feel weird about it at church. But mostly—I’ve just been thinking about it. For kind of a while.”

  Then Mr. Davidston got there and I was spared having to come up with the right thing to say. We all took an honor pledge not to share numbers with anyone outside the room and split the ballots into five piles to tally. I thought about how Harry would take it if he lost, and I thought about how all year so far he’d been letting me cheat off him in Advanced Geometry because otherwise I’d be tanking. I thought about him having no idea right now that Regina was thinking about dumping him. And I thought—it physically hurt to think—about how hopeful he was. The force of someone else’s hope can be completely crushing.

  It was much closer than I would’ve expected. Leaving the room I felt kind of sick, and I told Regina my mom wanted me to go home and I hurried off before she had a chance to say goodbye. We weren’t supposed to tell anyone results, but I texted Harry to tell him—Davidston was going to call all the people who’d run, but I wanted to be the first. I waited until I was home and then I closed the door and waited until I heard my mom go out into her garden, which was stupid, because it was just a text, but I was nervous. His phone did that ellipses thing that meant he was typing, then it stopped, then he typed again, then stopped, like he couldn’t figure out what to say. Finally he wrote back, Fuck I was nervous. Just been sitting here trying to calm down. Thanks for telling me, buddy.

  In the morning they made the announcement. I told myself not to look at Sandra, but then I did, and I saw her eyes fill with tears, and I saw how long it took her to wrest her expression into something presentable in public. She clapped for Harry along with everybody else.

  He was so happy; I caught him sneaking off at lunch to call his dad to tell him, his hand cupped over the phone like he didn’t want anyone to hear. I avoided Sandra, and I avoided Regina a few days, too. And I waited for her to break up with him, and I thought about warning him, and in truth the only reason I didn’t was that I never knew how to bring it up. And then, of course, Regina never did.

  I have never told anyone this. I wanted to at the time—I wanted to immediately, mostly because I felt like garbage—but who was I going to tell? The truth is, though, Harry was supposed to lose. I lied tallying up my votes.

  I still can’t say exactly why I did it. I knew it was wrong. And deep down I think I only even partly wanted him to win; watching him smile modestly at everyone the next day I was filled with this rush of something that definitely wasn’t happiness. Maybe I wanted to give him something and that was the best I had. Or maybe I wanted to let Harry have something I might’ve, maybe, wanted for myself—not the election itself, which I didn’t care about, but just the idea that you would want something or want some version of yourself and you would get it. Maybe I wanted to hang on to the belief that the world worked that way for as long as I could.

  Or maybe it was none of that, maybe it was something much shallower and less nuanced. Maybe it was just that between him and Sandra, obviously I wanted Harry to win.

  The SAT is a couple of weeks later, and Monday Harry’s still in a weird mood, worrying about the test. He’s taken it twice already—first he got a 1580 and then the second time he dropped down to 1540, which really rattled him.

  “The worst part is, I know I’m always bad with dangling modifiers,” he says as we’re heading to the rally court for lunch, talking loud over the echo of all the footsteps and conversations in the concrete hallways outside the math wing. He’s holding his books against his waist, and it contours all those lines of muscle in his arm. “I swear I miss every single one of those questions. So I studied them all the night before, and I think I still missed them anyway.”

  “You dangled modifiers in public? Have some decency.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He smiles, but in an obligatory way. “I wish I remembered the questions so I could look them up.”

  “You probably got it this time,” I say. But I kind of hope he didn’t, that somehow his scores will magically be exactly good enough for Brown and no better. We’d be just miles apart.

  And then we’re at the planters and
everyone’s milling around and eating—no Regina today—and Harry marshals himself for lunch, teasing Priya Dev about something that happened when they were both taking the SAT, sitting cross-legged, his hands on his knees, nodding sympathetically as Margie Rhee talks about how she’s gotten maybe four hours of sleep a night all week. He’s soothing for a while, and then—he has impeccable instincts—knows just when to pivot into joking around again, teasing her about the time she made wristbands with the solubility rules printed in five-point font sophomore year when we all took Honors Chem.

  I know him well enough to know he’s still down about his test, though. I’ve never brought up the thing that I always felt like, underneath everything, knitted us together early on: that the truth about Harry is that he’s always felt like he has to distract the world from noticing he doesn’t measure up, that deep down he believes that if you take away the GPA and the test scores and everything he put on his college apps, there’s nothing left.

  I wonder where Regina is. I have a goal today, after watching Grace and Mina come find her last week: I want to talk to her. Really talk, not the way we’ve been navigating around each other since last year. I want her to know I miss how it used to be between us and that I’m here for her. I was lying awake last night thinking about all these convoluted ways to try to lead into it, but really probably the easiest thing to do is just say, Hey, I hope you know I really care about you, and I hope things with us are okay.

  Regina comes back ten minutes before the bell rings. Harry looks up at her from where he’s sitting on the steps, putting up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and says, genially, “Where’d you go?”

  “I was just looking at some things for story assignments.”

  “Anything juicy?”

  “I was just—no, not really. Just trying to figure out—some things.”

  She sits down next to him. Regina and Sandra used to always sit next to each other at the very edge of the planters, sometimes cross-legged with their backs to each other, leaning against each other, or sometimes with their arms linked together, Sandra peering around the rally court and murmuring things darkly into Regina’s ear as Regina laughed or sometimes rolled her eyes in disapproval. They always pooled their lunches together, so you’d sit next to them and not be able to pick out what belonged to each of them. A few times I tried to draw those lunches but I could never quite get the details right, never get it to look like more than just food.