“Another one?” Cooper asks, halfway up the stairs.
“I need five total.”
“Clover?” He holds one of the sleeves and considers it.
“You got it,” I tell him, not looking up from stitching.
“Snip, are you mad at me?” Coop sits at his desk. He hasn’t used it much this summer, but I’m sure once the school year kicks in he’ll be hunkering down as usual.
“Of course not.” I sew on another button. Each pocket will close with a button and a loop. Clover protects everything that matters to her.
“You ignored my texts, all day.” I miss the fabric; the needle slides off the thread and onto the floor. I had forgotten about my phone, and what happened, for hours now.
“My phone died.” I search around for the lost needle, knowing I probably won’t find it until I’m barefoot and not paying attention. “I forgot to plug it in with all my work and stuff. What happened?” Cooper picks up a packet of extra needles from my desk and tosses it to me.
“I saw Why at the mall.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” I panic and drop the packet.
“Calm down. No, I didn’t rat you out. Not yet, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But listen. This isn’t about you and your shenanigans,” he scolds me, and sits in the rolling chair.
“Right. Listening.” I go back to sewing on buttons while Coop talks.
“He noticed me and came into the store and, like, I know I’ve said this a bunch of times, but he’s really cute, Cam. No joke.” Cooper is positively glowing, and I can tell he’s fallen. Hard. “Okay, so anyway, he stuck around and grabbed lunch with me, and we were talking about movies.”
“Of course you were.” I sew on a tiny silver button without even looking down.
“Right, but get this: he doesn’t like them.”
“What.” I stare at Cooper. Deadpan.
“Okay, he likes them, but he only likes the awful ones.”
“What do you mean?” I fish around my button tin and grab a pink flower-shaped one and attach it to another pocket.
“He has terrible, terrible taste in movies. He hates everything I love. He likes disaster movies and corny sci-fi and those movies about car racing or whatever.”
“So why are you smiling?”
“Because it was the best conversation I’ve ever had. It was fun and funny, and I could have sat there and fake-argued with him until the mall closed.”
“That’s kind of amazing.” I smile at him.
“So if you could just…”
“Not yet.”
“Well, why the hell not? You know what I’ve been through with Farrin and everything. Just do it already.”
“What you’ve been through?” The voice from the phone floods back into my head, snarling, calling me pathetic, a coward.
“You have no idea what it’s really like,” he accuses me. “You’re just playing pretend! You’ve never had to deal with anything close to what I went through.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I love you, Cam. I really love you. And I’m asking you to please not fuck everything up with this stupid scheme of yours.” He motions to the pile of boy clothes in the corner. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that now I do know what it’s like to be tormented. But it’s not a competition. Just because I can sympathize doesn’t mean his troubles are less real, less important.
If I’m honest, I’ve created most of my own problems. Cooper can’t help his. I can turn off my phone and ignore the randos all day. He can’t turn off his feelings. He doesn’t need to know about any of my issues.
“Soon, Snap. I just need to find the right moment.”
“One week. I’m giving you a week. Then all bets are off.”
* * *
I can feel Clover coming to life on the dress form, smiling at me, or at least she would be if the dress form had a head. The three costumes look like a family next to each other, though equally unfinished. Each one is missing some detail or another. Nothing that can’t come together after another late night in the loft.
There’s a soft knock on the studio door. I’m sure it’s Dad coming to remind me that summer will be over soon and I shouldn’t be this pale and this tired. I look over the railing to shoo him away, but it’s not him. It’s Lincoln. He waves, holding a Scrabble box and the crushed velvet I was supposed to buy up to the window.
What on earth is Link doing here, at my loft, at my door?
“Thought you could use some cheering up?” he says through the glass. I hold up a finger, asking for just a second. I sprint around the loft, stashing my dirty boy clothes, trying to fluff my hair into an acceptable shape in the mirror. No time for shoes or straightening anything else, because Lincoln is here and I don’t want him to wait.
“Hey. Come on in.” Lincoln walks past me and up the stairs while I peek back at the house, making sure no one saw him come in. It’s not that they would be mad that I have a boy over; I just don’t want to answer any questions, not when I don’t know the answers myself.
“I met your dad,” he tells me as we walk up the stairs.
“He didn’t embarrass me too badly, I hope?”
“Nah, I just told him I liked his first-edition handbook and that we should all play D and D sometime.”
“You’re joking.”
“Why not?”
I want to change the subject. My dad is the last thing I want to be discussing when Lincoln is actually here, in my studio, right in front of me. Here to cheer me up. I hop up off the top step and try to affix everything about this moment in my mind.
“Wow, this is marvelous.” He looks around the messy workroom, mouth wide open. I scoff at his word choice.
“Recognize anyone?” I motion to the lineup of costumes hanging next to the dress form.
“No way! It can’t be. Jade and Wizzy?” He figures it out without missing a beat.
“They’re for my portfolio review. I’m trying to get into CalArts.”
Lincoln whistles, impressed. “CalArts should be trying to get you, not the other way around.” He slides the Scrabble box next to my sewing machine and places a stuffed, ratty notebook on top of it. The cover has HEGEMON DICTIONARY written on it in Dotty’s slanted handwriting. He goes straight back to looking at the costumes.
“May I?” He motions to the sleeve, asking if he can touch it.
“Sure.” I let him. His thumbs feel the fabric; he inspects every stitch. He opens one of Clover’s pockets and pulls out the silver thimble I’ve hidden inside. “She collects them.”
“Oh, does she?” He smirks over the dress form’s shoulder. “Very interesting.” He studies the drawing of Clover’s costume that’s pinned up behind her. He moves on to Wizzy’s costume, gently running his fingers through the black scraps.
“I’m pretty bad at Scrabble. You’ll have to take it easy on me,” I tell him.
“You’ll do fine—it’s Hegemon Scrabble.” Lincoln doesn’t turn around. He’s still mesmerized by the fishing wire on Wizzy’s robes. I love that he is interested in what I do; even so, I’d rather he look at me right now.
“I don’t know what that is.” And then it happens: he looks at me like it’s the first time he’s ever seen me. And maybe it is. He’s never seen me in my own clothes, my own skin before. His ears flush red, and his eyes dart to the Scrabble box. He takes it and the notebook and sits cross-legged on the floor. I sit across from him, folding my legs to the side.
“Dotty and I invented it when I was a kid. Before I could really play, like when I was seven or something.” He takes his time scrambling and flipping over all the little wooden tiles in the lid of the box. “I wasn’t good at reading, and I took the losses pretty hard. So we just started using made-up words.
”
“What do you mean, like gibberish?” I join him, flipping over letter after letter, hoping his hand brushes mine by accident.
“Well, not just any combination of letters. Words that could be real, but aren’t. And when you play a word you make up, the definition goes in the book.” He taps the Hegemon dictionary.
“What’s ‘hegemon’ mean?”
“I dunno—I think she was reading Ender’s Game to me at the time.” He picks seven tiles and lines them up on his rack, making a big show of hiding them from me. I take my own, though I have no idea how this is supposed to work.
“I’ll go first.” He plays the word SNIKEL. “ ‘Snikel.’ A secret nickel that you have hidden away for a rainy day.” He takes the notebook and finds the S section. He adds his new word on one of the crammed pages before tallying up his points. His handwriting is neat and straight; he writes in all caps underneath Dotty’s signature slanted script. “Your turn.” He beams.
“Uh, how about ‘yolker’?” I play my tiles off the K in his word.
“Sure, what does it mean?” He flips the dictionary open to the Y words and slides it to me.
“It’s when, um, you get double yolks in an egg?”
“Perfect. Thirteen points!” He hands me the pen to write it in and mark my score. We both pick out new tiles from the box. He takes his time, pondering his next move. I flip through the dictionary, years of imaginary words filling up hundreds of pages, and as far as I can see, mine is the only other handwriting in the whole book. He finally plays ROZEZ, a robotic bouquet, off my R tile. I play SLUBBIN off the S.
“Ha! What’s that one?” Lincoln leans on his elbows, giddy with the game. Happy and at ease, despite the fact that I haven’t offered an explanation for what happened this morning. He hasn’t even asked.
“It’s that feeling when everything should be great, but you keep thinking about that one bad thing and it ruins it.” He looks up from the dictionary; his eyes land on mine.
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
I take out my phone from the cubby and turn it on. Lincoln is the last person I want to see what’s written in my comments section, but if he’s going to understand, he has to.
“This is why. This is why it’s easier for me to dress and act and be that guy from D and D.” I hand him my phone and let him scroll. I never thought it would get this bad. It’s just a stupid blog about cosplay. Time passes as he goes through my phone, brow furrowed. I fidget, crack my knuckles, chew my lip, hoping that he’ll still be able to treat me the same way after reading all that poison.
“Dear lord. How are you still standing?” He looks at me with a mixture of admiration and pity.
“Am I? I feel like I’m falling.”
“Wait, are all of these costumes yours? You made them?” He must be scrolling through the posts now. He swipes up the screen over and over.
“Yep.”
“What are you doing in Eugene? You’re, like, the most talented person I’ve ever met. This is incredible.”
“They don’t seem to think so.” I point to my phone.
“It’s the Internet—what did you expect?” It’s a kick in the gut. My perfect image of Lincoln now has a frayed edge. What did I expect? I expected to post some photos and get stupid reaction GIFs from my friends. Not hundreds of pages of abuse, not death threats growled at me through my phone.
“Do you have a blog?” I ask. Lincoln is still scrolling through the archive.
“I used to; I always forgot to update it.”
“So, how many death threats have you gotten? When some jerk released your phone number to the masses, how many disgusting calls did you have to answer? Did you switch your number when it happened? Or did you weather it out?”
“But I didn’t—”
“It’s the Internet, after all, so I assume you’ve gotten some, no?” I need to think about something else before I lose it. I lean out the window. Dad’s garden is really coming along. He has all the paths lit with glass solar globes; they change colors every few seconds. A rave for ladybugs and squirrels. I take a breath.
“Hey, I’m sorry. You’re right. If someone called my phone, someone from the Internet, I’d pee my pants.” Lincoln stands up and I can feel him get closer to me, but he stops before joining me at the window. He waits for me to give him the go-ahead. “I really am sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I move aside and leave a space for him to stand at the window. We both lean out, look up. “I’m listening.”
“I just want to feel like myself again. But if I do that, things go back to the way they’ve been all along at Atomix. And it’s not like jerks will just stop posting crap online. I wish there was an easy answer, but I know there isn’t.”
“There never is.” He leans in the slightest bit; his arm is touching my arm, and it’s warm, and it’s there, and I don’t want to move.
“If I ignore it, they win. If I yell at them, they win. They win, they win, they win.”
“No. You can’t think of it like that. Because no matter what you do, they’re still gonna be anonymous losers with nothing better to do, while you’re making costumes for the next Spidey reboot.”
“But what should I do?”
He thinks it over for a moment. “Whatever it is that you need to do to get yourself through this is the right decision. If you feel safer being dude-Cameron, do it. If you want to change your phone number, go for it. If you want to tell them all to screw themselves, I will make a hundred accounts to fight off each and every commenter. You know, if you want me to. Because in the end, you will have a life and—” Lincoln motions around the studio, his cheeks rosy pink with fire. “And a whole career that they could only dream of. You just need to get through it.”
* * *
I am kissing Lincoln. I am pushing his hair out of the way of our mouths, even though the smell of it makes me want to pull him closer. I am pulling him closer. I am opening my mouth. I’m tasting him and he tastes like cherries and cinnamon and I can’t figure out if he just drank a soda or a chai. He is very still, his thumbs in his belt loops. He leans in, but not too much. I feel his tummy press against mine. He is careful. He is patient. Too patient. He pulls away and lifts his arms, just so, pausing right at my waist. Hovering.
“May I?” he asks, just the same way as before. As if I’m the same sort of masterpiece my costumes are. And it’s the first time anyone’s ever asked instead of just grabbing, and I had no idea how much I’d like that. I want to say yes and please, and I do over and over again. And he lets me.
“May I?” Before he wraps his arms around me, pulling me closer, kissing deeper.
“May I?” Before running his hands up the front of my dress.
“May I?” Before kissing down my neck, his lips trading places with his hands. Each time pausing, waiting for a yes, and each time we are both thrilled when I say it. We find ourselves back on the floor, and I climb into Lincoln’s lap. I feel his hands tug on the edge of my dress.
“May I?” he asks again, and as much as I want to, I’m not sure I’m ready.
“Not yet.” I wince a bit; he moves his hands back into mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he whispers into my neck.
“I just think that—”
“You don’t need a reason.” He pulls back, to make sure I know he means it. Our fingers interlock.
“May I?” I ask him this time, leaning in to kiss him again.
“Please.” And he lets me. We spend the rest of the night scattering Scrabble tiles across the floor. Spelling out countless Hegemon words all on their own. We’re far too busy to make up the definitions.
“Sixteen-ounce dirty chai, please.” I order my new favorite drink at Wandering Goat. My cheeks hurt; I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling since Lincoln left the studio last night. I walked him down the stairs; w
e parted ways in my driveway. He kissed me on the cheek. I bet I smiled in my sleep.
Why waits for me at one of the tables underneath the huge maple outside. He ordered a mocha with orange zest. I’m hoping the sugary sweetness of it will mask the bitter news I’m about to drop into his lap. Today is the day: I promised Cooper I would come clean, and I’ve never backed out of a promise to him. Never.
I balance the mug on its saucer and open the door with my hip. Why is taking a picture of his mocha. I’m dressed in my thrifted boy duds: another Hawaiian shirt, this one adorned with lobsters, and my hair tucked in place under my beanie. I don’t want to shock him, so I swagger over to the table.
“Chai?” he asks, smelling the steam over my mug.
“Dirty chai.”
“Heh, that’s Lincoln’s drink.” He leans away from the cup. The mention of Link’s name makes me blush, and I pray Why doesn’t notice it through his tinted shades. I wonder if Lincoln dropped by the Goat this morning and ordered one for himself.
“I’m glad you wanted to hang,” Why says after a long sip of his drink.
“Yeah, I wanted to…” I pause. How do I bring this up? Ease into it, or rip it off like a Band-Aid? Actually, I usually just pick at the edges or make Cooper rip it off for me.
“I’m glad you moved here, you know? Like, not glad that you had to move, but glad that it ended up working out?” Why rambles on in his Why way. Everything is a question, everything over-explained.
“Eugene’s not so bad, I guess.” I take a sip of my chai; it’s the perfect temperature. I take another sip before it starts to get cold.
“It’s not the best either, but, man, I didn’t know how I was gonna get through senior year.”
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