Adam

by Ariel Schrag

  Sure, why not.

  “Yeah, uh, be right back,” said Adam.

  Adam hustled over to the group. They saw him coming, and Adam watched as their expressions morphed from relaxed banter to What the fuck does this guy want?

  “Just, uh, wanted to say bye. So, bye,” said Adam. And he spun around before anyone had a chance to respond.

  ***

  Out on the street, it was warm and dark and disturbingly quiet. Adam and Gillian headed down the block. He was nervous. Where did this go from here? It had been so perfect up in the hazy colorful bubble of the apartment. But now what? Did he try to kiss her? What if she backed away in horror, thought they were only friends? That wasn’t possible. She liked him. He knew she liked him. Didn’t she?

  Gillian was talking about the drunk girl. “Oh my god, it’s embarrassing enough to go up to some strangers at a party and start talking about your ex or something—but your cat?”

  “‘My cat knows where I am tonight. And my cat does not care for it,’” said Adam, mimicking the girl’s nasally voice.

  Gillian laughed. “That was perfect! You’re so cute.”

  Adam blushed. He was glad Gillian couldn’t see his face in the dark. He saw the glowing green bulb of the subway station at the end of the block. He had approximately two and a half minutes to figure out what he was going to do when they got there. He thought about an essay question on his American lit final. “What does the green light in The Great Gatsby represent?” He had left it blank.

  They were there. They paused outside the entrance. Gillian looked so beautiful in the streetlight.

  “I’m gonna get on the uptown to transfer to the express to Atlantic,” said Gillian.

  Adam looked over at the name of the subway they were at: 77TH STREET STATION. He had no idea how to get home.

  “I’m, um . . . ?”

  “You’re taking the downtown to the L to Bushwick,” said Gillian, laughing.

  “Right,” said Adam.

  They smiled nervously at each other. God, he loved her smile.

  “So . . . you wanna hang out again?” said Gillian.

  “Yes!” said Adam. Good lord, could he possibly have said yes any faster? Keep it cool, keep it casual. “Um, let me get your number.”

  They took out their phones and exchanged numbers.

  “Just so you know,” Gillian said, putting her phone back in her pocket. “I’ve, um . . . Wait, I don’t want this to come out wrong.”

  Adam’s heart was racing. Did she know? Had she figured it out?

  “I’ve never, um, dated a trans guy before. I mean, like, I’ve only ever had girlfriends. But I think I’m open. I mean, I am open. I just . . . thought I should tell you.”

  “Um, that’s OK,” said Adam. “I . . . haven’t dated that much either.”

  “Really?” said Gillian. She sounded genuinely surprised.

  “I’m kind of . . . shy,” he said. Fuck! Why did he just say that?

  “I know,” said Gillian. “It’s sweet.” She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Then stood back and looked at him. Adam’s whole body was tingling. He leaned in and kissed her. They opened their mouths.

  ***

  Adam collapsed on the subway seat as the doors closed. “Be careful of the closing doors. This is a Brooklyn Bridge–bound Six train. The next stop is Sixty-Eighth Street, Hunter College.” The train jostled and sped off as Adam leaned his head against the window, closed his eyes, and replayed the kiss in his mind.

  ***

  Adam turned his keys in the two different locks and creaked open the door to the apartment. The living room was dark and still. He imagined running through all the rooms, flipping on all the lights, blasting music, and jumping up and down, screaming as loud as he could. But then he heard crying coming from June’s room. A soft, kittenish cry. He took a few steps to the center of the living room and peered over toward her door. The door was open and through the shadows he made out a dark lump, hunched on the mattress. Adam took another step toward her door—he should probably console her—but the dark lump rose up and shut the door before he could come any closer. And then it was quiet.

  Adam turned and looked over toward Ethan’s room. Ethan’s door was cracked, a slice of bright light. His door was almost always closed, so Adam knew this gesture meant he wanted to talk. Adam felt a flush of warmth. Ethan would never say he wanted to talk or come into Adam’s room the way Casey might barge in and demand sympathy—but Ethan wanted to, and the cracked door was his way of letting Adam know. Adam hoped Ethan’s date had gone well, that Ethan wanted to tell Adam all about it, and then Adam could tell Ethan about Gillian—minus the pretending to be trans—and they would both punch each other in the shoulder and look up the girls on Facebook, and Ethan would be really impressed by how pretty Gillian was. God, she was so pretty. Adam replayed the kiss quickly in his mind. Then walked over to Ethan’s door.

  *Tap*

  Adam knocked lightly enough so it wouldn’t push the cracked door open.

  “Hey, it’s Adam,” he said, staring at the door.

  “Hey, man, come in.” Ethan’s voice was quiet.

  Adam walked into the room. Ethan was slouched in his computer chair, eyes on his monitor. The Rachel movie was on the screen.

  “How was . . . the date?” said Adam, sitting down on Ethan’s bed. He pretended not to notice the Rachel movie.

  “Sucked,” said Ethan.

  “What happened?”

  Ethan continued staring at the screen.

  “Don’t really wanna talk about it.”

  Adam nodded. Sometimes wanting to talk just meant having someone there. He thought about the silent glances with Gillian at the party. When you talked without talking, it was as if your brains were touching. Adam felt a shiver of electricity in his body. He looked around Ethan’s room. The special gray-and-white-lined button-down shirt Ethan had bought for the date was crumpled on the floor in the corner. Depressing. But any depression Adam might feel was muted. Gillian was like a buffer inside his body. Nothing could touch him. He was safe from sadness. Ethan swiveled around in his chair. His face looked drawn. Raw around the eyes. Adam wondered if Ethan had finally cried.

  “What about you? How was your night?” said Ethan.

  “It was OK . . .” said Adam. He didn’t want to act too happy. “I met a girl . . .”

  “She a redhead?”

  Adam nodded. And then he couldn’t help it—he looked down at his lap and broke into a silly, sheepish grin.

  “That’s awesome, man,” said Ethan. But his voice was hollow. “So give me the details.”

  “Um, her name’s Gillian.” Gillian. Adam felt like he owned the name. Like it was a word only he knew the definition of.

  “Gillian,” said Ethan. “So she’s cute?”

  Adam nodded. The kiss replayed in his mind.

  “You deserve it, buddy,” said Ethan.

  Adam felt a pinch of guilt. He kind of felt like he was going to start crying. In front of Ethan? Are you kidding? He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling, so on the chance any tears dared to form, they would absorb back into his eyes.

  “I lied to her about my age,” said Adam. And something else, inside his head.

  “How old is she?” said Ethan.

  Adam brought his head back down. He ran his hands across his face and through his hair, secretly rubbing away any potential wetness. “I’m not sure . . . How old are you when you graduate college?”

  “I don’t know, never went to college. Twenty-one? Twenty-two?” said Ethan. “Look, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s not a huge age difference, and since it’s just a summer thing she never has to know. Besides, you’re really mature for seventeen.”

  Adam smiled. Ethan thought he was mature.

  “You think so?” said Adam—then immediately felt embarrassed for asking Ethan to repeat it.

  Ethan nodded. But he wasn’t smiling. “I was a fucking wreck at seventeen,” he said. Ethan t
urned in his chair and stared at Rachel, frozen on the monitor. He adjusted some things with the color, and the image flickered.

  What had gone wrong on Ethan’s date? And what had actually happened between him and Rachel? Suddenly, Adam was dying to know. Needed to know. He imagined that if he just sat there, very still, without making a noise, Ethan would start talking. He would tell him everything. All the questions Adam ever had about Ethan would be answered. From start to finish.

  Ethan spun around in his chair. “Anyway,” he said, “I should get back to work. Congrats on the girl. That’s really awesome.” His voice was cold.

  Adam stood up. “Thanks, um, yeah, I’m really sorry about . . .”

  “Whatever,” said Ethan. He turned back to his computer. “I never should have gone. I was rightfully punished.”

  Adam walked out into the dark front room and closed the door. He thought Ethan was being a little dramatic. “Rightfully punished”? This wasn’t Lord of the Rings. It was weird, but for the first time, Adam felt . . . cooler than Ethan. His happiness made him powerful. But as soon as he acknowledged this, he felt weaker than ever. He could not lose this. He replayed the kiss in his mind. Bliss. But she thinks—eh. He would worry about that later. He reached into his jeans pocket for his cell phone. Maybe she had texted? “I can’t stop replaying the kiss either.”

  Adam’s phone read: Text (2) His heart jumped. One was from gillian and one was from Casey.

  Gillian: Just got home and woke up roommate’s cat. It did not care for it. Adam grinned as the tingling feeling flooded into him.

  What should he text back? Something else about the cat? Something about his roommates? Just got home. Both roommates want to commit suicide. I do not care for it. He stared at his phone, trying to think of what to type.

  Just got home too! Erased it. Boring. And then: Feed it some of your salami sandwich. He pressed SEND before he could stop himself and then stared at his message, mortified. But then, right away, new message! His heart leapt again.

  Gillian: Just did! Currently cleaning up cat puke. Strangely, liverwurst came up as well.

  Adam laughed out loud. Then looked around. No one was watching. Just him in the dark in the glow of the phone. He checked Casey’s message.

  Casey: I’M SORRY. I was a total dick. Forgive me? Also, sleeping at Hazel’s. THINK I’M IN LOVE.

  Adam texted back: No big deal. I was a shit too. Then he wrote, THINK I’M IN LOVE TOO, but immediately erased it. Writing it made him terrified that he was jinxing it. Also, he wasn’t convinced that his phone wouldn’t somehow end up sending it to Gillian instead. He shuddered.

  Adam made his way back to his bedroom. June still locked in her room, Ethan in his. He wished Casey were coming home. He felt close to her. Not like the sad people in this apartment. He and Casey were brother and sister, the cool ones whose nights had gone well. The people who things work out for. This was what he wanted to be.

  Chapter 8

  IT WAS TUESDAY night, and Adam and Gillian had a date for tomorrow day. Everything had been planned by text. The idea of calling Gillian was terrifying, and fortunately she didn’t seem to need to call Adam either. He was still replaying their kiss at the Seventy-Seventh Street subway stop twenty to thirty times a day, and Gillian’s existence had become an amalgamation of that six-second memory plus the font of the name gillian as it showed up on his cell phone. It was going to be really weird seeing her in real life again.

  Gillian had suggested they go to this exhibit called Bodies, which was a bunch of dead humans preserved in chemicals with their skin stripped away so you could see all their muscles and organs inside. It sounded awesome. Adam had immediately texted back: cool! But then, a couple hours later, Gillian sent another text saying: just realized bodies might be weird 4 u? or not? sorry if i wasn’t thinking. we can totally do something else. Adam hadn’t known what she was talking about, but then some subconscious part of his brain flashed an image of Boy Casey standing in the shadowy living room with his scarred, weird-looking chest. Gillian thought Adam’s body looked like that. Adam had texted back: no, it’s fine! But the anxiety over “the trans lie,” which he’d been trying to ignore, had reared up again, and by Tuesday night it was all he could think about. Casey always said, “Trans guys are real guys.” So if that was true, then by the symmetric property, shouldn’t the reverse be true too? Was it really a lie? I mean, yes. It was a lie. But how big of a lie? Adam wanted to run to Gillian’s apartment, bust open her door, and yell: “I’m not really trans! I’m only seventeen! But I think I love you!” And she would laugh and smile and tell him it was OK, and they would fall onto her bed and have sex. He wanted to tell her so badly. But he couldn’t. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you crazy? Get the fuck away from me!” So the lie stayed inside him, a trapped gnat, buzzing between his rib cage and brain.

  Meanwhile, the latest around the apartment was that “the Jews” had left a giant refrigerator on the landing, blocking the front door so it would only open a crack, and you had to squeeze through to get in and out. Adam and June had managed to push the thing a couple inches forward but couldn’t do much more without completely blocking the neighbor’s entrance. The only space for the refrigerator to go was down the stairs, which required some sort of hand truck. And even that seemed scary to manage. June was in an uproar over the whole thing. Agnes was apparently done, and June now channeled all her energy into ranting about the “selfish fucking Jews.”

  “I should call and threaten to get a lawyer! That’s what I should do! It’s a fire hazard. You guys do know it’s a legal fire hazard, don’t you? Guess we’ll all just have to burn to death and then they’ll be sorry. Or not!”

  June paced up and down the living room in front of Adam and Casey, who were hanging out on the futon, Adam watching TV and Casey messing around on her laptop.

  “Plus the bathtub drain!” June continued. “I mean, it’s only been, what, a month and a half? That’s a legal hazard too! We all probably have some horrible bacterial infection from the cesspool! I’ve been feeling sick!”

  “Yeah, we should call and tell them we’re gonna get a lawyer,” said Casey. Her eyes didn’t move from her computer. She was on Hazel’s Facebook page. Casey was either talking to Hazel on the phone, talking about Hazel, or staring at Hazel’s Facebook page. Mention of Boy Casey had been scarce since Saturday night.

  “It’s not like I haven’t called them fifteen fucking times already,” said June. “It’s pathetic. It’s illegal.”

  Ethan padded out of his room toward the kitchen. He looked like shit. His clothes were rumpled, and there were bags under his eyes.

  “Hey, um, Ethan?” said June. “Would you mind giving the Jews—I mean, the landlords—a call if you get a chance? I mean, I hate to say it, but I really think this is gonna mean a lot more coming from a man. That’s just the way those fucking assholes roll.”

  “Get Adam to do it,” said Ethan. He poured himself some grapefruit juice.

  “Adam sounds like a girl,” said June.

  Adam gave June the finger. But then he felt a spark. Sounding like a girl, if you were pretending to be trans, was a good thing. As soon as Adam thought this, though, his mind doubled back. He could not keep pretending. The whole thing was ridiculous. Absurd. He needed to tell Gillian the truth on their date. He would just say he had been nervous, everyone at the party was gay, and he panicked. “I’m not trans. I’m seventeen years old.” If she really liked him, she shouldn’t care, right?

  Of course she would care! Gillian didn’t want to date some dork teenage boy. She didn’t even want to date a boy at all. She’d say, “Uh. Wow. OK. Look, I’m sorry, but . . . I can’t do this.” And she’d walk away. Walk away! He absolutely could not tell her.

  No, he had to tell her. She was going to find out eventually: there was no way around it, if they ever got to make out—have sex!—which was the whole point, right? So he had to tell her. But maybe if he didn’t tell her right away . .
. just waited a little bit longer . . . made sure she really, really liked him, so she wouldn’t care if he wasn’t trans, was only seventeen, because by then she would like him so much it wouldn’t matter what he was. Yes, the right thing to do was continue to pretend for as long as he needed until he was absolutely sure she liked him enough.

  No. He had to tell her, and he had to do it tomorrow. Everyone knows the longer you tell a lie, the worse it gets. And, besides, what was he supposed to do—just never make out with her? Once they started doing anything, she would “discover” the truth—the poking, protruding penis, “Hi!”—and then she would really hate him, she would stare in horror, she would gag and throw up, she would spit in his face. He had to tell her.

  There was no way in hell he could tell her.

  Adam felt his brain wheeze with exhaustion. Tell her. Don’t tell her. The world’s worst tennis match on eternal replay.

  “Please, Ethan?” said June.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it,” said Ethan. He shuffled back to his room with his glass of juice.

  “God, and all I want right now is to take a fucking bath!” said June, staring up at the ceiling, as if she were actually addressing God. Despite the drain situation, June had become obsessed with taking baths. She would empty the dirty water from the tub cup by cup into the toilet, scrub it down with Ajax, take a three-hour bath while everyone else held their pee, and then leave the tub full of her grimy water. No one complained though, since taking baths seemed to be the only thing that gave her any remote pleasure.

  June heaved another sigh and retreated to her room.

  What did “pretending to be trans” even mean, anyway, thought Adam. Besides the obvious, that Adam had a dick and trans guys didn’t. Adam tried to recall the interactions he’d had with Boy Casey and Jimmy. What made those guys different? Boy Casey talked about being trans all the time, but Jimmy never did. Adam wouldn’t have even known Jimmy was trans if he hadn’t seen his ID. And there was something about Jimmy that made it seem like bringing up his trans-ness was not OK. Like Jimmy would just stare at you and say, “What the hiz-ell you talkin’ about?” Adam wished Casey was still dating Boy Casey so he could gather more information. This Hazel girl was useless to him. He needed Boy Casey back in the picture now.