by Ariel Schrag
“Ugh!” said Gillian. “I hate hippies. I swear I got scabies from my hippie roommate junior year. I mean—not that I have scabies anymore. Actually, it probably wasn’t even scabies.” Gillian’s face was red. “But, yeah,” she said, “Smith is basically made up of lesbians and straight hippie girls. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Definitely hippies,” said Adam. He was starting to feel awkward. Not nervous awkward like before. Just . . . awkward awkward. He worried Gillian could tell because she started talking really fast.
“Yeah, it’s kind of weird, like, having graduated, everyone figuring out what we’re going to ‘do,’ you know? I mean, some people always knew. Like my friend Jackie just started med school at NYU, and, like, she’s just really dedicated. It’s really cool. I just wanted to move to New York and was lucky to get this part-time job at the Met—only because my mom’s friend works there. I wasn’t even an art history major. I was women’s studies.” Gillian rolled her eyes. “Yes, I majored in women’s studies.”
“That’s cool,” said Adam. He took another bite of pizza so he wouldn’t have to say something else.
“It is not ‘cool,’” said Gillian. “I mean, it wasn’t horrible, I don’t regret it—well, maybe I do—but I mean, it was fine, it’s good, it’s just definitely not cool. It would be cool if I were, like, a guy or a straight girl, maybe—but, you know, instead it’s basically like, ‘Hi, I’m gay and I majored in being gay.’” Gillian paused. “It’s a little ‘M. Night Shyamalan—a film by M. Night Shyamalan.’”
Adam laughed. “But not all women are gay!” he said.
And . . . you’re not, right?
Gillian rolled her eyes again. “You know what I mean. So, anyway, now that I have my degree in being gay, I’m kind of, like . . . still not sure what I want to do, you know? I actually really like the job at the Met. I get to work in this climate-controlled library underneath the museum where they have all these really old, rare books. I make these custom boxes out of this special acid-free blue cardboard to store them in. I love old books. The leather covers and tassels. You know? And a lot of them have illustrations inside. I don’t know why they don’t do that anymore. My great-aunt had this old illustrated copy of Gulliver’s Travels. I used to go to her house every day after school. And now being at the Met sort of reminds me of her.” Gillian paused and looked down. “I’m too nostalgic.” She had that serious look, like she’d had when Adam had seen her waiting in front of the museum. He loved that look, too. He loved every single thing about her. Gillian took a small bite of pizza and chewed fast. “Anyway, um, so what’s your major?”
Casey’s major was biology. “Biology,” said Adam.
“Really?! That’s so cool!”
“Yeah.” Stop saying “yeah.”
“Wow . . . why didn’t you say so in the museum? Do you have, like, a focus?”
“No . . . no focus.”
“But you want to be a biologist?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s really cool.”
“Yeah.”
Adam’s pizza was finished. He picked up his napkin and began quietly ripping it into tiny pieces. He was really hot. He wished he could take his flannel off. No one spoke for about six seconds.
“But, um, so you like Berkeley?” said Gillian. “I mean, apart from the hippies? My friend Andrea from high school goes there. Andrea Salzberg. Do you know her?”
Adam realized that when Gillian had asked him what Berkeley was like, she had meant the college, not the city. He didn’t know anything about the college. Why had he told her he went there?
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“I feel like I know a lot of people who went to Berkeley . . . What about Corinne Poggi?”
“No.”
“Derek . . . what’s his last name . . . Sorensen. Do you know him?”
“Uh, no.”
“Um . . . oh! My friend Kiley Quinn—from middle school.”
He couldn’t just keep saying “no.”
“Yeah.”
“You know Kiley?!”
“Uh, yeah.”
“That’s so funny! What’s she like now? I haven’t seen her in years.”
“She’s . . . cool.”
“Yeah? Like how?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a long, cold pause. Adam looked at his hands. Little pieces of napkin were sticking to his sweat-covered palms. He wiped his hands on his pants. He hated lying. He hated it, he hated it, he hated it.
“Is something wrong?” said Gillian.
Adam didn’t respond.
Say something!
“No,” he said.
“No?” said Gillian.
Silence.
Silence.
Gillian looked down. “I think I’m . . . gonna go,” she said. Her voice was hollow. She picked up her grease napkin ball and put it on top of her unfinished pizza.
Adam’s heart was beating wild. It was all crashing down. He was ruining it. It was ruined. He needed to say something, but the only thing running through his brain was 100mgaweek.halfacc.penispumpkit.metoidioplasty. What could he do? He needed to save it. How could he save it? Just tell her! Just tell her!
Gillian stood up and went to throw her plate in the trash. Her face was expressionless.
“I—I don’t go to Berkeley,” said Adam.
“What?” said Gillian.
Adam was silent.
“What do you mean?” she said. She stayed poised at the trash can.
“I don’t go to college.”
Gillian said nothing.
“I . . . I live at home . . . in Piedmont.”
“You live with your parents?”
“Yeah,” said Adam.
Gillian’s face shifted. It didn’t look mean anymore. Just curious.
“It was really stupid to lie . . .” said Adam.
“It’s OK . . .” said Gillian, cautiously.
And then she smiled. She smiled! Those dimples. Adam was so relieved, he thought he might cry. Gillian sat back down at the table.
“I mean, I’m kind of mad you lied,” Gillian said, “but I also kind of understand . . .”
She understood! He was going to tell her. He was going to tell her everything. This was it. He was going to do it. He could feel the flood at the back of his throat, bursting to be let out. Just do it—now.
“I’m so sorry,” said Adam. “It was really, really stupid to lie. It just happened and then I couldn’t take it back. Kind of like when I threw that drink. Anyway, so here’s the thing. I’m actually—”
“My friend Aiden lied to his girlfriend at first too,” Gillian interrupted.
Aiden?
Gillian blushed. “I mean, not that we’re . . .”
What was going on?
“He’s trans too,” she said, looking down at the word trans.
“Oh,” said Adam.
“He started out at Smith but was so fucked up over gender stuff that he dropped out after a year and moved back home and started transition. He didn’t want to deal with being in college—especially Smith—while he was going through all that, so he just worked jobs and lived at home. Also so his mom could take care of him during surgery. He wants to start college again now and is kind of ashamed since he’s twenty-two and the rest of us are all done.” Gillian smiled at Adam. Adam smiled weakly back.
“Anyway,” she continued, “so he hooked up with this girl and lied and told her he had graduated college, and then when it turned out it was going to be a real thing—like, they kept hanging out and ended up really liking each other—he had to come clean. It’s kind of funny, she knew he was trans the whole time and was totally cool with it, but the big ‘coming out’ was telling her he’d dropped out of school and lived at home. We, like, processed how he was going to tell her a million times on the phone together. Anyway, I’m rambling. I guess what I’m saying is, I get it. And I think being who you are, being trans is . . . really brave.”
Adam nodded. He felt as if cement had been poured into the shape of his body and hardened cold.
“So are you planning to go to college?” continued Gillian.
Adam nodded slowly.
“How old are you, anyway?”
This was it. His last chance. Tell her.
“Twenty-two,” said Adam.
“Cool,” said Gillian, “me too.”
***
Adam walked up the stairs of 206 Scholes Street. He and Gillian had kissed goodbye, and the kiss had made him want to collapse on top of her and sink his entire body into hers, but he couldn’t be happy. They’d made plans for Friday night, but instead of feeling overjoyed, he felt terrified, sick. He could feel the lie seeping through his insides, like a toxic oil spill. He liked Gillian so much. He liked her more than he’d even known it was possible to like someone. He rammed his fists into his eye sockets. He hated himself.
“My father is one of the most powerful attorneys in the country.”
Adam opened the door to Ethan on the phone. Judging by the way June was hovering next to him, Adam was pretty sure he was on with the Hasidic landlords.
“Yeah. If that refrigerator isn’t gone by tomorrow morning, and someone isn’t here to fix the bathtub by Friday, you will be hearing from him.”
Ethan’s voice was cold and measured. June hopped around like a boxer.
“Thank you.” Ethan closed his cell. “They said it’ll be done. It better be, since my dad’s just an immigration law professor.”
“Sweet,” said June. “The Jews are going down! They may not understand please, but they sure as fuck understand lawyer.”
“Hey,” said Ethan, looking at Adam, “how was the date?”
“It was . . . good,” said Adam.
Casey looked up from her book on the couch. “You went on a date? With who? That girl from Carlisle’s party?”
Adam nodded.
“What was a straight girl even doing there?” said Casey, glancing at June, who promptly wrinkled her nose.
“She’s bi,” said Adam.
Casey smirked. “Well . . .” she said, “what happened? Does she still think you’re twenty?”
“Twenty-two,” said Adam.
Everyone burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny!” he said.
“Aww,” said Ethan. “We’re just playing. . . . It’s a little funny.”
“Why does this girl like you?” said June. And Adam knew she wasn’t even trying to be mean—just genuinely curious.
“Adam’s awesome,” said Ethan. “Why wouldn’t she like him?”
“Seriously though,” said Casey, and she placed her book down on the coffee table. A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. “She really believes you’re twenty-two? I mean, I’m not trying to be an asshole or anything, but you kind of barely look seventeen.”
“Shut up,” said Adam. He picked up a Netflix sleeve off the TV and pretended to be absorbed in the synopsis. The Apartment. Some movie from the ’60s Ethan had ordered that had been sitting there for weeks.
“So she thinks Adam’s a little older than he is,” said Ethan. “So what. It’s not like age really means anything. My parents are thirteen years apart.”
That’s not the lie I’m worried about, thought Adam. He was suddenly scared he might start crying.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Casey. “I just can’t believe if I meet this girl, I have to pretend Adam’s older than me. Being the older sibling is a crucial part of my identity!”
“Yeah, being middle is a crucial part of mine,” said June. Then everyone got kind of silent and awkward. Ethan had had a brother, but he had died when Ethan was a kid. He’d never told them how.
“She’s really cool and we like each other,” said Adam. “That’s all.” And he turned around, went into his closet-room, and shut the door.
Inside, he fell to his knees and punched at his mattress, willing himself not to cry. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the Bodies pamphlet. Held it lovingly, then crumpled it into a ball and threw it across the room. Gillian. She liked him. He was the luckiest, luckiest, luckiest person in the entire world. He was totally fucked.
Chapter 10
IT WAS LATE Friday afternoon. Tonight Adam was going to meet Gillian at her apartment at 7:00 P.M., and then they were going out to dinner with some of her friends. Gillian had texted: Is it too soon for that? Followed quickly by: I just want to see you and I forgot about these dinner plans and it would be cool to bring you. Adam had texted it was fine, great, even though it made him feel as if his throat were puffing up and his hands had started stinging and gone numb. More people to lie to.
Meanwhile, the hallway refrigerator had been swiftly removed after Ethan’s lawyer-threatening phone call, and someone was supposedly coming today to fix the clogged bathtub.
“I have a plan,” said June. She turned down the TV and faced Adam and Casey, slumped in their usual positions on the futon. June’s eyes were wild and shiny, and Adam wondered if she was gaining weight. She was wearing a tank top, and her stomach spilled out over the top of her jeans—her bellybutton stretched into a winking gash.
“A plan for what?” said Casey, not lifting her eyes from her book. She had finished A Cyborg Manifesto and moved on to Neuromancer—another one of Hazel’s recommendations.
“A plan for the Jews of course!” said June. For a moment, Adam thought June had a plan to kill them. Or at least trip them on their way into the apartment with a shoelace nailed to the door frame.
“Uh-huh?” said Casey, still not looking up. Adam knew she wasn’t listening. It was a surprise Casey heard June at all. When Casey was reading, nothing got through to her. She became dead to everything outside the book. It was an attribute their mom liked to brag about all the time.
“We put out all the Jewish items we can—that menorah you bought, whatever old Jewish holiday cards any of us can find. Adam”—June jerked her head toward Adam, suddenly needing him—“what Jewish stuff do you have?”
“I don’t have anything Jewish,” said Adam.
“Well, look,” said June. “We’ll put out all the Jewish stuff, they’ll realize we’re serious Jews, and then they’ll love us and we’ll never have to worry about them fucking us over again!”
“But we’re not serious Jews,” said Adam.
Casey, head down, turned the page of her book.
“Speak for yourself!” said June, flouncing around. “I can say the Hanukkah prayer. Baruch atah Adonai . . .” and she continued reciting it as she went into her room to look for “Jewish stuff.”
June had had to take on a second job. The comic shop barely paid anything, and she’d already had to borrow money from Ethan to pay last month’s rent. So now she was a medical research subject. A “guinea pig,” she called it. Adam wasn’t sure what the medical research she was loaning her body to was, but it entailed her leaving a giant jug of her urine in the bathroom and keeping a “mood chart,” for which she was always asking everyone to help her rate her mood on a scale of one to ten.
“Only you know what your mood is,” Casey had said. “We only know how you act.” And June had looked crestfallen, like Casey knowing her mood had been the one slight glimmer of intimacy she was hoping they could share.
Adam listened to June reciting the Hanukkah prayer over and over in her room as she rooted around. He was pretty sure she was pathetically trying to impress Casey with it. Casey, who, if you clapped in front of her face right now, wouldn’t notice. The apartment felt heavy with loneliness.
Casey looked at her watch. “Shit!” she said. “It’s four-thirty! I’m meeting Hazel at seven! Fuck!”
“But you have, like, over two hours,” said Adam. I’m meeting Gillian at seven, he thought.
“Uh, yeah, and I’m totally not ready,” said Casey. She looked forlornly back at her book. “God, and I really wanted to finish this so I could talk to Hazel about it. She’s so fast. She reads, like, a book a day. I’m
so dumb and slow.”
If Casey was dumb, Adam was brain-dead.
“She sent me the itinerary for our date on iCal,” continued Casey. “Wanna hear it?” and before Adam could respond, she said, “First we’re meeting at South Fourth and Bedford and having a romantic sunset walk over the Williamsburg Bridge. Then I’m going with her to get her tattoo worked on—the one in binary code on her wrist. I’m not allowed to tell anyone what it means. Then we’re getting dinner in Chinatown at a special place where she knows the waiters. Then we’re getting strawberry gelato at this other special place on the Lower East Side.”
Adam noticed June, cast in dark shadow, standing completely still in her bedroom door frame, clutching the heavy gold menorah.
“And then,” continued Casey, “there’s a surprise! She won’t tell me what it is. I have to get ready!” And she bolted up.
Casey was making Adam nervous. He should be getting ready, too. He went into his room and started rifling through his clothes. Ugh, he hated everything he owned. A few weeks ago when he’d bought his Ethan Diesel jeans, he’d tried to buy some shirts that seemed Ethanesque too, but now that he’d worn a real Ethan shirt, they all seemed horrible and like they were from Kmart. Adam went and knocked on Ethan’s door.
“What’s up?” Ethan was still in his pajamas.
“Hey, um, I’m going out with Gillian tonight, and, um, I was wondering if I could borrow that shirt again?”
“What?!” said Ethan.
“Oh, uh, I don’t—”
“You cannot wear the same shirt to your second date,” continued Ethan. “Get in here—let’s try on some other ones.”
Adam walked into Ethan’s room. The Rachel movie was still on his computer screen. Didn’t he ever just get sick of it? Adam was sick of it, and he hadn’t even seen the whole thing. Ethan took a shirt off a hanger in his closet and held it up to Adam. It was the special gray-with-thin-white-lines button-down he’d bought for his date with the Film Forum girl.