This Is What It Feels Like

by Rebecca Barrow

  Eventually Dia’s cheeks began to ache from all the smiling, and Alexa began to fuss, her irritable I’m hungry and I could use my words but I don’t want to whimper. “Are you done?” Dia said through her rictus smile. “Is ten thousand pictures enough, or do you need more?”

  “Don’t be smart,” Max said, but he put his phone away and held up his hands. “I’m done, okay? Forgive me for wanting to preserve this momentous occasion.”

  Dia tipped her head back to feel the sun, warm on her face. The rubbing of her shoes, her too-tight dress; the slippery gown and crisp diploma; the scent of cut grass in the air—she didn’t need a photograph to remember any of it.

  Jules

  Jules rang the bell only as a formality, and then walked right in, announcing her presence as she opened the refrigerator. “I’m getting a soda,” she called out.

  “Jules!” Dia’s dad came into the kitchen, a look of mild annoyance on his face. “You treat my house like a hotel.”

  Jules gave her best impression of an apologetic smile. “Only because you said I could.”

  “Hmm,” Max said. “I might start regretting that.” But then he laughed. “I didn’t get to say congratulations earlier, to my second-favorite graduate.”

  “It’s okay, Dia’s not here,” Jules said, pulling her mass of braids over her shoulder. “You can be honest.”

  Max narrowed his eyes. “I remember when you were a kid and actually showed me some respect,” he said. “Where did it all go wrong?”

  “Ask Dia.”

  He shook his head. “You hungry?”

  “I’m good,” Jules said. “We had a ton of food at the house. Thanks, though.” Her mom had been cooking the whole day before: stewed chicken and rice and curry goat, mac pie and roast lamb, a true Barbados feast in California. They’d crowded around the kitchen table and Jules had eaten her body weight in all of it while her parents got all teary-eyed and started reminiscing about Jules’s birth. That always led into the story of how they met, and then they’d started dancing around the kitchen, and Danny had rolled his eyes, but Jules loved to watch her parents’ love.

  Perfect celebration.

  “All right,” she said. “I guess I better go get ready for this party.”

  “At least act excited,” Max said. “It’s your graduation night. You only get one.”

  “It’ll be the same as every other party we’ve ever been to,” Jules said, shrugging.

  “Go anyway,” Max said, running a hand over his locs. “Take Dia and make her have fun, for once.”

  “Fine,” Jules said, grabbing her soda and heading toward the stairs. “I’ll try!”

  Jules didn’t knock before entering Dia’s bedroom either, her friend at her computer, her honorary niece scribbling on the floor. Dia looked up at her, immediate annoyance on her face. “I have nothing to wear.”

  “Juju!” Alexa stretched her arms up toward Jules, hands grabbing at the air. “Up!”

  Jules did as she was commanded, scooping Lex up from the floor and settling the baby’s weight on her hip. “Hi, sweet one,” she said, nuzzling her nose against Lex’s cheek. Then she looked at Dia. “Don’t even start with me.”

  Dia stood. “Have you seen that show with the two girls and they’re dating, but one of them’s a spy?”

  Jules arched one eyebrow. “I’m an eighteen-year-old lesbian with internet access. I’ve seen everything that even hints at two girls being into each other. The GIFs are imprinted on my eyelids.”

  “Okay, well, in one episode the tall one has this amazing red jumpsuit. That’s what I want to wear.”

  “Let’s start with something you actually own,” Jules said.

  Dia made a face. “I don’t know if I even want to go to this thing anymore.”

  “Me neither,” Jules said, sitting on the edge of Dia’s bed. She let Alexa loose on the comforter and shrugged her backpack off. “But we promised.”

  “Who?”

  “Each other.” In the cafeteria, two weeks ago, looking at the text invite on Dia’s phone. When do we ever go anywhere? Dia had said. Me with Lex, you working all the time. This’ll be our last high school party ever.

  I’m so sick of folding jeans, Jules said. Bagging people’s groceries. One day I’m going to do something different.

  Of course you are.

  Okay, Jules said. So let’s go to this fucking party.

  Dia steepled her fingers underneath her chin, and then nodded. “Okay. We’ll go. And if it sucks, we get to leave after an hour. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Right,” Dia said. “Now let me work my magic.”

  They set up the way they always did—or always had, Jules amended, back when they used to party and go to shows and roll around the streets of their town without a care in the world. Electro remixes and old-school punk playing through the speakers, Dia’s makeup spread across the bed, a bag of chips within easy reach. Dia eased Jules’s braids—fresh for graduation, the ten hours and numb ass and hypnotic click-click-click of Stephy’s acrylics whipping through her hair oh-so-worth it—into a high pony, then started on Jules’s makeup. Moments like these were what made Jules glad that they were both staying home for college: being apart, being without her best friend, the girl she’d loved since preschool? It would have felt like losing a part of herself.

  Jules examined her face in the mirror when Dia was done: a simple flick of black liner on each eye and her thick brows framing them, clear lip gloss, and something shiny gold on her deep-brown cheeks. She got dressed in black jeans from her mall job, hacked at with a razor to make them look like the expensive ones from the store three doors down, and a gray shirt with the sleeves cut off, dipping low enough beneath each armpit to flash her black bra.

  She played with Alexa while Dia painted her own eyelids deep blue and her lips a bright, shiny red. “I heard High and Mighty Kallas are playing at Revelry tonight,” Jules said, making a polka-dotted lion dance with a robot as Lex clapped her hands. “If we get out of this party early enough, we could catch them. I haven’t been to a show in forever.” She sighed with longing. Cheap beer and sweaty dancing and pounding, punky music? It was so good and she missed it so much. The music scene was real in Golden Grove; Jules and Dia had been going to backyard shows and all-ages clubs for years before they’d picked up their own instruments and become part of it.

  (Jules made herself stop. That was before, and this was now. They had no band. They had no Hanna. It made Jules ache thinking about it all.)

  “HMK are completely unoriginal and you know it,” Dia said. “They’re the worst Glory Alabama rip-off.”

  Jules snorted. Anyone could be, and often was, labeled a GA rip-off by them—when your town had an amazing band that actually broke out, headlined every big festival in the US and overseas, played with legends like Sleater-Kinney and Melissa Auf der Maur, featured on the cover of not only Rolling Stone but fucking Vogue, too, there was a certain loyalty. Jules smiled, ready to drop a bomb on Dia. “You know they’re touring soon, right?”

  “What? Glory Alabama?” Dia said, and her voice jumped an octave. “Shut up. Why is this the first I’m hearing of this?”

  “First tour in five years,” Jules said. “First time back here in almost ten.”

  Dia widened her eyes. “Oh my god, we’re going,” she said. “Oh my god, we’re going to get to see them? I don’t care how much tickets are, I will work a month straight of morning shifts, whatever. We need to be there.”

  “I thought you might like that,” Jules said with a laugh, and Lex laughed with her. “We can be the creeper fans who wait outside their tour bus, if you want.”

  “That is my dream,” Dia said. She got up and opened her closet, taking out a plain white shirt, which she looked at for a second before putting back. “Is a dress too much?” she asked. “I have no idea anymore. But I want to look hot. Not like a mom.”

  “You are a mom,” Jules said, glancing over. “A hot mom.”

 
; “You know what I mean.”

  “Wear whatever you want,” Jules said, and she sat up. “Y’know, it’s really only going to be people from school at this party.”

  “Okay.” Dia stepped out of her shorts and held a blue-and-white vintage-ish dress in front of herself. “What about this?”

  “Yeah, great,” Jules said impatiently. “I’m only saying, if you were maybe trying to look especially good for a certain specific somebody—”

  Dia pulled the dress over her head, coming up laughing. “I’m not.”

  “And,” Jules continued, “if that certain somebody happened to be one Jesse Mackenzie . . .”

  “I already said I’m not.” Dia smoothed her hands over the striped skirt of the dress. “Juliana, a person can want to put on nice makeup and dress up and look good for reasons other than wanting to impress somebody,” Dia said. “A person can want to put on nice makeup and dress up and look good solely for themselves.”

  Jules held up her hands. “All right, I take it back.”

  “You should.” Dia turned her attention to Alexa, her entire face suddenly beaming. “What do you say, Lex? Is Mommy good to go?”

  Lex opened her mouth in a big yawn, a squeak her only response. “You and me both, kid,” Dia said with a laugh, and Jules reached over to tickle the baby until she was giggling wildly, too, all three of them exited and happy.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jules said eventually, breathless. “One last time, right?”

  The bus dropped them off on the edge of a wide cul-de-sac lined with tall trees, branches still in the warm night, and Jules stared up at them. This was the Nice Side of Town, the side of Golden Grove where the big houses had glittering blue pools and cutesy mailboxes. The cars on the drive were shiny, brilliant, brand new; the lawns were green and dotted with flowers.

  It made Jules feel small sometimes, how awed she was by these things, but wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to sit in your pretty house, and look out at your beautiful yard, and feel proud?

  That was what she really wanted. That was what she secretly feared she’d never have.

  A pretty, happy, shiny life.

  Dia was already walking down the street, and Jules took several long strides to catch up with her, bouncing in her fresh Nikes. “I changed my mind,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go to the show. It’ll be so much better than this.”

  “We’re already here!” Dia whirled around, the skirt of her dress spinning, and she looked like some fifties movie star. “We made a deal! It’s going to be fine.”

  “It’s going to be annoying.” Jules slowed as they approached the house with the music pounding out from the open front door. “But whatever. You want your party, you get your party.”

  “Attagirl.” Dia hooked her arm through Jules’s. “Chin up, kid,” she said, an impression of the old stars she looked like tonight. “Let’s have fun.”

  Fun, Jules thought. I can do that.

  Once they were inside it didn’t take long for Jules to remember that yeah, parties were annoying—people spilled drinks on you and yelled way too loud in your ear—but they were also loose, wild, open. In the big living room two guys—one on drums, one behind a synth—made loud, bass-heavy music, impossible not to nod your head to.

  Jules watched them play. She recognized them from around town, even disconnected as she was right now. They’d won the Sun City Originals contest last year, too, the contest that she and Dia and Hanna had always planned to enter, before everything. It was like a rite of passage around town and beyond to at least try to win. Not for the prize—five hundred dollars and your song on the station playlist was cool, but it was more about bragging rights. So that one day in the future, when you were selling out tours, you could say that was where you got your start and Look at Us Now.

  “Jules.” Dia was at her elbow. “I’m getting a drink. What do you want?”

  Jules pulled her attention away from the music and raised her voice. “Whatever,” she said. “And lots of it.”

  Because Dia was right: this was their last-ever high school party, the last time they’d see some of these people, and didn’t they deserve to have a good time?

  Yes, Jules decided, and so she let the girl she’d sat next to in freshman English spin her around the living room to that slick electronica. She took the shot offered by Oscar Rush and followed him out onto the deck. She watched Oscar and his buddies as they threw themselves fully clothed into the pool, and she stepped closer to the edge. She considered jumping herself, and thought about what it would be like to hit the cool water and disappear under the surface, how long she could swim around down there before her lungs began to ache.

  Jules crouched down and dipped her hand into the blue. Oscar was dunking some kid under, water splashing everywhere, and Jules laughed. She looked up, searching for Dia. But the gaze she found was not Dia’s.

  It was Hanna Adler’s.

  They stared at each other.

  Jules hadn’t thought she would be here. Wasn’t sure why she had thought that, because it used to be that Hanna was the life of any and every party. Why would that be different? Just because Jules wasn’t at those parties anymore didn’t mean that Hanna wasn’t.

  Jules stood and hitched up her jeans. Her skin was hot to the touch and her mouth had that sour-sweet nervous taste. How do I look to her? she thought. To Jules, Hanna looked . . . like Hanna. An inch of dark roots in her blond hair, dark circles beneath her eyes, the same way she looked every time Jules glimpsed her in the packed hallway at school. Well—that wouldn’t happen anymore. Maybe this was it: maybe Hanna was one of those people Jules would never see again. That didn’t stop the twitch in the back of her mind, the reminder that this girl used to be her friend.

  But tonight wasn’t meant for her to fixate on things from the past that she couldn’t change. Or people, who wouldn’t change.

  A touch on her shoulder, and Jules turned away from Hanna’s empty stare. “Hey.” Dia handed her a cup filled to overflowing with a pinky-orange liquid. “What are you doing?”

  “I—” Jules started to say I saw Hanna, she’s here, but she stopped herself. What was the point? That was all so old now, the three of them. Forget it. “Nothing. Waiting.”

  Dia tipped her head to the side, her eyes so shiny and excited. “For what?”

  Jules knocked her cup against Dia’s and downed the contents—too warm, sticky, and syrupy but with enough sting to perk her up—before smiling at Dia. “Isn’t that the question?”

  Elliot

  JULY

  Elliot has no idea who this house belongs to.

  He has no idea whose party this is.

  But he knows he’s having a good time.

  “Nolan,” he says—or yells, maybe—“what time is it?”

  Nolan checks his phone. “Ten fifteen.”

  “Okay!” Elliot has to be home by eleven, according to his dad, and midnight, according to his mom. He’ll roll in sometime between the two, probably, and if he’s lucky he won’t get grounded.

  He wanders outside, sipping the punch that stings as it goes down. It’s packed out here, all these people crowding a makeshift stage where a band plays. He might not know where he is but these parties are all the same: music outside, drinks in the kitchen, a circle of stoners in an off-limits bedroom.

  A punch hits his arm and he swears. “Kwame, you asshole.”

  Kwame salutes. “I’m out, man. Early shift in the morning. You coming to Mike’s tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He’s left alone again, and pulls a hand through his curls as he gets closer to the band. It’s these three girls going hell for leather up there, and the music’s good, but what catches Elliot right away is the girl in the front, singing.

  It’s not just that she’s hot—though she is. Short and curvy and in these skin-tight jeans that make Elliot think about pulling them off and—

  He shifts. Calm down.

  She’s up the
re, playing her red guitar like she wants to hurt it, and singing in this raspy voice, and winding her body like no one’s watching her. But Elliot is.

  Then he looks around and realizes: so is everyone else.

  Later.

  Elliot’s trying to ignore Nolan arguing with him over their last baseball game, the mistakes Elliot apparently made that cost them the win, his tendency to freeze. He’s trying to ignore Nolan, because on the other side of the yard the girl from the band stands right in his eye line.

  “Uh-huh,” he says, nodding without looking at Nolan. “What-ever.”

  He can’t hear the girl talking, but she’s using her hands to tell a story, drawing swooping circles in the air, and the other band members are watching her intently. She looks like the kind of person you have to listen to, he thinks. If it was him standing in front of her, watching those dizzying hands, he’d be listening.

  Go over, he thinks. Say hello. Ask her name.

  Is that an asshole move? Butting in while she’s busy talking? Or is it okay? He won’t know her if he doesn’t talk to her. But if he talks to her she might not want to know him.

  Elliot cuts Nolan off. “I’m getting a drink,” he says. “You want one?”

  “I’m good.”

  In this stranger’s kitchen he grabs a half-empty bottle of rum, then puts it back. The clock on the microwave says 11:20.

  Hi, he practices in his head. You were really good.

  I like your band.

  I like your band? What is he, twelve?

  Hi. Good set.

  Better?

  Hi. I’m Elliot.

  A coppery-brown hand reaches for the stack of cups at the same time Elliot does and he looks up to see the band girl right there. “Sorry,” she says with a shake of her head, and the tight spirals of her curls fan around her face. “You go.”

  “No,” Elliot says, his mouth dry. “After you.”

  She smiles at him, creases appearing around her eyes. “Thanks.”

  Silence.

  Well, not silence: the noise of other people coming for drinks, more music outside. But silence from Elliot, his closed mouth.