This Is What It Feels Like

by Rebecca Barrow

Show them, Ciara had said.

  She was in these notebooks, the old her and the new. Maybe this was the perfect way for them to see how much she had truly changed.

  So she lifted out a small stack and held them close to her chest as she ran back downstairs, back into the garage. “Here,” she said, holding them out in Dia’s direction. “These will help.”

  It took Dia a second, but then she took the pile from Hanna and when she looked up, it was with genuine surprise. “Oh,” she said. “You still write?”

  Hanna folded her arms and nodded. “A little.” Every single day.

  Now Dia’s mouth curved into the smallest smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Jules—we can start from here.”

  Jules nodded and looked at Hanna. “You always were our poet.”

  Hanna smiled back, instinctual. “Yeah,” she said. “I always was.”

  Elliot

  SEPTEMBER

  It’s kind of hypnotic, watching the skaters go back and forth on their boards, from up on the hill. Like the tide rolling in and out, Elliot thinks.

  “Have you seen Graceland play before?” Jules asks him.

  “No. I don’t really go to a lot of shows,” he confesses. “It’s not really my scene.”

  “She kind of does that, doesn’t she?” Jules stretches her legs out on the grass. “Makes you do things you didn’t think you would.”

  True.

  They’re sitting on the hill above the skate park, waiting for Dia to get off work so they can go see Ciara’s band play. It’s kind of fun, being with the band. Like a new world. Dia knows all these people, and Elliot follows behind her everywhere they go and pretends like he knows what he’s doing there. He hit the jackpot, he thinks—this guitar-playing, song-writing, determined force of nature, actually with him. Not that they have touched the words girlfriend or boyfriend. Dia doesn’t seem to care, and Elliot just wants to keep what they have for as long as he can. “Do you have plans?” he asks Jules now. “For the band? After school or whatever?”

  “Dia has plans,” Jules says, and then smiles. “I’m kidding. We talk about it. Going to LA after graduation. But then maybe we could stay here and become the best here, instead of being nobodies in that city. People might pay more attention then.”

  “Do you want to do that?”

  “Yeah. You know, I want to prove everyone wrong. Black girls playing alt music?” She pauses. “People still think it’s weird, and it’ll be ten times as hard for us as some straight-white-boy band with a fraction of our talent. I want to show them they’re wrong. We have as much right to be there as anyone else.” She looks at Elliot and shakes her head. “But who knows? It’s all, like, a thousand years away.”

  “Right,” Elliot says, although he’s a junior and they’re sophomores. So for him, graduation is only several hundred years away.

  “And who knows what might happen before then?” Jules is looking down the hill as she says this, and Elliot looks, too. Hanna’s down at the bottom, talking to a girl on a bike. Jules is frowning, and Hanna’s flipping her hair, and Elliot isn’t sure what to say. He’s both part of this and not, and whenever Dia brings Hanna’s drinking problem up now, Elliot stays quiet. She never really wants him to say anything, anyway; she just wants to say things out loud, things she won’t say to Hanna.

  Then the girl on the bike rides away, and Elliot notices Jules’s gaze following her. He smiles and nudges her with his elbow. “You like her?”

  “No,” Jules says, but she begins playing with her hair. “Shut up.”

  “Who is she?” Elliot nudges her again. “Come on . . .”

  Jules shakes her head and looks up at the sky. “Delaney Myers,” she says. “But she doesn’t even know I exist.”

  “So make her know,” Elliot says.

  Jules laughs and looks at him. “Oh, easy as that?”

  He thinks back to meeting Dia at that party, the way he’d almost missed his chance, how he wouldn’t be sitting here with Jules if she hadn’t appeared out of the night and he hadn’t asked her name. “I mean, think about it,” he says now. “You can sit and keep pining over her, or you can try.” He looks to where the girl—Delaney—is now. “She’s cute. Why don’t you just ask her out?”

  “I don’t even know if she likes girls,” Jules says, and she makes a face.

  Elliot grins. “You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

  “But what if she shoots me down?”

  “So? She’s just one person,” Elliot says. “You get over her and find someone new.”

  “But . . .” Jules’s eyebrows pull together. “She’s Delaney. She’s perfect. I want her.”

  Elliot laughs at her stricken expression. “It’s not that deep, Jules. I swear. Just ask her!”

  “Hey!”

  Elliot turns and Dia’s walking toward them, wearing those skintight jeans again, and now he no longer has to wonder about taking them off.

  They’ve had sex a handful of times now, in off-limits rooms at parties, once in her bedroom while her parents were at work. The first, third, sixth time for both of them, better every time. And now, when Elliot sees Dia, all he can think about is how she’s the only girl he’s seen naked and it is everything he dreamed and more. About the stretch marks all across her hips and thighs that shimmer like lightning in a summer storm sky.

  “Hey,” Jules says, standing up and dusting the grass off her legs. “Ready?”

  Dia nods. “Where’s Hanna?”

  “Down there.” Elliot points, and when a shadow flashes across Dia’s face, he takes her hand and pulls her close and pinches the inside of her elbow, softly. “It’s fine.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she says, but then she kisses him. “Let’s go.”

  The four of them meet Nolan on the way, take the bus across town, and get their hands stamped at the club where Ciara’s band is playing. Hanna really isn’t too bad; Elliot keeps a cautious eye on her all night, still. At one point they end up getting drinks at the same time—Cokes—and Elliot’s talking to her about baseball—she’s an Angels fan—when she suddenly shakes her head. “You don’t really like me, do you?”

  “What?” Elliot says, taken aback. Where is this coming from? “No. I mean—yes?”

  “It’s okay,” Hanna says, resting her elbows on the sticky tabletop, a dreamy look in her eyes. “I’m messed up. You can think that.”

  “I don’t—”

  Then she reaches into her shirt and pulls a tiny flask from her bra, and bares her teeth at him. “Tell her if you want. I don’t care.”

  She walks away, this blond ghost, and Elliot clenches his fist. Tell her if you want.

  He finds Dia and the words are on the tip of his tongue, but the music’s loud and she kisses them away.

  Jules

  Jules had never been on a real date before. She had never stood on the front steps of another girl’s house, dressed in nice clothes, wearing makeup, and knocked on the door. She had never had the door open to reveal someone’s mother standing there. So when that happened and this imposing woman looked at her, inquisitive, Jules had to wipe her suddenly sweaty hands on her pants.

  “Hi,” she managed to force out. “Is, um, is Autumn home?”

  “You must be Jules,” Autumn’s mom said, and the icy facade disappeared as she broke into a smile about as bright as her blond hair. “Come in, come in!”

  Jules tried to keep calm as she stepped inside. She could already tell it was too hot for the jeans she’d put on, and she’d gotten her period about fifteen minutes before leaving the house, and the bus had been late, and and and . . .

  But the hall of Autumn’s house was enough to distract her, because it was filled with . . . everything. Kitschy velvet portraits lined the floral-papered walls, and the shoe rack by the door bore a dozen pairs of sparkling stilettos. An orange table held a variety of china figurines, and each stair had its own vase of fake flowers. Jules took it all in, scanning and then finding Autumn’s mom staring at her expectantly.
“You have a lovely home,” Jules said, her inflection almost making it a question—Is that what you want to hear?—and Autumn’s mom beamed.

  “Oh, thank you, sweetheart!” She spoke with this southern curve to her voice, Texas or Mississippi or somewhere else Jules had never been. “I know it’s a little much, but I love a house full of pretty things. Makes it so much easier to get up in the mornings, doesn’t it?”

  “Mom, please stop talking.” Autumn descended the flower-packed stairs, the skirt of her sky-blue dress swirling. “Jules does not need a lesson on Dollywood chic.”

  Jules tried not to look too taken aback by Autumn and her radiance, but in that dress, with her mermaid hair all swept up and the flash of thigh and her mouth so shiny red—god, she was beautiful.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Autumn’s mom said. “Everybody needs that lesson. But fine, I won’t keep you.” She lowered her voice a touch. “Back by eleven, okay? And keep your phone on.”

  Autumn rolled her eyes but smiled, passing her mom to stand by Jules, and even that close was almost too much; what was Jules going to do when they had to sit by each other? “Yes, okay.”

  “All right!” Autumn’s mom clapped her hands together. “Have a good night.”

  Jules remembered her manners at the last second. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Holloway.”

  “Oh, you too, honey. You two have fun,” Autumn’s mom said, and waved them out of the door. “Bye!”

  The door shut firmly, leaving the two of them standing on the porch. There was a beat of silence before Autumn began laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know, she’s kind of a lot.”

  “Your mom?” Jules said. “I like her. Does she know this is a date?”

  Autumn tipped her head to the side. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Jules said. “I didn’t want to say anything wrong, or . . . you know.”

  “Not everybody from the south is like that,” Autumn said. “And besides, I tell her everything.” Then she gave Jules this long, up-and-down look. “But now we’re done with her, can I tell you how good you look?”

  Jules dipped her head, her face on fire. “Not as good as you,” she said, looking back at Autumn. “Although, I feel bad. I should be taking you somewhere fancy in that dress.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Autumn shook her head. “It doesn’t matter where we go. I just want to go somewhere with you.”

  A roller-coaster swoop in the bottom of her stomach. “Okay,” Jules smiled. “You like Giorgio’s, right?”

  Jules wondered if the other people on the bus could tell they were on a date, or if what she felt crackling in the air was for her and Autumn only.

  They got off and walked the few blocks to the pizza place, where they got a table out in the courtyard surrounded by families and other kids their age throwing balled-up napkins at each other. Jules asked the girl who brought their drinks if Jesse was working. “Not tonight,” she said. “Can I get your order?”

  They ordered the veggie deluxe, because Autumn didn’t eat meat, and fried mac and cheese because—fried mac and cheese. When their food came their server gave them garlic fries, too, and when Jules said they didn’t order fries, the girl gave her a sly grin. “On the house,” she said. “Enjoy.”

  She walked away and it took Jules a second to figure it out, right as Autumn said, “Why did she do that?”

  “Because we’re on a date,” Jules said. “And I think she’s probably one of us. Me. I mean, she’s queer.”

  Autumn turned to look after the girl and then looked back at Jules, a delighted expression on her face. “Huh,” she said. “That’s so nice!”

  “Isn’t it?” Jules said. Golden Grove was a pretty decent place to be, as a baby gay. Their school had a decent QSA, and coming up through the music scene there had been enough older girls for Jules to see and know that she, too, could come out and live a relatively okay life in town. She’d never had this, though—an actual date with another girl. This was another level.

  Autumn did this thing of drawing the cheese out with her teeth and snapping it with her finger that was equal parts funny and mesmerizing. Jules wiped her fingers on her napkin as she chewed a bite of pizza. “So your mom—stepmom—where’s she from?”

  “A tiny town in Georgia,” Autumn said. “She always says she had to get out because it wasn’t big enough to hold her. Like, did you see the shoes?”

  “Oh, I saw them,” Jules said. “Impressive.”

  “I know.” Autumn smiled. “She’s so . . . she does exactly what she wants, you know? She wears ridiculously high heels and fake lashes, and her outfits have a ton of cleavage always, and she dances in the kitchen every single day. I want to be exactly like her when I grow up.” She tipped her head to the side and studied Jules. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Jules lifted a corner of her mouth. “Financially stable.”

  “Ha! The dream,” Autumn said. “Okay. Really, though.”

  “Really?” Jules blew out her cheeks and looked to the sky, streaked with deepening blues. “I have no idea. I don’t even know what I’m interested in anymore. Like, my favorite class at school was math, but that’s about all I’ve got.”

  “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a prima ballerina,” Autumn said. “That was before I realized there are a very limited amount of fat girl ballerinas in the world, and that you have to actually be good at dancing.”

  Jules laughed. “What now, then? Besides your mom, of course.”

  “I want to be a nurse,” Autumn said. She touched a hand to a pink curl. “When my mom—not Sasha, my first mom—was dying we practically lived at the hospital, and the nurses are the ones who keep you going. They would bring me books and let me sit in their station, take me down to the cafeteria in the middle of the night. They do all these things you don’t even realize, and they help you get better, too. Well. When they can.”

  Jules looked at Autumn, marveling. How good was this girl? Smart and sweet and a heart of actual gold.

  And honest. Autumn was spilling her soul, and Jules was lying.

  Autumn gave her a funny look. “What?” she asked. “Do I have food in my teeth?”

  Jules took a breath. “I used to want to be famous,” she said in a rush, the truth now. “Maybe famous isn’t it—known. I used to want to be able to stand on a stage somewhere and play music and have all these people sing the words back to me.”

  Autumn’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “Music?”

  “Yeah,” Jules said, her palms sweating.

  “Used to,” Autumn said. “You don’t want it anymore?”

  Jules looked away. “It’s a dream, isn’t it? A little kid thing. Like you wanting to be a ballerina,” she said. “People don’t really get to have those dreams come true. It’s a story they tell you so you’ll believe in magic a little longer.”

  Autumn shrugged and leaned her elbows on the table. “Maybe, maybe not. Ballerinas are real, right? You can go and see them dancing. All those people on TV, on the radio, in magazines . . . they’re real people. Once upon a time it was a dream for them, too. Somebody has to make it—it could be you. Then maybe . . . I would get to be the girl with the rock star.” Her cheeks glowed pink.

  “Maybe,” Jules said, her face warm, too. God, I wish. But then she pressed her hands together. “I used to be in a band, actually.”

  “No way,” Autumn said. “Tell me about it.”

  So Jules did tell her the story, the most bare-bones version she could manage without skipping over any of the important details. She tried not to get distracted by Autumn’s face, either, intently watching her, and when Jules was done talking Autumn shook her head. “Wow,” she said. “That’s so cool. And also kind of shitty. But still cool. Don’t you want to play anymore, then? Make another band or something?”

  Jules drummed her fingers on the shiny silver surface of the table, watching her distorted reflection in it. “Actually, we just started playing together a
gain,” she said. “The three of us. Hanna’s sober now and we’re trying to make it work. It’s going okay so far. We—” Should she mention the contest? No, not yet. In fact, maybe she wouldn’t tell Autumn until the whole thing was over. Yes, she thought, warming to the idea. What if we win and then I tell her? And she’ll be so surprised because she’ll have no idea, and imagine her face! Autumn would be delighted, and Jules would get to feel like a true rock star goddess. Yes, this was a plan. “Yeah, it’s going well.”

  “That’s awesome,” Autumn said. “Seriously.”

  Jules played with her straw. “It feels good,” she said. “Playing again.”

  “So how do I hear you?” Autumn raised her eyebrows. “You have a Soundcloud? YouTube?”

  “You wish,” Jules said. “We shut it all down before. And Dia has all our original recordings, and good luck trying to get them out of her.”

  “Fine,” Autumn said with a laugh. “I’ll just have to come to one of your practices.”

  “Maybe,” Jules said, nervous even at the thought of playing before this girl. “One day.”

  Autumn smiled, white teeth behind her red lips. “Okay.”

  Jules shook her head. “I’ve officially talked about myself enough. Okay. Moving on.”

  “Let’s get dessert,” Autumn said. “And I’ll bore you to death talking about me. Deal?”

  Jules laughed. “Okay. Deal.”

  They took the bus home, sat across the aisle from each other, and Jules asked delicate questions about Autumn’s mom, her first mom. And Autumn answered equally delicately.

  How did she die?

  Pneumonia.

  What was her favorite music?

  Jazz. Dizzy Gillespie.

  How much did Autumn miss her?

  So much. Like you wouldn’t believe.

  Eventually they were back right where they’d started, outside Autumn’s front door, and Jules was supposed to say goodbye but she didn’t really know how to. “Full disclosure,” she said, looking Autumn right in the eye. “I’ve never been on an actual date before. I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to do all this.”