“We could have a car wash,” Tall Zach said. “That’s what the team did to raise money for cross-country camp.”
Alison whirled around and stared at him. “What, with all the girls in bikinis? I bet you’d like that.”
Tall Zach made a face. “Uggo. You wish.”
“It could be equal-opportunity swimwear,” Tess said. “We could mess with gender norms and put everyone in bikinis.”
“In October?” I said. I pictured myself in a swimsuit, teeth chattering and gripping an icy hose. “No thanks.”
“Okay, not a car wash,” Tess agreed. “Yeah, you, in the blue.”
“Um, raffle?” squeaked a voice from underneath a sweatshirt hood. Some freshperson.
“We’d have to get a prize first,” I said. “Which we can’t afford, unless someone will barter for T-shirts.”
“Or . . .” Bryce spoke slowly, like he was hatching a brilliant scheme. “The T-shirts themselves are the prize.” He settled back triumphantly as Zach the Anarchist let out an actual, audible laugh. I wanted to laugh, too, but Bryce already looked confused.
“We can’t have a raffle, anyway,” Tess said. “They’re against school policy. Something something gambling something.”
The room went silent, except for another stray laugh that I think came from Zach the Anarchist. Tess sighed.
“Okay, well, if no one has any ideas, I guess the meeting is adjourned—but!” She jabbed a finger at the poster of the ruins of Pompeii, which, under the circumstances, was not the most encouraging image. “Think big, everyone. Be bold. Be fearless.”
The OWPALGBTQIA got to its collective feet, hefting backpacks and throwing out the greasy paper boats once filled with cafeteria tater tots. Tall Zach bounded out of the door, heading to his next class at almost a sprint like only a tracklete could. Endsignal began rolling up his various cords and wires, and Zach the Anarchist slipped out without saying good-bye.
Meeting over, I swallowed, ready to ask Tess my favor.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I tell you something?”
“What? Oh, okay. Walk with me.” Tess stuffed an arm into her coat and grabbed her backpack. “I’m going to the computer room to print out flyers. At least those are free to advertise.”
“Right,” I said, and led the way down the hall to the first door on the right. The computer lab was mostly deserted at the tail end of lunch, save some kids surreptitiously checking their Tumblrs and Meredith White with her giant rolly backpack, probably doing something for the literary magazine. Tess logged into her email, opened up a Word doc, and began typing furiously.
“Which of these clip-art rainbows do you like the best?” she said, eyes glued to the screen.
I shrugged. “Whichever. They’re just going to print in black and white, you know.”
“Oh.” Tess paused her typing, then kept on. “Whatever. Something’s better than nothing.”
I frowned. Even for someone as intense as Tess, she seemed extra plugged-in. “Are you sure you need to do this now?” I asked. “We could just take a break. I’m sure we’ll still find recruits somehow.”
Tess stopped typing. “Somehow is not good enough.”
“Okay. Um, sorry.” I squinted at her. “Is there a reason you’re having a membership drive all of a sudden?”
“Besides the fact that our very existence as a club hangs in the balance?”
I thought of my spreadsheets. “Ugh, God, don’t say balance. I just meant, like . . . we have some new members. Endsignal. Those three sophomores.” Alison and Chihiro I was pretty sure I’d never seen before the beginning of this school year, but I at least knew of Bryce, since he’d come out as transgender last year, which was pretty cool.
“I guess. It’s just . . .” Tess’s jaw tightened, the screen with the “Join the Best Club Ever in the Whole School!!!” document glowing softly on the side of her face.
“It’s my parents,” she said at last.
“Your parents think the club doesn’t have enough people in it?”
“No!” Tess looked up and flicked me in the forehead.
“Ow!”
“Sorry. You were asking for it.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s just . . . you know.”
Tess stared intently at her folded hands. I swallowed.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not like—God, it’s not like I think they’ll judge me or anything, you know?”
“They are registered Democrats,” I agreed.
“Right. But they’re just . . . I don’t know. My mom’s always asking me about the boys in my class. My dad still talks about gay marriage even though it’s just marriage now.” Tess’s voice was totally unloud. “So I want to rally our people up. Make the OWPALGBTQIA the cool club to join. Just . . . be normal. But still be us.”
She stared at the opposite wall, where a flyer for the Winter Formal fluttered over a fire extinguisher.
“Anyway. Whatever.” She cleared her throat. “Is that what you wanted to talk about? How your poor lesbian friend needs to uncloset herself to her family already?”
“Um,” I said. “Actually, no.”
“Ugh, thank God. Because no offense, as a straight person, your opinion is completely invalid.” Tess swiveled back to the computer. “A hundred and fifty flyers is probably enough, right?”
“Maybe we should just get a billboard.”
Tess spun back around. “Do not joke with me about billboards. That was seriously traumatic.” She rubbed her closed lips and returned to the screen.
“Sorry.”
“If that orthodontia money wasn’t going to put me through college, I’d have sued my parents for emotional damages.” She hit Print, then wheeled on me again. “So what is so urgent? Some kind of drama? Oh my God, wait. Did you call Sebastian Delacroix?”
“No!” I whispered, kind of loudly. “I mean, not exactly.” I snuck a look over my shoulder to make sure we were out of Meredith’s earshot and took a deep breath.
“I heard them on the radio,” I said. “Sebastian’s band.”
“The radio?” Tess screeched.
“Yeah,” I said, a few thousand decibels quieter. “On the WPHL morning show.”
“Ooh, the one with that sexy lady DJ?”
“Yeah.”
Tess’s eyes widened.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure that station is syndicated.”
“What does that even mean? Is that a good thing? You’re looking like it’s a good thing.”
“No. I mean, yes. Sebastian might end up famous. Sebastian and whatever his band is called.”
“The Young Lungs,” I said. “Anyway, the thing is, they’re coming to town, and—”
“Hey! Tess, Nattie.”
Meredith White appeared in our corner of the lab, her arms full of printouts.
“Hey,” I said, smiling and attempting to affect the disposition of someone who was definitely not going to a rock show that night, which, seeing as that was my typical demeanor, was not that difficult. Meredith smiled, which, in combination with her clear blue eyes and wavy French braid, gave her a look that was nothing but pleasant.
“I think these are yours,” she said, and handed Tess a stack of papers.
“Oh,” Tess said. “Yup. Thanks.”
Meredith beamed. She was the kind of person who beamed.
“Can I interest you ladies in Wister Writers?” She handed me and Tess each a flyer without waiting for a response. “We’re always looking for new fiction and poetry submissions.”
“Thanks,” Tess said, holding the flyer gingerly by a corner like it was coated in snot.
“Yeah, thanks.” I smiled back at Meredith to show that I wasn’t entirely opposed to the concept of poetry, even though the closest I’d come to writing poetry was my terrible Catullus translations.
“No problem,” Meredith said. “Hey, we should hang out sometime. I feel like I haven’t seen you guys since the summer.”
“Yeah, totally,” I said, wil
ling myself not to blush as I remembered exactly the circumstances under which I had last seen Meredith.
“Actually, I was kind of eavesdropping,” Meredith said, “and I was just wondering if you guys were talking about Sebastian Delacroix’s band?”
“Nope,” I said, panicking.
“Yeah,” Tess said, loud enough to drown me out.
“Oh, cool!” Meredith smiled and looked at her shoes. “Because, um, I heard that they’re playing some club downtown tonight? And I kind of want to see them, but I can’t go by myself, because my parents won’t let me.”
Tess’s perfect eyebrows were nearly touching her hairline, but her face was mercifully expressionless otherwise.
“Of course.” She chanced a tiny glance in my direction, but fortunately, Meredith rushed in with more words before I had to say anything.
“I’ve heard they’re actually pretty good, and I used to hang out with Sebastian a lot, so it seems like a nice thing to do. Go out and support them, I mean.”
As far as I was aware, Sebastian would never hang out with someone like Meredith White. Not that there was anything wrong with Meredith, exactly. She just was a little too much—her big smile, her giant backpack, her pool party invitation list that included literally everybody at Wister Prep and their brother. (Sam Huang, though invited, had been at home in China at the time, or else he probably would’ve been there, too.) Besides, of everyone in this room, I was the one Sebastian had actually Almost Kissed. I was the one who’d actually been in his car. I was the one he’d said had a beautiful name. I was nothing like Meredith White, fussing with the end of her braid and practically radiating desperation.
I’m not proud of this, but right then, I actually felt pretty proud.
“We should all go together,” I heard myself say.
“Really?” Meredith said.
“Really?” Tess said, with a good deal more incredulity than Meredith.
I shrugged, the picture of casualness. “Why not? I kind of want to hear them, too.”
“Cool!” Meredith’s face lit up. That poor girl. “I have to stay after school for Wister Writers, but I could drive down afterward and meet you guys there?”
The bell rang, exactly on time.
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “Gotta go!”
I stuffed my Wister Writers flyer in my pocket and swept out of the room with Tess in tow.
“Dude,” Tess said. “Look at you.”
“What?”
“Little Miss Cool Concertgoer. You’re practically strutting.”
For some reason, I thought about Meredith, twisting her braid and bumping into people with her backpack on wheels.
“Yeah,” I said.
Tess nodded sagely. “Nothing wrong with indulging in some full-on lusting now and again.”
“It’s not full-on lusting!” I said. “It’s . . . aloof consideration of a possibility.”
“A lusty possibility,” Tess said. I shot her a look and she quickly retreated into a palms-up.
“Okay, okay. Well, whatever it is, in its own weird, totally hetero way, this is actually kind of awesome. Nattie finally kissing a boy at last.” Tess arched an eyebrow at me. “So what are we wearing tonight?”
CHAPTER FOUR
My bedroom was a mess, but even if I cleaned it, it wouldn’t be cool. I’d begged to paint the walls Blushing Blossom Pink when I was six, and it had been so much work to prime the walls and tape the molding and throw down drop cloths that my parents made me promise I’d never change my mind. And I didn’t, for about six months. Now, it looked like stale cotton candy—horrible, especially with Mom’s weird homemade lace curtains and my sagging inflatable chair covered in stuffed animals and the paper lanterns covered in dust. If I ever ended up on one of those shows where a prospective date rummages through your room and tries to decide if you’re normal enough to go out with, I’d flunk. Right now, I felt awkward enough with Zach the Anarchist sitting cross-legged against the wall of my bedroom, watching Tess drag all my hangers from one end of my closet to the other with a grating sound.
“Why am I here, again?” Zach said.
“Because Tall Zach had cross-country after school, and we need someone to evaluate the efficacy of our outfits,” Tess said. “Also, to drive. You wouldn’t want us to take the train to the city, would you?”
After some quick Google mapping, Tess and I had discovered that Ruby’s Rock Club was just a few blocks away from Zach the Anarchist’s house in Center City, so we (meaning Tess) decided to convince him to come over to my house after school—with his car, of course—so that we could all go downtown together.
“I think you’d survive,” Zach said, stretching his arms overhead. Today he was wearing a black T-shirt with “Club Sandwiches, Not Seals” on it under a flannel shirt he’d rolled up to his elbows.
“Does anyone have any opinions on either of these?” I asked. “Because otherwise I’m going to put them down.”
Tess squinted at the top in my left hand, which had a bunch of buckles and zippers dangling off of it, and then at the one in my right hand, which was made of something fluffy and white. Zach the Anarchist had become occupied with the stuffed-animal pile.
“Zippers,” she said. “Definitely.”
I examined the top. “It’s from, like, fifth grade. It doesn’t fit.”
“Okay, so the white one. It’s”—Tess paused, searching for the most convincing adjective—“different.”
“It’s weird,” I said. “I’m pretty sure my mom bought this for me to play a sheep in Charlotte’s Web. It’s not actually cool.”
“It’s pretty baa-aad,” Zach said, holding up a tiny stuffed sheep.
“Stop!” Mortified, I grabbed Lamby from an amused Zach and threw the fuzzy top on the ground for emphasis, which was kind of hard because it was too light to throw properly.
“You’ll find something.” Tess rattled the hangers again and yanked out a peasanty-looking top. “What about this? It’s got this cool abstract design on the front—”
“That’s a mustard stain.” I took it from her and put it back.
By the wall, Zach had picked up two teddy bears and was making them dance.
“Stop?” I said again, and snatched them out of his hands. “Please?”
Seeing Zach play with all my stuffed animals reminded me just how weird it was that a phrase like all my stuffed animals could still apply to me. I needed to burn them on a ceremonial pyre. Plus, something about having him here, in my actual bedroom, where he had never been before, was making me second-guess the whole concert plan. There was no way this was a thing I could actually do.
I flung the teddies at my bed. “So dumb.”
“I think they’re nice.” Zach got up and stretched. “Do you have any snacks?”
“Probably?” I said. “Ask Sam Huang.”
“Cool. Call me when you’re ready.”
The stairs creaked across the hallway as Zach left. Tess craned her neck out the door, her red lips a tight line.
“So cranky.”
“He’s got stuff to be morose about,” I said, trying not to cringe. “And you did kind of trick him into driving us, Tessica.”
“Ugh.” Tess hated it when I called her that. “Still not my real name, Nattie. Now, do you have any other clothes? Your outfit says a lot about you.”
I eyed my closet. “That’s about it.”
“Really? You don’t own, like, a leather skirt or a halter top or anything?”
“Nope.” Unlike Tess, who used clothing to express her personality and looked good while doing it, I had cultivated a personal fashion aesthetic around the idea of just not looking too strange. Normal T-shirts, ordinary jeans. One unfortunate occasion in freshman year, I’d been bold enough to wear a pair of fingerless lace gloves to school, and everyone asked if it was a costume. Mr. Sentman, the ninth-grade physics teacher, even called me “Lacey.”
Tess groaned. “This is not going to work. How are you ever going to m
ake an impression on anyone, let alone Sebastian, in something like this?” She held up a “Wister Runs 5K and Walk” T-shirt, which I snatched away.
“I didn’t even run in that,” I said. “I think it’s my mom’s.”
Tess wasn’t listening. “Take off your shirt.”
“Um.” I glanced back at the doorway—no Zach the Anarchist lurking. Tess grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and yanked up.
“Hey!”
“Relax, Nattie,” Tess said from somewhere outside the shirt stuck on my head. “I get why you’re nervous. I mean, I would never want to date Sebastian—”
“I don’t want to date him.” I disposed of my shirt in my laundry hamper, by which I mean the floor, and hugged my arms around myself. “I mean, I don’t think I do. I just want to . . . figure out what happened between us. If anything did happen. Or something.”
“He stayed up all night with you and touched you on the face,” Tess said. “I think that is definitely something that happened.”
“Yeah, but . . .” I sighed. It was supposed to be the Kiss and not the Almost Kiss. It was not supposed to be dumb Nattie and another I don’t know? situation.
“Look, all I know is, you, Nattie McCullough-Schwartz, are incredibly sexy and have once upon a time attracted the attention of an indie-rock-star guy who is also, I assume, sexy.”
“I’m not sexy,” I said, looking down at my bra, which was hot pink and had a weird pucker between the boobs where there used to be a bow. “This is from the kids’ section.”
“Well, it’s working for you.” Tess arched an eyebrow. “Sebastian wouldn’t have spent time with you if he didn’t think you were special. And that’s why you need to look special. Here.”
She threw me a tank top made of lace—the same lace top I’d worn with my gloves.
“No,” I said. “I need to wear something underneath it.”
“You have a bra on.”
“But then everyone can see my bra!”
“Exactly.” She grabbed me by the shoulders and steered me to the mirror. “Wah-lah.”
“It’s voilà,” I said to no one. “And I look—”
“Hot,” she said. “You look hot. You look like you’re going to a rock show. You look like you need a little lipstick.”
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