“Ow!”
The oven door snapped shut. Meredith sprang back, clutching her hand to her chest. Zach leaped from the food processor to her side.
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Meredith hiccupped. “The door just hit me. . . .”
Slowly, she uncurled her hand, which now had an angry red welt across the top.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “Meredith, I’m so sorry.” My heart had started beating sickeningly fast, like I’d downed six cups of coffee. “Are you okay?”
But Meredith was being led to the sink, where Zach flicked on a cold tap and stuck her hand under the water.
“It was an accident.” My voice was annoyingly high again. “I didn’t mean to.”
Meredith winced as the water rushed over her hand. Zach fixed me with a hard look, the kind of look you give someone who’s really, really dumb.
“It doesn’t matter if you meant it, Nattie. You still hurt her.”
“I—”
“Go get some bandages.” Zach wasn’t looking at me now. “Since you know where the bathroom is.”
I slipped into the hall, hating myself with every step, and hating myself even more once I’d gotten the bandages but stopped to read what was on my phone.
from: sebdel
hey sry this really isnt a gud time
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Needless to say, I had totally lost my appetite for pie by Friendsgiving.
“Fake sausage, Nattie?” Tall Zach held out a pan that smelled nauseously savory. I shook my head.
“Suit yourself.” He helped himself to a fourth link. “This stuff is delicious.”
“I know, right? It’s even precooked. You’d totally never know they make it with tofu,” Bryce said.
Endsignal, who was sitting on Bryce’s other side, glanced to where an excited banner proclaimed “Made with 100% Wheat Protein!!!” across the box of sausage, but said nothing. Next to him, Zach the Anarchist was doing his best to carry on a conversation with Meredith, who had showed up for some reason, against the background of Alison and Chihiro arguing about imperialism or socialism or something. Not that I was looking, or even cared. Zach could talk to whoever he wanted. Despite whatever his anarchist philosophy wanted to decry about the US, it was a free country.
Tess and I were sitting next to Dr. Frobisher’s desk, which had become our impromptu feast table, and she was doing a great job encouraging people to take more food than they probably wanted and welcoming stragglers as they came in. I, on the other hand, was barely able to eat. Besides my frustration at Sebastian personally, there was also the small matter of my identity hovering millimeters away from public knowledge, and being at school only refreshed my anxiety about it. If people like Celeste Franklin and Brooke Lieberman were guessing, it was only a matter of time before the OWPALGBTQIA found, or figured, it out, too.
I looked around the room, eyes narrow. These people were my friends—well, all except Meredith—and yet every one of them was a potential backstabber. Tess and Tall Zach—and Endsignal, I guess—already knew, and I had no choice but to assume they were trustworthy. Everyone else, I wasn’t sure. I’d like to assume that they’d sympathize and understand my need for privacy, and that they would never stoop so low as to spread gossip about their beloved, if incompetent, replacement treasurer.
Then again, I thought, as I watched Meredith snort-laugh at something Zach the Anarchist had said, you could never be too careful.
“The corn bread is effing delicious.” Tess stuffed a hunk in her mouth, which made Endsignal perk up a little. “And Nattie, you need to eat more.”
“I am eating.” I was picking at—but not really eating—some mashed potatoes, my mind still trying to work through the cognitive dissonance. Because despite the insane fight-or-flight response about getting discovered that had taken up residence in my nervous system, I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to respond to Sebastian’s message.
hey sry this really isnt a gud time
What did he want with me, anyway? When exactly would it be a “gud” time to talk to him? It’s not like he ever asked if I was available before rapid-firing his thoughts on California and the moon and mango salsa. And now, just because I’d had the audacity to address something more serious than his feelings on Mexican food, he was cutting me off? I took an angry bite of mashed potatoes.
“These taste like wallpaper paste,” I said to no one in particular. The freshperson in the hoodie froze, midrefill on potatoes, and looked like they were going to cry.
“They’re great, Kennedy!” Tess gave her the biggest closed-mouth smile possible and whirled on me as soon as Kennedy turned around.
“Nattie. What the hell is wrong with you? You love Friendsgiving.”
I gave my mashed potatoes a very morose stab.
“Look,” Tess went on. “I know we’re all upset about this bullshit boycott of Operation Big Gay Dance Party. It’s completely ridiculous and insulting that a bunch of heteronormative seniors think they can have their own party just to make us look bad. But trust me, we are going to figure out some way to force everyone in the school to come—I mean, want to come. Of their own free w—”
“It’s not Operation BGDP,” I said. “It’s”—I lowered my voice to the barest whisper—“Sebastian.”
“Right. Of course.” Tess cast a glance around the room, where everyone seemed to be either in the process of eating or in the process of getting more food to eat. Classic Friendsgiving. And usually, I did love it. But not now.
“Did you text him again? I thought we agreed it was best if you just ignored him from now on.”
“I was,” I said. “There’ve just been . . . some developments.”
Across the room, Meredith was getting up for a second helping of Zach the Anarchist’s pie. Because of course that would be her favorite.
“Developments?” Tess chewed furiously at her corn bread. “What have you been keeping from me?”
I took a big breath in, let an even bigger breath out, and started to explain, everything from the Pixstagram messages to the girls in the computer room to my suspicion that Sam Huang was in the process of arranging it for the a cappella group to perform. When I was finally done, I looked from my plate of potatoes up to Tess. Her gray eyes were positively flinty with resolution, and she was doing a slow, solemn nod.
“I know what we have to do.”
“You do?” I said. By this point, I was totally, utterly at a loss. Even for someone with Tess’s interpersonal experience, this was a capital-s Situation.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, and then said something I really wished she hadn’t.
“Hey, Zach!”
“What?” Tall Zach popped his head up from his umpteenth vegan sausage.
“Not you. Anarchist Zach.”
Meredith nudged Zach the Anarchist, who was in the middle of telling her some story and looking unusually animated—which, for him, was barely animated at all, really.
“Do you think Nattie and I can stay with your sister on Friday? We’re going to New York on an emergency shopping mission and I don’t want to have to take the late train back because we’ll get killed.”
“Tess,” I said, but Zach the Anarchist answered her like I hadn’t even said anything.
“Sure, I guess,” he said. “I mean, I can ask.”
“Excellent.” Tess waved her hands at the room, which had quieted considerably under her yell.
“As you were, everyone.”
She settled back into her desk and picked up a homemade Pop-Tart. I gaped for a minute and then started in.
“Shopping mission?”
“Yup.” She grabbed my hand and stared into my eyes. “It’s a cover, although we may end up doing that, too. Because you, Nattie M-S, are going to confront Sebastian in person at his show in New York this weekend.”
“What?” I yelped. “Why? How?”
Tess bit into the tart and actually rolled her
eyes back into her head.
“Have you tried these? They’re amazing.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Zach is really talented.”
I shook my head. “No. I mean about going to New York.”
It didn’t seem possible. But then again, it seemed equally impossible that I would be the subject of a chart-topping anthem of indie-rock sexiness, and look what happened with that.
“As a heart attack. What are best friends for?”
“And what exactly am I supposed to say when I get there?”
Tess squared her shoulders. “You are going to march up to him, look at him with all your smoldering hotness and fury, and demand that he explain himself. And then”—she sucked in a dramatic breath—“you are going to demand that he and his band play the Owen Wister Preparatory Academy Winter Formal.”
“What?!”
“It’s brilliant, Nattie!” Tess cried. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. We haven’t even found a DJ yet, and this way we won’t have to. Plus, no one will be able to resist coming to a dance if hometown hero Sebastian Delacroix and his band are playing. And you’re our secret weapon. You’re going to use your fame to single-handedly save OBGDP. You’ll be a gay-rights legend for years to come.”
“But I’m not even gay,” I said. “Liking a boy is kind of how I got into this whole mess.”
“Well, right,” Tess said airily, “and like I said, you’ll sort that out while you’re up there, too. But—hey!” She spun in her chair. “Be careful with tha—”
But it was too late. There was a crack, and then a plop, as the dish of mashed potatoes slipped through Bryce’s fake-sausage-greased fingers and smashed on the floor. Tess groaned.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said, as if I was about to leap up and help. “Everyone, clear the area!” She lunged forward to herd everyone out of harm’s way. “No, Bryce, it’s fine, just go get a vacuum or something from the janitor’s closet.”
I half expected Zach the Anarchist to make some crack about vacuuming mashed potatoes, but he was still . . . occupied talking to Meredith. So I chewed noncommittally on a string bean and stared at the “CAVE CANEM” poster, which unfortunately was right above Alison’s head as she took a bite of her second vegan pie two desks away. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“These are good,” she said, defensively. “Do you mind?”
“Um . . . yeah,” I said, since I couldn’t really take credit. “I mean, no. Zach’s a good baker.”
“Ugh.” Alison broke off a corner of crust and chomped it with relish. “Do you know how hard it is to find good dessert when you have a restricted diet?”
“Actually . . . yeah,” I said. “I’ve, um, had to pass up a lot of shortcake, I guess. No one gets that I can’t just scrape the strawberries off. And then I feel rude.”
Alison smacked her hand against the desk. “I know! People get so mad. ‘It’s just butter, the cow’s still alive.’ Like, that’s not the point. Just let me live, okay?”
She chewed a moment longer, looking like she was sizing me up.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
I blinked. “Um?” It took a full two seconds for my white-lie instincts to kick in. “No! You’re, um, I just . . .”
She sighed. “Look, don’t think I don’t know I’m loud and stuff. But I’m not going to apologize.”
“I . . . okay.” I looked at my soggy paper plate.
“If you’re not loud, people don’t hear you, let alone listen. And if other people are afraid to speak up, then I have to be twice as loud for them. This”—Alison whipped out her phone and held it two inches from the end of my nose—“is my motto. Or one of my mottos.”
I squinted at the screen, at what seemed to be a tiny blog post with a bunch of swoopy, handwritten text. “I . . . can’t really read that.”
“Don’t you take Latin? God.” Alison yanked back her phone. “Fortuna audaces iuvat. Fortune favors the bold. So I try to always be bold.”
“What is that?” Tess, mashed potato crisis over, appeared at Alison’s elbow and snatched away her phone. “Did you draw this?”
“Yes?” Alison rolled her eyes. “It’s called hand-lettering, duh.”
“This is amazing,” Tess said. “I’ve been making cruddy clip-art posters this whole time. Why didn’t you tell us you were good for something?”
Alison pursed her lips. “I tell you lots of things. You just don’t listen.”
“Fair point. Okay, Alison, I’m sorry for ignoring you, and from now on, you’re on official poster duty. Nattie.” Tess turned to me, her voice notionally softer. “Are we doing this, or what?”
“I . . .” I swallowed. “What about, like, train tickets? Or concert tickets, for that matter? And what am I supposed to tell my parents? I don’t even know how to take the subway.”
“Leave it all to me,” Tess said. “Well, except the part with your parents. Come on, Nattie! This is your chance!”
My heart was banging against the front of my chest—not in an anxious way, but in an adrenaline-y, let’s do this kind of way. Maybe, crazily, Alison was right.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re on.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It turned out the secret to lying was to use a really boring excuse, and also to spring it on your victims while they were in a tryptophan haze. When I asked on Friday morning, my parents were happy to let me sleep over at Tess’s house for the evening, because I’d been doing it for practically half my life, and because apparently they wanted to do some really boring parent things that night anyway.
“The Brandywine River Museum is fascinating,” Mom told me. “All these American illustrators are on display.”
“Yup,” I said, only half listening, because I could not find my phone among the jumble of newspapers and nonfunctional pens on the kitchen counter.
“And the Carters invited us to come stay over for the night,” Dad said. “Gonna make a whole getaway of it.”
“Nattie?”
I looked up from a pile of old Wister Registers to where Sam Huang was holding my phone. “Did you forget this?”
He glanced at the screen, where I could read a text from Tess: JAMBA ALERT train leaves in twenty!!!
“Train?” Sam Huang frowned. I snatched my phone away and clutched it to my chest.
“Sam Huang,” I hissed. “Swear to me that you won’t say anything.”
“But . . .” Sam Huang looked to where my parents were reading an actual road atlas, like they were pioneers or something. “Robert and Anne . . .”
“Come on, Sam Huang,” I said. “Brothers and sisters do this for each other all the time.”
“They do?”
“Sure,” I said, assuming this was true. “Look, swear to me you won’t say anything and I’ll take your dishwasher duty for the next two weeks.”
I gave him a thumbs-up that he dubiously returned, then ran out the door as Mom called the Phone Responsibility and the Privilege of the Family Plan litany after me, and two and a half hours later, I was on the outskirts of America’s cultural capital.
Something thumped into my arm.
“Je frappe toi. Are you alive, Nattie?” Tess jabbed me a second time, just as the conductor on the commuter train started announcing New York as the next stop. “Quit looking so pale.”
“Je frappe toi more,” I said weakly, and brushed my knuckles against her sleeve in a faux-punch. “And I would, but it’s not exactly something I can control. I’m white and I haven’t seen full sunlight since September.” Not to mention that I was feeling less than ready to shop for a Winter Formal outfit and intensely less than ready to see Sebastian in the flesh.
Tess rolled her eyes. She was in full-on city gear: leather pants, long black trench coat, and lipstick the purpley-red color of a day-old bruise. She looked awesome. And I, based on a quick glance in the greasy train window, looked scared. Weird. And more than a little pale.
“You know what I
mean,” Tess said. “We have a very exciting day of fancy-dance-outfit shopping ahead of us. And then a very exciting night of—” The train car lurched forward, squealed, and then slammed to a stop.
“Penn Station,” the conductor said.
“This is us,” Tess said, and got to her feet, as if there was even the possibility of further stops on a one-way commuter train between Trenton, where we’d transferred from the SEPTA train from Philadelphia, and New York. Somehow, she’d managed to pack all of her overnight essentials into a small messenger bag slung on her hip. Not having a small messenger bag, I had to bring a WPHL tote bag, which wasn’t exactly the wieldiest thing to navigate up to the subway level of the world’s busiest train station. I followed Tess to a wall map as what felt like the entire population of New York City streamed past us.
“Okay, so we just have to take the A, C, or E down to the L and then we can hit the East Village,” Tess said. “I need something to wear to this dance, and the Plymouth Meeting Mall isn’t going to cut it, so while we’re there I want to investigate some vintage stores. Then we can just hop back on the train at Union Square and get to Bethany’s place.”
“Sure,” I said. Tess was one of those people who, despite never having lived in New York, seemed to know the names, locations, and characters of all the neighborhoods in the city. As for me, I’d seen Times Square once and kind of hated it.
The first subway car we got onto was way warmer than it needed to be, and the second was practically an oven. I loosened my scarf to let out some body heat.
“So, did you bring anything else to wear, or is that it?”
“This is it, I guess,” I said. Under my peacoat, I had on a black, tunic-type top with three-quarter-length sleeves and the one pair of jeans that didn’t gap at the back when I sat down. I’d even worn a pair of peacock-feather earrings my aunt had given me the day before as an early Christmas present, which I thought looked pretty good against my hair.
“Mm.” Tess lifted her eyebrows. “Well, good thing we’re going shopping.”
“Hey,” I said, but before I could adequately berate her for slighting what I thought was a pretty cool, New York–y outfit, she was up and slipping out the doors onto a platform and toward the exit stairs.
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