The Gatekeepers

by Jen Lancaster

  Simone and I planned to study together, but we’ve yet to crack a book. Fine by me. What’s the hurry, right? Like Shakespeare said, “Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.” In a month, it’s gonna be forty degrees and raining sideways and then I’ll be the only idiot venturing outside. I figure we should enjoy the weather together while we can. Game of Thrones called it—winter is always coming here.

  “Magic hour?” Simone asks. She opens a Coke and takes a huge sip. The bubbles cause her to burp. Her eyes get real wide, like she’s surprised herself, and then she laughs. “Pardon me!”

  I appreciate that she’s not mortified, like it’s not a big deal, so I don’t even acknowledge it, instead explaining, “Magic hour’s a cinematography term. Means the time after dawn or before sunset when the whole sky turns a real smooth, soft orange because of the angle of the sun. Directors go apeshit for it. Sometimes they blow their budgets just to capture it on film, ’cause it’s worth it. At this time of day, the sun’s rays are still bright but less intense, you know? All dissipated and everything has, like, an ethereal glow. Picture every Nancy Meyers movie your mom has ever watched—boom, magic hour.”

  Simone’s face lights up with recognition. “Oh, yeah, ’course. Mum calls it ‘golden hour.’ This time of day always inspires her to take out her own camera. Reminds me of Rome, really. The whole country’s practically swimming in gilded light, just so diffused and gorgeous, but Rome takes it to a whole new level. During the magic hour, the sky becomes a burnt sienna wash, covering everything with its brilliance. The Tiber River always looks like it’s on fire.”

  “Sounds badass.”

  Her voice takes on a dreamy quality. “More like magnificent. Then, as the sun sets, the sky turns from copper then to rose pink before morphing into lavender. All the colors are gradient and they reflect off the pale old alabaster buildings. The whole thing is almost too beautiful to comprehend, like a box of Crayons that’s melted together.” She stretches like a cat and sighs contentedly before adding, “Rome’s one of my most favorite places. Ever been?”

  “To Italy?” I clarify.

  Simone nods and her indigo bangs fall in her face. I sorta want to brush them back.

  “Nah. We’ve made plans before, but one of the ’rents always has to cancel at the last minute. Work stuff.”

  “Damn shame, eh?”

  I shrug. “Tell me about it.”

  We had to bail on our most recent European vacay because my mom’s company was hit with a class-action suit and everyone in her department bitch-panicked. My parents felt bad and I got a boss Vespa out of it, but I’d rather have just rented one and been with them while we navigated the continent as a fam.

  She puts a tentative hand on my shoulder and gives it a little squeeze. “No worries, you’ll get there.”

  I feel good when I’m with Simone, like I have a buzz, even though I’m stone sober today. She gets me. Don’t consider myself a big player or anything, but more than a few girls have been into me, especially back when I was on the lacrosse team. Was real flattering. I’d hook up with one of them and we’d vibe and it would be cool for a couple of weeks. But, like, every time, whatever girl it was would eventually start in with the pointed suggestions, all, “Maybe lose the cargo shorts?” or “The dreds are super cute, but you would look sooooo much more like Ryan Lewis with a haircut.”

  Then that would be it for me.

  Done.

  I’m not a fixer-upper, you know? Like one of those ranch houses people snap up on the cheap, slap on some paint, and then sell at a huge profit? If someone genuinely digs me, then they don’t think I should change to fit into some random societal construct. Not cool to suggest it, either. I’d rather be alone.

  That’s when I notice Simone’s staring at my dreds. Aw, man, she’s not going to try to tweak me, too? Almost subconsciously, I raise my hands to my hair, like I’m trying to protect it.

  “I brought something for you. Have you ever considered...” She pauses as if to gather her thoughts, or maybe courage.

  Well, Simone, I think, this was fun while it lasted.

  She says, “This might be weird and you’re welcome to say no, but I’ve been carrying around these Hindu prayer beads that I think would look amazing strung on the tips of your hair. Wanna look at them?”

  Pretty sure my smile in response is more golden than magic hour.

  * * *

  “I could have a brilliant career ahead of me in the hairdressing arts,” Simone says, all pleased with the job she’s done.

  I nod, then turn my head right and left, feeling the weight of the beads. Makes me happy that they’re special to her and that they came from the other side of the world. She said she’d picked them up in an open-air market in sub-Saharan Africa and everyone would travel from miles around to shop there. Vendors would set up their stalls on the dirt, stacking up their wares, the market’s air thick with the smoke of cooking fires, which helped repel the flies, and the African moms would do everything with their babies strapped to their backs with brightly colored strips of cloth. She described the scene so vividly that I itched to capture it on film.

  Bottom line, I’m inspired when I’m with Simone. And I liked the warmth that radiated to my back from her legs while I leaned into her as she sat on the riser behind me, stringing my beads while telling stories about her travels. Felt real natural. Comfortable as an old habit, but still exciting.

  These beads are more than just an accessory; they’re proof that she sees me as I see myself. I’m not afraid she’s gonna show up at my house next week with a package from Vineyard Vines, saying how “totes adorbs” some pink collared shirt might look on me.

  She likes me for me.

  “These are the best,” I say, pinching one between my thumb and forefinger before letting it fall. I scoot back up onto the riser to sit beside her.

  “Right?” she agrees, beaming.

  “You’re the best,” I add.

  At this, she leans in closer, like she’s feeling my vibe. I’m stoked at how she doesn’t find me wanting, not a renovation project, not a Before picture. I was taking my time with her, afraid of, I don’t know, maybe the inevitable disappointment? But I trust her now and I’m ready to make a move. Like Rousseau says, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

  Let’s do this.

  I angle in for the kiss, quiet and deliberate-like because our eye contact is so intense. I move in excruciatingly slow, building anticipation. If our lives were a feature film, this is when the score would swell as our faces come together. I wanted the moment to be right and it finally is. Her breath is sweet from the Coke, mingling with mine as we exhale at the same time. But right before our lips come in for a landing, the riser we’re sitting on shakes briefly but violently.

  “What the bloody hell?” Simone says, her head snapping up, the moment broken. We look over to see Mallory Goodman barreling up the bleachers.

  Figures.

  I say, “Mallory’s always out here.”

  “You know her?”

  I nod, delighting in how the beads clack with the motion, like my own personal castanets. Every time they bang together, I’ll think of Simone and this, the beginning of the beginning. “Sure,” I say. “I’ve known Mal forever.”

  “Mal...” Simone rolls the nickname around on her tongue, like she’s trying to determine if she enjoys the flavor, then finds it wanting. “You’re friends, then?”

  She almost sounds jealous, but we were never like that and I’m quick to convince her. “Back when we were kids.”

  Simone’s shoulders, which had inched up around her ears, ease down. Her reaction is confirmation that we’re feeling the same thing. This gives me a surge of dopamine, a better high than any street narcotic.

  I explain, “Our parents all grew up in North Shore and th
ey went to school together so everyone’s known everyone forever. Our folks used to hang out so I spent a lot of time with her family. Her brother Holden’s a real Zen dude.”

  “The footballer?”

  “That’s Theo. He’s okay, even if he’s kind of a meathead, which is way less interesting. He’s pretty much eat, sleep, football, repeat. Holden’s my favorite. He’s older, out of college. When I was a kid, he’d talk about ‘escaping the Matrix,’ and he’s in the Peace Corps now, so I guess he did.”

  Holden used to say this place wasn’t reality, but he didn’t start to hate North Shore until one of his friends shot himself with his father’s hunting rifle. His buddy was wait-listed by Brown and figured since his life was over anyway...

  God, that was sad.

  I was just a kid, but I remember it clearly, maybe because it marked the beginning of a real bad trend around here. Used to think I was so far removed from suicide, because it happened only with kids who were way older. But after Paul this summer, and then Macey Lund, I realize that we’re the older kids now.

  I wish that I hadn’t grown apart from Paul when we hit junior high, but we didn’t have much in common outside of a similar address. But everyone in this ’hood splintered. With Paul, he dug being onstage and I was into science and sports. Our interests didn’t overlap at all. Still, I have to wonder...if we’d stayed close, would things have been different?

  Holden was messed up for a long while after his friend died. I get that; I do. Didn’t really pull himself together until he decided the best way to honor his friend’s life was through service to others. I wonder if he wasn’t on the right track.

  “Are your families all still tight?” Simone asks, snapping me out of my reverie.

  “Nope, they had a falling-out.”

  Her eyes twinkle. “Ooh, that sounds rather gossipy. Do tell.”

  I wave her off. “You’d assume it was standard old people stuff, like someone shaved a few too many strokes off their short game. But what really happened was a big fight about academic standards. There was some scandal about test scores or something and part of the town believed one thing, and the other part felt a different way. What started off as a conversation got ugly fast one night over dinner and then that was it. Finito.”

  What’s twisted is, I always assumed that being grown up meant you didn’t get bogged down in petty high school bullshit. Don’t think that’s true, though. Our folks were buds, then they weren’t. They didn’t grow apart, they were just done all of a sudden, like, game over. My mom was pissed, but I never caught the whole story. End result is, we don’t do holidays with the Goodmans anymore, which is a bummer. Then again, Holden doesn’t come home so I’m probably not missing much. What’s weird is that for most of my life they were my extended family, until they weren’t.

  Simone begins fiddling with her bracelets. “Was Mallory...” She grasps for the right word to end her sentence, but I get what she means.

  “Was Mallory always like that?” I volunteer, watching her pound up the bleachers a few meters away from us, her face set in deep concentration, the muscles of her legs cut like the Kenyan guy who won the Chicago marathon last year. “Like, intense and hardcore and—”

  “Hungry?” she offers.

  “Ha. Negative. She used to be fun.”

  Simone’s mouth puckers into a lemon-twist smile as she moves her woven leather cuff from one wrist to the other. I stop myself from touching the tender patch of bare skin exposed after she’s swapped the cuff. “Fun. That’s difficult to picture.”

  I’m gonna say it; the jealousy is real cute on her. But I don’t want to perpetrate competition or a girl fight. I’m not one to play games. “I said used to be. She’s definitely changed, not for the better.”

  “What happened?”

  I examine the end of one of my dreds while I think about it. “Nothing real specific.” I rack my brain, because that’s a bogus answer. “Well. Maybe not. Okay, so, she was hanging out in my room one night when her family was over for a party—this is a few years ago. We were sophomores?”

  “You’re asking me if you were a sophomore?”

  I laugh. “No. We were definitely sophomores. Anyway, she’d never seen The Breakfast Club, which, criminal, so we started watching it.”

  “God, I love that film.” Simone grabs her hands and clasps them to her chest, kind of like she’s hugging herself.

  Her reaction to the mention of John Hughes’s work? That’s a sign. He used to live up here, too. Never knew him personally, but my folks met him a few times. They say he was everything I’d hoped he would have been. His untimely passing was tragic on so many levels.

  I go, “Who doesn’t love them some J-Hu? That’s what I call him in my head ’cause I feel a kinship. Oh, know what else I love? Opening a movie with a crawl—you know, that text graphic where you read the backstory? Like in Star Wars IV, A New Hope, which was the first in the theaters about forty years ago, but obviously not the first part of the story. George Lucas’s staying power is amazing when you consider—”

  “What about Mallory, now?” she prompts, trying to bring me back to this galaxy and not the one far, far away.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember she got pissed off about halfway through and I was all, ‘What’s up?’ She goes, ‘This movie is fucking bullshit,’ which, shocker. She wasn’t usually one to swear. Also, even the most pretentious film critics agree it’s his best work. So I’m like, ‘Why is it bullshit?’ She goes, ‘Because it’s not accurate. Maybe back in John Hughes’s time, everyone was all about being one thing—the brain OR the jock OR the princess—but now? No. No way. Now, it’s like people expect us to be all of these things at the same time and it’s just so fucking hard.’”

  Simone’s face softens and she stops fiddling with her jewelry. “That’s truly depressing.”

  “Right? Like major insight into her world. Anyway, after that night, we were less tight. She got kinda bitchy with me, cold, ignoring me in the halls and stuff, especially once she started getting serious with Liam, and then our families stopped hanging out. I was like, whatever. Haven’t really talked since then.”

  “Not at all?” she asks.

  “Nope.”

  Was she embarrassed for letting her guard down around me? We’d swiped a couple bottles of wine and I always say a drunk man tells no lies. Maybe I accidentally peeked behind the curtain all Wizard of Oz–style and that made her mad? Maybe she freaked out that she’d shown me too much of her soul or something, suddenly all naked and exposed like that part of Simone’s wrist where I can see the pale blue veins under the surface of her skin. Mallory’s not the kind of chick who gets off on allowing you to see her vulnerabilities, or anything less than Stepford-perfection.

  Simone watches Mallory blow past us with nary a glance in our direction. “Certainly in her own world right now, isn’t she?”

  I reply, “Yeah, I’ve seen her run the stairs a million times—I promise you we’re invisible. You know, if I were making a movie about her life, I’d open with a black screen and all you’d hear is her thumping and heavy breathing from running the bleachers. Maybe there’d be a grunt here and there. I’d let it go for a minute or two and people would be like, ‘Sex scene!’ but, no. I hate when directors start a movie or TV show like that, by the way. Too cliché. I’m all, stop it with that amateur shit. Anyway, the big twist would be to see that she’s not gettin’ down, that there’s no pleasure there. Instead, she’s torturing herself, and that would show the audience so much about who that character is.”

  She bites her bottom lip before saying, “You see everything as it would play out on film, don’t you? My mum’s just like that.”

  I pull back and look at her sideways. “Whoa, it’s super hot when you tell me I remind you of your mom.”

  She gives me a shove and I tickle her in return. She
shrieks with laughter and says, “Stop! No! I’ll wee myself. Too ticklish! Can’t do it! Swear to God, I’ll piss all over the place.”

  I pause. “So what you’re telling me is I’m like your mom and you’re going to pee? Oh, you’re pushing every one of my erotic buttons. Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought it would happen to me, but I was hanging out with this girl who—”

  Before I can complete my thought, I spot a guy in a Lou Malnati’s shirt at the bottom of the bleachers so I excuse myself and head down to grab our pie. Can’t study hungry, right?

  I tell Simone, “Hold that thought, my daughter, be right back.”

  I amble down to the field and then give my favorite delivery driver a half-bro hug. Sometimes I feel like I see him more often than my pops. “S’up Rico?”

  Rico slaps me on the back. “Owen! Good to see you. Double pineapple, pepperoni, and ricotta? Didn’t even have to look at the name on the order to know it was you.”

  I shrug. “I’m a creature of habit.” Sure, there are lots of other tasty combos, but this one is the best. Trust me, I’ve tried ’em all. We bullshit for another minute or two before I head back up with the pie.

  Simone clutches her stomach.

  I ask, “You hungry or you guarding the fortress against marauding ticklers?”

  “Starved. Absolutely famished. Christ on a bike, that smells amazing.”

  I reply, “See? Who says I don’t know how to show my woman a good time?”

  Simone peers up at me from behind her bangs. “I’m your woman, then?”

  Emboldened, I say, “You tell me.”

  She flushes and her hands fly up to her cheeks, which are bright pink. She doesn’t actually consent, but I feel like this is a definitive answer. Maybe we’ll become a thing and we’ll inspire a one-name couple moniker, like Bennifer. They’d call us Simowen, which sounds all badass and exotic, with beaches and tropical birds. It’s kinda perfect.