Final Draft

by Riley Redgate

  “Look,” Hannah said. “I had a lot of those same thoughts freshman year. I had no friends in middle school. I mean, none. So getting close with you three, and then with Ethan and the others, and then dating—all of it felt so invasive, like I had to give up this power I used to have, back when I could call all the shots and be distant and not give a shit.”

  “Caring sucks,” Laila said.

  “For real,” Hannah said. “But . . . I don’t know, the payoff is such a rush. One day I spend with you guys is better than my entire middle school life. Even when we’re fighting. So, yeah, you give up control and you take your risks and there’s the likelihood of suffering.”

  Laila half-smiled. “Yeah.” She rubbed one of her eyebrows over and over, the soft hair rising and flattening beneath the pad of her index finger. “I just felt hollow when I read that note. Not even hurt so much as totally taken aback. I mean, I guess I’m realizing I don’t even know my own face. Know what I mean? I look in a mirror and see what changes. If I get a spot or a bruise. Otherwise, I have no concept of the way I look.”

  “Do you care what Samuel Marquez thinks?” Hannah asked.

  “No. Yes.” Laila leaned back. One of the rivets on the bench knuckled against her spine. “I thought so. I wanted him so bad for three years, and he lied to me, and he was using me, and all that sucks, but mostly I think I’m disappointed that he was nothing like I imagined he would be. I need to stop doing that. Making people up.”

  “Do you care what I think?” said Hannah.

  Laila examined the uneven paint on the bench planks, so many coats of so many colors that beneath the chips, she could see hair-thin layers of white, pink, dark green, gray. “Yes,” Laila said, and she felt like she’d never made a bigger understatement.

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “I’m glad it didn’t work out. You and him.”

  They were looking at each other now. There was a smudge of something grayish and mineral against Hannah’s temple, a touch of grime from the warehouse. She had a split in her lower lip; they were always chapped.

  “Because I’m selfish,” Hannah said. Laila couldn’t remember ever hearing Hannah’s voice so careful, so strained.

  There was a person’s width between them. Laila remembered the footsteps in the warehouse stairwell, and her pulse drummed along with the erratic rhythm. This, here, sitting in silence, was the risk. They could stand, finish the gravel path, emerge back into the city, joke over ice cream until Laila’s curfew. Or they could stay.

  “How was kissing Sebastian?” Hannah asked, and Laila experienced the uncomfortable jolt of knowing, definitively, that they were thinking the same thing.

  “It was okay,” Laila managed.

  “Weird. I’ve heard guys are supposed to be gross and nervous. Lots of tongue, so say the rumors, and by ‘the rumors,’ I mean Bridget.”

  “He was—no tongue excess. He was fine. But I also have zero reference points.”

  “Fair.”

  They weren’t far from the park’s exit. One of the gates had come free of its stanchion, and it was half-closed and creaking. A net of ivy that hadn’t let its spears peek through yet wrapped around two brick columns. The noise of the bars seemed isolated to the streets beyond, where whoops and bass rang as if inside a fishbowl.

  “Do you want one?” Hannah said.

  “Do I . . .”

  “A reference point.”

  The night contracted, suddenly darker and closer. Laila’s focus couldn’t settle. Hannah’s wrist peeked out from her army jacket, wrapped in a golden watch. Her hair had been bleached so many times that sometimes chalky threads would flake off and stick, as they did now, to her earlobes and neck. Laila heard more than felt the wind shift and suddenly caught the scent of something burning: Hannah’s perfume, or maybe cologne. Hannah didn’t hug, only ever put up with hugs from Leo, but Laila knew that scent anyway. Laila thought of the crown of Hannah’s head against her thigh as the halo of afterglow simmered around a recently extinguished television, Hannah’s hand bound around her forearm at the bottom of the warehouse steps, Hannah’s foot against her calf upon her bed.

  Laila waited for her to break, anticipating the grin that always followed Hannah’s fake flirtations with Felix and Leo, wondering how she would laugh this one off. She didn’t.

  “Yeah,” Laila said.

  Hannah slid over haltingly until they were side by side. She leaned up and hesitated, her lips so close that Laila could feel a slow, careful breath loosed against her skin, as warm as the evening. The tip of Hannah’s nose grazed Laila’s cheek. The tiny, gentle piece of sensation sliced in like a razor. Laila closed her eyes. She had to focus on the dark, the stillness—her systems were going so fast, neurons in overload, heart in breakneck pursuit of something.

  Hannah’s lips pressed to Laila’s jaw. Her mouth was rough and warm, and Laila’s eyes drew open, her gaze fixed on a willow tree on the opposite side of the path. Hannah’s fingertips shook over the shell of Laila’s ear, sank into the thick frizz of her hair, and Hannah slid a leg over Laila’s lap until her knees met bench on either side, and Laila couldn’t see the trees anymore, because Hannah’s nose and eyes and the miniature channel pressed into her upper lip were suddenly the center of the known universe, the point around which Laila had been orbiting for longer than she’d realized.

  —

  The apartment is one-eighth mine. The infrastructure greets me when I walk in. “Hello, Eden,” the voice in the ceiling tells me, as the curtains open and I am shown the brown of the Hudson River, exposed to one million points of sun glare that ricochet off Chrysler roofs and aviator sunglasses and windows of lesser skyscrapers.

  My months are December and one half of January. Bad, cheap months. Not so bad or so cheap as the second half of January plus February, which belong to Ali. I have never met Ali, but the landlord has told me that he’s considering revoking her bloc of tenancy because he has recently learned that she is artificially intelligent. When the Dismantling bill comes through Congress, he says happily, he wants to be shot of all that.

  Then, on January 6, the Epiphany, she arrives one week early.

  From: Laila Piedra

  To: Tim Madison

  Subject: stuff 3:11 PM

  * * *

  Hi Mr. Madison,

  I have a new draft for you. Here it is.

  Also, have you ever had a day that felt like it changed the trajectory of your entire life?

  Laila

  From: Tim Madison

  To: Laila Piedra

  Subject: stuff 3:18 PM

  * * *

  Dear Laila,

  That sounds like a stressful sort of day. Excepting days that I have been hit by cars, not that I can think of; why?

  I loved your last draft, and I can’t wait to see how this one tops it!

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Madison

  From: Laila Piedra

  To: Tim Madison

  Subject: stuff 3:26 PM

  * * *

  Hi Mr. Madison,

  It was a stressful day, even though I’m also ecstatic. Not getting hit by a car stressful, but still. To be honest, I’m scared to tell anyone else, but: I think Hannah and I are going to be together.

  I’m probably not thinking straight right now (lol get it), but I feel like going up to the top of my building and screaming, “Take that chance you’re scared to take,” and I know it’s freaking live-laugh-love cheesy, but I also feel like I just jumped off a mountain and started flying.

  What I’m saying is, DO IT, ASK HER OUT! haha

  Laila

  From: Tim Madison

  To: Laila Piedra

  Subject: stuff 3:34 PM

  * * *

  Dear Laila,

  I’m so very happy for both of you. Fr
om the way you speak about Hannah, it’s always been obvious you have something special.

  Significant events unearth those greeting-card emotions, don’t they? I’ll admit, in the moment of disorientation after the accident, when I wasn’t sure what had happened, the words that came to my mind weren’t Shakespeare or Plath or Milton—and I wrote my thesis on Milton! I actually thought about an insurance ad I used to see playing before every other video I watched online. (I must have been their perfect target demographic.) There was a scene of a house burning and a family watching. I think they added cheerful music to make the image less sordid—they turned it into a joke somehow. At the end of the video, a banner scrolls across the screen that says, “We know what all this means to you.” That was what I was thinking after I was hit! Somebody’s tagline.

  I will very tentatively consider asking Ms. Bird to coffee. Fear historically gets the better of me. We’ll see.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Madison

  p.s. This story is my new favorite.

  15

  They were the first to their booth on Monday, and they sat on their usual side, spending inordinate amounts of time “preparing” their lunches. Laila couldn’t speak. They hadn’t spoken since Saturday, hadn’t texted, nothing. Did that mean Hannah wasn’t interested after all? But then again, Laila hadn’t said anything, either, and she wasn’t trying to avoid Hannah. It was just that everything they normally talked about—even the deeper, larger things, like Laila’s family frictions or the way that looking college freedom in the face felt like looking over the edge of a precipice—seemed miniature and temporary. Now they were something new to each other, and that defined everything else they cared about.

  To add to the disorientation, Laila’s memories of Saturday kept expanding and contracting. In yesterday afternoon’s vivid reimagining, they were kissing for an hour; this morning in physics, barely a minute. Last night, Laila had a dream about lying beneath a willow tree with Hannah—not the anemic willow trees in the park but a lush one the size of a forest, miniature trees blooming and cascading out from its thick umbrella—somewhere by a murmuring river, while Hannah drew patterns over Laila’s bare thigh, up between them, and she woke blazing with heat and shame, pushing the heel of her hand desperately between her legs.

  The cafeteria’s reverberant noise only made their agonizing silence feel more obvious. Laila wondered wildly if they’d ruined this forever. Maybe this was the time to ruin things, if they were going to be ruined, because they only had four months left, anyway.

  Four months ago, Laila had been dusting up the last of her college applications, Mr. Madison had been encouraging her through a story about interdimensional travel—a thinly veiled riff on In the After Path—and she’d still never done anything without checking it against her parents’ sensibilities. How could that time move so quickly, and how could her life before that barrier shrink so dramatically into a vacuum-sealed packet of memories? Where would she be sitting in four more months: Bowdoin or Brooklyn College, alongside Felix? Would she be remembering this weekend as the one that had taken away her best friend forever and replaced her with unnavigable territory?

  Hannah said quietly, “You look nice today.”

  Laila met her eyes. Hannah was wearing a rare dash of eyeliner. Laila’s first instinct was to reply, wide-eyed, Wait, we do compliments now?

  Hannah’s pinky finger was tapping the table in moth-quick beats, though. She was nervous, Laila realized. Nervous in a way Laila hadn’t seen her since sophomore year, when she’d accidentally broken one of her parents’ sculptures during one of their watch parties (throwing a pillow at Felix, of course).

  “Thanks, Han,” Laila said.

  Hannah’s cheeks suffused with a brilliant rose color that Laila had never seen.

  —

  Hannah (1:06 a.m.): you up?

  Laila (1:06 a.m.): Sorry! I’m not conscious at the moment! Please leave a text at the beep!

  Hannah (1:07 a.m.): VERY CLEVER but I SEE THROUGH UR RUSE

  Hannah (1:07 a.m.): so. how are you feeling

  Laila (1:07 a.m.): You mean like in general?

  Hannah (1:07 a.m.): nope

  Laila (1:07 a.m.): Didn’t think so.

  Laila (1:07 a.m.): Um, I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I feel really good. Do you?

  Hannah (1:08 a.m.): yes. very, very good. the best actually.

  Laila (1:10 a.m.): It’s just. I’ve never done this before. So I don’t really know what we do next? What do we do next

  Hannah (1:13 a.m.): oh in my experience we either 1) dive into things so quickly we crack our metaphorical skulls open on the metaphorical pool floor or 2) have a confusing text conversation about taking things slowly and then make out in the gym supply closet

  Hannah (1:14 a.m.): there’s about 8 million excruciating shades of gray in between those though

  Hannah (1:15 a.m.): take your pick

  Laila (1:15 a.m.): How did you date five girls and learn nothing?

  Hannah (1:16 a.m.): look. none of them were you. this is a fickle business

  Laila (1:16 a.m.): A fickle, yet highly profitable Fortune 500 business

  Hannah (1:17 a.m.): fuck yeah, i’ll get informatics to loop me in on the updated projections so we can explore actionable options

  Laila (1:18 a.m.): Screenshot that text to Harvard Business School and you’ll have grad school locked in before you even get next year’s roommate placement

  Hannah (1:19 a.m.): EXCUSE you, business schools will take one look at a photograph of me and throw my resume ON THE FIRE or I have NOT DONE MY AESTHETIC CORRECTLY

  Laila (1:19 a.m.): No, okay, that’s way more likely.

  Hannah (1:20 a.m.): lmao

  Hannah (1:20 a.m.): listen, I didn’t tell the guys anything. do you want to?

  Laila (1:20 a.m.): Maybe we should wait.

  Hannah (1:21 a.m.): sounds good, we are very good at waiting for things apparently

  Laila (1:21 a.m.): hehe

  Hannah (1:21 a.m.): hoho

  Laila (1:21 a.m.): Hey, I need to go to sleep. Talk more about this tomorrow? I guess?

  Hannah (1:22 a.m.): yeah. definitely. have a monster-free dream sequence

  Laila (1:22 a.m.): :)

  Hannah (1:22 a.m.): :D

  The note said, “See me.” The score was a 68. A passing grade.

  Throughout Nazarenko’s lesson on—of course!—manufacturing methods in late-1800s China, Laila pushed so much energy into repressing a smile that the corners of her mouth ached. After seventh period, she returned to room 431, but before she could ask for advice, Nazarenko beckoned her to the front of the class and offered her a brown paper bag with twisted crêpe paper handles. Inside were two books: a copy of Nazarenko’s A Flight of Roses and a tiny leather-bound journal. Laila drew out the journal, which was identical to Nazarenko’s and whose pages were blank.

  “Th-thank you,” Laila said, startled. Nadiya Nazarenko had given her a present. She felt as if she should inspect the paper for anthrax.

  “Use this to write,” said Nazarenko. “Wherever you work in this book, do not bring your cellphone. Do not bring your computer. Write down what you see, smell, hear, feel. Write down the associations you make between those sensory points and your own memories.”

  “Okay,” Laila said.

  “Your piece suffers from a nebulous sense of place. You could exaggerate this effect and create the illusion of an everyplace setting, or you could narrow down on a world that your reader can feel, but be decisive. Practice existing in your present physical space.”

  Laila nodded.

  “This is a workable draft,” said Nazarenko, and Laila’s lungs seemed to fill with helium. She held her breath and expected herself to float.

  That night, at dinner, Laila left the books stacked at her right hand, and her mother didn’t resist the bait. “Lolly, what are those?”

  “Mr. Madison’s substitute gave them to me. She wrote that book.”

  H
er father hefted the hardcover, brushing his rough palm over the canvas-textured jacket, hiss, hiss. “Hija,” he said, “this is great. You have a real author helping you with your stories?”

  “Yeah. She’s giving me special assignments. I think she actually likes my writing. I mean, she’s scary, so I can’t really tell, but she gave me that notebook to write in. She isn’t doing this for the other kids.”

  “Laila,” said her mother, “I’m so proud of you.”

  Laila felt giddy. Pride had swelled within her like a paint bubble, so bright and big that its curvature tinted the world. So this was the feeling Mr. Madison had been trying to give her. Even alongside the knowledge she could still do better, this was bliss.

  “That’s actually really cool,” said Camille, and she only sounded a little begrudging.

  Laila nearly did it then. She nearly told them about Hannah. She came so close that she could see Hannah’s blush clashing with her red hair. But this was a perfect night, full of triumph, and she didn’t want to introduce that uncertainty. Not yet. Not when her family was regarding her with not just affection, but with respect, with admiration. For the first time, Laila looked back at her parents, those tall, imposing figures, and she felt grown-up, too.

  Before first period the next day, Laila tucked the journal into her desk, pinning the covers open with the textbooks that occupied most of the metal slot. She would jot notes on the history classroom, the smell of pencil shavings and dry-erase marker, the whirr of air-conditioning. In any other class, Laila would have felt bad about being inattentive, but in general, nobody seemed less interested in Mrs. Stanton’s lectures than Mrs. Stanton.

  When the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the shuffling had settled, Mrs. Stanton said, “Good morning, class.”

  The class mumbled an unenthusiastic good morning back at her. Rather than giving them her usual disappointed sigh, though, Mrs. Stanton hesitated and tilted her face up toward the white squares of ceiling busy with black dashes. She looked at the ceiling so long that a few of the kids glanced up, too.