Dr. Flores seems to be waiting for him to say something, so he says, “Um, thanks. That’s cool. Thanks.”
“Do we need to have an assembly?”
Aaron freezes. An assembly? On him? Being depressed? What? Why?
“Um, I’m okay, thanks.”
Dr. Flores frowns. “You can tell me. If there’s problematic behavior in terms of LGBTQIA+ issues and we need to do something on sensitivity, on being an ally, we’ll do it. We’ll preempt tomorrow’s assembly.”
“Um. I don’t know?” Aaron says, because he really doesn’t. “Probably not?”
“I actually already have a speaker, so. I think maybe we should. Surely there’s something problematic going on, and you know we have a zero-tolerance policy for harassing LGBTQIA+ people here. You know that, right?”
This is the most I’ve been harassed about my sexuality ever, Aaron thinks, but he swallows down a smile and tries to match Dr. Flores’s serious expression.
“Honestly? I think this is like garden-variety sadness or whatever. Depression. I mean, I think this school is great vis-à-vis my gayness. Really, truly. No problem. No assembly required.”
Dr. Flores nods, and his eyes go distant and his ultra-white smile dims somewhat, and Aaron thinks, Outstanding. I have disappointed someone because I haven’t been bullied for being gay.
Winnie’s makeup isn’t quite right. She put it on during what felt like an out-of-body experience. She’s out of bed because of Britt, and because normalcy is everything right now for her daughter. But the biggest part of her is still in bed, and will be in bed, for a long time. Forever, maybe.
Forever in bed sounds about right at this point.
“Yogurt or an egg?” she asks Britt, who is Candy Crushing while sitting at the breakfast nook.
Britt says, “Okay.”
The part of Winnie that isn’t a zombie wants to take the phone from Britt, pull it out of her hands, and yell, “It’s okay to have feelings! It’s okay to let them out!”
The part of Winnie that is a zombie takes okay to mean yogurt, because yogurt is easier. She scoops out a dollop of yogurt. She brings the bowl over to the table and Britt ignores it, continuing to play her game.
“Do you have any questions, Britt?”
Britt doesn’t respond.
So Winnie keeps Britt silent company until it’s time for Britt to go downstairs for the bus, and she gives her daughter a tight hug, which Britt doesn’t return, and then Winnie trudges to her bedroom, disrobing as she walks, and she gets in bed, and she sets an alarm for thirty minutes before Britt will be back from school.
So she can pick up her clothes from the hallway, and reapply her makeup, and throw out the yogurt, and make everything look okay again.
And before she goes to bed, she uses every last bit of her remaining juice to text her husband.
She can’t help but think about how much she’d rather be texting Tillie instead.
Aaron gets looks in the hallway. Lots of looks. They vary, from the super sympathetic to the borderline pathetic. Dr. Sengupta pulls him out of the classroom right before physics to ask him if he thinks he’ll be okay this time.
No. I’m back in school because I find catatonia in the physics classroom refreshingly droll. I hope to do it again very soon.
“I promise,” he says, and Sengupta gives him that look that says, I’d like to believe you, but I really don’t. It is unpleasant.
At lunch he sits with Wylie Jones and Marissa Jones, no relation—hopefully. They are band geeks in love, and he wonders what happens if two allegedly unrelated people with the same name get married. Do they go Jones-Jones? A single Jones but for the rest of their lives they have to deal with the fact that no one took anyone’s name? There has to be some drawback to that situation. He, for instance, would not date another Boroff and potentially become Aaron Boroff-Boroff. Aaron considers Marissa and Wylie the kind of people he’d be friends with if he were to have actual friends.
“How are you?” Marissa asks, becoming the thirty-trillionth person to ask him that same question.
He surprises himself by answering the question honestly. He doesn’t know why, exactly. Maybe he’s tired of fronting.
“Exhausted,” he says.
“Exhausted?” she asks.
“Today is an exercise in humiliation,” he says.
Marissa and Wylie share the kind of look that people who have been intimate share with each other. It makes Aaron want to punch them both in the face with something large.
“Humiliation,” Marissa echoes. She’d make a terrific background singer if they were to assemble a ’60s doo-wop band or something, Aaron thinks.
“Generally, people pay just about no attention to me, and today I’m like a roadside attraction at a suicide fair.”
Another look between Marissa and Wylie, and Aaron’s chest gets tight. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m just. It’s really nice that people care but it’s all a little overwhelming, I guess.”
“I get that,” Wylie says, and Marissa, because she’d be a fantastic background vocalist, repeats, “I get that.”
“A lot of us were really worried about you,” Marissa adds.
Aaron opens his mouth to say something, but there are no words. Until there are. “Um. Really? I didn’t really think …”
“What?” Marissa asks, and, sweetly, she comes and sits next to him, so close he can smell her perfume. It smells like the beach and money.
“I just don’t feel like … I have friends, but. Not anyone close.”
Wylie and Marissa share another look.
Aaron says, “Permission to speak freely. Seriously. Like, what do people think of me?”
A fourth look. “People like you,” Marissa says. “There’s no one who doesn’t like you. It’s just—”
A fifth look. “What?” Aaron asks. “Please. I really am curious.”
“You don’t really let anyone in. You’re a good singer and actor and all that, but it’s like no one really knows what makes you tick or anything. Offstage, I mean. You’re like Blank Slate Kid. If there’s anyone in our grade who is more blank slate than you, I don’t know who they are.”
“Wow,” Aaron says, genuinely pleased to be hearing this information. “Thank you, Marissa. This is actually helpful to hear. I want to be less blank.”
“Good!” she says, almost too enthusiastically.
“But, like, my songs suck, right?”
“I love your songs!” Marissa says. “Oh my god! What was that one you did at the talent show before winter break?”
“ ‘For You I Would Lie’?”
“How does that one go?”
Aaron’s eyes go up and to the left. It’s hard, because it doesn’t really have a chorus, that one. “ ‘Your picture is in my mind’? ‘Careful not to put it on my wall’?”
There’s no recognition, but she keeps staring at him, like she wants him to continue. He blushes a bit, because it’s weird to recite your own lyrics to someone in the cafeteria. But he goes on, focusing in on a part that might be more memorable or catchy.
“ ‘Stay in my viewing room, my fantasy. Wanna hear your voice from inside of me’?”
“Maybe …” she says skeptically.
“ ‘Even though it sounds very funny, even though you could never care for me, I want you next to me so … that I’d kiss you, head to toe’?”
Her eyes light up! “Yes! Oh my god, Aaron.” She closes her eyes. “And then it’s like, ‘I’m lying, but I would lie for you’?”
Now it’s Aaron’s turn to illuminate. He feels it inside his rib cage, like a warm light, spreading.
“ ‘Okay, that was a lie, but for you I would lie, any day.’ ”
“Yes! Oh my god. I was totally into that. It’s catchy. You’re so talented. I like that your voice isn’t like a pretty-boy Troye Sivan voice. It’s so much more … real, gritty. I was talking about that for days after.”
“That’s true,” Wylie says, glancing at her.
“She wouldn’t shut up about it. I got, like, a smidge jealous.”
Aaron holds his breath, hoping that it will allow his face not to go beet red. “Thanks,” he says, but really he feels like he could fly out of the cafeteria, like his feet could not touch the ground ever again.
“Who was that about?” she asks, a smirk crossing her face. “I am so all about the m-for-m romance. You can tell me. I mean. Please. Tell me!”
He lowers his chin. “Honestly?”
“Yes!”
“No one.”
“What?”
“No one. It’s about a fantasy. It’s about that feeling of wanting something. Someone, I guess I mean. I wrote it about no one?”
“Wow,” she says, and Wylie nods and says, “Cool.”
“So there’s no one you stan for?”
“Well, Evan Hanson, obviously,” he says before he can stop the words from coming out of his mouth. And then the blushing again.
“What? Get out! Evan is really, really, really cute. Is he gay?” She whispers that last part.
“Well, probably not, but. We did have like the best silent cab ride ever. Last fall.”
She laughs. “Oh my god, I am loving you and Evan so much. I ship you so hard.”
“Me too, clearly,” Aaron says.
They decide to have lunch again the next day, and Aaron does almost float out of the lunchroom. It seems so easy. Almost too easy. How did he not know how much a conversation with nice people could mean to him? Or the song. And he realizes: This is the thing. It’s happening. It was one thing when his dad liked his music. Another to know that someone was loving his song and he didn’t even know it. All this time. He almost died over this. It’s like, how could that happen?
And how could Tillie … He doesn’t know why she did what she did, but he wonders if a simple conversation would have made her feel like life was worth living.
He’ll never know, though. Because she died. And there’s no coming back from that.
The thought makes Aaron shudder. Hard.
Frank’s eyes slowly open when he feels the not-so-gentle nudge on his shoulder.
“Mr. Stanley? You seem to have fallen asleep on the floor.”
The voice belongs to a woman with a European accent of some sort. He grunts in response.
“Are you certain you would like me to refill the bar? It seems as though you may want to give your body a rest.”
Frank looks up at her. He wants someone to take him where he belongs. To make it all go away, be better. To bathe him, clean him up, and fix this thing that’s happened. Fix it so he doesn’t have to, because it’s unfixable.
She lifts him up, and, aware that he’s utterly disgusting—unshowered, soaked in a week’s worth of booze—he averts his eyes.
“Will you take me to the shower?” he asks.
It turns out she will not.
The afternoon of Amir’s third and final day of suspension, he and his mother go to Central Park and race model sailboats.
It’s so far from something they’ve ever done, but then again, so is his mom playing hooky. So is her being fun. His mom has always been a great provider and a whiz at keeping Amir on track, but playing? Almost never.
But then again, nothing’s been remotely normal since Tillie’s suicide. It still hurts, like a blade in the center of his back that keeps twisting. But ever since he told his mom, her love and support have definitely helped ease the horrible ache.
“Mine won’t turn,” his mother shouts as she jerks the remote control hard to the left, as if moving the entire console will move her boat.
“What do you mean? You’re doing circles,” he says.
“What? No … Oh, shit,” she says, laughing. “I thought I was the blue one!”
Amir laughs back and puts his head on her shoulder. “Oh, Mom,” he says. “You probably won’t ever do this professionally.”
She puts her head on top of his, and Amir wants to memorize this feeling. This unconditional love. It’s the most ironic thing ever, that him getting suspended from school has brought them closer. In a million years he could not have imagined this.
“Can I be honest with you?” his mom asks. He hears the words vibrate in his head as she says them.
“Sure.”
“Truth is, I’m relieved. You’re so secretive, and I think I wondered if you were gay. I’m so sorry about your friend, your ex. I really am, Amir. But honestly I’m glad to know you had a girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
“They say these things run in families, and you know, Aunt Nava. Who is a perfectly fine person, to tell the truth. Just so you don’t think I’m a monster. I just think she needs to grow up and stop—anyway. Not important. And anyway, you’re not gay, so.”
He moves his head in a way that makes her pick her head up so that he can, too. He stares out at the model boats, the placid water. His heart feels heavy, and he knows. He just knows.
As much as this might end this beautiful moment, he can’t—not.
And it won’t change anything. His mom is a lot of things—driven, typically no-nonsense. But also she’s a great mom. He’s been being dramatic, and he knows it, and now, out of nowhere, he’ll find out what happens next. Because, oh god. It’s happening.
“But I am,” he says, not turning his face toward hers.
She laughs. “You are what?”
He whispers, “Gay.”
The air changes. Like he can feel it. The afternoon, which had stretched out around them like pillows, like softness, hardens. A steep intake of air marks it.
His mother stands. He doesn’t look at her. It’s like he can’t, but he can feel the judgment.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Amir,” she says.
Then she walks off. Actually walks away from him. And Amir sits on the concrete bench with the two remote controls, trying to ignore the little part of himself that feels like it was just assaulted.
“So … your first day back at school,” Dr. Laudner says as Aaron parks himself in his usual cushy chair.
“Yes,” Aaron says. “My first day back.”
“And the verdict?”
“Total confessional. I feel like I should have brought a rosary or something. And I’m half Jewish, so …”
Dr. Laudner laughs. Aaron laughs. He’s feeling—it’s hard to explain, really. Just a week ago he was lower than low, and one well-placed compliment about his music and he feels like he can’t even imagine his life ending, or wanting it to. Is this that Petralor drug? It doesn’t feel connected, like he doesn’t get how a drug could change him so much, but a compliment? That, either. It’s magic, and whatever it is, he should bottle it and sell it. World peace would be attained in like a half a minute, and he’d become a bazillionaire.
“Should we even—yes, we should. Take the test, please. I want to see what you score.”
Aaron looks at the form when Dr. Laudner hands it to him and it just looks different to him. Like he can barely remember how it was, just five days ago.
The truth is that he’s on this medicine, and the clouds are lifting. And even if he can’t feel the connection, it has to be—it’s a little uncanny, really. All his life, he’s been living under a cloud without knowing it. The thing in his stomach, that thing that was always rolled tight in a horrible ball of pain, isn’t normal. Not everyone has that. And it’s not like he really thought everyone did; it’s more like he never noticed that it existed in the first place. It was just how things were. And all this time, it was a sickness? And yeah, he’d heard his dad talk about depression, plenty. But it always seemed like he was listening to something theoretical, not real, and certainly not inside him.
Now he gets it, and he feels himself about ninety percent out of it, and it’s a little goddamn difficult not to cry out of gratitude, because his life! He’s going to have a life! And it’s not all going to hurt!
Dr. Laudner smiles at him and says, “I see it, you know.”
And he doesn’t have to ask him wh
at he means. Because he knows. He sees it, too.
He watches the doctor score the test this time, staring into his eyes as he marks away, filled with this tender anticipation in his belly.
The doctor looks up, smiling, and hands him back the test.
On top is the score: nineteen.
“Borderline depression,” he says. “That’s amazing, Aaron. Utterly amazing. Five days. You’re doing great … This is a long journey we’re on, but I must say … we’re off and running!”
And yeah, it’s hard for him not to feel a little proud about that.
Walking down West End Avenue after the appointment, Aaron finds himself enjoying the old-timeyness of the buildings and their awnings. The buildings on West End are like unassuming acquaintances from middle school who don’t ask much of you. Internally he salutes each one he passes and he absentmindedly plays the game where he can’t step on any lines in the pavement. He finds himself giggling a little. He’d never in a million years have guessed he’d feel good again. And yeah. He feels good! He feels … new! He finds himself smiling at passersby and thinking a good thought for each of them. And for the yellow cabs blaring by. And for the guy trying to park his black Tesla in a too-small spot, and for the line of cars behind him, honking incessantly, as if that will make him go faster. The sounds of New York life.
All his life everything’s been so hard. And in actuality it’s so easy! So much of life is how you approach it, he realizes as he passes Eighty-Third Street, and for so long he’s been shackled to these beliefs. That he’s lesser. That he’s no good. That he’s unlovable. And suddenly the veil has been lifted, and he sees behind the curtain, and it’s good! He’s not lesser! He’s totally good! He’s absolutely lovable, and some day, the right guy—or who knows, the right girl, maybe, gotta keep the options open—will show up, and he’ll be ready, and he’ll treat them so well, and they’ll love him for exactly who he is. He’ll have a Wylie or a Marissa to share looks with. He’ll tell them his innermost secrets, and they’ll divulge theirs, and the feeling will be so, so good, and oh my God. It’s so sunny today! The sun and the glistening of the sidewalks on West End and he actually twirls on the street out of goddamn gratitude for whatever this feeling is. Because he loves loves loves it! So much!
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