You Don't Live Here

by Robyn Schneider

  The server was back.

  “Here’s that flatbread you were waiting on,” he said, sliding an enormous wooden cutting board onto the table and promising our entrees would be out shortly.

  “Taste test,” Cole said, passing me a slice of flatbread and watching me take a bite.

  It was spicy and gooey and really, really good.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “My mom loves this place,” Cole admitted. “I figured it was more your speed than the Italian.”

  “Little bit,” I said.

  “Besides, I couldn’t eat a whole flatbread by myself,” Cole said.

  “I’ve seen you take down an entire basket of garlic knots and three slices of pizza,” I argued. “So nice try.”

  We lapsed into momentary silence, eating.

  “Thanks, by the way,” I said, reaching for another piece. “For bringing me here.”

  Cole looked up hopefully.

  “Does this mean you forgive me?” he asked.

  “I accept your apology,” I amended. “How about that?”

  “Just so long as you don’t think I’m a garbage person.”

  “You’re not a garbage person,” I told him. “But you’ve done some shitty things. And you need to own that. And be better.”

  “I’m trying,” Cole promised, fiddling with his napkin. “I swear.”

  “And you should talk to someone about Archer. It doesn’t have to be your parents, but, like, if there’s an adult who can help?” I said, realizing I didn’t know if there was anyone. “Like you said earlier, it’s not okay. And if your parents are having a hard time with processing what’s going on, they should know that he’s been treating people badly for a while. That it’s a pattern.”

  Cole nodded, considering. And then he looked up at me, his green eyes blazing. “Do you ever feel like high school is this huge performance, and everyone’s watching and criticizing if you get it wrong, but no one’s helping you get it right?”

  “Totally,” I admitted, shocked that someone like Cole had those thoughts too.

  “Okay, good,” he said. “Because I just—I’m feeling really lost right now. And I like you, a lot. And I was hoping you could help me.”

  He was staring at me as though I was the answer to all his problems, instead of a girl who had too many problems of her own.

  “Cole,” I said, and he could tell that it was bad news, because his expression crumpled. “I can’t. I’m not some manic pixie dream girl who can swoop in and magically fix your life. I appreciate the apology, and the dinner. But the only way I see things going between us is friends.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked, dejected.

  “One hundred percent. And you’ve got to stop trying to make it more than that. Because I’ll be honest, I’m into someone else.”

  “It’s Adam Ziegler, isn’t it?” Cole said mournfully.

  “Adam?” I actually burst out laughing.

  “You’re always with that dude,” he accused.

  I took a deep breath. For some reason, I felt like he would get this.

  “Actually, it’s Lily,” I said.

  Cole dropped his piece of flatbread.

  “No way,” he said. “That’s like the hottest thing ever. Are you two, like, dating?”

  “We were, but now it’s over, and she hates me,” I said.

  “Nah. No one could ever hate you,” he said. “So, whoa, hold up. You’re gay?”

  He frowned at me, confused.

  “No. I’m actually bi,” I admitted.

  I winced, waiting for his reaction. For him to make fun of me, or act uncomfortable. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he grinned, shaking his head.

  “That is so hot.” Cole moaned, sinking down in his seat. “So a threesome—”

  “—is a really rude question,” I told him.

  “Ahh. Right. Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “See? I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Neither does anyone,” I promised. “You have to figure it out as you go. And you have to help yourself get it right.”

  And I realized that I needed to take my own advice.

  Because this conversation was giving me déjà vu. It was eerily similar to what had happened with Lily. It was too little too late. It was asking the person you hurt to do the work, instead of working on improving yourself.

  Oh god. I was her Cole.

  I’d never thought of being straight-passing as a privilege before, but of course it was. When people looked at me, they saw someone who didn’t exist. Someone who had it easy.

  And choosing to walk out from under that privilege was terrifying. Sure, I could keep on hiding forever, if I wanted to, but the only person I’d be hurting was myself.

  I didn’t want to live as half of myself. I knew that now. I’d already lost so much—my mom, my old life. Choosing to lose even more when I didn’t have to seemed foolish.

  I’d been shaving off pieces of myself for years, pretending they didn’t exist. Pretending I wasn’t miserable or scared or unhappy. Pretending I didn’t like girls because I also liked boys.

  I’d spent years brushing my fingers over the things I truly wanted, then selecting whatever was safe and plain and boring. But I deserved to try on any identity I thought might fit. I deserved to let myself have instead of want.

  I’d been acting like I didn’t live here. Like this was someone else’s life. But it wasn’t—it was mine, and every day that I sacrificed toward making other people happy was a day that I’d never get back.

  Bayport would always carry the history of my mom in it, but I’d been wrong to think of this town as solely hers.

  It was ours.

  I hadn’t been dropped into a repeat of someone else’s life. I’d started a new chapter of mine.

  I hadn’t understood that for a long time, but I saw it now. And I also saw what I had to do. If I wanted my grandparents to truly understand me, then I had to show them who I was. And that meant I had to tell them who I wasn’t. Just like I had wanted to do in yearbook the day of the earthquake, my small first step toward honesty, in six-point font.

  Our server appeared with our entrees.

  “Actually,” I said, as he reached to put mine down, “can we get those to go? And the check?”

  “No problem,” the guy said, hustling our sandwiches away.

  “What’s going on?” Cole asked, frowning.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but there’s something I have to do.”

  “Right now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. I was sure of it. “Right now.”

  Chapter 30

  THE SECOND I GOT HOME, I did something I should have done a long time ago. I took out my camera. And then I went to my bedroom window and lined up a shot.

  The shutter clicked softly as I took the photo. The image flashed across my screen: the ocean, dark and churning. The same view that my mom must have seen when she stood at this window. It wasn’t a picture of her absence. It was a photo that existed because of her.

  My ISO was too high, making the picture grainy. But it didn’t matter if the picture was good. It just mattered that I’d taken one.

  The next one would be easier, and the one after that, and the one after that. Doing this wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d thought. But then, most things that you build up so much in your head never are.

  By picking up my camera again, by reclaiming the idea that I was a girl who took pictures, the world didn’t end. And by telling Lily and Adam and Cole that I was bi, the ground hadn’t fallen out from under me. If anything, the earth felt even more solid, and I’d begun to feel even more tethered to this place.

  I wrenched open the window. Outside, a cricket chimed in the soft grass, and the waves pounded faintly in the distance. I could smell the deep, salty rush of the ocean, and feel the balmy air against my skin.

  And I was here. Living in this world. And that was worth capturing.

  I stared down at my
photo again, realizing it wasn’t nothing. It was the permission I’d been looking for to keep going with something that I couldn’t remember why I’d stopped.

  You can’t always bring your comfort zone with you. Sometimes you need to walk toward something terrifying, until you’re close enough to see that it isn’t scary at all, that it’s actually just hard.

  And hard things are doable.

  All of the important things that had happened to me this year had actually happened. They weren’t excuses, or things I’d experienced by standing in the corner with my camera, watching them happen to other people. They weren’t captions in a yearbook, with my name as the only proof that I’d ever been there.

  And after that conversation at dinner, I knew exactly what I was going to submit for the art gallery.

  I brought my camera to school on Monday to work on my submission for the gallery show. It seemed so obvious in retrospect, but then, the best ideas usually do.

  Mr. Saldana had given me all of those essays and books to read about art, and they all said the same thing: that art is a mirror, a political act, a confession.

  I was trading some books at my locker when I heard Adam announce very loudly, “Wow, a library! I suddenly have to go in there immediately.” I didn’t think much of it, but when I glanced up again, Lily was standing next to me.

  She’d cut her hair shorter, the blunt ends swishing just below her ears. It suited her.

  “Hi,” I said, surprised.

  “Hi,” she said, raising a hand self-consciously to her hair.

  “I love the cut,” I said.

  “I’ve been working up the courage to go short for a while,” she confessed, playing with it. It made her look older and more serious, like one of those college students who are very into houseplants and sustainable fashion.

  “You should come back to Art Club,” Lily said. “I don’t want you to quit something you obviously love just because of me.”

  I stared at her, confused. And then I realized she didn’t know what had happened. We’d never talked about it.

  “It’s not because of you,” I said, spinning the combination on my locker. “My grandparents found out I wasn’t doing Mock Trial. And then they found out where I’d been instead. So I’m grounded.”

  “Oh,” Lily said. “Wow, that sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  We let the silence hang there for a moment, because we both knew whose idea the lie had been.

  “When did this happen?” Lily finally asked.

  “Couple days after my birthday?”

  “I wish you’d told me,” Lily said.

  I wished I’d been able to.

  “I thought you wanted space,” I said, wondering which it was.

  “Right,” Lily said, as though she’d forgotten. And then she fiddled with the strap of her backpack for a moment.

  I opened my locker, grabbing my chem textbook and putting my camera inside. I felt Lily notice it.

  “You’re taking photos again?” she asked, surprised.

  “Well, someone told Mr. Saldana that I’m a photographer. So he’s expecting them.” I shrugged.

  “I thought you’d stopped,” Lily said.

  “I thought so too,” I said. “But it turns out photography’s like riding a bicycle. Actually, no, it’s not. Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Because everything’s like riding a bicycle and everything tastes like chicken?” Lily suggested.

  “Well, except for chicken. Which tastes like riding a bicycle.”

  Lily snorted. And then I saw her remember that she wasn’t supposed to be laughing with me. Her dark eyes turned serious.

  “I didn’t think you cared,” she said. “About the gallery show.”

  “I always cared,” I confessed. “I was just scared of not having anything worthy.”

  I was ready to be honest. I’d spent such a long time putting so little of myself out there. Playing it safe. But disasters happen whether you’re being safe or taking a risk.

  I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to say so many things. But Mabel came by then, having a complete meltdown over a lab write-up that was due in thirty minutes, and before I could say another word, Lily was gone.

  “How does next week sound?” my grandmother asked at dinner that night, handing me the salad bowl.

  “For what?” I asked, confused.

  “For you to start helping at your grandfather’s firm after school,” she said.

  “We were thinking two afternoons a week,” my grandfather said.

  They were both staring at me. Expecting me to say, “Sure, sounds great,” because that was what I always said. Even when it wasn’t true. Especially when it wasn’t true.

  It was now or never.

  And so I chose now.

  “Actually,” I said. “That’s not going to work.”

  “Your grandmother can drop you off after school,” my grandfather said, as though transportation was the issue.

  “Okay, but that isn’t the problem,” I said. My heart was hammering, and I felt faintly ill, but I pushed through, because I knew I would feel even worse later if I backed down. “You told me I should join a school club. And I’d rather do that than waste my time at an internship I don’t care about. I want to go back to Art Club. It’s important to me.”

  “You didn’t even want to take an art class,” my grandmother said. “You wanted yearbook.”

  “Well, I was wrong,” I said. “I only did yearbook so I could take the photos. That’s what I like—photography! And I got to do that in Art Club, and I made friends there, and I was happy there, and you took it away.”

  My grandparents were frowning.

  “Why am I just hearing about this now?” my grandfather asked.

  “Because I didn’t want you to be upset with me, so I tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal,” I confessed.

  It all came out in a rush, about how awful Todd was, and how miserable I’d been, and how all I’d wanted was to join the Art Club instead, and I hadn’t meant to lie. That it had just happened. And that when faced with the choice between miserable and happy, I wanted to choose happy, and I hoped they’d understand.

  After I was finished, my grandparents stared at me.

  “Sasha, honey, you have to tell us things,” my grandfather said. “We can’t be here for you if we don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I know,” I mumbled, feeling terrible. “I’m sorry.”

  “For the record, none of this excuses the way you behaved,” my grandmother said. “Trust goes both ways. Your mom did the same thing. Always kept her distance. If she had a problem, she dealt with it herself. We kept waiting for her to reach out, but she never did.”

  My grandmother looked so sad, thinking of my mom. It was like her permafrost had thawed, finally. I hoped this wasn’t a herald of impending global warming.

  “She was really stubborn,” I offered.

  “The women in our family always are,” Eleanor said.

  She smiled thinly, and I wondered for the first time what she saw when she looked at me. I’d always thought it was my mother, but now I realized she must have also seen herself.

  “So what does one do in this Art Club?” my grandfather asked.

  “Lots of things,” I said. “We watch documentaries, and we visit museums.”

  “I didn’t know you liked museums,” my grandfather said.

  “Well, I used to work in one,” I said.

  “That’s right,” my grandfather said. “Eleanor, she used to work in a museum. You know, I like the sound of this Art Club. It certainly seems more enriching than doing filing in my office.”

  “Really?” I said, hardly daring to believe my luck. “I can go back?”

  “Well—” my grandmother began.

  “Yes,” my grandfather said firmly.

  “Joel,” my grandmother said, her voice tinged with warning.

  “She should be around other kids her age, doing what makes
her happy,” he said firmly. “Not sitting around some stuffy law office.”

  My grandmother clearly didn’t agree. I could tell from the twist of her mouth and the way she’d folded her arms.

  “Thank you, Grandpa,” I said, giving him a hug.

  “You’re all we have left, kiddo,” he said.

  I’d never thought of it like that before. I knew we’d all lost my mom, but I’d never considered the negative space. I’d never considered what it was that we all had left. Or rather, who.

  “So, there’s one more thing,” I said, taking the flyer out of my pocket. “My art class is having a show next weekend. I hope you’ll come.”

  Chapter 31

  I WENT BACK TO ART CLUB on Wednesday. Lily had said she didn’t mind, and anyway, I missed everyone.

  Ryland wrapped me in a hug and was like, “I’m Switzerland, I’m neutral about whatever went down between you and Lily, but I still missed you.”

  Mabel showed me pictures of the cat her little sister had rescued over Thanksgiving and named Applesauce, which she thought was one of the worst cat names ever.

  “It’s totally a horse name,” I told her.

  “Thank you!” Mabel said. “That’s exactly what I said.”

  Even Adrian was overjoyed to see me. He’d made a pinhole camera out of a box of mac ’n’ cheese and wanted someone to geek out over it with him. Although he kept annoying everyone by telling them to “say cheese,” and then asking if they got it.

  Lily gave me a nod. She was putting on a documentary about Ai Weiwei, and she crept over after it started to sit next to me.

  “You came,” she whispered.

  “I came,” I said.

  “Do your grandparents know?” she asked nervously.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then clarified, “I mean, they know about Art Club.”

  “That’s great,” Lily said.

  “I know,” I whispered back.

  And then Danica and her friends very loudly shushed us, and Lily rolled her eyes. But she didn’t leave. She sat next to me for the rest of the movie. It was agony, having her so close, having this cautious friendship between us, which was better than nothing, but wasn’t at all what I wanted. It was what she wanted, though.