Through the wall, a chorus of giggles: “Jonah said a bad word!”
“Taking a poop!” he calls back, but they only giggle harder. Toto joins in, too, barking uproariously. Jonah looks at me, exasperated. “Kids these days.”
“They’ve got a point, you know.” I nod to the door, where Renata and Benjie are still howling with laughter. “The bathroom debate isn’t just gross—it’s grown-up. You can’t talk about it around kids. You just can’t. And that plays into this whole idea of . . . of . . . of trans people, especially women, being rapists, or pedophiles, or . . .”
“Or Buffalo Bill. Right.” Jonah taps on his keyboard, scrolls down the doc, all business. “Well, okay. Looks like we’ve got a good start on the pro-bathroom side. How do we argue against it?”
I stare down Google. I swallow. I’ve typed transgender predator into the search bar. The cursor blinks and blinks. My hands rest on the keyboard. They do not move.
Jonah tilts his head to look at the screen. Sees it. His face goes soft, and he says, in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Finch.”
That little flicker of hope I felt before? Gone.
I clear my throat. “It’s fine,” I tell him, “really,” and I can tell by the look on his face, his arcing brow, that he doesn’t believe me. Hell, I don’t even believe me.
“At least the rounds only last, like, half an hour?” There’s a hopeful bit of up talk in his voice. Some optimism. “Half an hour’s not a long time.”
I sit for a moment, silent—chewing on this, chewing on my lip. Jonah is very right. Nothing in me wants to stand up, say that people like me are predators. But it’s just half an hour. Just pretend. That’s not so bad, is it?
If I want this win—if I want Georgetown—what else can I do?
* * *
—
I’m the first to admit it: I’m not tech-savvy in the least. I’ll never understand bitcoins or blockchains, not as long as I live, no matter how many times Roo tries to educate me or calls me a “pleb,” whatever that is. But I know enough about computers to understand that my own is on its last digital legs. Tonight, at Jonah’s, it stammered and stuttered, shutting down at random. In the end, I gave up—just dictated to Jonah as he typed into our prep doc, swore to him I’d look at it when I got home.
And I can’t even do that. The little blue circle is spinning on my screen with no end in sight. What if I stood up, right now, and threw my laptop out the window? I’m weighing this idea when my eye hitches on a symbol low on the screen, a white circle no more than a few pixels wide. It’s struck through with something like a screw. A lever, maybe. I move my mouse, hover over the icon: STEAM, it says, in that little white bar.
STEAM? Panic surges through me, steals my breath. STEAM is a virus, isn’t it? It is, it must be; this is why my computer’s been so slow? Not a second to lose. I open Google and batter my already-battered keyboard: what is steamcomptr?
The answer, instantaneous: “Steam is an online platform from game developer Valve where you can buy, play, create, and discuss PC games.”
“Roo!” I bellow. “Roo!”
I find her on the couch in the living room, fully horizontal. Her dinner—a bowl of off-brand Lucky Charms—sits on the coffee table, the marshmallows consumed and the brown cereal getting visibly soggy. She peers at me over the edge of her laptop like an otter balancing a clam on its stomach.
“What’s up?” She tugs out a single earbud. “Wow. You look pissed.”
“Why,” I seethe, “did you hack into my computer?”
She blinks. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How did Steam get onto my laptop?” I tilt the screen, stab the white icon: J’accuse! “Explain how this got here if you didn’t hack in.”
“Dude, oh my God, Steam is just iTunes for video games.” Roo groans, driving the heels of her hands into her eyes. “It’s not, like, advanced hacker shit. Jesus Christ, what are you? Twelve years old?”
It’s a weird dig coming from a fourteen-year-old.
“Look: All I know is that I didn’t install this thing.”
“And you think I did? On that hunk of junk?”
I click on the logo. A box pops up.
“ ‘Username,’ ” I read aloud, “ ‘kangarookelly.’ ”
“Oh.” She shoves her fists into the pockets of her hoodie. She does not look at me. “Yeah, that’s . . . that’s one of my usernames.”
“Sorry: One of your usernames?”
“Okay. Sometimes, when I’m playing Civ on multi-player, I’ll use two accounts at the same time.” When I look at her, baffled, her voice goes high, defensive: “It makes conquest easier. One less capital to nuke during endgame.”
I understand just about nothing she’s saying—except this one crucial point: “You’ve been using my computer to play video games? Against yourself?”
“Well, if I’d known you were going to have such a stick up your butt,” she huffs, “I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Roo, I need this laptop. For school. For debate. For college stuff.” I close it, hug it close to my chest. “It is a very old, very sick computer. It cannot handle video games.”
“Fine.” She sounds angry—why? what right does she have?—as she lowers her eyes to her own screen. “Won’t happen again.”
I’m just about to issue a command: Wipe this Steam nonsense off my hard drive, right now, or else. But then I hear these things, in this order: a door swinging open, a pair of heeled shoes clicking on linoleum, and a doorknob hitting drywall, hard. Mom is home.
Along with those familiar sounds, though, I hear a low, ragged hum. It’s like laughter, but there’s a bite in it, a razor’s edge. She’s crying, I realize. Mom is crying. But why? I look to Roo. She looks back with the same fear in her eyes.
We move quick, out of the living room, into the cluttered entryway. Mom is still wearing her shoes and coat. She’s soaked in gray rain, clutching a cardboard box. I see a snow globe. A picture frame holding our sun-faded faces. The bottle of hand lotion I bought her last Christmas, half-empty now, trembling on top of the pile and threatening to swan-dive.
Mom lifts her head. Every worried line in her face carves itself deeper, deeper.
I swallow, hard. “Is the paper . . .”
“It’s over, Finch.” She closes her eyes. A few stray tears trickle out anyway. “We’re fucked.”
chapter five
You’d think I’d have learned, at some point in my seventeen years of life in the glorified mud puddle that is Olympia, Washington, to bring an umbrella with me when I head out into the rain. After hours of tossing and turning, fretting about my future and Mom’s, I finally gave up on sleep and set out for Lucy’s place. I really thought the coat and boots I threw over my pajamas would be enough for the quick walk over. I was wrong. When Lucy opens the door to find me on her porch, I look like I’ve just been tossed in a swimming pool.
Lucy scans me up and down, every sopping inch. “Two questions: Who died, and where’s your umbrella?”
“Nobody died.” I sniffle, but not because I’m crying; it really is raining on my face. “My mom, uh . . . she lost her job.”
“Shit.” Lucy lets out a low whistle. “This is normally where I’d give you a hug, but I think I’d better give you a towel instead.”
Another sniffle. “A towel does sound nice.”
“Well, come on inside, then.” She steps back, then stops. “Unless you want to have your mental breakdown out here. We’ve got a porch swing for that.”
“I just want to be dry,” I tell her, because I can’t even remember what that feels like, and she leads me in and leaves me dripping on a mat that says Namaste instead of Welcome.
Lucy lives with her mom in a low-lying split-level house a lot like ours. One crucial difference, though: Where our clutter fee
ls ugly, theirs is totally charming. It’s all jewel tones, gilt and tin, mahogany Buddhas. Lucy hands me the softest towel I’ve ever held—it’s got to be bamboo, something New Age–y like that—and motions for me to follow her down the hall, into her bedroom. We walk past a tiny gold cat, its paw raised high in greeting. I reach out with a fingertip, pet it between the ears.
“I love your mom’s little knickknacks,” I tell her.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” Lucy huffs. “I keep having the Orientalism talk with her and she keeps bringing that shit home from garage sales.”
I’d honestly like to advocate for said shit—how bad can it be, really, if she bought a Japanese cat in a Japanese family’s garage?—but before I can even open my mouth, we’re out of the foyer and stepping into Lucy’s bedroom, another world entirely, a vintage Lisa Frank notebook in three-dimensional space.
Lucy’s strung Christmas lights all along the headboard of her bed, rainbow-colored bulbs sending red and yellow and blue light flickering over the Barbie-pink bedspread where we used to kiss and where we presently hold platonic sleepovers. Every surface in her room is soft. She’s got faux-fur rugs in leopard and zebra, beanbag chairs in lime and tangerine, a whole zoo’s worth of stuffed animals piled into a pyramid at her headboard.
I fall onto the bed. Calamity strikes. I’ve dislodged Paddington, and he’s tumbling, fast, to the floor. Lucy shrieks, lunging for her British bear, and that’s when I see it: a patch of skin, like cracked earth, violently red, just above her hip.
“What is that?” I only just suppress a gag.
“What’s what?” she asks, cradling Paddington to her chest.
“There, on your hip.” I point, wincing. “Were you rolling around in poison ivy?”
“Oh. No. I was trying to give myself a stick-and-poke, actually. Of the Subaru Star. It got infected.” She glances down at it, forlorn, and sort of stretches the skin out between two fingers. I look away so I won’t barf. “But never mind. We’ve got more important shit to discuss than my botched tattoo. Like your mom. Who lost her job.”
“Yeah. Along with everyone else on staff.” It’s a miracle I can talk at all; my throat is so, so dry. My eyes, too. I guess nothing—not Mom losing her job, not the shuttering of the paper I’ve read and loved my whole life—is enough to make the dam break. “No warning. No one’s getting severance.” Which means even less wiggle room when it comes to paying for college, but I don’t say that part out loud. Don’t want to come off self-centered.
“Shit,” Lucy breathes. “And there’s not a ton of jobs for newspaper reporters right now, yeah? Not even in the state capital?”
“Well, no,” I sigh. “Because Mom mostly writes music reviews. Covers art shows. Things like that. She’s talked to some local politicians about, like, state funding for glee clubs and school musicals, but . . .”
“But politics isn’t really her beat. I get it. Is she going to, like . . . write for other places? Magazines? Or just start a whole new career?”
I can’t answer her. I can only plant my face in the soft belly of a Care Bear and scream like my Celtic warrior ancestors.
“Attaboy, Finch.” Lucy reaches into the pile of stuffed animals to stroke my head. “Abandon the spoken word. Regress to cavemanhood.”
After maybe my fourth scream, there’s a knock at the door: “Lucy? Sweetie?”
I lift my head. My hair falls damply into my eyes, and through the reddish fringe, I can see Lucy’s mom stepping through the door. Her curls have turned pink in recent months, but a darker sort of purply-pink, nothing like the cotton-candy hue Lucy’s trademarked.
“I brought tea,” she says, and lifts a long wooden tray. I see a blue ceramic kettle, a sticky jar of honey, and three lovingly chipped mugs. None of them match. “South African honeybush. Uncaffeinated, naturally sweet, and proven to inhibit the growth of tumors in rats.”
“Thanks, mamacita.” Lucy takes the tray. “We needed this.”
She fills the mugs and hands me one from the gift shop at Mount Rainier—sturdy, painted with snowy peaks. Little brown rings tell tales of tea parties past. I close my eyes and take a sip of honeybush that warms me from the inside out. I want to cry: Lucy’s mom really got up in the middle of the night just to boil water, to make tea, to assemble her most stalwart mugs, all for me. And for a second, I think I really might cry—the feeling’s there, that tight heat behind my eyes. But when I lower my mug, no, nothing; drought.
Lucy’s mom takes a seat at the foot of the bed as we settle into place against the stuffed-animal pyramid. Lucy throws an arm around my shoulder. I’m grateful for it. For her.
“So,” Lucy’s mom starts, her dark pink eyebrows arcing up, “you two back together?”
“Nah.” Lucy shakes her head. “He just needed a cuddle.”
“I got some bad news tonight,” I explain.
“Really bad,” says Lucy. “He ran all the way over here without a dang umbrella.”
“Do you want to talk about it, Finch?” says Lucy’s mom. “I’m a licensed hypnotherapist, you know.”
“Oh, no. I . . . I’d rather not be hypnotized.” I shake my head, smile, try not to look too freaked out. “Thank you, though. For offering.”
“Finch’s mom lost her job today,” Lucy says. “The Mountain’s owners shut it down. Fired all the reporters.”
“Oh, Finch, honey.” Lucy’s mom reaches out, squeezes my knee in sympathy. “What goes around comes around. Just remember that.”
I laugh, bitter. “I sure hope so.”
“Now, your father,” she says, speaking slowly, cautious, “he’s not working, either, yes? Do I have that right?”
It kills me to nod. “I mean, he’s been looking for a job for a long time, but . . .”
“I understand, sweetheart.” Lucy’s mom smiles. “You know, if you ever need a distraction, we’ve been doing some volunteering with the Alice Brady campaign. She’s just incredible. They’ve got a ton of resources that could help your family.”
Lucy brings a fist to her chest, pounds the place over her heart. “Mutual aid!”
“Thanks,” I say, “that sounds really neat,” but I don’t ask Lucy’s mom what she means by “resources,” or how Lucy thinks “mutual aid” is going to keep my family from the brink. The Newsomes aren’t exactly in the one percent, but I’m not sure they know what it really is to be broke. There’s real money in hypnotherapy and vegan food. Gwyneth Paltrow’s built an empire on it.
“And if you’ve already submitted your financial aid applications,” says Lucy’s mom, “you’ll want to get in touch, tell them what’s changed.”
“That is . . . a really good idea.” Just for a second—a gorgeous, guilty second—I wonder if this could be it, my ticket into college: not one, but two jobless parents. Could this actually . . . help me?
No, no—what am I thinking? Being broke isn’t going to help. There’s a reason that Ari Schechter got into Georgetown early and I didn’t. Forty million reasons, actually.
“You’re still aiming for D.C., right?” says Lucy’s mom. “Not anywhere nearby?”
“He doesn’t want to go to Evergreen, Mom,” Lucy cuts in, before I can speak. “I’ve already given him the pitch.”
“Oh, but Evergreen’s an incredible school,” she says. “You know, when I went to Evergreen, I dated a girl who dated Carrie Brownstein.”
“Mom!” Lucy squeals, rocking forward onto her knees. “Why didn’t you tell me? Am I really two degrees of separation from lesbian royalty?”
“Who’s Carrie . . .” I begin, but Lucy’s mom is already moving on, resting her hand on my knee again.
“We’ll be crossing our fingers for you,” she says. “Whether you stay in this Washington or move on to another one.”
I feel a smile, a real one, flicker across my face just for a moment. At least someone believes I
can still make it there, to that other Washington. “Thanks,” I manage. “That means a lot.”
She smiles back. Her hands return to her own mug, and she takes a long, slow sip.
“Well, I guess I’ll be going back to bed,” she says, as she rises, pats the foot of Lucy’s bed. “You guys be safe. I’ve got a few dental dams in the . . .”
“Oh my God, Mom,” Lucy cries out. “I literally just told you we’re not dating anymore.”
“Whatever you say!” She smiles—clearly not convinced—and makes for the door. “You two have a nice slumber party, now.”
She’s barely closed the door before Lucy and I collapse into each other, waves of laughter washing over us.
“She wants us to get back together,” I giggle, “so bad.”
“Oh, yeah. She ships us hardcore.” Lucy leans away from me, grabbing a stuffed elephant the color of cream soda. “She thinks you’re a good influence on me, even though . . .” She taps the elephant’s soft snout against my own. “We all know that I am the good influence on you.”
“You don’t think our sleepovers are weird, do you?” I ask, idly stroking the elephant’s velvet ear. “I mean, we’ve been broken up for years, and I still come to your house in the middle of the night.”
“No. Not weird at all.” She’s emphatic. “Best friends sleep over all the time.”
“Even girl and boy best friends?”
“How very Mike Pence of you.” She tosses the elephant at me. “Look, I’m not even into boys. And you’re probably not even into girls, although you . . .”
“Lucy . . .”
“. . . Continue to deny it.”
I give her the finger. She rolls her eyes, then rolls off the bed, making her way to the closet.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“If you’re staying over, you should get changed,” she says. “You can borrow some pajamas from me.”
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