My stomach curls. I trip over nothing—without the bandana on. “Funny, I’ve never seen you. Any of you.”
“Most people don’t.”
15
I’ve never walked so far back in the cemetery before. I’m in unfamiliar terrain. We walk to where the daffodils have died and been replanted for next year, where leaves once lay but now sit in giant plastic bags under the trees. Past mausoleums, which I only thought existed in gothic novels. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we all got to be entombed in pyramids?”
“Yeah, it would.” Baldwin straightens their reading glasses. Their hair is slick but not dripping anymore. “What would you take with you? If you could only take three things.” Their stomach growls. One pork bun obviously didn’t cut it.
“You had to make it hard. But actually the answer is always books. Books first. And a photo—of my friends.” The one we took outside the movie theater, freezing smiles, icing time. “And—is there Wi-Fi in the afterlife?”
“Of course. I said heaven, not hell.”
“Kay. But it is cheating, isn’t it? Like making a wish for more wishes.” Rose bushes surround us now, shedding the last of their petals.
“All right. No Wi-Fi.”
“Then I’d take my props. A prop. The Sharks jacket Blanca and I made for a production of West Side Story.”
“And leave your scabbard behind?” They smile and their glasses shed another piece of lens.
“Ha!”
“Danny told me about you and stage crew. That’s dope. Why the jacket?”
“I never felt more at home than in the theater. I was stage crew most of the time. Creating worlds.”
“Being in control.”
“Yup. But it was more than that. Sometimes I had to jump in, take over a role for an actor. I played a Shark in West Side Story. I loved it.”
“The thrill of being someone else.”
“Actually, no. The thrill of being me. I didn’t want to be the girl in the window. I wanted to be out on the streets, dancing.”
“Oh!” Baldwin grins. “You’re pan!”
I think they mean pansexual. Or pangender? Both?
“It was fate we all met. The fate of star-crossed-dressed lovers!”
Baldwin twirls me, dips me, and drops me on my culo, but I add some stylized moves that look like a combination of breakdancing and going into epileptic shock.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
We laugh too hard and too long. “Okay already!” Baldwin helps me to my feet.
I dust myself off. Grab my backpack. “Your turn,” I say as we start walking again.
“Well, first of all, I’d take my glasses. Ever seen Velma without them? That’s been me for the past year. My librarian buys me these reading glasses from CVS, but as you can see,” Baldwin says holding them up in the moonlight, “they are suited for grandmas by the fire. Not Underdogs in the cemetery.”
Needing glasses for a year. I imagine not being able to read for that long. I think back to when my mother offered me braces and I turned her down. I mean, I was turning down shit I needed. That’s how well off I was. This poor kid—who’s driving, no less—is squinting to read road signs. I wouldn’t even dare ask if they have a driver’s license.
Shhhhh. Tsssssss.
I jump.
“What is that?” I’m scoping the darkness for sickos and snakes of mythological proportion, hand on my bat.
“No worries, She-rah. It’s just the fountain.”
A fountain full of angels blowing trumpets is a few feet away, turned off for the winter.
“How ’bout you all?” Baldwin says to the shadows under the fountain’s edge. “What three things would you take when you die?”
“I’ve already taken names, so I’d take revenge.” Something crawls out from the bottom of the fountain. Something extra-large. XXL.
The bat leaves the scabbard.
“I’d take it out on everybody who fucked me over,” LumberJane says all chill, like she just walked through a door and not from out the underground. Her blond hair looks oily and drips like Baldwin’s did. Her collar’s wet.
“How in the hell did you fit in there?”
Baldwin strikes a match. Danny, Sarah, and Prisha climb out of what I come to see is a small underground room, shivering, their backs wet from their drippy hair.
Danny squeezes out and shakes leaves off of his jacket. His breath comes out in ghosts.
“It’s a tiny room,” Danny says. “You can turn the fountain on from down there.”
Danny unhooks my backpack from my arms and drops it on the ground. I stretch and crack my back. Danny massages my shoulders. Wraps his arms around me. He kisses me, and my ghosts haunt his mouth, his mine. I run my fingers through his wet hair. Have they all been taking baths in this fountain?
“We’re gonna build an igloo when it snows. Be like the First People.”
Oh shit. It hits me for the first time. This overnight cemetery visit isn’t some teen rebel harmless bullshit. I hear my mother’s voice from a couple days ago: There’s been homeless people seen in the neighborhood. But for real, I was picturing like, old men with cardboard signs saying they were Vietnam vets.
He motions to my backpack. “Did you bring bricks to build a house?”
“Uh.” I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. “Sort of. Books.”
“Books,” LumberJane says, swaggering to a tree and leaning on it. Poor tree. “Not blankets? Water bottles? Toothpaste?”
“No, wiseass. And if someone gets on my case for toothpaste one more time today . . .”
Prisha shows me her feet in my shoes. “They fit perfectly. Thank you!”
Danny and I are standing side by side now, his arms around my shoulders.
“No offense or nothing, but why the fuck were you barefoot to begin with? Why are you,” I point to Baldwin, “wearing those ridiculous glasses? And why are you people sleeping in a graveyard on regular basis?” And why do you always look like you fell into trash cans from the fifteenth floor?
“Her parents,” Sarah answers for Prisha. “They took all of them. Her shoes.”
“The shoes I wore to Diwali last year even. Oh! They think, Prisha won’t leave without shoes.”
“But she did,” Sarah chimes, crushing Prisha with a hug.
“Not that it’s none of my business, but—”
“She left because she had an arranged marriage,” LumberJane interrupts and lights up a cigarette. “Back home. Real Disney shit. Only not the Disney ending.”
Sarah strokes Prisha’s head. “First,” Prisha says, “my mom caught me and Sarah together. We were supposed to be studying. My mom started yelling at me like Sarah wasn’t even there, until I just broke down crying. But then nothing. No mention of the incident for a week. Until my dad casually mentions there’s someone he wants me to meet online.”
“Just like that?”
“They arranged a month-long trip to India last summer for our families to meet. I complained, because for one thing I was not about to leave my dog behind for that long . . .”
Prisha bursts into tears and the girls walk off together as if no one but them exists.
Baldwin leans against the tree with LumberJane and lights a smoke off her cigarette.
“So,” LumberJane exhales, “Prisha’s dad killed her dog. Her mom locked her in her room and Prisha could hear the dog barking. Then the barking came to a dead stop. The next day the dog was gone—buried in the backyard. Week after that, Prisha took off. The rest is herstory.”
“Christ. In this day and age? What. The. Fuck? Is that why you’re all here?”
“Because our dads killed our dogs?”
“No, LumberJane!” Oops. “Because you ran away from home.”
Jane to Baldwin: “Did she just call me LumberJane?”
Jane to me: “What did you call me?”
I step behind Danny for protection. “Um. It’s just the flannel shirt. The boots. The muscles.” The shadow of a bea
rd.
Danny laughs. “Nice to use your boyfriend as a human shield!”
Boyfriend? Boyfriend! Xoxoxoxoxoxoxox.
Jane scowls and puts out her cigarette on the bottom of her boot.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Still learning.”
“Okay, J Lo.”
“Hey, I said I was sorry.”
Baldwin grabs Jane’s hand and whispers I-don’t-know-what. Jane nods. “It’s just, we lost a friend of ours. Cops couldn’t figure out who he was because they kept deadnaming him. Then the parents who threw him out finally turn up. Dressed him like a girl for his funeral.”
Blood is rushing to my neck. My cheeks are hot. I don’t entirely know who I am, but I know who I am not and will never be. “I said I was sorry, and I meant it. But me making a mistake doesn’t make me those people.”
“Okay. Moving on. Anyway, yes,” Jane exhales, “we all ran away or got thrown out. My parents wanted a boy. They thought they got one.” Jane leans against the tree with her back and one boot. “They were mistaken.”
Baldwin lays their head on Jane’s shoulder. “My parents wanted their son to be a computer science engineer. I could do the computer science part. Just not the son part.”
I turn to Danny and he looks at me while he’s talking to everyone. “My dad runs an evangelical Christian bakery. Communion for all. Cake for some. He tried to send me away to some camp to get reprogrammed. So here I am.”
Programmed. Maybe Danny and I and the Underdogs are the only ones who aren’t robots.
I hug Danny and we stay like that.
Sarah and Prisha come back from the dark, renewed. Their teeth are incandescent like the moon. They sit cross-legged and take turns braiding each other’s hair.
Jane piles wood for a fire. Baldwin uses the matches I bought to light it, then sits their skinny self between Jane’s legs. I try not to stare.
Danny motions for me to sit down. I dislodge my bat from my scabbard. We’re all in a circle by the fountain of angels.
“Who’s got the s’mores?” Baldwin says.
They all hold imaginary sticks in the fire.
“This is just like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan,” I say.
“More like the Donner Party!” Danny says, laughing.
Baldwin and Jane are making out hard and I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m not looking! But I’m thinking. Specifically, about Danny with a hard-on. Does Danny want a penis? How would I feel hooking up with Danny if he had one?
Dany is behind me, wrapped around me like a blanket. I am in so much trouble. I lean my head into his neck. “How am I going to leave you in the morning?”
“You mean you’re going back home?”
“I mean—yeah.” He didn’t think I was running away for good tonight, did he?
Danny’s hand tugs out of mine hard.
I swallow. “You’re mad?”
“No.” But Danny nods yes. “Not exactly.” He throws a pebble at Jane’s shoe.
Jane and Baldwin come up for air. Danny snaps his fingers and Jane responds by throwing a pack of smokes in his direction.
“Yeah, and I hate to bust your bubble,” Jane says to me, “but can you go home? ’Cause it’s not a choice for us.”
“Of course I can go home.” I hate cigarette smoke. I cough.
“How can this be?” I wave the smoke fumes out my face. “At our age. How can you be homeless?”
“Welcome to our world.” Danny takes a drag and aims the smoke away from my face. He pulls me closer and I can’t help thinking that smell’s gonna stank up my hair. “The Crooked Queendom.”
“Wait. The Crooked Queendom?” I search my brain’s database and get a hit. “Like The Crooked Kingdom by Bardugo. You guys r—I mean you find the time to—”
“To read?” Jane interjects. “Yeah. The library is where we go to get warm. Use the bathroom. The librarians don’t bother us as long as we’re reading.”
“If you join the cooking book club on Kingsbridge, you can get food.” Baldwin’s cracked lens has fallen out completely. “If you go to the library on 231st, they’ll bring you hot tea when it rains. I heart librarians. I asked Ms. Ramos if she could adopt me. She said yes, and I ran out screaming.”
“That’s—I—But, how could your family do that? Just—They must be worried about you!” The cognitive dissonance in my brain is so high, the walls of my glass house are shattering at the noise. No mother or father could be that cold. “Don’t you miss them?”
“Verdad,” Sarah asks, “what is your mom doing right now?”
“What she’s always doing. Working. Where’s your mom right now, Jane?” I will not picture her mom as Slue Foot Sue. I will not.
“She’s at the airport keeping America safe. The funniest shit, though. She’s never even been on a plane.”
“Me neither. But when I am it will be to Puerto Rico. My girl B—we were planning on making the trip together senior year. We were gonna get jobs to pay for the trip ourselves. It’s easier to be an outsider when there’s two of you.”
“So Cinder-ella—you’re not Puerto Rican?” Funny. Baldwin was trying to place me like I was trying to place them.
“I’m a Puerto Rican who’s never been to PR. It’s embarrassing. But with—my girl, we would’ve been embarrassed together. Somos uña y carne.”
“Meaning?”
“The nail and the meat. Like two peas in a pod. She wanted to go for the beaches and los ranas and the coqui, the little frogs. I wanted to go to figure things out. Figure me out.”
“I’d like to go back home too.” Prisha hugs her knees. “To visit—not to live. I’m an outsider too. But oh—to walk the marketplace stacked with pomegranates. Pluck sugar apples from the trees. Eat stuffed bhati, aloo samosa. You know, Verdad, your native Puerto Rico is second best to India. I would love to go back there someday.”
“Really? You’ve been to Puerto Rico? Dang. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Oh, Puerto Rico is in your DNA the way India is in mine. God created India and Puerto Rico on the same day she made the sun. We’re sisters.”
“Sol sisters. S-O-L.”
Jane says, “Shit-out-of-luck?”
“No! Sol. Sun.”
“I like that.” Prisha rests her head against Sarah’s shoulder. “Sol sisters. Sisters of sand, salt, spice.” Prisha looks at Sarah. “I miss my auntie’s chana dal so bad. The food here is so bland. And everywhere, processed meat.”
“I could not live without meat,” Danny says. “I’m a carnivore.”
I chime in, “Same.”
“Meat!” Prisha clucks her tongue in disapproval. “If you would eat flesh, what stops you from eating a man?”
A discussion follows in which Prisha attempts to prove animal sentience and Baldwin and Jane scheme to get some Taco Bell. Danny and I face each other.
“So you’re going home.” Danny pushes my hair out of my face. “But just in case you find there’s no home to go to, I’m here.”
We kiss deep, and my brain turns off the thought of me being homeless and my body pushes closer to his body, his promise that I’m not alone.
“Hey. Is this a violin? Verdad, can you play?” Sarah and Prisha interrupt our PDA, having used my distraction to go through my things. I’d have been pissed but Prisha is actually holding it right, even reverently. “You could make good money playing this.” She places the instrument in my hands.
Sarah and Prisha each take one of Danny’s hands. Jane leads Baldwin to the safe outskirts of the fire. The Underdogs aren’t asking.
I take a minute to decide my piece before I play.
Jane is a surprisingly graceful dancer, an orca up for air. Prisha necklaces her arms around Danny. She’s touching his hair, her fingers walking a trail they’ve obviously traveled a hundred times. I weigh my options and come to the conclusion that smashing Prisha on the head with my violin would not go over well. But the worm has poked out of the apple, and I wonder if Danny has ever hooked up with Prish
a or Sarah. Or both of them.
My fingers speak the jealousy that I have too much pride to articulate. I’m a demon, summoning my music from all the unspeakable things in the shadows, from the tongues of fire.
Prisha separates from Danny and mirrors Sarah, banshee ballerinas traveling at the speed of dark, hiding and seeking, losing and finding themselves. When we’re half-dead with exhaustion, I replace my bow and violin with a pen and skin. The others follow, tattooing themselves in the firelight. No one wants to be the first one to break the silence. We start in whispers that could be mistaken for the wind.
A big thermos is passed around. I gulp water, out of reverence for my heathen homies. But I have to admit I’m not down with sharing the same drink with so many mouths. Especially ones that that don’t floss daily. Everybody’s conversating freely now, talking about people I don’t know, things I couldn’t understand because I wasn’t there. I have to pee.
I search for a private spot to do my business. I do not like popping a squat without toilet paper. I almost pee on my own self. I literally pray I don’t have to poop and God’s like, Really? Do you know the shit I’m dealing with right now?
I want my shower. I want my scissors. There are rituals that I have performed for months and right now it’s Sunday in the church of my mind. Just stepping out of the Underdogs’ circle, I realize I’m burning out like our fire. I don’t belong here. I am not an Underdog. As much as I needed to talk, I doubly need the silence.
I linger in the shadows on the periphery of our camp. Prisha is laying her head on one of Danny’s shoulders. Sarah the other. I can’t hear what they are whispering. Why weren’t the girls so cozy with Danny before? Prisha is telling Danny a secret and he is laughing. Did her lips just brush his ear? I try to block out the image of them kissing, but the more I try the more the image plays like an annoying commercial break that won’t stop till you buy what it’s selling. The true test: if all this is innocent, the girls won’t act differently when they see me.
I step my stalker ass out of the shadows. “Hi!” I interrupt, scaring the crickets into cardiac arrest. Sarah and Prisha startle and slide away from Danny. No!
Danny jumps to his feet. “Hey!” He sidles over and reaches for my hand. I cross my arms and shiver.
The Truth Is Page 13