You Know Me Well (15 page)

Of course. Taylor wouldn’t be here.

Taylor is still a secret. Because Ryan still has a secret.

I want to laugh. And at the same time, I start imagining punishment. It would be so easy. All I have to do is go up to him and kiss him. No. All I have to do is tell four gossipy people the truth. No. All I’d have to do is tell my mom, who will mention it to his mom. No. All I have to do is kiss him. All I want to do is kiss him.

Everyone will know. And if everyone knows, there will be no reason to hide. And if there’s no reason to hide, there will be no reason to be apart.

I think Lehna is screaming at me. But that doesn’t matter. I am walking his way and he is watching me walk over and I think, yes, I actually have the power here. All I have to do is kiss him in front of all these people. All I have to do is kiss him like it’s the most natural thing, like practice has made perfect.

I love that he has no idea. As I’m getting closer, he has no idea. He is pretending that he doesn’t feel anything. He is pretending that everything’s okay. He is pretending that it is no big deal for me to walk across a crowded room for him after crying all day.

I am going to do it. I am going to show him. I am going to show everyone, and then it will be all right.

No. Don’t.

That’s Katie’s voice. In my head. I stop, look around a second to find her. But she isn’t there. She isn’t one of the dozen people looking at me.

You found the weapon—now throw it away.

I am looking into Ryan’s eyes and I know I am going to take that public kiss, that kiss that would have changed everything, and I am going to fold it up until it is too small to ever be found again.

Our eyes meet for a second. He looks sorry. Not happy. Not desiring.

Sorry.

“Where’s Katie?” he asks.

And then Lehna is back in my face, back between me and Ryan. “You can’t just walk away! Answer me!”

“I don’t know where she is,” I tell him, I tell her, I tell everyone. I don’t mention that she was with me before. That’s not theirs.

Ryan still looks sorry. He asked me because he didn’t know what else to say. Now he’s trying to think of the next thing. And because I was thinking so hard about kissing him, now all I’m feeling is the act of not kissing him, of having him here, but not really.

All of a sudden it’s like the whole room is pressing on me. Lehna is angry and Ryan is blank and the constellations in Katie’s paintings are spelling out a warning. I feel the two men behind me, kissing over all those years, and I see Audra cross like a hurricane over to my mother, and see Brad blow away from her, chastised. People are looking at me, but nobody’s seeing me, and the pink walls are starting to waver in the corners of my vision, as if we’re trapped in some crowded ventricle, some noisy heart.

I need a new life, and I need it right away.

I don’t say goodbye to any of them. I push toward the valve, swim toward the door. I ignore every voice, every look, everything but my own thought to get out of here. I hit the sidewalk and turn left, go to the side of the gallery, the back of it. I sit down on the curb. I put my head down. I hold my head together.

There’s a burst of incandescence, a rainless bolt of lightning. I look up into it, and when the blindness shifts back to seeing, I find Garrison, the photographer from that night, smiling down at me.

“Sorry about that,” he says, lowering his camera. “But I couldn’t resist. Such beautiful desolation.”

“It’s not beautiful,” I tell him. “Desolation is
not
beautiful.”

“It is from the outside.”

“Well, I’m not on the outside.”

He sits down next to me on the curb. “You will be one day. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but someday you will be.”

I’m not even sure he recognizes me—I can’t see why he’d recognize me—until he asks, “So, did everyone like the other photograph? Did it have the desired effect?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I mean, everyone was talking about it. Everyone but the guy I wanted the most to like it.”

He pats me on the knee, in a way that Katie would, not in a way that someone at Happy Happy would.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m really not
that
much older than you. And I know that when I was your age, this kind of advice would have gone in one ear and out the other. But I’m gonna say it anyway. Most lives are long, and most pain is short. Hearts don’t actually break; they always keep beating. This is not to diminish what you’re going through, but I’ve been there, and I’ve been through it. As that famous homosexual Winston Churchill once said, if you find yourself heartbroken, keep walking.”

“Winston Churchill was gay?”

“Well, no—I was just trying to add some levity there.”

I can’t say I feel much better. But I do feel a little calmer. So there’s that.

The photographer stands. Raises his camera back to his eye.

“One more, for posterity.”

I don’t pose. I let him see me as I am.

“Imperfect,” he says. “Which is perfect.”

And then, like everyone else, he asks the question of the hour:

“Where’s your friend?”

14

Kate

I find him on the sidewalk, exactly where his text said he would be.

“I can’t believe you came,” I say.

“I can’t believe you didn’t.”

Even though we’re behind the gallery, the lights and voices from within it tell me that the party is still going strong almost four hours after it began. I saw Ms. Rivera and Ms. Gao getting back into a car when I got here, but I can hear Lehna’s voice and Brad’s and a laugh so shrill and joyless it must be Audra’s. I don’t even listen for Violet’s voice because I know Violet isn’t here. She’s somewhere else, waiting for me to make it up to her.

Brad’s voice booms from inside, announcing one hour left to bid on the auction.

“Can we go somewhere else?” I ask. “We can come back here later, but I can’t go in now.”

Mark stands up.

I look at him; he looks at me.

We are not the same as we were on Sunday.

He runs a hand through his hair and even the way it falls has changed. He isn’t a golden boy, charming a bar with his winsome looks and wholesome sex appeal. He’s wounded and damaged, tired and lost. If he were dancing atop a bar now, just as many people would watch him, but not a single one would smile.

I can feel the change in me, too, but I don’t want to think about it. It’s one thing to be wrecked by another person, entirely something else to be wrecked by yourself.

“Garrison showed up here looking for you.”

“Are you serious?”

“He took my picture and gave me advice. He may think he’s my fairy godfather.”

I smile in spite of myself, and then I think of Saturday night, of that mansion and all those people and the feeling that anything was possible.

“They aren’t ever going to ask us what happened,” I say. “If they haven’t done it by now, they never will.”

“I know.”

The car parked in front of us rumbles to life, shines its headlights into my eyes.

“What advice did he give you?”

“Some stuff about hearts. And that Churchill quote about walking through hell, only he made it about heartbreak.”

“Mr. Freeman loves that quote. Did you have him for history?”

“Yeah, sophomore year.”

“I love his classroom. All of those nice posters he put in frames instead of just tacking them on the walls like all the other teachers do. How he always has tea on his desk and the electric kettle that makes the room all foggy when it’s cold out. I never wanted that period to end. Even though we were talking about wars and betrayals and death, about all of these horrible things and how they repeat themselves, when I was in his room, everything somehow felt safe.”

Mark is watching me as I’m saying this as though I’m answering his question from earlier tonight. And maybe I am. Or, at least, I’m doing my best considering that I don’t know what the answer is.

What’s going on with you?

If I could put it into words, it might not sneak up behind me like it does.

I close my eyes.

Violet
.

But it isn’t working anymore. She’s no longer an idea or a spell or a daydream. She’s someone whose mouth I’ve kissed. She knows I have issues and that I run away, and even though I should find comfort in the knowledge that she wants me anyway, I don’t.

I can’t find comfort anywhere.

“Let’s walk,” Mark says.

We pass the Japanese restaurant we went to with Violet. We pass a karaoke bar and a man laying out blankets in a doorway for shelter from the night, fast-food restaurants and a fancy jazz club, hipsters and beggars, a tattoo parlor and a church. And then the street becomes quieter, lined with apartment after apartment and no one but us and the rushing cars and the occasional person returning home.

We get to the end of a block and we stop. The city lights stretch below us.

Mark says, “I didn’t even notice we were walking uphill.”

“I didn’t, either,” I say, though I find that I’m catching my breath.

I’m trying to figure myself out. I keep failing.

“Tell me about that night,” I say.

He turns to me.

“They aren’t going to ask us, but it’s still ours.”

He nods.

“Okay,” he says. “We showed up on the doorstep and we didn’t know what to expect. We rang and waited for what felt like forever, but then that guy—George—he opened the door and he let us in. It was like a scene out of
Gatsby,
but gayer. Unless you agree with Mr. Chu and think that weird part with the ellipses means that Nick and Gatsby hooked up, in which case it was like a scene out of
Gatsby,
and just as gay. The place was full of ferns and overlapping rugs and champagne on silver trays carried by hot caterers and being drunk by even hotter guests. And George said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you!’ and even though it felt impossible, it also felt true.” He takes a breath. “Now you.”

“It was true. They
had
been waiting for us. We crossed under this giant chandelier to where the photographer was lounging with his friends. They asked us to tell them about our night, and everything we said, they loved.”

“I can’t believe how interested they were in us.”

“I can,” I say. I concentrate. I try to find the reason behind it. “What’s happening to us—the decisions we’re making and not making, the things we can control and the things that we can’t—they are huge. And people can choose to forget how it was for them, or they can remember. They can half-listen to us and roll their eyes when we leave because we’re young and we have no fucking clue what we’re doing. Or they can actually listen, and they can think about themselves when they were like us, and maybe we can bring some pieces of them back.” And now my eyes are welling up, my hands are trembling. “Because we
lose
it,” I say. “We grow up and we
lose
ourselves. Sometimes when my favorite songs are on I have to stop what I’m doing and lie down on my carpet and just listen. I feel every word they’re singing. Every note. And to think that in twenty years, or ten years, or five, even, I might hear those same songs and just, like, bob my head or something is horrible. Then I’m sure I’ll think that I know more about life, but it isn’t true. I’ll know less.”

Tears are covering my face now.

“Look at me,” I say. “So stupid. You were probably expecting something real, but all I have to explain myself is some existential crisis.”

“No,” Mark says. “Don’t say that.”

“But really. Here you are, going through an actual event with Ryan, and here I am, freaking out because I’m thinking too much.”

“No,” he says again. “That’s your future self talking. Your grown-up, dumb-fuck self.”

I laugh. He reaches for my hand.

“Tell me what happened next.”

“Okay,” I say. “Let me think. Garrison’s friends pulled out their phones and said they only needed ten minutes to make me famous. ‘What’s the gallery’s name again?’ they asked. ‘What’s your Instagram handle?’ As they worked their magic, Garrison said he wanted to photograph us. He wanted to do it right there. He traded places with me so that I was on the sofa and he asked George—”

“—did we ever figure out who exactly George was? Like a young, hip butler? Are there even butlers anymore? Maybe a personal assistant?”

“I thought George lived there. Like he was one of the owners. He was so hospitable.”

“Oh, crazy. Maybe he was.”

“Anyway. He asked George to hand me a bottle of whiskey. I told him thanks, but I was driving. He said, ‘I’m just asking that you hold it.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about having a portrait taken of me holding a bottle of whiskey that I’m not even going to drink.’ He said, ‘It isn’t in the frame.’ And he had you look through his camera and you told me it was true. I guess it was supposed to make me feel something.”

“Did it?”

“I don’t know. Okay, yeah. Maybe it made me feel reckless.”

“Do you think it came through in the picture?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I’ve hardly looked at it.”

“Why not?”

I shake my head. I can’t find a reason.

“We can pick it up another time,” he says. “Let’s keep going.”

Make it up to me. Make it up to me.

“What is it?” Mark asks. “You just stopped walking.”

I guess I did.

“Violet,” I say. “I don’t know how I’ll ever recover from this. She bought all my paintings. People were probably asking her questions about them and me, and I left her there to guess.”

“So call her,” Mark says.

But I can’t. I couldn’t stand to hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Text her, at least.”

“What do I say?”

“Ask her where she is. Go wherever she says.”

“But I look like shit.”

“You look beautiful. Go. Sweep her off her feet.”

Violet,
I text.
I’m so sorry. Where are you?

The dots appear immediately. Then they stop. Then they’re back.

Just got home.