You Know Me Well (20 page)

to call it by its name

because then it won’t be the same

as everything I used to be.

You’re so ready

for me to be ready.

But I’m not ready

to put on the clothes you’ve sewn me.

They’re beautiful.

I’m not really sure they’ll fit.

You hold me steady,

but I’m not ready.

Not ready to tell you why.

Not ready to be more scared

than I am right now.”

He is not looking up. He is looking at the paper. And when the time comes to turn the page, his hands are still shaking so much that he drops it. It slides behind him, lost.

Instead of stopping to pick it up in front of everyone else, he tries to continue from memory.

I’m ready to lose myself,

But—

I mean, I’m ready—

I’m not ready.

Now he looks at the audience. Not at me. Not at Taylor. At someone else. Anybody else.

I’m not ready

to do this,

to stand here

I think this is part of the poem. But maybe it isn’t part of the poem. Because Ryan stops. Freezes. Says, “I’m sorry,” puts down the mic, and walks—not runs, walks—out of the room.

Violet starts clapping. Other people join in. And I am a minute too late. I am frozen, too. Before I can get up, Taylor is up. Before I can follow Ryan, Taylor is following Ryan. Taylor is closer to the door. I freeze again. I look at Katie, but Katie’s not going to tell me to go. It’s Violet who tells me to go. Tells me to hurry.

So I stand up, even though Quinn is announcing the next poet, who is not me. People think it’s me, though, because of the timing of my standing up, and they’re even more confused when I head in the opposite direction from the stage, when I head out the door.

Ryan and Taylor haven’t gotten far. They’re right outside. Taylor has Ryan in his arms, is telling him he was amazing, that he was brave, that the first step is always, always the hardest. All the right things to say, only they’re in his voice, not mine. I stop heading toward them, but they’ve already heard me. They pull apart a little, look at me.

I am interrupting.

For some reason, it’s Taylor I find myself talking to. “I just wanted to see if he was okay,” I explain.

Taylor nods. Gets it.

“I’m fine,” Ryan says. “Really. I guess I’m not that much of an improviser.”

Neither, it seems, am I. I just stand there.

“We’ll be back in soon,” Taylor says.

“Oh yeah. Of course. See ya.”

I open the door and it makes what feels like a huge clatter, right in the middle of a really quiet poem. I don’t want to draw more attention to myself, so I stand there until the poet is finished—a good ten minutes later.

I make my way back to my table, expecting that Taylor and Ryan will follow on my heels. Taylor said they’d be back soon, after all. But they don’t come back. I see the friends at Taylor’s table checking texts and whispering to one another. News I don’t know.

I check my phone. Nothing.

Someone from Greer’s table takes the stage and recites a very funny poem called “Ode to Pee-wee Herman.” When it’s done, Quinn gets back on to say that since we’ve now gone through the list, we’re going to take a five-minute break—and in that five-minute break he wants to see at least three more people volunteer to spit out some words.

“Do you want to go?” Violet asks us.

I want to go, but I’m not sure I want to say I want to go.

Katie settles it by observing, “If we leave now, Quinn will kill us,” which is probably true.

So we sit there. Some of Taylor’s friends are up and talking to the people at the table next to ours, so I can’t tell Katie what happened in the hallway. I can sense she’s correctly assuming it wasn’t good.

Quinn comes over, and it’s while Violet and Katie are telling him how amazing his poem was that I look over to the stage area and see the lone piece of paper resting at the base of the back wall. The second page of Ryan’s poem. It seems wrong to leave it there, so I head over to get it. It’s facedown. I guess I could just fold it like that and never discover how the poem ended.

It’s not his diary, though. It’s something he was planning to read to everyone. So I figure it’s okay to look.

Only, after I’m done, it doesn’t feel okay.

I’m ready to lose myself,

but I’m not ready to lose you.

I’m ready to find myself,

But I’m not ready for you to know what I find.

If you want me to change,

be ready for me to change.

I don’t think you’re ready for that.

I don’t think I’m ready for that.

Why do you have to risk the good things

for the better things?

I’m not ready for the answer.

I know he’s gone—they’re gone—but I go out into the hall anyway. When I find he’s not there, I take out my phone again. But what can I say? That I’m ready for him to change? That I’m ready for him to do what he wants to do? The past few days have shown that’s not true.

I guess I’m not ready, either.

Quinn’s heading to the mic when I walk in. I put the second page of Ryan’s poem on the table. Katie’s eyes grow wider as she reads it. And they grow even wider when Quinn surprises us all by announcing, “Welcome back, bitches. The Queer Youth Poetry Slam is now spiked as punch to welcome
Lehna
to the mic!”

THURSDAY

18

Kate

It’s a normal Thursday morning in my kitchen. The coffeepot hisses and puffs as it always does; we sit at the round breakfast table as we always do. Mom, as always, reads the business section while Dad, as always, reads about the foreign news first and then cheers himself up with Arts and Entertainment.

We eat toast and fruit and yogurt.

We reach over one another for the box of half-and-half or the jar of honey.

Periodically, we check the bright red clock until one of us says, “Seven thirty,” at which point we’ll collect and rinse the dishes, put the perishables back in the refrigerator, and walk to our three cars, parked side by side in our wide suburban driveway. I can’t even explain the comfort I take in this routine. The comfort could fill the sky—it’s that immense.

But I haven’t been able to enjoy it for months, because of this thing I’ve been carrying. This anxiety. This crushing, terrible dread. This weight I decided to shed yesterday in the shadow room, holding hands with Mark and Violet. We were like a paper chain of children. We were substance and shadow. We were heat and clutched hands, and wonder, and love. And that clarity I got—it was breathtaking, it took me by surprise, and then it let me go.

So maybe a normal Thursday morning at the breakfast table is not the right time to do this, but I’m doing it anyway.

“Mom?” I say. “Dad? Can I talk to you guys for a second?”

They lower their sections of the paper.

“Of course,” Dad says.

“You can have more than a second,” Mom adds, smiling even though I can see her nervousness.

“I’ve been having a hard time lately.”

“Something’s happened with Lehna, hasn’t it?” Dad says. “The house hasn’t been this quiet since you two met.”

“Shh,” Mom says. “Let her tell us, sweetheart.”

“Right. Go on, Katie.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Lehna and I are going through some stuff. That’s part of it, maybe, I don’t know. But what I’m really struggling with is college.”

Mom cocks her head. Dad takes his glasses off—very,
very
slowly—and presses on the spot between his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to go,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Hmmmm,” Mom says.

Dad keeps pressing between his brows. Harder and harder.

“Can you … elaborate?” Mom asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. I just want to defer for a year. Every time I think about leaving I panic. I know it’s normal to be nervous, that it’s huge—to leave home, fend for myself—so it’s expected to feel kind of shaky about it. But I should be a
little
bit excited, too, right? And I’m not. I’m not at all. I can’t even think about it because I hate the idea so much.”

“You hate the idea,” Mom says.

“I do. I hate it. Dad, you’re stressing me out. You’re going to bruise your face.”

“I don’t even,” Dad says. “I don’t even know…”

“I think what your father is saying is that we need a little time to sit with this.”

I have no idea what’s going on inside her head. Her voice is calm; she’s even smiling. But she works in the Human Resources department at an investment firm. She’s used to telling people what they’ve done wrong in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. She’s used to firing people and making it sound like an opportunity.

“Fair,” I say. “It’s seven thirty anyway.”

We all rise. Dad puts his glasses back on.

“We love you, Katie,” Dad says.

“Kate,” Mom corrects.

“Right,” he says. “Kate. We’ll pick this up later on, okay? When we have more time.”

I nod. We clear the dishes and we rinse them. We grab our bags and hoist them over our shoulders. We walk single file out the door and to our three cars.

“Just a year,” I say, before we all slide in.

My mother nods. My father sighs.

And then they pull away, and I hear my phone ringing from the back. I haven’t left yet, so I jump out and get my bag, and I look at the caller.

Ryan
. His name on my screen takes me by surprise. We haven’t texted since last year when we were working on the lit mag cover. I had forgotten that I even had his number.

“You answered,” he says. “Are you with him?”

“Mark?” I say. “No. I’m on my way to pick him up.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Um … getting ready for school I’d imagine?”

“Not right this second. That’s not what I meant. Or maybe I did. Right now he’s probably finishing his homework for first period. Or brushing his teeth? He brushes his teeth a lot. Like
a lot
a lot. Or maybe that’s just because he thought we might be making out and he was trying to be prepared. I never thought about that, but it’s probably what it was.”

“Hey,” I say. “Are you okay?”

“No. I don’t know. I’m tired. I didn’t sleep.”

“At all?”

“He saw the poem, right? I mean the rest of it, right? I know he did. I can just feel it. And his phone was off. Off at midnight, off at two, off at five, off at seven. It’s just been totally …
off.
”

“Yeah,” I say. “He read the rest of it.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew it. We left. I was … upset. At least that’s what Taylor kept saying, ‘You’re upset. You’re upset,’ and he said we should probably leave, so we left. And then we got back to his place and I remembered that I dropped my poem. That it was just lying there on the stage somewhere, all alone, for anyone to find and make fun of, and I panicked. I left him and I ran all the way back, and everything was over and almost everyone was gone, but they let me back in anyway and I looked all over the stage, but it wasn’t there. But then I found it, and it was face up, right there on the table, and I
knew
it. I knew he’d read it. How did he react?”

“You should probably ask him that yourself,” I say.

“I told you already! His phone. Is fucking.
Off
.”

“Then ask him at school.”

“I don’t think I can go to school today. I’m not really feeling well.”

I want to tell him he doesn’t need to state the obvious. I didn’t know Ryan was capable of this kind of emotion. I thought he was all literary allusion and little feeling, all critic and no poet. But then I think of him onstage last night, all tremor and fear, and I feel myself softening for him, even though he’s crushed my friend’s heart and might not deserve my sympathy.

“Are you okay, Ryan?” I ask him. “That’s a sincere question and I want a sincere answer.”

Silence.

“Ryan?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” I say. “Just breathe. We’ll be there soon.”

Mark’s waiting for me when I pull up to his house. He looks a little worn-out himself, and I can’t help it—I reach out and mess up his floppy, all-American boy hair.

“Is that really necessary?” he asks, but I can tell that he didn’t really mind.

“Where does Ryan live?”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where we’re headed.”

“You know,” Mark says, “there’s this thing called ‘first period’? And then this other thing called ‘first period on the second to last school day of the year’?”

“Address,” I say.

“Howard Street. Behind the Seven-Eleven.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s this about?” he asks as I drive.

“You’d know if you turned on your phone.”

“Maybe I kept my phone off precisely so that I wouldn’t
have
to know.”

“Then you should be happy that he called me so that I could tell you this: Your friend needs you. It might not be fair. It might really suck, because you’ve needed him and he’s been off
slip-dip-dripping
with a college boy—”

“Don’t forget
mortar-pestling
.”

“Oh, I haven’t. Nor have I forgotten rearranging the universe—”

“—with their
bodies
—”

“—which last time I checked is a pretty big accomplishment. I mean, not just anyone can do that.”

“Apparently not me,” he says. “Or else Ryan wouldn’t have had to trade me in for his erotic poet.”

“Nope,” I say. “No time for self-pity this morning. You have some rescuing to do. Which house?”

“The blue one.”

I pull over. I turn off the Jeep and turn to Mark.

“He sounds like shit,” I say. “It sounds serious. I’m gonna be right here. Let me know if you need me.”

Mark takes a breath. Shakes his head. I can tell he really doesn’t want to do this, but he gets out of the Jeep anyway. I expect him to knock, but he turns the knob and lets himself into the house, and yeah, that makes sense. Because up until a few days ago, nothing was wrong between them—not on the surface, anyway. A few days ago, Mark was a quiet kid in my math class, a blur of motion in the outfield at the one baseball game I ever attended. So much can change in a few days, even in a few hours. I’ve brought him here to face the change head-on and I know I’m going to have to face it, too.