“Steve has a gay cousin? I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t think they’re close.”
“Well, if he’s still around, Ben and I were going to hang out with Steve and Stephanie during assembly period this afternoon. Just get coffee or something. Wanna come?”
I notice she hasn’t invited Justin. It’ll be a triple date, only I’m not being asked to bring my date.
“Can I get back to you?” I ask.
Rebecca’s not stupid. She knows why I’m not committing.
“Whenever,” she tells me. “We’ll be there either way. Although it would be great to have some time with you. I feel I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Now it’s clear that Justin’s being deliberately excluded. Because Rebecca sees me all the time. It’s just that he’s always by my side when she does.
—
I find him right before lunch.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks back.
It looks like he is switching his books in his locker. It looks like he’s about to head to lunch.
“What do you want to be doing?” I ask.
He slams the locker shut. “I want to be playing video games,” he says. “That work for you?”
“Wanna get out of here and do something? There’s that assembly seventh and eighth period. Nobody will notice we’re gone.”
I am looking for that spark. If it’s gone out, I am trying to relight it. Because I have a spark inside of me, too. And right now it wants to be bright.
“What the fuck has gotten into you?” he asks. “If we could just leave, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now? Jesus. It’s bad enough to be here. Why do you have to keep pointing it out?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I just thought it could be like last week.”
“Last week? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“The beach? The ocean?”
He shakes his head, like I’m making things up. “Enough, okay? Just stop.”
So I stop. I swallow the spark and feel it scratch as it goes down.
We eat with our friends. Preston asks about the party, and Justin tells him it sucked. In his version, skank girls kept crowding the kitchen. Stephanie yelled at him for putting his feet on a table. Then the police came, because the police clearly have nothing better to do.
Preston then asks me how my night was. I tell him that my night sucked, too. I don’t tell him about the basement, or about the dancing. No, my version transforms itself into Justin’s version. He doesn’t even notice, but I do it anyway.
I am disappearing. This is the thought that occurs to me: I am disappearing. Like nothing I say or do matters. My life has become so tiny that it’s completely unseen.
The only way I can think to fight this is to text Rebecca and tell her I’m free to hang out after school.
—
He doesn’t care. I tell him I made plans for during the assembly, and he genuinely doesn’t care. He doesn’t ask to be invited along. He doesn’t even ask me what the plans are. He’ll go home and play video games. He won’t text me unless I text him first. I know all this—but why do I still feel surprised, as if it isn’t meant to be this way?
—