there, although when I explained to Avani what I was doing, she was very confused. But I just liked them. Hanging out with Mari was one of the unexpected bright spots of this year—I couldn’t even say where or how our friendship had started—it’d appeared out of nothing.
For her part, Mari hung out with Avani whenever I was with her, but she acted like a tourist who was content to go home when her visa ran out.
“Don’t you ever want to be closer with Avani and her crew?” I once asked as lunch was breaking up.
“No, not really. They’re fun, but I have my real friends.”
“Wait? Am I one of the fun ones?”
“No!” She jumped up, grabbing me around the waist, and hugged her face close to my chest. “I mean yes! But you’re one of the real ones too!”
Despite all the practice with Mari’s friends, I hadn’t quite worked my way into Avani’s inner circle. Part of the problem was that I was shy. I was afraid to ask her to do anything with me, because I knew the first no would stand between us forever. Now that I was queer, it was like our entire previous relationship was wiped out, and I didn’t want to mess up our blank slate.
One night Avani called me out of the blue to extensively discuss the merits of some guy who was camped out at her Instagram, liking all her photos, and I sat in my room, smiling to myself over how natural all of this felt.
The Avani thing made zero sense to me. The thought of her sitting in her house somewhere, legs crossed, holding the phone to her head, made me insanely happy. But I suppose lots of people get weird friend crushes. Or at least I told Mari about it, and she was like, “Whatever, that’s normal.”
But for some reason I stopped mentioning Avani when I was around Dave.
16
ABOUT A MONTH AFTER THE lake house, I was in the midst of hooking up with Dave when I had a thought that couldn’t be resisted: I am really not enjoying this.
The thought stayed with me even as we kissed and cuddled and touched. I didn’t want this. I’d done everything possible to convince myself this was a natural fit, including coming out to the whole effing world, but it still didn’t feel right, and now it needed to end.
I told myself to chill out. I’d done this dozens of times, and it would be over soon. But whereas before it’d just been slightly boring, now every touch was torture.
The words I don’t want to do this anymore floated to the top of my brain, and I barely held back from saying them. After he left, I took a shower and played a mindless mobile game and finally fell asleep. The next morning I woke to a long string of heart emojis from Dave and, to my relief, I felt happy. When I saw him at school, he smiled broadly, and while he talked I stared at his thin lips, trying to understand whether I actually liked him.
We sat together at lunch with Pothan and Ken—not touching, of course, but still next to each other. Pothan took the floor, laughing and joking and mocking Ken for his outfit, saying you can’t wear a blue shirt and blue jeans—you look like a fucking Smurf. Then Jessie dropped by, asking about our homecoming plans—clearly, she wanted to know if this year the Ninety-Nine would be headed to homecoming or if we’d be sitting it out.
“You know I just love letting Ms. Felcher smell my breath,” Pothan said.
Our school had a zero-tolerance policy for drinking at dances, and the entrance to homecoming was a receiving line of teachers who shook our hands and stared closely into our eyes and tried to detect if we were drunk.
“Come on,” Jessie said. “You can be sober for one night.”
“Maybe I can’t,” Pothan said. “Maybe I’m an alcoholic. That’s a medical condition. You can’t discriminate.”
Jessie rolled her eyes. “You know I dream sometimes about being at a school where the boys aren’t such idiots.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh, not you,” she said. “You’re one of the good ones.”
“What?” I said. “That’s absurd. I demand to be lumped in with the bad ones.” But secretly I was happy that she thought I was different.
She looked at me and Dave. “Hey, are you guys going?”
I shrugged. “Umm, if people go, I shall go; if they stay away, I shall do likewise.”
“You are