where’s your Uber?”
“There’s no Uber. I walked.”
“Oh.”
She punched me in the shoulder. “You idiot, what’re you doing?”
“I do not feel good.”
She plucked twigs and leaves from my shirt, and we sat on a nearby bench, trying to figure out where to go. Eventually she plugged my address into her phone and sighed at me. “All right, come on.”
On the way home, I explained everything that’d happened with Dave and with the girl.
“So you don’t like guys after all.”
“I think so. Possibly.”
“But . . . you and Dave hooked up, right?”
“Yeah. Mmm-hmmm.”
The conversation was meandering and confusing, but by the time we reached my living room she’d gotten the full picture. As she grew in knowledge, getting steadier and steadier, she even started to tease me for getting so drunk. Meanwhile, I was a little tearful.
“I’m such a radioactive mess,” I said.
We were at my living room table. She’d bustled to my room, picking through my clothes, but now her head popped out.
“What? No!” she said. “You’re the opposite. You’re brave.”
“I can definitely see that interpretation.”
“It’s the only one. You thought you wanted Dave, so you went for it. That’s brave.”
“No, I, it’s—” I gulped, hoping she wouldn’t make me go on, but she sat next me, draping one hand over my back.
“What is it?”
“Part of me thinks, I don’t know—maybe—perhaps I did this to get close to Avani. Like, like, like, I wanted to be her friend. And this was the only way to get past her guard.”
“Ohhh.” Mari’s lip quivered. “Nobody wouldn’t want to be your friend.”
She said all the usual things, said I was courageous and caring and funny and fun, but all through her reassurances, I heard the death knell of everything I’d built my life around. I told her that, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Nandan,” she said. “You’re being crazy. You had a boyfriend. You’ll never not be queer. And if you only date girls from here until you die, then so what? It’s fine. It’s cool.”
“I’ll seem confused. Weak.”
“It’s not weak.”
“Look, I know it’s not weak. Not really. Not in real life. But people don’t want honesty. They don’t want mess. They don’t want confusion. They don’t want awkwardness or second thoughts or . . . or . . . or any of it. They want a simple story. People will laugh at me. I’ll be an item of gossip. You know what? I would laugh too. If I heard this story, I’d laugh.”
“Well, then maybe you should be a better person.” Mari shrugged. “This really doesn’t lower my opinion of you at all. Not even a little bit.”
“You’re not Avani.”
“She won’t care either.”
“You’re wrong. She won’t be my friend anymore.”
“Give her some credit.”
“Mmm, we’ll see.”
Mari’s phone rang, and she held up a finger. “One second, it’s my mom.”
My face froze. It was two a.m. I hung around the edges of the conversation, listening to Mari’s side. But it quickly became clear that her mom wasn’t mad.
“Yeah, I found him! It’s that boy I met on the beach!” Mari said. “Remember him? . . . No. . . . Yes, he was fine! . . . I’m at his place. . . . I think I can stay here tonight. . . . No, I’m okay. . . . No, I don’t need to go to the farmers market. . . . Okay, fine, then get me pineapples. . . . Yes, I’m sure . . . pineapples. . . . Okay, I’m good! . . . No, no, don’t come over here! I’m good.”
When she hung up, I looked at her through one eye.
Mari shrugged. “My mom. She was trying to get me to say our ‘I’ve been kidnapped’ word. ‘Apricots.’ But I used the ‘I’m safe’ code word instead, so we’re good.”
“You and your mom are weird,” I said. “You told her you were coming to find me?”
“Of course!”
That night, Mari slept on the couch in an old T-shirt of mine, and in the morning I and my mom drove her back to her place. Her mother met us at the door—a giant woman in an immense caftan—and made us all drink bitter black coffee with her. Mari’s dad, a little, sleepy-looking guy—he seemed on the older side—tried to interest us in some YouTube videos, which we watched politely until her mom said, “That’s enough, Ben. We have to talk now.”
I rubbed my head, which ached terribly, and tried to smile at her. We still had school this morning, and the whole