so terrified, that I didn’t think a boy my own age would be interested. I didn’t think I was worth something more normal. I didn’t think the happiness I saw all around me was on the menu for me.
I texted back, I don’t have time to go through this right now, I’m going to high school, talk to you later. By the way, do you have grandkids?
And I hit send, cruelty flushing through my veins like adrenaline, energizing my limbs with an eerie cold.
* * *
—
Bunny was not in school. Ann Marie was not in school. Naomi was in school, and even though we sometimes ate lunch together with Bunny, when I saw her in the cafeteria, sitting with the rest of the volleyball team, she wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I understood that she would not be sitting with me or being seen with me or associated with me in any way. And it made sense. She was going to jettison Bunny as quickly as a sandbag falling hoists a piece of scenery out of view in a play. Naomi was here to win. An association with Bunny would only harm her standing on the team and more largely in the school. In fact, without Bunny, she was the uncontested star player of the team and would stand out even more strikingly to recruiters. I also think Naomi was truly disgusted by Bunny’s behavior. And why shouldn’t she be?
In thinking about all of this, I realized that no matter what happened, even if all charges were dropped, even in a best-case scenario, there was no way that Bunny would be allowed back on the team. Her volleyball career was effectively over. It appeared that now she would be six foot three for no particular reason.
I wondered how things had gone at the police station, or if perhaps she was still there. I wondered whether she was under arrest. Or getting her hand X-rayed at Urgent Care. Or sitting at home watching RuPaul and understanding piece by piece that her life was ruined. Maybe that was a dramatic way of putting it. She was still a young white woman after all. There was still that marble kitchen, though we had not been able to get up the wine stains, blurry rust-colored splashes that we had coated in baking soda because the internet told us to. Her father would undoubtedly be able to afford to send her to college. Though her grades were bad. That had never seemed to matter because of the volleyball, but now it didn’t seem good. But she could go to community college.
Unless she was in jail. Though she probably wouldn’t go to jail. She had no priors. Her father was rich and powerful. So much depended, I realized, on Ann Marie.
I wondered how her surgery had gone.
* * *
—
When I got out of school, I had a text from Anthony. It said, I wonder why you would say something so hurtful to me. No, I do not have grandchildren. Why would you ask that?
I read the message over and over as I walked, and I didn’t know what I wanted to say back. I wasn’t sure why I was so angry at Anthony. It wasn’t really that I was angry with him for lying. The issue was not trust. I didn’t trust anyone, and the idea of expecting to trust someone and then being miffed to discover I could not seemed a luxury so laughable I could have spit on the floor like Naomi. No, it was not that Anthony had betrayed my trust. It was simply that he was older than I thought he was and that made him seem pathetic to me, and it made me feel pathetic for loving him, and I did love him.
So gross, Ann Marie’s voice said helpfully in my mind. What a pedo. He could be your granddad.
How can you touch his wrinkly old skin?
What does he even smell like? Like old sweaters? Like talcum powder?
I realized that what was unworthy in Anthony, what was so deeply uncool about being old, was that he was closer to death. And we disdained death, didn’t we? The glossy young. We looked at death and wrinkled our noses, rolled our eyes: yuck. We would have shiny hard penises forever. We would cuddle only the most velvety vulvas. Our cells would always have perfect plump walls. Our mitochondria would gush ATP like limitless fountains. We would stay young by fucking