that, you’re saying that you have,” August says. “Yeah,” Jane agrees, “I know.”). For once, she’s not thinking about staying alert to fend off danger. It’s all people Isaiah knows and trusts, and August knows and trusts Isaiah.
And she’s got Jane with her, which she fucking loves. It makes everything easier, makes her braver. A Jane in her pocket. Pocket Jane.
She finds herself wedged between Lucie and Winfield, shouting over the music about customers at Billy’s. Then she’s trading jokes with Vera Harry, and she’s laughing so hard she spills her drink down her chin, and Isaiah’s sister calls out, “Not saying shit’s gone off the rails, but I just saw someone mix schnapps with a Capri Sun and someone else is in the bathtub handing out shrooms.”
And then somehow, she’s next to Niko, as he goes on and on about the existential dread of being a young person under climate change, twirling the thread of the conversation around his finger like a magician. It hits her like things do sometimes when you’re buzzed enough to forget the context your brain has built to understand something: Niko is a psychic. She’s friends with a whole psychic, and she believes him.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” August says to him once the group dissolves, hearing her voice come out sloppy.
“Should I go?” Jane says from her pocket.
“Noooo,” August says to her phone.
Niko eyes her over his drink. “Ask away.”
“When did you know?”
“That I was trans?”
August blinks at him. “No. That you were a psychic.”
“Oh,” Niko says. He shakes his head, the fang dangling from his ear swinging. “Whenever someone asks me personal questions, it’s always about being trans. That’s, like, so low on the list of the most interesting things about me. But it’s funny because the answer’s the same. I just always knew.”
“Really?” August thinks distantly about her gradual stumble into knowing she was bisexual, the years of confusing crushes she tried to rationalize away. She can’t imagine always knowing something huge about herself and never questioning it.
“Yeah. I knew I was a boy and I knew my sister was a girl and I knew that the people who lived in our house before us had gotten a divorce because the wife was having an affair, and that was it,” he explains. “I don’t even remember coming out to my parents or telling them I could see things they couldn’t. It was just always … what it was.”
“And your family, they’re—?”
“Catholic?” Niko says. “Yeah, they are. Kinda. More when I was a kid. The whole psychic thing—my mom always called it my gift from God. So they believed me about being a boy. Our church wasn’t so chill about it when I wanted to transition though. My mom kinda got into it with the priest, so none of the Riveras have been to mass in a while. Not that my abuelo knows that.”
“That’s cool,” Jane’s voice says.
“Very cool,” August agrees. Suddenly she knows where Niko gets his confidence from. She pulls on his arm. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“You have to be on my team for Rolly Bangs.”
The battered office chair appears out of nowhere, and Wes tapes off the floor of the hallway while Myla stands on a table and shouts the rules. An assortment of protective gear manifests on the kitchen counter: two bicycle helmets, Myla’s welding goggles, some ski gear that must belong to Wes, one lonely kneepad. August posts a sheet of paper on the wall and gets Isaiah to help her devise a tournament bracket—two drunk brains make one smart brain—and it’s on, the kitchen cleared and cheering crowds gathered on either side of the apartment as the games start.
August puts on a helmet, and when Niko flings her chair toward the hallway and she goes flying and screaming through the air, Jane warm in her pocket and no care for whether she breaks something, the only thought in her head is that she’s twenty-three years old. She’s twenty-three years old, and she’s doing something absolutely stupid, and she’s allowed to do absolutely stupid things whenever she wants, and the rest doesn’t have to matter right now. How had she not realized it sooner?
As it turns out, letting herself have fun is fun.
“Where does that disembodied voice keep coming from?” says Isaiah between rounds, sidling up beside August. He’s wearing a fur muff as a helmet.
“That’s August’s girlfriend,” Wes supplies, slurring slightly. “She’s a ghost.”
“Oh my God, I knew this place was haunted,” Isaiah says. “Wait, the