the day the doctor had removed the cast from my wrist that I’d gotten when I broke it skiing. The moment the cool air hit my hot, itchy skin had been a revelation. I thought I’d never again feel anything so wonderful in my life. And then came Dre.
I didn’t want to overshare, though. I could have filled the screen with my feelings, but I’m not sure that would have been fair to him. He had his own friends and his own life, and I didn’t know what I would have called us. Secret not-enemies? There were complications to our friendship that we would eventually have to confront if we continued talking. We didn’t have to confront them now, though, and I needed someone to talk to about things I couldn’t say to anyone else or I might explode, but I was afraid of scaring Dre away.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and was about to leave the stall when the door banged open. I froze.
“Layla, huh?”
“Seems like it.”
“You guys going to Jack’s?”
“For the party?”
“No, to sit shiva. Yes, for the party!”
“What’s shiva?”
“Forget it. Are you coming to the party?”
“Hell yeah.”
“This is the best night of our lives.”
I remained motionless, quietly listening to the boys as they peed and talked and did not wash their hands. One of the boys was definitely Avi Fleischmann, but I’m not sure who the other was. I couldn’t return to the dance this way. I just needed to talk to someone. It might have been a terrible idea, but as soon as the boys left the restroom, I got out my phone, opened Promethean, and began to type.
PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre. It’s Dean.
PrezMamasBoy: There must be more to being seventeen than this, right? More than discussing who we find attractive and who we want to “get with.” More than dances in gymnasiums that still smell like sweaty jockstraps and overchlorinated water. More than the superficial relationships that we claim mean so much to us but that keep us from really knowing one another.
PrezMamasBoy: More than . . . more than this. There must be more than this. Please tell me that there’s more than this. That this is not the best night of my life.
PrezMamasBoy: ~Dean
I typed furiously, my fingertips tapping against the screen, hitting send after each message. One second later, I began to regret it. I couldn’t believe I’d said all of that to Dre. What kind of person was he going to think I was? He was going to think I was a melancholy weirdo who fired off long-winded messages from the stall of a gym restroom instead of having fun with his friends. He was going to read my messages and delete my contact information and never speak to me again. I had to fix it. Or, at least, mitigate the damage.
PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre. It’s Dean again.
PrezMamasBoy: Forget what I said. I didn’t mean it. Okay, that’s not true; I did mean it. But you have to believe me when I say that this is no simple case of adolescent ennui.
PrezMamasBoy: Which is, I suppose, how every teenager in the history of teenagers feels. Like their pain is real while everyone else’s is phony. Like the isolation they feel is incomparable to the isolation felt by anyone anywhere ever. I think it really is different for us, though.
PrezMamasBoy: We can’t do anything without being watched and analyzed.
PrezMamasBoy: Last year, when I had my wisdom teeth removed, a photographer took a picture of me taking one of the pain pills prescribed to me, and someone ran a story that I was addicted to opioids.
PrezMamasBoy: I’m worried that by the time all this is over, I won’t know who I am anymore.
PrezMamasBoy: You are very likely the only person in the world capable of understanding what I mean.
PrezMamasBoy: Other than Sasha and Malia Obama, Chelsea Clinton, or maybe even the Bush twins, but I think there is a difference between remembering how something feels and feeling it in the moment.
PrezMamasBoy: Besides, I doubt the Obamas would take my calls.
PrezMamasBoy: They might take yours. You should try.
I knew I should stop—a voice in the back of my mind was screaming for me to stop—but I couldn’t. I just kept typing. Sending the rawness of what I was feeling through my phone to Dre.
PrezMamasBoy: I’m sorry for the barrage of messages. It’s just that I’m sitting alone in a toilet stall in the boys’ restroom in the gym, which has been decorated in