Chapter 19
19
NOW
THERE WERE ONLY TWO EVENTS scheduled for the afternoon: Orienteering and the Fishing Contest.
Orienteering is a navigational sport that, at its core, amounts to an hour of walking through the woods in various straight lines. Each team starts at a given point on the edge of the island armed with nothing more than a compass and a number. The number—ranging from 1o to 360o—indicates the direction in which the team should walk. Earlier that day, Wendy and the in-laws trekked through the middle of the island and set up navigational “checkpoints”—ribbons tied to trees or rocks or jumbled-up cairns that marked the end of each leg of our journey.
Manuel and I started out the contest in silence. Personally, my mind was on the conversation we’d had at lunch around OCD. Had I really admitted—in front of my entire family—that I used to worry about being a lesbian? Three years ago, I wouldn’t have dared. Wouldn’t have admitted to a single fucked-up thought in my woefully fucked-up brain, fearful of the reaction that the words would receive. But now that it was all in the past, I thought it would be okay to talk about. That maybe we could even laugh.
But what had that expression on Karma’s face been?
After a few minutes, I came out of my mind enough to notice the silence blooming thick between Manuel and me. As usual, it made me almost instantly nervous. Normally, I would grasp about for the first possible subject, launching into some embarrassing monologue. But Manuel’s words from the night before echoed in my head: self-centered , he had called me. And look—he was right! Look how I’d spent the entire walk so far living inside my own mind, my own body, not even wondering what might be going through his.
“So,” I said, the word startling us both, like the burst of an unexpected balloon, “what’s your major?”
Manuel glanced at me, as if amused by my humiliatingly obvious attempt at selflessness. “We don’t have majors, actually.”
“You don’t?”
“Nope. Apparently, major is a term far too pedestrian for the great institution that is Harvard University. We have concentrations .”
“I see. Well. What’s your concentration , then?” I asked, wrapping the word in the same biting sarcasm that he had.
He smiled. “Biomedical engineering.”
“Oh.” As usual, I felt somewhat helpless before his brilliance.
“Yep.”
Just then, we rounded a tree trunk and found ourselves face-to-face with the first ribbon. This ribbon was bright green and tied to a thick branch of an oak tree. Below it was taped an envelope.
“We made it,” I said.
“Try not to sound so surprised.” Manuel reached into the envelope and pulled out a little blue note card. Scrawled on the front in Wendy’s familiar handwriting was: 217o . “That’s that, then,” he said, sliding the note card back into the envelope. Then he reached out one hand, palm flat to the sky.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was doing. Was he offering to hold my hand?
But then he said, “I’ll take this round,” and thankfully, just in time, I remembered the compass in my hand. I scrambled to pass it over to him. He readjusted the needle, and away we marched, leaves and sticks and daddy longlegs crunching beneath our feet.
“So,” I said again. I saw the corners of his mouth tug up into a faint smile. “What does a biomedical engineer do for fun at Harvard?”
“Well,” said Manuel, lifting a pine branch to let me pass underneath. “I think you remember Karma referencing the Spree, as you called it?” His tone was teasing.
My face reddened. “Yes.”
“Well, the Spee is my Final Club.”
“Oh. I remember those.”
I did, actually. I remembered the week after Manuel received his acceptance, when we sat on the couch in his basement and binge-watched every piece of content we could find that took place at Harvard. I remembered learning strange new words— Widener and Annenberg and Hasty Pudding and Wigglesworth —most of which felt, to me, as foreign and inaccessible as a dinner menu written in Mandarin. “You’ll have to learn a whole new language,” I’d said as the end credits rolled for The Social Network . “You’ll be tri -lingual, now.”
Final Clubs, I remembered, were Harvard’s equivalent of fraternities. “What does one do at the Spee?” I asked.
“Oh, you know,” Manuel said. “All the usual Final Club things. Drinking Keystone and beheading sacrificial lambs and snorting lines of flaked gold.”
I burst out laughing. The sound echoed against the tree trunks and fluttering leaves, as loud and genuine as the laughter that came out of me the day before when Clarence scooped me up and spun me around in Sunny Sunday.
After passing beneath a thick cluster of tree branches—again held up for me by Manuel’s long arm—we found ourselves staring at a tall face of rock. I glanced down at the compass in his hand. Its needle pointed directly into the rock.
“Well,” I said. I looked up at Manuel. “Guess we’re climbing, then.”
He laughed. Its sound pleased me more than I wanted to admit. When I lifted one leg to step up onto the first ledge of rock, he didn’t argue or suggest we go around. Instead, he offered his hand. This time, I knew it was to hold mine.
When our palms touched—mine draped over his like a snug blanket—warmth flooded my hand, passing my wrist, traveling all the way up my arm. His other arm wrapped around my lower back, hand grabbing the bottom of my elbow to help push me up onto the wall. I shuddered slightly, an involuntary response that I tried to still before he noticed.
There it was again. The bodily reaction I needed so desperately to avoid.
With every minute I passed in his presence, it was getting more and more difficult to do so.
We scaled the rock, a short climb that spat us out atop a ledge with a view out to the lake. I straightened, catching my breath at the sight.
“Damn, Beck,” said Manuel, and at the sound of that nickname, my stomach did a stupid little flip. “Do you recognize this place?”
I blinked and looked around, taking in the smooth rock and juniper bushes that covered most of the island. “Sort of?”
Manuel crouched next to a long patch of juniper. He dipped both hands into the bushes and pushed them aside. A mischievous grin curled up the sides of his mouth. “Check this out.”
I walked over and peered inside. There, among the tangle of prickly armed bramble, was a pile of bottles, beer cans, and handles of liquor, all worn and wilted by years of snow and rain.
I looked at Manuel, who was still grinning. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
Our compass led us right to our old dumping ground—the place we hid an adolescence’s worth of alcohol. We made eye contact over the empty booze. For a long moment, we held each other’s gaze. Then, in perfect unison, we dissolved into laughter.
—
WE GAVE UP ON ORIENTEERING in favor of sitting on the hilltop and staring out at the lake.
“If we’re near our old stash,” I said. “You know what else that means we’re nearby?”
“Of course.” Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Manuel smile. “The Fort.”
We fell into a warm, comfortable silence. As I listened to his steady breathing, I became aware of the closeness of his hand to mine. I felt a strong urge to reach over and take it. Instead, I asked, “What does a biomedical engineer do for his summer job?”
“Well”—Manuel looked down at his hands, which were playing with loose pebbles—“I’ve spent the last three summers interning for the pharmaceutical empire known as none other than…”
My jaw fell open. “Beck Pharma? Are you serious?”
“Your mom and dad’s influence helped out a lot with that one, no doubt. Though Wendy would be aghast if I ever so much as insinuated I didn’t get the job on my own.”
I laughed, but it sounded more like a shocked cough.
“This summer, I did my time at Beck Pharma in St. Louis, drove up to Chicago, spent a week with Che and Juli, and hitched a ride up here.”
“Who…?” I trailed off, recognizing the question’s rudeness as I spoke it aloud.
“Invited me?” Manuel guessed.
I nodded.
“Take a wild guess.”
“Let’s see…could it be…my mother?”
“Ding, ding, ding!”
I rolled my eyes. “Shocker.”
He pushed my shoulder lightly, just a second of contact that sent sparks rippling all the way across my chest.
“You know,” I said, trying—and failing—to ignore the sparks altogether. “I wonder if, in any of the many books Wendy Beck has read on How to Mother Someone Else’s Child, she ever reached the chapter on White Savior Complex.”
Manuel laughed. I felt a spit droplet flash wet on the back of my hand.
Shit.
It might not have been real. It might have been a phantom droplet, like so many before it. But the movement came to me instinctually—I raised my hand up to my mouth and blew on it. To dry the droplets. To chase them away.
When I lowered my hand, Manuel caught it, long fingers wrapping around my wrist. “What did you just do?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, tugging.
“ No me mientas , Eliot. You just blew on your hand.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t . I don’t do that anymore.”
His eyes flared. “How dare you!” he said. “How fucking dare you!”
I flinched. “How dare I what?”
“You know exactly what,” he said.
I tugged my wrist again. He tightened his grip.
“You know what, Eliot? I get why you hide your compulsions. I get that they scare you. I get that there are thoughts you have that you never shared, even with me.” He leaned in close, so close our noses almost brushed. “But after everything you put me through. After everything I did for you in high school, all the lies I saw right through, all the ways your Worries tried to get in the way of our friendship, how hard I worked to make sure they couldn’t. After all of that—how dare you lie to my fucking face! Me. Of all people.”
I scrunched inward, eyes down, trying desperately to fold so far into myself that Manuel wouldn’t be able to see the shame blossoming up from within me.
“I…” I started, then trailed off.
Manuel didn’t fill the ensuing silence. He wouldn’t give me that mercy.
“I’m…”
I didn’t know what to say. A decade of friendship, of always having something to say, of allowing his warm brown eyes to tug words from me without ever questioning how they would land, and I was speechless. I didn’t know how to deny his accusations. I didn’t even know if they were true.
Manuel finally released my wrist. “Hey,” he said, voice gentler. “Look at me.”
I did.
“Are you okay, Eliot?”
My breath curled up into my chest, building, congealing, pushing into the walls of my lungs until it felt as if they might burst. How could I answer him? How could I possibly respond when I didn’t know the truth myself?