Chapter 7
Andi stops on their stoop. “No thanks. I’ll skip today.”
“Come on in!” Tony shouts in an old lady voice. “The water’s fine!”
I turn the volume down. “We’ll get unhappy once you’re here!”
Andi sighs and continues down the driveway. “I have my own car, you know.”
“But do you have a parking spot?” I ask. The few at school are given out via a lottery system and everyone else has to park at the pharmacy down the street.
Andi groans their way into the back seat. I hold out a buttered roll and they shake their head.
“I’m vegan.”
“You are?”
“I’ve told you this like a hundred times.” They cough. “How are you, Tony?”
He grins. “Incredible! You?”
“Yeah.” Andi points to the glove compartment. “Can you take out the fourth CD from the left?”
Tony pops the glove compartment open to reveal the Official Andi Lucero Mix Library.
Last October Andi gave me the first, Autumn Sweater.
They made fun of the title they’d chosen, but the slipcase was carefully constructed from handmade paper and duct tape.
There was no pretending it hadn’t taken time and care.
My car doesn’t have Bluetooth or an auxiliary input, but it does have a functioning CD player.
The mix Andi has instructed Tony to play is called Unsatisfied and it is very loud. Andi pulls their hood up and leans back peacefully as though we’re listening to soothing ocean noises, and I drive away.
“Permission to be sincere?” I request.
“Permission granted,” Tony replies.
Andi is silent.
“What’s something from your recent life that made you see the world differently?”
Tony bounces. “I drank two full glasses of water before bed last night and I didn’t wake up to pee once.”
I hold out a fist to bump. “A hydrated prince!”
“I’ve been doing Kegels,” he announces.
We pull up to a red light and Andi coughs again, then asks, “Why are you in such a good mood? Did something happen with Christy?”
“To clarify,” Tony says, “I didn’t pee the bed either.”
“No,” I say to Andi. “Kaye got a parking spot, so she’s gonna drive her in the mornings.”
“I mean, did something happen with Christy to put you in a good mood?”
“Am I not normally in a good mood?”
“You have dimples on your cheeks.”
“Dimples!” I smile. “Me and Christy are baking pignolis Friday night?”
“The supreme leader of Italian cookies,” Tony says, then holds up a finger. “For the record, I prefer pizzelles.”
Andi says nothing the rest of the drive. Is there more I could say? There is. So why am I not saying it?
We pull into a parking space and I reach into the back seat to grab my backpack.
“Permission to be whatever,” Andi says, taking their hood off. “What’s the thing that made you see the world differently?”
I put my backpack on my lap and I take a breath.
I want to tell Andi and Tony that yesterday I learned I can share a non-funny truth and it will be heard and accepted.
“Yesterday…”
I want to tell them that yesterday I learned I am already okay.
“Yesterday I learned…”
I guess I want to tell them that yesterday I met someone who seems really great.
My brain goes blank.
After a few long seconds, I make my face smile and I nod.
“Profound,” Tony says. “Yesterday, I learned.”
“Ugh.” Andi opens their door.
“It’s like a haiku with only one line.” Tony stays still. Andi leaves and Tony says quietly, as though sharing a secret, “I got us two tickets to the Joe Johnson competition at Captain’s. I wish you were in it, but it’ll be awesome to see a show in a big club.”
I find I’m unable to reply.
“Do you think he’ll be there?” Tony asks. “Do you think he’s the one deciding who wins?”
I find I’m barely able to open my door.
I pay attention to myself during the morning announcements and the first few periods of the day.
I have not magically transformed into someone who speaks strictly in sensitive truths.
My public persona remains the same, like I’m a computer programmed to operate a certain way and yesterday with Elijah was a momentary glitch.
Maybe that’s fine, though? Wouldn’t it be weird if I were quietly recounting my deepest emotions during a lesson on parabolas? Would it be weird?
At the beginning of English, Mr.?Mazzei writes VOICE on the whiteboard.
His bald head looks even more bald than when I was a freshman in his humanities class.
He has a neat gray beard, shiny possibly-fake-tan skin, and today wears a gray blazer and leather slip-ons.
Some kids make fun of him, and always seem to add, unprompted, that it’s not because he’s gay.
How does anyone know how he identifies? Either way, he’s probably the only teacher who’s taught me how to read and think.
“Hello again,” Elijah says as I sit down next to him. He’s wearing another loose T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, today in muted yellow.
“Morning!”
He points at my shirt. The tips of his fingers are flat, almost square. “This one doesn’t look like a Walt Whitman reference.”
I look down and see my cartoon of a baby T. rex in space. “It’s from one of his really rare poems.”
“I see.”
“?‘Song of My T. rex.’?”
He shakes his head. “That’s a terrible title.”
“It’s a worse poem.”
“But a great shirt.”
He smiles wide. It’s not a laugh but it feels even better.
“We have a lot to get to today!” Mr.?Mazzei says as he closes the door and passes a stack of handouts to each row. “Our first major project begins now.”
My probable-nemesis Jay Romero sits in front of Elijah. He’s wearing a tight red polo and his slicked-back hair is extra slicked. It’s buzzed so neatly on the sides that he must take care of it almost daily.
“Isn’t it like the first week of school?” Jay says.
“It is like that, Jay.” Mazzei doesn’t look at him.
He sit-stands against his desk and crosses his feet.
“You will be putting your voices to use in this oral storytelling project. Is anyone here familiar with the organization The Moth? They have live shows, a radio show, and a podcast.” Silence.
“Well, this is like that. Each of you will have five minutes to tell a true, personal story here at the front of this room.”
“So, like, stand-up comedy,” Jay says.
“No.”
I savor the silence Mr.?Mazzei leaves here.
“We speak differently with our friends than with our parents,” Mazzei says. “We write differently online than we do in essays. My main question is: What is your truest voice?”
Steph Rooney, a girl with such good posture I think it might be bad for her back, raises her hand. “The one we use with ourselves?”
“Possibly.” Mr.?Mazzei walks to the window. “But how do we discover what that language sounds like?”
“Read a person’s diary.” Steph always sounds exhausted when teachers don’t get straight to the point.
“Possibly.” Mr.?Mazzei repeats, not getting straight to the point.
The room is silent, but Mazzei could sit in silence for a month.
Jay doesn’t raise a hand. “My true voice comes out when I order Burger King.”
“Is that right?” Mazzei says.
Jay leans his elbow on Elijah’s desk and speaks with mock seriousness like he’s delivering lines in a soap opera. “I believe love brings out our truth.” He looks around as though we’re his captive audience. “And I love beef.”
A couple people laugh. Mr.?Mazzei nods, but it’s the kind of nod that I think is a shrug, and the kind of shrug I think is a no .
“Maybe the voices we use with ourselves,” Mazzei begins, “in our diaries and even at fast-food restaurants, are only another place for us to posture, to perform. Most of us are likely far from knowing our true voices. Where would we even find them?”
Steph shifts in her seat. Jay scans the room. Mazzei takes a stack of paper from his desk and hands some to each row.
“Take one and pass them back. Please turn and talk with the person next to you to complete this activity.”
My phone buzzes and buzzes. It’s Christy.
Overslept
Blah
Whatever
I’m not coming in
Relief rushes through me because not seeing her today means there’s no chance for me to get it wrong with her, but I immediately feel guilty for thinking that. I send her a frowny face and take a secret selfie of me frowning and send it.
The kid in front of me passes back a slip of paper and I see it’s a list of styles of talking. We’re to take turns speaking in them with a partner and discuss what is different on a syntax level in each.
I count the desks and see I’m paired with Elijah.
“That works out,” he says. His voice is light and quiet.
“Yeah!”
“How are you today?”
“Good!” I say. “How about you?”
“I’m okay. The rest of your yesterday was all right?”
“It wasn’t bad. It may have even been good.”
“Whoa.”
“I know.”
He laughs and looks down at his slip.
Christy replies, thinking?of?you
She sends a selfie of herself in bed, head on the pillow with her eyes closed, blanket covering her bare chest. Just slightly, she’s biting her lip.
I cross my legs and put the phone away.
“Um.” I look at the paper but all I can think of is Christy. “At a job interview. How would you speak if you were at a job interview?”
Elijah folds his paper in half and creases the fold with a fingernail. “My skills include hiding behind the counter to read, and that is the end of my skills,” he says.
I do a deep voice, a professional voice. “And what would you be reading behind the counter?”
He looks up. “Sufjan Stevens lyrics?”
I hold an extended shrug. “I don’t know who that is, but—”
“Never mind, it doesn’t—”
“But reading the lyrics shows dedication.” I drop my shoulders. “So, hired.”
He looks down but I think he smiles. “And you? How would you speak at a job interview?”
“Please give me money?”
He laughs and for a split second I see his teeth. “Hired.”
I wipe my hand across my forehead. “Phew.”
He looks back down at his paper, studying it closely. I look at mine too, but I keep rereading the same phrases.
“Uh,” I say like it’s a complete thought.
“So, I’m new.”
“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.”
He lifts a foot up onto his chair and wraps an arm around his knee. “We moved here in July. From New Jersey.”
“Right before senior year. That’s rough.”
“I’ll never be homecoming king.” He sighs, and it takes me a second to realize he’s joking.
“There’s still time,” I say. He crosses his fingers on both hands, and I laugh.
Mazzei brings everyone’s attention to the front. “Now, the last part of the exercise. Talk with your partner using your true voice. About whatever you’d really like to talk about.”
“Like…” Steph Rooney hesitates. “Just talk?”
Mazzei nods. “As yourself.”
Steph is too polite to make a face. I love Mazzei so much.
I turn to Elijah.
“Gree-tings,” I say like a robot. “My. Name. Is. S. E. A. N-N-N.”
He laughs.
“In all seriousness,” I say, “here we go, this is my voice, hello, hello. I am Sean. Nice to be chatting with you today. Okay, your turn.”
He laughs. “Try again.”
“What do you mean?”
“That wasn’t your true voice.”
“The way I was just talking?”
“The way you’ve been talking this whole period. It sounds different than yesterday.”
“In the bathroom?” I wave this silly idea away. “I was playing around then. Practicing for a big audition.”
“Oh?”
I do a very important voice. “I’m trying out for the role of Stupid Idiot in the fall musical.”
He flinches. “I don’t like those words. They’re harsh.”
“But they’re the only appropriate ones when referring to me.” He doesn’t laugh. “Anyway, what’s your true voice?”
He shakes his head. “Just this. I think.”
I’m trying to salvage the conversation but it keeps backfiring. What is it I learned yesterday? You can be honest and not funny and that’s okay?
“Were you sad to leave your old school?” I prepare for him to make fun of my sincerity.
“No.” He rolls his brown eyes and they catch the fluorescent lights. “There’s not even anything interesting to say about it. Just”—and he cuts a hand across the air—“no.”
Mazzei comes closer to our side of the room and I hold up my paper as though I’m referring to it. Mazzei’s left eye drifts slightly, so it’s hard to know where he’s looking. All of us and none of us at the same time.
“And you, Sean?” Elijah doesn’t pretend he’s reading off his slip. “Are you happy to be here?”
“I am.”
“You feel like people get you?”
“I do,” I say, though it’s more complicated than that. Do I? I do. But do I? It’s complicated. And do I really? No.
“That’s good.” He’s even quieter now. “You seem…I don’t know.”
“What?”
He tilts his head as though thinking, then shrugs and says, “I don’t have an end to that sentence. I started it hoping I’d find an end, but I didn’t find it.”
“It must be around here somewhere.”
“I’m very disorganized.”
Mazzei shouts that we’ll stop to share out in one minute. Elijah shifts his desk back to its spot and I find I have to do the same. When did we both move closer to each other? Elijah says something I don’t hear.
“What’s that?”
He turns to face me but looks at the floor and keeps his hands folded in his lap. “I’ll keep looking for the end of that sentence.”
“Thank you,” I say without thinking.
He nods solemnly and drops his voice lower. “You’re very welcome.”
I’d like to tell him that I don’t think people get me but I don’t think that’s their fault. I don’t ever show myself. I don’t even show myself to myself, so I don’t know if I get me either.
That is what I’d like to tell him right now.
“I—”
His eyes don’t look away from me. His brow is relaxed.
My voice gets low but not quiet. “I don’t think people get me, but I don’t think that’s their fault. I don’t ever show myself. I don’t even show myself to myself, so I don’t know if I get me either.”
My brain replies, Stupid idiot, stupid idiot, stupid—
Elijah touches a hand to his chest. “Mm.”
I blink.
He looks at the ceiling. “There was a guy at my old school…” He shakes his head. “I thought he saw me, but he didn’t. I was out of the closet, I’ve been out since I noticed there was a closet people thought I was in. He knew I was out. He saw that. He saw my body, but he didn’t see me.”
My heart pounds.
“I never considered that he didn’t see me because I never showed myself to him.”
“It’s scary to let yourself be seen,” I say.
“Sometimes it is.” He looks at me. “But sometimes it’s not at all.”
“Your attention up front!” shouts Mazzei. “Thoughts? Reactions?”
I place my pencil under my nose and smell the wood. I rub my thumb across the desktop, feeling its smoothness as well as the rough edges of nicks and graffiti. I move my tongue over the roof of my mouth, letting it curl and flatten back down, tasting my own spit.
When the bell rings and the period ends, Elijah passes me and, without making eye contact, drops a folded piece of paper on my desk.
I open it and read, in perfect handwriting, You seem like your own kind of person.
When I look up, he’s gone.