Chapter 33
Andi’s bedroom light is still on when I pull up.
Hi, friend, I text from my car.
I’ve been thinking of you and wondering how you are
I am, admittedly, parked outside yr house
No reply.
I walk across the lawn to their window. Andi isn’t inside but their face looks back at me from drawings and paintings, all self-portraits, taped to the walls. On their desk is a mirror and a sketchbook.
Mrs.?Lucero calls from the front door, “Andi said they were meeting up with you.”
“How long ago?”
“Hours.”
My hands and feet know where to drive before my mind does.
I go past Andi’s elementary school, the slide and jungle gym black against the dark sky.
Past a gas station. Past the house that sells bears carved from tree trunks.
I drive along Lake Ronkonkoma and I go east onto the Long Island Expressway, wind rattling the car.
I drive until the pine barrens spring up and the expressway ends, and I exit south onto a smaller road. The yellow bill of the Big Duck peeks out from behind the trees. I pull into the parking lot.
But Andi isn’t there.
I’m at the Big Duck, I message them. I thought you might be here
They don’t reply.
They said they knew the Big Duck but didn’t say they go here. They said they pass it.
I drive down the road past farm stands and rusted tractors.
I look down dirt roads and empty fields for Andi’s brown pickup.
I’ve entered a rural area that feels time zones away from our cookie-cutter suburbs.
Soon, though, the strip malls with giant parking lots return.
There’s a highway I’ve never heard of. I look at my phone’s map and that helps even less.
There’s another fifty miles of little roads leading to Montauk Point at the far eastern end of Long Island.
There’s no way I’ll find Andi. They might not even be out here.
I drive back to the Big Duck.
Andi is parked outside it, sitting on the hood of their truck.
My eyes are sleepy-bleary as I exit my car, but the cold air bites at my cheeks and wakes me up.
“I saw your text,” Andi says.
“Where were you?”
They cough. “You wanna go for a drive?”
Their truck has one long, plush bench seat. A garbled radio station plays loudly. I can’t figure out the right thing to say, and there must be so many wrong things, so I wait silently.
“Tell me something funny,” they say, barely loud enough to hear.
I shout over the music, “I spiraled into a depression when Elijah didn’t immediately understand I’m bi! In English we didn’t talk and I lost my mind and repeatedly banged my head on my desk!”
“Like, literally?”
I move my hair aside to show my forehead.
“Whoa!” They don’t swerve. “Are you okay?”
“I’m getting there.” I turn the music down. “But I’d like to hear more about what’s going on with you.”
They take a deep breath like they’re about to say something, but instead they accelerate. Dashed lines whir past.
“On the subject of the difficulty of talking about things…” I pull at my unibrow. “I’m sorry I didn’t message you back this afternoon.”
Oncoming headlights shine on their face. “It’s fine.”
“This application is obviously a big deal for you. I should have texted you to check in.”
“Please don’t ever text me to check in.”
“I’m also sorry about how last night I said I was working on my set and then I went out east with Elijah.”
“Why would you apologize for that? If you want to hang out with Elijah, you should. You can do whatever you want.”
I wince. “Sometimes I worry about how you are but I think you’d prefer I don’t say anything.”
“I appreciate that.”
“As though it would embarrass you to acknowledge you’re having emotions.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s kinder to leave you alone.”
“Thank you.”
“But it’s not kind and it’s not honest. I should have replied right away this afternoon. And I should have asked how you were feeling about all of it.”
They shrug. “I just figured you were being a guy.”
“But I don’t want to be that way.”
“But that’s why I like being friends with guys.”
My stomach twists. “I thought gender was a fiction.”
They groan.
The road narrows and we drive past little buildings with neatly painted signs. They’re the same kinds of stores that are in strip malls near us, but out here they have the time and money to make them look cute.
“You do this drive a lot?”
“I do.”
I don’t know whether I should ask more or just leave them alone. I close my eyes, the bumps in the road shaking my back. When I look over, Andi’s jaw is tensed, their eyes narrow.
“What is it?”
“Ms.?Esposito asked me to do this…thing.”
“Whoa. A thing.”
“It’s an application for art school.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what I thought the application was for. A contest?
“I know it’s stupid, okay? There’s like a one in zero chance I’d get in. But if you do, then this school is free, so, whatever, I’ll send something in. The app only asks for ten pieces.”
“Great. Easy.”
“That’s what I thought. And then you had that good set at Captain’s.”
“As opposed to all the bad ones?” I joke.
“Yes. When you talked at McGuinn’s about real stuff, the night you got into the competition, it was cool.
It wasn’t funny, but you were trying, trying to open up or whatever, and I found that inspiring.
And then at Captain’s, your set was actually good.
And you were being so honest. Like you’d looked hard at yourself and you knew who you were.
It was a reminder that I don’t do that.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Then you and Elijah hanging out, it was like…”
“Like what?”
Andi’s eyelashes are long and thick, the kind a lot of people probably wish for.
“Nothing. I liked hanging out with Elijah after Tony’s. He’s great. Suddenly I had a new friend. But then you two snuck away that night, and again after the diner, and suddenly I had no friends. And I feel like I’m not as…never mind.”
“Not as what?”
“Not as special as you two. That’s it. I said what I wanted to say and now we don’t have to talk about it anymore.” They take a pack of gum out of a pocket in their door and shake a stick out. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
They crank their window down. Air blasts in and rushes around us. I crank down my window to let it out. Over the sound of the rushing wind, I shout, “You’re special to me and I’m sorry for not acting in a way that shows that!”
They roll up their window and I roll up mine. Then they reply quietly, “Please stop.”
I’m still not sure about the right amount to push and the right amount to leave it.
I cross my arms and say in a dopey voice, “So, you’re applying to art school?”
“This is deeply embarrassing.”
“This is fine!”
“Everyone says it feels good to share, but it does not. Antidepressants are good, and coming out was obviously da bomb. But the thing that has kept me going is that I never think about myself. I don’t even look in the mirror when I brush my teeth.”
“What if you get a pimple?”
“I dunno, I squint. But now all I’m doing is thinking about myself and I can’t stop.”
The town ends and we pass an open field.
“You’re doing self-portraits for the application?”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” They scrunch up their shoulders. “I let myself want to get in and now I want to get in. And I don’t want…I don’t want to want anything.”
“But you—”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“You—”
“I’m done talking about it.” They adjust themselves so only the tips of their fingers rest on the steering wheel.
“I was trying to draw something for the application and it wasn’t working, so I went for a drive and you texted and I didn’t know how to reply but you were at the Big Duck so I went there.
And one thing I’ve learned is that when you’re feeling bad and you don’t know how to fix it, it’s almost always the right choice to go to sleep.
You might not feel better in the morning either, but at least you’ve taken care of your body. ”
“That makes sense.” I add it to the list of reminders to myself of what I could do better. “But if that’s true, then why are we driving east instead of heading home?”
They’re silent for a while. “It’s hard to do what’s good for you just because you know it’s good for you.”
I turn the volume up. Andi leaves the main road and weaves through streets of mansions with tall hedges and wide gates. They pull around a corner and park at a dead end with some overgrown brush. Without a word they exit the truck, and I button up my jacket and follow.
The wind is freezing and salty. I follow Andi onto a dirt path through the brush along a fence, past a cheap sign saying this is private property.
Sticks and leaves crunch under my feet, but below that is soft sand.
Andi pushes aside a massive branch and the star-filled sky appears above a beach and the ocean.
Waves crash in the distance and moisture sparks on my face. We go down to where the loud water rises high and smashes against the sand. For thousands of miles there’s only this ocean. My legs go numb like I’m standing at the edge of a great height.
“How do you know this place?”
“Sometimes I go swimming at night.”
“In this?”
“I go out until I can’t see the shore anymore.” The wind hits against us, but Andi doesn’t close their eyes. “I only know which is the way back because the water pulls me the other way.”
I don’t say anything. I reach out and hold their hand.