Chapter 10
I was on my way to Practical Mechanics when I noticed people looking at me strangely in the hallway. I thought there might
be something on my face—donut cream?—and made a note to check myself in the mirror before class. But there was nothing there.
Someone I didn’t know from the Blue House—a boy who mostly focused on where he was going—came up to me, looking suspicious.
“You and Jay?” the person said. “Y’all seem close.”
My body froze with terror. “What?”
“The letters.” He pointed to a newspaper clipping taped to the wall above the water fountain across the hall.
I ran over, pulled it down, and scanned it. It seemed someone had reprinted Jay’s letters to me and written commentary in
the margins.
“Are Nick Carrington and Jay Gatsby Lovers?” said the headline. “Read The Daily Dish for More!”
Artie . . . His column in the paper—the Daily Dish. He was dissecting every sentence of the letters and questioning what it meant about our feelings for each other.
My palms were sweating, my whole body hot, like a piece of ham on burning asphalt.
Everybody—not just this kid—was looking at me. There were three crowds of people around—where did they come from? Some tilted
their heads, others laughed.
The boy who’d spoken seemed both amused and sympathetic. “Don’t be so rattled. If it makes you feel better, I think people
had already noticed.”
I fled from the conversation, down hallways and back to my dorm. Scrambling to lift my cot—where I had hidden my letters from
Jay—I knew they’d be gone.
The mess of my ransacked things made it impossible to tell when they had been taken. We had stopped writing to each other
a while ago, now that we were talking face-to-face. Had they disappeared with the flyers and notes about my paper?
What a stroke of luck for the thief! To have not only found my writings but the letters as well—it was all they would need
to ruin my life at West Egg!
Jay . . . I had to find Jay.
I ran toward the quad, shoes scraping the stone ground heavily, and scanned the yard, all the disc-throwing boys and overachievers
passing out flyers from their extracurricular tables. I spotted Jay there at one of the tables—this one for the hiking club,
it looked like.
I weaved through the small crowd and sidled up to him. “I don’t know how best to say this, but there’s an emergency happening.”
“What?” Jay said, looking at me, his relaxed expression dissolving into concern. “What emergency?”
I lowered my tone so only he could hear. “Someone broke into my room and stole your letters and now they’re apparently published
in the Chronicle.”
Jay looked alarmed, his eyes darting around with quick thoughts. And then, his face relaxed. “Let’s get somewhere private.”
My stomach churned as Jay led us to an abandoned classroom, clearly in need of repairs.
“Haven’t you read it?” I asked as I closed the door behind us.
“No, read what?” he returned, as he sat halfway on the teacher’s desk. “I went to man the table for hiking club first thing
today.”
“I’m sorry for what you’re about to see then.” I set my bag on a desk and fished the paper out. “I don’t know if writing letters
was the best way to communicate in the first place.”
“Just show me,” Jay said.
I gave him the column Artie wrote, and his face tensed with concern as he read it.
“So, now they know.” He tore it up and threw it in the trash, with seeming indifference.
“You . . . don’t care?” I asked.
“What’s the point of caring?” he asked, voice low, as if he was speaking to himself, “My father being who he is naturally
makes me into a spectacle, so people talk about me all the time. Who do you think it was that broke into your room? Was it
Artie?”
“Charlie,” I answered. “I was going to start this paper that pushed back against the Chronicle, what it allows us to say. I don’t think Charlie liked that a Negro was challenging the agenda of his paper. So he raided my room and took what I’d been
working on. Your letters, I think, were a happy accident, taken to keep the joke going about us.”
Jay entertained the idea but seemed to doubt it as well. “Sounds like something he’d think to do. But the thought of him setting
one foot into the Blue House is a bit of a stretch. It could have been anyone, really! This idea of sexual inversion is such a topic of fascination to people nowadays.”
“Oh.” His philosophical speech was grand on the ears. “What’s sexual inversion?”
“It’s the theory that some boys are attracted to boys, and some girls are attracted to other girls,” Jay said. “Their attraction
is flipped from what’s considered normal, as it were. It’s very scientific—well studied, in fact, and a popular topic in sensationalist press.”
“So, it just could have been anyone who thought we were . . .”
He looked at me, as if ready to catch my next word like an apple fallen from a tree.
“Fruits,” I finished, making Jay snicker with amusement. “And wanting to have a laugh.”
“Precisely,” Jay said. “Which is why you shouldn’t worry. The Chronicle offers fifteen dollars weekly for inside scoops and people are desperate for an in with Charlie. They were looking for my letters and got lucky with your paper.”
Though I still felt uneasy in my stomach, his words were calming me. No need to make this gossip a bigger storm in my mind than it was.
“I’m not used to being in the spotlight,” I said.
“Well, clearly the spotlight loves you,” Jay replied, gesturing to the paper on the desk. “But either way, we can’t have Charlie
thinking he’s won by pandering to West Egg’s gossips.”
How would I fight back? The thought of it drained me. There were moments I felt like fighting everyone who wanted to harm me, and moments when I just
wanted to give up.
Something behind me stole Jay’s attention, and when I turned, I saw someone passing by in the hallway behind us.
“Ah, Zihan!” Jay called, running out into the hallway.
He went out and stopped Zihan, to put his arm around him to bring him into the room. “Nick, this here is Zihan. He’s studying
restaurant work, but he wants to be a stuntman, like his father.”
Why would Jay decide to pull him into our conversation? Things were embarrassing enough without an audience.
“We know each other,” I finally told him, and Zihan’s and my hands naturally raised for a high five.
“Oh, great!” Jay said, looking back and forth between us. “Zihan, I’ve called you over here because I’ve seen Charlie giving
you the business too, over your fashions and heritage. I say we put our heads together and get back at him.”
“I don’t want to get back at him,” I protested.
Jay turned to me. “Wrongdoing should be faced with accountability, Nick. It’s the only way to keep the balance of nature.”
“I read your letters,” Zihan said, looking slightly concerned. “You should carry something like a weapon, just in case people get the wrong idea. My uncle carries a cane for his bad leg, but he’s used it like a bat when he’s needed to.”
“I’m here for an education, not a fight!” I said.
“But you must learn to fight to defend yourself!” Jay countered. He approached me in a fighting stance and started to throw
jabs, forcing me to back away from him, my hands held up.
“Okay, what are you doing?” I demanded.
“Teaching you how to fight!”
“All my life I’ve had to fight!” I said, swatting his hand away. “Stop!”
“Boohoo—life is rough!” Jay took off his sweater vest and threw it on the desk, then unbuttoned some of the shirt underneath.
“Zihan!” he said, pivoting to face him. “Hit me!”
But instead of a hit, Zihan instantly threw a kick into Jay’s shoulder.
“Ow!” Jay screamed, rubbing his shoulder.
“You asked for it,” Zihan said, with a shrug and a soft laugh.
“I said hit, but very well.” Jay nodded, impressed. “See!” he said, turning to me. “Zihan can walk around in girls’ clothes because he
knows how to do that.”
“What if I don’t want to know how to do that?” I said. “I’m not fighting anybody, Jay. I don’t need a reason to be thrown
out of West Egg.”
“But it does matter,” Jay retorted. “Say my letters get out beyond school, and someone jumps us? Then what?”
“We get jumped, I guess.”
“Ugh!” Jay groaned and rolled his eyes. “Don’t you get tired of being so nonchalant?”
My reaction in this moment mattered to him—he wanted it to be as chaotic as his. And, as neutral as I was to a rumor as silly
as this one, I couldn’t call the question inappropriate. I did get tired of being so nonchalant.
I crouched into a fighting stance, and the sight of it made him smile. I threw a jab at the front of his shoulder. In response,
he tackled me into the chalkboard, knocking the wind out of me. In the cloud of chalk dust that burst around us, he grabbed
my wrist, rendering me half powerless.
“Nice try,” he whispered, our faces so close I could smell the florals of his shampoo.
Close enough to feel the force of his inner chaos, I decided that some wrestling around was okay.
We didn’t want that day to end! Each of us wanted to spend more time together. All the attention at West Egg was suffocating,
but off campus grounds we could breathe again, free from the petty gossip.
After school, we shelled out five cents for a trip to Coney Island. There was a carnival on the beach—the last of the year—that
stretched off Southwest Brooklyn, near to where Jay lived but so far from Harlem and school.
The day melted away as we wandered toward the coast and weaved through a wonderland of lights, carousels, and rollercoasters.
Zihan got some cotton candy from a man spinning it in a machine.
I got a funnel cake and then found Jay sitting on a table with his feet on the adjoining bench.
He’d somehow secured a plastic cup full of gin and lemonade.
I don’t know how he found it, but he offered me some, and I sipped it awkwardly, careful not to touch my lips to his lip print.
He watched me though, to see if my lips would touch the ghost of his.