Chapter 24
The streets are empty as Elijah and I speed under green lights past strip malls. Neither of us had any idea where to go, so we’re driving east without a destination. The seats vibrate with thumping bass. His car contains no mystery smells and moves so smoothly I feel like it’s from the future.
I run my hand along the door handle. The leather is stitched with red thread. “So, you like the new school?”
It’s as if now that we’re officially dating I can only do small talk.
His voice is stilted too. “You’ve been here your whole life?”
“Sort of. I started in Paumanok but left before first grade. We were real excited when we found a house back in this district last year.”
“You and your mom?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We moved a bunch.” I can feel all my memories stacked up inside me like physical objects. I imagine showing each one to Elijah and asking him, Do you understand?
Streetlights flash across his face. He puts on his blinker to get on the highway. “Why did you want to get back to this school so badly?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and I really don’t.
It was just never a question. “I think we were wishing we could get back to the life we had when I was little, and we settled for at least the same school district. I always knew money was tough, but way back then, my mom used to lie next to me in bed and we’d chat as I went to sleep.
She’d say, Everything’s going to be okay, over and over as I drifted off. Like a prayer.”
Elijah makes a sound. “I’d love to meet your mom.”
“Yeah?” My voice shakes and I tell myself not to worry about her. “She’s gonna be at Captain’s tomorrow. You can meet her there.”
“I look forward to it.”
I watch the side of the highway rush by while the moon above remains still. “Why did you move here?” I imagine him and his mom having dinner together, saying good night to each other, saying good morning.
“Why did I follow my mom to a school with like five Black kids?” He scratches hard behind his ear, then changes the subject. “We never actually decided where I’m driving. Should I get off and turn back toward your house?” He pulls into the right lane.
“Let’s keep going,” I say.
“Yeah?”
The map shows us driving into the unknown.
“So what happened with you and Christy?” he asks.
“That’s what I’m considering talking about at the show tomorrow.
It’s the thing Jay was making fun of me for.
Trying to have sex. Because Christy and I both felt like she had to stay still while I went into her.
But that’s not required. I could’ve been the one who stayed still while she got all the parts in the right place. You know? Or we both could’ve moved.”
“That’s true.”
“I felt so scared taking the lead. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were the norm for whoever feels like it, regardless of gender, to make the move?”
“Definitely.”
I light up. “Have you ever kissed a girl?”
He thinks about it. “Once.”
“And?”
“She started it.”
“And?”
“I’m glad she did!”
A full body rush. I know Elijah has been out forever, but I don’t know specifically how he identifies. He’s kissed people of different genders and it’s no big deal to him.
The exits get fewer and the pine barrens spring up, thin trees reaching toward the cloudless sky with all its stars.
I don’t know anything about this region except that it’s called a region, and before I was born the trees burned for weeks and now they’ve all re-grown.
This far out on the island, you could almost forget we live in the most suburban suburbs around.
Elijah zooms out on the map. “It looks like the expressway ends soon.”
“I’ve never actually gone this far east.”
“Yeah. I thought when I moved here it would be all beaches and farms.”
“Not where we live. But I think it gets more nature-y if you go past where the island forks?”
There’s a long silence before he says, “Let’s see.”
He turns the music up and we take the final exit off the expressway, slowing down onto a smaller road. We pass non-chain stores in buildings that look like houses. We pass a gas station advertising homemade ice cream. We go through a town that looks like a town.
“What happened with the girl who kissed you?” I say.
“Duck!” he shouts.
A building shaped like a white duck appears from behind the trees, towering above an open field.
Elijah pulls over and we get out and behold the duck. Its expression is alternately stoic, confident, dopey, and blank. It’s baffling and mesmerizing.
“Long Island,” I say.
“There’s a door in its breast.”
“Maybe it’s a house for wayward ducks.”
Elijah runs up and peers into the dark interior through the window in the door. “It’s a gift shop.”
“Are the gifts live ducks?”
“They’re mostly postcards.”
The grass in the field is lit gold and blue by the streetlights and moonlight.
Elijah rolls his sleeves to his shoulders, stretches one leg forward, and begins leaping across the field.
I put my hands in my pockets and trot behind him.
He twirls with arms outstretched and gracefully lowers himself to the ground. I thump down beside him.
“So you definitely know how to dance,” I say.
He laughs. “Because of that?”
“It might not seem like anything to you but that was very cool.”
He hops up and strikes a pose with one foot stretched behind him.
I applaud and cheer. He holds a hand out to me.
“Oh,” I say. “No thanks.”
“You can do it. Just live in your body and move however you feel.”
I wrap my arms around my knees. “My body is already moving how it feels.”
He crouches in front of me. “You would love a eurhythmics class.”
“I don’t know what that is, but I prefer to detach from my body and exist as floating thought.”
“Do you?” He sits and crosses his legs. “You’re so comfortable with yourself.”
“Me? You are.”
“How many times have you seen me talk in class?”
I consider this. “That’s true. Why don’t you?”
He shrugs. “When I was little, I barely spoke at all. Ever. Then I found dance, and it was this way I could be myself. And it’s like I practiced being me onstage and slowly learned to take it offstage.”
“So…”
“So, I still don’t feel like talking about myself in front of a room of people!”
No cars pass by. I hear myself inhale before I speak. “Would you tell me the story of the friend who saw you but didn’t see you?”
He says he will if I try a movement exercise first, and I accept.
He says to listen to the sounds outside of us, to the air above us and the cars in the distance and the insects all around, and also to the sound inside, to my heartbeat and my breath.
He says to move however I feel without concern for how it might come out.
He says he will go elsewhere and look away.
I watch him move, not dancing exactly, not doing anything necessarily beautiful. He moves across the field with his body like each gesture is a phrase in a language I haven’t learned.
Soon I do the same, or I try. I move my arms and my legs, like a robot at first and then more smoothly.
I am learning the language of my body. I move over the grass until I find myself near Elijah.
I wouldn’t understand the first thing about attempting to have my body in conversation with someone else’s, it would terrify me to try to move together, to see while being seen.
But I suppose I must be interested in it, because I move in front of him and make eye contact, and he responds by touching my chest lightly and whispering, “You’re it.
” Then he sprints away. I race after him toward the trees and I tag his arm and I turn and run back into the field, his laughter close behind.
We’re lying in the grass out of breath and sweating when Elijah says, “Last year my best friend Gabe’s girlfriend broke up with him, and he started inviting me over every Friday night.
It used to be their night and now it was ours.
Gabe was a track guy who buzzed his own hair and looked like he was in the army, but I knew he was secretly scared of everything: heights, bugs, everything. ”
We’re not touching, but I can feel the heat of his arm beside mine.
“One night, a cockroach ran next to my sleeping bag on the floor, and I didn’t care but Gabe said I should come sleep in his bed.
I climbed in, a foot of space between us.
He said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t get morning wood,’ and I was like, ‘Phew,’ and he goes, ‘Because I jerk off every night.’ I said, ‘That’s weird because I jerk off all night,’ and he goes, ‘While sleeping?’ And I said, ‘Very slowly.’ And then we went to sleep.
The next time I slept over, he invited me up again, and again we slept.
The only weird thing about it was that it wasn’t weird.
He knew I was gay and I knew he was straight.
We were proud of ourselves for not caring. ”
I make a sound of affirmation.
Elijah shakes his head. “Then one night we’re lying there with the lights off, and he says to me, ‘I’m kind of surprised there’s been no incidents,’ and I said, ‘Incidents?’ He says, ‘Have you thought about it?’ And I say, ‘I must not have, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.
’ I loved him so cleanly I never would have allowed myself to see him that way.
And I was raised very Christian, so I can only be attracted to someone if they’ve given me permission to be. ”
I’ve never heard this idea before but it makes sense. I wouldn’t want to think about someone in a way they weren’t comfortable with.
“And Gabe rolls onto his back and says, ‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’ And like it was waiting under my tongue, I say, ‘An incident sounds fun.’ He turns over, his face lit up by the moon.
And, like, I have heard guys say that the first time they kissed a guy it finally felt right .
I’d been kissing boys since elementary school, but Gabe was the first boy I kissed who I loved.
And. It. Felt. Right. We barely touched each other but we still came all over the bed, and it was gross and we laughed trying to clean it up and there was no way to clean it up. ”
“Oh my God.”
“When we woke up in the morning,” Elijah says, “I asked if he wanted to be my boyfriend, and he said, ‘You know I’m only emotionally attracted to girls.’ And he kept inviting me over for sleepovers, and I kept saying yes, only now I slept on the floor again.
And when he’d ask if I wanted to jerk off together, I’d say yes.
And afterwards he’d say how proud he was of us just being cool about it, for being guys and keeping things uncomplicated , and I’d laugh and agree. And I got so angry.”
“With him?”
“With myself. For trying to play it cool, for trying to please him…I was mad at myself for not believing I was deserving of his affection. And that’s why I moved here. To get away. To start over.”
For a moment I only blink, not because I can’t find the words, but because there aren’t words.
“Thank you for sharing.”
“So it’s hard for me to trust someone else, especially someone who was just dating a girl.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to defend myself. “I see.”
Mostly, my feeling is simply that I want to know everything about Elijah.
I want to ask about his mother. I want to ask about wanting to be a dancer, about how he imagines his future, and if he ever makes fun of himself for wanting it.
I want to know his favorite food. How do I not know his favorite food?
When I look over, his eyes are waiting for me.
“I would like to kiss you,” I say. “But you just told me about your awful friend and how it’s hard for you to trust me.”
“I take it back.”
I laugh. “I feel a little overwhelmed, though. I feel like a lot is happening in my life right now.”
“Well.” Elijah gives a gentle smile but his eyebrows flick with sass. “I like hanging out with you. If that means making out? Fun. And if not? Totally okay.”
I exhale.
“The good news,” he says, holding out his hand, “is that there are no armrests in this field.”
His fingers are long and square. I draw my fingers along them, and he turns his hand to face the gold streetlight, and I trace the lines on his palm.
He reaches his other hand over and touches my hand that’s touching his, tracing his thumb along the side of my thumb.
I bring my fingers up his wrist, the skin softer here.
He pulls back for a second because I accidentally tickled him, and so when he brings his arm back I press more firmly.
I feel his rough elbows and the tight muscles of his upper arms. The cotton of his T-shirt is so soft it’s like nothing I’ve ever touched, it’s a type of T-shirt I could’ve never imagined.
I move closer to him and I run a hand along his clavicle, his head turning away to reveal his taut neck.
His stubble scratches lightly against my thumb.
He closes his eyes and leans into my hand as I touch his face, as I move my fingers up to his temple and across his eyebrow.
I slowly move my thumb along his nose, the ridge above his lips and along the side to his chin.
I close my eyes as he moves closer and I feel his soft hand touch my neck.
I lean into him and press my face into his palm and breathe deeply the smell of his skin.
When I feel his lips on mine, I sink into them and let his tongue open my mouth, and I lose myself entirely.