Afterward we went back upstairs, and Tracy closed the door behind us.
“Do you not like me anymore? Do you think I’m boring?”
“No,” I said, a little startled. “Not at all. I just wanted to work. And,” I added, my voice very soft, “I’m just not that into Halloween.”
Tracy didn’t say anything. She moved around her room, looking for things to do with her hands.
“Look, Alex,” she said. “I get it. You miss Mabel. Mabel’s a lot, I don’t know, cooler than me. Your life was probably a lot more interesting before you started dating me—”
“Tracy,” I interrupted her. “That’s not true at all—”
“What is it then, Alex?” She stood straight up and faced me. “If that’s not why you’ve been so weird lately, then what is it?”
I started muttering, “It’s nothing, I’m just, I have a lot of work to do … and I wasn’t really in the mood to…”
I trailed off.
Sasha Masha. I couldn’t tell her. Not yet.
“I don’t think you’re being honest with me,” she said.
I was afraid of what I’d reveal if I opened my mouth, so I just shook my head and looked at my feet.
Tracy waited. Then she sat down on the couch. Her legs were crossed and her back was straight and her eyes were shooting daggers at me. “I don’t think you understand,” she said, “how shitty it feels being with you sometimes.”
That was news. Maybe my distraction had been more obvious than I realized. I tried not to let her see my eyes.
“There are days,” she went on, “when you are so sweet, and caring, and I just feel so lucky. But then there are days…” She caught her breath and started to cry a little bit. I looked up at her. I’d never seen Tracy cry. “I’m sorry, I’m being stupid.”
I shook my head no and came over and sat by her. I took her hand, but she took it back and laid it in her lap. I was afraid to say anything. And then she looked at me.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to keep doing this,” she said. “What we’re doing.”
A moment of silence stretched into two moments. Three. I felt at a loss for words. I felt afraid. What could I say? Tracy stood up and blew her nose. She had stopped crying. She didn’t look at me, but she went back to picking up clothes, folding them, putting away the books that had ended up sprawled across the floor and the yellow couch.
I watched her a moment and then I covered my face. I didn’t want her to see that I wasn’t sad, or angry, or worried about breaking up. I was terrified about giving myself this name. It suddenly occurred to me that this name could change my life. I didn’t understand it yet, but I knew it had great power. It had warped things, and would only keep warping things the longer I held on to it and kept it inside.
“Can we maybe still go to the apple festival this weekend?” I asked, finally, in a voice that sounded like it was coming from a tiny box inside me. “And then see where we’re at?”
The best I could do. Pathetic. Holding on to a thread. Not ready to let go.
“Sure,” Tracy replied, but she didn’t meet my eyes.
Then I said it was late and Tracy agreed, and I packed up my books and my laptop and she gave me a ride home. We didn’t talk in the car. Maybe neither of us had the energy to think anymore. There was still homework to finish.
Chapter 12
“What should I do, Murphy?”
He didn’t answer. He fidgeted and then pounced on my hand when I tapped it on the carpet. He wrapped himself around my arm and chewed lightly at my knuckles. It was almost one in the morning. I’d come downstairs to try to finish my history outline. I hadn’t been able to sleep.
It really did seem like some monstrous force was suddenly rampaging through my life. I didn’t understand it, but I knew the name: Sasha Masha. I knew that I’d felt it that afternoon at Mabel’s house, in the velvet dress. But a wall of impossibility loomed high in my mind.
Eventually I gave up on the history outline and went upstairs to bed.
* * *
At school the next day, everything seemed normal. It was a Friday. Tracy and I sat next to each other in English, and she reached over and put all her weight on my shoulder when she stood up to use the bathroom. I was so relieved not to be in the middle of a muddy breakup that I was extra smiley and chatty with her. I guess we were both so afraid of fighting that we steered as clear of it as we could. Most Friday nights we did something together, but tonight we had no plans, and so far neither of us had brought it up.
On my way to second period, I sent a text:
“hey andre, it’s sasha masha, from the other night. any chance u want to hang out sometime?”
He texted me back just as second period was ending:
“hey Sasha Masha! yah totally. what r u doing next week?”
The warmth of it made me glad. I was supposed to wait to reply, though, right? I didn’t want to seem too excited.
Tracy found me after last period. Habit at least had her walking me from my locker to the back lot where I’d catch the bus.
“I’m going to stay home tonight, if that’s all right.”
“Sure,” I said, and nodded.
“Do you still want to go to the apple festival?”
“Yeah! I mean, if that’s okay?”
“Are you sure?” She searched my eyes. “Is that actually what you want or is that what you think you should say?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. I do. I want to go with you. Do you want to go with me?”
“I do,” she said softly. “Yeah.”
I rode the bus home, staring out the window at the sidewalks strewn with leaves and trash, the chain-link fences that wrapped around concrete yards. The bus moved west and north, and the smaller trees struggling to come up from squares in the pavement were replaced with bigger trees whose branches dimmed whole streets. The colors of the leaves reminded me of the color of the old T-shirts my dad loved to wear, shirts he’d had since college. Reds and oranges named after diners and rental car companies and minor league baseball teams. The leaves filled the gutters. When I got off the bus, I realized that for a while there, I had stopped thinking about Tracy or Andre or myself. I had stopped thinking about Sasha Masha. I had just been looking out at the world.
A gift. However fleeting.
As soon as I made it inside, I texted Andre.
“I think mostly just hanging out with my girlfriend”
“& homework lol”
“but if u feel okay to skip the lavender ladder”
“what about Tuesday”
“?”
Chapter 13
Saturday around noon, my mom, my dad, my mom’s friend Janice, and I pulled up in front of Tracy’s house. Janice was a college friend my mom had reconnected with on Facebook; she was visiting from Denver and staying with us for a few days. She made me wonder what my mom had been like at twenty. The Lewises met the Shapelskys and chatted in the sunshine on the lawn. Janice stood in the grass in her high-heeled boots and waved her ring-heavy fingers. I couldn’t tell you how, but overnight our date had turned into a whole group expedition.
“Don’t come back too late,” Jennifer warned Tracy. “I’m making dinner.”
Tracy and I could barely look each other in the face. When Tracy’s mom squeezed my hand and waved goodbye, I had a feeling in my gut that I was making a mess of everything. I took the middle seat in the back between Janice and Tracy, and everyone had to move butts to get seat belts buckled. We rode through the fall-colored city, but I felt in no mood to daydream.
At the apple festival there were indeed apples and apple cider doughnuts and so many different stands trying to sell apple pie that I found myself craving anything salty and dry. We walked up and down the rows in a loose flock. My mom was telling Janice about my life.
“Alex is in his junior year, and he likes his school a lot—you like it a lot, right, Alex?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“He has th
e best English teacher,” she said, “and the best history teacher.” Janice nodded, looking back at me. “Which took a little bit of doing—”
“I wasn’t going to get involved,” my dad interjected, “but his mom thought—”
“You have to ask for certain teachers. You just have to. And anyway, it’s been hard with his friend Mabel gone, but you seem to be holding up okay, no?”
“I’m all right.” I shrugged.
“And how would you characterize your mother’s life, Alex?” Janice asked, turning to me with a playful smile. “How would you describe her year so far?”
“Devastatingly stable,” I replied.
Janice laughed out loud. I was weirdly thrilled at that.
Eventually Tracy and I split off from the grown-ups. We drifted down the hill toward the pig races.
The crowd around the miniature racetrack consisted of lots of little kids with painted faces and dirty fingers and their parents holding apple fritters on a stick or Styrofoam cups of hot apple cider. They cheered as someone on a microphone announced the lineup for the next race. George “Porker” Washington was going up against Thomas “Tubby” Jefferson, Alexander “Ham Hock” Hamilton, and Benjamin “Butterball” Franklin.
There was a bang and four baby pigs came galloping out onto the sawdust track, little pink bodies bumping along in a hurry. It was over in a minute. “Ham Hock” Hamilton won.
I had a sinking feeling that I was about to spill everything to Tracy and that it wouldn’t go well. I wasn’t sure what I was spilling, really, but it seemed clear that I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had to tell her about Sasha Masha. I didn’t know what I was going to say, and I didn’t know what she would take it to mean. I was afraid. I was worried. The crowd was restless, and the next round of pigs were getting corralled into their starting cages. The man with the microphone was naming them, but I had trouble paying attention. And then it was as if a hand reached into my chest and turned my heart. I wasn’t afraid anymore.
“Hey, will you come with me this way?” I held out my arm and waited for Tracy to take it. She didn’t, but she indicated that she’d follow. I headed toward what seemed like the far edge of the festival grounds.
Bang! The gates were open for the second race, and the crowd was hollering.
Up ahead was a fence. I walked and could hear Tracy behind me. Uneven ground. Muddy earth covered in straw. Soon there would be nowhere else to go.
By the fence, we faced each other in the crisp, chilly air.
“What’s going on, Alex?” Her voice was steely and level.
“I think that, um,” I started to say. I felt like I was watching myself from outside my body. The muscles in my mouth were moving without my moving them. Time slowed down. The air smelled like apple pie and pig shit and I was standing there about to say something that I wasn’t sure had any meaning. Something that would probably come off as pretty stupid. And I was about to say it with a straight face and my heart in my gut.
“I think my name’s actually Sasha Masha.”
“Okay,” Tracy said, her face unchanged. “So what are you telling me?”
“Just that. That that’s my name. It was starting to drive me a little crazy. And I thought I should tell you.”
Tracy looked at me, searched my face for something else. For what I might say next. But I didn’t say anything else. I just shrugged.
“You know what?” Tracy said. “I think I’m done with this. I don’t know what this game is about, but I’m tired of feeling like you’re playing with me. I’m gonna head home.”
My mouth opened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want to break up.”
“Oh.”
She looked at me an extra moment, and then she took out her phone and started texting someone. She seemed completely unemotional. But then I noticed that her hands were shaking. This wasn’t the reaction I’d expected at all. I was too surprised to argue.
“Um,” I said. “Who are you texting?”
“I’m texting Jo, to see if she can come pick me up.”
And that’s when I wished I could take it all back. I felt a huge sadness come flooding in, and all I could think about was wanting to make things better. Never mind, I wanted to tell her. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, tell her it wasn’t true. I wanted to drop it, simplify, get rid of the thing that didn’t make sense. All of a sudden it didn’t make sense to me either. Don’t worry, I wanted to say. I’m just me. I’m just Alex. I wanted everything to feel as simple as it had that magic, endless afternoon by Lake Roland.
“No, Tracy, slow down. Let me explain.”
“It sounded like you explained all you could explain. And frankly, I’m tired of asking for explanations and getting ones that don’t make any fucking sense.”
“Let’s just go for a walk. And then we can all drive home together. My parents can drop you off.”
“Are you insane? That sounds like the worst thing in the world.” Tracy looked up at me. “The last thing I want to do is walk around this stupid pig-smelling place pretending we’ve been in a real relationship for the last two months instead of some fantasy I tricked myself into believing. Sometimes I think you’re completely out of your mind.”
I felt myself shrink. “Um,” I said again. “I’m sorry.”
“I think I’d like to have a moment to myself,” she said. “And then I’m just going to go. Jo is going to come get me.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I’m going to tell her that it’s over. I’m going to tell her that I’m relieved.”
“But what about…?”
“About your name? Masha Pasha or whatever?” She glared at me. “I don’t have much interest in dignifying that with a response.”
“Can we just talk a little bit?”
“What is there to talk about? You said what you had to say.” Tracy’s hands were shoved resolutely in her pockets. Her feet were planted next to each other in the mud. Then she flinched and looked off toward where the pig races were continuing in endless rounds. “I’m sorry, I need to go.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, but I said it too quietly and she was already walking away.
Chapter 14
The next day, Sunday, I slept till noon.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” my dad said when I came downstairs. “You must have been beat from all those apples and pig races.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
When I’d found them after the races, I’d told them Tracy wasn’t feeling well and had left the festival early.
“Have you heard from her? Is she feeling any better?” my dad asked.
“I think so,” I said.
“That’s good.”
I poured myself a bowl of cereal and joined them around the table like nothing was wrong. My whole body felt like Mabel’s and my favorite parking garage, the way it got empty and still at night. It was a kind of exhaustion, but it was a kind of relief, too.
Janice turned to me. “We’re talking about our friend Terry,” she clarified. “He just left his wife and sold his house and moved into a trailer in Wyoming.”
“Ah,” I replied.
“When people get to be our age, they sometimes flip out a little bit,” my dad said to me by way of explanation. “Too many regrets.”
My phone buzzed. It was a new text from Andre. Under the table I read:
“Tuesday yah”
“how about paper moon?”
I replied with a thumbs-up.
Eventually my mom pushed back from the table and proposed that they get on the road. “You sure you don’t want to come, sweetie?” They were taking Janice to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
I shook my head.
After they were gone, I tried to focus on schoolwork. But my mind kept flooding with my own regrets. I wished I’d said more to Tracy. I wished I’d tried to explain. Still, I knew the damage had already
been done. And anyway Tracy had once said it felt “shitty” being with me. I had been a bad, distracted boyfriend well before I brought up Sasha Masha.
Mabel called that afternoon. I told her that Tracy and I were over.
“Did you break up with her, or did she break up with you?”
“She broke up with me.”
“But what happened? Did something happen?”
I took a deep breath and did my best to describe the situation.
“Well, first off, I think I want my name to be Sasha Masha.”
“And that’s why Tracy broke up with you?”
“Yes and no.”
Even with Mabel I couldn’t explain it very well.
“It’s not about the name. But the name is also everything,” I said.
“You sound like an insane religious leader,” Mabel told me. “In a terrible movie.”
“I know! It’s awful.”
“I mean, how would you describe it, this Sasha Masha–ness? This thing you’re after. I get it. But I was there. And I’m me.”
I tried, but my mind refused any other language. “I’m not … sure.” I had a sudden wave of despair. “Ugh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, my dear,” Mabel said. “All in good time!”
* * *
Monday was Halloween and relentless chaos. It might have seemed like Halloween was a great day to try being someone new, but somehow I couldn’t muster the right spirit. You couldn’t walk down the hallway without bumping into someone’s wings, or horns, or stuffed appendage. Maybe Sasha Masha wasn’t the key to who I was after all. Maybe it was just my own stupid stuffed appendage.
Tracy wasn’t there in English. Jo was wearing fairy wings. I thought about asking her if Tracy was okay, but then decided against it. In history I avoided eye contact with Jen, though probably that was because of her vampire cape and the trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.
“Alex! What happened?” Mr. Wolper-Diaz asked me in the hallway. “You forget your costume?”
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