Sugar Summer

by Hannah Moskowitz

  Chapter 15

  The auditorium is set up with a bunch of little tables, like when we were in New York (Mara was there, Mara was there, we were in the same city and I had no idea) and went to a comedy club. Mom picks out one for us that's tiny and backed into a corner. I guess she's embarrassed.

  I probably should be too. I've seen people looking at me, whispering about me. A couple families and just about all of the entertainment staff that's lined up against the back wall. I don't think they hate me—Tristan promised they didn't—and it's hard to believe most of the guests have any real feelings about Mara being fired besides that it's decent gossip, but they're still staring at me and it's enough to bother my mom, apparently. Rory's sitting with her entourage in a table near the front. Not tucked into a corner.

  I feel like there are so many things here that should piss me off but I'm just feeling none of it. None of anything. I get a virgin cocktail and sit there while my mother shuttles down whiskey and watch the different performers. I don't even feel sad anymore, just done with this place. The only person here I feel like I'm even allowed to have anything in common with is Bekah, and she keeps running back and forth between our table to the backstage for all the various number she's in with all the friends she made without my noticing.

  That's probably where my mom thought I'd been these past three weeks. Hanging out with a whole bunch of new friends, like Bekah. She was probably relieved that I was finally coming out of my shell.

  Guess I showed everybody. It doesn't feel any more triumphant now than it did back in Mara's cabin before she left.

  What does feel triumphant is just being here. Showing up, looking nice, and staring straight at the stage while everyone studies me like they're hoping to see some of Mara's blood on my dress.

  Josh passes by our table at one point when it's just me and mom, clearing glasses off the table next to ours. My mom stops him when he straightens up to shake his hand and thank him for his service this summer.

  He flashes her a smile. “You're very welcome, Mrs. Applebaum,” he says. “And listen...I heard that you took care of Tristan, and I want to say that I think that was really cool of you.”

  “Oh, of course,” my mother says.

  “I mean, I think a lot of doctors might have...y'know. Because of what he is.”

  “Josh,” I say.

  Neither of them looks at me. “What do you mean?” my mother says.

  “Well, y'know. Because he's trans? Anyway, I think...you know. I think it's pretty weird, but he still should get medical care and stuff, of course...so I think it's cool that you knew that.”

  “I didn't know that,” my mother says. “Not that it would have changed how I treated him at all. But I don't think it's your place to tell people.”

  He opens and closes his mouth like a fish. “Oh. Um. Right.”

  My mom just stares him down.

  He says, “Well, goodnight, Mrs. Applebaum.”

  She turns away from him and sips her drink. He shuffles away, and she sets her drink down and I see her working through it in her head. The name on the painkillers.

  I raise an eyebrow at her.

  She has her mouth open for a few seconds before she actually speaks. “So Mara didn't—”

  “Nope,” I say.

  Bekah comes flitting over to the table. “Did you see me?”

  Mom shakes herself a little and kisses her cheek. “You were fantastic.”

  Bekah turns to me.

  I force a smile. “Really great.”

  “Thanks, Sugar.”

  A bunch of the staff, including Sol and Josh, are onstage now, singing the little anthem they play when we're walking in for meals that I never realized had words. I guess this is the end of the program. I didn't even feel the space where Mara's dance should have been.

  Tomorrow morning everyone will go home and it'll all be over. My mom and I will circle around each other for a month and pretend it never happened and never talk about it. I'll go off to college and meet a nice girl and slowly ease my mom into it and she'll act like she had no idea it was coming, and then eventually get to a place where she acts like she never had a problem with it, what am I talking about. You saw how she reacted to finding out Tristan was trans! How could she ever have a problem with a gay daughter? Preposterous.

  I down my drink like there's something real in it while Mom and Bekah giggle to each other about the waiters and their terrible singing.

  Tomorrow it'll be like none of this ever happened.

  I hear the door in the back of the auditorium open and slam shut. I hear hushed noise from the entertainment and landscaping staff in the back, high-heeled footsteps to the middle of the audience and then silence. I look.

  Holy shit. It's Mara.

  She's wearing a silver dress and her red heels. She has lipstick on and her hair pinned off her face and pouring down her back.

  Everyone onstage is still singing. If the staff in the back weren't still whispering to each other, I'd think I was imagining her.

  She's scanning the crowd, eyes narrowed, and finally she lands on me.

  I'm scared for a second that I wasn't who she was looking for.

  But she smiles at me. And she clicks over to me and looks at me backed into the wall behind this table, sitting there in my pink dress, my sister's makeup.

  “Nobody puts Esther in a box,” she says. She takes my hand and pulls me out from behind the table and we're walking through the auditorium.

  “What are you doing here?” I say. “I thought you were out of the state by now.”

  “I came back,” she says. “You look beautiful.”

  “You were supposed to leave quietly,” I say while we weave through the tables. “So you could get your summer bonus.”

  “This is my summer bonus.” She stops and takes both my hands, looks me dead in the eyes. “Are you good with this?”

  “I can't even process that you're here. I just. Good with what?”

  She beams at me and I swear I feel faint. “Do you want to stay in the closet a little longer?”

  I don't even hesitate. “Not for a second.”

  “All right then.”

  She brings me to the front of the auditorium but doesn't pull me onstage. There are about eight feet between the front cluster of little tables and the stage, and we stop there. We're maybe five feet away from Rory Richards.

  She puts both her arms up in the air, and she still has me by the hand so one of my arms goes up too. I slowly raise my other one. I realize she has something—a CD case, I think—in her other hand, and I start to figure out what's going to happen here.

  Everyone gradually stops singing.

  I look up at Sol. I can't help it. He has his palm over his eyes.

  So I look at Bekah instead, who's lit up like Christmas tree over at our table. And then I look at Mara.

  Fierce, gorgeous...and scared, now that all these eyes are on us, waiting to hear what she has to say.

  She puts our arms down and opens her mouth, closes it again.

  She turns to me.

  “You don't owe them an explanation,” I say quietly.

  She nods. “Okay.”

  I hold out my hand for the CD. “Do you want me to..?”

  She gives it to me.

  I start to climb up on the stage but Tristan steps out of the line of people and takes it from me. He nods and disappears into the wings, and the crowd on the stage slowly disperses. Sol starts to say something, but Josh takes him by the shoulder and leads him off, and he lets himself be led.

  Mara and I stay on the floor.

  The music starts, sultry and slow. A woman's voice. Mara stands perfectly straight, her back to me, her arm up and ready to wrap around my neck.

  I go to her. I stand behind her and put my hand on her hip and run the other one down her side.

  I feel her laugh, just a little, and it's so real suddenly. It's Mara and I together again, in front of everyone, in front of my mother. Dressed
like ourselves.

  And she laughed. She's not in character. It's really her.

  I spin her out and the music speeds up.

  I don't have to think about the steps anymore, and even if I did have to think about them I don't think I could. We're holding hands and dancing side by side for this part, and I try to keep my head out to the audience, but it's so hard not to turn it and watch her, proud and fluid and startling, this girl.

  The entertainment and the landscaping staffs are just about losing it, cheering and dancing along. We do the first lift, the small one, and they scream. Our dresses twirl out in all directions.

  Something in me is growing, stretching, waking me up to the tips of my fingers. And I know, I know the song is going to end and she'll leave again, and I'll have to be back in the real world without her but...

  But it'll be too late now. I'll have been seen now. A lesbian, a rule-breaker, a dancer. An adult. There's no going back from this.

  Finally.

  We won't leave quietly. I'm never going to leave quietly again. I can't anymore.

  Finally everything will have to change. Finally.

  We're nearing the big lift. “You got this?” Mara asks me.

  “Absolutely.”

  She steps back and starts to run towards me, and I'm ready. There's no doubt anymore. I can do this. I'm strong. It's not too much.

  The music speeds up, and I lift her over my head like it's what I was born to do.

  The entertainment staff goes absolutely wild, the audience's jaws drop, and Mara stays perfectly still, balanced on my hands. I feel her ribs under my fingers and I know that she's safe. I've got her.

  I set her back on her feet and she starts to dance again, but I grab her and kiss her. She wraps her arms around me and we sway and I drink her in like I want her to be part of me.

  She is part of me.

  We finally break apart, both gasping a little. The music seems louder than it was before. The entertainment staff has pulled people up to get them to dance. My sister is dancing with Oscar, her hands draped around his neck, trying to coax any sort of rhythm out of him.

  Sol is standing by the stage, and Mara looks at him and gives him a flirty kind of shrug, and he rolls his eyes, but I think maybe he's trying not to smile.

  Rory Richards leaves with her posse.

  I can't find Tristan and I look around and around the room, and finally I find him. He's with my mother. They're talking. He looks happy.

  And she hugs him, really gently.

  And then she turns to me and she catches my eye and she smiles.

  Everything in me loosens, untangles, unfurrels.

  Mara tugs on my arm until I look at her and then grabs me and kisses me again.

  And I don't know what is going to happen with us. I don't know if I'm ever going to see her again.

  But I know that whoever I'm with for the rest of my life, they're going to get a little bit of Mara, too.

  And they're going to get me. I'm going to be there.

  Lucky them.

  About The Author

  Hannah Moskowitz

  Hannah is the author of over a dozen works for children and young adults, including Sydney Taylor Honor Book SICK KIDS IN LOVE, Stonewall Honor Book GONE GONE GONE, and Bisexual Book of the Year NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. She lives in Maryland.