by Zan Romanoff
She’s seen pictures of Katy’s Orphan Thanksgivings the last two years running. When Katy was a freshman, she and a few friends pulled the meal together from various cheap takeout places, with rotisserie chickens and mashed potatoes from KFC, and cranberry sauce still shaped like the can presented on a paper plate. Last year she had an apartment with a kitchen and they actually cooked. It’s become Grace’s favorite fantasy of adult life: being able to celebrate a holiday on your own terms, without any family demands or awkwardness to get in the way.
Train tickets from Ohio to New York are expensive; Grace is glad she’s been stashing away money from her new campus library job. She does the math, though, and she can make it work as long as she doesn’t spend much of anything while she’s there.
She calls her mom just to let her know what the plan is. It’s weird to realize that she doesn’t have to. If she wanted to, she could just go.
“You don’t know this person? And you don’t know anyone who does? And you’re going to stay with her?” her mother asks.
“She has, like, an extensive internet presence,” Grace says. “So I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m not getting catfished.” Technically, she was the one lying to Katy for most of their friendship. Or hiding things, anyway.
“You know I don’t know what that means.”
Grace registers that her mother is making a joke, and laughs at it. It’s nice, she thinks, this thing where they both agree to try.
“I’m really excited about it,” Grace says then. “Katy and I— I met her through, um, like, Fever Dream stuff. We’ve been talking for years now. She’s sort of one of my closest friends, weirdly. So it’s important to me to do this.”
Her mother sighs. “I can’t stop you,” she says. “So, okay, I guess. Be safe.” She pauses. “Have fun.”
“I will.”
“I’m going to send you some money.”
“You don’t have to, you really—”
“New York is an expensive city. And if she does turn out to be some kind of fish-thing—”
“That’s not—”
“Or whatever, I just want you to be able to get a train or a hotel room if you need to.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Grace says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” her mother says.
When Grace steps out of the subway into the thin, frigid air of the East Village a month and a half later, she’s certain that whatever else it was to come here—a little bit crazy, probably, her mom might have been right about that—it was also worth it.
Katy is sitting on the steps of her building, smoking the last half inch of a cigarette. She looks like she does in pictures, pretty much: curvy, with a full, generous mouth. Her hair is pulled up into a tight, no-nonsense bun, and she’s wearing jeans and boots and a sweater but her cat’s eye is perfectly, meticulously applied.
She did a video tutorial on it, once, before she and Grace had ever messaged each other. Grace tried to mimic it with her mother’s eyeliner. She only succeeded in turning herself into a dark-eyed cartoon in the upstairs bathroom. Standing on the sidewalk, watching Katy see her for the first time, Grace is overwhelmed by the memory of dipping a cotton ball in makeup remover and swiping it against the delicate skin of her eyelid. She remembers how plain her face looked in the mirror, stripped and slightly raw, when she was done.
“Hey,” she calls across the street.
“Hey yourself,” Katy says.
—
Her apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up, and so teensy Grace can barely believe it. Luckily, both of Katy’s roommates are out of town for the holiday, so they have the place to themselves.
“You should take Jasmine’s room,” Katy tells her. “I mean, Emma’s is slightly bigger, but it’s pretty much an enter-at-your-own-risk situation.”
“I’ve been sharing a double since September,” Grace tells her. “I can handle cramped as long as I get to close a door and have it, like, stay closed.”
—
Hanging out with Katy turns out to be best-case-scenario easy. Katy’s been an invisible possibility in every room Grace has been in for the last two years; having her sitting in one, physically, now, isn’t really any different. They know how to talk to each other, and how to fall silent together.
For most of that first afternoon they sit in Katy’s living room while she finishes a project that was supposed to be due before the break started, and Grace gets through the last third of the novel she bought for the train. Occasionally one or the other of them offers commentary—Grace reads Katy a funny line, or Katy moans and clutches her face and Grace says, “So soon this will all be over.”
At night, after dinner, Katy pulls out her laptop. “Do you want updates on the disintegration of the fandom?” she asks. “Or are you still on strike from all of that?”
Grace has been avoiding that corner of the internet. It’s just too painful to try to acknowledge everyone else’s pain, and her name is still getting dragged into the conversation, in ways that range from bizarre to furiously ugly.
“I’m not on strike,” she says. “I just need a filter or something.”
“You can blacklist your name, you know.”
“Yeah, but then it’s just a zillion gray boxes reminding me that people are saying nasty stuff that I’m trying not to know about.”
“Ugh. Yeah. That’s fair. I just feel like it sucks that, on top of everything else, you’re losing the internet, too.”
“I do love the internet. I’ve actually been thinking about making a new Twitter account. With, like, my name and face, and everything. Everyone else in the world has one, you know? So. It could be a thing.”
“And if you’re still thinking about applying for PR internships this summer—”
“You don’t think they’ll just treat me like a joke?”
“No. I really don’t.”
“I feel like I ruined things with Pixel and Grain.”
“Yeah. One firm. Based in LA. Come to New York and work with people who do, I don’t know, theater, or books or something. You can hang out with me all summer.” Katy turns her laptop toward Grace. “You never know until you try-y,” she singsongs.
—
Every possible iteration of her name—first, last, middle, underscores, whatever—is taken. She and Katy get punch-drunk trying out different combinations, suggesting increasingly outrageous ideas. Finally, Katy gulps through her giggles, “You should be @gracenotgigi. Just to be clear.”
“Yes,” Grace says. “Yes. Perfect. Done.”
And there it is: a new name, and a clean slate. Well, clean enough—Gigi is still there, but Gigi has always been there, with her. She puts up a profile picture and makes Katy her first follow.
“Look at that,” she says.
“Nice work, G.” Katy opens up the camera app on her computer. “Now. Don’t you think your first post should be a selfie?”
“Everyone knows what I look like.”
“With me, then.”
And so Grace posts an underlit picture of the two of them grinning, red-faced from laughing, with the caption ’Sup, @katydrawsthings. ’Sup, internet. It’s good to be home again.
They cook and eat Thanksgiving dinner at Katy’s friend Gregor’s apartment, which is out in Brooklyn and just a little bit bigger than Katy’s. The whole afternoon is loud and messy and perfect. The gravy comes out lumpy and the turkey is predictably dry, but there’s so much wine that nobody minds.
Even Grace has two glasses in the festive spirit of the day. It’s barely 6:00 p.m. when they finish eating, but the sun is already set, and everyone sprawls out in the living room while Solange hums over the speakers in the background.
“Damn, G,” Katy says from the couch. She tries to hand her phone down to Grace where she’s lying on the floor.
“No internet,” Grace says. “I’m too full for literally anything right now.”
Selina, who’s on the couch next to Katy, takes the phone instead. “Oooooh,
” she says. “You guys were spotted.”
“I always forget that Katy is secretly internet famous,” Gregor says. “We were so surprised when we found out! Like, really? Katy?”
“Shut up, I’m very cool,” Katy says. She tosses a pillow at him and it lands short. “Anyway, Grace was real famous for a hot minute there.”
“Spotted where?” Grace asks.
“Someone actually took our picture in the Trader Joe’s line yesterday,” Katy says. “What a creep.”
“Ughhhh.” Grace reaches up and Selina hands her the phone. “Why?”
@MRSHOLLOWAYYYY
Nov 22, 2:15 pm
So @katydrawsthings and @gracenotgigi are hanging out in NYC—why didn’t you guys get @realjes to pick up groceries for you??
@MRSHOLLOWAYYY
2:16 pm
@katydrawsthings @gracenotgigi oh right because you fukking broke up the band and he’s done with you bitches forever.
The tweets are paired with two pictures—Grace and Katy waiting in line, looking bored and decidedly unglamorous, and Jes stepping into a town car at the curb at JFK around the same time yesterday.
So he’s in New York, too.
There’s the usual back-and-forth underneath it—girls defending Grace and Katy, girls calling for them to explain themselves and apologize, girls riding the thread to tweet YOU WOULD MAKE MY THANKSGIVING AND CHANGE MY LIFE IF YOU JUST FAV THIS PLEASE at Jes.
Grace gives Katy her phone back. “Did you guys say there was pie?” she asks. “I think I’m ready for pie now.”
—
By the time she gets to her own phone, the flood of notifications on her lock screen is almost absurd. She scrolls through to dismiss them and changes her settings—she’s gone from yesterday’s fifteen followers to nearly a thousand in the last few hours. “Maybe this was a mistake,” she says to Katy, who’s busy putting on her coat.
“They’ll get over it,” Katy says. “Lock it down if you want it to go away.”
“I might.”
Grace thumbs through the new followers, who seem to be split evenly between spambots and Fever Dream fanatics.
And, apparently, Jes.
Now it’s her turn to hold her phone out, wordless, to Katy.
“Whoa,” she says. “Whoa. Really?”
“Maybe it was a mistake?”
“That seems kind of unlikely.”
“All of this has been kind of unlikely!”
Grace can feel her world starting to pick up speed, straining to spin out of control again. The last few months have been so lovely and quiet. Now she checks her reflection in Gregor’s bathroom mirror twice before they leave. What if someone takes another picture on the subway? What if one of these girls spots her, and confronts her? What if word spreads around Kenyon and it becomes some kind of thing there, too?
What if Jes wants to talk to her after all?
The subways are running slow, and it takes well over an hour to get from Bushwick back to the East Village. Katy’s mouth is wine-stained and she’s tipsy and unselfconscious, so she naps most of it against Grace’s shoulder, first on the platform and then on the train.
“You can delete it if you want,” she says when they’re saying good night. “I really didn’t mean to bring all of that chaos back into your life again.”
“Nah,” Grace says. “Or, not yet, anyway.”
“Okay. Night, G.”
“Night, Katy.”
Alone in her room, door closed, curtains open, Grace looks up at the black sky and the pale sliver of the brand-new moon. There’s a thin winter wind blowing, something wet and eastern, alien, a sure sign of how many miles she’s traveled since she walked through the door that night and found Jes trying to figure out how to hold on to something he wasn’t ever going to be able to keep. She didn’t know him then, and she doesn’t know him now. He’s made her life so complicated.
Trying to get to know him forced her to make her life so much bigger.
Grace opens his Twitter profile page and clicks the tiny blue Follow button with her thumb. It doesn’t feel like much of anything. She opens a direct message and closes it again.
She hasn’t been listening to much Fever Dream, lately—all summer it seemed too weird, and then when fall came, it just reminded her too much of those long, hot, strange days, and all the lonelier ones that had come before them.
Tonight, though, she falls asleep with Burning Up playing in her headphones, the way she did so many nights in high school, because the music is almost as familiar as the sound of her own breath in her ears. Everything she put there for safekeeping is still wrapped up in the notes. The longer she waits, the more she can separate Jes from the music, and see how the music will always be full of her self.
Direct message from @realjes to @gracenotgigi
Nov 24, 2:06 am
This doesn’t mean we’re friends.
Direct message from @gracenotgigi to @realjes
Nov 24, 11:09 am
Okay. I get it.
11:11 am
For the record, though, I’m really sorry. I would be friends if you wanted to be.
Direct message from @realjes to @gracenotgigi
Nov 24, 12:15 pm
We were friends.
Direct message from @gracenotgigi to @realjes
Nov 24, 1:00 pm
And I screwed up. I know.
Direct message from @realjes to @gracenotgigi
Nov 24, 1:34 pm
Do you, though?
Direct message from @gracenotgigi to @realjes
Nov 24, 1:36 pm
Probably not.
1:38 pm
If you want to tell me, I’ll listen.
Jes sends her the address of his New York apartment.
He’s wearing glasses. That’s the first thing Grace registers when Jes opens the door: clunky plastic dollar store–style frames that hide the cut of his cheekbones and cover the sweep of his lashes. They make his face look even narrower in comparison, or maybe he’s lost weight since she saw him last.
That first night, sitting on his car in the cul-de-sac, he seemed dense, packed with power she couldn’t imagine or approach. Now he just looks small. He’s had this apartment for a few years, but it’s barely decorated. It looks less lived-in than his hotel rooms did.
“Come in,” he says. “You, uh. Do you want anything?”
“No,” Grace says. She’s glad she managed to eat a little lunch before her stomach knotted itself up completely. Now she can barely swallow. “Thanks. I’m good.”
She waits, but Jes doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, looking at her.
Grace tries not to think about Rick saying, It must seem kind of romantic to him, you know? That there’s anyone he wouldn’t have to put under contract to keep his secrets, and fails.
So she says, “None of this was ever supposed to happen.”
“How did you think it was going to end?”
“No, no, I mean—I didn’t think it was going to end, because I didn’t even think that it would start. That I would meet you. That you would like me. That I would lie to you, or hurt you. That I would end up betraying you. None of that was what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
“I don’t think I really ever knew the answer to that question,” Grace says. “I kind of just, you know. Kept letting myself get caught up. Everything was so exciting. It was so easy to just—” She gestures at the space between them.
Jes cocks his head at her, gazing like a sparrow. He has lost weight. He’s too thin. She can see the blades of his shoulders through his shirt when he walks across the room to sit on an enormous leather couch. It faces a flat-screen, which isn’t on, and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, which have been hung with sheer curtains that still effectively block what must be a pretty decent view.
“I’m so mad at you,” he says.
Grace goes and sits facing him on the floor. He looks blank. She knows him just well enough to reco
gnize that the blankness is a mask—and not quite well enough to guess at what’s seething behind it.
“I kept thinking I would stop being mad at you at some point. That I would stop caring. But it just doesn’t seem to go away.”
“Do you want to yell at me, maybe? Would that help?”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”
“Okay.” Grace traces a pattern into the thick nap of the rug she’s sitting on. It doesn’t quite go with the curtains or the couch. “Why did you ask me to come, then?”
“I don’t know,” Jes says. “It’s been awful not talking to you. So I thought maybe talking to you would be better. But it’s just as bad. Different, I guess. Still bad.”
Grace stretches out so that she’s lying down and looking up at the ceiling. Above her on the couch, Jes shifts to do the same thing.
He says, “I woke up and you were gone.”
“Who told you?” Grace asks.
“Rick,” Jes says. “On the phone. He sounded— He was thrilled.”
“He really never liked me, huh.”
“Rick doesn’t like anyone. I thought he cared about me, at least a little.”
“I’m sure he does. He’s just—”
“You don’t know him.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
Grace covers her eyes with her hands. “I tried to call you,” she says. “After.”
“So did the girl who took your phone. She got there first.”
“Did you answer?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Grace rolls onto her side and props herself on her elbow. Jes stays where he is, staring resolutely at the ceiling.
“The thing with the photos,” she says. “I just have to say that it was so stupid of me. I sent them to one friend. I wasn’t thinking. It just didn’t occur to me that she would send them to someone else, and that, you know—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry.”
Jes nods. “I hate that you get your normal life back,” he says. “Poof! Like it never happened.”
“That’s not what it’s like.”
