Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah

by David Levithan

  “But my mother—she became my ally. I started off in secret, and then she became a part of the secret. Because that is what allies do—they allow you to let them in on the secret, and then they become a part of the secret until you start to feel that maybe it doesn’t need to be as much of a secret anymore. More than anything else, that was the fortress I was in. I think you understand.”

  I nod.

  “You are not alone, Sam. There are some people who are very alone. I was very alone until I understood how to be unalone. You already have allies. With some, it may take time for them to understand. Some”—and here he looks at KK—“are probably not worth the time. Get rid of those people who doubt you. Then go forward.”

  “I doubt you,” KK says. “Does that mean you’re getting rid of me?”

  Caspian nods. “Absolutely.”

  KK sighs. “Kicked to the curb by a sock! I guess that’s what it’s come to.” She glares at Ilsa. “There—I tried something different. Happy? Never again.”

  “You really can’t pin this one on me,” Ilsa replies flatly.

  “Why not? But I digress—your widdle bwother asked a question, and it would be rude for me not to answer.”

  I try to tell her she doesn’t need to bother, but she shushes me.

  “Oh no! This is all so very interesting. Do you know what I learned? I learned that leaving is bullshit. Because you always take yourself wherever you go.”

  “What a revelatory thought!” Parker interrupts. “I think you might be the first person to ever discover that.”

  “All I’m saying, Sam, is that the problem isn’t here—the problem is you. Say what you want—I have everything I need in this city. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

  “Because you have money,” Parker points out.

  “Yes, because I have money.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Parker asks.

  “Well, I’d suggest you get more money.”

  “That’s not helpful,” Parker says.

  “Actually, I think it is,” Li puts in. “It just goes to show why you need to leave your fortress every so often. Otherwise you can be tricked into thinking it’s the whole world.”

  “What?” KK asks with mock innocence. “It isn’t?”

  “Build a wall!” Parker says. “That’s the way to do it! Build a wall around your comfort zone so you never have to leave it! Build a wall between yourself and the things that scare you the most, the things you don’t want to look at. Oh, and while you’re at it, build a wall to hide the things that scare you the most about yourself—that way, you’ll never have to look at them! Build a wall to keep your friends trapped with you, even though—I have a little secret for you, KK—they always find a way to leave, don’t they?”

  KK doesn’t launch a counterattack. She doesn’t laugh at him. She doesn’t say anything. She’s silent, trying to stare him down, then looking to Ilsa for support that Ilsa doesn’t give.

  Parker turns to me. “This is your chance,” he says. “You’ve never had a chance before to make your own way, not like this, not a completely blank slate. Just go for it. What you did to that glass—it can’t be undone. But heading off somewhere when you’re eighteen—that’s not necessarily permanent. You’re not choosing a path, just a few steps. And you go from there. We’re all improvising to some degree. But you have to leave the house to find a path.”

  I wish he hadn’t mentioned the glass, because now I am feeling sorry about the glass.

  I turn to Ilsa. “How about you? What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  I’m asking her thoughts because I can tell there are plenty of them going on in her head at the moment. I can tell she’s quiet not because she’s disengaged, but because she’s fully engaged. I want to know what those thoughts are. Because I want her to find an escape route, too. Not the same escape route—I know that. But any escape route.

  “You want me to tell you how to leave?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She shakes her head. “What do I know about leaving, Sam? The only times I’ve left, I’ve been with you.”

  My instinct is to say, That’s not true. But when I think about it…is it possible that it’s true? Except for that separation at camp—is it possible that every time we’ve left the fortress, we’ve done it with each other? I’ve had a solo trip or two—but Czarina’s never been one to give Ilsa a solo trip just because I got one. (Especially not if one of the “trips” was to get help.) Even the excursions within New York have felt like joint excursions. Like the time we went down to this club to see Rufus Wainwright sing from the Arthur Russell songbook (my choice), and when I went to the unisex bathroom, I found written on the stall, Sam, if this is what it’s like to go south of Houston, let’s just stay uptown and order in. Or the time she wanted to go to Queens to see some Christmas decorations and I decided it would be better to have a Bring Your Own Light dinner party, and create our own display. Because Queens was far, and it was cold out.

  When Maddy let slip that Ilsa was going to be her new live-in nanny, at first I was jealous—not that I wanted to spend any more time with Maddy, but that Ilsa had found an angle that would allow her to stay. But the more I thought about it, the more depressing it felt. I wanted to call Ilsa on it, to tell her she was sacrificing her future to cling to her past. Then I imagined her lobbing the same accusation my way…and I couldn’t think of an effective way to deny it. It would have been one thing to stay in Manhattan to study music. But to stay in Manhattan because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to be…that, I see now, is not a great plan.

  I really wanted this party to be our last hurrah, for it to make me ready to pack up and go. I guess, without admitting it to myself, I invited Jason to help me say goodbye to the past, Parker to help my sister say goodbye to the past, and Johan to help me see what could be up with the future. Only…it’s not as simple as that. Caspian’s right, in a way—things can only be as simple as the emotions we bring to them.

  “We’re on the cusp,” I tell Ilsa. “Don’t you want there to be something different on the other side?” Then I worry I’ve made it sound like we both have an appointment with the afterlife, so I clarify, “I love this apartment—truly, madly, deeply. We made it into something spectacular, which is not something many people get to do. Czarina let us do that. Throw dinner parties. Pretend we’re in this world. But I don’t think staying here’s going to be the answer. Do you?”

  seventeen

  ILSA

  “Where should we go?” I ask.

  My brother and I will have no choice but to skip town since he’s gone and broken one of Czarina’s sacred flutes. Who’s the reckless twin now? She’ll blame me, of course, but make up for it on the back end by resenting Sam and me equally, perhaps into eternity. When she grabs on to one, Czarina will hold a grudge for a very long time. She hasn’t spoken to her own brother since before Sam and I were born. Some might call that stubborn. I call it dedicated.

  “We shouldn’t go together,” says Sam, and I immediately snap, “I know.” I wasn’t saying we should go anywhere together, and truthfully, after tonight, I’m ready to be far away from my brother for a good long time. For both our sakes.

  Except on our birthday in January. We’ve had eighteen birthdays together so far, and on our eleventh, we made a pact to always be together to celebrate the day. Our parents made us sign the pact—it can be seen framed and hanging on their kitchen wall—because it was the rare day Sam and I weren’t squabbling as hard as we were playing together. Give a kid that much cake and of course they’re going to commit to a lifetime of birthdays with their sibling, regardless of the future reality of the promise. I admit I want the birthday streak to go on for as many years as possible, even though I accept the unlikelihood that Sam and I will annually be found at the Central Park boathouse doing a January polar bear run around the water wearing only shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers.

  “Except for our birthday,” says Sam, and I immediately love
him again. “Shall we consult the hat, Ilsa?”

  “The hat! Of course!” I jump up from my chair and retrieve the long pointy black hat from the coat closet in the foyer while Sam retrieves some index cards and pens from the kitchen. We return to the table at the same time, with Sam having also retrieved another bottle of bubbly.

  “That had better not be a wine cooler,” warns KK.

  “Czarina doesn’t even know what a wine cooler is,” says Sam. “But as penance for her beloved glass that I willfully broke, I downgraded us to the C-list champagne bottle from her fridge.” He hiccups a little, good and tipsy. “California Brut.”

  Parker, whose parents are wine enthusiasts, gasps. “Czarina stocks domestic champagne in her fridge?”

  Sam says, “Yes, but only for guests like her lawyer or the Stanwyck’s condo board.” He looks at me. “Do you want to explain the hat, or shall I?”

  KK groans. “I’ll do it, you bores. One year for Halloween, Sam went as Harry Potter and Ilsa was the Sorting Hat. They kept the hat, and the family uses it at parties to play Where in the World, a really fucked-up Dora the Explorer game of hollow adventures, where no one actually goes anywhere, but they talk for a long time about where they could go, all because of the magic hat’s suggestions.”

  “Your enthusiasm is delightful, KK,” says Sam. “Now, would you like to explain how the game works? Or if it’s so boring to you, I bet Jason would love a nap cuddle buddy back in my room.”

  KK convulses momentarily at that last suggestion, as do I. Then she says, “I’m staying. If only to hear about the jail where the twins will be going once Czarina sees what you’ve done to her glass. Sam.” Dear, loyal KK. There’s no reason to adore her, other than that I do. If I don’t, I fear no one else will. She passes the index cards around the table, along with a pen for each person. “It works like this. Everybody write down the name of a place on a green index card, and a thing you might take there on a pink index card.”

  Johan says, “This feels like Mad Libs. But for fate.”

  “Pastel-colored fate,” says Parker, looking at the pink and green index cards.

  “Pastry fate!” says Li. “My parents don’t want to hear it because they want me to be a doctor, but I’d like to be a baker. Not now, but maybe in the future. Can we also write down a profession?”

  “Great idea,” says Sam. “But no. The idea is to discover what you’d want to do based on the place and the thing, and not have it suggested to you.”

  Li frowns slightly.

  “But I think you’d make an excellent baker, Li.” I go on, “The place should be real, somewhere you could find on a map.”

  Sam says, “That means, no Boulevard of Broken Dreams, no Galaxy Far, Far Away, no Salome’s armpit. KK.”

  I say, “And the thing can be anything except—”

  Caspian says, “If you have to qualify it, then it can’t be anything.”

  I would smack that little bitch if I thought it would actually wound him.

  I continue, “Anything that’s not an electronic device like a phone or computer.”

  “What about my Fitbit?” asks Li.

  “What about it?” Sam asks.

  “Can I take it?”

  “To count your steps going nowhere?” asks KK. “Take it. The Fitbit: the muumuu’s perfect accessory. Someone tell Project Runway.”

  I suggest, “Wear that Fitbit proudly but don’t write it as a choice for the magic hat. We want less technology-oriented options.”

  “Aha!” says Johan, scribbling on his paper. “I’ve got a good one.”

  I write down my choices—Paris, and feral cat. (Because I feel like Geraldine with the lazy eye, on my dress, has suggested it.)

  “This gel pen writes like a dream,” says Li. “My hand is practically having an orgasm.”

  Sam says, “Czarina is a pen collector. That’s one of her favorites, from an office supply store in Tokyo that she loves. She always comes back with dozens of different styles of pens.”

  “Dammit!” says Li. “I was just writing Tokyo as my place. Now I have to choose someplace else.”

  She could have kept Tokyo as her place, but now that she’s announced it, she obviously can’t. Li crosses out the word she’d just written, then uses her spare hand to shield the replacement place she’s writing on her index card.

  I don’t know if it’s because everyone’s drunk enough or because they’re just nice and used to Caspian by now, but no one goes for any obvious comments when Freddie has to write Caspian’s choices, since his sock’s hands don’t possess the dexterity to do so themselves. But we see Freddie eyeing us, challenging us to make a cheap joke.

  Once everyone has written their choices, I go around the table holding the hat, for the index cards to be dropped into. “Who wants to go first?”

  Caspian raises himself into the air. I step to him. Freddie’s free hand dips into the hat.

  “Choose one green card and one pink card. If it’s one of yours, put it back in the hat.”

  Caspian groans after reading his cards. “I assure you, neither of these choices is my own.”

  “What’d ya get, Casp?” KK asks him.

  “North Korea and pastrami sandwich. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Introduce New York deli to the oppressed,” says Li. “Humanitarian work, obviously.”

  “Puppetarian?” suggests Johan.

  “Proletarian?” suggests Parker.

  “Shut up,” says Caspian. “I don’t want to go to North Korea.”

  “The sock-puppet passport challenges alone—” Parker says.

  “SILENCE!” says Caspian, making a shushing gesture.

  “He doesn’t like to be called ‘sock puppet,’ ” says KK.

  “SILENCE!” says Caspian again, this time giving KK the shush.

  “Don’t self-hate,” Johan advises Caspian. “Embrace your identity.”

  “Grip it like a tube sock,” says KK.

  This game was not intended to cause meltdowns. So I move to the next person, to get Caspian out of the line of fire. “Let’s get out of North Korea. Much as those needy people could use the pastrami sandwiches. And, Caspian, I think you’d look divine handing them out.” I offer the hat to KK, who draws a pink card and a green card.

  “Ooh, Miami!” she calls out.

  “Look closer,” says Sam, who somehow knows how to put a KK-attracting scent on the exact card he wants her to choose.

  KK looks at a bottom corner of the card, where another word is written. “Miami…OHIO?” She tosses her card in Sam’s direction. “I don’t think that’s even a real place.” She looks at her other card. “And I don’t think a metronome’s a real thing, either.”

  “It is,” says Johan. “Look closer at that one, too.”

  KK looks closer. “Wind-up metronome? Come on, you’re making this shit up. What’s it, like a transit card you need to get to wind turbines?”

  Johan and Sam laugh. Sam says, “It’s an instrument that musicians use to keep time.”

  KK says, “Keep it where?”

  Parker says, “In the Top-Secret Time-Travel Lab at Miami University of Ohio.”

  “Time travel!” says KK. “Now we’re talking. Let’s ask the Sorting Hat when to go somewhere, not where to go.”

  “Where would you go?” Li asks her.

  Without missing a beat, KK says, “Salem witch trials. Whenever ago they happened.”

  There’s a pause around the table as we digest this choice. Finally, “Why?” I ask.

  “I love those little white hats they had to wear,” says KK. “With the bows under the chin? Super practical and fucking adorable.”

  There’s nothing to do but move on to the next person. I stand before Johan, who dips into the hat and retrieves his cards.

  “Nova Scotia. And feral cat.”

  “Geraldine!” Caspian hisses. “I know that was your suggestion.” Add psychic to Caspian’s gifts.

  Johan says, “I’
m not sure where Nova Scotia is, to be honest. Is it fictional?”

  Li says, “Only in the sense that the Anne of Green Gables series took place there.” She sing-songs, “Best books ever!”

  Sam asks Johan, “Are you trying to pass for American?”

  “Never!” Johan exclaims.

  “Ignorance of Canada is usually reserved for its neighbors to the south,” Parker tells Johan.

  “So Nova Scotia’s in Canada?” Johan asks.

  “Yes,” everyone else says.

  Johan says, “Well, I’d be delighted to have a feral cat there with me. It could be my muse. I’ll write melodies for it to bounce around to, and I’ll let it nap in my fiddle case for maximum cute appeal for listeners wanting to hear my melodies and drop a few dollars’ donation into the case.”

  “It feels like you’d be cheating on Dolly if you let the cat hang out in your fiddle case,” says Caspian.

  Johan says, “I assure you that Dolly would only celebrate me letting a feral cat reside in the case dedicated to her music.”

  “My turn,” says Parker.

  I go to him and he retrieves his cards.

  “Bhutan…and a Slanket? What’s a Slanket?”

  Li says, “They’re the best! They’re long blankets that are also, like, pajamas that fit over your whole body and you can zip into. Very cozy.”

  “Where’s Bhutan?” Caspian asks.

  “Near India?” Parker asks, looking to Li to affirm his answer and not because she’s Asian but because she’s the smartest person in the room.

  But Li shrugs. “Never heard of the place.”

  It’s KK who informs us. “Yes, it’s near India, in the high Himalayas, bordering Nepal and Tibet. It’s a Buddhist kingdom filled with monasteries, fortresses, and stunning mountains and valleys. Bring the Slanket as a gift. They’re very poor but the nicest people in the world and appreciate any Western luxuries. Fill your coat pockets with pencils to give away, too—easiest way to get a radiant smile from a kid.”