Summer in the Invisible City

by Juliana Romano

“I don’t want to go out,” Willa says.

  “Okay. Well if you change your mind I’m not leaving for a while,” Danielle says, turning so quickly that her shiny brown hair fans over her shoulders like a girl in a shampoo commercial.

  —

  After Danielle goes to her room, I can’t concentrate on the TV show anymore. There’s a party and everyone will be there. Why does Willa have to be so above it all the time? Why can’t she be normal and get excited about a party for once?

  It must be a full twenty minutes because we’re into the second act of the next episode when Willa pauses the TV, and her eyes bore into me in the silence.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  She glares at me.

  “What did I do?” I repeat.

  “Just go with Danielle if you want to go so bad,” she says, as if she’d been inside my head this whole time.

  Chapter 16

  “Do you think Willa is happy?” Danielle asks in the taxi. She brought a SmartWater bottle full of vodka and orange juice and she takes a sip. And then she says, without waiting for me to answer, “It’s rad you are old enough to party with. I wish Willa would party with me. What’s with her?”

  “She’s just Willa,” I say.

  “You’re so right,” Danielle says. “That’s such a little sister thing. To just, like, do what you want all the time and not care if other people are making everything easier for you.”

  I tug on the hem of the tight black dress Danielle let me borrow. It’s too small for me, but Danielle said it’s too small in a good way. It feels like just yesterday that she was screaming and literally throwing shampoo bottles at us when she found us trying on her clothes in eighth grade. Now, I’m wearing her dress with her permission, going to a party with her on a Friday night.

  “Here. Have some,” Danielle says, shoving the bottle at me.

  Danielle is watching and I don’t want her to regret bringing me so I take a sip. It tastes terrible.

  “Anyway, Willa is still awesome. I can’t wait for her to come to Yale,” she says. “I’ll be a junior when she’s a freshman. That will be amazing. She’s going to love college. You’re going to love college, too. It’s so much better than high school. Where do you want to go?”

  “I think I want to go to IACA,” I say. “In California.”

  But Danielle isn’t listening. She taps on the plastic that divides the backseat from the driver. “Excuse me? Sir?”

  The driver doesn’t turn around, but says, “Yes, ma’am?” with a thick accent.

  “Can I smoke in here?”

  “No! No smoking! You cannot smoke!” he replies. I can see him trying to catch Danielle’s gaze in the rearview mirror. She sinks back into the pleather seat and rolls her eyes.

  As the taxi curves onto Central Park West, the velvety black trees zip by to our right, blending into the night sky. To our left, the looming apartment buildings stare down at us, their stone faces hard as armor.

  —

  Justin lives on the corner of Eighty-Third Street and Riverside Drive. It’s one of those huge, almost block-size brick buildings that look like a thousand others in the city, including the one we lived in when I was really little. There’s something so strange about walking into an unfamiliar building that is almost identical to a familiar building. The tiny differences between each one, like the placement of the elevator and the smell of the walls, seem dangerous.

  The metal jaws of the elevator open and Danielle and I ride up to the ninth floor. The hallway that leads to Justin’s apartment gives me the same strange feeling as the lobby. I feel an uneasy kind of déjà vu. Like when you dream about a real place but everything in the dream is altered in ways that you can’t name.

  Someday, I’m going to do a photography project where I take pictures of people’s hallways. I could take a trillion and no two would be exactly the same. And if I hung them side by side, all the differences between them would pop out.

  Danielle pushes open the door to Justin’s apartment and we are immediately sucked into the party. People’s faces slur together, music and laughter and heat erasing all the eerie surrealness of the hall.

  “Ugh, everyone here is in high school,” Danielle complains.

  “How can you tell?” I ask.

  “I just can,” she says. “I’m gonna go find Katie.”

  There’s a dance party in the living room, and Phaedra Bishop is sitting on one of the couches talking to a girl I’ve never seen. She catches me staring at her and she smiles and beckons to me. I walk up to them, standing awkwardly.

  “Hey, you,” she says, patting the sofa next to her.

  “Is Izzy here?” I ask.

  “No, she left for the country,” she says. “I’m going tomorrow ’cause my dad had to work late. I’m so sick of the city. It’s so gross in the summer.”

  I nod in agreement. I’m used to people around me acting like certain things are normal—like country houses and private school tuitions. “Where’s your country house?”

  “Cape Cod,” she says. “It’s so beautiful. It’s been in our family forever; it’s really old. I think it’s haunted.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Hey, actually, I wanted to ask you,” she says, her eyes focusing on mine for the first time. “Izzy mentioned that your dad is an artist. I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, she did?” I stammer. “Yeah. He is.”

  “What’s his name?” she asks.

  “Allan Bell?” I say, swallowing. And then I add, “I don’t think you’d have heard of him.”

  “Allan Bell . . .” she repeats it to herself. “I’m gonna ask my mom. My parents are really involved in the arts. And I love art, too. I’m not talented at anything, but I think I’ll probably be an art history major in college. What kind of stuff does your dad make?”

  “He’s made a lot of things,” I say. “He makes sculptures and does performances. He’s been in the Whitney Biennial a couple of times and both times he made installations and videos.”

  I think I see a flicker of approval flash in her eyes, but it’s gone as quickly as it was there. Is it possible that Phaedra Bishop is curious about me just like I’m curious about her?

  The girl on her other side holds out a glass of a clear liquid, offering it to Phaedra. Phaedra shakes her head no. Then she says, to me, “You want some? It’s vodka soda.”

  “No thanks,” I say.

  “I don’t drink either,” Phaedra says.

  I don’t correct her—I do drink, sometimes. But it feels good, being on Phaedra’s team.

  “I’m back,” Danielle announces, grabbing my arm above the elbow. “Katie isn’t here. She left. Let’s go.”

  “Already?” I ask. “But we just got here.”

  “I’ll take you home. I’m going to meet up with Katie. She’s at a bar, but you need IDs to get in so I can’t bring you,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, deflating.

  Embarrassed, I wave good-bye to Phaedra and follow Danielle through the party back toward the entrance.

  The front door to the apartment swings open as we approach it and more people pile in. Danielle walks past them all, determined to leave.

  I notice him before he notices me. Sam-from-somewhere. He doesn’t smile, but something else registers on his face when he notices me and it feels better than a smile.

  “Hey,” he says. “Are you leaving?”

  “Yeah, we were going to.” I look at Danielle, who isn’t happy that I’m stalling.

  “Bummer. We’re just getting here,” Sam says. And then he grins and gently flicks my arm with his thumb and forefinger. “You should stay.”

  Stay. The word expands, blooming into the wonderful and scary possibilities of staying.

  “What now?” Danielle groans.

  “Maybe, um . . .” I b
egin. “Maybe since you’re going to a bar anyway and I can’t go, maybe I’ll just . . . stay.”

  “Fine,” Danielle says, seeming a little relieved to be free of me. “See you later. Don’t get kidnapped or whatever or it’ll be my fault.”

  —

  I look up at Sam. His eyes don’t look as green in the dim lights as they did the other day at the beach. There is a peeling sunburn on his nose. I wonder if he got it the day we met or in the week since then. I wonder about what he has been doing since I last saw him.

  “So,” I say, shrugging nervously.

  “So,” he replies. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. How’s it going with you?” I ask.

  “All right,” he replies.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  Maybe it’s because I remember how real things felt when we talked last time, but the conversation between me and Sam feels really extra small now.

  “Wanna go in?” he asks.

  I nod. We wander through the apartment silently, which feels better than forcing stupid party chatter. We walk past a bedroom where people are crowded together with the lights off and the music turned up too loud. We walk past the line for the bathroom where girls are huddled in groups of three, whispering. Somehow, me and Sam are outsiders together. Sometimes he leads the way, and sometimes I do.

  It’s strange, this weird comfort we have, like old friends. On the way here with Danielle, and whenever I’m with Izzy, I feel compelled to keep the conversation going. That if I stop asking questions and saying witty things, they’ll remember that they don’t actually want to hang out with me. Around Sam, it feels safe not to talk.

  After a loop, we end up back in the living room. There’s a small balcony outside of a set of sliding glass doors and I follow Sam onto it. A few smokers are huddled in the corner. They ignore us and we silently agree to ignore them, too.

  Sam leans against the wall and stares out at the Hudson River and to the New Jersey skyline on the other side. A big ship that looks like a party boat, with red, white, and blue lights popping on and off, glides down the surface of the slick dark water.

  “Are you doing anything fun for the Fourth of July weekend?”

  His words snap my attention back to him. “Not really. Are you?”

  “I’m going to New Hampshire tomorrow,” Sam says.

  “Nice,” I say. “How do you get there? Do you have to fly?”

  “We drive,” he says. And then he adds, “Driving is this thing that people do where they sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and it moves and . . .”

  “Oh, right . . . driving,” I say, scratching my head theatrically. “I’ve heard of it.”

  He smirks. “I didn’t want to assume.”

  I roll my eyes, trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah, we’ll leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow,” he continues. “To beat the traffic.”

  “Who’s going?” I ask.

  “Me and my mom,” he says. “Her boyfriend is staying because he says he has to work. Which pisses me off.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “He’s never been to New Hampshire,” Sam says. “They’ve been dating for two years and we moved to New York to live with him, and he hasn’t once seen where she’s from.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Is he very busy?”

  Something sad blazes in Sam’s eyes. It’s so quick, I almost don’t see it happen, like the shutter snapping open for a fraction of a second inside a camera lens. For that moment, I’m seeing straight through him to his heart.

  But all he says, is, “Yeah. Really busy.”

  “I can’t imagine my mom having a boyfriend,” I say, after a minute.

  “She never has?” Sam asks.

  “No,” I say. “And my parents were never even married.”

  “Mine neither,” Sam says. “They had me in high school. So dumb.”

  “They had you in high school? Wow,” I say. “How old is your mom now?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “What—thirty-three? No. No, she’s thirty-four. That’s right.”

  I feel my jaw drop. “Omigod. That’s so bizarre. My mom is fifty-seven. She didn’t even have me until she was forty.”

  Sam nods slowly. He moves away from the wall and rests his forearms on the banister of the balcony. I stand next to him and do the same. The edge of my arm is touching the edge of his, and I can feel the exact shape of where our skin is making contact, like a clothing iron, searing its shape onto a blouse.

  “Good for her,” Sam says. “I always feel so bad for my mom. Like she’s wasted her whole life raising me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not how she sees it. I always wish my mom was younger,” I say. And then I add, “It’s weird how I keep telling you things I never tell anyone.”

  Sam doesn’t react to what I just said, and I’m worried I went too far. But then he turns his head and his eyes find mine in the darkness.

  “I know.”

  I try to hold his gaze, but he looks down. “Going back is gonna be weird.”

  “You’re not excited?” I ask.

  “Not really,” he says. “My friends there . . . it all feels different than it used to.”

  “Different how?” I ask.

  Sam sighs, and gazes out at the view. On the street, ten stories below, a taxi pulls up in front of Justin’s building and a family piles out. They look like toys, all shrunk down to miniature by the distance.

  “I mean, I spent most of this year feeling like New Hampshire was home and I was just visiting here,” he says. “I had a girlfriend there, and all my real friends were there. But then . . . I don’t know. Things changed. Now, this is more like home in some ways.”

  My chest tightens at the word girlfriend.

  “A girlfriend?” I repeat. “Do you still . . . ?”

  Sam looks at me but he’s not seeing me. His eyes are far away.

  “No,” he says. “We broke up a few months ago. But we’re still friends, I think.”

  “So you’re gonna see her this weekend?” I ask, trying to sound like I don’t care.

  “Yeah, probably,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  He elbows me a little. “You don’t know her.”

  “Yeah, never mind,” I murmer, tucking my hair nervously behind my ears.

  “Mandy,” he says. And then he corrects himself, sounding a little sadder this time. “Amanda.”

  Sam bites a nail, stares out into space, and then he shakes his head like he’s shaking off a thought. He turns to me.

  “What about you. You have a boyfriend?” he asks.

  I shake my head no.

  “Why not?” he asks, a teasing smile breaking on his lips. “Nobody good enough?”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoff. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. I had this one thing with this guy, but we were never, like, together.”

  “I get that,” Sam says vaguely.

  “Can I tell you another thing that I’ve never told anyone and that I probably shouldn’t tell you?” I say, trying to make him smile again.

  “Please,” he says, not missing a beat. He looks amused.

  “I’ve never even had a friend who is a boy,” I say. “Like a guy friend.”

  “No way.”

  “For real.”

  Sam’s eyes rest on mine, and he lifts his chin in this really cute way so that he has to look down his nose at me.

  Then he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. “What’s your number?”

  I tell him and he types it into his phone. Then, he keeps typing.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  A minute later, my phone vibrates in my back pocket. I pull it out. There’s a new text message from an area code I don’t recogniz
e. I open the message and read. All it says is: hi friend.

  “So now you do,” he says. “Have a guy friend.”

  Suddenly, I wish I could reach up and touch that piece of peeling skin on his nose. I wish I knew all the things that his ex-girlfriend knows about him, how his skin smells, and what it’s like to feel his hands. I wish I knew how he kisses. The thought of Sam with a girl makes my stomach turn over.

  But Sam isn’t into me. He just said we’re friends. Still, there’s something about the way he’s looking at me that makes me wonder if he’s wrong.

  I pry my eyes away and look out at the view. The party boat on the river flashes blue and red and white.

  The doors to the apartment open and loud music momentarily billows up like a wave as a group of people tumble onto the balcony, shredding our private moment. The only one I recognize is Justin.

  Justin spots Sam and hands him a paper bag with a bottle of something tucked into it. Sam takes a sip. It stains his lips wine-red. He hands it to me, but I don’t feel like drinking. When I hand the bottle back to Sam our fingertips touch.

  “I should probably leave soon,” I say.

  Sam doesn’t make a move to come with me. He takes another sip of the wine and says, “Okay. Well, I’ll see you soon. Right, friend?”

  “Right,” I say. Friend. The word swirls around me, like someone’s flipped a coin inside my heart. It’s a quarter spinning through midair, and I have no idea how it will land.

  I take a cab back and then climb carefully into bed beside Willa without waking her. I lie under the sheets and close my eyes and I imagine I’m still standing on the balcony next to Sam. It’s just the two of us there, hovering above the crowded city and beneath the planes and satellites in the sky. The quarter is still spinning: friends or something more. Maybe it will just spin and spin forever and all I’ll ever feel is my own dizzy longing for it to stop.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, I wake up alone in Willa’s bed. A siren wails outside, growing louder and louder like it’s right on top of me before it fades away.

  Willa emerges from her bathroom, freshly showered and dressed for her family trip to Martha’s Vineyard. She’s wearing a white dress and open-toed sandals. I’m so used to seeing her in sweatpants, it almost looks like she’s in drag. I notice she’s got her contact lenses in, instead of her glasses, which is rare.