I glance behind me, where my brother is now talking on his phone. I wonder if he’s pretending to talk to someone, because he hates being on the phone. Even knowing how much he missed me, I think he barely tolerated our calls when I was at Dinsmore.
“He has to take care of something,” I say, “and I just wanted to drop this off. I shouldn’t bother Emil if he’s sleeping.”
Catherine holds the door wide open.
I step into the foyer and immediately take off my sandals, bending down to place them on the low shelf by the front door. Emil’s dad—Appa, as he sometimes calls him—grew up with parents who emigrated from South Korea, and one of their traditions that’s held strong in Emil’s family is no shoes in the house. “It only makes sense—shoes are filthy,” Mom said after the first time we visited them with Lionel and Saul. She tried to implement the rule in our home, but it wasn’t a week before the Nussbaum men were once again stomping around on the hardwood floors in work boots and dirty sneakers.
Our house is big, but old and kind of rickety beneath all the historic charm. Emil’s house is modern, with concrete floors and white shag rugs thrown around the Eames furniture in the main room. The front wall is enclosed by panels of steel and glass and has a gorgeous view of the houses that sit below the hill.
“Last night was pretty bad for Emil, but he’s been better today. Sleeping, mostly.” Catherine sighs. “He’s been in remission for quite a while.… I hope this doesn’t start happening more frequently.”
“How long does it usually last?” I ask, wondering why, if there are no secrets between our families, nobody told me about Emil’s condition while I was away.
“Oh, it depends,” she says, leading me to the bottom of the stairs. “The episodes can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. He might have another one next week or be fine for six months. It’s hard to know.”
“Maybe I should go. He can let me know when he’s feeling better.” I try to say it like it’s no big deal, but Catherine sees right through me and my matzo ball soup.
“No, you should go up and see him. I think he’s getting tired of me and his dad.” She smiles. “He’ll be happier to see you than either of us, trust me.”
Emil’s door is cracked, and through the sliver of space I can see he’s lying on his side, facing away from the door and toward the big windows that overlook the backyard. His room is dark except for one panel of the wooden blind that’s been pulled back. It sends a startling strip of sunlight across his desk, the bamboo floor, the corner of his bed.
I knock and watch him slowly turn over, draping an arm across his eyes as he says, “Come in.”
“Hey.” I push the door open after a slight pause, hoping he’s not annoyed that I’m here. “It’s Suzette.”
The arm flies off his face and he sits up immediately, which was much too fast, judging by the pained expression that crosses his face. He grimaces for a moment, then turns it into a weak smile for me. “Hey.”
“I brought you soup,” I say, walking over to the bed as I thrust the mason jar forward. “Matzo ball. It always makes me feel better when I’m sick.”
Emil blinks a couple of times and his smile deepens as he takes it from me. “No one’s ever brought me soup before.” He examines the jar’s contents before setting it on his nightstand. “Thanks, Suzette.”
“Are you feeling any better?” I ask, suddenly wishing I had something to do with my hands. Like earlier, when I wanted to touch Rafaela’s arm, I clasp them behind my back.
“Kind of.” He reaches for his glass of water and nearly drains it before he sets it back on the nightstand, eyeing the pill bottle a few inches away. My heart jumps as I think about the pills I’ve hidden for Lion. “I really wanted to go out the other night, but I can’t drive like this. I’ve been dizzy for the last couple of days. I lost my balance on the stairs after dinner Friday and almost fell.”
“God, I’m sorry, Emil.”
“The only thing that makes me feel better is the medicine, but then all I want to do is sleep.” He taps the bottle in frustration before leaning back against the headboard. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear all this.”
I walk toward him then, because this is where I would pat his shoulder or touch his arm reassuringly—if he weren’t sitting in bed. But he eases himself over and pats the space next to him on the mattress, and I hesitate only a moment before I sit down, my knees nearly touching the nightstand.
“Of course I want to hear this,” I say. “What, you’re supposed to pretend you’re fine when you’re not? You’re my friend.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Just your friend?”
My heart is beating in my throat and my face is too hot and my God, if someone had told me a year ago that Emil could make me feel this way without even touching me, I would have laughed it off.
I’m still trying to think of how to respond when, again, he says, “Sorry. I’m just…” He covers my hand with his own. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Emil slides his hand slowly up my arm, sending goose bumps tingling up and down my skin.
Catherine is downstairs and Lionel is waiting in the car, but I want to kiss Emil so badly that I don’t care. And when he leans forward, I don’t overthink it. My eyes close as his lips brush the slope of one cheekbone and then the other, followed by the spot below my right ear. He pauses and I wonder where he will go next, take in a breath as his mouth falls down to my neck and along the line of my chin before he kisses my lips. Slowly. Softly.
I kiss him back, resting one hand on his shoulder while I run a fingertip along the perimeter of his ear. I bump against a hearing aid and pull back, starting to apologize, but he shakes his head and kisses me again and then his arms wrap around my waist as he draws me closer. I like that I can feel his body heat through his T-shirt and how his skin smells like blankets and sleep, and I wonder if that’s the scent I’d wake up to if we spent the night together. My skin burns even more at the thought.
Emil’s hands move down my waist, sliding just under the thin fabric of my tank top to touch me on either side of my spine, and I realize he’s searching for my dimples of Venus, the indentations in the small of my back. He must have seen them when I was in my bikini. “I like these,” he murmurs.
I like you.
I kiss him harder so I won’t be tempted to say it aloud.
then.
Iris and I are careful—until we aren’t.
We’ve been locking our door at night because sometimes we fall asleep before one of us can move back to our own bed, and the girls on our floor don’t always knock before they come in. We never touch outside our locked dorm room. Sometimes we have a slight reprieve, when we go into town, but it’s hard to leave Dinsmore’s grounds without the girls on our floor wanting to come along, too—and they’re the very people we’re trying to get away from.
But we slip up.
I don’t know it at first. Neither of us understands that this morning is any different from the others. I wake up in her bed and yawn, my mouth cottony from too much vodka. Iris got an A on her last chem test before the final in a couple of weeks, so we celebrated. And now she’s spooning me, her cheek flat against my back, and I flush for a moment when I remember what I said last night. That I told her no one has ever made me feel the way she does.
My head is too foggy when I try to sit up, so I decide to skip breakfast in favor of lying here with Iris. I wait until the last possible moment to get up and take a shower in our private bathroom, and even then she tugs at my arm, silently begging me to stay. When that doesn’t work she uses her lips, kissing along my naked skin, but I eventually, reluctantly pull away. I can’t miss English lit.
When I walk out of our room, I don’t think too hard about the girls hovering in the hallway outside my door. I smile, and I guess the hangover makes my brain slow, because I don’t even think to follow their wide, disbelieving eyes, don�
��t wonder too hard what they’re doing here when none of them live on my floor. I don’t think anything is out of the ordinary until one of them nods behind me to the door I’ve just pulled shut.
D Y K E S
My stomach goes sour. I realize that whoever wrote it took the time to go over the markered letters more than once. That whoever it was definitely wanted the word to be permanent.
Everyone in front of me, every door and corner of this hallway that I’ve looked at nearly every day for the past nine months, goes blurry. And I think I’m going to be sick. The logical thing to do would be to go back into the room. Warn Iris. Stay in there until I know I’m not going to vomit.
But I take off. I push past the onlookers, because I’m sure everyone will know it’s true once they see us together. And while I’d never think it was an insult to call someone a lesbian, this word isn’t informing people of who we’re attracted to—it’s a hateful accusation.
I keep my head down while I walk to first period so I won’t have to watch anyone react to seeing me. Hatred, confusion, sympathy—I don’t want to see any of it. I don’t want people to look at me any differently than they already do, though it’s obviously too late for that.
I make it to the English hall bathroom before my stomach turns over. Afterward, I sit on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. There’s no way I’m going to class today. Not one of them.
The first text from Iris comes in as I’m walking to the infirmary: What the fuck happened to our door???
I ignore it because I don’t know what to say.
I lie down on a cot in the infirmary, but the nurse makes me leave my phone with her, so I can’t check to see if Iris texts again. I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes I think I hear my phone buzzing. And I can’t stop seeing that word on our door.
I’m starving when the day is over, but by now surely everyone has seen or heard about what happened. The dining hall will be a shitshow, so I hurry to the library, keeping my earbuds shoved firmly into my ears, my eyes cast downward anytime I pass someone.
I wait until I’ve wedged myself into the stacks where anyone rarely goes, near the Latin texts, to check my phone again. I have thirty new messages. Most are from Iris, but some are from the few people I’ve grown to like while I’m here.
Iris’s are the worst to read, though.
You’ve SEEN the door, right??
Suz where are you?
Well chem lab was hell
I really hate this and I can’t believe you’re ignoring me
I’m not pissed at you, ok? Just please come back to our room
When I get back, she’s perched on the edge of her bed, facing the door. Her cheeks are flushed and I imagine they’ve been that way since this morning; her skin is pale and blushes easily and often. Her blond, curly hair is swept back into a French braid. Some pieces have started to work their way loose, and it makes me feel bad to think of her sitting here this morning, braiding her hair for the day and not knowing what was on the other side of the door.
“Someone scrubbed it off,” I say, tossing my backpack onto my desk. My first instinct had been to lock the door, but we both know that’s no longer necessary.
“Yeah, but you can still see it.” Her voice is thin. “Not as well, but the letters are just faded, not gone. They’ll have to paint over it.”
I nod, staring down at the floor.
“Where have you been?” she asks, and the question isn’t accusatory. It’s more… sad than anything else. “I went to every single class and I didn’t see you once.”
“I got sick.” I swallow, still not making eye contact. “Did people say anything to you?”
“Of course they did, Suzette. Everyone in our dorm has seen it. Every time I came back to the room to get something, someone was here staring. Some people I’ve never even talked to were asking me about us. About you.”
She doesn’t sound angry. Mostly frustrated.
“I’m sorry,” I practically whisper. I should have been here with her. I know that.
“I can’t believe I let them win,” she mumbles. “I should have told everyone I was gay when I first got here.” She pauses, then: “Did you know I was president of my middle school’s gay-straight alliance? A couple of people told me they came out to their parents because I was so brave, so open. What would they think if they could see me now?”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
A couple of times Iris said we should walk out of our room holding hands, or kiss each other in the common room, and I’d agree in the moment. It was easier to think things would be all right when we were safely behind our locked door. When I was lying with my head against her shoulder and her arm was draped over my side, her fingertips tracing invisible patterns along the slope of my hip. I could pretend we were in California, in Los Angeles, where no one I knew cared who I was attracted to.
But as soon as we were out in the hall, under the watchful eyes of my classmates, my bravery vanished. All I wanted was to blend in as much as possible.
“Well, you don’t have to worry,” Iris says briskly as she stands up from her bed. “Nobody thinks you’re a real dyke. I told them it was all me.”
“You what?” I look straight at her for the first time since I’ve walked in, but now her back is to me. She’s rearranging things on her already spotless desk, and I guess she doesn’t want to look at me when she says this part.
“Lily and Bianca cornered me at lunch. Asked if it was true.” She shakes her head and laughs a bit, but it’s more like a bark—sharp and quick and unhappy. “They probably had something to do with it, or at least know for sure who did it. But I knew whatever I told them would get back to everyone else, so I said…”
The air is so quiet I can hear her breathing across the room. Like the many times I’ve listened to her when we were in our separate beds, counting her breaths and wanting to be near enough to feel them on my skin.
“I said I came on to you when we were drunk a couple of times and that it was all me. Everything.” She clears her throat. “So it’s all good, okay? Nobody thinks that about you.”
That. As if girls liking girls is a disease. But it’s how the girls on our floor think of it, and Iris is smart enough to know that nothing she says will change their minds.
“I don’t care if they do,” I say, but my voice is distant enough that we both know that statement is false.
The truth is that I already feel so on guard, I’m not sure I’m up for being put under a new lens to be examined. There’s the fact that I’m one of less than a handful of black kids at the entire school, which is something I’m reminded of much more often than I think necessary. And while I don’t feel great about the fact that I haven’t so much as removed my Magen David from the bottom of my jewelry box since I’ve been here, the necklace that I’ve worn nearly every day since Lionel gave it to me, I know it’s easier than explaining my background to the girls in our dorm. They’re still trying to understand how my mother and Saul can make a family like ours without being married; they could never fathom my converting to the religion of a man who can’t legally call himself my stepfather. They like clear-cut boxes, and I don’t fit the one they know to be Jewish.
Iris turns and we look at each other, finally, her light brown eyes connecting with my own. “Do you… Did you ever feel like I was taking advantage of you?”
Her voice is so small that I want to go over and wrap my arms around her and kiss her until the pain goes away. But I know nothing will be the same between us now. I knew that the second I decided to walk away this morning.
“Never,” I say firmly. “Not once.”
“But we always drank. I know it made you more comfortable, and maybe that wasn’t right… to be with you like that.”
“I did everything I did because I wanted to, okay?” I say. “You didn’t ever force me to do anything.”
She nods, but I don’t know if I’ve convinced her. She switches on her lamp and switches it off
again. “You’re off the hook.” Her voice is the softest it’s been since I came in. “We only have a couple more weeks here. Let them believe you were never into it… that you were never into me.”
Maybe if I were a better person I would ignore her suggestion and tell everyone that she didn’t take advantage of me, that I care about her, that being with Iris makes being cut off from the life I never wanted to leave enjoyable, not just bearable.
But I am the sort of person who, when I walk out of our room the next day, finds it easier to let them believe what she said. I shut down Bianca immediately when, with the most concern I’ve ever seen her show toward another human being, she asks if I’ve been sexually assaulted and want to make a report. But I don’t deny what Iris told them, and I don’t correct them when they repeat it.
And the worst part is that I can’t stop thinking how it’s the nicest they’ve been to me all year.
twelve.
It’s hard not to think of Iris whenever I drink.
We weren’t even close to being the biggest drinkers in our dorm, but she kept a bottle of raspberry-flavored vodka under her bed that we sipped from during second semester. She’d procured it with the help of her older sister when she was home over winter break, smuggled back to school in a giant duffel bag with her lacrosse gear.
So when DeeDee says she’d like to get drunk because she’s fighting with Alicia and I’m the only person she wants to see, I immediately think of Iris, the relationship between girls and liquor. Iris and I stopped drinking when everything fell apart between us, and it never occurred to me to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. We drank raspberry vodka on the nights I wanted to be closer to her.
DeeDee comes over armed with a fifth of spiced rum tucked in her overnight bag, and when she shows it to me up in my room, it reminds me so much of Iris that for a moment I can’t breathe.
“What’s wrong?” DeeDee asks.
Little & Lion Page 11
