19 Love Songs

by David Levithan

  Joe’s hand is inches from mine. Centimeters. This has to be what love is, to physically feel a person even though you’re not actually touching.

  What I hate, Tyrone, is how excited I was to see you today.

  Singing is best when it testifies. Singing is best when it shines with truth and love. Singing burns brightest when you mean the words to be heard.

  I want Mr. Glenn to see me now. I remember when I auditioned for him—upstart ninth grader trying to get a spot in the high school chorus. I don’t know anything. When it’s my turn to audition, I tell him I’m going to sing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.” He asks me if I’m sure. I tell him I’m very sure. I’ve even downloaded the sheet music from the Internet. I hand it over to him and he sits down at the piano, asking me if I’m ready. I sing along to it all the time—shower, car, bedroom—and I’m sure this will be the same. Even though it’s just a piano accompanying me, I try to hear all the instruments as I tear right into the song, trying to hit the notes just like Christina does. Mr. Glenn doesn’t stop me—he plays the whole song through. And then when it’s done, he looks at me and says, “I have a question.” I ask him what. And he asks, “Why are you singing falsetto?” I don’t know what he means, and instead of pretending I do, I ask him what he’s talking about. “That’s not your real voice,” he says. “You’re probably a baritone. Not a tenor.” I tell him I still don’t understand. He’s patient. He says, “Your speaking voice is different from your singing voice. Can’t you hear that?” And I say, perfectly sure, “I know, but my speaking voice isn’t my real voice—my singing voice is.” What I don’t say, because I haven’t come close to figuring it out yet, is that I’m not even trying to be a tenor. I want to be a soprano. But maybe Mr. Glenn gets that. Because he doesn’t laugh or tell me I’m wrong. He thanks me for sharing my song with him. I don’t get into the chorus, but I get to keep my voice. I start to figure things out and pave over the gravel that never should have been in my speaking voice, so now it’s smooth music instead of a rough road. While I never make it to soprano, I’m now a damn strong alto. If I auditioned now, Mr. Glenn would have to let me in.

  A song can give you a place to be, a place to live for three and a half minutes. If the song works its wonders, you don’t have to be anywhere else.

  I have to stop looking at him. He must sense that I’m looking at him. The whole audience must see it.

  There was this one time after rehearsal when Joe and I were going the same way and we had to have talked for at least fifteen minutes after we got to the corner where he was supposed to go his way and I was supposed to go mine, and even though we were mostly talking about the chorus and whether Fredrique deserved the “Over the Rainbow” solo and whether we were going to get to tour at all this summer, I really sensed this subtle flirtation between us, although maybe subtle flirtation is just the usual way gay friends talk to each other, and it’s not like we ended up going in the same direction after that, because that night he was going to a birthday party, but he did ask me at least twice if I was going in his direction even though he knew it wasn’t my usual direction, and why am I only figuring out now that I should have just made up an excuse to go in his direction and why am I so bad at this?

  When Gaga sings, it’s genuine. When Katy Perry sings, I’m not so sure. But right now, we are genuine. We mean it.

  Sing it in defiance of all the people who want you to be quiet. Sing it to lift your own soul from the depths. Sing it to be the music you want in the world.

  You know what, Tyrone? It’s wrong to make a guy feel safe and then pull all that away without a word. I know you don’t want it to happen again—I am definitely getting that message. But I’m telling you right now, I’m making it my decision: It is never going to happen again. And if anyone asks me why all of a sudden I’m not eager to be sitting next to you on the bus, I’m going to tell them exactly why.

  “He always loves to hear you sing,” Mom said. And I told her, “Yeah, but which voice is he expecting to hear?” Still, she took him to the Christmas show. Told him it was the only present she wanted that year, and he said, fine. He said it wouldn’t prove anything. But as he sat there in the tenth row, thinking he was anonymous, I saw him. And when we started to sing “Silent Night,” I saw him start to cry. I, who had vowed a million times over that he would never make me cry again, began to let the tears fall like they were the silent notes housed all along within the music. When Mom invited me back home after, he didn’t protest, nor did he acknowledge what it meant. We’ve been navigating that conversation and absence of conversation ever since. Over a year…and he hasn’t missed a show since.

  Oh my god my fly is open. This whole time, my fly has been open.

  I want him to notice me and I don’t want him to notice me and I want him to notice me and I don’t want him to notice me and I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know what I want.

  Who am I kidding? I WANT JOE.

  Here come the fireworks. We build and build with our voices, and then we hit the heights—

  I will get better at this, Tyrone. Thank you for helping me figure out that the way a guy treats you is much more important than how he makes your heart race.

  I am not afraid to sing for my father here. He is not afraid to listen. I am proud of our peace because it is something I made.

  Joe’s hand is opening. Getting closer. He’s smiling at me as he’s singing. Singing to me. I’m not imagining this, am I? He wants me to take his hand, doesn’t he? I must move my hand. Is this really happening?

  Silly rabbit. It took you long enough to go the shortest amount of space. It took you long enough to hear me singing to you.

  Holding hands with Joe. Everyone can see I’m holding hands with Joe. Or maybe nobody can see I’m holding hands with Joe. But definitely Joe can see that I am holding hands with Joe. And he is not letting go. No, neither one of us is letting go.

  I don’t have any friends out there in the audience. But that’s because I have so many of them onstage with me. That’s what I love about the choir: We are all in this together.

  Bring it home. Bring it on home.

  We are so much louder together than apart. We are so much brighter together than apart.

  I am a part of this. I am making this.

  We are making this.

  I am the sound I create. I add the sound I create.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Follow the sound of my voice.

  I love this song when we sing it.

  This is what it feels like, to be alive. We sing to be fully alive.

  TRACK FOURTEEN

  The Vulnerable Hours

  Later, there would be people who would try to explain it away. There was something in the light, they’d say. The sky was a color that nobody had ever seen before, a rose-tinted darkness that made the air more tender to breathe. Other people would swear that the tincture in the air wasn’t light or color but scent, an uncertain distillation of the things you were afraid to admit you desired. The temperature could not be blamed, because it was so mild that nobody felt it. Not a single person in the city shivered the entire night, nor did anyone feel overburdened by heat. Minds wandered to other things.

  Sarah Wilkins may have been the first to feel it. She was in her room, alone, getting ready to go out. She could hear her mother yelling at her sister in the kitchen—something about a lack of respect, probably stemming from the fact that Sarah’s sister had taken to leaving without saying goodbye. Sarah drowned out the fight and focused on her face in the mirror. She tried not to feel sad about the acne on her forehead or the fact that her bangs were too long. I just have to try to make it better, she said to herself. And then she surprised herself by adding, Why? She put on her cover-up, her
blush, her lipstick. She teased and gelled and pulled her bangs into shape. It’s a party, she told herself. But the why still lingered.

  Amanda called to say she and Ashley were two minutes away. Sarah was only going to the party because Amanda and Ashley wanted to go. The guy who was throwing it was a complete jerk, and the guy Amanda wanted to see there wasn’t much better. Sarah never told her this, because what was the use? When had a friend’s opinion ever undone a crush?

  Even worse, Amanda’s crush had a friend. Sarah had already forgotten his name—or maybe nobody had bothered to mention it to her. All that mattered was that he was going to be at Devin’s party. Amanda had even told her what to wear. Ever dutiful, Sarah had put on the skirt they’d bought at Bloomingdale’s over spring break. Amanda had said Sarah looked good in it, but Sarah suspected she was only saying that so she’d feel less guilty about her own purchases.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Amanda and Ashley asked when Sarah met them in front of her building. Sarah didn’t say it, but she realized she was the opposite of excited. Then she realized she didn’t even know what the opposite of excited was. She’d never allowed herself to express it, so the word had dissolved.

  On the subway downtown, Amanda and Ashley gossiped about who was going to be at the party and then tried to guess what was going to happen. Sarah kept silent, not even realizing she was staring at the woman on the seat across from hers. The woman was alone, quietly reading a magazine. She looked like that was all she wanted for the moment, and she was content in having it. Sarah was surprised by how jealous she felt. She didn’t know this woman; this woman was old. Why would Sarah simply assume a stranger’s life was better than hers?

  The boy throwing the party went to one of the private schools that didn’t even bother to be named after a saint. He didn’t greet them at the door. Instead the girls found the door cracked open, a bare-bones invitation to walk from the hallway of the building into the hallway of the apartment. It was already crowded with teenagers—mostly anonymous, mostly drinking. Amanda and Ashley led the way, angling through the crowds until they found the bed with the coats on it. Then they angled again until they got to the place where the beer was being distributed. Sarah took a bottle, because it was handed to her. She said thank you, because it was the right thing to say. But she didn’t take a sip, or even look around much. She noticed the copper pots hanging on the walls and wondered if they were ever used, or if they were just there for decoration. She asked Amanda, and Amanda either didn’t hear or pretended not to. Instead she and Ashley took sips from their bottles and scoped out the crowd. Sarah knew Amanda and Ashley were not going to leave her; they were in this together. This had always been a comfort to her, because she feared being left behind. But now, on this strange night, she wanted just that. She wanted them to forget she was there.

  Sarah was not used to making excuses, so she fell back on the most universal one: She said she had to go to the restroom. That’s how she said it—restroom—as if they were in a restaurant instead of some rich kid’s home. Amanda and Ashley said they’d wait for her in the den; the jerk Amanda liked had last been seen heading that way, and Amanda didn’t want to miss her chance.

  Sarah didn’t know which direction the bathroom was in, so she chose the direction opposite the one Amanda and Ashley were taking. It was still early in the evening, but already couples were making out against walls and boys were putting on their jackets to go to the roof for a smoke. Sarah wanted to put her unsipped beer bottle down, but all of the available surfaces were too close to people. She had no desire to be pulled into a conversation. She just wanted to find a room where she could close the door and lock it and be alone.

  Lindsay Weiss saw Sarah walking down the hall, looking into doorways, trying to find something. Lindsay would never have been able to explain it, but immediately she recognized what Sarah was feeling. She knew it as if it was happening to her. So she cut off the boy from Regency who was attempting to flirt with her, and she caught up with Sarah just as she was about to peer into a bedroom.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Sarah. “You look lost.”

  Before, Sarah had felt stirrings, but they had been isolated stirrings. Now, having this girl come up to her and say she looked lost, the stirrings filled her with noise. Not the noise of sound, but a noise much louder than that: the noise of thought.

  “Yes, I’m lost,” she said. And she could have left it at that. She could have just asked where the restroom was. But something about tonight made her go further, made her more honest than necessary. There was something in this girl’s eyes that already understood. So Sarah found herself adding, “I’m completely lost. I don’t belong here at all.”

  The truth feels different from other things. The closest you can come to describing it is that it feels like taking a perfect breath.

  Without having to think about it, Lindsay knew the next thing to say was, “I’m Lindsay.”

  And Sarah could find just enough energy to say, “I’m Sarah.”

  Sarah had never wondered what it would be like to tell the total truth. If asked, she would have said she had done it numerous times before. And it would have been a lie, as much to herself as to the person who had asked. Now, she understood this. Now, she wanted to try to tell the total truth.

  They ended up where Sarah had been intending to go all along—the bathroom off of the parental bedroom. Mom’s bathroom, clearly, with its museum of perfume bottles, its royal-majesty mirror, and its hand towels embroidered with shells. With the party raging on, it was the quietest part of the apartment. Lindsay perched on the edge of the tub while Sarah put the seat cover down and sat on the toilet.

  “What is it?” Lindsay asked.

  “Can I really tell you?”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Sarah said. “I don’t really want to be anywhere I usually go. I have no idea where I want to be instead, but I know that I can’t keep going to the same places. My friends have no idea who I am, and maybe I don’t know who they are, either, but they live much more on the surface than I do. Is that awful to say? I don’t mean it as an insult. They’re the way they are and I’m the way I am. Neither way is better or worse. It’s just that my way is better for me.”

  Lindsay didn’t pass judgment. Instead she asked, “So why did you come tonight?”

  Sarah shook her head slowly. “Because I can usually trick myself into thinking I’m going to have a good time. It’s like this social amnesia kicks in, and I forget how ugly I feel and how out of place I am and how miserable I’ll be. It’s amazing how you can convince yourself of something when you don’t think you have any options.”

  I should be crying, Sarah thought. She was effectively erasing everything that was supposed to matter to her. What her friends thought. What the guys might think.

  Lindsay heard what Sarah was saying and she knew: This was a girl who wanted to walk away. And who would walk away, even if it hurt. What Lindsay felt then wasn’t the desire to walk away, too, but instead the desire to remain. She knew that Sarah’s problems were not her own, even if she could understand where Sarah was coming from.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Sarah said again.

  And Lindsay replied, “You should never be somewhere you truly don’t want to be.”

  “Is it that simple?” Sarah asked.

  And Lindsay said yes, it was that simple.

  There is such freedom in learning you can leave.

  * * *

  —

  Less than a mile away, Stewart Hall was sitting with his friend Phil in Tompkins Square Park. Later, they would each wonder whether being outdoors made them more susceptible to the night. The day hadn’t been at all out of the ordinary: Stewart had gotten new headphones at Best Buy while Phil had worked on an English paper and had messaged with a girl named Deborah who he’d met at camp. The conver
sation had been inconsequential; they often chatted about visiting each other, but they never did.

  “So what’s up?” Stewart asked. They’d just gotten to the park.

  “Not much,” Phil answered. “You?”

  “Not much.”

  It was Stewart who’d called Phil, who’d said they should hang out. They usually met in the park, then saw who else came by.

  “Not much?” Phil said.

  “Yeah, not much.”

  Phil started thinking.

  “And how are you?” he asked Stewart.

  “What do you mean, how am I?”

  “I mean, how are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “You tired?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. You tired?”

  “Hell yes, I’m tired. I’m always fucking tired.”

  Phil nodded. “You know what I wonder?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna tell you. I’m wondering, why are the answers to these questions always the same?”

  “What questions?”

  “You ask, ‘What’s up?’ I say, ‘Not much.’ Then I ask, ‘What’s up?’ and you say, ‘Not much.’ If anyone asks how we’re feeling, or how we’re doing, we say, ‘Fine.’ If someone asks if we’re tired, we say of course we’re tired. Because everyone is tired. There is not a single person we know who isn’t tired. That’s the only truthful answer of the three.”