19 Love Songs

by David Levithan

  Normally, Stewart would just tell Phil to get his head out of his ass, but for some reason, he went along with it. He was listening, which wasn’t something he always did with Phil.

  “But isn’t not much true?” he asked. “I mean, are you saying that something’s up and I don’t know about it?”

  “I’m just saying that if nothing’s up and we’re feeling fine, then why are we so tired all the time? Something’s got to be happening.” Phil stood up from the bench. “We can’t all be doing nothing, right?”

  “I’m not saying nothing,” Stewart pointed out. “I’m saying not much.”

  But Phil was already heading somewhere. Since the weather was so ideal, there were a lot of people in the park, even long after sunset, well into the night.

  “Where are you going?” Stewart asked. Then, not getting an answer, he followed.

  There were two girls from the neighborhood sitting on a bench about twenty feet away. Tamika and Danika, or something like that.

  “What’s up?” Phil said to them.

  “Not much,” they responded.

  He nodded and moved on to the next bench, where a homeless guy who smelled like bad cheese was sitting.

  “What’s up?” Phil asked.

  “Not much,” the guy said.

  Third bench. A poet type with a black notebook on his lap, pen poised for words that he clearly sensed were on the way.

  “What’s up?” Phil asked.

  The poet looked up thoughtfully from his poetry daze.

  “Not much,” he replied. “Not much at all.”

  Stewart could sense his friend getting more and more frustrated. Still, he wasn’t expecting what happened next.

  They saw a few members of their group—Mateo, Ben, Miranda—ahead.

  “Hey, man, I called you!” Mateo yelled out when he saw them coming.

  “Hey!” Phil yelled back. Then, when they were closer, he asked it: “What’s up?”

  And Mateo said, “Not much.”

  Next, Phil asked Ben, and Ben said, “Not much.” Then Miranda, and she said it, too.

  “That’s not true!” Phil yelled. “We’re all so full of shit—not much not much not much. Mateo, something has to be up. Ben, I know there’s something going on in that head of yours. Miranda, why don’t you just come right out and say it?”

  Something clicked into place then. Was it the way Phil said it? Or was it the light or the scent in the air that opened them up? Or maybe they were just tired of not really answering. Whatever the cause, Stewart could actually see the change—the way Phil’s question was suddenly a real question, not just something to say.

  “You want to know what’s up?” Miranda asked. “You really want to know?”

  Phil nodded.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’m here with Mateo and Ben, right? But I’m also on the lookout for my brother, because he’s been acting weird lately, and I think he might be coming to the park to score. I mean, we’ve hardly seen him in the past few weeks, and when he’s home, he’ll just lock his door and do whatever behind it. The other night, we were both brushing our teeth at the same time, and I tried to ask him what was going on, but he just looked at me like I was some girl renting a room from his parents, and he said nothing was going on. Nothing at all. I just thought he was being a jerk, but then when he was leaving, he tells me not to worry. And I’m thinking, If there’s nothing to worry about, then why are you telling me not to worry? I know who he hangs out with, and they’re not a problem, but suddenly I’m wondering if he’s hanging out with someone else I don’t know about or if he’s gotten into trouble. I mean, I know he’s done some shit in the past, but it’s always been under control. He’s got his friend Mike, who keeps him in line. But it’s not like I can call Mike and ask him what’s going on—Darius would knock me in the head if he knew I did that. So I’m just trying to see what I can see, you know? Darius likes to come to the park and do his thing. So maybe I’ll catch him at it.”

  “How ’bout you?” Phil asked, turning to Mateo. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not over Deena,” he said. “You know that’s what’s up.”

  “You hoping to see her?” Miranda asked.

  “I’m always hoping to see her. Even when I’m all like, Fuck hope, I’m still hoping.”

  “And you, Ben?” Phil asked. “What’s up?”

  “Just had to get out of my house, man. Being there makes me feel like I’m living a murder, you know?”

  Phil didn’t know. None of them knew. Ben never talked about home.

  Phil thought: We talk all the time about people opening up, as if it’s some kind of physical unfolding. But the only thing that can open us up to another person is words. Words on the inside, telling us to do the things we’re most afraid to do. Words on the outside, sharing what’s really going on.

  Sometimes all we need is a little attention to open up.

  * * *

  —

  People kept knocking on the bathroom door, but Sarah and Lindsay didn’t feel too guilty about staying locked inside; they knew there were at least two other bathrooms in the apartment. People could deal.

  Then there came a knock that was less insistent, more of a question than a statement.

  A voice followed it.

  “Sarah, you in there? It’s me, Ashley.”

  Lindsay watched Sarah, wondering what she was going to do.

  Sarah didn’t seem to be surprised at being found, or even that worried.

  “What is it, Ashley?” she asked through the door.

  “I was just looking for you. Are you okay? You’ve been gone for a long time.”

  Sarah noticed the I—Ashley was almost never an I. This had to mean that Amanda had found her guy and left Ashley to the wolves.

  Sarah sighed. Had she really thought her life wouldn’t be able to find her? Did she really think it would get distracted and not notice she was gone? She looked to Lindsay, silently asking if it was okay for her to open the door, to let the interloper in. Lindsay nodded; she knew from experience that even though it was important to hide away in the bathroom when you needed to, it was equally important to leave it eventually.

  Ashley looked stupidly confused when the door finally opened and she found two girls inside. Had Sarah and this girl been making out? Was Sarah a lesbian? Ashley couldn’t understand how a bathroom could be used for anything other than making out or, well, going to the bathroom. Ashley wasn’t perceptive so much as receptive—she needed someone to explain things to her. And Amanda was too busy flirting with Greg to be there.

  Sarah said, “Ashley, this is Lindsay. Lindsay, Ashley.”

  This new girl held out her hand, and Ashley wondered if she’d washed it. After either making out with Sarah or going to the bathroom. Whichever.

  It looked clean and dry, so she shook it. Then she asked Sarah what she was doing.

  “Just talking,” Sarah said. “I needed to get away.”

  Get away? Ashley was confused. They’d only been here for a half hour or so. Which was long for being in the bathroom, but pretty short for being at a party.

  The next possible explanation that came into her head was that Sarah had gotten her period and that Lindsay had given her a tampon. Although that didn’t explain why Lindsay was in the bathroom with Sarah, or why Sarah hadn’t asked Ashley or Amanda for a tampon. Not that Ashley or Amanda would have had one; this one time, Amanda’s purse had fallen open when she was with a boy and the tampons had fallen in his lap and Amanda had been so mortified that she said they would just have to rely on scamming them off other girls from now on. Ashley had actually sent this story in anonymously to a teen magazine’s embarrassing moments column, but they hadn’t printed it.

  Sarah could not for the life of her figure out what was going on in Ashley’
s head. More than anything, she wanted Ashley to go back to the party and leave her and Lindsay alone again. Sarah knew she should have never opened the door. Now there’d be no closing it again.

  “There you are,” a male voice said. A not-as-cute-as-his-clothes indie-rock boy was shouldering into the doorway, looking at Lindsay. “I totally lost you.”

  Lindsay was happy to see Jimm, only not right now. This girl needed her more than he did. At least until she left the party.

  “Jimm, Sarah. Sarah, Jimm,” Lindsay introduced. “And…I’m sorry, I’ve already forgotten your name.”

  “Ashley.”

  “Jimm, Ashley. Ashley, Jimm.”

  The presence of a boy made Ashley stop thinking too much, especially since he was clearly with Lindsay, and therefore Lindsay wasn’t a lesbian. Not that Ashley minded lesbians. She would just be hurt if Sarah had been one all along and hadn’t told her and Amanda.

  On other nights, Sarah would have given in. She would have asked Ashley where Amanda was, and they would have headed to that general vicinity together, to chaperone her flirtation and provide interruption if it was needed. She would have let Amanda’s guy introduce her to the guy she was supposed to fall for tonight, and maybe she would have been so bored that she would have fallen for him. Or at least pretended to, if he was pitiable enough. But not tonight.

  “I’m going to go,” Sarah told Ashley.

  “But we just got here!” Ashley replied.

  “I’m going to go,” Sarah repeated, this time to Lindsay.

  “You should,” Lindsay told her. “Do something you want to do.”

  “I just want to wander,” Sarah said.

  “Then wander.”

  “C’mon, Sarah,” Ashley said. And Sarah felt bad, because she knew if Amanda was in the boy zone, Ashley was going to be a barflower for the rest of the night.

  “Do you want to come with me?” she asked.

  Ashley shook her head. “Is it cramps?” she whispered.

  Sarah decided to avoid the polite lie.

  “I don’t belong here,” she said. “I’d rather be doing something else. So I’m going to do something else.”

  Ashley took it personally, even though Sarah had asked her along.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked.

  And Sarah thought, Well, I wasn’t until you said that.

  Lindsay was scribbling her phone number on the back of a receipt.

  “Call me when you get there,” she said, passing the paper over.

  “I will,” Sarah said, and hugged Lindsay goodbye. Then she did the same to Ashley, who was still confused.

  As Sarah pushed forward into the crowded hallways, a strange grace filled her. Instead of being sick of all the people around her, she recognized that many of them were actually having fun. This crowded, loud, playerful atmosphere was the right kind for them.

  She laughed when she got to the door and realized she didn’t have her coat. Then she plunged back in, seeing Amanda out of the corner of her eye as she passed the living room. Amanda was in firm girl-grasp of her target guy’s arm. Her peripheral vision was turned off, so Sarah could slide by, retrieve her coat from underneath a guy in the third stage of passing out, then head back to the door.

  As soon as she was out of the apartment, she felt free.

  It didn’t matter that she had nowhere to go. Nowhere to go was the perfect destination.

  * * *

  —

  While Mateo, Miranda, Ben, and Stewart talked about what was going on with them, Phil sneaked away. He wasn’t done with his questions. There was still some kind of answer he was looking for, but he hadn’t found it yet.

  He saw two guys sitting on a bench, both about his age, probably from Stuy or Bronx Science or one of the other smart high schools. They were clearly with each other, but they weren’t really talking. It reminded Phil a little of him and Stewart, how some nights they’d sit around for hours and wait for something to happen instead of making it happen themselves.

  One of the guys was lost in thought, and Phil could see how that would happen on a night like tonight. The second guy looked at Phil strangely as he headed over.

  “Hey,” Phil said to the guy who seemed to be paying attention. “What’s up?”

  “We don’t want any drugs,” the guy replied. “Sorry.”

  Damn, Phil thought. Do I look like a dealer? He laughed. “I’m not selling drugs. Just coming by, saying what’s up.”

  “Oh,” the guy said. He didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He wasn’t exactly apologizing. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Not much really going on.”

  The quiet guy looked up now. No longer lost in thought, because clearly there was one thought that had found him and taken hold. It was hurting him.

  “What’s up?” Phil asked him.

  “You’re not the person I should be telling,” the boy replied.

  “Fair enough,” Phil said.

  Suddenly he felt out of place, self-conscious. Why was he talking to strangers? What was he trying to find?

  But there was something in that quiet boy’s eyes.

  “Say it,” Phil told him. “Not to me. But to whoever you need to say it to.”

  “Thanks for your advice,” the louder guy said sarcastically.

  “See you,” Phil said. He spotted a girl he knew, Isabel, coming into the park. He wanted to get to her before she saw the others.

  “What’s up?” he called out to her, leaving the two guys on their bench.

  “Oh, it’s all the same,” she said, coming over for a hug. “You know.”

  “What do I know?” Phil asked. “Remind me.”

  * * *

  —

  “What was that about?” Simon asked. Even if he’d been sarcastic with the guy who’d come over, the sarcasm was diluted now by a simple confusion.

  “He was just being friendly,” Leo replied. “Remember friendly?”

  They were both in a bad mood, and Simon wasn’t sure why. Leo had been weird all night. Simon had been friends with him long enough to know what these moods were like, and how to get through them. But usually he also had a clue about what had caused them—Leo knowing he had to dump his boyfriend, Leo feeling he was fucking up his chances at a good school, Leo feeling overwhelmed by his parents’ expectations and the feeling that the illustrations he spent all his free time on were never going to be any good. Simon knew these things because he and Leo talked about them. But tonight: nothing. At dinner, they’d volleyed between trivia and silence. Normally, Simon might not have even noticed. But tonight he did, and Leo’s bad mood started to put him in his own bad mood. Maybe it would have been a good thing if the guy had been selling drugs. It would’ve been something to do.

  “I love you.”

  Simon had been zoning out, but still he heard it. So quiet, but unmistakable. He turned to Leo.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  Leo sighed. The saddest, deepest sigh. “I said, ‘I love you.’ ”

  “To who?”

  “To you.”

  Simon didn’t know where this was coming from. “Well, I love you, too,” he said.

  “No, not like that, Simon. I mean, I really love you.”

  Simon was about to respond, but before he could, Leo went on.

  “You have no idea how many times I’ve told you. I can’t believe you finally heard. I have been saying I love you to you for years. Years. Sometimes when you’re asleep on the subway and I’m sitting next to you. Sometimes if the music’s really loud. Or if we’re at the movies and you’re not paying attention to me. I’ll be watching you watching the screen, and I’ll say it really softly, and I’ve always felt that if you were meant to hear it, then you’d hear it. I have been
in love with you for years, Simon, and it’s become too heavy. I can’t do it anymore. I know it’s ridiculous and I know this is going to be a disaster, but you have to understand it’s been a disaster for me to try to keep it inside, only letting it out in all of these I love yous that you never hear. I know you’re going to be kind to me, because that’s what you do. I know you’re going to say that we’re friends, and that it’s about friendship, but you have no idea how many times I’ve watched you, how many times I’ve had fierce arguments with myself about you. I always told you the truth when you weren’t listening—and now you’re listening, and it scares the hell out of me. I know this will change everything, and it will probably screw it all up, but I have lived with this so long, Simon, and I just can’t do it alone anymore. I have to tell someone, and that someone needs to be you. That guy—that guy asked, ‘What’s up?’ And I realized that the answer to the question was I love Simon. Whether you lean over and kiss me—which I know isn’t going to happen—or whether you push me away and tell me you don’t want to see me again—which I’m pretty sure isn’t going to happen, either—I just need something to happen. I can’t keep having the same feelings over and over again in secret. Because if you hold something inside long enough, you start to hate it. And I don’t want to hate you. The opposite, really. I love you, you see. I love you.”

  “But, Leo—” Simon began.

  “No,” Leo interrupted. “Please don’t start with a but….”

  * * *

  —

  Sarah couldn’t figure out what was happening in the city that night. As she wandered, she was witnessing the strangest things. Shopkeepers walking out of stores, leaving them unlocked, wandering off with their aprons still on. Waiters walking away with their order pads still in their waistbands, taking out cell phones and saying, “I need to see you now.” There were painful, aching fights in the streets—not between strangers, but among friends or lovers or people trying to be either, the truth suddenly so plain to see. People were clutching at photographs, searching through purses for the love notes they could never throw out. Love had suddenly become an active verb—prodded, confessed, kissed into words. There were no innocent bystanders, because how could you see this and not think of the person love always made you think about? Maybe you felt the absence of that person. Or, like Sarah, you felt the absence of the absence. Walking through the honest chaos, she felt moved but untouched. I am by myself, she thought. I am by myself. And that was okay. That was fine. That was what she wanted.