Inside, it was slightly less cold, appreciably less damp, and smelled like a combination of loamy soil and what must have been Epifanes-brand varnish. It was almost an actual building now, which made sense given that Dad had been spending every waking weekend minute assembling, tethering, post-hole digging, and shellacking. I couldn’t stand up fully unless I stood right in the center, which was more or less impossible thanks to a stout support beam in the middle. At one side, there was a little platform that Dad had furnished lavishly with my old beanbag chair and a couple scented candles.
“Canvas,” Dad said, tapping his knuckles against the material protecting us from the elements. “Now, this is just up temporarily until I get it water-treated, so that it’ll be suitable for use in all seasons.”
“Assuming you can make it out here without freezing,” I said. I slumped over to the beanbag chair, which made a plastic rustling sound when I sat in it.
“Just you wait. Once I get the Franklin stove in here, it’ll be nice and toasty. You could even spend the night with your friends out here, if you want. Maybe over the long weekend coming up.”
I tried to imagine the Acronymphos crammed into the yurt, Tall Zach practically bent double and Tess complaining loudly about getting dirt on her jeans. Zach the Anarchist might like it if it was sufficiently warmed.
“I think they’re all leaving Wister for Thanksgiving,” I said. Technically, this was true: Zach Bitterman was going to Boston, “out of town” for Tess meant spending the day forty minutes away in Media, and Zach West didn’t live in Wister to begin with.
“What about that big party you guys always do?”
“Friendsgiving happens the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. And it’s always at school. That’s kind of the point. Actually,” I said, seeing a chance for a yurt-scape, “I should go call Tess about it. She probably wants to get some details worked out before the weekend’s over.”
“Oh, okay.” Dad seemed only the tiniest bit bummed that I didn’t want to stay out and freeze in the yurt with him. And I felt a little bad about it, too, but the fact was that no matter how relaxing and humbling the yurt was, it was still a ridiculous thing to have squatting outside our house where our backyard neighbors could see it.
“It’s great, Dad,” I reassured him.
“Do you feel a little better? Like you have a newfound clarity?”
I looked around at the beige, canvas-y glow of the walls, the tons of screws that could act as coat hooks, the admittedly humble dirt floor, and weirdly, I did feel a little better. In the yurt, there was no stereo in constant danger of blaring the Young Lungs news or computer stuffed with new blog posts about Sebastian. In the yurt, there was barely anything at all, and that was nice.
“Yeah,” I said, and shivered again. Even with all the internet stalking I’d been doing, I still couldn’t control where the song was going. I still didn’t have a clear read on Sebastian and whatever relationship he and I had, or were having, or might have. In fact, I still didn’t have anything from Sebastian besides a string of stream-of-consciousness messages. And even those had stopped when the album news had come out.
“Could use a little light, though,” Dad said thoughtfully. I only nodded, because with my newfound clarity, I realized I had to stop playing it cool, at least a little. If I wanted to know what Sebastian really thought about me, if he really liked me or wanted me or whatever, I was going to have to ask him. So, with trembling fingers, I composed a Pixstagram message:
to: sebdel
hey, can we talk?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I think she’s a junior. I took her yearbook picture last year. Natasha Something or Other.”
“No way. It can’t be her.”
“Why not? She has red hair.”
I was late to the rescheduled OWPALGBTQIA meeting, and I was only getting later. Since we had a half day Tuesday, the cafeteria would be closed, thereby killing our chance to have a bake sale and giving us a good excuse to celebrate Friendsgiving in Dr. Frobisher’s room instead. Still, bake sale or no bake sale, I knew today was likely to include a few solid minutes of Tess grilling me over budget details, and just because I hadn’t ever taken an econ class didn’t mean I couldn’t be as good as someone who did, so I had swung by the computer lab after bio to print out my new and improved spreadsheets. I was hovering at the print station, where the black-and-white was chugging out slow copies of my documents, when it occurred to me that the conversation I was overhearing was about me.
“Okay, I’m ordering tickets. December fourth at the TLA in Center City.”
“It says it’s twenty-one-plus.”
“God, Celeste, so bring your fake.”
As another sheet spat out of the printer, I took a slow, stealthy look behind me. Two senior girls with matching flat-iron-straight hair were casting twin, hard-eyed glances across the room, partially veiled by the giant screens of iMacs but definitely in my direction. I swallowed hard, squared my shoulders, and acted like I couldn’t hear them, while in actuality I had never listened to anything more intently in my life. If they could see me, I didn’t want them to know I could see them.
“I knew Sebastian was going to get famous,” the first one said. “He’s always had such a good voice.”
“I know, right?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, even though they couldn’t see me. Apparently they had not been present during the Talent Show Incident.
The first looked at her reflection in her phone. “I have red hair, too. Maybe I’m the one Sebastian’s in love with.”
The other girl snorted, which made the first one pout.
“Come on! Like it’s really that rando junior. I see her hanging out in the cafeteria with all the gay club kids. She’s probably a—”
And then she called me a very not-okay word for gay people, a word that was so not-okay that my face burned as I took my sheets out of the printer. If I were Tess, I’d jump over there and threaten to tear out their jugulars for using a slur. If I were Tall Zach, I’d explain to them, politely but firmly, how hurtful it is to say things like that. If I were Zach the Anarchist, I’d flip them off.
But I wasn’t. I was just plain old Nattie. Too inconsequential to even get the right name in the yearbook.
“God, that freakin’ club.” The first one groaned a horrible nasal groan. “That one girl is suddenly everywhere.”
“Like being on a billboard wasn’t enough?”
“Omigod, I forgot about that. Of course it’s her.”
They laughed. I cringed. Between the blatant bigotry and the mention of her past as an orthodontic model, Tess would be furious if she were here.
“But yeah, like, I’m not homophobic or anything?” the first one went on. “But they’re turning Winter Formal into a protest. It’s supposed to just be a dance. I don’t even, like, want to go now.”
“Dude, didn’t you hear?” The second girl dropped her voice. “No one’s going.”
The final page was finally stuttering out of the printer’s mouth, but I hit Cancel to make it shut up.
“Everyone’s going to Brian’s carriage house instead. We’re throwing our own party.”
But that was the last I heard, because they were leaving, and I only had four and a half of my five pages. I hit Resume, then grabbed the sheaf of papers and made a beeline for the OWPALGBTQIA meeting, my heartbeat clogging up my throat the whole way.
People were guessing. Not guessing especially well, but they were homing in on me. And once they did, there was no amount of lies or dumb nonanswers that could keep everyone fooled, especially someone as not-dumb as Zach the Anarchist. Everyone was going to know about my hips and thighs and—ugh—breasts, like I was some kind of dissection project.
And even worse, Sebastian still hadn’t answered my message.
By the time I pulled back the door into Dr. Frobisher’s room, I felt like I was going to tremble away into a puddle, right in the middle of the floor.
Of course,
there was no space for me to do such a thing.
“Well, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t even be celebrating this holiday.”
To no one’s surprise, Alison was dominating the discussion. I slunk into a desk at the back of the room and tried to catch my breath. Tess was at the blackboard in front of a half-finished list of potluck contributions and looking like she’d rather stuff Alison instead of a turkey.
“That’s why it’s called Friendsgiving,” Tall Zach said with his characteristic patience. “We just get together with our friends and eat a lot of food.”
“Exactly,” Tess said, nodding. “It’s firmly anticolonialist.”
Alison glowered in her seat.
“Well, I’m not going to bring anything,” she said.
“That’s fine,” Tess said, “since I sincerely doubt anyone else wants vegan food.”
“I like that fake sausage stuff,” Bryce piped up.
“Shut up, Bryce,” Alison said.
“Why do you have to be so negative, Alison?” Chihiro said, fiddling with the edge of her sweatshirt sleeve.
“Yeah,” Bryce said, as if slowly realizing that Alison wasn’t an outgoing cheerleader type. “I was just trying to pay a compliment to the food of your people.”
“I can make one of my pies with shortening instead of butter,” Zach the Anarchist said.
Everyone stared.
“So it’s vegan,” he explained.
“Seriously?” Tess looked incredulous, but Zach did a kind of affirmative shrug, so she chalked the word vegan in parentheses next to Zach’s entry for two pies on the blackboard.
“Okay. Anyone else? Have we covered all of our dietary bases?” Tess stared down the rest of the club in a way that was hardly inviting to further contributions.
“Corn bread,” Endsignal said without raising his hand.
“Mashedpotatoes?” whispered the freshperson in their hoodie.
“Gyoza,” Chihiro said. “They’re dumplings.”
“Fake sausage,” Bryce said.
Tess said nothing, just raised her eyebrows and took it all down onto the board. It was certainly going to be an unusual holiday spread, that was for sure.
“Okay. Good. We should be fine, then. I’ll bring paper plates and stuff. Dr. Frobisher says we can use her room again as long as we clean everything up, so . . . same time tomorrow, I guess.” Tess slapped the desk in front of her, making Bryce jump in his seat.
“Adjourned! Until Friendsgiving, anyway.”
The room stirred and began getting to its feet. I barely had time to slide the rest of the way out of my jacket when Tess was at the other side of my desk.
“Nattie, I really need—”
“Listen, Tess,” I said, “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not canceling Friendsgiving, if that’s what you want,” Tess said. “It’s a tradition. People love Friendsgiving.”
“Alison doesn’t,” I pointed out.
“Alison doesn’t like anything,” Tess said. “And she’ll warm up to it if Zach makes her her own special pie.” She nodded over my shoulder, to where Zach the Anarchist was standing in his leather jacket with his backpack over his shoulder and his eyebrows up.
“Everything okay?”
I looked from Tess, who was looking limp and very un-Tess-like, to Zach, who was standing practically at my elbow and whose eyes were, I couldn’t help but notice, very blue today. Now did not seem like the time to abandon my play it cool strategy.
“Yup,” I lied, putting on the most cheerful front I could muster.
“How’s the budget?”
I made a face. “Well . . .”
I went to hand him my printouts, but Tess snatched them away.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ve already paid the student council.”
Zach frowned. “Wait, what?”
“Paid? How?” I said.
Tall Zach, who’d been at the blackboard drawing a pilgrim riding a unicorn, turned around but didn’t say anything.
“We were seven hundred dollars short of the total last week,” Zach the Anarchist said. “There’s no way we made that up yesterday.”
“We didn’t,” Tess said.
“Then where did the money come from?”
Tess folded the spreadsheets in half again, which was getting tricky because there were so many sheets. “If you must know, I paid it. With my own money.”
“Tess!” My mouth actually hung open. “Are you serious? Seven hundred dollars?”
“Yes, I’m serious,” Tess said, and rapped the folded spreadsheets against her palm. “This dance has to happen, Nattie. It has to. Besides, what was I even going to spend that money on?”
“College?” I said.
“A car?” Zach the Anarchist said.
“Clothes with little spikes on them?” said Tall Zach.
“Seriously, Tess,” I said. “It’s not worth it. We’ll just figure some other way to—”
“It will be worth it,” Tess said. She was looking kind of ferocious, actually, with her eyes big and bright and her jaw so tight it was almost hard to understand her. “It will. And none of you get to tell me how to spend my money. If I have to get personally invested, then so be it.” She took a short, hard inhale through the nose. “So if what you needed to tell me was that the money issue is over, then yes, I already know. Case closed.”
Everyone looked at me.
“I, um,” I said, thinking back to the computer room. “I just said I had to tell you something, actually.”
“If it’s about tomorrow, uh . . .” Zach the Anarchist shrugged. “Do you want to help with the pies? I mean, if you want.”
“Excuse you, interrupter.” Tess barged in front of Zach the Anarchist. “What did you need to tell me, Nattie?”
I looked from Tess’s face to Zach’s.
“Oh, it’s, um . . .” I swallowed. “Just that a bunch of people aren’t, uh, actually going. To the Winter Formal, I mean.”
Tess’s face went ashen. “What?” she breathed.
“I just heard them in the computer room,” I said. “Two seniors. Celeste and, uh—”
“Celeste Franklin and Brooke Lieberman?” Tall Zach bailed on his drawing. “I know them. They’re dating some guys on the team. They’re—”
“They’re in A Cappella,” Tess said shortly. “And they probably can’t stand something not being about them, for once. What are they trying to do?”
“They said something about not going to the dance. About throwing their own party,” I said. “I guess so—”
“So they don’t have to go to ours,” Tess said. She put a fist to her mouth, and then slammed it against the bookshelf. “Dammit! Dammit dammit dammit!”
On top of the bookshelf, some eighth grader’s model of the Acropolis rattled forlornly.
“It’s okay, Tess,” Tall Zach said. “We don’t even want them there, right?”
“No!” Tess cried. “Of course I want them there! I want everyone there! That’s the whole point! You think I cashed in all my savings bonds from my grandma just so we could have a party by ourselves?”
“Savings bonds?” I said. “You didn’t say it was savings bonds.”
“What, you think I just have seven hundred dollars lying around? No, this was a big deal.” Tess sank into a desk chair, defeated. I sat next to her and petted her back, which was kind of hard with all the zippers in her T-shirt.
“This blows,” Tess muttered from her hands. “Or sucks. Or whatever expression doesn’t malign some kind of sexual activity. Dammit!” She kicked the leg of the desk and rubbed at her face. “Hey, Mom and Dad, I secretly spent all my christening money to throw this giant party to show you how normal gay kids are, and nobody from the rest of the school wanted to come because we’re such freaks. Oh, and, by the way, I’m a lesbian. Ta-da!”
“Tess. Hey. Come on.” I plopped into the desk next to her, Tess didn’t move, so I gave her a knee-to-knee bump. “Tessica.”
That got her attention. “What?”
“Remember how we met?”
“What, in second grade? No offense, Nattie, but who cares?”
I reached across the desk for Tess’s shoulder and sort of squeeze-pinched it with my fingers to show I wasn’t, in fact, offended. This was just how Tess worked.
“It was at lunch, remember? The yogurt?”
Tess sniffed, but less loudly. “Oh. Yeah.” She cracked a tiny smile. “I forgot about that. You were so excited to finally eat that yogurt.”
“Because you showed me the lid trick!”
“Can . . . someone fill me in here?” Zach the Anarchist asked.
“The lid trick,” Tess explained, “is when you fold the foil yogurt top thing into a little scoop and eat with it.”
“That’s . . .” Tall Zach wrinkled his nose. “Okay. You do you.”
“It was second grade!”
“Anyway,” I said. “I had forgotten my spoon, and I was really disappointed about not getting to eat my yogurt—shut up,” I added, when Zach the Anarchist smiled. “Yogurt was my dessert.” I took a deep breath. “The point is, Tess, that I saw you were the kind of person who wouldn’t just throw away her yogurt if she didn’t have a spoon. You figured stuff out. And that’s when I was like, wow, I need to be friends with this girl.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I leaned out of my desk so I could stretch my arm over her shoulders. “So, like, if anyone can fix this, it’s you. The Tessica Kozlowski I know doesn’t just give up.”
“For the last time, my name is not—” Tess sighed, but she was smiling now—a real, big, lips-together smile. She smashed her face into my shoulder and then looked back up. “Okay. Okay, fine. We’re going to figure this out.”
“So . . . what do we do?” Zach the Anarchist asked.
Tess sniffled one last time and wiped a streak of eyeliner off her cheek. “Make everyone in this school want to come to our dance,” she said resolutely. “Or die trying.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Some of these?”
Nothing felt less useful to the cause than a trip to the supermarket, but since Friendsgiving was tomorrow, Zach the Anarchist and I were in the frozen foods section of the Round Earth Gourmet Grocery, shopping. While Zach was grabbing bags of blueberries, I had located a box of pie crusts—efficiently, or so I thought. Zach looked at the box in my hand like it had rat poison in it.
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