by Emma Mills
“This can’t have come as a surprise, Alex,” my mom said. “We talked about it last year, we talked about it the year before. I don’t know what you expected.”
Dad chimed in before Alex could: “We made it clear, bud. We’ve always made it clear. If you want to go to college, you either get scholarships, or you take out loans. No one’s saying you can’t go. But you’ve got to be responsible for yourself here.”
I couldn’t see Alex’s face, but the line of his shoulders was tense.
“What about Claude?” he said finally.
I startled a bit, which was silly, because no one could see me.
“What about her?” Mom said. “She knows she’s responsible for herself, too.”
“What about the money you pay for her to go to Prospect?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because of Daddy’s job,” Mom said patiently. “You know the tuition is on a big fat discount—”
“But not entirely. You still pay part of it. So how is that different? How can you shell that out for Claude, but you can’t help me here? Money that you could’ve paid for me to get an actual college degree, you’re paying for Claude to go to high school. It’s … fucked up.”
“Alex.”
“It is. It’s not fair. And don’t say ‘life’s not fair.’ You always say that.”
“It’s true, though.” Dad’s voice was firm. “And frankly … Claudia earned it. We get the tuition break because of my job, but Claude had to be accepted into PLSG all on her own. It’s very competitive, and she had the grades, she put in the time, she got in. Whereas…” He sighed. “Al, I’m sorry, I hate to say it, but if you had devoted more time to school like your sister has, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?”
“This is bullshit,” Alex said finally, and turned away. I stood up fast and raced into my room before he could see me there.
I heard his door slam. When I went back into the hallway, I saw several crumpled sheets of paper on the floor in front of his room. I picked them up, turned one over:
Dear Mr. Wallace, It is our pleasure to offer you a place in the incoming class at Illinois State University.…
I knocked on his door.
“Go away.”
“It’s me.”
“I know, go away.”
I swallowed. “Do you want my car money?”
“What?”
I cracked the door, stuck my head in. Alex’s room was perpetually messy, full of books and unfolded clothes. “My car money,” I said. “You could use it for school.”
He was lying on the bed, and his face—sunk into a scowl—softened slightly.
“Claude, your car money would barely pay for a semester.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.
“Why?”
“’Cause you’re right. They do pay for me to go to Prospect.”
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It’s just … I just wish things were different. I wish I was smarter.”
“You are smart.”
“I wish I’d tried harder.”
“What are you gonna do?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I think it was difficult for him—first graduation season, seeing where everyone was headed. Then this summer, watching his friends pack up and leave one by one.
But he kept working. He enrolled at Springdale Community College. He’s moving forward.
Right now he changes the channel again and glances at me while I save Gideon’s number to my phone.
“For real, tell Julia to get online.”
“It’s not Julia,” I say, and hover over the message for a moment, trying to decide if I should I reply.
I decide against it and flop down on the couch next to Alex, reaching for the remote.
“Don’t even think about it,” he says.
fourteen
We have a movie night that evening, me and my parents. Alex headed out in the afternoon and said he wouldn’t be back until late.
We’re halfway through when my phone buzzes.
GIDEON PREWITT flashes across the screen.
I grab it and get up.
“Do you want us to pause it?” Mom says, reaching for the remote.
“No, it’s okay.”
I step into the kitchen, press accept.
“Hello?”
“Are you here?” Gideon says.
It’s loud in the background, the pound of music and the hum of conversation.
“I—” I didn’t really expect any follow-up on this. I hadn’t actually said I would go. It wasn’t a yeah, it was a yeah maybe, which is basically a no. “No, I stayed in.”
“Aw, really? I thought we were gonna hang out!”
To be honest, I didn’t really think he would remember. Gideon Prewitt, Danforth–PLSG social director apparent, must invite dozens of people to parties every week.
“I’m just … kinda wiped. Sorry.”
The background noise changes, like Gideon is moving through a crowd, and then it lessens considerably.
“No worries. What did you do today?”
“Sorry?”
“That has you so wiped.”
“Oh. You know. Saturday stuff.”
“What’s Saturday stuff? Typical Saturday for Claudia Wallace.”
I blink. I didn’t know he knew my last name. I think of what Caris told me at Goodwill—Robbie said Gideon was asking about you.
“I ran a 5K,” I say.
“Really.” He says it like he might believe me, so I go on.
“Actually, I ran twelve 5Ks. Basically a 60K. And then I fought like seven bears. So. You know, I’m pretty beat.”
“Seven bears. All at once?”
“No, three and then four.”
“That’s impressive. I’ve only ever fought seven bears tournament-style.”
“I’m not saying it was easy. That’s … that’s why I’m so tired.”
He huffs a laugh.
“What’d you really do?”
I did homework. I went to the grocery store with my dad to get the frozen pizza we ate for dinner. My family is currently watching a several-years-old weepy romance movie based on a weepy romance novel that my mom liked. And in between:
“I, uh. I was playing a game. Battle Quest? Do you know it?”
For a moment I’m afraid he’ll scoff or hang up immediately, but he does neither of those things. “I don’t,” he says easily. “What kind of game is it?”
“An MMORPG, like Final Fantasy or WoW, but it’s a lot newer. It’s not that popular yet, but my sister and her husband are really into it. They got me into it, too.”
“That sounds very cool,” Gideon says without a hint of irony. “Very interesting.” A pause. “What’s an MM-something-something?”
“A massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It’s like … where you design a character, and you do tasks—quests and stuff—that are part of a larger story arc. You pick a server when you sign up and then you can interact with anyone who’s playing on that server, too. It can be people from all over the world. It’s cool because it’s not like a video game that has a start and a finish that you play all the way through. I mean, there’s the story arc, but it’s more about…”
I realize how much I am talking about this.
“About what?” Gideon says.
“I don’t know. Like … inhabiting the world, I guess?” To me, it’s not so much a game that you play but a place that you go.
“Huh.”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Do you—shouldn’t you get back to the party?” I say.
“Oh, I bring the party with me wherever I go.” And then, “That’s the first lyric off my mixtape, just FYI,” he says when I don’t respond.
I’m fairly sure he’s joking, but at the same time, he thought I was the kind of person who could run a 5K.
“So …
what did you do today?” I ask for lack of anything better.
“Claudia Wallace, you’re not even a little bit curious about my mixtape?”
“I’m like sixty-five percent sure you don’t have one.”
“It’s called Gideon Prewitt: Getting Improvement.”
“Agh, God, why?”
“Because it sounds cool.”
“Getting Improvement? What does that even mean?”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything, it just has to strike a chord with people.”
“I’m now eighty percent sure this mixtape doesn’t exist.”
“But the other twenty percent of you is imagining the cover art, right?”
A pause. Before I can think of a response, he goes on:
“It’s a close-up of an iguana wearing a Christmas sweater.”
I laugh.
“So,” Gideon says after a moment’s silence, “I know I blew it with the whole you being at my birthday party thing. But I know you didn’t go to Morningbrook with us, I definitely would’ve remembered.”
“Maybe I had a face transplant.”
“Maybe you did. But I also feel like I would’ve remembered if someone in my class in middle school got a face transplant.”
“It was the summer between eighth and ninth grade. I kept a low profile afterward.”
“What did you look like before?”
“Better,” I say. “I had a rare condition. The doctors said I was too attractive. It was detrimental to my health and also society. So they gave me this face instead. For the greater good.”
Gideon laughs and then says, “I like this face.”
I don’t know what to say to that. But then voices rise up suddenly in the background, all talking at once.
“GIDEON!” a deep voice yells above them, followed by a chorus of giggles and several female voices:
“Giiiiiiideon!”
“Come inside!”
“There’s the party, right on cue,” I say.
“Told you. Hey, listen, do you—”
“I’ll let you get back to the fun.”
“But this is fun.”
“Bye, Gideon.”
I just barely catch the last thing he says, “Talk soon!” before I hang up.
fifteen
I wake up earlier than usual the next day and end up doing what I typically do on a Sunday morning—lying in bed, scrolling through various apps on my phone. Blowing through one, switching to another, then switching back to see if anything new has been posted. Which, at roughly eight a.m. on a Sunday, isn’t very likely.
Though a number of pictures have gone up from the party last night. Lena Ideker and Sudha Prabhu, heads tilted toward each other, looking seductively at the camera. The two of them, posed similarly, but with Gideon in the center, an arm around each. The caption is three chili-pepper emojis.
The girls look gorgeous—that’s nothing new. But I can’t help but focus on Gideon. Gideon, pressing a kiss to Lena’s cheek. Something in my stomach shifts. Which is absurd. It’s so stupid. I don’t even know why.
I close the app and get out of bed.
* * *
I go over to Iris’s house that afternoon. We have a new assignment for Brit lit, and since we have rehearsals after school, it makes more sense to just work on it now.
I park to one side of Iris’s driveway, which is as wide as some major freeways, and head to the front door.
I ring the bell, and Iris answers after a long delay. I wonder for a moment how you even hear the doorbell in a house as big as this. Do they have speakers throughout? Are there cameras? Some kind of broadcast system?
“Come in,” she says, but she turns to me right inside the door, so abruptly that I have to back up fast not to run into her.
“My parents don’t know about me and Paige,” she says in a low voice.
I blink. “You mean like…” I match my volume to hers. “You dating, or you breaking up?”
“Any of it. If you say one word to them—”
“I won’t,” I say.
But Iris continues: “No one will find your body.” Then she turns and goes inside.
Awesome. Great. No problem.
I follow her upstairs to her room. She pushes the door open to reveal a huge four-poster bed with ornately carved posts and a big white canopy. Windows on either side of the bed look out over the sprawling lawn.
I step into the room, glancing at the opposite wall.
“Whoa.” I can’t help it.
The entire wall is covered, floor to ceiling, in images of the same five faces.
“What?” Iris says, crossing over to the bed.
The focal point of the wall is a giant tapestry with THIS IS OUR NOW emblazoned across the top, and five boys posing underneath it, grinning with their arms around one another.
“I just … you must really … I mean, I guess you’re a big fan, huh?”
“You could say that,” Iris says.
“I…” I barely know what to say. This room is probably three times bigger than mine, this wall is expansive, and literally every inch is covered. I knew TION was popular, but … well, I didn’t know they were this popular with Iris. I move closer. There are magazine clippings, multiple movie posters for the TION documentary, and seemingly every promotional ad and poster available—some, even, in languages I don’t recognize.
One face is more prominent than the others. I know vaguely about the band, but I could only name two of the five: Tristan, the “bad boy,” and Kenji, the fashion plate, the heartbreaker, and, clearly, Iris’s favorite. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Kenji stands in the corner, his hands in his pockets, his smile wide and just a little bit roguish.
“Are we going to work or not?” Iris says abruptly.
So we work. The boys of TION watch us unrelentingly, but we don’t speak of them again until I get up to go to the bathroom. There’s an en suite attached to Iris’s room—I’d have expected no less—and I jump when I flick on the lights.
“Holy shit.”
“What?” Iris says from the other room.
I stick my head out the door. “There’s … another Kenji in here.”
“That’s Will You Stay tour Kenji,” she says.
“And that one?” I point to the cutout in the corner of her room.
“That’s All of Us tour Kenji.”
It’s a little difficult to take care of business with Kenji’s cardboard face grinning at me from five feet away, but I do my best.
“So,” I say when I get back out there, because I literally can’t keep from saying something. “You really like Kenji.”
“Yes.”
“You, like, really like Kenji.”
“It’s not like I want to date him,” she replies.
“But … then what else is there?”
“What else is there besides wanting to date someone? It’s fucking sad you have to ask that.”
“Not like—obviously I know in general, I just meant, like, in … boy band circumstances.”
“He is my small son,” Iris says, and even though the words coming from her lips are completely ridiculous, her expression is 100 percent serious. “I want him to be happy, and healthy, and to be with people he cares about, and do things that he loves. I want him to know how much he’s appreciated and how much he’s changed people’s lives by … just being who he is. And by helping us be who we are.”
“Oh.”
It’s quiet for a while after that. I make an editing mark on Iris’s paper, and then once again the words bubble up without my consent.
“It must be hard,” I say. “Your parents … I mean, them not knowing. About Paige and stuff.”
“Oh great,” Iris says, looking up from her computer. “Is Straighty McHetero going to give me a lecture on living my truth?”
“I—” I blink. “You’re right. I’m sorry. None of my business.”
Iris frowns down at her notes, and it’s quiet for a bit. Until she says, “Sorry. I s
houldn’t assume you’re straight. All I know is that you have an obvious boner for Gideon Prewitt.”
I sputter. “I—I don’t—”
“Though to be fair you could have had boners for people of all genders in the past and I wouldn’t know.”
Before I can respond, Iris points to the wall—the massive TION collage. “Which one is your favorite?”
“Why?”
“I want to know.”
“I’m not really … familiar with them.”
“Look at them. Your heart will tell you your favorite.”
I start to smile—I think she’s joking—but when I glance over, her eyes are solemn.
So I get up and cross over to the wall, zeroing in on an artsy photo of the boys standing on a bridge.
They all stare back with thoughtful expressions—Kenji’s eyebrows are pulled down, a little crease between them, like he’s examining me deeply. Me, or the photographer, or whatever person he envisioned one day buying this poster.
“I think … I think I like Kenji,” I say.
“Huh.” Iris comes and stands next to me. “Really? You’re not just saying that because you want to ingratiate yourself to me?”
“I don’t want to ingratiate myself to you, God.”
“That was an SAT word.”
“I know. Do you want me to congratulate you for using it?”
“Is he really your favorite?”
“I don’t know. It might be some kind of subconscious conditioning, since his face is literally all over the room, and, you know, he just watched me pee and everything.” Something almost like a smile tugs at Iris’s lips. “But…” I shrug. “He has a certain … something.”
She nods. “He does.” And we both contemplate Kenji for a moment. Then she crosses over to a bookshelf and grabs a book, returns, and presses it into my hands.
“What’s this?” I say, even though Daring to Dream is emblazoned across the front, and underneath, Our Words, Our Voices: The This Is Our Now Official Autobiography. The title says it all. In more words than are probably necessary.
“The first TION book,” Iris says nonetheless. “You can focus on the Kenji chapters if you’d like, but it really helps to understand your favorite in the context of the group.”
“Oh.” Again, I check, but again, this is not a joke. “Uh. Thanks.”
