“No, I just—”
“Why did you leave your house?”
“I went to my friend’s birthday party.”
“And what did you do there?”
Laila foundered. She couldn’t say she’d drunk her first beer. Could she? Was that the sort of thing Nazarenko was searching for, the type of risk she’d identified as missing from Laila’s first draft?
“I met this new girl,” she offered instead. “Bridget. My best friend Hannah introduced us.”
“I see. What did you think of her?”
“She was intimidating, I guess. She’s really pretty, and she’s from London, so she’s got this cool accent.”
“Did you like her?”
“I—I don’t know, we barely talked.”
“Did you feel insecure because she’s pretty?”
“What?”
“Did you feel attracted to her?”
Suddenly Laila’s face was a wash of heat. “Excuse me?”
Nazarenko waited. The creases around her eyes, the low auburn strokes of her brows, seemed to focus her gray irises. Laila couldn’t make herself respond. She remembered the little peaks of Bridget’s ears breaching from her thick hair, and the view of her collarbones above the scoop-neck of her shirt, and even the way she’d held her drink, fingers poised in an elegant fan against the cold-dulled aluminum.
Laila had tried not to think about these things, had tried not to notice. She always tried, and failed, not to notice. Hannah liking girls seemed so certain, so natural, but in Laila’s head the concept was a mess of guilt and confusion. The twins in her fourth-grade Sunday School class had whispered about lesbians, gross whenever one girl, April with the overalls, walked by, and in the time between second and sixth grade when Laila had acquired knowledge of every swear word in the world—not that she would ever, she’d promised herself, use them—she’d heard so many different angry words for gay that she couldn’t help but associate it with bullshit, hell, and damnation.
So hadn’t she been mentally snapping a rubber band against her wrist whenever she looked at a girl too hard since then? Pursuit was impossible. Even boys, whom she was supposed to like, she was disallowed to want. Her parents had explained since she could remember that all kinds of love were equally beautiful, but “show, don’t tell” had been Laila’s operative adage since elementary school, and the world had shown her something else. So now, on the other side of this stew of contradictions, where was she? She guessed she was pansexual, a word acquired from the internet, from people who seemed more confident in it than she was: Yes, she still couldn’t say, I could want anyone, any gender, any type. Any person in the universe. Past layer and layer of self-consciousness, she knew it was true. But admitting the want was excruciating. The idea that somebody could look at her and just see it made her want to cry.
Nazarenko leaned idly forward. “You and your story alike seem averse to the idea that human beings might affect each other. From your first page to the last, all we know of your main character is that she needs some part for some spaceship: a flavorless, transactional goal. We have no sense of how other people impact her. Why? Because human impulses would distract from the goal?”
“No, I . . . I don’t know.”
“Then find out. Interrogate your instincts. Insecurity isn’t shameful. Attraction isn’t an embarrassment. Interpersonal affection isn’t a side note to be glossed over. Whatever the nature of the material that forms between two people, it’s the backbone of literature.”
“But attraction is embarrassing,” Laila blurted.
That fleeting, unpleasant smile tugged at Nazarenko’s thin mouth again. Nazarenko slipped a playing card into her book as a marker, a crumpled Bicycle, and folded the book shut. The back cover was a colorless photograph of a marsh. “Not to everyone,” Nazarenko said. “If all your narrators share your anxieties, try autobiography.”
For an instant, Laila hated the woman in front of her, hated her cold gray eyes and her felt-coat uniform and her international success. She hated Dr. Greene for bringing Nazarenko here, and she even hated Mr. Madison for being impressed with her books. But Laila couldn’t stop looking at her. Couldn’t stop holding her breath between Nazarenko’s sentences, as if the woman’s words were oxygen.
Laila didn’t want to write about herself. She wanted to leave herself, slip out of the cocoon of her life and unfurl oddly colored wings. If Nazarenko could diagnose Laila’s neuroses from reading one of her stories, she hadn’t gone anywhere at all. She was still wrapped up in herself, in the dark.
“Think of engaging with other people as an expansion of vocabulary,” Nazarenko said. She stood. She was several inches shorter than Laila. That seemed wrong. “Reach out. Touch. Fear people, want people, feel whatever you will feel, but be there with them, be right up next to them.”
“I—” Laila said, meaning to protest, explain that she did engage with other people, but a thin overlay of memory lay across her vision. The corner where she’d stood and watched everybody else dance.
Nazarenko tucked her book into her bag, shouldered it, and strode past Laila for the door. “I don’t want to read your walls,” she said, voice smooth and even as glass. “I don’t want to read your hang-ups. I don’t want to read skeletal concepts of people who operate without the influence of a limbic system. You are not an archaeologist excavating and presenting old bones. Your work is in the connective tissue. Give me some DNA, or don’t bother.”
The classroom door closed with a click.
—
Laila (4:40 p.m.): Hi, it’s Laila, is this Samuel?
Samuel (4:43 p.m.): Yeah hey, what did you get yesterday?
Laila (4:45 p.m.): 37.
Samuel (4:45 p.m.): 28 over here
Samuel (4:46 p.m.): This is fucked haha
Laila (4:47 p.m.): Have you been talking to her?
Samuel (4:52 p.m.): Yeah she basically told me to make friends with a stranger
Laila (4:52 p.m.): Oh, that’s not too different from what she told me! Did she say why?
Samuel (4:55 p.m.): not really… i do hang out with the same five dudes all the time, maybe shes trying to get me out of my comfort zone I guess? or maybe she really does want my parnets to hate me
Samuel (4:55 p.m.): *parents
Laila (4:55 p.m.): *parrots
Samuel (4:56 p.m.): *peanuts
Samuel (4:56 p.m.): lol anyway, what did she tell you?
Laila (4:58 p.m.): She wants me to connect with people more.
Samuel (5:02 p.m.): Well you could meet some of my friends
Samuel (5:04 p.m.): Me and Sebastian are going out Friday, im going to meet some random person to make our weirdass teacher happy, want to come?
Laila (5:04 p.m.): So
Hannah (5:04 p.m.): Yes?
Laila (5:04 p.m.): about that fake ID
11
Under forty-eight hours later, Hannah slid a pair of fake IDs across the lunch table, courtesy of an anonymous mega-felon in Williamsburg.
“I get two?” Laila said.
“Yeah,” Hannah said, “so if a bouncer looks at you funny, you can run and still have a copy.”
Leo blinked owlishly. “Laila. You let her wear you down?”
“No, no, I needed them. You’re a lifesaver,” Laila added to Hannah, burying the cards in her backpack’s deepest pocket.
“God, I know. What would you do without me?” Hannah gave a toothy smile. The fakes, indistinguishable from the real thing, had been embarrassingly easy to order. The process operated through a website, Fake-Wizard.it, that looked like a sixth grader had assembled it in 2008 for a social studies project. Submit a request through the bare-bones HTML of the Fake Wizard’s secure form, include a photo and vital statistics—only as accurate as you wanted them to be—and pick up within forty-eight hours at a random drop location. This time, the Wizard had planted the contraband inside the lining of a filthy hoodie, which he’d left under a crate in a Bushwick alleyway between a decaying laundromat and an art
isanal tea shop. This process had been relayed last night to Laila through Hannah, who had gushed for upward of a half hour about “this James Bond type shit.” Hannah never cared about practicality when dramatics were available.
For two hours, Laila had drafted, deleted, redrafted, and agonized over the text she’d sent to Hannah with her information. She’d had to pick and choose which pieces of her identity to preserve: Keep her birthday as February 3, or change it? Keep her name, or choose a new one? Eventually, she’d picked May 2, a freshly minted Taurus, and changed her last name to Zambrano, her grandmother’s maiden name. Part of her had expected the police to hammer at her door the instant she’d hit send. (This had to be traceable, right?) Hannah had reassured her, though, that half the seniors had these, and the only person who’d been caught was Sara Hurst, who apparently had handed a bouncer her real driver’s license, apologized, swapped it out, and said, “Wait, I meant this one.”
“What are they for?” Leo asked absently. Sometimes Laila wondered whether Leo was actually interested in half their conversations, or whether they were just an agreeable distraction between physics lessons.
“Yeah. Spill,” Hannah said. “You owe me.”
Laila looked over Leo’s shoulder to the lunch line. Felix was picking at his fries while waiting for the register. A girl with cornrows was examining her strawberry milk carton with suspicion. Behind her, two blond boys were listening to an earbud each. Laila stopped chewing on her hair. This was an accomplishment. She shouldn’t feel conflicted about telling her best friends.
“I ended up talking to Samuel Marquez,” she said. She paused, expecting Hannah to laugh, or splutter, or crow some snarky comment that sounded as if she’d prepared it months in advance, but suddenly Hannah was very still, and Laila rushed on. “I—I started out asking him to leave Felix alone, but we ended up talking, and he seems cool, and we’re going out tonight.”
“Laila,” said Leo. “That’s huge.”
Hannah made a distant noise of agreement. Mm.
“Can y’all not tell Felix?” Laila asked, tracking his progress toward their table. “I’m scared he’ll be weird about it.”
“Lips, sealed, et cetera,” Leo said, but as he started texting, Laila knew Angela would know within thirty seconds.
Hannah finally spoke. “You’re going out going out?”
“No,” Laila said quickly. “Sort of. Felix’s friend Sebastian is also coming. There’s this bar—it’s not a date. We’re not, I mean, it’s just . . .”
“Okay,” Hannah said.
Laila glanced her way, but Hannah wasn’t looking at her. Before she could say anything else, Felix sat down. They didn’t speak about it again until Hannah texted her that evening.
Hannah (6:45 p.m.): hey would you want me to come tonight?
Hannah (6:45 p.m.): not trying to cockblock you, just so you don’t feel outnumbered, especially since you don’t know those guys
Hannah (6:45 p.m.): also since it’s your first time out. Idk. Just let me know
Some set of muscles seemed to loosen across the span of Laila’s back, and she let out a deep breath. She realized she’d been worried that Hannah was angry.
‘Interrogate your instincts,’ reminded a glass-smooth voice in the back of her head, but Laila didn’t want to think about why Hannah might have been angry. She was too relieved. She was already typing a response.
Laila (6:46 p.m.): Yeah sure, I’ll tell them!
Her heart buzzed quietly throughout the duration of dinner. She rubbed Malak’s soft paw with a bare foot, listening to the family reports. This was a rare week during which everybody had wound up in a buzz of a mood: Camille had been picked to lead one of the trios in her spring ballet recital, her mother had been given a class in the 6 P.M. slot on Wednesdays—yoga prime time—and her father had found a copy of one of the only Star Wars expanded universe novels he didn’t already own (Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka, hardcover, 1983). He’d dug it out of a rummage sale in the East Village. Her father attended a good rummage sale with the determination of a miner approaching a vein of emerald. The sheer amount of junk Laila had watched him sort through when she was a kid and unable to opt out of these journeys. Statistically, he had to find something worthwhile at least once.
“So,” Laila said, “I have a semi-date tonight.”
“You do not,” said Camille.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Lolly, that is so exciting,” said her mother.
“Don’t get excited yet,” said her father. “I need some details before you’re going anywhere.”
“I’m going to see a movie with this guy Samuel Marquez. Hannah and one of his friends are going, too, so it’s only sort of a date.”
“Samuel Marquez, like the guy you’re always stalking online?” Camille said.
“Camille,” Laila said through gritted teeth.
“What movie?” asked her father.
Laila took a generous bite of fritada, trying to remember what movies were in theaters. “Uh. I think it’s called Days Without Sun? He already got the tickets. We’re going to an eleven o’clock showing. I know that’s kind of late, I hope it’s okay.”
Her father sipped his beer, thinking, but Laila’s mother put a hand on his wrist. “I think that’s just fine, sweetheart.” She glanced at him. “We had a few late-night dates too.”
“Gross,” Camille muttered.
Seizing the opportunity to disgust Camille further, their father launched into a reminiscence of one of these “late-night dates,” and Laila felt the pressure ease from around her chest. She almost couldn’t believe her parents had believed her. Maybe they hadn’t and were only humoring her because, in eighteen years, she’d never missed a curfew they’d set, done any drugs, or even had a date before this. Laila knew her father had been a rebel at her age. Sometimes she wondered if he wished she were a little edgier. Not enough to worry, but enough to recognize himself.
Hannah arrived at her door at 10:30, and by the time they reached the bar in Williamsburg, which was somewhat blasphemously named the Ave Maria, Laila’s nerves had made her insides queasy and her outsides damp.
“Just don’t projectile vomit,” said Hannah, helpfully.
A square-jawed man in a bomber jacket occupied the majority of the threshold, glancing over IDs. As they approached him, Laila had the sense of facing a mid-level video game boss, the type you could only defeat by dying repeatedly so you could figure out which of its appendages were the most susceptible to poisoned blades. Except that if he caught her, she wouldn’t respawn. She would—Hannah hadn’t explained this. Go to prison? Run? Beg for mercy? Procure a poisoned blade? Why hadn’t she been prepped for this step?
The bouncer handed back Hannah’s ID and gave Laila a two-finger beckoning motion. She surrendered the card, toes pressing into the indentations in her boots. He traced a penlight over the holographic stamps and looked at her face. She looked back, her facial muscles in pain from the forced stillness, and imagined what the Bowdoin admissions board would think when a criminal charge appeared on her record in her updated transcript, and what the inside of the courthouse would look like at her summons as she sat flanked by thirty-five-year-olds with speeding tickets and/or backgrounds in petty thievery.
He waved her through.
“Thanks,” she choked, stumbling on her way over the threshold.
The walls of the Ave Maria were reclaimed wood, the type of rough, hideous plank that someone might untangle from a clot of seaweed on the beach, rinse off, and resell at a boutique in the West Village for $380. The lanterns above the bar offered just enough light to make the place feel like dusk rather than midnight. In the comedown from the brightness of the streetlamps, the people at the bar didn’t seem to have faces. As if being here wasn’t disorienting enough.
“Are they here yet?” Hannah asked.
“No, still on their way.”
Laila and Hannah slid into a booth. Everyon
e around them was old. Mid-twenties old, not old old, but enough to make her feel misplaced.
“So, your first bar,” Hannah said. “Is your mind expanding?”
“Not really. This is less . . . everything than I pictured.”
“What did you think?”
Laila could only dredge up fragments now. She’d pictured light, color, and motion. A night painted on in unusual makeup, constant flirtation with a carousel of strangers, throats exposed as heads tilted back in endless rounds of shots. “I guess you said ‘going out,’ and I pictured not sitting still at a booth in a relatively quiet room.”
“It’s early. Patience.”
“Hey,” said a voice. Laila looked up, and all the nerves she thought she’d left at the threshold writhed back into life. The warm half-light made Samuel and Sebastian look carved out of amber.
“Hi,” she said, her voice half an octave higher than usual. “Um, this is my friend Hannah.”
“Yeah, I think we had Spanish together last year,” Samuel said. “What’s up?”
“Not much. I’m gonna get a drink,” Hannah said. “Laila, want me to grab you something?”
“Whatever’s fine,” Laila said. As Hannah backed into the shadows, Sebastian took her spot across from Laila, and Samuel slid into the seat beside her. His knee brushed hers. The contact made something jump in her stomach. She tried to ignore that she could smell him (too-strong body spray), and that his forearm was right there on the table within touching distance, and that they were here in a bar together, and that whenever she pictured college, this was her exact mental image. A man who called himself DJ Saint Lightning had started up the massive speakers stacked at the back of the bar and accumulated a small, shuffling crowd.
Laila flicked through a mental card deck of small talk, but the guys were finishing a conversation. “Sorry—really quick?” said Sebastian, giving her a glance.
“No, sure,” Laila said and folded her hands to restrain the urge to look at her phone and free them of her attention. Be present, she told herself.
Sebastian was one of Felix’s good-looking Puerto Rican friends on the wrestling team. He looked hardly anything like Felix, though, dark-skinned with loose curly hair that hung in a cloud around his protuberant ears. He and Samuel were both visibly cooler than Felix, and so, by Laila’s estimate, about seven degrees cooler than her. They wore several different textures of black and their conversation was packed with proper nouns. That must have been what it was like to have too many friends. It sounded stressful and overinvolved.
Final Draft Page 10
