You Don't Live Here

by Robyn Schneider

  I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Missing one Mock Trial meeting was acceptable. Missing two felt like a decision, one I was terrified to make without telling my grandparents. Especially after what had happened the last time I’d mentioned wanting to quit.

  “I can’t,” I said, making a face. “I have Mock Trial.”

  After all, a promise was a promise.

  “Wow, look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Todd said when I walked in.

  “Sorry about Monday.” I cast around for an excuse. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Then you should have notified your team captain,” he said, referring to himself in the third person.

  “Sorry.” I mean, it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t do anything essential.

  “You may only have a small part,” Todd went on, “but your real job is to prove yourself. To impress me. And you can’t do that if you don’t show up.”

  He was actually enjoying this. He threw a pleased smirk in Michelle’s direction, and she grinned back. It was an absolute delight sitting next to her in English, let me tell you.

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Well, are you going to make it up to the team?”

  I hope not, I thought.

  “Um, I guess?” I said.

  “Right answer,” smirked Todd. And then he picked up a heavy law book with yellow sticky tabs and said, “We need photocopies of the tabbed articles for everyone. Stapled.”

  I wanted to scream. Instead, I pasted on a smile and promised, “Eleven copies coming right up.”

  That night at dinner, I took a deep breath and jumped.

  “So,” I said. “I think I’m going to quit Mock Trial.”

  The sentence floated there, clunky and awkward. My grandmother frowned.

  “You can’t quit,” she said. “Where’s this coming from?”

  She sounded upset. My heart sped up, and all of the lines I’d carefully rehearsed in my head disappeared.

  “Well, the other kids on the team aren’t very nice,” I said lamely.

  “Who cares?” my grandmother said. “This isn’t about making friends. This is for college.”

  “But that’s the thing,” I said. “I’m like one of five timekeepers, and the others are freshmen, and—”

  “So tell them to put you to work,” she said, making it sound like the whole thing was my fault. “You’re very capable.”

  She didn’t understand. And she wasn’t going to. I couldn’t ask Todd or Michelle to put me to work. They’d laugh and make snide comments and send me off to the netherworld of the photocopy room. There wasn’t a way to fix this. I just wanted to bail.

  “Grandma, I’ve tried,” I said. “But I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “You made a commitment,” my grandfather said, as though I had exchanged sacred vows and married Mock Trial, instead of showing up to a couple after-school meetings.

  “I agree,” my grandmother put in. “You can’t have nothing down on your résumé for junior year.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was thinking of joining Art Club.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, my grandmother winced.

  “Art Club?” she said, making it sound awful. “Sasha, be serious.”

  I was being serious.

  “How’s that going to look?” my grandmother went on. “Quitting Mock Trial in the middle of the semester. What’s to say you won’t quit this Art Club?”

  Before I could get a word in, my grandfather added, “Quitting isn’t smart, and I’ll tell you why. Because you’d be walking off a winning team. And you know what that makes you look like? A loser.”

  It was scary how I knew exactly where he’d gotten that language from.

  “Joel,” my grandmother scolded. “You can’t talk to her like that.”

  “How’s what I said any different from what you said?” he argued.

  “Sasha, you’re not quitting,” my grandmother said, “and that’s final.”

  I went upstairs and sprawled across my bed, hating everything. Just once I wanted my grandparents to let me make my own decisions. To see me as an actual person, instead of some person-shaped doll they could move around to their liking. It was no better than Cole and his crowd: Friya arranging my seat to suit, Whitney asking me to move my lunch so it wasn’t in her Instagrams, Cole literally placing me into his fantasies.

  They were being so unreasonable. At least by quitting I’d gain something I wanted and lose something I didn’t.

  Except I didn’t know how to make that happen. Because Mock Trial was my grandparents’ idea, and telling them it had been a bad one was basically telling them that having me around wouldn’t go the way they wanted.

  That I wasn’t the granddaughter they wanted.

  I’d been the daughter my mom had wanted. At least, I’d pretended. She’d assumed I was out with friends whenever she worked weekends. Instead, I was sitting alone in my room watching girls I didn’t know try on their new spring wardrobes on YouTube.

  But at least that was my choice. My grandparents had effectively prevented me from choosing anything. And I hated that so much. Living here, I’d found out who my grandparents wanted me to be, but I’d never tried to figure out who I was.

  I sprawled on my bed, staring at the room that was starting to look like mine. At the stack of textbooks on the desk, and the pile of clothing spilling out of the hamper. At the disappointing still lifes and landscapes I’d made in art class.

  And then I stared at the drawer where I’d stashed my camera. The drawer for lost socks and dingy bras. And I thought about Mr. Saldana’s book, tucked into my bag. He’d never done anything but correct my work before, and suddenly he was showing an interest in me and my photography. And now I was going to disappoint him by going back to being just another mediocre student in his class.

  It was ironic how I could capture people perfectly on camera, but when it came to real life, everything was underexposed and off-balance.

  The only person I ever felt in focus around was Lily. And I had no idea what that meant. Just that, if there was anyone who might understand how frustrated I was, it was her.

  I reached for my phone, sending her a text.

  Told my grandparents I wanted to quit Mock Trial and they lost their shit.

  Her response came back almost immediately.

  Ugh. Sorry. And then, after a moment, Want to hear a radical idea?

  I said that was my favorite kind, and then I waited as the three dots blinked across the screen. I pictured Lily in her bedroom, even though I’d never seen it, sprawled across her bed, barefoot and wearing sweatpants, her hair up in a messy bun. I pictured the case on her phone, covered with sunflowers. That case, cupped in her hands, right now.

  Finally, my phone vibrated with her response: Quit and don’t tell them. I mean, how are they going to find out?

  I stared down at what she’d written. Lily was right. It wasn’t like they’d get some note from the attendance office saying I was skipping. It was an extracurricular activity. The first district competition wasn’t even until January. That would give me plenty of time to break it to them gently.

  Interesting, I wrote. But what about my résumé? Pre-law, remember?

  You can still put Mock Trial on your résumé! Lily wrote. I mean it’s not a lie, you were a member of the team.

  She was right. Oh my god. It had never even occurred to me.

  Mind blown, I wrote back.

  And after you quit, you can hang with me in Art Club, Lily wrote, followed by a string of heart and smile emojis.

  I like this plan.

  Me too, Lily said. So much.

  Cole was waiting by my locker the next morning. He was sipping a green juice, and his hood was flipped up, and he looked pensive.

  “Um, your locker brings all the boys to the yard?” Adam said, spotting him.

  “Evidently,” I said, frowning.

  “Do you need a minute?” Adam asked. “Because I don�
��t really need my chem book until third period, so . . .”

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  And then I went to go see what Cole wanted.

  “Whattup,” he said, holding out his smoothie. “Want a sip? It’s a Green Monster.”

  I shook my head.

  “Um, Cole?” I said. “Why are you waiting at my locker and offering me your smoothie?”

  “Because you’re ignoring me,” he said, sounding hurt. “You stopped sitting at our lunch table, and when I asked Friya, she said something about Harry Potter that didn’t make any sense?”

  I groaned. I really didn’t want to have this conversation here.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said bitterly. “I found some people who actually want me around.”

  “Come on, Sash, we miss you.”

  “Yeah, I’m so sure,” I scoffed. Off Cole’s confused look, I explained, “Friya asked me to move seats in English so she could sit next to Nick.”

  By his expression, Cole clearly hadn’t known about this.

  “Damn it, Friya,” he groaned.

  “And Whitney doesn’t seem to care I exist, so.” I shrugged. “Guess it’s just you.”

  “What, I don’t count?” Cole asked, joking.

  “You took topless pictures of me without my consent, so your opinion doesn’t matter,” I told him.

  Cole sighed. Closed his eyes a moment. And then opened them, being completely serious.

  “Sash, please. I need you,” he said.

  “No, you don’t,” I told him. “You just need to not be eating lunch with two couples. It’s a completely different thing.”

  And then the bell rang for homeroom and I left him there, looking upset. But Cole wasn’t my problem. And his problems weren’t my problem. And I wished he’d just forget about me, like the rest of his friends already had.

  That afternoon, I marched up to Todd Burnham’s locker and handed him my handwritten letter of resignation. The letter had been Adam’s idea. He and Lily and Ryland had stood over my notebook at lunch, helping dictate as I wrote it out.

  “What’s this?” Todd asked, staring down at it.

  “I’m quitting,” I said. “And just so you can’t accuse me of not taking it seriously, I put my resignation in writing.”

  “Well, not everyone is cut out for Mock Trial,” he said. “Good luck with Berkeley. Or—sorry—was it Stanford?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “See you around, Todd,” I said, and then I walked out to the student lot and got a ride home with Adam and Lily.

  When we pulled onto our block, Lily asked if I wanted to hang at their house for a while. I glanced at my grandmother’s car in the driveway, really not wanting to deal with her. She was used to me staying late on Thursdays anyway.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound less excited. “I could do that.”

  Their house was the opposite of my grandparents’. Warm and colorful and chaotic, with mid-century furniture and brightly patterned rugs and a shelf of cut-glass awards that it turned out Lily’s mom had won as a software developer.

  Where my grandparents’ place felt cold and unlived in, this felt like a home. Everywhere I saw small personal touches.

  “We should bake something,” Lily said. “It’s almost Halloween, and I feel like I haven’t done anything celebration-y.”

  “Same,” I said. Part of it had to do with the holiday falling on a Wednesday this year, which flat-out sucked.

  “I volunteer to eat whatever you’re making,” Adam said, which earned him an eye roll from Lily.

  “Wow. Big sacrifice,” she told him.

  “Um,” I said, staring down at my yellow silk top. “Got an apron?”

  “Better. Come on.”

  Lily grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs to her bedroom.

  It was black and white and minimalist, except for an entire wall of bookshelves that were arranged by color, creating a floor-to-ceiling rainbow.

  “Wow,” I said, going over to have a better look. I’d never seen someone with so many books. She had everything from John Green to Eudora Welty. And none of it was alphabetized. “How do you find anything?”

  “That’s the downside,” Lily said. “But I figure it’s the coolest pride flag ever, so it’s worth a little disorder.”

  “Pride flag?” I said.

  Lily shrugged and said, “Yeah. I’m gay.”

  She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world to admit aloud, without even a hint of self-consciousness. I stared at her, totally caught off guard.

  “Oh, wow,” I said, surprised, “I had no idea. It’s, um, great. That you told me.”

  I trailed off, embarrassed. There was this incredibly long moment of silence, and then I started laughing.

  “Did I make it awkward?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

  “Little bit.” But Lily was smiling. “But not in a bad way? Sorry. It’s super weird, having to constantly tell people, or not tell people. I’m still figuring it out. Note to self: showing off my giant bookshelf rainbow is maybe not the best reveal.”

  “Even though it’s awesome,” I said.

  “Even though it’s awesome.” Lily’s smile stretched wider.

  She disappeared into her closet for a moment, rattling around. And I had a few seconds to process what Lily had just said.

  I couldn’t imagine ever admitting something so huge that casually, and it blew me away that she was able to. But then, that’s how Lily was. Bold and matter of fact. She’d said she had a crush on Emma Watson when she was younger, and there was that little rainbow dumpling pin on her backpack, which I’d figured was from a cartoon or an anime. Of course it wasn’t. The hints were all there, and still I hadn’t put them together.

  But then, no one had been out at my old high school. Not even Brandon Wasserman, who did both ballet and gymnastics, yet never had a hair out of place.

  “You can borrow this,” Lily said, emerging from her closet. She tossed me a sweatshirt. It was soft and gray and said Shakespeare on the Hill Summer 2017 across the back.

  “For baking,” she explained. “So you don’t get anything on your shirt.”

  “Right,” I said. I’d forgotten why we’d come up here in the first place. “Thanks.”

  I tugged it on. It smelled like Lily, like her woodsy perfume, which reminded me of the party that weekend.

  “Did Cole know?” I asked. “When he pulled the naked stunt on you?”

  Lily shook her head.

  “I only figured it out the summer after freshman year,” she said with a self-conscious shrug. “I kept obsessing over this one girl at theater camp, and Ryland was like, ‘You have a crush on her, and I have never seen you have a crush on anyone ever.’ And he was right. And then she broke my heart and stole my favorite jeans.”

  “That’s a lot to take in,” I said. “But I’m very sorry about, not in chronological order: your jeans, your broken heart, and Cole’s penis.”

  Lily smiled.

  “All apologies should be so disorderly.”

  She tugged on a sweatshirt of her own, which read Gryffindor Quidditch across the front, and then flipped her hair upside down, gathering it up into a knot. God. It killed me how she could just do that, how she didn’t even need to look in a mirror or watch a tutorial or use a million pins and dry shampoo.

  “Are you dead?” Adam called, thundering up the stairs. “And if yes, what am I supposed to do with the bodies?”

  “We are extremely dead,” Lily told him seriously.

  “Somehow, I feel like you two would be terrible at a murder mystery party,” I said.

  We all trooped to the kitchen, where Adam sat down at the table, making it very clear that he was only there for the eating part, not the baking.

  “Shortbread cookies?” Lily asked, reaching for a cookbook that had Mary Berry on the cover.

  I stared at it in surprise.

  “I’m obsessed with the Great British Bake Off,“ I said.

>   “‘I expect nothing less than sheer perfection,’” Lily quoted.

  “Why is everyone into that show?” Adam complained.

  “Because it’s full of drunk grandmas and dirty baking puns and is hosted by queer comedians? Except it’s somehow weirdly wholesome?” Lily returned.

  “What she said,” I told him.

  “Whatever,” Adam said. “It looks dumb.”

  “So does your face,” Lily shot back, grinning.

  Adam slunk off and put on some music while Lily and I followed Mary Berry’s recipe.

  We left the dough to chill in the freezer and joined Adam in the living room to start on our homework.

  I was wrestling with my chemistry, and Adam was like, “You’re calculating molar mass wrong.”

  Lily craned over to see what I was doing. “Yeah, you need to divide, not multiply.”

  I swore and began erasing.

  “Stupid H Chem,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, it’s brutal,” said Adam. “I wish I’d taken regular.”

  “My grandmother insisted on honors,” I said miserably.

  “That sucks,” Adam said. And then, without even looking up from his Spanish worksheet, he asked, “Why’d you move in with them, anyhow?”

  Lily must have kicked him under the table, because he mumbled “ow,” and glared at her.

  I should tell them, I realized. Lily had told me about losing her dad, and being gay, and the girl who’d broken her heart. I’d almost told Cole.

  So I took a deep breath and admitted, “It all happened really fast after the earthquake.”

  “Wait.” Lily turned toward me, her eyes huge. “That giant earthquake up in San Bernardino?”

  I nodded.

  “Were you there?” Lily asked.

  They were both staring at me, and I felt horribly uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, my voice small. “I was there. I was—I was working at this museum, after school, and all of the displays started falling.”

  I stopped. I’d never told this part of the story before. At least, not to anyone who wasn’t Dr. Lisa.

  “And my mom was at work, too. And she got hurt. And that’s how she died,” I finished awkwardly. “My dad’s not an option, so my grandparents took me in.”