You Don't Live Here

by Robyn Schneider

  I didn’t go back to sitting with Lily at lunch the next day. I wasn’t sure I was invited, and I didn’t want to push. Besides, I’d already learned that things don’t snap back into what they’ve been.

  I sat with Cole for the rest of the week, the two of us decamping onto a slope of grass behind the math-sci courtyard. Without the constant presence of Friya and Whitney, Cole seemed more relaxed. He told me about computer programming, and some of the apps he wanted to design, and he confessed to being overly competitive at board games.

  “We should get a game night going over winter break,” he said, getting really excited about the idea.

  I knew it was a distraction. And he knew that I knew. It was so much easier to talk about real things now that we weren’t trying to figure out what we were to each other, or what anyone expected us to be.

  “You tell your parents about Archer?” I asked one afternoon.

  He nodded, his expression unreadable behind his sunglasses as he gave me the bullet points. It sounded rough. I nudged his shoe with mine, and he nudged back.

  “You tell your grandparents that you’re into Harry and Hermione?” he asked.

  “Working on it,” I said. “I have a plan.”

  And I did. I’d turned in my submission for the art gallery. I didn’t want anyone to see it early, so I wrapped it in brown paper bags and left it in the pile. It was the best thing I’d ever made, because it was the most personal thing I’d ever made.

  I’d hidden behind photography before, but now I was revealing myself through it.

  This piece was my insurance policy.

  If I didn’t tell my grandparents before they saw it, they’d find out anyway.

  In a way, it felt poetic. You’re supposed to count down before you take a photo. Three, two, one . . .

  I counted down the days left for me to come out.

  I felt jittery and a little sick as I sat down to breakfast the morning of the gallery show. I watched my grandmother bustle around as I stirred my yogurt and made small talk with my grandfather.

  It all felt unbearably normal.

  How can you not know? I wanted to scream at them.

  But then, we never know when the earth’s about to fall out from under us. Even when we’re the ones causing the shift.

  My hands were shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d spill my yogurt if I tried to eat any. I could hear the tremendous thump of my heartbeat in my ears, and I wondered how no one else heard it too. How my grandparents could sit there calmly discussing the latest food recall on romaine lettuce.

  My grandmother got up to refill her coffee cup, and I realized that if I didn’t tell them now, I’d miss my chance.

  “So, um, there’s something I want to tell you,” I said.

  “What’s on your mind, sweetheart?” my grandfather asked, setting down his phone. He really was addicted to that jewel-collecting game.

  This was so much harder than I’d thought it would be.

  I took a deep breath, my heart pounding so loudly that it felt like my own heartbeat was rising up around me, ticking, a clock to mark this particular moment in time. This was it. I was telling them.

  This was the timestamp on the photograph. The spike on the seismograph. The end of the world as I knew it.

  “First of all, I love you,” I said.

  “We love you too,” my grandfather said. “Very much. Now what’s going on?”

  “Okay, so there’s no easy way to say this, and I guess I’ve wanted to tell you for a while. And just. Well. What I wanted to tell you is that I’m bisexual.”

  Judging from the looks on my grandparents’ faces, the word had tumbled from my lips, gained corporeal form as a dancing bear, and was doing high kicks all over the breakfast table.

  “That can’t be true,” my grandmother said. “It’s so confusing being young and—”

  “I’m not confused,” I said. “Not anymore. I like boys and girls. I just thought you should know.”

  “But you have a boyfriend,” my grandmother said, as though reassuring herself. “You’re dating Cole.”

  “No,” I said gently. “We’re just friends.”

  “But you were dating someone,” my grandmother said. “On your birthday, you were so upset over breaking up with . . .”

  I saw her pause, realizing.

  “Lily,” I supplied.

  The room got very quiet and very cold as a frost of displeasure crossed my grandmother’s face. My grandfather was frowning, as if confused.

  “I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure how you’d react,” I went on. “And that’s partially why we broke up. Because it wasn’t fair that we had to lie and hide it.” I took a deep breath. “So I wanted to tell you now, because if I feel that way about someone, I want to be able to date them. And not hide it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” my grandfather said. “Are you saying that you’re gay?”

  “No,” I said. “I still like boys. But I also like girls.”

  “But even if you ‘date’ a girl, you’re eventually going to marry a boy and have children,” my grandmother interrupted.

  “I’m not going to make that promise,” I said. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Well, maybe it should be,” my grandmother said.

  “Eleanor,” my grandfather growled.

  “What?” my grandmother snapped. “Are you telling me you’re okay with this? With our granddaughter saying she might marry a woman?”

  “It’s not like it was in our day,” my grandfather said. “The world is changing.”

  “Just because the world is doesn’t mean I have to,” my grandmother said. “I don’t care what other people do, but that doesn’t mean I want my own granddaughter doing it.”

  “Doing what?” my grandfather asked. “Finding someone who makes her happy?”

  My grandmother’s mouth twisted.

  “If she can be happy with a boy, then I think she should try that,” she said.

  “I did,” I cut in, refusing to let them have this conversation about me like I wasn’t in the room. It was time to take charge of my own life. “I tried so hard. But then I met Lily and I—I just, no one else compared. And it didn’t seem right to ignore the way I felt.”

  I stared down at my napkin, which I’d somehow torn into ribbons. “I’m sick of hiding things and lying. I want to know that we can be honest with each other, and that I can share important parts of my life with you.”

  “We want that too,” my grandfather said. “We’re just very surprised, sweetheart. You’re such a pretty girl. You could date anyone.”

  And I realized that he didn’t get it. That they didn’t get it.

  “I know,” I said. “And I’m telling you that’s what I want. To date anyone.”

  “But if you date a girl, it’s going to be so hard for you,” my grandmother said, her voice small. “I don’t want your life to be hard.”

  “I think it’s going to be harder on me if that’s something I want and I tell myself I can’t,” I admitted. “I’m just—I think the hardest thing is that I’ve known for a while, and I was never brave enough to tell my mom. And now she’ll never know.”

  My grandmother had never been at a loss for words before, but she certainly was now. I stared at her, willing her to say something. But it was my grandfather who spoke.

  “Sweetheart, she knew you,” my grandfather said. “And she loved you more than anything. And so do we.” He shot a look at my grandmother. “Right, Eleanor?”

  My grandmother was very quiet, and I realized she was crying.

  “Grandma?” I said.

  “I don’t want it to be hard for you,” she said. “We just wanted to give you a good life. To make things easier for you. And being . . . bisexual . . . isn’t easy.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. And it’s actually been really hard not being able to say anything about it.”

  “Sweetheart,” my grandfather said, wrapping me in a hug that
felt fierce and protective.

  My grandmother’s hug was brief and perfunctory, but as she reached out to offer one, I realized that the thing I was most afraid of had already happened. That I’d told them my truth, and that they’d listened and tried to understand, and that, somehow, even though it wasn’t okay yet, I felt like it was going to be eventually.

  My grandparents were never going to hate me for being the person I was instead of the person they wanted me to be. I hadn’t understood that because I hadn’t tried to understand them.

  We were three people who had been broken by a loss and then thrown together, and we were learning how to fit ourselves into a family. And that want was the glue that bonded our broken pieces together, instead of individually. I hadn’t realized the pieces were connected.

  I had felt like a stranger here, ghosting through someone else’s life. My real life, I’d been convinced, was the one I’d lived with my mom, full of quiet desperation. We’d both spent years pretending to be happy, pretending for each other, because each other was all we had.

  But then I lost my mom, and found myself. And it turned out there was more to me than I’d ever known. I’d stood on the sidelines for so many years, capturing other people’s best moments. Telling myself it didn’t matter that I was missing my own. And then, when I got them, I told myself it didn’t matter that they felt wrong. Because it turned out I hadn’t wanted to fit in after all. That what I’d really wanted was to be seen.

  When we got to the high school, we followed chalk arrows that someone had drawn from the parking lot. Mr. Saldana had reserved the black box theater, and twinkle lights were strung across the lobby, along with flyers for our show. It looked beautiful. And somehow, I knew it was Lily’s doing. Although I couldn’t spot her anywhere.

  The theater was surprisingly crowded. The music playing was familiar, and it took me a moment before I realized the song was from Whitney and Ethan’s band.

  I watched as my grandparents looked around politely, taking in the art. There were more than a few mediocre seascapes and painfully precise bananas. But there were also a lot of wonderful things.

  The panels from Ryland’s graphic novel. Cakes frosted out of plaster, which I knew immediately were Lily’s. Adrian had hung photographs from the ceiling on fishing wire. On one side were black-and-white snapshots, and on the other, colored photos of the sky stamped with the date.

  Mr. Saldana spotted us and hurried over.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You must be Sasha’s . . .” He trailed off, frowning. I could see him realizing that, despite my grandmother’s regimen of face creams and Zumba, she was too old to be my mom.

  “Grandparents,” I supplied.

  “You must be so proud,” he said. “She has quite an eye for photography.”

  “We’re fans,” my grandfather said.

  My grandmother looked confused, as though she couldn’t figure out how she’d missed this. As though she was just beginning to piece together who I truly was.

  “It’s been a pleasure having her in Art Club this semester,” Mr. Saldana went on, chatting politely in that teacher-parent way.

  After Mr. Saldana got pulled away, my grandfather smiled.

  “I like him,” he said. “So, where’s your work?”

  “It’s interactive,” I warned. “You’re going to need your phones.”

  “Interactive?” My grandmother frowned.

  “You’ll see,” I promised, steering them over and hovering nervously, waiting for their thoughts. I’d taken four portraits of my classmates, in the style of a page of yearbook superlatives. I’d even done the layout. Across the bottom of each, I’d written their names and the titles that immediately came to mind when I thought about them. Cole Edwards: Most Likely to Succeed. Whitney Jackson: Most Likely to Become Famous. Todd Burnham: Most Likely to Become Your Boss. It was only when you saw the note, off to the side, inviting you to take a picture of the art with your phone, that you realized what the art was really about.

  The captions were a deception. Over them, I’d used IR-spectra paint, which was invisible unless seen through a camera lens.

  When you held up your phone or your camera, you saw the true captions on my photographs. Cole Edwards: Most Improved Human. Whitney Jackson: Best at Taking Selfies. Todd Burnham: Biggest Ego.

  In the bottom right was one of Adrian’s pictures of Lily and me. Best Friends, the caption read. But when you held up your phone, it changed to: Cutest Couple.

  She’d told me that I needed to want to stop hiding. And now I did.

  Just because I was terrified of doing it didn’t mean I shouldn’t. It just meant that I had to push through the fear.

  So here I was, showing my truth. Bearing my soul. And hoping that she’d see it. That she’d understand what she’d meant to me, and how much I wanted another chance to do it all right.

  I watched as my grandparents held up their phones to each picture, as they saw that when they did, the images changed.

  “This is neat!” my grandfather said, shaking his head over it. “How’d you do it?”

  “Invisible paint,” I said. “It’s supposed to show how the overall idea of someone isn’t actually the truth. How sometimes, who we truly are is hidden.”

  “Sasha!” Ryland said, coming over and sweeping me into a hug. “The photos are amazing!”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Best at taking selfies.” He cackled. “I died.”

  “Ryland!” my grandmother said, spotting him. “How’s your grandmother doing? Does she still need help with that silent auction?”

  “I can find out,” he said, chatting with them politely.

  My grandfather was frowning at his phone.

  “Everything okay, Grandpa?” I asked.

  “Just trying to save these pics,” he said, looking lost. “How do I get them in my cloud?”

  I tried not to laugh.

  “I think it’s automatic,” I told him. And then I waited a moment before asking, “So, do you like them?”

  “You blow me away, sweetheart,” he said. “So creative.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You look so happy there,” he said, pointing at the picture of Lily and me. “Elle, did you see this one?” A shadow flickered across my grandmother’s face. “Have you ever seen her look so happy?”

  “No,” my grandmother said, gritting her teeth. “I haven’t.”

  I got that she was trying. That they both were.

  But I kept twisting around, looking, hoping, waiting for Lily.

  Except she wasn’t there.

  So many other people were, though. They kept coming up to me. Telling me how much they liked it, how they were choosing my piece for their write-up. These were art kids, after all. They knew what it was like to be different. They didn’t even blink at what my art had revealed. And I wished I’d realized that sooner.

  I don’t know what I had expected.

  For Lily to come. For her to see my yearbook portraits and rush into my arms. For the smashed pieces of what we were to magically float into the air and stitch themselves back together.

  But she hadn’t shown up.

  I waited and waited, until far after my grandparents were ready to leave, and then I slunk into their back seat and smiled faintly as they politely assured me that they’d enjoyed themselves.

  Even though I knew it had made them uncomfortable, seeing the picture of us with its innocent caption and then holding up their phones and seeing the truth.

  Even though I knew I made them uncomfortable now, every moment they realized how much they’d misunderstood me. So I’d told them that I was tired, and I’d gone up to my room and collapsed onto my bed and put on some music that was in no way helping me to feel better.

  I’d failed. Not at the most important thing, but at something that was important to me. At someone who was important to me.

  But I could do this without her. I didn’t need to define myself in the negative space o
f other people. I could trace my outlines and sketch in the shadows and darken the lines without being afraid of messing up.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Sasha?” It was my grandfather. “Someone’s here to see you.”

  Oh god. I hoped it wasn’t Cole.

  It was Lily.

  I sat up, startled at the sight of her. She was in her Quidditch sweatshirt and leggings, and her hair was a mess, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She looked beautiful.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Well, you girls have a nice . . . chat,” my grandfather said, making to close the door. And then he stopped halfway, realizing, and mumbled something about leaving the door open after all.

  “You told them,” Lily said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I’m not sure, actually,” I said. “They’re dealing with it. They’re trying. I think they need time.”

  “Time helps,” Lily said. “It did with my grandparents.”

  “Where were you?” I blurted.

  “Oh god,” she said, collapsing onto my bed with a groan. “My sister broke her ankle playing soccer. We rushed straight to the ER from her game, and we had to wait forever, and Adam made some dumb joke about amputation, and she freaked out, and I couldn’t leave.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  No wonder Lily was wearing a sweatshirt and leggings.

  “Is she okay?”

  “My parents granted her unlimited screen time while she’s on crutches, so it’s like Christmas came early.” Lily rolled her eyes fondly. “Yeah, so I only got to the gallery show for like the last ten minutes. I had to take an Uber. And the driver was an aspiring DJ who swears by his keto diet.”

  “Woof.”

  Lily sighed.

  “How does nothing ever go the way it’s supposed to?” she asked, half to herself.

  “I loved your plaster cakes,” I blurted.

  “They were just an amusement.” Lily shrugged. “Nothing like what you made.”

  I stiffened.

  “You saw it?” I asked.

  “The real art is the photo you take of the art, not the piece hanging on the wall,” she said. “Clever.”