18. Mina

I wait until the door snaps shut behind Caplan to breathe out. I know that everyone is still looking at me. I peek and catch Ruby's face in a ridiculous cartoon O. She shuts her mouth quickly.

"Well, that was dramatic," Quinn says from somewhere behind me.

People laugh, and the air rushes back into the room. Someone half-heartedly suggests we keep playing. I'm not sure if anyone does. The music turns on again. I feel the world moving around me in odd smudges of color. I realize I'm the only person still sitting on the floor, in a circle that doesn't exist anymore, so I get up.

"Are you okay?" Quinn asks me.

"Sure," I say.

"That was something," he says.

I shrug.

He throws his head back and laughs. "Every time I think you'll do one thing, you go and do the opposite."

I smile.

"See?" he says.

"I don't like that game very much," I say.

"Fair enough. Wanna get out of here?"

I try to raise one eyebrow, like Hollis, but I'm sure both go up.

"Not like that," he says. "I just meant I'd walk you home. Or we could stay?"

"No," I say, "let's go. Unless you want to go to that other party?"

He scoffs and leads the way out. We pause at the door. He cracks it and peers both ways.

"Yeah, they're gone. We can take Huron instead of Brighton to be safe, though."

We walk along quietly for a little.

"Okay," he says, "tell me what you're thinking. Or I'll guess and get it wrong."

I take his hand. I see the pit of his dimple out of the corner of my eye, navy blue in the night.

"I'm sorry you saw that," I say.

"I didn't really," he says. "My eyes were closed. Was there something to see?"

"No," I say, "not exactly. He just caught me by surprise."

"Well, yeah," he says. "No shit."

"What?"

"The look on your face!"

I try to throw his hand back to him, but he grabs mine again right after.

"Was that really the first time you guys have ever? I mean—"

"Yes," I say, "definitely."

He's still sort of chuckling.

"I have no idea why he did it," I say.

"I mean, come on." He pulls my hand up over my head and makes me spin. "I know why."

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"No, you shut up."

We walk along happily. Or he seems happy. I have a funny feeling, like when I've left the house and definitely forgotten something at home but I can't remember what.

"Don't you have to teach your class tonight?"

"Oh, I got someone to cover it."

"How come?"

He squeezes my hand. "Don't play dumb, nerd."

"I can't believe you said wanna get out of here," I say.

"Holy shit, please forget that right now."

"Nope," I say, swinging our hands like a metronome.

"You know what I meant."

"I don't."

"Like I'm not trying to take you home and wine and dine you and fuck you or—"

"You're not?"

Our hands drop dead between us. The smirk slides off his face.

"It's okay if you're not," I say in a small voice that I hate.

"No, I mean, well, I just. Would you want to?" He says it looking straight ahead.

I clench against the tide of questions and hypotheticals that rise inside me. It has to be someone, sooner or later. Better sooner, better Quinn. Better than some stranger next year at college. Better than Caplan.

I surprise myself into stillness with the thought. My brain splits into ten different roads, going ten different directions, some back in time, some up into the clouds, loop-de-looping through an imagined world where that is an option. I realize Quinn is several steps ahead of me, looking at me, waiting. On the ground, in the real world. On the sidewalk, with me.

"Yes," I say. "I mean, I think so."

He blinks. "Have you ever, you know, before?"

I start walking again. "Um. Basically not. I mean, no, not really."

"Oh?"

"No," I say firmly, "I haven't. You have, I'm assuming?"

"Right, yeah. Yeah, I have. Not with, like, that many people or anything—just, like, a normal amount—"

"You don't have to explain," I say. "I don't mind that you already have. That's probably good. That way at least one of us will know what's going on."

"For sure," he says. He stops walking, and I realize with a start that we're in front of my house. I look around, but Caplan and Hollis are nowhere to be seen. "Did you mean, like, tonight? Like… like right now?"

"Oh," I say, "I mean, I don't know where we'd—my mom might be awake—so—"

"Okay, cool," he says, looking a little relieved. "But eventually, yeah, I'm down."

"You'd want to?"

"Mina," he says, shaking his head. He puts his face in his hands. "Obviously, I fucking want to," he says into his fingers.

"Okay, cool." I say.

"Cool?"

"Awesome. Fantastic. Like, soon?"

"Yeah," he says. "It should be, like, not a big deal or anything, but it should be a special thing. For you."

"Oh god, stop it."

"We could even, well, yeah, soon sounds great."

"Even what?"

"Forget it," he says.

"No, tell me."

"You're gonna laugh," he says.

"I promise I won't laugh."

"We could, like, on prom?"

We stare at each other for a moment.

"You're trying not to laugh," he says.

"No, I'm not. Okay, yeah, a bit. But you just make me laugh, so that's not fair."

"I told you it was stupid," he says.

"It's not," I say. "It's classic."

"It's dumb."

"The classics are the classics for a reason, though," I say.

We stand there in the dark. I look at him, the shadowy planes of his face, the nervous lift of his shoulders, and think, inexplicably, of explaining the word trite to Caplan. How he said it isn't my fault that we're in high school.

"Let's do it," I say.

He wiggles his eyebrows at me.

"What?"

"Do it."

"Oh my god."

"We're gonna do it."

"Yes, I suppose literally, we are."

"On prom night!" He punches his fists in the air.

"Maybe!" I shout back.

"Okay, maybe!"

He sticks his hand out, and we shake. We keep shaking, and he doesn't let go. Then we're just holding hands again. We become aware at the same time of someone turning the corner, a tall weaving figure coming down Corey Street.

"We should—"

"Go, yeah," he says. "Actually, you go, I'm gonna stay for a second."

I run to my door, more quickly than I'm proud of. I slam it behind me and hope my mother is deep in medicated sleep.

When I get to my room, it's chilly and a mess. I've left the window wide open, my clothes are all over the mattress, and my quilt is on the floor. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had hours to fill, endless time to clean and straighten and keep each thing in its place. My whole life, Caplan has teased me about being anal, but the messy room gives me an odd pleasure. It looks like someone busy, someone always coming and going, lives here. I lie down on top of all my clothes and try to imagine having sex with Quinn. It's more than I'd hoped for, going to college having had sex in a normal way at least once. And kissing him so far has been nice.

Caplan kissed me.

Why on earth did Caplan kiss me?

I roll over onto my stomach and press my face into the mattress. It's not like I can compare the two. Caplan surprised me, so I didn't have time to think. When I kiss Quinn, I am definitely thinking the entire time, Is this right? Is this nice? But there are far worse things I could be thinking. I realize, with a surge of dread, that I need something to wear to prom. Had Caplan kissed me just to follow the rules of the game? Which rule applied to me, then? I'm not the person he knows the least. I'm not the person he's most attracted to. That leaves the person he thinks is most attracted to him. An old familiar misery steals over me. He knows, of course he knows, because everyone knows. But he kissed me twice, I try to reason with myself. Definitively, two separate times.

Am I the person he thinks is most attracted to him and the person he is most attracted to? Or am I the person he knows the least? Of course not. We know each other best of anyone.

But do we really, if I'm lying here wondering why he did it and what in the world he'd been trying to tell me? Hadn't there once been a time when I would have just known? And if not, when had there ever been a single thing I hadn't been able to ask him? I shiver as a breeze blows the curtains in. Maybe, I think, maybe the second kiss wasn't a part of the game at all. Maybe he just wanted to. I go to slide the window down and freeze when I hear their voices, floating up to me.