Chapter Eleven

August 23

It’s almost seven thirty when I pull the Jeep off the side of the road outside Michael’s house, rumbling up behind three other

cars. Out here on the edge of Oak Falls, the roads don’t really have curbs—they’re just asphalt slapped on the ground, and

they’re also narrow. Which means the only way to really park is to pull half off the road.

I kept telling myself I wasn’t actually going to drive over here. I told myself I wouldn’t know anyone except Michael, I’d

probably run into Liz, and everyone else in attendance would have heard all sorts of horrible stories about me and why Michael

kicked me to the curb senior year of high school. The whole evening could be one long parade of Oh, so you’re Darby?

But here I am. Because I made the mistake of telling my mom that Michael had invited me, and she said that was nice , and what was I supposed to do with that?

And anyway... I want to go. Michael invited me, and I can’t stop hoping that that alone means something . Maybe it is a pity invite, but that’s still better than him ignoring me.

I glance out of the Jeep’s open window at Michael’s house. The front porch is crisscrossed with string lights, and I can dimly

make out people sitting in lawn chairs. A murmur of conversation floats across the yard.

Okay. This looks pretty low-key, right?

I tug on my light-pink polo shirt, flapping the fabric. The air outside the Jeep is cooler now that the sun has gone down,

but I’m sweating.

I shouldn’t have spent so long deciding what to wear. I mean, I didn’t want to risk being the first person to show up, but looking at the five cars parked in his long driveway, plus the three sitting on the road with me, I’m beginning to think I’m going to be the last person to show up. I wasted too much time trying to guess what kind of party this was. The I-just-came-from-work kind? The

casual-but-fun kind? The lol-I-threw-this-together-but-miraculously-look-super-cool kind?

I must have tried on half a dozen different options before ending up in the same polo shirt and jeans I started with. It was

the only outfit that didn’t seem to say, I’m looking for the unemployed-and-living-with-your-mom party .

Why did I wear a pink polo shirt? I might as well have written Hi, I’m from the East Coast and super pretentious on my forehead. I’m peak prep.

This was a bad idea. My insides are knotted up and shivery. I should turn around—go back to my mom’s house and claim I have

a headache so I can hide in my room for the rest of the evening. I don’t know what I would do there other than feel sorry

for myself, but at least I can do that in pajamas.

I reach for the key, and I’m about to start the Jeep again and actually bail when someone glides up next to me on a bicycle.

“Hey! Are you Darby, by any chance?”

I blink, staring at the person on the bike. She’s white but with a deep tan, wearing cut-off denim shorts and a T-shirt, light

brown hair tied back in a braid, the end dyed a faint pink. Flyaway strands stick to her neck. “Yeah,” I say. “Do I know you?”

She grins. “No. Sorry. I’m Amanda. I’m one of Michael’s roommates. He said you might be stopping by, and since I didn’t recognize

you...” She pauses. “Are you leaving already?”

“Oh. No.” I quickly pull the key out of the ignition. I can’t bail now. Not with Amanda watching me. Not if Michael told her

I might be stopping by. “Just... working up to going in.”

Amanda nods, but she looks a little like she’s trying not to laugh at me. Which is fair. “You want to walk in with me? Or

are you still... working?”

Heat rises up my neck. “No, I’m good.”

She hops off her bike while I roll up the windows and lock the Jeep, and we go up the driveway together. The crickets are starting in, but even with their hum, it hits me again just how quiet it is. I can hear the bike creaking as Amanda walks it along next to us. The voices on the porch get closer, but it’s all gentle, a wash of sound dissipating into a large expanse of space. In New York, sound reflects off everything—skyscrapers, sidewalks, the tiled walls of subway stations.

We cross into the glow cast by the string lights, and a woman with short hair shoots up from one of the lawn chairs on the

porch. “Hey, there you are. Jesus, Amanda, what took you so long?”

Amanda leans her bike against the railing of the porch steps. “Connie kept changing her mind about her color. Took ages to

finish it.”

“Yikes.” The woman meets Amanda halfway up the porch steps and kisses her, quick and familiar. “Do you need to change? Are

you covered in hair bits?”

“So many hair bits.” Amanda wrinkles her nose. “I might just jump in the shower real quick.” She gestures to me, still loitering

on the porch steps behind her. “This is Darby, by the way.”

The woman Amanda was just kissing looks at me for the first time, and her face goes slack with surprise. “Oh my god. Darby

Madden?”

Holy shit. It’s Liz Forrest. I almost didn’t recognize her without her long, layered hair or her necklaces or her leggings

and UGG boots. Her hair is cut short now, and she’s wearing rolled-up jeans and a loose tank top. She has a tattoo of flowers

on one shoulder.

And she was just kissing Amanda.

Liz is queer.

I force my brain to work and pull my face into a smile. Or at least something that feels like one. “Hey. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah. Wow. It’s been ages.” She smiles, and it looks genuine enough. Like maybe she’s not still thinking about that awkward

snowy Saturday at In Between Books. Like it’s not weird that I’m here on her porch steps and also trans.

I certainly didn’t expect her to be queer, so maybe we’re even.

“Come on in and grab a drink.” She opens the screen door and holds it for me.

I feel weirdly disoriented as soon as I step inside. Pieces of this house are sharply familiar—the popcorn ceilings, the little round window in the entryway, even the coat hooks on the wall. It’s not like I hung out at Michael’s grandma’s house all the time, but at least a couple of his birthday parties were here, and there was that time we got a group together to go see the Star Trek reboot the summer before senior year of high school, and the only car that would fit all six of us was Michael’s grandma’s

old Buick with its front bench seat, so she let us borrow it...

So I’ve been here, at least a few times. I hadn’t expected to remember it so strongly, but I do—which means I notice what’s

different too. The stale pall of cigarette smoke is gone. There used to be paisley wallpaper all over the front entryway and

up along the staircase that Amanda is currently climbing. Now the walls are painted light blue.

And the living room is full of people.

This is definitely a gathering rather than a party. There’s no music. And it’s really just a few knots of people standing

around, talking and holding beer bottles or cocktails in mason jars. Not enough of a crowd to count as a real party.

And I definitely did not need to look this put together. Nobody here is trying to look cool. Nobody here is trying to look like anything. One guy is actually wearing cargo pants. And not in a sloppy way—in a very functional, I-probably-wear-these-for-my-job

way. He’s got a carabiner of keys and a pocketknife dangling from a belt loop, and he’s wearing a green trucker cap that says

john deere .

I swallow. My mouth is dry again. What kind of gathering did I just walk into?

“This way.” Liz leads me down the hallway to the big eat-in kitchen. The dining table in the middle of the kitchen is cluttered

with bottles of booze, bowls of pretzels, popcorn, crackers, a plate of cheese slices, and a whole bunch of empty mismatched

mason jars.

And leaning over the table, stirring a drink, is Michael, still in the same beat-up jeans and gray T-shirt he was wearing

this morning.

“Hey, Mike,” Liz says, opening a cooler next to the table and fishing around in the ice for a beer. “Look who I found.”

Michael looks up and pauses, the slim cocktail stirrer in his hand hovering above the drink. “Hi.”

I can’t read his expression. Amanda said he told her I might come by, but I can’t tell if he’s happy I’m actually here. “Hi.”

Liz opens the tab on her can of Pabst. “Okay, I’m going to make sure Amanda is actually showering and not, like, falling asleep.” She glances at me. “Grab whatever looks good, Darby. There’s pop in the cooler too.”

I haven’t heard anybody call it pop in years. I said pop exactly once when I arrived at boarding school. Nobody knew what I was talking about. “Thanks.”

“You bet.” She turns and goes back down the hall, swinging herself around on the newel at the bottom of the stairs and jogging

up them in search of Amanda.

Leaving me with Michael.

Now that I’m here, I have no idea what to say to him. I can’t say anything that I’m thinking— Remember that time we shoveled your grandma’s driveway when it snowed three feet, remember that birthday party when half the

cake fell on this floor, what made you ditch the paisley wallpaper... It’s all too much; too personal, too fast. I have no idea if I’m here because once upon a time we were friends, or just because

I’m someone Michael used to know who’s back in town and it’s the polite thing to do.

“Thanks for inviting me.” It feels shallow leaving my mouth, like the most nothing thing I could have possibly said. It’s the thing your mom makes you say to kids whose birthday party you’re at when you have

no idea why you’re there.

“I wasn’t sure you were gonna make it,” Michael says.

There’s definitely a version of this where Michael is making a very Midwestern dig at me. I just can’t quite tell if I’m living

that version. “Sorry I’m so late. In New York I’d blame the subway, but the truth is... I just forgot ‘fashionably late’

isn’t really a thing here.”

His lips twitch into a smile. “I seem to remember you always being unfashionably early.”

I should probably cringe, but I’m too caught on Michael remembering something about me. The shivery feeling is back in my

stomach. “I’m actually still unfashionably early. Most of the time.”

He idly swirls his drink. “Some things don’t change, huh?”

I manage a grin, but it feels tight and strained. “Guess not.”

He hesitates, and I hesitate—both of us waiting for the other person to say something.

Finally, he clears his throat and gestures to the table. “Well, um... grab something and I’ll introduce you to everybody.”

Right. The part I’ve been dreading. My stomach has gone from shivering to churning.

It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Nobody in that living room looked familiar. So maybe there’s nobody here I went to high school with.

Maybe these friends only know grown-up Michael, and they’ll have no idea who I am or why it might be a terrible idea that

I’m here.

I lean down and root around in the cooler until I find a ginger ale. No way am I having alcohol tonight. Even aside from my

embarrassing lightweightness, I don’t think my stomach can handle it. It would be just my luck to drink booze and then vomit

spectacularly over one of Michael’s friends because I’m an anxious mess.

Michael leads me back down the hall to the living room, where we join the edge of the closest knot of people, the one that

includes the guy in cargo pants. His scruffy face splits into a grin when he sees us. “Michael! How long does it take you

to make one drink?” His blue eyes shift to me and he holds out his hand. “Hey. I’m John.”

I wipe my hand furiously on my shirt and shake his hand. “Darby.”

“We grew up together,” Michael says.

“Oh, Darby!” John’s eyebrows jump up to the brim of his hat. “Yeah, of course, we’ve totally heard about you!”

A jolt of anxiety shoots through me.

“You’re the reason Michael’s still got a stuffed Pikachu in his bedroom,” John says.

I blink. That wasn’t what I was expecting. It takes me a second to even clock what John is talking about.

Then I remember. I gave Michael a little plush Pikachu for his fifteenth birthday. It wasn’t anything special—it had literally

come as the toy in a Burger King meal. I only gave it to him because I didn’t know what to do with it, and there wasn’t a

Burger King anywhere near Oak Falls; my mom and I had stopped at one on our way back from Chicago, when she’d gone to a teaching

conference over the summer and taken me with her.

I can’t believe Michael kept that plush.

“Wait, really? Pikachu?” The shorter, dark-haired guy next to John leans around him. “How come I didn’t know this?”

Michael’s ears are turning red. I bite my lip, trying not to smile.

“You totally knew it,” John says. “Remember, we were helping Michael move that new desk he got up to his room and I knocked it off his dresser, and then asked why on earth he had a Pikachu—”

“Oh, right.” The dark-haired guy nods and then holds out his hand to me. “Sorry, hi, I’m Lucas. I’m this guy’s husband.” He

jerks his head at John.

All thoughts of Michael and Pikachu plushies evaporate out of my brain. I shake Lucas’s hand, but my mind has gone completely

numb. John—this guy in cargo pants and a John Deere baseball hat— this guy is queer? I look from him to Lucas, who isn’t wearing cargo pants, but is wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt that says monroe county fair 2019 .

And it’s not like either of them shouldn’t be wearing those clothes, but...

But I assumed they were straight Midwestern farm guys. There’s a look.

Michael clears his throat. “Yeah, so John and Lucas live on the opposite side of town, over by Strickland Farms—”

“That’s where I work,” John says, so I guess I wasn’t totally off on the farm guy thing.

“And this is Bex and their partner, Erin.” Michael gestures to the two remaining people in the circle. “Bex and I got our

teaching degrees together.”

“Oh.” I look at Bex, who has short buzzed hair and a septum piercing, and is the only other person besides me wearing a shirt

with a collar. It’s a short-sleeve floral button-down, though. Not a polo shirt. Definitely not prep. “So you teach at Plainview?”

“No, we’re over in Monroe,” Bex says. “I’d honestly love to be a bit more out in the country than that, but Erin’s the assistant

principal at the middle school, so... we’re good for now.”

Erin snorts. “Uh, since we just bought a house, I hope we’re good for now.” Erin is taller than Bex, a willowy woman with light-brown skin and black curls that are currently piled

up on her head.

“Wait, I didn’t know you bought already; I thought you just started looking,” Lucas says.

“We got lucky,” Bex says.

“Well, that’s great!” John says. “Now you’ve got it before you really get going on baby stuff.”

Erin shoots me a slightly amused look. “Sorry, Darby, we just met you and we’re already talking houses and babies...”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. I’m still stuck on the fact that these people are queer. That there are other queer people here , in Oak Falls, the place I left. The place I couldn’t get away from fast enough, because I was so sure there was no one else

like me here. Because I was so sure there wasn’t room for me.

“So, you live around here?” John asks me.

“Kind of,” I say, at the same time Michael says, “He’s just visiting.”

There’s an awkward silence. Bex, Erin, John, and Lucas all glance at Michael. And then back at me.

“I’m visiting my mom to help her move,” I say. “I was in New York, but... I haven’t totally figured out what I’m doing

next.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Michael look down at his drink. His shoulders rise.

“Well, if you want a sales pitch for Oak Falls, let us know,” John says with a grin.

A strange twinge cuts through me. I have a sudden urge to tell him I don’t need a sales pitch. I grew up here—I know everything

there is to know about this place.

Except, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I do. Not anymore.

So all I say is “Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”

The conversation drifts to Bex and Erin’s new house and the electrical rewiring they need to do. Michael shares a few tips

because apparently he’s rewired outlets in this house. I stand there feeling very much like a useless city queer. When the

single ceiling light in my apartment kept blowing out, I called the super. I don’t even know what the problem was in the end.

Eventually, Michael asks if I want to meet everyone else, and I say sure because what else am I going to say. We go through

the same routine with everyone else in the living room.

And it quickly becomes clear that nobody at this gathering is straight. It’s not that anyone really announces it—or even talks

about it that much. It’s just that Robin with the blue hair says when Mikaela and I started dating as an offhand comment, nudging the arm of the woman next to her. And Brianna, a tall blond woman in a tank top and over alls, mentions driving to Chicago for hormones in a story that’s otherwise mostly about her cat. And by the time we’ve gone through the living room and we’re back out on the porch, where Liz and Amanda are sitting on lawn chairs with a Black man in khakis and a Chicago Cubs T-shirt, I feel like I’ve wandered into some alternate reality.

I knew Oak Falls had changed. The condos, the coffee shop, Subway, the supposed traffic...

But this is something else. This is something that digs deep into my core until it’s a dull, nagging ache. Because I can’t

help wondering how many of these people were here, growing up when I was growing up. I can’t help wondering why I didn’t find

them. Why I couldn’t find them.

And whether anything might have been different if I had.

“Did you meet everybody?”

Liz’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts and I force my face into a smile. “Yeah. They’re all, um...”

“Queer?” Liz says with a grin.

“I was going to say nice,” I mumble, because I suddenly feel ashamed that Liz knew, somehow, that that’s what I was thinking.

Liz shrugs. “Yeah, they’re nice too, in addition to being queer. Except for Grant.” She nods her head toward the guy next

to her. “He’s nice but he’s not queer.”

Grant snorts and rolls his eyes. “Hey, nice to meet you.”

“Grant works with Liz at the hospital out on Highway Thirty-Six,” Michael says for my benefit.

“Fellow nurse.” Liz takes a swig from her beer. “Fellow night-shift sufferer.”

Grant groans. “Ugh, don’t remind me. I have to go to work after this. Thus the pop.” He holds up a can of Dr. Pepper.

Something catches in my brain at that. “Yeah, you said you do this every month.” I glance at Michael. “Is it always this many

people? Or is this, like... a special occasion?”

He shrugs. “No, it’s just whoever can come. We started doing it... a few years ago?” He glances at Liz, and she nods. “It’s

usually on a weekend but a few folks were on vacation, so... this worked out.”

“Plus, there’s not really anything else to do,” Amanda says, and Liz and Grant laugh at that.

The ache settles deeper.

Grant asks Amanda how things are going at the hair salon where she works, and then he and Liz start telling stories about

the weirdest patients they’ve gotten in the ER late at night, and I try to keep up. Nod along. Laugh with everyone else. But

I’m barely listening.

All I can think about is how did I miss this .

And then, I miss this.

I want this.

Why didn’t I realize that there were queer people right here? How did Michael find them? Did he and Liz know about each other

in high school? Is that why they were friends?

Something twists inside me, sharp as a knife. Why did I assume they were dating, back then? Why didn’t I see what was really going on?

I wish, so deeply it hurts, that I could have gone through senior year of high school with them. The three of us together.

I don’t know what difference it would have made... but I feel sure it would have made a difference.

Maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much time feeling lost.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lost now.

“Okay, I need to go inside and say hi to people,” Amanda says, pushing herself out of her lawn chair. “I haven’t talked to

anybody else since I got home.”

“I’ll go with you.” Liz tips her head back, draining the last of her beer, and reaches out a hand. Amanda pulls her up.

Grant wanders after them into the house with a kind of self-consciousness that makes me think he’s a newer addition to this

group, and he’s still following Liz around as his closest friend.

And now I’m alone with Michael again, both of us standing awkwardly next to each other on the front porch. I can’t decide

if I should sit down in one of the lawn chairs, or suggest we could go back inside, or wait for him to say something. In the

end, I just stare out into the yard. It’s fully dark now—darker than it ever gets in New York—and a few tiny spots of goldish

green wink on and off. Fireflies.

The ache in me digs even deeper. I missed fireflies. There aren’t any in New York. Not in the city, anyway. Fireflies are

one thing I know I always loved about Oak Falls. One thing that always felt faintly magical.

“Did you get a lot of fireflies this summer?” I ask.

Michael turns toward the yard, leaning one hand on the porch railing. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, about average, probably. This

is pretty good for this late in the year.”

I nod. We’re silent again, watching the fireflies, while the conversation from inside drifts through the screen door and the

open windows.

And suddenly the ache is too much. “I didn’t know you were gay.” It comes out choked.

His eyes jerk to me.

I swallow around the tightness in my throat. “I mean, my mom told me when I got back. But I didn’t know back then, and I didn’t

know about Liz, either, and... I don’t know if I was supposed to, but... I’m sorry. That I didn’t.”

I look up at him. He’s looking back at me with a strange expression—like he’s seeing me and not seeing me, just like that

night I ran into him outside the bookstore. “I didn’t tell you.”

“I know.”

“So... you didn’t know.” His voice is quiet and flat.

My chest tightens. “Well, I know, but...”

He watches me, waiting, but I don’t know what to say. It’s not like I told him I was trans, back then. I mean, I was barely

even admitting it to myself.

So maybe he was doing the same. Maybe he really didn’t know.

And yet...

“What happened to us, Michael?” It bursts out of me, like it’s been building ever since I got back, or ever since I found

that box from In Between Books shoved under my bed in New York. “I know we got in a fight at my seventeenth birthday party,

but that was... it was ridiculous. I can’t even totally remember why it blew up so big. Was that really enough to ruin

everything? Was that enough to just... stop talking to me?”

Michael has gone very still. Like a statue, barely breathing, face perfectly blank. And then it twists with hurt. “You’re

asking me?” His voice is rough. Rusty.

The ache turns into desperation. “I’m just trying to—”

“Darby, I can’t...” His eyes skip to my face and then away. “This isn’t... I can’t do this right now.” He runs a hand through his hair, which just makes his curls stick up, and then looks down at his glass. “I’m gonna get a refill. I’ll... I’ll be right back.”

He turns away from me, like he can’t get away fast enough. Pulls open the screen door.

“Michael—”

But he’s already gone back into the house. The screen door squeaks closed behind him. I twist around and look through one

of the windows, but he disappears down the hall.

What just happened?

I let my breath out, shaky, and realize I’m staring into the living room. I turn back to the yard and the twinkling fireflies.

I should apologize. Go find him and tell him I was being a fool. Tell him forget it . Never mind.

But I know it’s too late for that. I can’t just say forget it after yanking everything back into the open.

And I can’t go in there and apologize—not when he’s surrounded by all his friends. I should wait here until he comes back.

Then I can at least say I’m sorry. I can at least try to move on.

So I wait, slowly sipping my ginger ale.

One minute.

Five minutes.

I get bitten by at least one mosquito, but Michael doesn’t come back.

I turn and look through the window again. Liz and Amanda and Grant are talking to John and Lucas. But I don’t see Michael.

So maybe he’s hiding somewhere. Maybe I should go look for him.

Or maybe he’s leaving me out here on purpose.

God, what am I doing here?

Everything inside me wants to curl up into a ball. I’ve been standing on this porch for five minutes and either nobody’s noticed,

or they’re all hoping I’ll leave, and either way, the message is the same: I don’t belong here. These aren’t my friends.

I set the ginger ale can down on the porch railing. And then I feel guilty leaving it there and pick it back up. I’ll recycle

it at my mom’s house.

I waver for another moment, hoping that if I just hang on for a second longer the screen door will open and Michael will reappear.

He doesn’t.

So I walk down the porch steps, following the driveway through the fireflies.

It’s not that easy to cry on testosterone. But when I get back to the Jeep, I have to sit for several minutes, taking deep,

shuddering breaths, before I can see without the steering wheel swimming in front of me.