Chapter Twenty-Five

August 31

The roof deck of the condo is crisscrossed by patio string lights sending a warm glow over the deck chairs and tables. There’s

an honest-to-god fire roaring away in the firepit, and a folding table draped in the paper tablecloth from Floyd’s. On the

table is a sheet cake and stacks of paper plates and plastic cups.

And in the middle of it all, currently unwrapping a package of napkins, is my mom.

I dropped her off here (along with Mr. Grumpy) almost an hour ago so she could start setting up, while I went hunting for

plastic silverware that we’d forgotten to get. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to Floyd’s, because that meant going back

to Main Street, so I drove all the way out to County Market.

“Darby!” Mom drops the bag on the table and hurries over, careening into me so hard that I let out an actual oof . “It’s my birthday boy!” She wraps her arms around me and gives me a squeeze. “Happy thirtieth, sweetheart.”

“Thanks, Mom.” It comes out a bit strangled. “My birthday’s, um... tomorrow.”

She lets me go and waves a hand. “Yes, I know that, but today’s the party. It still counts. Did you get the silverware?”

I hold up the plastic bag. “Yeah. Just forks, right?”

“Yes, yes.” She takes the plastic bag and pulls me over to the folding table. “You haven’t seen the cake yet! What do you

think?”

The sheet cake is peak grocery-store cake—perfect white frosting, a few blobby flowers around the edges, and a scattering of sprinkles. happy new adventures darby I kept hoping you’d guess, so I wouldn’t have to. And that week...” His voice cracks.

He rubs a hand over his face. “The week before your birthday, I brought the latest issue of Pet Avengers to Prime Pie Pizza

while I was waiting for you to finish work, and Brendan Mitchell walked in and told me that was the gayest shit he’d ever

seen me read.”

Cold settles deep into my core.

“And then Brendan was at your birthday party, and...” Michael looks at me desperately. “I was dropping hints for weeks , Darby. I thought you knew, and you knew that Brendan said weird shit around me, and then he was there, and you told me someone like me could never understand...”

Someone’s splicing videotape together in my head. I can see my younger self in the bookstore, shoulders hunched forward to

hide my chest. I see myself insisting I have to leave; I have to get out of Oak Falls. But now I’m at my party too—back in

my own body, painfully aware of every way it feels wrong. Painfully aware that my mom invited all these people in my class

to take up space, to fill up a birthday party, so it wouldn’t just be me and Michael.

And surrounded by my classmates, it was just so obvious that I couldn’t fit in with any of them. I felt like I was all angles, sharp corners of me bursting out where every other girl was soft edges. I wished that I could dress like they did, and I felt so angry that I couldn’t make myself do it.

I’m not a girl . It was the first time I remember thinking that. Exactly that. I am not a girl, and I don’t know how to explain that to anyone.

“I didn’t invite Brendan,” I murmur, but my voice comes out weak, and it sounds like an excuse. Which it is.

Michael just shakes his head again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says thickly.

No, it doesn’t. Because what matters is Michael thought I knew. He thought I knew he was gay, and when I said someone like you wouldn’t understand...

It hits me like a thunderclap. I remember those words slipping out of my mouth, bitterly. I can almost see Michael—not the

Michael in front of me now but the one I knew back then—drawing back, like I’d slapped him.

He said something like, Wow , thanks , in the sharpest voice I had ever heard him use. So sharp that it jerked me out of the angry, miserable, self-involved fog

I was lost in. I didn’t get what he was so angry about. That made him angrier. And I still don’t remember everything we said,

yelling at each other in the middle of my living room while everyone else edged away and tried to ignore us.

But it doesn’t matter. Because I told him someone like you wouldn’t understand , and he thought someone like you meant I knew he was gay. He thought I was telling him he couldn’t understand me anymore because he was gay, because I thought

there was something wrong with him, and I never wanted to trust him with any piece of me again.

And when he started yelling at me, I exploded, because I’d been waiting to explode for weeks, probably for months, and all

of this just meant I was right , nobody would understand me. And then we were hurting each other, tearing away at the most vulnerable, invisible pieces of

each of us, too terrified to reveal those pieces to the other person.

No wonder he didn’t say goodbye before I left.

No wonder he didn’t call me at boarding school.

No wonder he searched for another friend to replace me with. And he found Liz—he found someone queer, someone he could trust

with that fragile part of himself. No wonder he didn’t look back.

No wonder he tried to move on.

Olivia’s face flashes into my mind. The way she looked at me expec tantly, eagerly, when I came out to her in that random lounge at NYU. The way she was so eager to come out to me.

The fierce way we hung on to each other that first semester. The way we hung on to Ian when we found him. The way all four

of us still hang on, even in New York, where there are queer bars and drag shows and a giant LGBT center. Because sure, maybe

it’s easier in a place where there are more of us and where we don’t feel quite so weird, but we are still making space. We

are always making space for ourselves, and the only reason I ever learned how to do that—the only reason I was ever okay —was because I met Olivia. Because I met Ian and Joan.

Because I realized I wasn’t alone.

All the air crushes out of my lungs.

“Michael,” I whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

From the direction of Main Street, the bell in First Church starts to chime.

8:00.

And I know, like someone flipped on a light in my brain, what I have to do.

No, more than that. What I want to do.

And I have to hurry, because I’m almost out of time.

I reach out and grasp Michael’s limp hands tightly in my own. “I’m so sorry,” I say again, my voice shaking. “I didn’t know

you were gay. And I didn’t realize what was happening. And I want to talk to you more about this, but I have to go. I just...

I have to go do something, and it can’t wait. But I’ll be back. I’ll be right back.”

He stares at me, and then opens his mouth, but he can’t seem to find any words, and I can’t wait for them anyway.

“I’ll come back,” I say again, even though I’m not entirely sure I will—or entirely sure I’ll be able to—and then I let go

of his hands and I dodge around the edge of the crowd toward the door that leads down from the roof deck.