It takes me a second to figure out who Toni means. I hope Toni’s serious about switching pronouns again, because the they stuff is hard to follow.
“Audrey’s sixteen,” I say. “When you were sixteen, you’d already founded the GSA. Of which, by the way, Audrey’s an active member. She’ll get this. Trust me.”
Toni mumbles something.
“What?” I ask.
“I said, would you come with me?”
“Come with you?”
“When I tell my sister. Audrey likes you. It won’t be weird if you’re there.”
It might be kind of weird, actually, but if it will make it easier for Toni, then of course I’ll be there. It’s one thing I can actually do to help.
“I absolutely will,” I say.
“I think I can do it if you’re there.”
“You can do it. I know you can.”
“I’m glad you called me.”
“Same here,” I say. “Toni?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I know. Me, too.”
We get off the phone, but I don’t go back to my room. I check my email. I check my friends’ latest updates. Then I play one of those gem-drop games on my phone until my battery is almost dead.
I’m so absorbed I don’t see Carroll coming until he sits down next to me. I let my last game die and look over at him.
“I can’t sleep,” he says.
“Tell me about it.”
“Why are you out here?”
“I was talking to Toni. Didn’t want to keep Sam awake.”
He laughs. “You are such the übergirlfriend. Always at her beck and call.”
“I called Toni.”
“Yeah, yeah. I bet you still wound up the selfless comfort-giver while she sobbed in your ear.”
Sometimes Carroll irritates me.
“You should go ahead and get married,” he says. “You’re such a little fifties wife already. Hey, if she becomes a guy it’ll be legal even in, like, Russia, right?”
I know I should tell him not to say that kind of stuff, but I don’t have the energy. I lay my head on his shoulder instead. He puts his arm around my waist.
“Mind if I practice my monologue, as long as we’re not talking?” he asks after a minute.
“Sure.”
He drones on, something from Shakespeare about the air and the glorious sun and an elephant. I tune him out and close my eyes and think that maybe everything will be okay, after all.
That’s when I realize what’s been bothering me this whole time. Why I’ve been sitting in the hall playing games instead of lying in my nice warm bed listening to the “Ocean Waves” audio track Sam plays to get to sleep every night.
That phone call was the only time I’ve ever said “I love you” to Toni and not had Toni say it back.
11
NOVEMBER
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
3 WEEKS APART
TONI
“Harvard’s a disgrace!” Chris screams into the crowd. “I bite my thumb at all y’all!”
“Yo, your friend is a dork, T!” Nance howls.
Nance is the only one enjoying this. The rest of the crowd is booing Chris, who’s balanced precariously on the John Harvard statue.
The game was this afternoon. The only football game of the season that anyone pays attention to—Harvard versus Yale. Yale won, thirty-five to three. So Chris has a point about us failing. Screaming Shakespearean insults about it in the Yard in front of hundreds of drunk Harvard students while wearing a bright purple Yale sweatshirt still isn’t a great idea, though.
Ironically, Chris is one of the few people in the Yard who isn’t drunk. Chris is on a so-called “detox diet” and has turned down every single offer of alcohol, even though the offers have been coming in since before we woke up this morning. Ebony’s new boyfriend, Paul, showed up in our common room with three bottles of champagne at 8:00 a.m. and nearly poured it all over Chris’s head at the sight of that purple sweatshirt.
Chris decided this trip would serve as a “post-dumping pick-me-up weekend.” That’s right—Chris and Steven have officially broken up. I heard the story on the bleachers this afternoon, Chris shouting over everyone else’s cheers so I could hear. “Steven decided he needed to explore some new horizons. I believe their names were Brandon, Justin, Cameron and Travis.”
I know getting dumped is rough, but if I’d known Chris intended to climb the statue, I wouldn’t have agreed to come back to the Yard. My friends all planned to go straight to their house after the game, but Chris spotted the crowd and ran right for it. The rest of us had no choice but to follow. Me because I felt obligated, and Nance and the others because they think Chris is hilarious. I keep explaining that ze’s normally much better behaved, but no one believes me. I think it’s partly because they all keep laughing whenever I try to pronounce one of the gender-neutral pronouns I’ve started using. Apparently whenever I try to say ze or hir out loud, I take a long pause first, and when I finally say it my voice gets really high and hoity-toity. The whole effect is, I’m told, quite entertaining.