“Nobody wins playing fair.”
“Your music’s important. I get that.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I don’t get upset when you disappear for days to practice, but relationships are about compromise, Lu. Jaime told you what he needs. If you’re not willing to give that to him, even if you think he’s being unreasonable, cut him loose before you wind up hating each other.”
Lua rolled his eyes. “Like you’re one to give advice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means, Ozzie,” he said. “You treat the rest of us like we don’t exist while obsessing after some guy who really doesn’t exist, and expect us to hang around waiting for you to come back to reality.”
I’d wanted to talk about Tommy—needed to, really—but not like this. Not when Lua was angry about Jaime and lashing out at me because I was the only person within easy reach. “I thought we were talking about you and Jaime.”
Lua stared into the bottom of his plastic cup and swirled the dregs of his drink with his straw. He was quiet for so long I almost would’ve preferred the yelling.
“Lua?”
“I love him, Oz.”
“I know.”
“But I love music more.”
I kissed his knuckles. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Lua’s anger bled out. His shoulders fell. He looked like a busted tire worn to the treads.
It’s impossible to let go of the people we love. Pieces of them remain embedded inside of us like shrapnel. Every breath causes those fragments to burrow through our muscles, nearer to our hearts. And we think the pain will kill us, but it won’t. Eventually, scar tissue forms around those twisted splinters like cocoons. They remain part of us, but slowly hurt less. At least, I hoped they would.
Lua smiled, shy and tiny. “That guy behind the counter’s pretty cute,” she said. “You get his name?”
I glanced toward the register. Diego was talking to a skinny kid with wavy hair, grinning like mad. “I can only deal with one of our love lives at a time. Today we’re focused on yours.” I watched Diego and the other kid. Their fingers touched across the counter in a way that was too intimate. The way I’d once touched Tommy.
I motioned at Lua’s hair with my chin. “Pink, huh?”
Lua shifted on the couch and tucked one leg under his butt. “I wanted to try something new.”
I held up my hands. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I know . . . I just . . .”
“What?”
Lua touched his hair. “It’s like I keep waiting to look in the mirror and recognize the person staring back.”
I stretched out my legs and jiggled my feet, which had fallen asleep. I liked the pins-and-needles feeling as the blood rushed back in. We spend so long in our bodies that we take for granted the myriad parts and pieces of it that work in harmony to keep us alive. Any one of them could fail and we’d die. It’s crazy, really.
“Your hair, the clothes you wear. None of it matters. I always see you. You’re always Lua to me.”
“What if I weren’t?”
“How do you mean?”
Lua sighed and shrugged like I’d asked him an impossible question. After a minute he said, “What if I were different? What if I changed so radically you didn’t recognize me anymore?”
“Impossible. You could step into a matter transportation device and come out the other end as Lua-Fly—all compound eyes and spindly legs—and I’d still know you.”
“I’m not going to turn into a fly, Ozzie.”
“But if you did—”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
Lua snaked his hand into mine and squeezed it. “Do you ever wonder if you’re the person you’re meant to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about when you came out? Didn’t you wonder if you’d made a mistake?”
When I’d told Lua I was gay, he’d said he’d known since the day we met, and we moved on with our lives. We rarely discussed it; it was simply a fact of my life. But the truth was, I had worried I wasn’t gay. Or not gay enough, since the only boy I’d ever loved was Tommy. But I didn’t think that’s what Lua needed to hear.
“Not really,” I said. “Intellectually, I understood what being gay meant, but until Tommy kissed me, I’d never wondered if it meant something to me. But he did kiss me, and it was like the first time I’d put in contact lenses: The world just came into focus.”
Lua pulled away. “Tommy, huh?”
“I’m not crazy, Lu.”
“I never said you were.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said. “Tommy is real, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me. It doesn’t make him less real.”
Lua let out another sigh. She seemed even less interested in getting into a fight about Tommy than me. “I don’t know, Ozzie. Sometimes I wish I’d find a zipper on the back of my head so I could unzip my skin and find the real me underneath.”
It wasn’t like Lua to dance around what he was trying to say, but maybe he didn’t know what he was trying to say. So I let him dance. “Whoever the real Lua Novak turns out to be, I’ll love him no matter what.”
He hugged my arm, squeezed it so tightly that he threatened to cut off my circulation. “Thanks.”
We hung out at Prufrock’s for a while. It was getting late, but it was the last week of school before winter vacation, and most of my teachers had resorted to showing movies or giving us “fun” assignments to kill time, so I could easily catch up on any missed sleep during class. And I definitely wasn’t anxious to go home.
“Did I tell you I met up with Calvin Frye at the bookstore?” I said.
Lua sat up straight. “Uh, no. You most certainly did not.”
I nodded. “For our physics project.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He’s kind of a freak.”
“What happened?”
“We talked about our roller coaster.” Which was only part of the truth, of course, but Lua had threatened to call DCS every time I’d cried on her shoulder after Tommy’s father had hit him, even if she didn’t remember it, and I wasn’t sure how she’d react to Calvin cutting himself. Besides, it wasn’t my secret to tell.
“That’s it?” Lua said. “You worked on your roller coaster?”
I shrugged. “Were you expecting me to jump him in the history aisle?”
“Jump him? No. But he is cute, in a dreary, the-world-is-unimaginable-pain kind of way. And I’ve heard he’s got a talented tongue.”
“Gross,” I said. “Also, he’s not my type.”
“But at least he’s real.”
“Maybe,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure.
2,000,349,000 LY
I THOUGHT I WAS STILL dreaming when I opened my eyes and found Renny sitting cross-legged on my floor, staring at me. Which was at least as creepy as it sounds. Probably creepier.
“Merry Christmas, Oz.”
“Were you watching me sleep?”
Renny nodded. “Nothing else to do.”
“You could go downstairs and cook me breakfast.”
“Fat chance,” Renny said. “You’re not going to believe this, but Mom and Dad are downstairs making breakfast. Together.” A cautious grin broke across his face.
“That’s unexpected.”