How They Met, and Other Stories(12)
Author: David Levithan

I thought more about Miss Lucy.

I’d never pictured her with anybody else, just her steamboat and her bell. Trying to keep things together, even when the world was constantly throwing glass under her ass.

“Do you think there was a real Miss Lucy?” I asked Heron.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I want to find out,” I told her.

The trouble I felt coming when I first met Ashley was nothing compared to the trouble I felt when I first realized I didn’t need her or anyone like her. People fall hard for the notion of falling, and saying you want no part of it will only get you sent to the loony bin. C’mon, you’ve seen the movie: As soon as the headstrong girl announces she’s not going to fall in love, you know she’ll be falling in love before the final credits. That’s the way the story goes. Only it’s not going to be my story. I am taking my story in my own hands. I don’t care for the way it’s supposed to go. Some people find happily ever after in being part of a couple, and for them, I say, good for you. But that’s no reason we should all have to do it. That’s no reason that every goddamn song and story has to say we should.

I tried to explain myself to people.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Teddy, who usually had about four crushes going on at the same time, told me. “It’s the best excuse in the world for getting absolutely nothing done.”

When I called my sister at college and told her about my revelation, she acted like I’d announced I was shipping myself off to a nunnery. (Which would only be another form of crushing, if you ask me.)

“Did someone hurt you that badly?” she asked.

And I told her, no, it wasn’t that.

“You want to be single?”

I said yes. And then I told her that I thought single was a stupid term. It made it sound like you were unattached to anyone, unconnected to anything. I preferred the term singular. As in individual.

“Does this have anything to do with…”

My sister couldn’t bring herself to say it, but I was still impressed. Besides a few gender-neutral terms (like someone, see above), she’d never really acknowledged that I was a [whatever term you want for lesbian].

“No, it doesn’t,” I told her. “I’d feel this way even if I were into guys.”

“Well,” she said, “just don’t tell Mom. You’ll never hear the end of it.”

I didn’t tell Mom. I did, however, finally speak to Ashley again. I couldn’t avoid her forever. As soon as Ashley sensed me not wanting her anymore, she stepped right back into my line of vision.

“I miss you,” she said.

“That’s special,” I told her.

She laughed, and this time the laugh meant nothing to me.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

“Don’t,” I said.

“You know about me and Lily?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m sorry. It just happened.”

“Let it, then. Why not let it?”

It felt so good not to care. Not to need.

“Miss Lucy,” she said. Quietly. Sweetly. Trying to pull me back in.

“Miss Lucy’s gone to heaven,” I told her.

You never think of heaven in terms of who likes who, or who’s with who, or whether this crush works, or whether the sex is good. In heaven you don’t worry about what you’re going to wear, or what you have to say, or whether someone loves you back, or whether someone will be with you when you die. In heaven, you just live. Because it’s heaven.

“Let’s go on a trip,” I told Teddy and Heron. “Let’s drive until we find Miss Lucy.”

The three of us. The four of us. The hundred of us. The thousands of us.

You see, us doesn’t need a particular number to make it fit.

I’m tired of convincing myself otherwise. I can put that energy to better use.

Let the boys and girls go on kissing in the dark.

I want more.

THE ALUMNI INTERVIEW

It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. Would I have applied to this university if I had known that of all the alumni in the greater metropolitan area, it would choose Mr. Wright to find me worthy or unworthy? Maybe. But maybe not.

Thom took it worse than I did. We had been making out in the boys’ room, with him standing on the toilet so no one would know we were in the stall together. Even though I was younger, he was a little shorter and had much better balance than I did. Dating him, I’d learned to kiss quietly, and from different inclinations.

He found the letter as he searched through my bag for some gum.

“You heard from them?” he asked.

I nodded.

“An interview?”

“Yeah,” I answered casually. “With your dad.”

“Yeah, right.”

The bell had rung. The bathroom sounded empty. I looked under the stall door to see if anyone’s feet were around, then opened it.

“No, really,” I said.

His face turned urinal-white.

“You can’t.”

“I have to. I can’t exactly refuse an alumni interview.”

He thought about it for a second.

“Shit.”

I had almost met Mr. Wright before. He had come home early one day when his office’s air-conditioning system had broken down. Luckily, Thom’s room is right over the garage, so the garage door heralded his arrival with an appropriately earthquakian noise. Thom was pulling on my shirt at the time, and as a result, I lost two buttons. At first, I figured it was just his mom. But the footsteps beat out a different tune. I did the mature, responsible thing, which was to hide under the bed for the next three hours. Happily, Thom hid with me. We found ways to occupy ourselves. Then, once Thom had moved downstairs and the family was safely wrapped up in dinner, I climbed out the window. I could’ve gone out the window earlier, but I’d been having a pretty good time.

The trick was getting Thom to enjoy it, too. I wasn’t his first boyfriend, but I was the first he could admit to himself. We’d reached the stage where he felt comfortable liberating his affections when we were alone together, or even within our closest circle of friends. But outside that circle, he got nervous. He became paralyzed at the very thought of his parents discovering his—our—secret.

We’d been going out without going out for three months.

I’d picked my first choice for college before Thom and I had gotten together, long before I’d known his father had gone to the same school. Thom couldn’t believe I wanted to go to a place that had helped spawn the person his father had become.