HE’S (@) THERE
Chapter 44 – Claustrophobia

From there, a month went by in which a number of surrenders were made that I thought were going to satisfy Erik. I canceled math tutoring, I stayed after “to work on projects” or “hang with friends”, I slept over “at Paulina's” every Friday, and even called in sick a couple times so I could spend almost the whole day in the dim basement floor of the theater, talking with him or, well, imagine it. Other times, we'd get some fresh air in the woods, and even head back to my house so I could eat and Erik could survey everything we possessed.

He treated the house like a museum whenever he visited. He wanted to know where everything was, what my parents were like, how I sneaked out, and sometimes he'd spend a minute or two staring down the hall while I was rummaging through the fridge. I honestly wasn't bothering to make conjectures about the behavior, because he always had that look in his eye, like something was being scrutinized under them, and he was extracting all of its functions and purposes. Whatever functions he had assigned to my house, I knew it would sound awfully accusatory to ask why he cared so much unless I did it playfully and with seeming distraction. He just responded the way he usually did when I asked why he had so many questions: “there is nothing that isn't interesting about you.”

I don't know how we managed to find the line between obsessive love and banter,but it was like purgatory . He played the piano at the stage a lot, endless songs, or songs that went on for 10 minutes, or maybe they were parts of songs he chose to play over and over again. When he was watching his own fingers, he looked like he was thinking of destroying the piano. Then he'd sit back on the bench and suddenly anger was flipped upside down and falling like a startling wave of admiration on me. For everyone else in the world, time like this spent together was just maintenance of a normal relationship, but for he and I, it was a transient state whose pending way of being was unknown to either of us, especially when he looked at me like that.

Words remained double-edged, and actions had their shadows. I ignored lots of things, like remarks about being sick of the theater and complaints about the stuffiness of my little neighborhood, and the way I would be ignored for the rest of the night if I rejected to see him. My mind knew something my heart and my hormones were ignoring for the time being. They were too interested in satisfaction to resist, but I knew better, deep down, that relationships weren't supposed to be quite like this. The easy moments, when he was bringing me tea in the “observatory”, when sunlight filled his eyes and turned them a glowing brown, when he fell asleep with my hand still loose around his fingers... they subscribed me to the complications.

* * *

If there wasn’t enough PDA at school already, Valentine’s Day reminded everyone that there were hands to be held, faces to be sucked, and asses to be grabbed. I wasn’t less bothered because I wasn't single anymore – in fact, the experience of having a lover made me feel even surer that anyone who couldn’t wait until later was just showing off or not thinking at all.

My only plan and my only care that day was the play, and possibly eating lots of chocolate. Mrs. Vardega sometimes asked me if I had a boyfriend, and did so just after I’d struck my hand into the bowl of caramel hearts she brought for the stage crew. “No,” I answered. Not out of spite for Erik, but out of self-preservation. It was simpler for everybody if I looked like the same person I was last year: wandering singularly and bitterly through life with only a passion for the arts. Erik and I somehow never discussed the holiday, but I couldn't decide whether he was passionately observing it anyway, considering I’d read 36 texts and sent 33 before lunch, and we were still on a roll. We had become determined to prove that we not only didn’t enjoy the other’s company, we wanted never to speak again and for the other to crumble under insults. In that regard, the holiday ended up being very different than usual because I was staring down at the floor, smiling to myself. From the outside, I looked caught up in the magic of romance, but… scratch that – I was, but in a way of which only Giry could be aware.

I didn’t hear or notice her approach me as I sat by myself below my locker. Only when I caught a long, ruffled, plum-colored skirt before my shoes did I look up from my cellphone. The sound of the busy hall hit my ears as if it had never been there before, and Giry was asking me with a cocked eyebrow, “you’re still eating lunch here?” At first I was too distracted by her beauty; she’d put out all the stops. Her now waist-length hair was tied back with a sparkling black flower, her lips were painted red, and her corset fit around a dress that didn’t make a secret of her assets.

“What of it?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t be here by yourself on Valentine’s Day.”

“Do you really think I’m alone?” She turned her face to the side and gave me the eye, but then started looking around the area with a hand on her hip. “It’s fine. Really. Before we know it, this will all pass.”

“Well maybe for me, but... your love-life is constantly Valentine's Day, isn't it? Just with an extremely morbid twist?”

“Then you know all about his secret.”

“What secret?”

“That he’s a vampire.”

“Oh, right,” she said, squinting, before kneeling right in front of me. I tried not to be distracted by the sheer volume of her boobs as she spoke. “I wanted to tell you something, actually. I saw Mariam this morning and we were talking about you, because she saw you.” The way her face lit up and her hands clasped, it seemed she had a secret to divulge. “She said she would’ve liked to see some of her friends backstage for Shorts, except she didn't want to make you uncomfortable, so I said ‘well, why don't you just tell her you'll be there and she can make what she likes of it? Maybe all you have to do is stay out of her way.'” At this, my eyes fixated on her with wild anticipation, though I was trying to subdue it. “So she said 'Lily would look at me like I was crazy if I said anything to her,’ and I said 'Mariam, she really doesn’t hate you, if that's what you're thinking,' and then she said something like 'I don't want to have to ignore her, I hate all this shit,’ so we kept going back and forth until finally she said she was going to talk to you, as politely and as minimally as possible, and see what happened.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, with a tone not yet excited. She frowned.

“That's not a problem, is it?”

My answer of “no” was drawn out and changed inflections several times before I looked down on my phone.

“Well, it wasn’t even like ‘okayyy, whatever.’ She sounded like she kind of wanted to reconcile, and she was in a way light mood... I think because Jeffrey was shredding construction paper and pouring it over her head during the second half of this conversation.” She flashed me a very toothy smile, but words weren't coming to me. “And... as for Erik...” I looked up and she was glancing at the phone in my hands. “She doesn't want things to be the way they were, so she's not going to talk about him. Do you think that could work?”

I made out like a response was just on its way, but just did a whole lot of blinking before she very mercifully stopped staring at me and invited me to join her group for the rest of the break. I don't know why, but I just said yes. I don't remember saying much to her friends, but other things were on my mind, anyway.

* * *

He was trying to talk to me on the way out of fifth period, but outside it was unusually beautiful and my stride down the hill was not so hurried. The sun was transcending the clouds with such a sharp light that the skeletons of dead trees were cutting into the horizon in every direction. I didn't answer his texts, but dilly-dallied on the other side of the street, eyes captured by the sky. I was hardly looking where I was going, I passed the theater entrance, but in my peripheral there was a break in the rooftops across the street, and I instinctively lowered my gaze and saw her house. To my side were the park structures, all dripping and covered in pine-needles, and the top tower where she found me watching that mysterious circle of light.

I was never unaware of how long we'd stopped talking. I knew when it'd been a week, and two weeks, and three. I knew it only took eight days for the rest of what was supposed to happen with Jeffrey to finally happen, and only twelve before I saw someone who looked as happy with him as she did only with me once. Maybe these things made most people feel bitter or desperate to make themselves independent of the other, but I felt more like something she'd misplaced and hadn't bothered yet to find. I kind of wanted to be found again. I had walked away and felt convinced that I'd sided with Erik enough to put everything into him, but I never got any happier or felt safer doing what I was doing. I was hoping this revelation of wanting to talk to me was not just the product of a light hearted day of construction paper raining over her head. I hoped she too felt a hole in her heart even if she had been very good at showing no one.

When I stepped through the front door, Mom turned her back on me in the kitchen while chopping something, and I smiled. She had made up a rule based on very smart observation that nobody should talk to me the night of a premiere, but that someone should make spaghetti as good luck food, spaghetti being the choice because Dad was often not home yet, and it was one of the few things my mom could make without blowing up the kitchen. The scent of the sauce heating followed me upstairs, but I wasn't going to the bathroom where I usually practiced my lines. Mostly because I had no lines. The ritual was in motion, but this year I had opted out of performing in Shorts. Instead of partaking in the rehearsals, I'd been telling my parents a few of us has permission to sit in on them, leaving me with a few hours every week to see the person I had given up performing for. Apparently, soon, I would have a gift for this sacrifice, so I tried not to be disappointed. Sure, I'd seen a girl wearing my dress – looking as lovely as I ever did in it, maybe more – but the energy was going to be surreal tonight, like it always was. Mariam didn't hated me. And I'd brought home enough candy to last, well, at least a week.

But then, there would be a thing about that night, however small, that took away its perfection, and it happened after dinner. I’d come from the kind of one I would’ve liked to have before every performance in my future, though maybe with a few more faces. We ate with a bouquet of roses from Dad to Mom in the center of the table, and Mom made fun of me for doing one of the lines I liked best from the skits “with a funny tremble in my eyebrow”, but my phone beeped, and she told me she’d take my plate, so I hurried and didn’t let myself read the message until I was upstairs.

“No.”

I didn’t move at all, and read it repeatedly while trying to understand my reaction. “Why not?” I asked, my fingers clumsily mistyping, twice. I set the phone down and did everything I needed to before it was time, but I had to wait for the next answer.

It didn't come until I was entering the mouth of the theater entrance, and a wind made the trees leaning over the road splatter me with raindrops. I tensed my shoulders and looked up at the trees like they had seriously insulted me, but I could hear an engine very close by and realized I was blocking the road. I wasn't used to there being visitors here, and stepped away wide-eyed while trying to rub the cold rain off my face. Finally, I looked at the message.

Mom.

You left your water bottle and mints in the bathroom. I’ll put them in my purse and give them to you before it starts, okay? Be there at 6:30!”

This wasn't exactly what I was waiting for. I stepped forward and could see that light from the attic, now glowing as the sky darkened, but on the way the reason I needed finally reached me:

“I distance myself from anyone with an expectation of me that won’t be met, Christine, and she fits under that category for you.”

* * *

Although that night would go just as it should have, I didn’t conceal my disappointment during preparation. There were so many people bustling about, it was almost like being alone, anyway. The faces I painted all kept their eyes shut, and I hardly knew them – they were underclassmen. It was reminding me of the time Mariam and I did each other's make-up, however. She was wearing a giant dress and needed heart-shaped lips, and I, on the other hand, needed a giant mole. It all sounds terribly Rococo, but I promise that's not what we were doing. My smiles about that time came and went during preparation, fading most immediately any time I thought of the attitude Erik had shown me he had toward the subject, of Mariam and I, being anything what we were. I guess I'd been pretty good at pretending I didn't miss it around him.

At ten minutes till, the cast and crew got into a giant circle backstage and started shouting with enough force to bring down the nonexistent chandelier, but maybe parts of the fly system. The people up there were yelling straight back at us. I heard them do every sound in the alphabet and was doing it silently from the sidelines. Ah, but I remember on that same night that Mariam had the lips and I had the mole, we were doing the sounds, holding hands, and making cross-eyes in each other’s faces. It had started back in freshman year, after I was turned down for the first audition and cried in the bathroom like a baby. I’d learned not to be so shy, but not to stop taking myself so seriously. She fixed this by making all kinds of faces to me while I ran over my lines for every following audition. I remember Mrs. Vardega taught me what people really want to see won’t come out if you feel inhibited, so Mariam and I started doing some crazy exercises to crack my inhibition and “turn me to jelly”, as we called it – free to do anything.

It was funny, when I thought of it, that Mariam had helped me “turn to jelly”. She wanted me to be just like Erik wanted me to be in a bigger sense; she just didn’t know there was a bigger sense. She didn’t know what kind of thoughts I was having about acting that would never, or seemingly never, work out.

It was even funnier that being with Erik hadn’t made me feel as loose as this once had. He introduced me to new ways of thought, and he let me run away to him, but not just anything could be done. There were many rules to He and I.

Love was a very whimsical thing, tonight, though. Everything was pink and red, and glowing, and laughter was almost nonstop. There was secret chaos behind the curtains, and a whole number of people had tripped backstage trying to haul off the ridiculous backdrops we had painted (I still don't even know how we got them done in time), but our bruises were rewarded with donuts, I guess is the good thing. Then I went looking for my backpack, where the head of a dethorned rose was poking out of the zipper. There was no message, there was no expectation, and nothing had been done yet, which meant happiness was the way to feel.

If I worried about what he had said, that would make him the authority of everything, and if he was the authority of everything, it meant my life had a dictator instead of someone who loved me and respected me.

And so, that night, I allowed myself to float on a cloud of complacency. I deleted his two messages, even if I still wrote them down on a piece of paper and stuffed them away. I acted with more reliance on what should have happened than what would, but it should have meant something more to me that I regretted asking what he thought of Mariam coming back into my sphere. The plan I had after thinking of her again and again that night was to invite her in to a place in my heart where Erik wouldn't notice, and where she wouldn't notice what had happened between us.

* * *

While I was finishing my paper for Humanities on fatalism, I took my first step into something completely right, but would promise to fuck up everything at the same time. I’d sunk back into the computer chair and started thinking about my next paragraph when I received a new instant message. I imagined that there was a way that box could’ve opened up on my screen as timidly as she would approach me in person, then I smiled at the words “marimonster (10:27PM): Hi Lily.”

“Hello,” I typed, and I bounced in my seat just a little, only a little, and leaned forward with my elbows bent up at the edge of the desk.

“That guy with the hat was so funny.”

“You were there?!”

“Well yeah...”

I agreed it had to be the funniest skit, and this was luckily a comparatively dispassionate subject – a bit like the Victorians about weather, for us – so I ran with it. The second to last skit, about a guy losing his hat at the park by supernatural forces, involved birds and a lot of rigging, and little did she know that one of our guys in the fly dropped a fedora he’d decided to wear and Jordan, at the bench, had to come up with some extra lines to seem really surprised there were two of them. (I think he said “I guess it's a past time around here" or something.)

“ahhhh… I wish I’d thought of auditioning, it sounds like it was a lot of fun. I was busy though and you weren’t around to bug me about it”

“Well, they're getting started right away on Bat Boy, if you're interested.”

“OH GOD, I FORGOT ABOUT THAT”

I thought about what I was doing when a pause ensued in our messages, and I found delight in how constant our connection to one another was even if we hadn't talked for a while. It was my choice. When it came down to it, we all had expectations of people that could be unmet. Even Erik, who was more than just important to me, was a prime example of possible disappointment, and so was I for him. There was a constant threat of me disappointing him, even, that he explained in some other way as if it wasn't like what Mariam posed for me.

“hey,” she started, and I perked up. “I’m going to Shorts again cuz Jeffrey hasn’t seen it yet and wants to. I'm going to visit backstage. I could just say hi if you want.”

I fell back in my chair again and fidgeted.

* * *

After I’d smacked down the snooze button, I rolled on my back with my eyes still closed and figured it made more sense that I had only had a dream Mariam was talking to me. But since it wasn’t, I had to make sure I was on top of everything. Erik had told me that tonight he would be viewing the production, so any misstep backstage, such as meeting a girl he wanted me to have nothing to do with, would be inexcusable. She wanted to see me in what was now his territory, and the simple matter of it was that I would have to avoid her. He’d had a very grand entrance last November when he pulled me into the stairwell closet during intermission, and I'm sure if he planned to do that or something of similar shock-value this time, I wouldn’t know about it until it was happening.

I kind of wanted it to, again. I wanted to have both of them.

It wouldn't happen this time, though. I’d have to make sure my parents and I were going to leave right away. I’d explain I was quite tired.

* * *

The second night didn’t have nearly that same feeling of perfection. Had she found me, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but I thought about it often. It wasn’t as simple, evading her, as it would be evading someone who wasn’t a theatre geek. Mariam had the nerve to walk right backstage if she wanted to, whether or not she was a part of the cast. She had friends here. I'd look all around me every now and then while I was doing the make-up, looking out for any red, pink, or striped clothing, or black hair in diddly-bobs. I also did a silly thing and wandered downstairs during intermission where nobody could find me.

At the end of it all, I hadn't found her. She’d never even told me which night she would be there. Jeffrey, although I should’ve had no reason to be annoyed with him, hadn’t yet decided which night was a better idea, apparently. I wanted to be like everyone else and have a perfect time again, but as soon as the cast was coming back from curtain call, I was squeezing between bodies on a mission for my bag. There was another rose, its head just outside my zipper to protect the petals. I hadn’t the time to put it safely inside, so I held it in front of me and went out the side door, where the life, and the chatter, and the light so warm was replaced by a world stiff and dry. I hadn’t put on my coat yet, and I was suddenly struck with a breeze. What a way to end something like this – abandoning my ensemble and being freezing, all so I could blow off the most important people to me.

I lowered my bag, threw my coat over my shoulders, and texted my mom to tell her I had walked outside. They didn't appear right away and I was stuck behind the corner of the building,waiting, fumbling with the rose, until I felt a note tied to a leaf.

Find me with your key.
-E

The note folded tightly in my grasp before I pulled it from the ribbon. I wanted to be excited, but pushed away the feelings he had conjured, hid the words in my pocket, and kept scanning the swarm of departing until I saw the backs of my parents' coats. When I came up right behind them and touched my mom’s shoulder, both turned around with perplexed expressions, but Mom's eyes didn't miss a beat falling straight on the rose.

“Lily! Where'd you get that?”

“What? Oh. Someone was handing them out backstage,” I said as naturally as ever. She seemed disappointed, but I couldn’t imagine why. “Well, I’m tired. Let’s go home,” I tried.

Dad seemed all for it. He’d sat through our show, good as it was, after a twelve hour shift. He put his arm around me and I tried not to feel guilty at all for what I’d just done. It wasn’t working, and the crowd seemed to be holding us back now as if it knew I had multiple unfulfilled purposes, but suddenly we came face-to-face with Mr. Frackson. I wasn’t expecting him at all and sort of went tense because he was attractive and made me feel a tiny bit fuzzy inside.

“Oh, hi, Lily!” He burst into greetings. I ever-so-timidly said hello back.

“Is this one of your teachers?” My mom had to ask. I told them who he was and Mr. Frackson did what I would never do and extended his hand to both of them until it had been thoroughly shaken.

“It’s nice to meet you and seemingly… fated,” he said, while looking to me expectantly. I laughed. “Lily’s a very charming student of mine.” His tone hinted at no jest at all, and his head was tilted back so he could see my mom and dad clearly through the glasses now slipping down his nose. I found I had momentarily gaped at hearing the compliment when he otherwise very rarely spoke to me one on one.

“Well, we’re not surprised,” Mom replied, which almost inspired a face-palm, but I used the moment to discreetly survey the people around us, making sure there was still no bright red or magenta mixed with fruit-shaped hair clips, no black curly hair... Even if I didn’t see her, she might see me at any minute. She was the kind of person who could slink around with her short stature and just spring on you.

“She’s been a wonderful asset to the class during discussion. I just have to make sure I call on her or she won’t say a thing.”

“That sounds like her.”

“You know, guys, I’m right here,” I began, but, in most situations where I interrupted adults, they just laughed. I leaned a little closer to Mom and kind of just stared at my teacher while he answered her next question, totally not attracted to him or anything.

“So are you involved with the theatre group here, or-“ she asked.

“Actually, I’m on my way to being a literature consultant – my area is English – but no, as of now, I was invited by some of the faculty and one of my other students is in the cast, so I said I’d come check it out.” My mom ‘aah’d a couple times as my dad nodded with his hands in his pockets, then Mr. Frackson gave me a smile that made the lines between his mouth and his nose come together in perfectly angular harmony. “Everyone was superb. I’m glad I came. I actually have to, uh, find Mrs. Vardega actually- so if you’ll excuse me.” He sort of bowed at us and told me he’d see me tomorrow, and I muttered something or other with my eyes hitting the ground and my fingers twirling the rose.

“He was a nice man,” Mom told me in the car, as if I needed help realizing that.

On our way out, the round attic window was watching over the lot, the room behind it deeply black like Erik's gaze.

* * *

“Why did you leave so early?” He wondered as soon as I answered, not even ten minutes after I was home. “You were beautiful and then you vanished.”

“That's you every day,” was my knee-jerk response.

At 11:30, when both of them were conked out in the living room, I left.

* * *

On night three, I saw her at the worst time anyone could possibly see a friend they weren't supposed to see. About five minutes after the final curtain fall, when clean-up of the entire production would take place for two hours at most, and when I thought perhaps, if she had come at all, Jeffrey had swept her off for some different purpose, she was there in the corner, chatting with two of my own classmates in Stage Crew that I had no idea she even knew. I was prepared for this: I had been keeping to less obvious places when possible, and, to make myself calmer, I did the whole production sneaking candy left and right. I had practically had chocolate for dinner, and none of it was originally mine. Well, in any case, I assumed I'd see her just to be safe, especially after she was frustratingly missing from AIM all night and wasn't responding to my text, and even though she was known for overlooking a message or two I couldn't bring myself to send duplicate questions given the delicate stage we were in.

When I saw her, I almost considered slinking out the side door, but I had to go to my station and start removing the make-up and prosthetics off our less experienced performers. I tried my hardest to seem like I hadn't noticed her arrival, but there came a point when she was standing by herself against the curtains, clearly looking for me, and we made definite eye contact, on accident you could say. She was wearing an adorable polka-dot shirt and waving her arm in that way Mr. Hankey did in South Park. My smile must've been the weakest most pathetic thing she had ever seen and then tried to seem super busy, but all I did was spill spirit gum remover by pouring too fast. Relentless, my friend I had been without all this time was breaking through the costume sorting group, heading past set pieces and two girls struggling to remove a corset. “Hi, Lily,” she said while I was wiping up the floor. I stood up and said hi back, still trying to seem like I couldn't spend too much time looking her in the face, not even knowing how to show her the warmth I wanted to under this condition. She herself was completely out of words, it turned out, I wasn't used to her just watching me like that.

“Your make-up turned out pretty good,” she trailed, but she was so out in the open, so obviously talking to me, as anyone would be able to guess had they been watching.

“Thank you,” I said while turning my back on her, “looking for something.” In my peripheral, I could see her rubbing her shoes together; I could tell I was making her feel awkward. “I'm glad you came,” my voice just barely got out.

“What?”

“I'm glad you came...”

“Oh! Yeah... me too...” My eyes were on my actress's face, but I could see her blurred figure looking around the backstage. “Well I'll just be around. I can see you're pretty busy.”

And she went to find a place to watch her other friends. I kept track of her only in the corner of my eye, and only sometimes risked a carefully quick smile, but what else could I do? By the time all the actors were clean, and leaving, I glimpsed her just watching me while I went for my backpack; it was killing me. Erik had sent several messages about how this process was taking far too long for him (trust me; it was taking too long for me, too), so I ever so discreetly slipped out into the hallway when I was told to do so, and to my absolute surprise, Erik was waiting there.

“Jesus Christ!” And I did this thing that involved tugging on him with no effect while he tried to look as stony-faced as possible, but there were smile lines on the both of us once I gave up.

“So am I going to be alone after all of this?”

If he wasn't going to hide with me, I was at least going to back into the shadows of the stairway, and even begin descending them. He was noting my paranoia with so much amusement, but I could see down the hallway and spotted that nameless grey-haired manager, shuffling around near the open entrance. He turned around and saw Erik and just looked away. “I don't know what you're doing, but I'm going downstairs right now. If you want to talk, that's where I'll be!” And I ran down, thinking for a moment that he may not have agreed to this arrangement because I heard no indication that he was following me, but his hand appeared at the first visible place on the railing, and he came down on light feet, directing, for some reason, a wide-eyed grin towards the upper level.

“I've got about two minutes,” I said.

“Ah, and how would you like to spend those two minutes?” I shriveled up and opened the nearest door, still sensing the man just a floor above us, wondering how curious he was.

“Well, I think at this rate, I'm going to have to spend them lecturing you about staying out of people's sight.”

“So beautiful people, like you and me, always have to vanish, huh?” I looked at him for a second before disappearing into the dark room, but within a second, Erik had appeared at the doorway and switched on the light. “A place as claustrophobic as this is hard to hide in, you know, and sometimes I'd just rather not do it,” he said. I didn't let him step too close before I dashed through the next passage, one I had once been very startled by, but relativity had changed that. I could see where I was stepping for a ways, and see the golden strings of light between the creaking wooden floor panels above my head, but then the room behind me went black.

“Hey!” I shouted over my shoulder.

He laughed but went very quiet, and then the light in the floor above me also vanished. I could hear murmuring suddenly and I turned around even if Erik couldn't see my face.

“There. Now everyone's hiding. What should we do next?”

I covered my mouth. “Turn it back on!”

“I'll do that if I know you won't be leaving with them.”

“You know people are expecting me to come home after this, right?”

“Well then don't stay long. Stay for just a short while and I'll give you a night's worth of me.”

“That sounds awfully suggestive to me.”

“I think it's been two minutes.” With a sudden motion, he was off the steps and clasping his hand around my wrist. I could slightly see the zig-zagged path he was leading us through, all the way across what would've been the rows of seats above our heads, until the door opened on the spiral stairwell. “You are an awful man,” I said to him over my shoulder.

“Then you shouldn't be around me.” When I turned completely around, he slammed the stairwell door, and I just stared at the handle.

The lights all returned before I stepped out of the stairwell on the ground level, just so that a few people would naturally snap their heads in my direction when they saw me coming down the isle, but Mariam wasn't one of them. She was missing from the room for five minutes; I thought she'd left. I was giving the stage a good sweep when she came through the same door from which I had left, and calmly took a seat.

Twenty minutes later, I received a text during role-call that prompted me to look towards her first, to see that she had noticed in a sense different from everyone else that someone was contacting me, but then the lights went out again and in that little moment of uncertainty, I brought the glowing screen up to face to read my next instructions. Mrs. Vardega was quick to establish some order over what was becoming a group of snickering teenagers bent on soaking up the paranoia of the moment. While she was telling everyone to go outside and wait for their parents, patting those who passed her for the hallway on the shoulder, I kept falling back in line. Soon the light outside the auditorium caught Mariam's glasses when her face turned behind her, when she was looking for me, and falling back, too.

But I hurried up against the wall where I was invisible, and Mariam evidently, though I could see her no longer, went with the crowd and didn't have it in her to tell someone I had never come out.