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After School

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“Sloane told me you bought a suit for graduation,” Gray shoots over Miguel’s shoulder. “Pretty badass.”

Sloane slings an arm around you and pulls you closer, plucking the cigarette out of your mouth and taking a drag. “I know, right? He looked so distinguished. Very gentlemanly.” Your heart all but stops in your chest and your smoke almost tumbles out of your mouth when Sloane tries to stick it back in. You brace for Miguel and Gray to give you both a weird look, or question her, or just do anything at all, but they do… absolutely nothing. They just smile and laugh and say they bet she’s right, and the moment passes. Like it was nothing. Which you suppose it was, really.

i got a lot of (for me) new followers because of my loserfication piece, sorry to disappoint but most of the pieces i post are chapters of a novella i'm writing called 'this thing i'm getting over'. it is about two girl ("girl") best friends named virgil and sloane growing up off the coast of washington state during the 2008 recession and realizing both of them wish they were both boys and what they do with that information while they graduate high school and start considering what exactly they want to do with their lives. most chapters are 'porn with plot' ,to use a fanfic term, but i'm moving more into plot heavy chapters, like this one- think of it as 'autohomoerotic literary fiction', to coin a phrase. i hope you'll read it if you like my writing, you can go back to previous chapters on my blog to find the ones with porn if you arent interested in lore, lol. anyway, here you go, sorry to shit up the forcemasc and aap/ahe tags with non-porn, it's more present in the other chapters as at its core it is a story about one friend forcing another friend to accept she wants to be a boy. i just want to get my work out there :]

(for clarity, although these characters are ftm, i use she/her pronouns for them as they aren't out or don't really get what they're feeling at this point in the story, and i find it more cohesive and interesting to refer to them with feminine pronouns to express the dissonance between their social position and clearly transmasculine interiority. when they accept themselves (or when they are having sex, for funsies) it will switch to he/him, i think that makes their transitions more meaningful in narrative context. if you don't like that then don't like don't read or whatever the fujos say)

When your graduating class is ninety people, your commencement tends to be more of an assembly than a ceremony. A ceremony would denote a stadium, seating assignments, maybe some sort of loudspeaker system to reach the parents in the nosebleeds; South Whidbey High School has none of that. You might find that disappointing if you weren’t so grateful for the tradeoff, which is that it takes all of an hour for it to be over.

You are standing on the side of a collapsible stage that was used by the middle school a week earlier for their own graduation ceremony (assembly), fidgeting with your cap in an attempt to make it look less stupid sitting on top of your hair. It is having a hard time staying on, seeing as to how it has to stretch over the thick headband your mother foisted on you before you left. You’re hungry, you’re tired, and you are almost unbearably hot in the itchy polyester gown under the June heat. But, you remind yourself, it is almost over, and soon you will be free. You were with the S’s, accompanied by Ethan Singer and Lainey Stewart, and you breezed past the T’s, the U’s, and the V’s- again, perks of a small class- and now, finally, you are at the W’s. And there is only one last name that starts with a W at South Whidbey High School.

Sloane is trying to catch her eye from where she stands across the platform. She’s leaning out of line, standing on her tiptoes and grinning in a way that borders on menacing as the measured applause for Lainey subsides and your principal clears his throat to read out the next name. You do not smile back, because you know why she is so excited.

Sloane has been planning what stupid thing she should do when she walks for going on three months now. She somehow got it into her head that this was a moment she simply couldn’t waste- ‘you only get to do it once!’ is what she had said, many times, with increasing insistence, and every time you have replied, ‘no, you only have to do it once,’ and then she flicks you on the arm and goes back to discussing what stunt she should pull with Andrew. You know it won’t be anything too crazy, but you also know that when she does it everyone will be looking at you and wondering what more you could have done to stop this.

Your principal barely gets the last syllable in ‘Webster’ out before Sloane is practically skipping across the stage to him, hand holding her cap onto her head. When he goes to shake her hand, she sticks hers out in return- and then takes it away at the last minute, sliding it up past her ear like she’s smoothing her hair. You guess she decided to go the down-low-too-slow route. You bow your head to hide your face behind your hair- and maybe a smile, despite yourself- and listen to the sound of exactly four people laughing. You can tell that it’s just the guys, if not from the sound than from the fact that no one else would find Sloane’s dumb stunts funny enough to dignify them with a reaction. When you look up she’s walking towards where you stand at the back of the line. You can see in her eyes that she is waiting for you to give her permission to be pleased with herself, so you give her your own small smile back as you grab her wrist when she passes by to pull her into line behind you.

“How was that? Did you see?” She’s whispering in your ear, hands on your shoulders as she shifts from foot to foot- Sloane is essentially unable to stand still if it is explicitly asked of her. You shrug her off and shush her, keeping your eyes forward as Alice and Ben Yang are called to walk. You continue ignoring her even as you can feel her start poking the small of your back, reaching behind yourself to grab her finger and trap it so she cuts it out. She’s attempting to take her hand back when the audience starts clapping and you take mercy on her, freeing it so you can put your hands together along with them.

You keep dodging Sloane’s attempts to get your attention for the next few minutes as your principal gives his closing remarks, about how poised and intelligent this class is, how proud he is to have served you for the past for years, that sort of thing, all the while batting her hands off your cap and resuming the blind tug-of-war between you and her finger until this ceremony (assembly) is finally, blessedly over. There’s one last round of applause- which Sloane obnoxiously joins in on, much too loudly- before everyone around you falls out and begins looking for their parents. You know there’s technically supposed to be some kind of recessional, where everyone stately walks off to orchestral music, but no one here is kidding themselves about that being necessary.

At last you turn to Sloane, and before you can say anything she’s already wrapping you in a hug and spinning you around.

“We’re finally free!” She’s saying as she lifts you up, repeating it a few times- “We’re free, we’re free, we’re free!” You wait for her to run out of steam and put you down before you hug her back.

“We’re free,” you repeat back gravely, smoothing the back of her gown and letting go, taking a look around. “Where’s Kim?”

Sloane points over to where her mother is chatting with a couple other parents, face in its characteristic under-impressed look. “Talking to the other hospital people. Where’d your parents run off to?”

“They told me they’d just wait in the car when the ceremony was over.” You parents are not big fans of ‘mingling’. “Is Austin around here somewhere?”

Her face falls a little and she purses her lips to the side. “He couldn’t make it down from Pullman.”

“That’s too bad, I’m sorry.” You know Sloane was excited to see her brother- he rarely comes home anymore, citing gas prices or homework or something or other, and you can tell it gets her a little more every time.

“It’s fine, I honestly expected it.” She takes her cap off, pushing her hair back and squinting up at the sun before looking back at you with another wide grin on her face. “So, how did you like my moves up there?”

You give her a look. “I told you no one would laugh.”

“Andrew laughed! And Nadir and Cameron! Maybe not Scott, he’s no fun. But the rest of you guys did!”

“I didn’t, don’t implicate me in all of that.”

“But you wanted to!” You elect not to respond to that and she huffs a little. “Whatever, you’re no fun either. Let’s go find them, anyway.” She doesn’t wait for a response before she’s dragging you along behind her by your wrist. You try to keep up, pulling up the hem of your gown so you don’t trip, and as you pass by the last of the rows of folding chairs Sloane’s hand finds its way into yours, lacing your fingers together.

You make the rest of your way around the side of the school like that, hand in hand, hers squeezing yours tight and then dropping it as you round the corner and see the guys where you’d agreed to meet after the ceremony (assembly) was over. Cameron spots you both first and beckons you over, cigarette in one hand and stupid chunky butane lighter in the other.

“What took you guys so long?” He hands you each a smoke and steps aside to let you into their huddle.

Sloane takes her zippo out of her pocket and lights your cigarette for you, then her own- she always starts yours first, to the extent that you almost never bring a lighter with you if she’s going to be around. “Just enjoying our first few moments as high school grads. We’re all kind of a big deal.”

“How sweet.” Andrew is sitting criss-cross on the ground, leaning back on his hands. His tie is slung back over one shoulder. “You weren’t apologizing to Larson for punking him?”

“He knows I didn’t mean it like that.” Sloane starts unzipping her gown and pulling it over her head. You always notice the way she takes things off- from the back of the neck, not by grabbing the bottom. You always catch yourself noticing tiny things like this- how she sits with her knees apart, never crossing them, how she keeps her wallet in her front pocket instead of the back. They’re tiny little things that don’t matter, not really, but you notice them all the same. You follow suit and try to mimic the way she grabbed her neckline. “What did you think about Emma’s speech, though?”

“Right? I’ve never heard her talk for longer than, like, two sentences.”

“I think she did really well,” Nadir remarks. “She was always so good in the school plays.”

“Well, that’s the only time she actually talks!” Andrew prods at Nadir’s ankle with a stick. “What do you think, Scott?” He’s being an asshole by asking this- all of you know Scott was quietly hoping he would be voted to be the student speaker.

“She was all right. It kind of meandered at the end.” Of course, this would be his critique- you don’t think you’ve ever heard Scott admit to being miffed in any way.

“Don’t worry, Scott, we know you could have done way better. The best, even. No meandering at all.”

“Don’t start.” Nadir only sounds menially serious as he says it; you all know there’s really no point in saying anything like that to Andrew.

“What about Virgil as salutatorian?” Sloane puts her arm around your shoulders and presses you against her side. “Who knew my best friend was a genius?”

You duck your head down and tuck your hair back behind your ear. “It’s really not that big of a deal, it’s not like there was a lot of competition.”

“Well, yeah, because that’s just how much of a genius you are!”

“Whatever.” You flick your cigarette onto the gravel, crushing it with your shoe. “Are we going to get out of here?”

“I can’t. I’m supposed to take my grandparents to lunch.” Nadir is always the first to have a reason he can’t go to something. It’s never an excuse, really, but it’s something you’ve all come to expect. Cameron- mouth occupied by the filter between his lips- hums and points to him in agreement, so you suppose that makes two of them.

“And my mom agreed to drive some people home since their parents have to get back to their shifts,” Sloane adds. “I told you, remember?”

“Right.” She had. You don’t even know why you asked- obviously, everyone would have things going on after graduation. You’re probably the only one who doesn’t- like mingling, your parents are not big on celebrating. “Well, how about later, then? Is that bonfire still happening?”

Bonfires are the ultimate, multipurpose festivity for young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty one on your part of the island. House parties can be fun- especially if someone with a lot of land throws them- but bonfires just have a certain something to them. The wide open space of the beach, the egalitarian parking situation, the way the police completely ignore any calls to complain about them- they always just seem to work out. So of course your class would cap this year off with one.

Andrew nods, moving down further to prop himself up on his elbows and crossing his ankles. “Yeah, at eight tonight. We’re all supposed to bring stuff, Evan is tired of no one paying him back for beer.”

Sloane scoffs. “Bullshit, he isn’t even the one paying for it, he puts it all on his dad’s credit card.”

“Nevertheless, it’s high time we all step up to contribute,” he replies loftily. “We’re adults now. We need to take some responsibility.”

“Well, you’re the only one with a fake ID, so that’s all you,” Cameron points out. “I can bring some weed, I suppose.”

“I’ll bring some beach towels, there’s never enough of them.” Nadir offers this like he’s being magnanimous, which he is- but he’s also just too closely watched to ever bring anything else.

Sloane pats her bag. “I went to the reservation the other week with my mom to buy smokes, so I can bring plenty of those.”

“What should I bring?” You really don’t know what else there is to add- booze, pot, tobacco and a place to sit seems like it about does it. No one even bothers asking after Scott because you all know he would insist that him driving all of you around is his contribution, and he would be absolutely correct.

Sloane leans over to tousle your hair. “You just bring your wonderful self, Virgil, don’t even worry about it.” Andrew ‘aww’s sarcastically, and Sloane kicks some gravel at him.

Scott slaps his hands on his thighs as he pushes off the wall and starts fishing around in his pocket. “Well, I’ve gotta split. Still need a ride, Drew?” He jingles his keys and Andrew hops to his feet.

“Only if I get to drive!” He reaches for the keys as he says it and Scott holds them up and away from him.

“When have I ever once said yes to that?” He turns back to the rest of you. “Anyone else?”

No one takes up the offer- their parents are already waiting for them at their respective cars, naturally- so you all say your goodbyes, throw your butts in the grass, and go your separate ways.

You and Sloane make your way back to the parking lot, all partitioned out by ticker tape and orange traffic cones, gowns and caps in hand. She’s humming the tune the choir had sang as the beginning of the ceremony (assembly), which was much too dramatic and emotive for the moment that it actually was in your personal opinion. You’re watching her side profile, how you can see her wifebeater peeking out where she’s unbuttoned her dress shirt. She glances sideways at you and looks you up and down, just for a moment, and she stops humming.

“How did your mom feel about the suit?” You guess she saw your mother’s sour expression as you’d stepped out of the car- not that it had been hard to spot. You’d been hiding the thing in your closet since Sloane had picked it out for you at the mall and dodging questions about what dress you’d picked out for the last few months. Needless to say, she had not been very happy with you when you’d walked down the stairs this morning.

“She kind of lost her mind, but it’s fine. There was nothing she could do about it by that point.”

Sloane tuts and reaches up to touch your headband where it sits behind your ear. “What’s with this stupid thing?”

“She told me if I was going to wear it I had to put something on that made me look less like a crossdresser.” You look at her and see she’s biting her lip. “You can laugh, it was funny.”

“Okay, it is, but like, in a fucked up kind of sad way.” She plucks it off your head and puts it through your belt loop. “That’s so dumb, though. It’s not like you could even see it with the hat on.”

“The cap,” you correct her, and Sloane flaps her hand in the way she always does to show she’s ignoring your nitpicking. “But, yeah. I just wanted her to stop talking about it.”

“Well, I think you look great.” For once, she sounds completely sincere. “I mean, look at me. I’m just wearing what Austin wore to his graduation, it barely even fits me.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been wanting to do that for years.” This is true- she’s only ever mentioned it in passing, but you know that’s always been her plan. Three quarters of her closet is already hand-me-downs from her brother, anyway. “And you look good, too. It does fit you, just… you know.” In a different way, is what you want to say, but it feels embarrassing to say out loud for whatever reason, so you don’t.

“True, I do look amazing.” She puts her hand on her hip and struts ahead of you, turning back around to strike a pose. “I’m gonna make my mom take a photo for him.”

“I think my parents are going to outright refuse to take one at this point,” you say drily, and she falls back into step with you.

“Boo.” Sloane bumps her shoulder into yours as you reach the edge of the lot and spot both of your parents leaning against their cars. Her mom, spotting her, starts waving at her and she puts her hand up to acknowledge it. “There she is. I’d better go make sure I get shotgun. She agreed to take, like, five people home.”

“I’m sure she saved it for you.”

“I’m not!” She’s probably right in that respect, you admit- Kim Webster is not a sentimental woman. “Wait a second, though.”

She pulls you into your second Sloane-hug of the morning. Before this winter you had really only experienced a few- despite being friends for so long (or perhaps because of it) you were never very affectionate with each other. But since this past winter you have come to find out that Sloane-hugs have their own, special quality- they’re tight and they’re warm and since she’s ever-so-slightly taller than you, you can lean your head on her shoulder, the way you’re doing now. It’s nice. You’d never initiate one on your own, but you’re always happy when she does. Then you feel her lips on your neck and you jerk back, looking nervously over at where your dad is waiting for you on the passenger side of the car only a dozen yards away. She rolls her eyes at you, but lets you step back all the same.

“Don’t be lame.”

“I’m not being lame.”

“You are, but it’s fine.” She looks back and looks at her mom again, who you can see is already getting into the car and starting it. “Okay, she will genuinely leave without me if I don’t get over there. I’ll text you?”

“Sure, or just come over when you’re home.”

Sloane gives you one last smile, and turns to jog to where her mom is already halfway through pulling out of her spot. You watch for a moment before you look back over to where your own parents are parked. You feel your mood immediately deflate. You can see your mother in the driver’s seat through the windshield, arms crossed. You really do not want to deal with the shit you’re about to get on the drive home.

But what can you do? You knew this would probably be how it went when you let Sloane convince you to buy that suit, you’d accepted it as soon as you’d hung it up in your closet, and you’d embraced it the moment you saw your mother’s face. And, really, how long could she drag out her low-level psychological warfare over it? A few weeks, maybe? You can deal with that. You’ve put up with much more for much less, actually.

So you unthread your headband from your belt loop, you secure it back in your hair, and you set your shoulders square. You get into the car and buckle yourself in. And as you pretend you can’t hear your mom’s passive aggressive sighs, you look out the window at the passing fields and start considering what you’ll wear to the bonfire that you’re sure she will hate just as much.

—

The road down to Double Bluff beach is bumpy. You know this- you’ve ridden it more times than you can count- but it gets you every time, especially when you’re in the back of Scott’s truck. The air is warm, even in the deep blue light of the mid-evening, and you feel it rush past you as you speed down the hill. You’re glad you decided not to go with the sweater you had been eyeing.

In the back with you are Sloane, Nadir and Cameron- Andrew, as always, was selected to sit in the cab, because he is liable to try to stand up in the truckbed if left to his own devices. Nadir has a deathgrip on the lip of the pickup, shrinking down as small as he possibly can so that he is jostled as little as possible, nestled between the duffels he’d packed. Cameron, on the other hand, is sprawled without a care in the world against the back window, backwards baseball hat keeping his long hair out of his face as he grinds up some weed in preparation for the long night ahead of him. As for Sloane- well. You assume that if someone passed by you all in the low light they would assume she was a dog, the way her head and half of her torso are sticking out over the side. She seems to be trying to lean over to talk to Andrew through the window. You decide this has gone on long enough and get a grip on the back of her muscle tee to tug her back into the bounds of the truck.

“Hey, what the hell?” She has to raise her voice to be heard over the crunch of stones under the wheels.

“You’re going to get your head taken off by a branch if you keep doing that.”

“Will not!” Sloane tries to move back to her previous spot, but you keep a hold on her shirt and she gives in, looking at you as if you’re keeping her from running into a theme park. “Ugh, fine. We’re almost there, anyway.”

Sure enough, the truck soon slows to a halt in front of a familiar thatch of blackberry bushes. The headlights cut out as you feel the truck’s engine turn off and Scott and Andrew hop out, still chatting about whatever they had gotten to talking about on the ride over- you think you hear the word ‘baseball’, so possibly bickering about what to listen to on the radio. They come around to open up the back. Nadir is the first to get out- or, more accurately to his sense of urgency, escape- and he goes to grab his bags.

“I’ll never get used to how horribly you drive on these backroads, Scott.” Even Nadir, almost always the kindest and most soft-spoken out of all of you, is unable to contain his disdain for Scott’s driving skills.

“Oh, give him a break. He won’t admit he needs glasses,” Sloane joins in, always happy to have a reason to shit on Scott.

Scott glares at both of them as he shoulders the bags. “Wow, you’re so welcome. I’m glad you guys appreciate me driving you around for free all the time.” He isn’t wrong, there. Scott never asks for gas money, even though you all can tell he is constantly waiting for someone to offer to give him some, which none of you ever do.

“We do, dude, don’t listen to them.” Cameron is hoisting himself out, dragging the packs of beer behind him to sit on the edge of the bed. “Let’s just get going. It’s going to get too dark to see in a second.”

He’s right, so you do- Nadir holding the bags of towels, you and Scott both left to carry two cases of beer each, and Sloane slinging her satchel of whatever the hell she is always carrying over her shoulder. You usually wouldn’t trust yourself to carry anything even slightly heavy this far, as weak as you are- or, more accurately, you wouldn’t need to, since Sloane would usually take them for you- but she has already run up ahead on the trail to engage in some moderate horseplay with Andrew, trying to jump on his back or trip him up, so you are on your own this time. You walk down the hill side by side with your two fellow pack mules, talking about nothing and who you expect to see and who you hope you don’t, until you come up on the edge of the sand. You can hear the sound of your classmates’ voices and you slow up, just a little- you’re realizing now that you’re likely going to be stuck here, on the beach, in the dark, until everyone else is ready to go, which is usually much later than you are. And you’re starting to regret wearing your best sneakers, and suddenly wondering if you actually should have brought that sweater.

Before you can continue this train of thought you feel someone sidle up next to you, and one of the cases you’re carrying begins to become lighter as someone pries it out of your grip.

“Doing good?” It’s Sloane, obviously, and her voice buzzes a little in your ear as she says it.

“Doing well,” You correct automatically. “I’m fine. Just, you know. Getting ready.”

Her hand comes into your field of vision with a Pall Mall in it. “You’re always a little more ready with one of these…” She wiggles it back and forth before sticking it in your mouth and then flips open her zippo to light it, again. You allow her to do this even as you walk, which makes it all a bit harder, but she figures it out and soon you are taking a very content drag of your third favorite cigarette. It’s hard to see anything at all in the dark, at this point- it’s more of a game of feeling around to find your way forward than a leisurely stroll. This is probably why you don’t notice until it’s already happening that her hand is in yours. “And one of these, too.” You can hear the smile in her voice.

“You’re so fucking lame.” But you don’t take your hand away, even as you finally reach the firepit. Sloane is the one who pulls away first, for once, so she can hop over a piece of driftwood and sit down next to- well, you can’t really see who from the back.

“Miguel!” Apparently Sloane can, and she taps him on the shoulder before positioning the case of beer between her legs so she can open it and offer him one. “How’s it going, man?”

“Sloane!” Miguel returns the greeting and gives her an enthusiastic side-hug, taking the can from her. “Doing fine, how about you?”

“Living the dream, you know how it is.” She reaches back to help you step over and sit down next to her before turning back to him. “Is Gray here?”

A girl with magenta hair leans forward to give Sloane a peace-sign around the bottle she’s holding. “Right here.”

“I didn’t see you two at the ceremony, where were you?”

Miguel and Gray look at eachother. “Well,” Miguel starts, “we decided that we didn’t want to contribute to the elitist concept of celebrating academic achievement, considering how many Americans today don’t get the privilege…”

“His alarm didn’t go off and he was supposed to pick me up.” Gray interrupts him and pats his knee as Miguel shoots her a dirty look.

“Whatever, it’s not like they actually give you your diploma there or anything. We didn’t miss much, I assume.” He doesn’t seem all that broken up about it, but he does seem to be searching for any way to change the subject away from this. “Virgil, what’s up with you?”

“Oh, you know.” You can’t really think of anything to say, so you just settle on that. “Nothing much.”

“Sloane told me you bought a suit for graduation,” Gray shoots over Miguel’s shoulder. “Pretty badass.”

Sloane slings an arm around you and pulls you closer, plucking the cigarette out of your mouth and taking a drag. “I know, right? He looked so distinguished. Very gentlemanly.” Your heart all but stops in your chest and your smoke almost tumbles out of your mouth when Sloane tries to stick it back in. You brace for Miguel and Gray to give you both a weird look, or question her, or just do anything at all, but they do… absolutely nothing. They just smile and laugh and say they bet she’s right, and the moment passes. Like it was nothing. Which you suppose it was, really.

You’re trying desperately to hang on to the thread of conversation after whatever that was when another pair of feet approaches from behind, and you’re snapped out of your daze in order to make room for a pair of Jordans to step onto and then down off of the log you’re sitting on. You peer up to see who it is and realize that it’s-

“Alex, hey!” Sloane, again, is the one to greet him, reaching up to give him some sort of handshake that it seems to you she must have come out of the womb knowing, considering how effortlessly she does it. “Your mom really let you out?”

“What my mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” He pulls something that looks like a long, thin tube of chapstick out of his pocket and offers it to the group.

“What the hell is that?” Sloane grabs it from him and holds it up to the light to get a better look at it.

“It’s a dab pen. Got it from my cousin.” Alex sounds very smug about this, and he takes it back to show her how to use it, pressing the button you can now see as it lights up and sucking at the top before handing it back to her, smoke coming out of his nose. “Just take a little hit, if you’ve never used one it’ll smack you in the face.”

Sloane does as she’s told, for once, and only coughs a little (bit of a lot) when she holds it back out to him. “What the hell, is that even legal?” Alex laughs and takes it back, clicking it back off. “And don’t you usually quit smoking when you start training for soccer season?”

“No more soccer to train for, remember?” He offers it to Miguel and Gray, who both politely decline, and re-pockets it. “I got my final team photo in the mail last week.”

“Oh. Right.” She looks at him with her head cocked to the side for a second, like she’s processing that fact. “Well, what are you doing now, then?” She turns to the wider group. “As a matter of fact, what’s everybody doing now?”

Alex takes a knee. “I’m gonna be an assistant coach at the middle school.”

“Oh, shit, really? With Coach Weiman?” Miguel leans forward. “I hated him, man.”

“Yeah, it’s… He’s kind of difficult sometimes. But, you know.” You don’t really know- you had started getting excused from gym class when you were in the sixth grade and started taking Spanish instead. “What are you guys doing, though?”

Miguel sets his empty beer can down on the ground and crushes it under his combat boot. “I got into Whitman for fine arts, so I’m heading there in the fall.”

“And I’m working at the gem gallery downtown and probably going to keep playing with our old band, which is just as impressive,” Gray chimes in, taking Miguel’s hand in hers and holding them up to pump their joined fists. “How about you, Sloane?”

“Oh, you know me. Keeping my options open.” She reaches down to grab a drink of her own and cracks it open, gesturing to you with her thumb. “This one’s going to community college, though.”

“Really, that’s great!” Miguel punches you on the arm softly, in that way guys do when they want to congratulate you. “Studying what?”

“Um.” Suddenly all knowledge of what classes you’re going to take have left your mind. “Communications and, like, rhetoric. And stuff.”

“Nice. You’ll actually be able to get a job with that.” He nods sagely. “My parents think I’m the biggest idiot in the world for going to school for an art degree.”

Gray rolls her eyes from behind him and brings his face closer to hers so she can kiss him on the cheek. “I keep telling him, they just don’t see the vision.”

Miguel lets her perch her head on his shoulder as they all continue talking- about college, about jobs, about summer plans and parents and siblings who are moving up a grade- and you feel yourself start to tune out. The fire is getting bigger and the smoke is blowing towards where you’re sitting upwind, and the smell of pot is encroaching from where you can see Cameron and his old woodshop buddies sitting. You feel your head start to swim, and you stand up.

“I’m just- gonna go for a walk. To the shore.”

“You okay?” Sloane pulls on the hem of your shirt, and you glance down to see a concerned look on her face.

“Yeah, it’s just, I just need some air or whatever.”

“Oh, sure. Well, hurry back.”

“I will.” You turn to the rest of Sloane’s friends- because that’s what they are, Sloane’s friends, not yours- and add, “it was good to see you guys, and stuff.”

“It’s always nice to see you, too, Virgil. Have a good walk.” Gray smiles softly at you, chin still sitting on Miguel’s shoulder, and she picks up his hand to wave goodbye.

“We’ll miss you! Don’t fall in!” You’re already walking away as Sloane calls after you, away from the din of people talking and the brightness of the fire and into the new dark of the sand further down the beach.

You stop just short of the edge of the Puget Sound and slip off your sneakers, peeling your socks off one at a time and tucking them into your shoes. You wore your ratty cargo shorts for this express purpose, almost out of habit- you and Sloane used to always do this together when you came to bonfires, though in recent years she’s become more and more busy at these sorts of things. You wade in up to your ankles and lean down to take some water into your hands, splashing it onto your face. Then, from behind you, you hear:

“Virgil?”

You straighten up and turn to see who’s calling for you. At first you assume it must be Sloane, coming to join you in the water- but there are two figures approaching. “Yeah?”

“I knew it was you!” As the two shapes get closer you realize that it’s Christie Bowman and Rachel Collins. “How are you, chick?”

You haven’t really talked to Christie or Rachel since you were in the eighth grade, when you were still taking choir classes at your mother’s request. They’re nice girls- you just didn’t really have a reason to speak to them after you quit.

“I’m okay.” You can see them a bit better, now, wearing almost identical combinations of denim miniskirts and layered camisoles. “Um, how are you guys?”

“Pretty good! I’m so excited school is finally over, doesn’t it always feel like it drags on forever in the last month?” Christie comes to stand in the water next to you, letting it wash over her jewel toned flip flops. Her toes are a bright, neon pink that almost glows in the dark under the waves.

“Totally.” You don’t really know what else to say to that, so you just kind of dig around in the sand with your foot and move the rocks around.

“...Well, congrats on getting salutatorian, that’s amazing! I knew you were smart, but like, not that smart. No offense, sorry, oh my gosh. Was that rude?” Rachel joins in on your casual water-standing in her own slightly gaudy flip flops, and touches your arm with one hand as she apologizes.

You smile a little at that- Rachel was always the first one to say something like that, blurting stuff out and then realizing it came off wrong, full of ‘no offense’s. “You’re good, I know what you mean. And it’s no big deal, honestly. But thank you.” You cast around for a compliment to give in return, and land on, “um, your dresses were both really pretty at graduation. I liked them.”

Christie beams at you. “Thank you so much, we tried to match them. Like how we did for all the dances, you know?”

“Oh, that’s fun- well, that’s really cute, actually.” You mean it, though you’d never realized that was something they did until just now.

They look at each other for a second- not like they’re excluding you, but in that way best friends do when they’re having a silent conversation with their little microexpressions, the way you’re sure you and Sloane must look at each other as well. “Your… headband was really nice!” You have to hold back a little laugh at how obviously Rachel is trying to come up with something nice to say about what you yourself were wearing. You’re used to girls doing this to you- they don’t know how to compliment you the way they compliment each other, so they just choose the girliest thing you have on and point it out. It would be sweeter if it wasn’t so transparent.

“Yeah, thanks.” You kick at the water a little more before switching gears to the next mandatory track of conversation. “Um… so, what are you guys doing now? After high school, I mean.”

Christie grabs Rachel’s hand and rattles it around excitedly. “We’re gonna go to beauty school together!”

“And work at her mom’s nail salon. To pay for it, and, like, practical hours and whatever.”

Your heart swells a little to hear them talk about it so eagerly- you might not know these girls that well anymore, but you genuinely are happy that they found a good plan, and that they’re going to stay together. They’ve always been so close- you don’t know, maybe it just gives you a little hope for, well, your own stuff. Or something like that.

“That’s really solid. I bet you’ll both do great, seriously.”

“Well, girls will always need their hair done, you know?” Christie gasps a little after she says it and claps her hands for a second. “Oh my gosh! Virgil, we could totally do your hair if you wanted, we’ll need to practice on people for tests and all that.”

You automatically reach up to touch your hair- shaggy, unstyled, more than a little choppy. “Oh, thank you. It’s fine, though, Sloane cuts my hair for me.”

The two look at eachother again- you can read what they’re silently saying to each other this time, as clear as day, which is that they could have guessed that even if you didn’t say it.

“Well, if you ever want to try something new, just call one of us. Or, you know, tell your friends and stuff.”

“For sure.” If you can think of literally any female friends you have, you definitely will. Well, you guess you have Sloane, but. You know.

You glance back up the beach- it seems like the crowd has doubled in size since you got here, and you can hear faintly that someone has set up a boombox. You realize you have probably been down here for much longer than Sloane would like- you’re sure if you got service down here you’d be getting a call by now.

“I’d better get back. It was really nice to talk to you guys, though.” You stand there stiffly for a second, deciding on if you should high five them or something, but before you can do anything you’re surrounded by arms and chests and long, soft hair in a group hug.

“Of course! We should hang out this summer, for real.”

“Definitely.” You feel a little pang in your chest because you know that is most likely not going to happen, but it’s a nice thought. You extricate yourself from the Christie and Rachel sandwich and pick your shoes up from where they’re sitting. “I’ll, um, see you guys around, then.”

“Absolutely! We’ll see you!”

You balance the backs of your sneakers on your fingertips and start trekking back up the small incline of the beach, stopping at the edge of the dry sand to dust off your feet and put them back on. Entering once more unto the breach, as you privately choose to think of it, you look around to locate Sloane and see her sitting some feet away on a patch of towels with the rest of the guys. She’s laughing and gesturing like she always does when she’s telling a story. As if she senses your presence, she looks back at you and starts waving wildly- as you get closer, you can see the red patches sitting high on her freckled cheeks.

Sloane yanks you down by the hem of your shorts when you reach her, and you do everything you can not to fall over as you go to sit down.

“What took you so long,” she asks, stretching out the ‘o’ in ‘long’ and leaning the entirety of her body weight on you. “I thought you drowned or something.”

“I was just talking to people for a second.” You brush some sand off of the blanket and wipe your hands on your shirt.

“Virgil’s just mysterious like that, Sloane.” Cameron holds the joint they had evidently been passing around out to her. “She likes going on little secret missions.”

“Well, she should be taking me with her!”

“Sometimes a man has to go it alone,” intones Andrew solemnly. “To find himself. And, you know, shit like that.”

You tamp down the way Andrew even jokingly saying that about you makes you feel and pinch Sloane on the outer thigh. “Yeah, what they said. A man needs privacy. You can’t always know everything about me.”

“You don’t know that.” Sloane reaches into her bag to grab her pack of smokes to offer you, which you gratefully take, before she shoots upright and hits the towel emphatically with both her palms. “Oh! While we’re all here, you know what we should plan?”

“It sounds like you’re going to tell us.” Nadir is sitting on his own, private towel, pointedly free of debris and ash.

“Fishing trip!” She roots around in her bag for a very dirty notepad in preparation for this event coordination, apparently unphased by the fact she has nothing to write with. “When is everyone free?” Scott, Cameron, Andrew and Nadir all look at each other for a second. “What, what are you looking at?”

“Well,” Cameron starts, “we kind of talked about it the other day and realized, you know...”

“None of our schedules are really going to line up this summer.” Scott finishes the thought for him.

“What? That’s impossible, there’s no way we aren’t all home for at least one day.”

“Yes way, dude. I’ll be working construction with my dad for, like, sixty hours a week. Scott’s gonna be in Castle Rock for his internship, Cameron’s taking care of his aunt over town, and Nadir’s going to have to practically run his dad’s store.” Andrew is, as he is wont to be doing when you’re all together, rolling smoke. He passes Sloane a fresh one and pats her hand as she accepts it. “Sorry, we meant to tell you earlier.”

Sloane sticks the cigarette in her mouth and lights it in a particularly moody way. “Well, that fucking sucks.”

You don’t think Sloane- or really any you- had considered what it would mean for all of you to graduate and start splintering off to find what there was to be done with your lives. You suppose you’d just tacitly assumed things would stay the same, if a little more intermittent- but Andrew’s right, you really are going to be all over the place. And even if you all come back to town after the summer is over- for how long? What happens when Nadir and Scott leave for college, and everyone else has to get a job, and you’re commuting for half the days of the week and working part time? What happens when everyone starts moving out? These have been your best friends for, what, a decade, now- you met in second grade and probably haven’t spent more than a week apart since- is it really all just going to be over, just like that?

The air feels just a little heavy. You can tell Sloane feels it, too, from how quiet she’s being. Even Andrew, who almost never falls below a ‘pleasantly content’ on the scale of emotion, looks a little downcast, and you can see Nadir playing with his lip while he looks into the fire. Without thinking you slip your arm around Sloane’s waist and pull her closer to you, imperceptible to the rest of the guys, but enough that you know she can’t not notice.

It’s Scott who breaks the glum energy that’s fallen around all of you. “Can you all stop being so dramatic? I mean, Jesus. We can go ice fishing at Christmas, it’ll be great. We can knock Andrew into the lake again.”

“What the fuck, asshole? Sloane’s mom literally said I could have died!” Andrew throws a handful of tobacco at him and you all fall into peals of childish laughter.

The conversation starts up again, as normal. Who Andrew wants to go home with (and who absolutely will not be taking him). How much piss Cameron is going to have to wash out of his aunt’s bedpan. Whether Nadir will let you all get away with keeping your unofficial tabs at the general store. You draw your legs to your chest and watch your friends laugh and squabble and spar under the glow of the fire. You still haven’t removed your arm from around Sloane’s waist. You feel her hand slowly snake back around yours, and then under and up your shirt. You shiver despite the heat as she starts running her thumb over your side, slowly, so slowly you’re sure unless someone was really looking they would never notice. You inch closer to her, and you let her.

You’re not sure when you’ll be driving back up that bumpy back road, but you hope it isn’t for just a little longer.

—

“Could you possibly be any louder right now?”

You and Sloane are crowded together on her back porch, your backs propping the screen door open as she fiddles with the inner one’s handle. She is slumping into your side, giggling uncontrollably as she jabs her key in the vague direction of the lock.

“I could, but it sounds like you wouldn’t like it if I was.”

“Jesus Christ.” You snatch the keys from her and insert them cleanly, on the first try, as one is supposed to be able to. You push the door open and leave room for her to squeeze past you, making sure not to swing it back too far- you know how Kim is about the mosquito hawks in the summer. “Just get in, your mom is going to flip if you wake her up this late.”

Sloane gives you an absentminded thumbs up as she trails down the hall, and you close the door as quietly as possible behind the both of you. When you enter Sloane’s room you find her flopped facedown on her bed, legs languidly trailing back and forth through the air. You tickle one of her soles as you pass, at which she shrieks- thankfully muffled by her blanket- and lashes out to strike the offending hand. You dodge her, smiling to yourself at your masterful prank.

“Do you have any clean shirts left?” Sloane lets out what sounds like a prolonged and fuzzy ‘no’. “Great.”

You reach into her laundry basket and pull out an assortment of pajamas, and toss some of them over to Sloane where they land on her back before you start undressing. When she feels the clothes settle on top of her she begins, slowly, to flip around and start shimmying out of her jeans.

“There’s going to be sand all over your bed,” you comment, but you don’t do anything to intervene.

“Don’t care.” She pulls off her top and pulls on her new (dirty) clothes- a commemorative turkey shoot tee shirt from 2001, if the text on it is to be trusted- and finally sits up to grab the cup of water on her nightstand. “How did you like the party?”

“It was fine.” You come to sit next to her in your (her) little tie dye number that you know she had to have made at the YMCA summer camp you both used to go to. You watch her chug her water before you add, “I ran into Christie and Rachel when I went down to the water.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“They said they liked my headband.”

Sloane snorts, wiping her mouth off and setting the cup down on the floor. “Oh, I’m sure. Hand me my bag.” You do, and she starts digging around in it, evidently to find her smokes, before tossing it back into a pile of clothes and school papers. She crawls up to where her bed meets the wall and slides her window open, picking up the lighter there and starting her final before-bed cigarette. “Come here.”

You climb onto the bed next to her and take it from her when she offers it out to you; and you both sit like that for a while, passing it back and forth, looking out to where you can see a lone street light shining through the leaves of the tree in her tiny backyard.

“We won’t be seeing a lot of the guys this summer,” you say softly. Sloane huffs a little and shakes her head as she ashes the cigarette out the window.

“I guess not.”

“But we’ll still see each other, right?”

Sloane freezes and looks at you like she’s expecting you to finish some sort of punchline. When you don’t she reaches outside and dashes her smoke out on the outside wall of her house- a disgusting and destructive habit you have begged her to kick- and then, without warning, she lunges straight at you. You yelp and try to push her off, but as you already know from previous experience, she is much stronger than you and there is essentially no point to even trying. You wrassle back and forth for a moment before you let her pin you, your head almost hitting the headboard.

She studies you for a moment from her vantage point above you, before she dips down to put her nose to your neck and bite you, hard, harder than could ever be considered sexy. You hiss a little at the pain and start squirming around again.

“Don’t ask stupid stuff like that just to get attention.” She nips you again, this time on the side of your throat, a little softer, and you laugh as her hair tickles your nose.

“Cut it out! No, Sloane, seriously, cut it out.” When she seems to realize you’re starting to sound more serious, she lets go.

She looks at you for a second longer before she dramatically pulls back her covers and starts getting under them, reaching over to turn off the light. “We’re going to bed now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re clearly too tired to be having a real conversation if you’re asking me things like that.” She continues settling down under her comforter.

You follow suit and in a moment you’re all tucked in, both staring up at the ceiling in the cool darkness.

You’re really not sure what to say, now- it’s been a long day, and you feel like there’s a lot to think about, between the two of you. You don’t want to start some big philosophical conversation- it’s much too late for that, and that’s just not how you two are- but it sort of seems like you should at least say something, or anything at all.

“You keep saying you’re ‘keeping your options open’.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because I am.”

“Okay, sure.” You’re silent for another moment before you restart. “But what are you actually going to do, though?”

“I don’t know.” She rolls away from you to face the wall, and you watch her run her finger across the stucco from over her shoulder. “For a while I was thinking about just using what I learned in auto-shop to get a job in Coupeville, honestly.”

“That sounds okay.”

“I could even pretend to be a guy so they’d pay me more.” She says it like it’s a joke, but it really doesn’t sound like one.

You hum a little and don’t say anything- because what even is there to say to that, really?

“Would you come with me?”

“What?”

“Would you come with me, to Coupeville.”

“Um. I don’t know.” You are trying to weigh out how serious Sloane is being about this- when she says things like that it’s hard to tell, sometimes.

She sighs and shifts a little, rolling back over to stare up at the ceiling again. “I know it’s not going to happen, anyway. I’m probably going to have to just get a job at some restaurant downtown so my mom doesn’t kick me out for not paying rent.”

You know how anxious Sloane is about the prospect of paying rent- her mom has been hanging it over her head for months and you know it’s not something they can exactly avoid, but it still clearly occupies Sloane’s mind a lot, even if she usually pretends it doesn’t.

“At least we’ll be able to hang out all the time, right?” You know it’s cold comfort, but it’s really all you have for her right now. Your plans are already set- drive to community college off the island during the week, work at the charity thrift store on the weekends. Save up to move out in the next year or two. You wish there was something more you could offer, but you both know there really isn’t. “We won’t have to stop doing any of the things we like to do, even if all the new stuff sucks.”

“Yeah.” Sloane looks over, a smile flitting across her face. She turns to face you, reaching an arm out to hook you with and bring you closer to her. You comply, threading your arms back around her in return. “You can still stay over, like this.”

“Exactly.”

“As long as my mom doesn’t kick me out.”

“Don’t say that!” You smack her lightly on the shoulder from behind and squeeze her tightly against you, so tight that you can feel her heart beating in her chest. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“I know. But still.”

“And you could always just come stay in my room.”

“Mm, that does sound nice.”

You suck your teeth at the way she says it, but you don’t respond. She doesn’t keep pushing it, this time.

“... I would go to Coupeville with you, I guess.”

“Would you?”

You nod, and hesitate for a moment before continuing, “and we could do it together.”

“Do what?”

“You know what.” You lock eyes with her and try to make sure she does, in fact, know. It seems like she should, at least.

“Yeah.” She does.

Neither of you say anything else; when you look back, you might realize that’s really all that conversation could have been, in that moment. It wasn’t a real idea, not really, but you know that wasn’t why she said it- she wanted to see what you would do, if she did. You hope what you did give her was enough.

You turn over a little, taking her under your arm. You feel her hand come up to press against your chest. Not to push you away- just to let you know she’s there. It scrunches your shirt a little, and then lets go, falling flat against it. You close your eyes and listen to the sound of the bathroom fan from the room over, and the trees outside rustling from where Sloane forgot to close the window- Kim is going to be so pissed in the morning, with all the bugs that are going to get in- and the frogs in the backyard that you can never see but you can always hear.

You fall asleep thinking about what you two are going to do tomorrow; your first weekend where there will be no school to hang out after come Monday.

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