âBack then, it was more comfortable for me to latch onto this feeling of animosity between myself and my friends than to actually admit that I wasnât sure, anymore, about any decision Iâd made since the age of twelve,â Wyatt said into the microphone.
Their sweater looked itchy.
It was a green, boxy thingâlike a lime or a mint sorbet cartonâwithout any real pattern or seam. The words and the sweater and the being itself just seemed to flow from them, like it was easy, like it was natural, like they just sat down at interviews with the perfect words prepared for any question that any old cis white man could possibly ask them.
She supposed they did, nowadays.
Elle reached up and placed her palm flat against her laptop lid and pushedâthe sound cut, the light from her laptop screen rectangular, triangular, and then no longer.
She had been watching the interview circuit for Wyattâs novel for about seven months too long, and Wyattâs origin story was always this: the summer that everything had turned on its head, the summer theyâd read George Bernard Shaw with fresh eyes because theyâd âstood on a rock eternal and felt it crumble under meâ firsthand.
Elle had read George Bernard Shaw at age twelve, and had understood it perfectly.
Elle had been the best English student in their sixth-grade class, and then their eighth grade class, and then IB and AP and even the Pre-Raphaelites course sheâd been allowed to take at the local community college before her high school graduationâher papers returned with one or two red markings at most, her end-of-year meetings with her teachers more like academic debates than advising sessions. Elle had known that she was good when sheâd received a perfect SAT English score twice over. Elle had known that she was good when her Harvard interview had gone two hours over because she and the interviewer couldnât stop talking about Christine de Pizan and Marie de France and Sappho and Katherine Parr. Elle had written novels at age thirteen, and at age fifteen, and had kept them in several little leather-bound notebooks in her closet, with real little locks to clamp the pages closedââElleâs eyes only,â sheâd written at the top of each of these inside cover, and then at the top of each first page of each notebook.
Sheâd lost the keys somewhere. Sheâd looked for them this week, under the bed and in the closet and behind the vintage desk her mom had bought her for her seventeenth birthday.
âYou probably wonât use it after you go to college, but it looked so pretty that I couldnât help it!â
Her phone rang, the screen lighting up from where it sat on the desk, now, its vintage wood warm where her laptop and phone radiatedâBluetooth, cell service, Wifi, all at once.
âARJUN !!!!â flashed across the phone screen, the letters blocky and black, like hard rock, like âThereâs nothing you could do that would make me stop loving youâeven this.â
She had been watching the interviews for so long that the room had gone dark, and now her phone was a single light in her otherwise-pitch-black room.
She let the ringing go. Waited for the call to go to voicemail, even though the screen stayed lit after her ringtone had long-ceased.
He texted once, twice, three times.
âHey j saw a first edition Austen at The Strand with Paola and had to sendâ
âHope the call didnât wake u up if u were sleepingâ
âLmk how ur doing! We cld call sometime but no pressure if its too soon hahaâ
Elle opened her laptop again, hooking her nail under the lid and pushing up. Clicked the red x to close her entire browsing window. Opened another immediately after, typed in âgmail.com,â let it load on the shitty Wifi of her momâs house on the corner of the street across from Paolaâs momâsânow, Paolaâs sisterâsâold place with the peeling green paint.
Apologies for my late responseâhave been soooo busy!! Though I know things have been insane on your end too, so itâs no excuse. (See, I see your response time apology, and Iâll raise you my own!)
Iâm genuinely doing great. Please donât worry about the breakup on my end (please check in on Arjun though). ReallyâI promise.
How are you? I recentlyâŚ