When I finished, Steph said, “Now I understand why you seemed so down when you first got here.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She reached over and put her hand on my knee. She squeezed it very lightly, as if to comfort me, and then she moved it away and picked up her Diet Coke. It happened so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it, but I felt her fingerprints on me, as if they’d been tattooed on my skin.

—

Steph texted me a photo of the poster for the Golden Gate Queer Music Festival. A bunch of bands were listed in the lineup, and right there second from the bottom was Madchen. She wrote: 8/3 in SF. You coming?

I replied: Wouldn’t miss it.

—

I started to cover the roofing paper with blue acrylic paint. It had a rough surface, and the paint clumped on it, but I liked the effect. It was too blue, so I mixed in red to make purple, and then black at the bottom. I took a photo of it and sent it to Steph, writing, I don’t know what I’m doing.

She wrote back: I like it.

—

On Sunday night, I went to Steph and Lisa’s apartment for movie night. I brought a pint of salted caramel ice cream from the Scoop in Fairfax, and Mel said it was her favorite flavor. Steph sat on the opposite end of the sofa from me, with Lisa snuggled against her. She didn’t mention that we’d met up a few times that week already, so I didn’t bring it up either. I told myself it didn’t mean anything; there simply wasn’t an opportunity or a reason to mention it. But it felt like a secret, and I liked having a secret with Steph.

Lisa had chosen the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers to watch. In the movie, humans were replaced by aliens who took on their exact physical appearance, hatching out of gooey pods that reminded me of the eggs in Alien. The aliens in Invasion looked just like their human counterparts, but were devoid of emotion.

“They’re zombies,” Steph said.

“No, they’re Communists,” Lisa said. “They represent the fear that Communists could be anywhere—they could be your neighbor!” She made a face and pretended to be freaked out.

“People are still scared of Communists,” Mel said. “It’s capitalist propaganda. We should all be communists—hello, national health care.”

“But Communism in the fifties wasn’t good,” I said. They all looked at me, startled, and I said, “China—Communist China—that was bad.” I didn’t know much about Communist China, but I knew that my mom had left it for a reason.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Mel said.

“Well, what are you saying?” I asked.