You know how I like my coffee, and you know not to talk to me in the morning until I’ve made it a third of the way through the cup. You know how scared I was when my dad got sick, and how relieved I was when he got better.

But you don’t know what it means to be us.

There will always be looking. There will always be those who stare too long or look away too quickly.

“What it is?” you ask, looking down at me as the music slows. You put your arms around my waist.

“Nothing.”

You say my name in the way you do when you call me on my shit.

“Everyone is looking at us. Everyone will always be looking at us.”

“Because you’re so beautiful. And I’m so lucky.”

I say your name like I do when I call you on your shit.

“I only see you,” you tell me with urgency.

“But I need you to see them, too.”

And then you nod.

That’s when I kiss you. It is all the things I imagined, sweet and breathless and heart quickening, all the things that I’d never known. It’s the beginning of us. And when the kiss is done, you look around to see if our friends and not-friends and teachers are looking—

And I don’t.

What We Love

What We
Love

Lauren Gibaldi

“What do you think purgatory means? Viv?”

I look up from my tattered library copy of Dante’s Inferno and answer, “It’s an in-between place. Like, between heaven and hell and they’re debating where you’re going.”

“Good,” Ms. Rizzoli says, turning back to the whiteboard. “Now in the book . . .”

“Poor you,” a voice whispers, and I brace myself for the insult. “You may know about purgatory, but you’re definitely not going there.”

“Sure,” I say with a roll of my eyes at Jessica Prichard, sitting next to me with her perfect posture, perfect straight blonde hair, and perfect manicure. She maintains a look of perfection to make up for the awfulness deep down inside her.

“Because you’re going to hell,” she says. I would have been surprised, insulted, had she not been telling me this all year, since she “discovered Jesus.” Really she just discovered a hot guy who wears a cross.

“Cool,” I say and go back to my book, flipping the soft pages with my thumb. I feel someone looking at me and turn back to see Nikhil. He does that embarrassed head nod thing when our eyes meet, then looks down. Great, he heard.

A million years later, the bell finally rings and I get up as quickly as possible.

“Hey, Viv?”

I pull on my shoulder bag and glance up at Nik. “Hey, what’s up?”