“I don’t think Cham is ready to come back.” Sal giggles, shattering my inner silence.

“Cham?” Brendan squeezes my hand.

“Oh!” I pull my hand back, mortified. I guess that was a strange time for holding hands. I step into the hallway as Sal is following Brendan toward the door. She waves, and he puts his suitcase down to give her a good-bye hug. Strangely enough, I’m actually glad I opened my big fat mouth full of feelings. It seemed to help all of us.

“See Sal soon?” Brendan asks. She nods, then waves again as he and I walk down the hall in silence. The wheels of the suitcase slide against the floor. We’re quiet until we reach the elevator.

“Well, I should go,” I say, pressing the button. “But what was up with that?”

He laughs and plays with the fabric of his tutu. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

I shake my head.

“When my brother was dying, he started putting on this costume every day and telling stories about himself, you know, narrating his life. He put on a mustache and a tutu and he’d say things like ‘Looks like Adam won’t be dying today!’ or, on bad days, ‘Everyone say farewell to Adam! This could be it!’ The therapists thought he wasn’t facing reality, but I think sometimes the only way to know the truth about ourselves is to not be ourselves for a little while. Like, trick ourselves through our suffering.”

He looks at me without blinking or turning away. I study the features of his face and try to piece that together. “Heal with laughter?” I ask.

“That’s the goal.” A curl has fallen out of the little bun on top of his head, and he tucks it behind his ear. “Well, I should snag this,” he says as the elevator doors open.

“Yeah, I should go too.”

“What’s your number?” he asks, holding the doors open with his foot as he takes his phone out.

“Uh, mine?” For some reason it makes me nervous. Not that I think he’s asking for my number like that.

“Just in case you need a distraction,” he adds, looking up at me with thick, dark eyelashes that I’ve somehow only noticed now. “Or want to talk about being scared.”

I swallow a tangled lump of feelings. “Right, uh, here, I’ll put it in.”

When I’m done, he presses the button and removes his foot. “Nice to see you get the feels, Cham,” he teases.

“I love getting the feels,” I call through the crack between the doors that’s getting smaller and smaller as they inevitably move toward each other. I love them so much that I lock them in the basement of my heart like a hostage.

The doors fully close. It’s just me staring at my warped reflection in the metal panels. I snort, then snort again, realizing I needed to take the elevator too.

Dear Universe,

Have you ever been wrong about a person? When you go to school with someone day after day and year after year, it becomes impossible to really know them beyond how you think you know them. Being in high school is essentially being stuck in how everyone sees you and knows you and has seen you and has known you. If there were a way around that, do you think it’d be possible to fall for someone you never even expected to stumble over?