I had this really awful time in ninth grade. A boy I liked had talked me into texting him a picture of me in a Speedo. I mean, it’s not like it was nude, okay? I’m not brainless, just occasionally impulsive. And he texted back the meanest things about how I looked. I mean, like, fired them off, rounds from an AR-15, so quickly it felt like he was loaded before I sent the pic. And then he blocked me entirely. I didn’t want to go to school the next day, so Nix came over, missing two tests and a lab final, to sit in my room streaming The Office reruns, telling me that watching other people cringe would be just the right medicine. They were right, and now they’re thirty-six years away.

I try to blink back tears and check to see if my friends are a mess too. Ma Elena and Leeza both are swaying softly, arms linked. But Chaz is transported. His eyes are closed, face upturned as if trying to catch the light of the moon, and he has his arms fanned out at his sides, palms open, as if he may lift off. Ernie and I both watch him, transfixed by this vision of Chaz as a mystic. What does Ernie see? Someone who moves through the world with a grace he does not have?

What do I see? I hate to admit it: I see boyfriend material. I know, I know I have a boyfriend, but Chaz is so beautiful right now I’d have to be a fool not to swoon a little if I’m going to be stuck here. And I’m so not a fool.

It strikes me that what’s happening right now is different: No one films our dancing. No one stops to check their DMs. We are present for it, really present, in the moment. Obviously, we could make this happen in my time, but we don’t. Not ever.

When the song ends, no one moves. We let the spell linger. I know I will never forget this, not in any of my lives.

Not from Around Here

Not from Around Here

A rapping at our door wakes me, but not Ernie—that boy is Sleeping Beauty, I swear. I stumble out of bed to answer, and I have an enormous woody, which is mortifying but totally fair. (It’s not like I can masturbate with Ernie six feet away.) But who cares? Who do I have to impress?

To my surprise, it’s the dean. He takes a full step back upon sight (seriously), but he’s used to teenage boys by now. “Someone’s up.” I want to die, which he clocks, and it amuses him. “Might want to cover that up before you see Silverthorn.”