“Look, not all of us can get with college boys. Try not to judge the rest of us lowlies.” Both of Asha’s parents teach at Cornell, which is her stated preferred environment for looking for love. Although, from what I can tell, that’s as far as she tends to get. Looking. Can’t really blame her, though. There might not be a guy within a thousand miles actually good enough for Asha.
She leans in so that I can smell her cinnamon gum and hooks the wire back over my ear. “My sympathies,” she says. She tears a strip of tape with her teeth and secures the mic again, while I try to ignore the follicles pulling at my temple. “Just don’t forget to be the interviewer.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember when we went to that thing on career day? The guy said, when you go to a job interview, they’re interviewing you, but you’re interviewing them, too. Like, do you even want this job?”
“Okay, so?”
“So, you got to do that with boys, too.”
“Um, he’s hired.”
“All I’m going to say is, he’s at all the dances. Occupied.”
“Well, of course. He’s a really good dancer,” I say, defensive.
Asha puts a hand up, like,no offense. “All right, don’t let me yuck your yum.” She gives the mic one last tug, squints at me,and nods to herself. “Practically invisible.” Then she tucks the other end of the wire under the tunic overlay on my costume. I wiggle around, letting gravity pull the wire straight.
“Great. Let’s let my love life go for a hot second. New subject,” I say.
“What did you think about what Nolan said the other day, about different dimensions?” she says without missing a beat.
One might assume I’d have a clear answer for her, since I’ve seen Mason—what—four times now? I could easily say, “Nope, he’s still in this dimension, and he doesn’t look like a baby shark. Although he seems to be glowing.” But I have a reservation or ten about revealing to Asha that I might be a few French fries short of a Happy Meal in the sanity department.
“Oh, you know Nolan,” I say. “His whole life is a response to whatever media he’s absorbed in the last forty-eight hours. Remember when we watched that James Bond marathon? He thrifted a tuxedo and wore it to class for a week.”
Asha seems dissatisfied with this answer. She hooks the controls to my waistband, plugs in the cord, and clicks on the volume. Then she sits down at the soundboard and throws on headphones. “Now talk.”
“I was talking already,” I point out. “You just didn’t respond.”
“All it takes is a mic and this girl goes straight diva. Say ‘testing one, two,’ please, Your Highness.”
“Testing one, two. How’s that, Headphones?”
“Perfect.” She pulls the headphones off again, lays themdown, and exhales deeply, tapping freshly manicured nails on the soundboard.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I mean, I never thought I’d say this about Nolan, but maybe he’s got the right idea. Typical heaven doesn’t seem to make much sense, logically, you know? Like certainly nothing up in the clouds with wings and shit. But the thought that everything we are just disappears when we die doesn’t seem right, either. There’s got to be some sort of energy transfer.” She said that before, at the lunch table. Something about energy. But the particular phraseenergy transfermakes the hair stand up on my arms. Is that what’s happening? I feel like I’m holding out on her, like I’m hogging Mason all to myself, but I don’t know how to get around it.
“I like this theory, that somehow our energy is forever,” I say.
“I have to think that way, ’cause otherwise I can’t stop imagining Mason at the bottom of the lake, all white and waterlogged and bloated.” She shudders.
“Oh my God.” I’m shocked.
“Sorry, overshare alert one sentence too late.”
I shake my head. “No, I hear you. Look, I never thought about death at all before and now I think about it all the time. So it makes sense that you’re focusing on what you need to in order to not completely wig out.” The creek flashes back to me, the unmistakable Mason I couldn’t quite grasp, who seems to be slipping in and out of my reality like a tide with a fierce rip current. Does that make me more okay? Or less?
The walkie-talkie next to Asha crackles to life. “Ten minutes, everyone. Ten minutes.”
“Yikes, I’m behind,” she says. “You’re all set, Queenie. Can you go grab Lancelot and tell him to come get miked up?”
“Sure.” I open the door and there’s Richard, about to knock. He smiles.
This is the first time I’ve seen him since his tongue was in my mouth and the surprise almost makes my knees go out. I gasp, accidentally breathing in a little bit of my own spit. A coughing fit follows. It’s all very sexy.
He seems not to notice. “Just the woman I was looking for,” he says, pulling a blindfold out of his pocket. Asha raises an eyebrow at the blindfold, then looks at me. “Never mind, I’ll radio for Lance. You look like you’re going to be busy not getting labeled.”
