Page 49 of Talk to Me

“I just want everyone to know that we’re going to take it at Homecoming! Don’t doubt the Lions, man! We’re bringing it home this year! Woot!”

Clark ran away from the camera, arms waving crazy, prancing all over the quad. Theo turned the phone to look into the camera, a confused, yet amused, look on his face.

I blew out a laugh and swiped again.

“Talk to me, Callie,” Theo said. “What do you want everyone to know?”

“We have a book club every Saturday afternoon at the student union center. So, if you want to know which book we’re reading, and—”

I closed the Peepers app. Most of the people who stopped Theo and asked to be on his channel were not the serious type. While I was happy that people were generally being nicer to Theo and wanting to be involved with his social media, I was bothered by the quality of things they had to say. Not wanting to seem arrogant, I still felt that it began because Arthur had shared a genuinely poignant story about being marginalized, how he literally fought back, and the lesson he learned from it.

Students at Midway just wanted to be on Theo’s Peepers channel, for the most part. They simply wanted their face to be seen and their voices to be heard by a bunch of people for a few seconds. Aside from Maya, the lesbian, no one really said anything incredibly poignant. Not that tampon machines weren’t important, and showing school pride wasn’t awful—and making sure vegetarians had options was good—most of videos seemed to be of people without something deep to say.

Shaking my head, I laid my phone on my desk and stood. I’d have to forget about the quality—or lack thereof—in the videos Theo had posted over the last few weeks. Eventually, I’d get a chance to talk to him about possibly making sure he didn’t let every random idiot say something on his channel. He never went live on Peepers, so he didn’t have to worry about some idiot saying something deeply problematic on his channel. So, I felt he could take his time to curate his videos better.

Since Theo had made me promise to tell him what I felt he was doing right, and what he was doing wrong, I was going to exercise my voice. Even if it was kind of entertaining watching my fellow students say the most random things on Peepers. I mean, who doesn’t want to see the smarty-pants from their freshman Economics class draw a blank when asked to speak?

“I don’t know,” Theo said as he pushed the door open to my dorm room. “I might have doomed us here.”

I turned in my desk chair to look at him. He’d put on his baggie red sweater with the appliqué woman in a white dress on the chest. Theo was holding the neck brace he still had to put on at his side. He’d teased his hair into a giant 80s mass of tangles and frizz, which he’d frozen in place with ozone-depleting amounts of hair spray. He didn’t have enough hair for a ponytail, so he’d done what he could to fit the part. I was wearing my electric blue baggie sweater, a paisley kerchief tied around my neck. My hair, short like Theo’s, was as crazy.

“No one is going to get this,” he said.

He gestured at his outfit.

“I think it’s brilliant.” I shrugged. “And if people don’t get it, we’ll do the dance.”

“Okay.” Theo leaned forward, as though speaking in confidence, though we were across the room from each other. “But what other twenty-one-year-old student at Midway University will get the Sixteen Candles Joan Cusack dancing at the high school dance reference?”

“We don’t make art to be understood!” I declared. “We make art to be artists!”

Theo laughed and waved me off.

“You don’t have to be nice because I picked a bad movie reference for our couple’s costume,” he said. “We should have gone with Romy and Michelle.”

“Look,” I said, “if you’re going to go with obscure references about movie female friends who dance at a school event together, you should go with the deep cut. It makes me laugh. It makes you laugh. Who cares if no one gets it? The more people don’t get it, the more opportunity we have to do the dance and let them guess.”

“You think?”

“I know,” I said. “And, when you post a video of you in your costume on Peepers, there will be tons of people who appreciate it. I swear.”

Theo eyed me. “You decide if you’ll do the dance with me for a Peepers video yet?”

“I’m considering it.” I turned in my chair, hoping he’d drop the subject.

“Mmmhm,” Theo said with a laugh. “You about ready?”

I sighed. “We should have gotten wigs.”

“I done been sayin’ that!” Theo crowed and strapped the neck brace on.

Laughing together, we grabbed our room keys and wallets from my bed where we’d left them. Theo tossed his bag of supplies he’d brought to get ready for the Halloween bonfire together with me into the corner at the foot of my bed. With Collin noticeably absent from the dorm we shared—and my life—getting ready in my room had been easiest. Neither of us wanted to get ready in Theo’s room, in case his roommate was scenting the air with his special brand of stink.

When we got into the hall, we found it flooded with other students in various stages of getting ready to head out to the bonfire. Greeted cheerfully by almost everyone we passed, we exchanged fist bumps and high-fives with several of the students on my floor. By the time we got down to the elevators, my hands stung from all the slaps. Also, we found that there was a line to use the elevators to get down to the lobby. Everyone was crowding around, waiting their turn, socializing and comparing costumes.

I felt bad that nearly no one had even clocked that Theo and I were dressed up, let alone that we had come up with a great duo costume. Not that it would break my heart if no one liked the costume idea, I still felt bad for Theo. When he’d suggested that we dress up like Joan Cusack and her dance partner in Sixteen Candles, I’d thought it was hilarious. If it fell flat and no one “got it,” he’d feel defeated.

“Come on.” Theo grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the elevators, yanking me from my thoughts.