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“It’s going well. I’m not sure I ever would have imagined being here like this. And now I can’t imagine not being here.”
This is the most truth he’s able to tell. Avery isn’t a place he belongs yet. But Avery is definitely a place he could belong, one day. Because the people you love lead you to places you wouldn’t have ordinarily gone. The people you love become places you wouldn’t have ordinarily gone.
Ryan doesn’t want to scare Avery away with his gratitude.
Good enough to hold hands, good enough to talk some more about the people inside. Good enough to have forgotten what’s waiting for him at home. Good enough to feel Avery breathing as he leans imperfectly on Ryan’s shoulder.
Pope bows from their conductor’s platform. Ryan and Avery watch as the music shifts into something more conversational. The dance floor disperses, mostly to the refreshment table. Pope disappears into the den, then reappears. They ask Baby Winston something, and Baby Winston points to the back door.
“I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now if you weren’t here,” Avery says.
Pope throws open the door with a flourish, unleashing all the voices inside to join Ryan and Avery in the backyard.
Ryan moves his free hand so it finds Avery’s free hand. They join.
“There you are!” Pope calls.
Both Ryan and Avery hear the intention in Pope’s sentence.
For the first time, they’ve become second person plural.
It fits.
Welcome to the Ocean
(the first date)
Ryan has never done anything like this before.
It almost feels like he’s in the passenger seat as he steers his way to the community center. He can’t exactly call his actions spontaneous—he’s been going back and forth about whether to go for weeks. And even now, even as he’s driving, at any moment he could still turn back. But back to what? That’s the question.
So he lets the truck go forward. That’s what it feels like. The truck is taking him there, not vice versa. Yeah, he’s at the wheel, but really he’s a passenger to something larger than his life. He’s giving in to it, because he wants his life to become larger, too.
The radio tries to encourage him, the sad songs reminding him of now, the anthems reminding him of what’s possible, the dizzying, glorious heights of self-assertion, of love. He is lucky to have a soundtrack for the war inside him—one side marching under an empty flagpole, convinced heisn’t worth much, and therefore deserves less; the other side carrying many flags, some of them rainbow, insisting that love is not only possible but inevitable, changing everything.
Your loneliness is not your fault,this side chants.We are out there. You will find us.
The velocity gives advantage to the voices of encouragement; being alone in your bedroom, staring at the ceiling and thinking that nothing will ever change, is very different from being alone in your truck, letting everything around you blur as you make an escape. He allows himself to think that maybe his lonelinessisn’this fault. The love he wants, the belonging he craves, won’t grow in the soil where other people have planted his life. But he is old enough now to begin the process of uprooting. This is it. This is him pulling himself from the earth at seventy-three miles an hour.
He doesn’t have any goal in mind. He’s not even sure he’ll have a good time. Alicia will be there, and a few kids from town will be there, but if this night ends up being about them, he’ll consider it a failure. He wants to prove to himself that he can be someone else, that his life can be something else, that the world will offer him somewhere else.
Even if it’s just a community center dance in a small town, it’ll be a start. Or not a start. This started long ago.
Not a start, but a step.
—
In Marigold, everyonegoes to Liz Macy’s house to pregame the gay prom. There is still widespread disbelief that it’shappening at all—if Kindling is at all like Marigold, Avery figures there will be some people in town who’d rather burn down the community center than have it host a queer event. But apparently they don’t get to decide. Avery chalks this up to progress…though he notes the progress may indeed be written in chalk.
Avery isn’t sure who first said, “If we’re going to go to a gay prom, we’re going to have to really gay it up,” but this philosophy has been adopted by most of the kids at Liz’s house. Liz and Hannah are dressed in matching Elton John, neon-blue sequined tuxedos, special-ordered by the local tuxedo shop. Jesse Lukas somehow found a blue-and-pink-striped jacket to reflect the trans-nonbinary flag. Pope has bedecked themself in a velvet ensemble, and Lana Yip, who graduated last year but has driven back from college to attend, is wearing a ball gown her grandmother wore toherprom.
Avery is excited to have the opportunity to wear his suit, an item of clothing he’s proud of but never really has an occasion to wear. When he wears it, he feels more seriously himself, more formally himself. Everyone in the store was sure it would need to be tailored in order to fit, but the moment he tried it on, he knew that wouldn’t be necessary. It fit. It was meant for him, and he was meant to wear it tonight.
He puts on a white shirt, then the black suit. He doesn’t have too many ties, but figures a black one will work. It takes a few attempts to tie it so that it doesn’t have a tail. Then he heads to the kitchen, to show his parents. His mom becomes all emotional and goes for her camera. Buthis dad…his dad takes one look and says, “No, that’s not right.” Then he leaves the room, too.
Avery feels his emotions stutter. What is his dad talking about? Even though Avery is sure of his parents’ support, he can’t help but have that lingering fear that there is something he can do that will make it topple. Being human means never being entirely sure of other people, even if they’re your parents.
But then his dad returns to the kitchen with the strange contraption from his closet, the hanger with special tabs that hold his ties in a bookshelf row.
