Did adults even give two shits? It was hard to believe they did.

I remain, in some way, in love with that house, tortured by it, even though it no longer exists. I think it may be the most perfect thing I have ever seen. Better even than the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal or the Palace of Versailles.

I used to believe you could cross a line. And once you had crossed it, you would never be the same. Metaphysically. If you stabbed someone. If you killed someone. If you ate someone. If you fucked someone. I remember after the first time I had sex, examining myself in the mirror afterward. Was I different? Or was I exactly the same? I was horrified to see my face there, my piranha underbite, my blackhead-seeded nose, the exact same, too-tender pink eyelid skin. Nothing, I suddenly knew, nothing could ever truly change me. All magic vanished from the world with a hiss.

So why was I so uncomfortable with Bunny hitting Ann Marie in the face? Why did the thought of her kissing Coach Eric make my stomach clench? Why was I so incredibly angry that she had soaked that house in coyote urine?

Why did I still refuse to talk, really talk, to my mother, even after all these years?

* * *

—

I was walking home from my shift at Rite Aid, deep in an internal reverie, when a car door popped open right beside me and I almost screamed, sure I was about to be murdered.

“It’s me, oh god, I scared you! Can we talk?” It was Anthony. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of the dark car and he looked like hell. The bags under his eyes were fat as change purses.

“I shouldn’t,” I said, knowing that I would, that I wanted to get in the car and that I was helpless before that want. The most I could do was delay. “My aunt has forbidden me from talking to you or seeing you,” I said, as dryly as I could. “Or she’ll kick me out.” I shrugged in my coat. It was cold from the night sea breezes and I could feel my own saliva chill on my lips. My neighbor Mrs. Cowan’s black cat, the one with no tail, meandered down the road ahead of me.

Anthony visibly deflated. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “You poor fucking kid. I’m so sorry.”

I had never heard Anthony swear before, but here he was using no-no words. It felt good, how bad he looked, how rattled he seemed. Like all this had been a big deal for him too. Like I mattered.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” he said, looking out his windshield into the middle distance, like he was on a highway, was driving through a forest of things that were just shitty. That’s what his face looked like. Like when he looked at the world, all he could see were things that were stupid and shitty. I swung myself into the passenger seat and slammed the car door behind me. My book bag was in my lap. It was suddenly awkward and quiet in the car; we could hear each other breathe.

“I realize I am behaving like a psychopath,” he said. “I—I’m not trying to stalk you. For whatever myopic reason, it did not occur to me that continuing to contact you could be putting you in jeopardy. That’s very helpful to hear actually. It makes your silence less personal.”

That wasn’t what I wanted him to say, but I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t say anything in response. I wanted to press my silence into him like a knife. I wanted to hurt him with it. I cleared my throat.

“I see,” he said.

And then I couldn’t stand it anymore, because somehow, frighteningly, I could not remember why I was mad at him in that moment, and yet I still felt all the physiological sensations of anger: the prickling in the throat, the hammering heart. I wanted to make him say he loved me, and I wanted to hear his voice, just unspooling, saying more and more in the darkness. “You lied to me,” I said. That seemed like the clearest of the transgressions. It was the place to start, even though I knew it wasn’t why I was angry with him. I had lied to him just as often. I lied to everyone. I assumed that most people lied to each other, constantly, habitually. This soup is delicious, I love your earrings, of course I’ve read Proust…Civilization itself was a lie, North Shore was a lie, clothing was a lie, language was a lie.

“I did,” Anthony said, and nodded.

“I’m not an excuse for your midlife crisis. I’m a person,” I said. “I’m not a convertible you buy when you figure out you’re going bald.” I was getting shrill. I tried again, more reasonably toned. “Or maybe this has been an ongoing thing? Maybe you’ve been cheating on your wife this whole time with different boys?”

“No,” Anthony said, “you were the only one.”

“I just don’t get it, are you gay? Or?”

“I think I’m bi,” he said.

“Jesus,” I said. “I can’t believe you fuck women.” I had wanted, as different as we were in age and background, in this one way for us to be the same.

“The fact that you think it’s disgusting is one of the reasons I’ve always shied away from dating men,” he said.

“Vaginas are disgusting,” I said. “So many folds, and the smell.” I had never seen a vagina in my life, but I felt confident I never wanted to.

“No one’s body is disgusting,” Anthony said quietly.

“You watched your wife push a baby out of that thing and you still want to fuck it? Color me confused is all, not my cup of tea.”

“Or maybe,” he said, “it’s easier for you to joke that your sexuality is about hating vaginas, instead of the fact that it’s about loving cock. Maybe being mean about women makes you feel better about the ways people are mean to you.”

“Don’t fucking psychoanalyze me.” None of this was going how I wanted or needed it to go. Why had I even gotten in his car? I just wanted to be by myself and cry. I didn’t want to fight, or explain myself, or understand. I just wanted to cry with no one watching me and then smoke a cigarette in a bathtub. It seemed insane that such simple desires were so impossible to fulfill, and yet it would be years before I would have my own space, my own house, and be allowed to smoke in a bathtub.

“I cheated on my wife with you,” Anthony said, “but that doesn’t make my entire life a lie.”

“Doesn’t it, though?”

“No,” he said, his voice resounding. He squeezed the leather of his steering wheel until it squeaked under his huge palms, and then he suddenly released it, raked his fingers through his hair, shaking with rage. “What the fuck am I doing here?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“When I was your age,” he said, his nostrils flaring, his rage contorting his face into something beautiful and strange, “I fell in love with my friend.”