But there’s no way. It’s not possible.
My washcloth falls to the floor. All around me, girls tug hats off and let their hair down and scrub foamy soap onto their faces and zip up garment bags. A door bursts open somewhere, and there’s a sudden shriek of laughter.
My mind is racing. What do I know about Martin? What do I know about Blue?
Martin is smart, obviously. Is he smart enough to be Blue? I have no idea if Martin is half-Jewish. I mean, he could be. He’s not an only child, but I guess he could be lying about that. I don’t know. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense at all. Because Martin’s not gay.
But then again, someone thinks he is. Though I probably shouldn’t take anything on the authority of some anonymous asshole who called me a fag.
“Simon, no!” says Abby, appearing in the doorway.
“What?”
“You washed it off!” She stares at my face for a minute. “I guess you can still kind of see it.”
“You mean the ridiculous hotness?” I say, and she laughs.
“Listen. I just got a text from Nick, and he’s waiting for us in the parking lot. We’re taking you out tonight.”
“What?” I say. “Where?”
“I don’t know yet. But my mom’s up in DC this weekend, meaning the house and car are mine. So you’re spending the night in Suso territory.”
“We’re sleeping at your house?”
“Yup,” she says, and I notice that she’s out of makeup and back in her skinny jeans. “So go drop off your sister. Whatever you have to do.”
I look in the mirror and attempt to push down my hair. “Nora already took the bus,” I say slowly. It’s strange. The Simon in the mirror is still wearing contacts. Still almost unrecognizable. “Why are we doing this again?”
“Because we don’t have rehearsal for once,” she says, poking my cheek, “and because you’ve had a weird-ass day.”
I almost laugh. She has no fucking idea.
All the way out to the parking lot, she talks and schemes, and I let her words kind of wash over me. I’m a little stuck on this Martin situation. It’s almost unfathomable.
It would mean that Martin wrote that post on the Tumblr back in August—the one about being gay. And that Martin’s the one I’ve been emailing every day for five months. I can almost believe it, but I can’t explain the blackmail. If Martin’s actually gay, why bring Abby into it at all?
“I think we should spend the afternoon in Little Five Points,” Abby says, “and then we’re definitely going into Midtown.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
It just doesn’t make sense.
But then I think about the afternoons at Waffle House and the late evening rehearsals, and the way I was actually starting to like him before things fell apart. Blackmail with a side of friendship. Maybe that was the whole point.
Except I never got the vibe that he liked me. Not even once. So it can’t be that. Martin can’t be Blue.
Unless. But no.
Because it can’t be a joke. Blue can’t be a joke. That’s not even a possibility. No one could be that mean. Not even Martin.
I’m having trouble catching my breath.
It can’t be a joke, because I don’t know what I would do if it were a joke.
I can’t think about it. God. I’m sorry, but I can’t.
I won’t.
Nick’s waiting in front of the school, and he and Abby bump fists when they see each other. “Got him,” she says.
“So now what?” asks Nick. “We drive home and get our stuff, and then you pick us up?”
“That’s the plan,” says Abby. She swings her backpack around and unzips the smallest pouch, pulling out her car keys. Then she tilts her head to the side. “Did you guys talk to Leah?”
Nick and I look at each other.
“Not yet,” Nick says. He kind of deflates. It’s tricky, because as much as I love Leah, her presence changes everything. She’ll be moody and snarly about Nick and Abby. She’ll be weird about Midtown. And I don’t know how to describe it, really, but her self-consciousness is contagious sometimes.
But Leah hates being excluded.
“Maybe just us three,” Nick says, carefully, eyes shifting downward. I can tell he feels kind of shitty about this.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” Abby says. “Let’s go.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m in the backseat of Abby’s mom’s car with a stack of paperbacks under my feet.
“Put them anywhere,” Abby says, eyes flicking to meet mine in the rearview mirror. “She reads them when she’s waiting to pick me up. Or if I’m driving.”
“Wow, I get nauseous just from reading my phone in the car,” says Nick.
“Nauseated,” I say, and my heart twists.
“Well, listen to you, Mr. Linguist.” Nick turns around in his seat to grin at me.
Abby eases onto 285 and merges with no difficulty whatsoever. She doesn’t even appear tense. It occurs to me that she’s easily the best driver out of all of us.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask.
“I do,” says Abby. And twenty minutes later, we pull into the lot for Zesto. I never go to Zesto. I mean, I almost never come into Atlanta proper. It’s warm and noisy inside, full of people eating chili dogs and burgers and things like that. But I quite honestly don’t give a shit that it’s January. I get chocolate ice cream swirled with Oreos, and for the ten minutes it takes to eat it, I almost feel normal again. By the time we step back out to the car, the sun is beginning to set.
So then we go to Junkman’s Daughter. Which is right next to Aurora Coffee.
But I’m not thinking about Blue.
We spend a few minutes poking around inside. I sort of love Junkman’s Daughter. Nick gets caught up in a display of books about Eastern philosophy, and Abby buys a pair of tights. I end up wandering through the aisles, trying not to make eye contact with scary-looking pink mohawk girls.
I’m not thinking about Aurora Coffee, and I’m not thinking about Blue.
I can’t think about Blue.
I really can’t think about Blue being Martin.
It’s dark but not late, and Abby and Nick want to take me to this feminist bookstore that evidently has a lot of gay stuff. So we look through the shelves, and Abby pulls out LGBT picture books to show me, and Nick shuffles around looking awkward. Abby buys me a book about gay penguins, and then we walk down the street for a little while longer. But it’s getting chilly and we’re getting hungry again, so we pile back into the car and drive to Midtown.
Abby seems to know exactly where we’re going. She pulls into a side street and parallel parks like it’s nothing. Then we walk briskly up to the corner and onto the main road. Nick shivers in only a light jacket, and Abby rolls her eyes and says, “Georgia boy.” And then she puts her arm around him, rubbing her hand up and down his arm as they walk.
“Here we are,” she says finally when we arrive at a place on Juniper called Webster’s. There’s a big patio strung with Christmas lights and rainbow banners, and even though the patio’s empty, the parking lot is overflowing.
“Is this like a gay bar?” I ask.
Abby and Nick both grin.
“Okay,” I say, “but how are we getting in?” I’m five seven, Nick can’t grow facial hair, and Abby’s wearing a wristful of friendship bracelets. There’s no freaking way we pass for twenty-one.
“It’s a restaurant,” says Abby. “We’re getting dinner.”
Inside, Webster’s is packed with guys wearing scarves and jackets and skinny jeans. And they’re all cute and they’re all overwhelming. Most of them have piercings. There’s a bar in the back, and some kind of hip-hop music playing, and waiters turning sideways to squeeze through the crowd with pints of beer and baskets of chicken wings.
“Just the three of y’all?” asks the host, resting his hand on my shoulder for barely a second, but it’s enough to make my stomach flutter. “Should be just a minute, hon.”