David Levithan - 19 Love Songs

“THE DEVIL!” I mimicked back.

I felt Damien’s hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go,” he whispered.

“This is so pathetic,” I said. “Sung, man, you’re pathetic. ”

Sung lunged forward then, and Damien stepped in between us.

“Go,” Damien told me. “Now.”

I was laughing again, so I apologized to Frances again, then I pulled myself into the hallway.

Damien came out a few seconds later and closed the door behind us.

“Holy shit!” I said.

“Stop it,” Damien said. “Enough.”

“Enough?” I laughed again. “I haven’t even started.”

Damien shook his head. “You’re cold, man,” he said. “I can’t believe how cold you are.”

“What?” I asked. “You don’t find this funny?”

“You have no heart.”

This sobered me up pretty quickly. “How can you say that?” I asked. “How can you, of all people, say that?”

“What does that mean? Me, of all people?”

He’d gotten me.

“Alec?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “Okay? I don’t know. ”

This sounded like the truth, but it was feeling less than that. I knew. Or I was starting to know.

“I do have a heart,” I said. But I stopped there.

I could feel it all coming apart. The collapse of all those invisible plans, the appearance of all those hidden thoughts.

I bolted. I left him right there in the hallway. I didn’t wait for the elevator—I hit the emergency stairs. I ran like I was the one on the cross-country team, even when I heard him following me.

“Don’t!” I yelled back at him.

I got to my floor and ran to my room. The card wouldn’t work the first time, and I nervously looked at the stairway exit, waiting for him to show up. But he must’ve stopped. He must’ve heard. I got the key through the second time.

Wes was on his bed, reading a comic.

“You’re back early,” he said, not looking up.

I couldn’t say a thing. There was a knock on the door. Damien calling out my name.

“Don’t answer it,” I said. “Please, don’t answer it.”

I locked myself in the bathroom. I stared at the mirror.

I heard Wes murmur something to Damien through the door without opening it. Then he was at the bathroom door.

“Alec? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, but my voice was soggy coming out of my throat.

“Open up.”

I couldn’t. I sat on the lip of the tub, breathing in, breathing out. I remembered the look on Sung’s face and started to laugh. Then I thought of Frances lying there and felt sad. I wondered if I really didn’t have a heart.

“Alec,” Wes said again, gently. “Come on.”

I waited until he walked off. Then I opened the door and went into the bedroom. He was back on his bed, but he hadn’t picked up the comic. He was sitting at the edge, waiting for me.

I told him what had happened. Not the part about Damien, at first, but the part about Sung and Frances. He didn’t laugh, and neither did I. Then I told him Damien’s reaction to my reaction, without going into what was underneath.

“Do you think I’m cold?” I asked him. “Really—am I?”

“You’re not cold,” he said. “You’re just so angry.”

I must’ve looked surprised by this. He went on.

“You can be a total prick, Alec. There’s nothing wrong with that—all of us can be total pricks. We like to think that just because we’re geeks, we can’t be assholes. But we can be. Most of the time, though, it’s not coming from meanness or coldness. It’s coming from anger. Or sadness. I mean, I see people like me and I just want to rip them apart.”

“But why do I want to rip Sung apart?”

“I don’t know. Because he’s a prick, too. And maybe you feel if you rip apart the quiz bowl geek, no one will think of you as a quiz bowl geek.”

“But I’m not a quiz bowl geek!”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Wes asked. “Nobody’s a quiz bowl geek. We’re all just people. And you’re right—what we do here has no redeeming social value whatsoever. But it can be an interesting way to pass the time.”

I sat down on my bed, facing Wes so that our knees almost touched.

“I’m not a very happy person,” I told him. “But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.”

“And where does Damien fit into all this, if I may ask?”

I shook my head. “I really have no idea. I’m still figuring it out.”

“You know he likes girls?”

“I said, I’m still figuring it out.”

“Fair enough.”

I paused, realizing what had just been said.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked Wes.

“Only to me,” he said.

It would take me another three months to understand why.

“Meanwhile,” he went on, “Sung and Frances.”

“Holy shit, right?”

“Yeah, holy shit. And you know the worst part?”

“I can’t imagine what’s worse than seeing it with my own eyes.”

“Gordon is totally in love with Frances.”

“No!”

“Yup. I wouldn’t miss practice tonight for all the money in the world.”

We all showed up. Mr. Phillips could sense there was some tension in the room, but he truly had no idea.

Frances was wearing Sung’s varsity jacket. And suddenly I didn’t mind it so much.

Gordon glared at Sung.

Sung glared at me.

I avoided Damien’s eyes.

When I looked at Wes, he made me feel like I might be worth saving.

Amazingly enough, during practice we were back in fighting form, as if nothing had happened. I felt like I could admit to myself how much I wanted to win. And not just that, how much I wanted our team to win. More for Wes and Frances and Gordon and Damien than anything else.

After we were done, Damien asked me if we could talk for a minute. Everyone else headed back to their rooms and we went down to the lobby. Other quiz bowl groups were swarming around; those that hadn’t made the semifinals were taking the night for what it was—a time when, for a brief pause in their high school lives, they were free from any pressure or care.

“I’m sorry,” Damien said to me. “I was completely off base.”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have been so mean to Sung and Frances. I should’ve just left.”

We sat there next to each other on a lime-green couch in a hotel lobby that meant nothing to us. He wouldn’t look at me. I wouldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “Reacted that way.”

It would take him another four months to figure it out. It would be a little too late, but he’d figure it out anyway.

We lost in the semifinals to Iowa. I knew from the look Sung gave me afterward that he would blame me for this loss for the rest of his life. Not because I missed the questions—and I did get two wrong. But for destroying his own invisible plans.

Looking back, I don’t think I’ve ever hated any piece of clothing as much as I hated Sung’s varsity jacket for those few weeks. You can’t hate something that much unless you hate yourself equally as much. Not in that kind of way.

It was, I guess, Wes who taught me that. Later, when we were back home and trying to articulate ourselves better, I’d ask him how he’d known so much more than I had.

“Because I read, stupid” would be his answer.

We lost in the semifinals, but the local paper took our picture anyway. Sung looks serious and aggrieved. Gordon looks awkward. Frances looks calm. Damien looks oblivious. And Wes and me?

We look like we’re in on our own joke.

In other words, happy.

When I am eight, Valentine’s Day is a Sunday. There is no certain minute I have to wake up, no bus to catch, no homework that needs to be handed in. Sleeping can blur itself into waking, and that is exactly what it does.