Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“Five years ago, maybe? Shit.”

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth said, turning back to face Zoe, who had covered her face with a pillow. “It’s okay.”

Harry’s room was painted dark purple, and it was a little bit like sleeping inside a gigantic eggplant. He could have asked his parents to paint it another color, but it didn’t really matter, seeing as the purple only peeked out here and there between the edges of the posters and other things he’d taped to the walls. He was going for one complete layer, like the people who got tattooed over their entire bodies, even their eyelids. Harry didn’t care about everything he’d put on the walls, but at some point he’d cared enough to put it all up there, and he respected his own process. It was okay to grow out of things and keep them around. He liked being reminded that he’d been obsessed with Rugrats and Bart Simpson and, for a few inexplicable months around his thirteenth birthday, Kobe Bryant. He didn’t even like basketball. Mostly the walls were covered with pages ripped from magazines and things he’d printed out, pages from books that he’d copied at school. It was like Tumblr, only 3-D, with no scrolling. The narrow strip of wall next to his closet was completely covered by pictures of sandwiches. Teenage girls got all the credit for being angsty and weird, and it wasn’t fair. Even at Whitman, which was supposed to be progressive and artsy, the boys bragged about the time they went to a shooting range with their grandfathers in Connecticut or Virginia. They wanted to learn how to drive and listened to hip-hop. Harry wasn’t interested in any of it. Luckily, his father wasn’t the kind of guy who insisted on things — everything Harry had ever done was because he wanted to, like the child sultan of a palace with only two servants.

Going to one school from age five to age eighteen was like being buried in amber. It wasn’t even like his walls, which were covered with layers of things — you had to be the same person from start to finish, with no big cognitive jumps. Harry was quiet and sweet and did his homework. He had three close friends, two boys and one girl, and he wasn’t particularly fond of any of them. He didn’t vape or drink malt liquor, because there were other kids who did that and he wasn’t one of them. He had smoked weed a few times, but he knew that his parents did, too, so it didn’t seem that bad. Harry lived in a monastery built of his childhood likes and dislikes. His parents loved it, and he never got into trouble, and it made him want to scream.

His phone vibrated in his pocket: COME OUTSIDE. It was from a number he didn’t have in his phone. Harry walked over to the window and pulled the curtain to one side. Ruby was leaning against a parked car, holding her phone over her face, with her giant dog leaning against her legs. Harry’s parents were in bed, or working — their bedroom was upstairs, and his mother often worked late at the small desk in their room. BE RIGHT THERE, he texted back. Harry changed his T-shirt twice and then tiptoed down the hall. The route to the front door was creaky but clear.

“What’s up?” Harry said once he was a few feet from Ruby. She hadn’t moved. Her hair was spread out over the passenger-side window like big purple jellyfish. Bingo sniffed genially in Harry’s direction.

“Walk with me, my moms are being total dicks.” Ruby pushed herself back to standing and pulled Bingo’s leash in the direction of the park. Harry put his hands in his pockets and followed. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and stuck one in her mouth. “Want one?” she said through her teeth.

Harry shook his head and watched Ruby cup one hand around the end of her cigarette and flick a lighter with the other. He was amazed at how brazen she was — smoking on their very own block, where they knew the people inside every house, all of whom could have picked up the phone and called her mothers. Very few kids at Whitman smoked. It wasn’t like when their parents were young, when everyone had packs of ciggies in their back pockets instead of cell phones. Now everyone understood about lungs and cancer and how the tobacco companies were trying to appeal to youth. It seemed borderline pathetic to give in, not that Harry could have thought that anything Ruby did was pathetic. It looked bad on other people, was all. The small contingent of smokers at school went around the corner to do it, or crossed the street and sat on benches in the park. Harry had never smoked a single cigarette — he’d actually never been offered one before. That was how small Whitman was. It wasn’t even a question. Harry Marx didn’t smoke. It was a fact.

They walked three blocks straight up Argyle, until they hit the soccer fields and the back of the tennis center. It was dark, and the park was closed, but there were still a few people kicking around a ball. “Rebels,” Harry said, and Ruby laughed. They crossed Caton Avenue and walked into Prospect Park proper. Harry didn’t like going into the park at night, even though there were always people running or biking around the main loop. It just seemed like one of those things that people did right before something bad happened to them, like running upstairs instead of out the front door in a horror movie. At least they had the dog with them, even if Bingo was geriatric and had permanent tearstains under his sad eyes. Ruby nudged Harry toward the bridle path, a soft dirt road that went a little bit farther into the park than Harry would have liked, but she moved with such confidence that he didn’t want to be lame. Bingo seemed to know where they were going. Finally, after a few minutes, Ruby plopped down on a bench. They were completely alone, staring out at the lake.

“People fish here, have you seen that?” Ruby asked. She lit another cigarette, and this time didn’t bother to ask Harry if he wanted one. “You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to eat a fish that was born in Brooklyn.”

“I’m pretty sure no one is paying anyone a million dollars to eat anything that was born in Brooklyn,” Harry said. He watched the red end of Ruby’s cigarette move up and down to her mouth. It got brighter when she inhaled, and for a second Harry imagined that he was the cigarette, his entire body, and when she drew the smoke into her lungs, he felt himself slip inside her throat and slide down into her body. He felt the softness of her lips and the thick velvet of her tongue. “So that SAT lady is pretty bad, huh.”

“Um, yes,” Ruby said. She gripped the cigarette in her teeth and pulled her hair to one side and wove it into a thick braid. “She’s a fucking psycho.” Bingo opened his mouth in a wide, stinky yawn.

“Speaking of psychos, has Dust called you? Do I need to hire a bodyguard?” Harry tried to make his voice sound as light as possible, but he had been worried. Dust seemed like the kind of guy who had a lot of scary-looking friends who knew how to do things like get into fights, which Harry definitely, definitely did not.

“Oh, he’s totally harmless,” Ruby said. “I’m pretty sure.”

“What about your moms?” Harry said. There were ducks in the lake, swimming from one side to the other, and Harry wondered when ducks slept, and how long they lived with their parents. Then he wondered if kids who grew up in Manhattan thought ducks were mythological creatures, like cows, things that existed only in picture books and in cheese commercials. Or maybe they had ducks there, too, in the park. There were some kids at Whitman who took the train from the city every day, which seemed beyond stupid, like walking up the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building. There were easier ways to accomplish the same thing.

“They’re probably getting divorced. I don’t officially know that yet, but I know your mom does, so maybe you do, too.” He didn’t. Ruby shrugged. “It sucks.”