Queer rep is like “I’m a girl…. But I like?? A girl >_<“ Meanwhile queer coding is like “I look at her face through her fishnet veil. Is she pissed? I can’t tell because it’s hard to see her expression in the dark. I shrug, smile, but feel my lip jerk to one side.
“Okay. Stressful. School and all.”
She nods at the moon, who would never be stressed out by dumb things like school. I wish she would look at me.
“I missed you.” I say it with feeling. Too much feeling. “I tried to text. I thought maybe you left town or something.”
“Nope, still here. Well, there was that really brief stint with Diego in Paris. He got me this coat.”
“It’s nice.” I say it before I even look at her coat but now that I do, I realize it is a nice coat, a very nice coat, and I’ve never seen her in it before. Probably another spoil from the Warren dumpster but no, it looks too new. It’s got a fur collar. “Is that real fur?”
“Rabbit.” She blows smoke coolly out of her nostrils like a dragon. “He skinned it himself. Don’t look so appalled, Smackie. That’s what they do in Europe. Anyway, it had a good life before he shot it. Lots of tall grass and hopping in the Bois de Boulogne or whatever.”
She grins at me, her eyes shining. “Oh, how was your little sex party thing, by the way?”
“I mean, it was super lame,” I add. “I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. Ever.”
She looks at me. “You’re allowed to have fun without me,
“I know,” I say. “But I really didn’t. At all.”
She looks at me until I look away.
When I look back at her, she’s staring up at the moon, smiling serenely at it like the moon is her new best friend, it’s telling her the most gorgeous things in the world, it would never betray her for some dumb cunts. I could never compare. I shouldn’t try.
“I really missed you this week. I thought maybe you were upset with me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you went to that lame party?”
When she says it aloud like that, it sounds utterly stupid.
“No. I don’t know. Maybe,” I say.
She laughs and shakes her head. “Don’t be an idiot.” She turns back toward the moon. “Unlike your new friends, I’m a grown woman.” “I know.”
“I have my own devices.” She looks down the street as though she’s waiting for a taxi that will arrive and whisk her away any minute now. The street is dark, empty, aside from a few scared-looking undergrads walking quickly down the sidewalk, huddled together, their coiffed heads bent, purse logos shimmering in the dark. Probably venturing toward the one cool bar downtown.
The tango music swells up again.
“We’d better go back inside,” she says and moves to walk in.
“I’m sorry I went,” I blurt out. “I would much rather have hung out with you.” It’s the truth. It’s so the truth I can’t even look at her.
“Do you want me to be mad at you? Is that it?” “No,” I say.
“Because I will be. Samantha, how dare you.” “Ava.”
“Why oh why did you desert me for three hours?”
“Do you know I almost died? In fact,” she turns to look at me, “I am dead.” “Don’t.”
“Oh yes. I’m a ghost now, Samantha. I died of a broken heart. I died of grief. It’s in the autopsy. And it’s all your fault. My tombstone reads, Friend Deserted for Evening. I didn’t invite you to the funeral because I figured you wouldn’t care.”
She moves in closer. Cups her hands around my face. Her hands are cold and soft and strong through the mesh gloves that grate my skin. She smells like wet leaf, firewood, and green tea. Her hair is platinum feathers brushing my cheeks. Her eyes are runny and scary with makeup, both the brown one and the blue one boring into my skull. We’re swaying slightly like we’re about to dance.
I remember how the first time we came to class, we were late and all the men had been taken. So the teacher said, You two, pair up! Take turns leading.
Are you leading or am I? I asked Ava.
Whatever, she said. We can both lead.
Okay, I said, not knowing what to do. So I sort of followed and led at the same time. She was looking right at me sort of dreamily, happily, like what bliss, what fun, isn’t it? but I didn’t know where to look, so I kept my eyes on a peacock feather earring dangling from her left ear. It felt a little like holding a dream.
I’m staring at that feather now, though this doesn’t feel like a dream.
“Samantha,” she says now, “I don’t care, okay? I really don’t. You want to go to a pretentious party and fraternize with bonobos, I honestly give zero fucks. I don’t care what you do or where you go, okay?”
I feel my breath being knocked out of me. “Okay,” I say. She looks at me.
Tears are suddenly running down my face.
“Smackie,” she says softly.
But I’m walking away, stumbling then running. Even though the night scares me. Even though I hear her calling my name as I walk off into the night. I hear her calling me back, but I don’t turn around. I want to show her I’m not scared. ”
