"Incoming provisions," Casey said.

  "We got pizza pops, we got bagel bites, we got chips," Marty announced, kicking open his bedroom door, oven mitt on, clutching a stained baking sheet covered in tin foil and littered with steaming food. Under his arm he'd tucked some bagged snacks. Marty put the sheet down on a folded bnket in the middle of the floor. "And rabbit food for you."

  Marty tossed a bag of trail mix to Talon, who caught it and rolled his eyes.

  "Only joking, bud," Marty said. He gnced at me, as though deducing if I'd give him shit or not.

  "When's the st time you saw a rabbit eating trail mix?" I said.

  It was two-thirty on Saturday. That morning, I worked a six-hour shift, covering Brayden's first two hours. After, I swam lengths; my biceps and calves still ached satisfyingly. Now we were holed up in Marty's bedroom, studying. Study supplies took up most of the surrounding floor space. Our binders y open, highlighters and pencils pooled between our legs and feet, and sheets of course outlines and study guides sat in crumpled stacks. Talon's color-coded fshcards were arranged in front of him. Time and energy were precious resources: the st of our finals took pce next week. Talon's bio final was on Wednesday afternoon, and he was focused but nervous.

  Marty's bedroom was massive—the rgest bedroom in the Schulers' rge house. All of our homes oscilted between kind of clean and kind of messy, depending on the week. But the Schulers' house was cluttered, busy, overflowing. Not quite a hoarder situation but veering close. For work, Marty's mother cycled through various MLMs and each stack of colorful junk in the living room and on hallway tables represented a failed venture. Marty's father kept what he called collector's items: children's toys in unopened pstic packaging that he was convinced would be worth a fortune in the future; a framed photo from an old television show with a minor cast member's signature; and boxes of old hockey and baseball cards. None of these items were given the type of care they deserved, though, and they sat haphazardly around the house.

  Marty's mom, a short and sinewy woman named Sabine, tended to interrupt us at least three or four times when we went over to study. (These awkward disruptions were a major reason we mostly piled into Casey's basement for group hangs, and to Rob's for covert drinking. The other reason was that when both of Marty's parents were home, they tended to fight so loudly that even turning up our first-person shooter games dulled but did not cover their voices.) Every year or so Marty's mom insisted we call her Sabsi, but this mortified us, and we exclusively referred to her as Mrs. Schuler. Over the years—even when we were as young as eleven and twelve, with little or no disposable income save for what some of us had from paper routes—Mrs. Schuler offered to sell us trinkets and rgely useless knickknacks. "Family and friend discount!" she'd say and lower her voice into a stage whisper: "You know I could sell it for double that, don't you? It's very coveted. Do you know what coveted means, boys?" When we declined, she became haughty and passive aggressive. Occasionally, I purchased something from her in order to keep her moodiness at bay. (Twice, I'd bought overpriced Tupperware, which I promptly handed over to Mom; once, I purchased a brick of scented wax, useless for me since I didn't have a diffuser, and it sat in my closet for two years, wafting a strange artificial apple-cinnamon-pstic scent; and I'd even spent fifteen dolrs on a tiny chapstick, which I only realized was tinted when Marty pointed out on lunch that my lips were a luscious peach.) Back in tenth grade, we stumbled across Mrs. Schuler's Facebook account. We were in Rob's living room, circled around his computer desk, and Marty hadn't arrived yet. The page gripped us. We scrolled and scrolled. Mrs. Schuler posted heavily filtered selfies, janky photos of shitty products that promised to change the user's life, and updates that involved an unsettling amount of excmation marks and emojis. Honestly, we couldn't bring ourselves to roast Marty for it, and none of us brought it up again—the page was too sad.

  As though in response to his parents' messiness, Marty carved out an organized oasis. Marty kept his room tidy and meticulously clean. I wasn't sure if I could recall a time I'd come over and his bed wasn't made, corners neatly tucked, pillows fluffed, blue Vancouver Canucks bnket folded at the bottom edge of his duvet. On his bookshelf, he'd arranged his textbooks by subject and, peculiarly, size, so each section began tall and sloped downwards like a mountain range. Each item on his desk—highlighters, pens, notebooks, his reading gsses he mostly eschewed—stayed in a carefully-chosen home.

  Casey ripped into a corner of a doughy pizza pop. "Aisling's back at school," he said, keeping his mouth partly open so steam could vent out. "And guess what? She's got a sore."

  He was referencing the Aisling Moore and Jack Richardson fiasco, the one we'd dissected the night Lily and I hooked up for the first time.

  "Herpes," Marty breathed. "Ass herpes. I knew it."

  "You saw the sore?" I said to Casey.

  "Nah," Casey said. He was chewing wide to let the heat of the pizza pop out, which meant I got a front-row seat to mashed-up pepperoni and cheese stuck to his mors. "Not personally. But Ana did. Or, well, she heard about it."

  "Inside or outside her lip?" I said.

  "Aisling?"

  "Yeah."

  Casey swallowed. "Uh, I think Ana said inside. And there were two."

  "Cssic herpes," Marty said, holding an oily bagel bite between his fingers and blowing on it.

  "It's probably a canker sore," I said.

  Marty shook his head. "Aisling hooks up with Jack, they get suspended, and she comes back with sores in her mouth? No way, dude, that's gotta be—"

  "None of us have seen them with our own eyes," I said, more firmly.

  Rob looked up from his phone to come to my defense. "Don't you all remember st year's presentation on herpes? That YouTube video? The song?"

  "Yeah, man, that shit was catchy as hell," Marty said, "and that's why I know herpes can be inside your mouth!"

  "It's less likely, though," I said. "But even if it is herpes, we're hearing exactly none of this firsthand."

  Talon spoke up for the first time. "Aisling got her wisdom teeth out," he said. "She's in my English css. That's why she hasn't been in school. Well, after the suspension, I mean—that really happened. I don't think she has a sore. She has stitches."

  Marty brightened. "Tell us the bathroom story."

  Talon shook his hand. "I don't know it," he said. "I just knew she got suspended."

  Marty defted at this information and reached for another bagel bite.

  Talon's hickeys were covered up. Rachel hid them better yesterday, but, regardless, Talon's clumsy application made them disappear—you could only find the three marks if you knew where to look. Of course, I knew precisely where to look, having kissed those same spots over and over; when Talon bent his head to peer down at his biology textbook, I traced their faint outlines with my eyes, chest humming pleasantly.

  Cross-legged on the floor with his phone on the carpet near his toes, Rob periodically leaned forward to press a button or enter a code on his screen. Fshes of bright gamepy cyclically popped up. The game had something to do with an alien invasion, or intergactic pnet colonization. Rob came straight from his shift at Best Buy and he still wore his bck work polo.

  I reached into the bag of trail mix (mostly an excuse to graze Talon's knee with my arm) and popped a handful of dark chocote, cashew, and roasted almond into my mouth.

  "Are your parents still going to that annual conference thing in Winnipeg?" Marty said to me. He bit into the side of a pizza pop and chewed noisily. He said something else, but it came out garbled.

  "You just spat on me," Casey said, flicking gnawed-on crust towards Marty.

  Marty swallowed noisily. "That pastor training or whatever it is?"

  "Yeah, they're going," I said. "They leave Friday."

  "You know what this means, right?"

  Casey, Rob, and Marty shared a grin.

  "What?" I said. "Why are you all looking at each other?"

  "My birthday," Marty said, feigning hurt. "How could you forget?"

  I said of course I didn't forget. "But what does that have to do with my parent's conference?"

  Marty looked at me like I was stupid. "Your parents are gone. Empty house. Pce to drink."

  "Oh," I said. "Yeah, that's fine. We'll need to be discrete, though. You know how my neighbors are."

  The guys cheered.

  "Maybe we can invite the girls?" Casey said.

  I carefully kept my gaze on the bagel bite I was reaching for, so as to avoid Talon's face. "Ah, I'm not sure," I said. "I don't want it to be a whole big thing. Easier to get caught."

  "Wait," Marty said. "Speaking of girls." He threw down his highlighter. "What'd you do at Kip's?"

  Cold prickled through me. Talon and I in the room upstairs. Had Casey and Ana somehow seen us?

  But no, that wasn't it. Marty saw Lily tugging me down the hallway. I had to tell the guys something. Or could I cim she and I had been interrupted by a drunk kid and we didn't get around to hooking up? That also seemed pusible. I didn't want to hurt Talon with the truth: that he and I had kissed feverishly upstairs, and it meant everything to me and downstairs, Lily and I kissed, too. How could I convey the difference to him, here with the guys? Marty and Casey watched my face. I was worried they knew more than they were letting on.

  "We made out," I said reluctantly. I reached for Great Expectations. "Hey, did you guys—"

  "That's not what I heard," Marty said.

  "The girls were telling a different story at lunch yesterday," Casey said. "Where were you two yesterday anyways?"

  "In the field," I said. Don't look at Talon.

  "The field?" Rob repeated, staring down at his phone. "We haven't eaten there since grade ten."

  "Especially not you," Marty said, "since you go to school half the time." He opened a bag of chips.

  "It's called being proactive," Rob said. He gestured at his work shirt. "I work, save money, and have plenty of time to game. I'm not wasting away in css."

  "I swear to God, we can't get through a single conversation," Casey said. He thew a bagel bite at me.

  "Don't do that," Marty said. "I vacuumed yesterday."

  I picked up the food and popped it into my mouth.

  "So, is it true?" Casey said. He grinned at me. "Ana told us that you two did more than kiss."

  Rob punched my arm. "Second base, dude."

  "Isn't fingering third base?" Casey said.

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Oral's third," Marty said, crunching into a handful of ketchup chips.

  "Wait, what's first? Kissing?" Casey said.

  "First is kissing," Marty said. "Second's touching—"

  "So: fingering," Rob said. "Like I said!"

  "Second's, like, touching over the clothes," Casey said, holding his hands in front of his shirt to mime a pair of breasts.

  Talon didn't engage in the conversation. Instead, he flicked through a thick stack of neon green fsh cards. Green was Calvin cycle.

  "Touching's anything! External or internal!" Rob said.

  "I'm Googling it," Marty said.

  "What does it say?" Casey said.

  "There's no clear consensus."

  "Who cares what it's called?" I said.

  "I do," Marty said. "I think it's strange that there's no definitive definition—"

  "That's like a tongue twister," Casey said, folding a piece of pepperoni and using it to sop up melted cheese on foil. "Definitive definition—"

  "Everyone agrees first is kissing," Marty said.

  "And third's obviously oral," Rob said.

  "Home base is penetration, yeah," Casey said, "we know—"

  "I guess my main question," Rob said, "now that I think about it, is why is it a baseball metaphor at all?"

  "Because, dipshit," Marty said, "how would it work with basketball?"

  "No, wait, that's easy," Casey said. "A two-pointer could be first base, a three-pointer's second—"

  "We're still relying on baseball as the crux of expining this metaphor," Marty said.

  Against my will, this part of the argument piqued my interest. "Yeah, because we're thinking in analogy now. It's fine to draw upon a preexisting concept in order to consider a parallel metaphor—"

  "Sure, sure," Marty said. "What about free throws? What would that be?"

  "I'm more worried about how this would transfer to hockey," Rob said. He leaned forward and pressed a button. Something exploded on his screen.

  "You're worried about it?" Casey said. "Focus on saving your space shuttle or whatever you're working on."

  "Well, we all know what stick handling would be," Marty said, grinning.

  "Okay, okay," Casey said. "Second base is clearly fingering and I won't be listening to any—"

  "But—"

  "No!"

  "But where does non-penetrative touching fit?" Marty said, exasperated.

  "Who cares?" I said. "Maybe every single sexual thing to ever exist doesn't need to fit within the confines of baseball."

  "Yeah, like, what about bestiality?" Rob said.

  All of us stared at each other before breaking into howls. Even Talon looked up from his fsh cards, shoulders shaking with ughter.

  "How the hell—" Marty said, wiping at his eyes, "—do you go from fingering a girl to fucking a dog?"

  Rob sighed. "We were thinking about the limitations of a metaphor, st time I checked. I was only demonstrating that we'd found it."

  "Actually," I said, "that's not a bad point, because—"

  "Focus, guys." Casey shoved the remaining bit of pizza pop into his mouth. "Ryan, did you finger her or what?"

  Talon pced his cards down near his feet. Rapt, he watched my face.

  "Uh," I said. There was no way out. Lily told Ana who told Casey. I couldn't cim miscommunication this time, some wayward game of telephone, like I had with the Aisling Moore story. Stalling, I used one of the napkins Marty had brought up to wipe my fingers and mouth. "Yeah. A bit."

  Save for Talon, another round of cheers and hollers went up.

  "Well on your way to home base," Marty said approvingly. "And in the bathroom at a house party. Nasty, Cloud. Meant as a compliment."

  Talon stood up. "Cool if I grab water?" He didn't wait for Marty to answer before leaving the bedroom.

  Shit. "I need some, too."

  I got up and followed Talon. He was already making his way down the stairs, but we caught up in Marty's kitchen. He pushed away a box of those scented wax cubes and a stack of ptes covered in hard food bits and dried sauce so he could open the gss cupboard. The overhead kitchen lights were off but we were near a window, so Talon's face was brightened by sunshine, his brown hair glossy in the afternoon glow.

  "Hey," I said. "Can we talk?"

  "About what?" he said coolly. He turned the tap on and filled his gss.

  I gnced upstairs. From where we stood, Marty's open door was visible. Their ughter carried. Still, I lowered my voice: "Lily and I aren't… we're not like that."

  Talon shook his head. He turned so his back was to the sink. "You keep saying that and then kissing her. And more." He drank from his gss. "I thought I could trust you."

  "You can."

  Silence while he considered this. "Say it, then," he said quietly.

  "Say what?"

  I turned so that we were both leaning against the counter, facing Marty's dining table, overflowing with mismatched cardboard boxes, unopened envelopes, amber-colored prescription medicine containers (many still semi-filled with gel capsules and chalky tablets), and loads of Tupperware stacked precariously in illogical groupings. I wasn't exactly sure what he wanted to hear.

  "At the party, I was so high," I said carefully. "If I was sober, I would've made a different decision. I kind of got myself into this—this situation—with Lily, but it doesn't mean what you think it means."

  "There's a different way to interpret it?" he said pointedly.

  "I didn't mean to kiss you and then do that with her."

  "You didn't mean to?" he said sarcastically. "You didn't mean to follow her into the bathroom and then reach under her—"

  "I know," I said hurriedly, not needing to revisit the memory (although a tiny, childish part of me lit up at the notion of Talon being irked or even potentially jealous about anything romantic-adjacent in retion to me). "It sounds stupid. I should've said no."

  What I wanted to say was this: when I kiss you, it's like I'm aware of every nerve and every single cell in my body. It's like I'm inside my own skin for the very first time, like my mind and body are completely aligned and know exactly what to do. It's as though the world's in darkness but there's a spotlight fixated on our point of contact. I don't feel that with Lily. I don't feel much of anything with her, or any girl.

  But I cmmed up. "Everything's been happening fast. With Lily and then—you kind of came back to us and—I've just… I've been confused. Well, not confused about you."

  He gnced at me.

  "You're my best friend," I said. "I never want to ruin that. But I also like you."

  Talon seemed unmoved by what I said, and I wondered, fleetingly but worriedly, why that was. (Did he not feel the same? Or was something else going on?) He brought the hand not carrying his gss up to his mouth and chewed on his nail. Around his finger, he said, "So you're—?"

  Say it, then, Talon had said.

  I got it. I knew now what he wanted me to tell him. Again, my eyes shot to Marty's door. The three of them were hollering and joking.

  I cleared my throat. In the soft light coming in from the window, Talon looked beautiful. He needed me to tell him the truth, I understood. Maybe on a deeper level than I could register right now; maybe uncertainty felt doubly painful for him. Maybe because of how I'd acted—saying one thing and doing another—he felt used. It's okay, I thought, you can tell him. You can say it.

  But if it was okay, then why did people make fun of how Noah Zhang walked and talked the second he left the room? He was one of the Scorpions' key baseball pyers, yet he never hung out with guys like Dhruv Bhandari or Aaron McIntyre or Simon King. From my vantage point, it seemed Noah's only friends were girls. Was that intentional, chosen by Noah, or a social inevitability? I remembered how Cire stood at the front of our church, head hung while her parents apologized for her deceit and her sin, while they asked us to pray for her soul. They spoke as though she was a sex-crazed maniac. Maybe that's what bothered me the most: being reduced to my sexual urges, as though no one else had them. Why were mine so disgusting and offensive?

  I hadn't pictured saying this in the middle of Marty's mom's messy kitchen. I assumed I would simply shoulder this secret for the rest of my life. That, regardless of how I felt, I'd marry a woman. In my mind, no matter where I moved—whether I was in California finishing med school, or in Denmark visiting retives—the wedding took pce at Dad's church with Dad officiating. In this grim fantasy, the woman was blurry, not fully formed by my imagination, although she was always somewhat androgynous: lithe with brown hair and brown eyes.

  I imagined Marty saying faggot. The venom in his voice. The sharp t at the end of the word, the curl of his lips. But I wasn't up in the room with them. I was standing beside Talon.

  "Look," I said softly. "I've known as long as I can remember." I felt a sense of urgency now, wanting to crify my muddled thoughts for Talon. I felt braver with him. "I knew something was different about me since probably first or second grade. If I'm being honest, you were a rge part of that knowing. But my dad, he… every week for my entire life, he stands up at church and he doesn't just speak to us, he instructs us. He lectures us. He tells us the word of God. And when he's up there, he's rger than any other person. It's like he takes on some of God's essence or something. He becomes immortal. It's weird, to have my dad kind of… become God. So when he tells me that two men being together or two women being together—or just anything not straight or not cisgender or not normal—it's like I'm hearing two voices at once. And it's hard to resist God, but it's almost impossible to defy my dad. You'd think it would be the opposite, right? But he just… he believes in me so much, he trusts me, he needs me to be a role model for Rachel, but not just her. For everyone! The whole church. He thinks I represent—" Here I held up a finger with each word: "Him, and God, and Christianity. He thinks that I'm a good person. It's so much pressure and it suffocates me. It fucking suffocates me. He doesn't know what I really think or how I really feel, and I don't think he'd like me very much if he knew. Over the st couple of years, I've realized that I don't really believe what the Bible says. Or at least, not all of it. But how am I supposed to tell my dad that? I can't right now. I think that's a big reason why I can't say what you want me to say, why I don't even think it to myself."

  Talon had turned to watch my face, his expression delicate. "Ry."

  "It would be so much easier if I was normal, if I wasn't... if I was straight. I prayed for so long. I begged God to change me. I wanted to like girls." I paused. "But it didn't work. No one responded to my prayers. No one changed me. I'm not upset about that part anymore. Because if it had worked, then I wouldn't feel like the whole world clicked into pce when I kissed you, and I wouldn't trade that feeling for my dad's approval." I paused. I reached over and grabbed Talon's hand. He pushed his fingers through mine.

  "I didn't know all of that," he said, looking down at our hands. "But I should've thought of it."

  "You're dealing with so much," I said. "It's incomparable."

  Talon went to say something more but he suddenly snatched back his hand.

  "Hey, losers," Marty said. "Didn't you see my text? What are you doing in the dark?"

  He flicked on the gring overhead lights, exposing the cavernous and disorganised kitchen in all its chaotic glory. There was something strange to his voice, though. How long had he been coming down the stairs? Marty smiled at us but his eyes searched my face.

  "I asked you to bring up pop," Marty said. "But I'll grab it." With his back to us, he said, "Taking you a long time to get some water."

  I reached for a gss and quickly filled it from the tap.

  Marty kicked the fridge closed, a mix of root beer and 7UP cans banced in his hands. "What were you saying about your dad?"

  "Nothing really."

  "Sounded sort of serious. Kind of like a big deal or something." Marty cocked his head, eyes moving between us.

  "We were talking about his dad's church," Talon said.

  "Ah," Marty said. "Thought I heard something about gender and—" He gave a casual shrug. "Guess not. Coming?"

  About halfway up to the second floor, Marty stopped, one foot on a carpeted stair. He faced Talon. "Hey, man," he said. "Apparently Georgia wasn't even at Kip's party." His expression a mix of curiosity and performative confusion, he looked again between us and then tapped his own neck. "So secretive!" But when he saw the glowering expression on my face, he hastily added: "Not that it's any of my business."

  Settled back in the bedroom, the tension from downstairs dissipated. We went back to jovially chatting in between frantic studying. Talon leaned close to me while I helped him with his fshcards. Around quarter to five, rain picked up outside, cutting through the sunny day. Casey stretched back and said we should quit studying, that his brain was fried. We bounced ideas around. Marty scrolled social media. A few minutes ter, he said we should watch Footloose. Tonight was apparently the penultimate showing; Marty said a bunch of kids were going. Senior year brought out some type of intense patriotic fidelity to Six Mile River Secondary. Lately, students had never had more school spirit. Casey invited Ana and Marty invited Kat, which, I knew, meant I should invite Lily. But, highly cognizant of Talon beside me, I didn't reach for my phone. Fortunately, the girls were busy but they said they'd join us after if they could. The five of us bought tickets online, packed up, and headed down to the school theatre.

  Rob managed to find a spot at the back of the overflowing parking lot. When we got out, standing beneath the diluted sunshine and rainy sky, Marty pulled out his fsk.

  He shook it. "We only got a shot each. But security's at an all-time high, so let's drink out here."

  "How do you know?" Casey said.

  "Intel," Marty said. "Apparently Miles Campbell got caught trying to smuggle in a single bottle of beer."

  "Damn."

  "Gio Reyes's water bottle got confiscated in the lobby. Kicked him right out. He didn't even have booze since he's driving tonight; it was just fvoured water."

  Marty's phone was always blowing up. I couldn't imagine the amount of group texts he was in.

  Rob declined because he was driving us, but the rest of us took swigs from Marty's fsk. (He'd ordered it online and the fsk featured a woman wearing a skimpy bikini, positioned in such a way so that when you pressed your lips to the neck, you gave off the vague impression of clumsy cunnilingus. Predictably, Marty loved this illusion.) The vodka burned uncomfortably and, because we'd skipped dinner, I had a nearly immediate head buzz. Marty stashed the fsk back in Rob's car.

  We secured seats at the back of the theatre. As Marty indicated earlier, it really did seem like seventy-five percent of our graduating css had come out for the musical. Grease was a hit the previous year, so that likely had something to do with it, but Six Mile River's ck of evening events also contributed to the turn-out. The room hummed with a collective frisson. A bunch of theatre kids—including Georgia, from the glimpse I got of her long hair—sat a couple rows down, animatedly detailing some lighting mishap from the night before. I nodded at Aaliyah Williams and Matt Wilson, across the aisle from us. A girl with two short ponytails hucked a wallet-sized pouch at the back of another girl's head; when the tter girl grabbed the pouch, she turned around and shot the first one a thumbs up. In the second row, close to the stage, I spied Rachel, Hilry, and Sasha clustered together. Three volleyball pyers wrestled with each other between chairs, grunting and chuckling. Bug Rooney was loudly and embarrassingly flirting with Hayley Guffey-Hodges, who had turned her shoulder so obviously and coldly to Bug that I almost admired his commitment to sheer obliviousness. Every now and then I got a whiff of sugary booze, followed by giggles; evidently, a few people made it in with alcohol intact. Adults (some parents I recognized, and older couples looking to attend community theatre) nervously peered around the room, astonished by the raucous. The band teacher, Ms. Pearson, was systematically moving between each row to—as politely as possible—instruct students to shut up and sit down.

  The lights came down and, after five additional minutes of shushing from Ms. Pearson and two student volunteers, the crowd quieted. In the darkness, it was difficult to see your own feet, let alone the person beside you. Talon sat closest to the aisle, then me, then Casey, then Rob, and Marty. Only a few minutes in, I felt slight pressure against my thigh. At first, I assumed Talon was adjusting in his seat. But his fingers slid down, closer to my knee. I hoped I wasn't misreading the nudge. Looking forward towards the stage, I moved my left hand to the other side of his so that our palms were facing each other. He positioned his fingers so we were holding hands. Adorably, he shifted in his seat so his shoulder was against mine and tilted his head so his hair brushed my ear; we were as close as we could conceivably be without noticeably cuddling. I could smell his vanil chapstick.

  Starkly aware of our fingers and hands and shoulders pressed together, I wasn't able to fully pay attention to the stage. I did my best. Harry Duquette pyed the lead, Ren McCormack. He was good, but Talon would've been better. Throughout act one, Talon seemed transported, bouncing his leg to the beat of the songs, singing softly underneath his breath. At the intermission, Talon and I broke apart before the lights came up but sank back into one another when the room darkened and the py resumed. To my right, Casey seemed mercifully unaware of our touching, but he occasionally slipped his phone out to send off a text. I saw Ana's name at the top of his messages.

  The final song, the reprisal of the titur tune, erupted into irresistible life. Talon was transfixed. I pictured him wearing Harry's tight bck pants and suit jacket, dancing and singing, and needed to quickly refocus so my heart wouldn't speed up and my crotch wouldn't do anything embarrassing. At the end, the audience—comprised of many drunk teenagers, despite the school's best attempts at confiscation—noisily appuded and hooted and cheered. We followed suit, standing up and shouting.

  We pushed open the lobby doors into the rainy evening, surrounded by kids. For the first time in a while, Talon's shoulders looked light.

  "That was sick," Casey said.

  "Way better than I thought," Marty said.

  "Who, um, who pyed Ariel?" Rob said, adjusting his gsses.

  We all ooh'd when he said this.

  "I thought you had an online girlfriend?" Casey said.

  "I knew she was fake!" Marty said.

  "She's a friend who's a girl," Rob mumbled, "and that fizzled out."

  "Why? Did she drop a rank in Helldivers?" Marty said.

  "Hey, that game's awesome," Casey said. He affably thumped Talon on the back. "You would've been great in Footloose, dude! You killed it st year."

  "Yeah?" Talon smiled. "Thanks, Case."

  "You didn't want to try out?"

  Talon shrugged. "Just wasn't feeling it this year."

  A girl pced her hand on Talon's arm. It was Georgia. Her long hair hung over one shoulder. The school lights backlit her, but I could see her thick eyeliner. She was fnked by two other girls that looked vaguely familiar to me.

  Talon smiled down at her. "Oh, hey, Georgie."

  Georgie?

  "Hey," she said. "That was rad, right?"

  "So great."

  Georgie poked her shoe with hers. "Bet you would've loved to sing 'I'm Free.'"

  They shared a knowing chuckle, as though referencing an inside joke. I was still reeling from Georgie, so this camaraderie felt like an additional afront.

  "Harry was okay, I guess," she said. "But you would've been something else. You should have tried out!"

  Talon deflected, like he had with Casey. "Harry's a better dancer, for sure."

  Georgia smiled like she didn't believe it. She turned to her friends. "Anyways, I gotta go. Have a good night!"

  Talon held up his hand. When had they broken up again? And had they been officially dating, or was it more of a hooking up type situation? (Which scenario did I hate more?) I was relieved that I alone knew he'd nded the lead but forfeited the role.

  Kids milled nearby, wanting to extend the night. A spontaneous house party didn't seem possible; everyone's parents were home. Someone threw out the suggestion of a power line party, but there were no takers. The building rain rendered the idea of drinking in the damp woods unenticing. The weather in Six Mile River was unpredictable on a good day but it'd been violent this spring, moody and intense. No one seemed particurly eager to head out into the cooling night, despite being united in our readiness to find a pce to get drunk together. In the end, most people left with the same group they arrived with.

  The five of us were all hungry. Rob proposed Denny's. Casey said the girls were finishing up at Ana's pce and would join us in a bit. When he said this, he nudged me; I forced myself to smile and stupidly said nice. We piled into the table we usually took at the restaurant, near the rge back window. (I recognized a bunch of people from the py. Clearly, we weren't alone in finding nothing else to do.) Rob, Casey, and Marty took one side of the booth. Talon and I sat across from them. Looking over the menu, we messed around while we waited for our server. Even Talon offered up his own jokes. Beneath the table, we pushed our shoes into each other's. He settled the toe of his sneaker atop mine.

  Marty shamelessly flirted with our usual server, a sprightly woman named Donna. She was in her sixties with vivid red hair and enormous breasts. Without fail, she flirted right back at Marty.

  Donna sighed happily when she saw Marty. "Hi, boys. Hi, Marty. You look nice tonight." (He looked like he always did.) Donna held a freckled hand to her chest. "If only I was forty years younger."

  "Age is but a number," Marty said. "You were just at the salon, weren't you?" He gestured at her hair. "You chose a different shade of red—it's brighter."

  "You noticed!"

  "Always," he said, beaming at her.

  We shifted uncomfortably while they prattled on ("what's the shade name? Vixen?" Marty said to Donna's delight). Marty's need for attention knew no bounds or age gaps.

  About ten minutes into eating, Marty fgged down Donna. We groaned, bracing for the next round of flirtations.

  But Marty held his phone out to Donna. "Can you take a picture of all of us?"

  Donna took the phone and held it vertically. "Oh, you boys." She had tears in her eyes when she clicked a series of photos. We manoeuvred our ptes and leaned forward on our forearms so that we were all grinning at the phone. "Don't lose touch with each other, you hear? I've lived a long life. Friends who know you—who really know you and love you—they're hard to come by."

  Once Donna left for a nearby table, Marty smiled down at the picture. "Cool. This is a good one."

  Casey peered at it. "Yeah, because you can't tell how short you are."

  Marty punched his arm.

  Marty was right: the photo was nice. Rob and Talon were farthest back but tilted in so they weren't obscured. Rob held up his thumb. Talon's magnetic smile matched his eyes. Casey'd slung his arm around Marty's shoulder. Me and Marty were at the forefront, smiling easily. The yellow lighting made the photo look both modern and old.

  "I'm gonna post it," Marty said.

  "Send it to me, too," I said.

  The bell above the front door jangled and Ana, Kat, and Lily poured in. Each wore stark and sparkly makeup near their eyes, their hair intricately pulled back in colorful ties. They spent the evening watching a show they were obsessed with and subsequently mimicking the makeup looks based on online tutorials. Kat shoved in next to Marty. Rob let out an audible oof at being squished against the wall.

  Lily sat next to me, Ana beside her.

  "Having a good night?" Marty said.

  "The best," Kat said. Her eyes were gssy.

  Ana reached across the table to tangle her fingers in Casey's.

  "And," Ana said, "Lucas dropped by—"

  "Lucas?" Marty said, turning to Kat. "Why Lucas?"

  Kat grabbed Marty's face and kissed his temple, a rare instance of public affection. "He was just saying hi."

  "He brought edibles," Ana said, and the three of them broke into giggles.

  Lily held her index finger and thumb an inch apart. "We had the teensiest bit of chocote each, but—oops!"

  "Wish you had more," Casey said gloomily.

  The girls ordered so much food that even Donna raised her eyebrows.

  In the restaurant lighting, Lily's two hickeys were visible despite the concealer she'd obviously used to cover them. The color wasn't quite an exact match; Rachel had done better work with Talon. Shame hit me. My face heated up and my chest tightened. I was a liar. She and I had kissed. I'd touched and even licked her breasts. Lily showed me her bedroom and the medical situation with her dad clearly left her vulnerable. My fingers were inside of her only two days ago. The marks along her neck were because of me. And since the party, I'd barely responded to her texts. She probably—rightfully—thought I was a dick. But she leaned against me cheerfully. She smelled nice, kind of floral. I couldn't say something now, though. By their own account, the girls were high. Besides, what was I going to do? Pull her into a dirty corner of Denny's and say, hey, look, there's something I need to tell you about myself? I hadn't even said it to Talon today. Not directly.

  On my other side, Talon busied himself with his phone. He and I had been sharing an extra pte of fries, but he wasn't eating them now. I turned my knee into his but he adjusted in his seat so they were no longer touching.

  I sat stiffly between Lily and Talon, wishing the night was over. When Donna came back, arms loaded with pancakes and bacon and scrambled eggs and onion rings and even two servings of cheesecake, I was grateful for the interruption.

  "Girls, settle a debate for us," Marty said. He spread his arms wide and pced his fingertips on the tabletop, like he was about to divulge extremely important information. Gravely, he looked between Kat, Ana, and Lily. "What do you know about baseball?"