Sugar Summer Page 5

  “Okay.”

  Tristan starts to step, the two three four in and out in and out we've been doing, and I follow along. He does a step that I miss and I try to correct it and Mara says, “Nope, just keep going. Do't look away, hey.”

  Her eyes are this dark, dark brown, almost black. Big and smudgey-lined. Looking right back up into mine.

  The music thrums and trills.

  “Just follow me,” Tristan says. “It's okay.”

  “I'm okay,” I whisper.

  Mara smiles up at me.

  “So how long have you known Tristan?” I ask, long after he's gone, while we're packing up. Or she's packing up, and I'm lying on the floor wondering how I'm supposed to make muscles work well enough to get back to my cabin.

  She doesn't answer at first, and I think she's not going to, but then she says, “We grew up together.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shitty apartment building in Queens. We were neighbors. Our moms were both young, they both spoke Spanish...” she zips up her duffel bag. “Rest is history.”

  “And you never dated?” I say.

  “Ew, no. He was like my big sister back then. And now?” She shudders.

  “You don't look so repulsed by boys on the dance floor,” I say.

  “Yeah, that's an illusion,” she says. “Salsa's all about pretending you're in love. Anything I do on the dance floor is ever real, that'll be a whole new world.”

  “I don't have any friends from when I was a kid,” I say.

  She slings her bag over her shoulder. “That's a shame.”

  I laugh a little. “So what, you can talk about your life but I can't talk about mine?”

  “You asked me a question,” she says. “I answered.”

  “You really don't want to be friends, huh?” I say. I stretch my legs out across the floor. “It just bugs the crap out of you that I want to be friends.”

  “You are gonna be gone in eighteen days,” she says. “What's the point of me getting attached?”

  “Oh my God, you counted how many days I'm here?”

  “Shut up.” She nudges me with her foot. “Get up. I want to leave.”

  “Yeah, gotta get to your pop punk princess. Tell me again how you hate rich girls.”

  “She's a self-made rich girl,” she says. “She wasn't born into it like...” she trials off.

  I roll onto my side and prop myself up on my elbow, look up at her. “Why, Mara, was that the beginnings of an antisemitic remark?”

  “I'm not saying anything about Jews,” she says. “I'm saying something about people who come here.”

  “So we're all the same, that's it?”

  “I'm saying not a lesbian's come through here who doesn't think she can buy me. That's all.”

  “I'm not trying to buy you,” I say.

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “I'm also not a lesbian,” I stutter.

  “Mmhmm.”

  “What?”

  “I mean...let's say hypothetically that you were. Sweeping in to save my best friend, at no personal gain to you?”

  “It was the right thing to do,” I say.

  “That's cute,” she says. “So you're gonna go out and save the world by doing the right thing to do, is that it?”

  “You're the one who keeps saying it's one night of my life,” I say. “That all I'm giving up is eleven days of shuffleboard. You can't say this is no big deal and act like I think I'm Joan of Arc in a tuxedo. You have to pick one.”

  She takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. “I do whatever I damn well please,” she says.

  We look at each other for a minute.

  “Come on,” she says. She shoves me gently towards the door. “Get out of here.” She opens the door for me. “And by the way?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I happen to like Jewish girls quite a bit.”

  Chapter 5

  My life is divided into two factions: dancing, and lying.

  Any time I'm with Mara, and any time I'm by myself, I'm dancing. We're dancing in the studio at weird hours. We're practicing Mambo in the corner of the old clubhouse while Tristan coaches and everyone else is grinding to Top 40. And then I'm dancing on the bridge between where we live, in the cabin when Mom's horseback riding and Bekah's with Josh, on the way to lunch any time I look around and no one's watching me, in the bathroom while I brush my teeth. I have Latin music stuck in my head all. The. Time.

  The lying is when anyone asks where the hell I am all the time.

  “I thought we were going to spend time together,” my mother says. “It's our last summer before you leave.”

  I have a month at home after this vacation's over. I have half a week here after the showcase. “Hiking trails,” I say. “Sculpting lessons. I was just reading by the lake. I was playing charades.” I don't need to feel guilty. I'm helping someone. I'm not doing anything wrong. Mom's a doctor. If I were allowed to tell her, she'd totally understand.

  I actually bring that up to Tristan, one night when we're on the dock by the pond, waiting for Mara to be done with a Samba lesson that my mother thinks I'm taking. Tristan and I have run through the routine a few times, him taking Mara's place at first, and then the two of us like one dancer, me behind him with my hands on his waist, or him behind me with his on mine, while I just try to dress myself up with the way he moves his body. His hair smells like limes.

  “What kind of surgeon is she?” he says.

  “General. She does a lot of appendectomies.”

  “She's probably never done a confirmation surgery,” he says. “That's plastics.”

  “I'm not saying she does them,” I say. “I'm just saying she'd understand. Maybe someone at the hospital you're going to even knows her and she could get them to move the surgery and it will never matter that I keep stepping on the one and Mara doesn't trust me to learn lifts.”

  He sighs a little and sits down to dangle his feet in the water. I plop down next to him.

  “I'm just kidding, y'know?” I say. “I'm not actually trying to get it moved. I'm gonna do the dance, it's gonna be awesome, you're gonna get the surgery, everyone's gonna kill it.”

  “You really think you could do the lifts?” he says.

  “Sure, look at me!” I flex my biceps. “I got those swim team muscles. And you can do them and we're the same size.”

  “I am on testosterone,” he says. “Gives you a big boost.”

  “That's sexist.”

  “Biology's unfair. I'm the last person who's gonna argue with that.”

  I rest my heels in the water. “Can I ask you something?” I say.

  “Not if it's about my genitals.”

  “It's not.”

  “Then continue.”

  “Do you really think you'd get fired if people found out?” I say.

  “Hmm,” is all he says, and I wait for more and it doesn't come.

  “I just think that...and I mean I don't know him well or anything,” I say. “But I just feel like Sol would probably be okay with it.”

  Tristan looks at me. “You're right,” he says. “He would probably be okay with it. It would probably be fine. But do you get like...that's as good as it ever gets?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I live my life at a probably at best,” he says. “There are places where I know it's not safe to be openly trans. And then are are places where it's maybe okay. And then the rest of the places, it's probably okay. Probably nothing bad will happen. It never, ever gets better than probably.”

  I nod a little.

  “You don't know what it's like,” he says, “To go through life and just never, ever be sure that you're safe.”

  I don't say anything.

  “Or maybe you do.” He dusts off his pants. “I don't know you.”

  “I don't think I've ever given anyone a chance to hurt me,” I say.

  He stands up. “That's one way to do it.”

  “It's...not, really.”

  “You wa
nt to run through it again?”

  “In a minute,” I say.

  I start walking like a guy, on the rare occasions I'm alone and not dancing. I walk like I'm not going to apologize for it.

  I watch Tristan do everything. It's so creepy, but I feel like if I'm going to really nail this I need to not just know how to dance like a boy. I need to do everything like a boy—specifically, the boy I'm impersonating. It's method acting, I guess. Who cares that the guests at Valley Falls aren't going to see me eat, or hear me talk? I'll know. I've got to nail this character.

  Mara's a character when she's performing too. Dance Mara is not funny. She's fun, but in a I'm so spontaneous, I'll run away with you for a romantic weekend way, not in way that's, like, actually fun. She puts her hair down and lets it swirl everywhere, when in real life she's always tying it up because it's pissing her off. Dance Mara doesn't know how to eat like a girl because Dance Mara doesn't eat. She is a perfect butterfly. You want to romance her and bring her home and buy her flowers.

  That is not the real Mara. The real Mara is a force. She's a weather event. You can enjoy it or you can get out of the way, but she's not here to make you happy and she's not here to mess you up. She's not here for you.

  She meets me all spit and lightning at two AM outside the clubhouse, six days before the performance. “Problems with the girlfriend?” I ask her.

  “She is not my girlfriend,” Mara says. “And no. She's not even here.”

  It's hard to keep track of when Rory is and isn't here. She stays for a few hours or a few days and then vanishes for a few hours or a few days. I smiled at her once at the breakfast buffet and she gave me this tight-lipped smile back, and that's the extent of my interaction with her.

  “Does she know what's going on with us?” I say.

  Mara pauses in the middle of unlocking the clubhouse auditorium. “What's going on with us?”

  “Nothing, I just mean...the stuff with Tristan. Me taking his place.”

  She's still looking at me like I have snakes coming out of my head. “No.”

  “Do you think she'd care?” I say. “About you dancing with another girl?”

  “Did you say you'd graduated high school?” Mara says. “Because you really are not acting like you're done with high school.”

  “Shut up. Why did you want to meet here anyway?”

  “You should get a feel for what it's like to do it on stage,” she says. “And without an audience, to start.”

  “I've been onstage, you know,” I say. “I did drama all through high school.”

  She laughs. “Not musicals, clearly.”

  “You know, I could be a way worse dancer.”

  “Please don't try it.” She sets up the boombox.

  I say, “When are we gonna learn that part at the beginning of the dance?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Y'know, like you and Tris do in the video. Before the steps start.” She does this thing where she gets in front of him and reaches an arm back around his neck, and he holds her and trails one hand al the way down her body.

  “Oh, um...” She sticks her fingers in her belt loops. “We can do that today.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Whaaaat?”

  “I said we can do it.” She crosses across her waist and peels off her shirt. She's wearing a black sports bra, now just that and those baggy pants and bare feet.

  “Well, come over here," I say.

  She gets in front of me and reaches her arm up and stretches it around me neck. She smells like cotton candy and electricity.

  “So just like...” I close my eyes briefly to picture Tristan in the video, stand up a little straighter, and run my fingers down her side.

  She flinches away with some kind of bird noise.

  I stare at her. “What the hell was that?”

  “Nothing! Do it again.”

  So I do, and she busts up laughing. And not a sexy laugh. This is not Dance Mara laugh, if she laughed. There's not a dignified thing about this.

  “Why are you laughing at me?” I say.

  “No, I'm not...” She twirls out of my arms. “I'm really ticklish.”

  “You're what?”

  “People are ticklish, Sugar. It happens.”

  “Yeah, but you're so...”

  She gives me that look she does, where she's not sure if she feels sorry for me or wants to kick my ass.

  “It's a compliment,” I say. “You're hardcore.”

  “It's a compliment that I can't be something I am?”

  “Well...not when you put it that way.”

  “Just don't...do it too gently. It feels like a ghost is trying to feel me up.”

  I'm not a ghost. I'm a man. I square my shoulders and center her back in front of me.

  The next time she laughs, I grab her and tickle her around the waist until she screams, and she won't speak to me for two hours.

  The sun's already coming up by the time I sneak back into the cabin. I guide the screen door closed in the frame, do soft-feet over to my bed, and slide into the covers.

  “I heard that.”

  If it's possible to jump while lying down, that's what I just did. “Jesus Christ, Bekah!”

  “Shh, you'll wake up mom.”

  I switch on the bedside lamp. She's lying flat on her back like somebody completely trying to fool her sister into think she's asleep. “What the hell are you doing up?” I say.

  “Um, I'm just lying awake in bed,” she says. “That's not that weird. Being awake in other places at five AM is pretty weird.”

  “I was just taking a walk.”

  “Yeah, well, you've been taking a lot of walks lately,” she says. “I want to know what's up.”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  She sits up and looks at me hard, like that'll make me just blurt it out.

  “Nothing,” I say

  “Are you like seeing someone?”

  “Ha. No.” I flop down on my pillows. “What about you?” Sometimes you can distract Bekah my appealing to her self-absorption. “What's going on with you and Josh? I thought you and Shia were all meant to be.”

  “It's complicated,” she says. “You wouldn't understand.”

  “I wouldn't understand your sixteen-year-old love life?”

  “Oh, right, I forgot, you totally had one.” Look who's figured out sarcasm.

  “I know enough to know that having some summer fling probably isn't the best way to keep your relationship going,” I say.

  “I'm just doing my part,” she says. “Someone in this family needs to be getting laid.”

  I roll over onto my side towards her and prop up on an elbow. “Are you and Josh...?”

  A pause, then she says, “No.”

  “Okay. Good. Me neither.”

  “Well of course you aren't,” she says.

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “You don't even like to talk about sex,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “So you're really not sneaking out with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “You're just going out on walks?”

  “Yes.”

  She groans. “God, why won't you just tell me? What am I gonna do, tell on you? I don't actually care, I'm just curious. God.”

  I ignore her and close my eyes, but after a while I know she's still awake. There's probably no point in trying to get to sleep before the breakfast bell anyway. Mara has private lessons booked solid through the day tomorrow. I'll just come back here and sleep whenever I'm not with Tristan. I've never been this tired in my life, but I don't feel like I could fall asleep.

  “Do you like it here?” I ask Bekah.

  “Ew, no.”

  “I like it here,” I say.

  It all goes to hell in a handbasket, of course. It has to. Our performance is in three days, Tristan's too busy going to and from pre-op appointments and scheduling people to fill in for him and getting as many lesson
s done as possible to do much coaching, and Mara has decided that this is all for nothing and we're failures.

  “What the hell was that?” she yells. It's pouring rain outside, about 10 AM, and anyone with any sense is in their cabin or in the real main house playing bingo or whatever the hell, but Mara and I are here in the ruined old clubhouse, and I'm sweating my ass off because I'm in pants and a shirt and men's shoes to try to get used to them (though Mara's in these short shorts and a cut off t-shirt and still sweating her ass off because it's ten thousand degrees in here) and somehow, somehow, I still don't have this tiny lift that we do at the end exactly right.

  I say, “Come on, let's run it again.”

  “So you can throw my back out for real? Who the hell holds someone like that?”

  “I'm new at this,” I say. “I'm trying.”

  “You're trying? This is trying?”

  “No,” I say, “You're right, I'm doing a totally half-assed job, because I'm spending eight hours a day getting screamed at by you when I could be relaxing by a fucking lake to rescue your best friend who doesn't even like me, all so I can do a half-assed job and fuck everything up. That sounds about right.”

  Mara growls and drops to the floor. “It doesn't even matter,” she says. “We're not doing the big lift in the middle. We could nail the rest of it and we're still going to look like shit if we don't do that lift, and everybody is gonna know.”

  “Then teach me the lift,” I say.

  “You can't even twirl me around, you think I'm gonna let you swan-lift me? No.”

  “I can do it.”

  “You can't do it,” she says.

  “I pick you up already for the lift at the end,” I say. “What, do you weigh twice as much when we do it in the middle?”

  “It's not about weight,” she says. “It's about balance, and trust, and confidence. Which you have maybe one of.”

  “Could you give it a fucking rest?” I say. “I'm here, I'm going to perform something I've never done before dressed up as a guy in front of a shitton of people. Can you stop acting like I'm a baby? I can do it. You're small. I'm an athlete. I can do the lift. You just have to teach me instead of standing in this shitty room yelling at me.”