Sugar Summer Read online

The spotlight snaps on, the music starts, and I simultaneously have a heart attack and ghost my fingers over Mara. She doesn't laugh.

  She spins and we start dancing. Every time my eyes drift towards the audience I feel her look at me a little harder, and she smiles in this way that's half-encouraging and half-I'm going to murder you if you don't pay attention. I don't look at the people. I don't look at my feet. I look at her.

  She's incredible onstage. I know intellectually that that smile is painted on but she makes it look so real. It's not some big cheesy grin, it's this subtle glow of confidence, this little quirk of her eyebrow like I know you wish you were as good as me. It's magnetic and inviting and...God, it's everything. You'd never guess that those shoes are hurting her feet. You'd never think she's worried about me messing up. She has to be thinking about spiking her turns and keeping her frame locked and keeping me on time, but she looks like she hasn't worried about anything in her entire life, like she's just been dancing like breathing for as long as she's been alive.

  “Wrong way,” she whispers.

  “Shit.”

  “Head up. It's okay.” She told me earlier that if I make a mistake the most important thing is to act like it was intentional. This isn't the Olympics; no one knows the routine ahead of time. They're not going to know I messed up unless I let them know.

  Or unless I really, really, really mess up.

  We nail the small lift and the audience cheers. They're going to love the swan lift. I can do the swan lift. We practiced. I can do it.

  “Ready?” she says.

  “Yeah.” I let go of her and she spins away from me and starts to run towards me.

  She's counting on me. She needs me. I need to not mess up. It's so so important that I don't—

  I can't do this. It's too much. It's just like that first night, when I saw them all dancing, when those girls were kissing right in front of me without knowing who I was or if I was safe, all this shit people keep putting in front of me and trusting that I can handle it and I won't break it but what if I'm not—

  I hold my hands out and shake my head.

  At first I'm terrified she doesn't get it and she's going to jump anyway, but at the last minute she turns the run into another turn and takes my hands back and gets back into rhythm.

  “I'm sorry,” I whisper.

  “Keep going.”

  “I—”

  “We're almost done.” And we are. Three more counts of eight. I do our last turn, our last set of steps, and drop to one knee for our final pose.

  The audience applauds. They don't sound amazed. They don't sound horrified. They don't sound suspicious.

  Mara squeezes my hand.

  Good enough.

  Chapter 8

  Mara drives us back to Sideling while I do all sorts of contortionist tricks in the backseat to get out of my suit and back into my sundress. We're playing music too loudly to have a real conversation but it's not stopping us from trying. We both keep just laughing.

  “I can't believe we're going to get away with this,” she says.

  “You really think we did okay?”

  “They had no idea. It went great. God, this stupid fucking plan and it worked!”

  “What if someone complains to the manager that I didn't do the lift?”

  “Then we tell them I had a sprained ankle and couldn't do the lift and they need to find a real problem in their life. You good back there?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I can't wait to tell Tris how well it went,” she says.

  “Is he gonna be back by now?”

  “Yeah, he should have gotten home about half an hour after we left.”

  “Can I come with you to tell him?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she says, like it's obvious. I feel vibrate-y. She shakes her head and laughs. “I can't believe it,” she says. “Who would have fucking thought, me and you. Biggest pair of misfits I've ever seen.”

  “Okay, I can't do this,” I say. “Forget it. It'll be dark in the parking lot, I'll just change there.”

  “Fine by me.”

  I squish myself over the front seat and back down next to her. She looks at me and gives me this small smile.

  “There you are,” she says.

  I nod a little.

  She hands me a tissue. “Here, get your beard off.”

  “Ha, right.” I fold down the mirror and get to work scrubbing.

  “You did good tonight, kid,” she says. “You were real good.”

  “Do you think I have a future as a dancer?”

  “Ha, maybe not.”

  “I could throw out this whole playwriting thing,” I say. “Be a salsa dancer.”

  “Playwriting, huh?”

  “No, I'm going to be a lawyer. That's just the minor. 'Cause see I'm not like a regular lawyer. I'm a creative lawyer.”

  “Y'know where I come from, creative is code for something.”

  “I know,” I say.

  We pull into Sideling Springs and towards the parking lot. It's past midnight now and the resort looks dark and quiet. Mara squints as we swing around the corner. “Why's someone just standing in the parking lot?” she says.

  “I haven't changed my clothes yet...”

  The figure waves his arms up and down like it's trying to land a plane.

  “Oh hey, it's Oscar,” Mara says. She parks.

  “What's his deal?”

  “Hell if I know.” By the time she has the car door open he's right there. “What's wrong?”

  “Tristan, come on.”

  We run after him up the hill and the next hill and the next hill. “What happened?” Mara says.

  “I don't know, everything was fine when he got back and now he's throwing up and he's really pale...”

  We follow him to Tristan's room at the end of one of the staff cabins. It doesn't look anything like our room from the inside---it's all personalized, posters and rugs and plants everywhere, and right now a shit ton of the entertainment staff crowded around.

  Tristan is in pajamas, curled up on himself on the bed. His face is swollen and he's making noise every time he breathes.

  “Holy shit.” Mara gets on the bed and grabs his hands. “What's going on?"

  “I can't—” Tristan starts, but he breaks off and just starts gasping.

  “He can't breathe,” I say.

  “I can see that!” Mara yells.

  “Does someone have an EpiPen?” I say.

  Everyone looks at me blankly.

  “Nobody here has...nobody?”

  “He's not allergic to anything,” Mara says.

  “I know what a reaction looks like, I...hold on!” I say, and I sprint out of the trailer and all the way back to my cabin. I go to my mother's room and start rooting around in her suitcase. The light comes on.

  “Sugar?” she says. “Honey, what are you—”

  “Where's your EpiPen?” I say.

  “In my purse...what's wrong, is it Bekah?”

  “No, it's...I don't have time, Mom, please?”

  She points to her purse on the nightstand and I've already dug through it and found her EpiPen before I realize she's gotten up and put on shoes and grabbed her medical bag.

  “Yes,” I say. “Come on, come on.”

  She follows me back to Tristan's trailer. We don't talk. We're too busy running. She lets me lead him to his door without asking who these people are or how I know them or what's going on.

  I open the door and point to him on the bed, and she charges right in and takes his pulse and immediately presses the EpiPen into his thigh.

  He gasps, and I can immediately hear something inside of him loosen enough for him to breathe, and it feels like something inside me lets go too. He's okay. He's going to be okay. I can't even stand how much I want to go to him, but between my mother and Mara and all the entertainment staff there are so many people between me and him and he probably wants every single one of them more than he wants me right now, so I just hang back by t
he door and look around the place while my mom talks to him quietly, trying to figure out what happened. She's trying to convince him to go to the hospital and he's refusing, saying he can't afford that.

  It's funny, because Tristan in person has always seemed really reserved to me, but his cabin is anything but. First of all, this is an absolutely excessive number of plants, especially considering we're basically living outside already. And it's also...maybe it's partially having the whole entertainment staff in their sparkly clothes packed in here, but it's a lot gayer—or I guess not straighter, since I have no idea if Tris is gay—than I would have expected from him. There's a rainbow flag draped over his bookshelf, and a poster of the Stonewall riots taped up over the dresser. I guess that's not really that many things.

  “Can we get some space in here, please?” my mom says, and a bunch of the staff people tell Tristan they love him and thank me on the way out, and then it's just me and Mara and Oscar in here with my mom and Tristan.

  Tris is still breathing hard, and he had a rash all over his arms and legs, but he looks about a hundred times better. Mom's already unloading backup EpiPens from her bag, in case it gets worse again.

  “I need to know what caused this, okay?” my mom says. “Did you eat anything new, or take any kind of medication?”

  “Oh,” Tristan says. “Oh, it must be—” He reaches over to his nightstand and grabs a bottle of pills. “It's a painkiller, I just took the first one about an hour ago.”

  “Okay, we need to call your doctor and let them...” My mom pauses, turning the bottle over in her hand. “These are prescribed to a girl.”

  Nobody says anything. I close my eyes and hope so hard that somebody will just tell her the truth. She'll be fine with it. I wish there were some reality in which it was even sort of my place to tell my mom without Tristan's permission, because I know her, she's my best friend, I know she would understand, but Tristan doesn't know her and he has to live with these probablies—

  “They're mine,” Mara says.

  My mom looks at her. “Yours?”

  “Yeah. I have a prescription and I told him he could take one.”

  “I thought your name was Mara,” Mom says. “Mara Del...”

  “Right, it is,” she says. “I, um.” She runs her hand through her hair. She's so uncomfortable. Is it possible I've never seen her lie before? A week and a half with her, and never? “Yeah, that's another name that I use,” she says. “It's...it's complicated.”

  “You have another name that you use to get prescription drugs which you give to your friend,” my mom says. “It doesn't sound that complicated to me.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Mara says.

  Mom rubs his back a little. “He's going to be just fine.” She looks at Oscar. “You're his brother?”

  “Cousin.”

  “And you'll be staying with him tonight?” she says.

  “I can—” Mara starts, but my mom gives her this slow look that scares the hell out of me.

  “Mara, I can do it,” Oscar says. “I want to do it.”

  “Right,” she says. “Of course. I'm sorry.”

  My mother says, “I'd like to talk to...Tristan?”

  He nods. “Tristan.”

  “I'd like to talk to him alone, please.” She nods to Oscar. “You can stay if Tristan wants. Girls?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, and Mara and I step out onto the deck where a bunch of the other staff members are waiting.

  “So how'd it go?” One of the girls, Tia, asks me.

  “What?”

  “The performance,” she says.

  “Oh, um. Fine, I think.”

  “She did great,” Mara says softly.

  Sam, Tia's boyfriend, laughs and says, “Nice suit.”

  “Oh. Shit. I forgot I still had this on.” Oh, God. At least I remembered to wipe the beard off in the car, but still there's no way I'm not going to have to come up with some kind of explanation for my mother.

  Mara comes and leans against the railing next to me. “I guess your mom's not really gonna dance with me now, huh?”

  “I can try to explain it to her...”

  Mara shakes her head. “It's better this way. It's easier for Tris.”

  I nod.

  My mother comes out after about ten minutes. “I still think he should go to the hospital,” she says. “But I left him with a few EpiPens and Oscar's going to watch him through the night.”

  Mara offers her hand to my mother, but she ignores her and palms my shoulder instead. “Come on, Sugar.”

  “I...”

  “I said come on,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  Mom walks so quickly back to our cabin that I have to jog to keep up with her. “What were you doing in that cabin?” she says.

  “Without me he would have died,” I say.

  “And what are you wearing?”

  “It's hard to explain, I was just...”

  “Do you really think that that's appropriate, Sugar? Pretending to be one of them?”

  “I wasn't—”

  “Dressing up like a lesbian so what, those people would think that you were cool? Do you know what they have to go through, Sugar? And you think it's all right just to co-opt that and wear it like a costume?”

  “I'm not dressed up like a lesbian,” I say.

  She stops in the middle of the bridge. “What you are is playing in those people's lives like they're a game, and it's not appropriate,” she says. “You are not one of them.”

  “I...”

  “Come on,” she says. “It's the middle of the damn night. Try not to wake your sister.”

  She walks me to my door before she goes back to her room. I keep the light off but Bekah stirs anyway. “Sugar?”

  “Shh, it's okay. Go back to sleep.”

  “Are you wearing a suit?”

  “Yeah. It's a long story.”

  “Mmm.” She sinks into her pillow. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks, Bekah.”

  I take off the suit and fold it carefully and change into my nightgown, this frilly thing Mom gives us every year for Hanukkah. The wind's coming in through the screen door and blowing little twigs around the deck. They tap against the door frame like something outside is trying to get in.

  I go out, just in my night gown. I go back to the staff quarters.

  Nobody's on Tristan's deck anymore. When I lean my ear against his door I can hear Oscar talking, really gently. I trail my fingers over Tristan's name taped on the door. Tristan Alvarez. I wonder if it's alphabetical. I trace the rest of the trailer, reading the rooms one by one—Christy Brennet. Javiar Carson, Tanya Cheerding...Mara Del Olmo.

  There's music playing inside. Something old and soft.

  I'm shivering a little in the wind. I should have at least put on shoes.

  I knock.

  It takes her a minute to answer. She comes to the door finally in sweatpants and and an old t-shirt. Her hair is all piled on top of her head and she's smoking a cigarette.

  “Can I come in?” I say.

  She opens the door wider and steps out of the way.

  All her windows are open and the place is almost empty, so it feels huge, like another dance studio with its bare floors. She has a old big boombox and a ratty couch and a tiny bed, and that's about it. No art on the walls. This isn't a home, like Tristan's room. Just a place to stay.

  It's a woman singing. Something low and syrupy. And sad.

  Mara sits in a wicker chair by the window and smokes her cigarette.

  “Are you okay?” I say.

  She shrugs.

  “That must have been so scary for you. Seeing Tristan like that.”

  Another shrug. “You saw him too.”

  “I knew what was going on. And he's not my...”

  She stretches her legs out on the windowsill. She isn't looking at me. “He's got Oscar. He'll be fine. You can sit if you want.”

  I sit down on the couch. I feel really naked,
curled up in this night gown. Forget shoes—I should have put on a bra.

  Not that she's wearing one.

  “I can turn the music off,” she says.

  “No, I like it.”

  Her hair blows around her head like a halo.

  “I'm so sorry,” I say. “About my mom. How she acted, I...”

  “Your mom,” Mara says, “Saved my best friend's life.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No, you think I give a shit how she talked to me if she's gonna do that? And I mean hell, she thinks I have a fake name to get prescription painkillers. Of course she's not going to be polite to me.”

  “I don't think that's the only reason she wasn't polite to you,” she says.

  “What, because I'm Puerto Rican? I thought she was a nice white savior like you.” She puts her cigarette out on the window.

  “Because you're a lesbian,” I say.

  “Your mom has a problem with lesbians?”

  “No, she...I mean, not usually,” I say. “Never before.”

  She turns towards me. “So why now?”

  “Because of me,” I say. “Because of what I was wearing.”

  Mara watches me.

  “Because of who I am,” I say.

  She's still looking at me. I look down.

  “Anyway,” I say. “I just...I wanted to let you know that the way she treated you was...it wasn't okay, but it wasn't because of you. It was because of me. So you shouldn't...I don't know. If you feel bad about it. You shouldn't.”

  “Y'know she reminded me of you,” I say.

  “Oh, great, thank you.”

  She laughs a little, low, like the music. “In a good way,” I say. “She came in and she knew exactly what she was doing. Just like you.”

  “I have no idea what I'm doing,” I say. “You said it yourself, remember? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm flailing around. I'm a tourist, remember?”

  She waves her hand. “You shouldn't listen to me.”

  “Of course I listen to you!” I say.

  “All right, well then listen to me now,” she says. “You know what you're doing.”

  “I don't,” I say. “I don't know anything. I don't know what it means if I'm...if I'm a lesbian but I don't feel good in a suit, and I don't know if I only liked you because I was trying to get into character, and I don't know if you're still going to like me anymore when you finally realize I'm not the kind of girl who wears suits and when I'm sitting here on your couch in my nightgown. I don't know if this is real or if it's just something I've made up in my head, and I don't know what I'm going to do when I have to go back to my real life and...I don't know anything.”