Sasha Masha Read online

  Tracy spoke to me for the first time since the pool party. “Hey, Alex,” she said.

  “Hey, Tracy,” I said back. “I like your haircut.”

  She thanked me and ran her fingers over the outer edge of her halo of hair. Her nails were painted a light blue, and her skin was smooth and shining. She had her usual expression—just on the edge of a smile, knowing and a little intimidating.

  The room waited for me to sit next to her, so I did. She smelled like the Tibetan store downtown; she smelled like comfort. When Jen turned out the lights and started the movie on the big flatscreen TV, Tracy leaned slightly toward me and her arm pressed against mine. The movie was about a woman who falls in love with a sentimental banker who turns out to be a vampire. I liked the feeling of another body beside me. And I liked that it was Tracy’s. I felt comfortable and dizzy at the same time, like I was sinking into bed and also flying.

  It felt strange to be sitting next to this person who’d always intimidated me. I did well in school, but mostly it was because I worked really hard. Tracy worked really hard and was also probably a genius. She was the only girl on the debate team, and last year she was ranked second in the state.

  Then my nose started bleeding.

  “What’s up, Alex?”

  “Ummm … Sorry, everybody…”

  Jen jumped up from the couch to take me to the hall bathroom. She left me there while I rinsed the blood off my hands and held a wad of toilet paper against my face. I stood there staring at the blue wallpaper, waiting for the bleeding to stop. I could hear them talking through the wall, waiting for me.

  After a minute or two, I heard a gentle knocking on the door.

  “Hey, Alex?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it okay if I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  I opened the door. Tracy stepped just over the threshold.

  “I’m checking on you. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, just a nosebleed.”

  “I hate that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a dry constitution, too. My skin is always cracking.” She laughed.

  “I think I’m doing this right,” I said, in a tiny, muffled voice, as I pinched my nostrils through the toilet paper.

  “Just don’t tilt your head back. Just pinch. Yeah. It’s chilly in here!” She shivered.

  “You can come in if you want,” I said, and she stepped in farther. She closed the door.

  I separated my nose from the toilet paper a little, but the blood was still coming and a few drops splashed on the floor tiles. I pressed the toilet paper back against my nose and moved my foot to cover the red spots on the floor. I leaned back as casually as I could against the sink.

  And then out of nowhere, Tracy said, “Hey, we should hang out sometime.”

  “Sure,” I said, in the same muffled voice.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “No, that’d be nice.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You really don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I think that’d be nice.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “You should get clear, Alex. On what it is you want.”

  I opened my mouth but didn’t say anything.

  She laughed and said she was just giving me a hard time.

  I felt too slow for her, like I was always a half step behind. I wished I didn’t have a wad of toilet paper in front of my face. I wondered if this conversation counted as flirting.

  “It’s just,” I said, and swallowed, “it’s just that my nose is still bleeding.”

  That made her laugh a little, and then I got flustered and turned away from her and hunched over the sink.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, and put her hand on my back. “I didn’t mean to laugh. You’re just being really adorable.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I checked to see if the bleeding had stopped and it had, so I took the paper off my face and turned on the faucet. Tracy’s hand stayed on my back. I tried to deal with the bits of bloody boogers from just inside my nostrils as best I could and then I had to deal with them on my fingers and then I rinsed my face. I dried off on a towel and turned around to say something, and that’s when she asked if she could kiss me.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

  Chapter 3

  I woke up before sunrise to the sound of Murphy, our cat, scratching at my door. My eyes cracked open in darkness, and it took a moment for my ears and my brain to arrive at what was happening. Murphy had been doing this lately, waking me up at an ungodly hour. When I was feeling generous, I respected his persistence.

  The moment I squeezed toothpaste on my toothbrush and squinted in the bathroom mirror, I remembered that I had been kissed. That’s when the day started to crack and settle around me. There was a tingling spot—almost like a touch of peppermint—at the corner of my mouth where the wetness of Tracy’s lips had left some wetness on mine. I stood in the bathroom remembering until my eyes were ready to open all the way.

  I was Real.

  I didn’t know it last night. But when Tracy kissed me, that did it. I kissed Tracy. In a cold bathroom. It changed me. I felt the softness of her nose grazing my nose. This morning I could even smell the faintest trace of her on my skin. Her touch had been so soft.

  My dad was boiling eggs in the kitchen. He was wearing a red T-shirt and his hair was sticking up. “Good morning good morning,” he said.

  I poured a bowl of cereal and clicked into my place at the table like a buckle. I felt connected to him. We could be two men in a kitchen. Neither of us was fussy and we both kissed girls.

  “What’re you guys doing in history class?” he asked.

  “The Cold War,” I said just because, though we hadn’t really done anything yet.

  “Ah, yes. That’s a really fun one.”

  And I laughed because I could tell he wanted me to.

  * * *

  On the bus, I relished the sights and sounds that flew past the windows.

  At school, I felt a thousand feet tall in the hallway.

  I felt a thousand feet tall in front of my locker.

  I felt a thousand feet tall waving hello to the people I knew. Jo passed me in the hall, walking quickly while her hands wrangled a bun above her head. She slowed down enough to smile a huge smile and make three quick pats on my shoulder with one of her hands. She even had to regather her hair and start the bun again, all for my sake. That whole morning I didn’t rush, I didn’t scurry, I just walked. I didn’t have to rush for anyone anymore, because I was Real. The world couldn’t leave me behind, because I was a part of the world and I was Real.

  I was shaky and shy when I said hello to Tracy in English class, but she sat next to me and squeezed my thigh as the bell rang. I didn’t pay much attention that period, and then when the bell rang again and we both had to head in separate directions, I didn’t know what to say, so I just blurted “Bye!” in a much-too-loud voice. “Bye!” she said, and blushed.

  I didn’t eat lunch alone. Jen made sure I joined her, Jo, Tracy, and James in their usual spot. The big story of the day was that Jo had had a thing with this other kid in our class over the summer, and he’d sort of stopped talking to her. “He came on really strong,” she explained to me, to “catch me up.” “We went to the movies a bunch of times. We were hanging out a lot. It was fun. He even met my family at one point, which is a thing.”

  “For Jo, that’s a thing,” Jen added.

  “But then he ghosted. Like a fade-out…”

  “Did you talk to him? Did you ask him what happened?” Tracy wanted to know.

  “No, not really,” Jo said. “And now we’re in Spanish class together. It’s really awkward. It’s like, Qué hiciste este verano? And I’m like, Travis. Yo hice Travis.” And we all laughed.

  “I don’t know,” she concluded. “I guess we’re just goin
g to pretend it never happened.” And she shrugged.

  “I don’t like that,” Jen offered, shaking her head, tugging at the paper from her straw. “I feel like that’s okay for a week,” she said. “But the rest of junior year Spanish is a long time to be pretending.” She looked up at Jo. “Why don’t you see if you can switch Spanish classes?”

  “Noooooo,” Jo said, shaking her head. “No no no. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It is a big deal!” Jen insisted.

  Tracy agreed. “It is a big deal. But that’s not how you’re going to handle it. What you’re going to do is talk to him. You’re going to wait for him after class one day and say, Hey, we need to talk about this summer.”

  “He’s not going to want to talk about it,” Jen hedged.

  “Maybe not,” Tracy insisted. “But it’s only fair.”

  “Things aren’t always fair.”

  “I know. But that’s why it’s important to try to make them that way.”

  Jo turned to James. “What do you think, James?” she asked. “As an average meathead?”

  A slow smile spread across James’s face. It was obviously a long-standing joke between them. People said James was in love with Jen and that was why he always ate with her and Jo and Tracy. People also said he once kicked his dad out of his house for hitting his mom. All through lunch he kept looking at me with this sly, blank smile but he didn’t ever address me. Everyone in the school knew James. People probably knew Tracy, as the class genius; they maybe knew Jen and Jo. But James was friendly with everyone. He was the kind of boy who made me nervous. He was the kind of boy who made me feel not-Real.

  “Speaking as an average meathead,” he said, “I think the guy’s an asshole.”

  The laugh that moved through me wasn’t a fake laugh, but it took a pathway through my body that my laughs didn’t usually take. It startled me. I had a panicked thought of Mabel and wondered where the parts of me that laughed with Mabel would go. Would they leave me? I glanced at my phone, as if a text from her might have an answer. But there wasn’t any text.

  Tracy’s right foot found its way over to mine. We pressed against each other just a little.

  I once confessed to Mabel that I thought I was a tiny bit attracted to guys. When Mabel got excited, I told her to calm down.

  “I don’t plan on acting on any of that anytime soon,” I said.

  “But aren’t you ready to fall in love?” Mabel asked.

  “Maybe … when I’m twenty-five,” I replied. But there was something about how serious I sounded when I said it that made us both start laughing. We couldn’t stop. I think that was the day we became best friends.

  The pressure of Tracy’s leg against mine made my body tingle and my heart flutter. Mabel felt very far away. I guess I like girls, too, I said to myself. And I guess I don’t have to wait till I’m twenty-five.

  I was a little bit relieved.

  * * *

  The week passed in a flash. By Tuesday I’d put dividers in binders and made labels for the sections. By Wednesday I’d outlined a reading on “Approaches to History” for Ms. Graybill and written a reading response on the novel we read over the summer for Ms. Lewiston. I’d memorized sixteen new verbs for Spanish and diagrammed twenty-some reactions for chemistry. Jake Florieau had taken to giving me high fives when we passed each other in the hallway. Each time I blushed and high-fived him back.

  The morning bell sounded the same as it always had, the stairwells had the same sour smell, and all the same teachers waved at me as I passed. But everything was different now that Tracy and I were together. It felt like I could snip ties with the past and let it float away, let go of all the years I wasn’t Real. Except for one thing: I missed Mabel. And something was keeping me from telling her about Tracy.

  Why? Something about this new life felt like a weird betrayal. Mabel and I had built our friendship on being in-between kinds of people, on being heartbroken and full of longing and frustration and desire—basically what I considered not-Real. But if that was true, how could it be that all of a sudden I was a Real boy dating a Real girl? Mabel had gone from being my other half to being a name in my phone, and whenever I looked up from that little rectangular screen at the people around me, I felt like I was living a double life.

  Late Wednesday night Mabel texted me a picture of her new Pittsburgh bedroom. I could see a postcard I’d given her taped above the desk. “How’s it going?” she asked. I replied with a heart, a shrug, and an “I miss you”—and that was about it. When I put down the phone, my stomach dropped into my ankles and I swear I almost started to cry.

  Thursday at lunch I sat with what was now the usual crew and listened and followed along. I didn’t say much. After chemistry, our last class of the day, Tracy and I got our things from our lockers and walked down to the parking lot together, where I would catch my bus. I felt a sudden desire to spend all my free time hanging out with her.

  “Would you want to go see a movie or something this weekend?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she replied, with a little smile. “How about tomorrow?”

  I said that sounded great, and she said she’d pick me up.

  Chapter 4

  On Friday night I opened the car door and got in. We were excited to see each other, and we said so. She put an address in her phone, and a voice told her to head north on Old York Road. She put on some music and a man was singing, asking a woman to stay, stay, please don’t go.

  For a while we didn’t know what to say to each other. Or maybe I just didn’t know what to say to her.

  “How’re you liking being back?” I offered.

  “I like it,” she replied. “I mean, it’s what we do, right? School? It’s nice to have a break, but I was getting ready to get back to it.”

  “Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “I’ll be excited when it’s all over with, though.”

  “Really? You don’t like school?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Huh,” Tracy said. “You’re good at it, though. There must be some part of you that likes it.”

  “I don’t hate it. I’m just getting through it, I guess.”

  “To what?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Getting through it to what? What is it you’re so excited about on the other side of all this school?”

  I’d never considered the question before.

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know. I guess just … real life? Like being a person in the world.”

  “This is real life. You’re a person, this is the world. As far as I can tell.”

  “I know, but…”

  “But what?” Tracy asked.

  “Maybe I don’t feel particularly real yet,” I said. “Like this world is just something I have to move through until I can get to a place where I can be a real person. I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “But what do you even do, then? If that’s how you feel? Like, what do you do in your free time? Is that a weird question?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I like to play with our cat. I like to read. I like documentaries.”

  At a red light she reached over and pinched me in the stomach.

  “Ow!”

  The light turned green.

  “What was that for?”

  “You said you felt like you weren’t a real person,” she said, and bit the tip of her tongue between her teeth in the most charming way. “I wanted to test and see.”

  * * *

  At the movie theater, I bought our tickets with my mom’s credit card (“My turn next time,” Tracy said), and we skipped buying popcorn because Tracy had a bag of it and two cans of soda in her purse. She said, “Hey, Derek!” to the guy taking tickets and stuck out her tongue. He said something I couldn’t hear, and Tracy laughed.

  As we settled into our big red seats, I wanted to tell her never mind and that I thought she had a point about being real, but the previews had started and she said, “Shhh!” and tap
ped my knee. “I want to watch these.” Then she turned and landed a kiss just in front of my ear.

  Afterward we made out in her car. Now it was like I was in a movie. At first I felt a bunch of pressure to do a good job, but then it seemed like it was going okay without having to worry about it too much. I figured I’d just say something if I felt weird. I could always pretend that I had to sneeze or something. Our mouths started to open a little bit. I felt the nub of her tongue testing for mine. It made me think of a pencil eraser. Her nose was cold and her tongue was cold from the ice in her soda, but the rest of her mouth was hot. I could taste the sweetness of the Coke and the salt of the popcorn. There was a tap on the window. It was a security guard. We separated and said, Sorry and looked at our laps.

  My body tingled where Tracy had touched me.

  I looked out the passenger window. Everyone had gone home. The lot was empty. The mall was dark. The sky was huge. The security guard looked tired, and her flashlight seemed heavy. She watched us buckle our seat belts and then she walked away.

  We turned on the car and the clock lit up. It was after eleven. It felt like we were the only two living creatures in a dead and silent world. I started to pretend that I didn’t care about curfew, but then I realized Tracy cared about curfew, too, so I said, Yeah, we should probably get back. She raced uptown so we could both make it home in time, and the whole way we were shivering and laughing and barely able to talk. I couldn’t stop giggling. I watched my fingers wiggle like little creatures in my lap.

  “I don’t usually get in trouble,” I said to her. “Is that a weird thing to say?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t usually get in trouble either.”

  “Did we just get in trouble?” I asked, tucking anxiety under something that seemed like flirting.

  “No,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “I don’t think so. But I know what you mean.”

  I have very few memories of my parents getting mad at me. I can picture my dad yelling when I was nine years old: there was a play I wanted to see, a version of Cinderella this children’s theater was doing, and he told me we couldn’t go, because my cousins were visiting and the weekend was too busy blah blah blah. But even after that I kept thinking about the play, and something in me started to ache and wouldn’t stop aching and I decided to ask one more time.