Sometimes.
Anna’s house is a small brick bungalow in a neighborhood a few light rail stops south of mine. When I knock on the door, screeching ensues from inside, and I step back.
The door swings open. “Hurry!” Anna whispers fiercely, grabbing my arm and pulling me across the threshold.
“What’s going on?” I stumble after her through the living room. Footsteps thunder below us, up the stairs from the basement. She drags me down the hallway, into her room,and slams the door, locking it just as a series of thuds shakes the frame. It’s like a horror movie or something.
“My brother’s friends are here,” she says grimly.
“We can hear you!” he shrieks outside.
“Go AWAY!” she yells, then jumps back, yelping as Silly String shoots under the door, coating her socked feet. A chorus of wild hooting echoes in the hallway, and then the sound of—three? Ten? It’s impossible to tell—pairs of feet racing away.
Relative silence descends. I can hear them dimly now, downstairs again, cackling and shouting. Anna sinks onto her bed, pulling her socks off and throwing them into the corner of her room next to her laundry hamper.
“They’ve been here since noon,” she says, “and they’re spending the night. I’m losing my mind.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, dropping my bag on the floor and joining her on the bed. Anna’s little brother is a nine-year-old terror, full of energy that Anna’s parents don’t seem to know what to do with. They’re older than mine; in their late forties, compared to my mom, who’s about to turn forty, and Shar, who just turned forty last year. I only know that because they talk about it all the time.
“It’s OK. I needed to hermit this weekend anyway.” She gets up and goes to her desk, clearing the makeup off it. “I was learning how to do a sea-creature look this morning. I’m thinking maybe I’ll be a mermaid for Halloween. But not a pretty one. A scary nightmare one.”
“How trans of you,” I say, and she laughs.
“What about you?”
“My morning?”
“No, your Halloween costume.”
“Oh.” I stare at her ceiling. “I haven’t really thought about it. I feel kind of awkward dressing up. Like ...too old for it.”
“Never!” she says. The brushes clatter as she pushes them into her makeup case. That’s something I love about Anna—she doesn’t care what other people think. Well, that’s not exactly true. She has anxiety too. But she does what she wants anyway, even if it’s something other people think is silly, like dressing up even though we’re sixteen now.
“I’ll think of something,” I say. “Are we coordinating this year?”
“Not sure.” She goes to her closet and pulls out the extra folding chair for me, setting it at the end of her desk. “Makayla said she’d be down. Jayden has been ...evasive.”
“What does that mean?” I sit up, watching her.
She shrugs. “I asked him about it and he changed the subject. I sent him my inspo earlier and mentioned some group ideas, but he just said it looked great and didn’t answer the rest.”
“Weird.”
“Maybe. It might just be ADHD brain.”
Jayden’s notorious for that—only reading part of a message, and responding to that instead of the whole thing. Or not registering what we’re saying because he’s distracted by something else.
“What are we doing today?” Anna asks, turning on some lo-fi beats.
I join her at the desk, pulling out my books and laptop. “I need to work on the draft of my English essay now that the outline is in,” I say.
“Oh perfect, me too,” she says, and sits down beside me.
It’s raining outside, the clouds making the day feel darker, but the light of her lamp is golden and cozy. We each type away, the lo-fi music and the rain on her window making a chill background. Every now and then, a screech sounds from below, and we roll our eyes at each other.
“So,” Anna says after a while. “Queer Alliance yesterday.”
“Yes.” I keep my eyes on my screen, but I’m not seeing the sentence I just wrote. My whole body is on alert for whatever she’s going to say next. “That was ...awkward.”
