“Oh, we’re very familiar,” Jay said, still looking disturbed. “Buchanan has lived across the lake ever since we’ve lived in New York, although I’ve never much liked him.”
The niceties of the rich felt very fraudulent, but I didn’t want to insult Jay’s father to his face.
“I never felt like I got to say thank you to you,” I said, in an effort to lighten the mood. “Most white boys—I mean, White House boys—wouldn’t even make an attempt to stand up for a Blue boy getting bullied.”
“You said white,” Jay said, looking at me intensely. “Do you see me as white?”
What do the white people see?I almost asked—that’s what mattered most. I knew he was a Negro. If it weren’t for his mild brown skin tone, I’d spot the giveaway in his full lips, or his hair, obviously thicker than a white person’s. And because of those features, I didn’t feel the need to be on my toes with him.
Still, I could see how they might not know. In the right suit, with gelled hair, in a club with low lights, he could pass for Italian. Especially with the way he stood—straight-backed—andgiven his speech patterns, which were clean and polished. He had no Southern drawl, no slouch in his vowels. He spoke like the radio announcers and politicians.
I wasn’t sure how he’d take my observations, so I kept them to myself. “I can tell that you’re not white,” I said, measuredly.
Jay looked away, his mouth hardening some, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “People see what they want. One look at a Mulatto makes people on both sides want to start a war, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Of course. You represent where this country is going, if we can put down the pitchforks.”
“Do you think they ever will?” he asked, a tinge of optimism in his voice.
I shrugged. “One can only hope.”
“The divide is everywhere. In my friendships and my family. My parents divorcing.”
I could tell just the thought of that bothered him, but I didn’t want to pry. And I didn’t want to talk about my own parents either lest I start crying in the middle of a regular conversation.
I uncovered another piece of Jay. But I didn’t know his father, not truly. If my relationship with my own father was any indication, sons and fathers could see things very differently.
How independent was Jay? Did he deserve my full trust?
Greenwood’s fate had taught me that anything horrible could come along and shock me at any given moment. But I knew that for the moment at least, his presence was a gift that made New York a worthwhile destination to start my life anew.
10.
I was on my way to Practical Mechanics when I noticed people looking at me strangely in the hallway. I thought there might be something on my face—donut cream?—and made a note to check myself in the mirror before class. But there was nothing there.
Someone I didn’t know from the Blue House—a boy who mostly focused on where he was going—came up to me, looking suspicious.
“You and Jay?” the person said. “Y’all seem close.”
My body froze with terror. “What?”
“The letters.” He pointed to a newspaper clipping taped to the wall above the water fountain across the hall.
I ran over, pulled it down, and scanned it. It seemed someone had reprinted Jay’s letters to me and written commentary in the margins.
“Are Nick Carrington and Jay Gatsby Lovers?”said the headline. “Read The Daily Dish for More!”
Artie... His column in the paper—the Daily Dish. He was dissecting every sentence of the letters and questioning what it meant about our feelings for each other.
My palms were sweating, my whole body hot, like a piece of ham on burning asphalt.
Everybody—not just this kid—was looking at me. There were three crowds of people around—where did they come from? Some tilted their heads, others laughed.
The boy who’d spoken seemed both amused and sympathetic. “Don’t be so rattled. If it makes you feel better, I think people had already noticed.”
I fled from the conversation, down hallways and back to my dorm. Scrambling to lift my cot—where I had hidden my letters from Jay—I knew they’d be gone.
The mess of my ransacked things made it impossible to tell when they had been taken. We had stopped writing to each other a while ago, now that we were talking face-to-face. Had they disappeared with the flyers and notes about my paper?
