Page 29

11

Shira could not totally do this, because here she was, down the block from the event venue—an art-gallery-slash-bar—heaving big gulps of air, leaning against the bricks of a New York City building caked with at least a hundred years of accumulated New Yorker grime and urine, trying not to cry, because that would ruin her makeup.

“Take a deep breath,” Leo said, which was not helpful, because she was already taking lots of big breaths.

They’d taken the train in, the same train Shira used to take into the city every time she’d go back to Columbia after a weekend break or visit home. She watched the same trees flash by against the same sunset and listened to the same robotic voice announcing that they were approaching New Brunswick and Metuchen and Newark Liberty International Airport. She squirmed in her seat against the too-tight confines of Talia’s borrowed little black dress and cursed herself one more time for not bringing a cocktail dress home with her.

This might have been the first time she’d seen Leo all dressed up in nice pants and a button-down, though that wasn’t saying much, considering he moved away as a teenager and then she’d only seen him a couple times since. What if he hadn’t moved? Maybe they’d have gone to prom together, and he’d have slipped a flowered corsage on her wrist while wearing a full-on tux. She gave herself a moment to imagine it, and it sparked something in her. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, because her heart was beating too hard in her ears for her to feel it.

When they’d gotten off the train at Penn Station, Leo stepped into the street and called them a cab without asking if she wanted to take the subway in her heels, which she appreciated. The cab had let them out on the end of the one-way block so that the driver wouldn’t have to take the time to circle around, and from their spot on the corner, Shira spied Danica entering the art gallery, not encased like a sausage à la Shira but cradled in a knee-length red dress that flattered her olive skin and feathery dark hair, her head thrown back mid-laugh as the light from inside bathed her in a golden glow.

Shira’s feet rooted her to the dirty sidewalk. Which was probably good because otherwise she might have fallen over, thanks to her blinding panic at the thought of following Danica inside and having to face her. This would mark the first time she saw her since the breakup, and Shira had no idea what the etiquette for such a situation was. Were they supposed to catch each other’s eye or pretend not to see each other? What if they both descended on a mutual friend at the same time—were they supposed to fight over them? Had Danica told her version of events to any of the people here? Did all Shira’s old friends think she was a bad person?

“Okay, forget about the deep part. Try to take regular breaths,” Leo said, and his hands clamped down on her shoulders and squeezed. Somehow they didn’t hold her down any further but anchored her flailing thoughts in one solid place. With them in one spot, she found she had more room to focus on her breathing. “It’s going to be okay. You can do anything for a half hour, right? We’re going to go in and put on a good show for a half hour, then make an excuse and leave.”

“Okay. Okay.” It suddenly occurred to her that “They’re probably going to think we’re together, you know. Like, together. Is that…okay with you?”

He smiled at her. “That’s fine with me. I’ll make sure to make you look good, okay?”

She nodded, suddenly so grateful for him she could cry. She took a deep breath. Do not cry. Steeling herself, she turned toward the door. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

The gallery was, like most spaces in Manhattan that weren’t outrageously expensive, too small for the event it was holding. Shira had always been the worst at that guess-the-number-of-jelly-beans-in-the-jar game, but she estimated there were somewhere around fifty people here so far. Many of them familiar. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and not just from all these people crammed into a small space surrounded by paintings and sculptures they couldn’t get too near.

From a side table she grabbed a plastic cup of wine or seltzer or something. She didn’t care—she just wanted something to do with her hands. “I need to find the artist, talk to her, and then we can go,” she said, head on a swivel. “She’s South Asian, with a black pixie cut and gauged ears. I can’t imagine she’ll be that hard to spot.” The art world had made a lot of progress in recent years, but it was still extraordinarily white.

“On it.” Leo slouched a little as he looked around, almost as if he were bored, and she sent him a silent thank-you for the body language. He was already doing a great job blending in with the art crowd, who sometimes made Shira wonder if there was a competition she didn’t know about over who could look the most jaded and blasé.

“Shira!”

Shira was looking at the other side of the room, squinting at someone’s back, so she hadn’t realized Ellery was approaching until her (former?) friend was already there, giving her air-kisses. Ellery shook Leo’s hand next, looking him up and down in an extremely obvious way. Shira mechanically gave her air-kisses back, reminding herself over and over not to sniff herself beneath the underarms. If she was stinky, it was too late to do anything about it. “Celery!” Shira said, striving for enthusiasm. She touched Leo’s arm, hoping for some of that strength he’d imparted earlier by touching her shoulders. “This is Leo. Leo, this is my friend Ellery. We call her Celery because—”

“Because it rhymes with Ellery?” Leo said, eyes glinting.

“No,” Shira and Ellery said together, and Shira almost cracked a smile. Almost. She continued, “Because she did this art project once using a bunch of celery where she let it sit in a jar of water for way too long to see what happened to it.”

“It was pretty gross by the end,” Ellery said. “I think Nora threatened to make her next art project a ceremonial burning of my art project.” She paused and thought for a moment. “You know, the reason I did that art project in the first place was because my name rhymed with celery, so you’re technically correct.”

Shira’s heart was racing. She could see Danica out of the corner of her eye—what if she came over to assert her dominance, to make it clear to everyone that Ellery was her friend now? “How is Nora, by the way?” she said, this time striving for casual. “I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you guys.”

“I know, right?” said Ellery. “We live in the same city, and yet we had to come to the opposite coast to actually talk.” She turned to Leo. “Nora’s our other friend. The fourth one in our—” A faint grimace crossed her face, one Shira didn’t think she’d have noticed if she wasn’t looking for it. “Well, she’s our other friend. Her family is from SF, so she’s there for the holidays, while I’m from Philly, and Danica’s also—” She stopped short, red blooming on her cheeks. She gave a short laugh. “Sorry. Anyway, yeah, we need to hang out. I saw you got promoted. That’s amazing! I’m still floating around trying to break in. I’m so jealous.”

Simply touching Leo’s arm wasn’t working. Shira slid her hand down his arm and grabbed his hand, squeezing hard. He squeezed back, sending a jolt of strength and calm through her. Shira took a deep breath, trying to forget that Ellery had once been one of the people she texted first when anything big happened; that they used to have a list of all the new LA restaurants they wanted to try together, categorized by how bad the traffic would be getting there around dinnertime; that she knew the exact boniness level of her shoulder because of the number of times she’d cried on it.

It was like mourning someone who’d died, only they weren’t dead. The grief was a splinter in her heart and a stone in her belly at the same time, but she had to pretend she didn’t feel it, that everything was normal. A performance. Hadn’t Leo said that thing about her life being a performance? It wasn’t, he was totally wrong, but she could put on a performance now if she had to.

She let out the breath. Squeezed Leo’s hand again. Turned to him with an adoring gaze. “Leo, tell her about the game you’re working on.” She hadn’t asked him about it since she saw him last year—she hated it when people asked about her art projects; so many times she worked so hard and so hard and so hard and ended up with nothing to show for it—but here he didn’t need to tell the truth. “It’s going really well, isn’t it?”

“Oh, wow!” Ellery said. Her enthusiasm was well acted but definitely fake—Shira knew she hadn’t played a video game since Pokémon in middle school. “Where do you work?”

The enthusiasm that lit up Leo’s eyes, on the other hand, was clearly real. “I’m not at a studio currently, I’m an indie developer. I’ve been working on this cozy RPG for a while now, and it’s really gaining traction—it’s gotten funding from a few major investors, and it’s been short-listed for an award that would take it to the next level, so fingers crossed.”

“Oh, cool,” said Ellery. “What does that mean, cozy RPG?”

Leo launched into the description of his game, the same one he’d told Shira about last year, where the player had to perform everyday tasks in the shadow of a looming world-ending catastrophe, but this time—she was pleasantly surprised to hear it—he’d added in her idea about making their small, relatively unimportant tasks ultimately responsible for the heroes saving the day. A nice touch, she thought. Even though Leo might have been exaggerating his accomplishments to make himself look like an excellent catch (he had to be, right? because she definitely would have heard if all this was real), he’d made sure to throw her a bone. He finished, “I’m still in school, doing my final internship, but a few studios have reached out to see if I’d be interested in joining them, so I’m trying to decide whether I want to finish my degree or go right to work.”

“Oh, cool,” Ellery said again. “Well, you probably can’t go wrong either way.”

“Yeah, probably. It’s interesting talking to art people about gaming, though. It’s really an art form on its own.”