Dear Universe

1

SECOND HALF OF SENIOR YEAR
{JANUARY}

Days ’til prom: 103

I’VE GOT MY NOSE LODGED IN A RACK OF OTHER PEOPLE’S clothes when my best friend taps me on the shoulder frantically.

“How about this one?” Abigail asks, shoving a dead cat into my arms.

“Ew.” I jump back and nearly knock over a row of vintage dresses with yellowing sleeves and a certain old-lady smell to their armpits.

“Relax, Cham, it’s rabbit.” Abigail sniffs the collar and wrinkles her nose. “Or was rabbit.”

“You can’t wear a fur shawl to prom,” I say, throwing it back to her with a quick Hail Mary because I have a moral compass, thanks for asking.

“Why not? It’s basically a winter prom, given that the end of April is as cold as a dead guy’s ball sack.”

I cringe and Abigail laughs. She loves disgusting me with her taste in just about everything.

“Besides.” She pokes me in the ribs. “It’s our debut into society. The end of high school! The precipice of Real Personhood! I can wear whatever I damn well please.”

“Yeah, which is exactly why you don’t want to wear a dead animal as a shawl.” I continue browsing the racks of orphaned clothes just waiting to find the right home. “It could be the best night of our lives. You don’t want pictures of you with a carcass around your neck.”

She checks herself out in the mirror. “Fine, you’re right.”

“Does this make my neck look ostrich-y?” Hilary calls from a dressing room at the far end of the store. Sometimes I pretend Hilary isn’t there, and then I actually forget she’s there. There’s nothing wrong with Hilary, but it comes down to numbers. Two is perfect. Three is one-of-these-isn’t-like-the-others.

“Hilary, you have a slender neck that necklaces throw themselves at,” I call to the row of dressing rooms, each with a different mirror and feather boa decorating its door. “Please don’t make me strangle it.”

Behind Abigail, I spot a white lacy dress on one of the mannequins in the window. Because it’s on display, it’s probably a million dollars. Or a size impossible.

“All the pressure is going to be off once prom rolls around.” Abigail sighs as I slide past the woman who just walked in to check out the dead-grandma dresses. “Just about everyone who didn’t do early decision will know where they got into college, so we can finally all relax—”

My hand stiffens on the neck of the white lace (I swear I’m not trying to strangle a mannequin). Abigail looks at me skeptically. “You did start your applications, didn’t you?”

“Of course I started,” I say. “I’m almost done, but can’t we enjoy this glorious last leg of high school without obsessing about college?”

“You don’t have a future unless you plan one in advance,” Abigail says.

“Well, there’s still a whole two weeks before regular applications close. And after that there’s rolling admission, so basically the amount of time I have is forever. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was a freshman. I’m gonna savor it.”

“Okay, I think I found the one,” Hilary says, sashaying over to us in an emerald-green ball gown. She recently dyed her hair a cool blue that makes her dark eyes look even darker.

“I love it, Hil,” I say, patting one of the ruffles awkwardly. Love is maybe an exaggeration.

“Right?” She checks herself out in the mirror next to the door, and the woman behind the counter nods in approval.

“Very eighteen-hundreds chic,” the woman says with absolutely no intonation in her voice.

Hilary reaches around to check the tag. “And I can even afford it! The world isn’t always on board with your girl’s financial-aid budget, but Willa’s Closet knows how to deliver.”

“Amen to that,” I say.

“I’m just worried that we’re shopping too early,” Hilary says, moving from her reflection in the mirror to her reflection in the window because sometimes mirrors don’t tell the truth. “What if my style changes in three months?”

My eyes linger on the white dress for another second before I tear myself away. “Nothing’s gonna change in three months except we’re finally gonna be free of high school and parents and Mr. Garcia quacking at us to stop making out in the hallways.”

Abigail looks forlornly out the window of the shop. “Can you believe three months are all that’s left in senior year? Are we ever going to meet your parents before we graduate, Cham?”

“I’ve told you eight million times: They don’t really live in this universe.”

“Yeah, yeah, they’re aliens, or they work for the CIA, yadda, yadda yadda,” Abigail says. “I’m just realizing all the things we still haven’t done.”

“Don’t get too sentimental too soon,” Hilary says. “You have to save some of that for your valedictorian speech, which you will beat Josie for.” I nod distractedly, the white dress catching my eye again.

“Did you want to try it on?” the woman behind the counter asks me. She has her laptop open, and it has all sorts of stickers on it. When she gets up, I realize she’s not really a woman, she’s more of a girl, but that always confuses me. I thought I’d be a woman when I started buying tampons and face cream, but now that I’ve passed those milestones, I’m starting to think I’ll never be a woman. Or worst of all, I’ve actually been one all along.

“Here,” the woman/girl says. She jumps up into the window display and takes the dress off the mannequin. When she holds it out to me, its shoulders slump.

“That’s okay,” I say, averting my eyes from the naked mannequin totally exposing herself to the center of town. “I don’t think it’ll fit. Besides, I’m gonna pass until my boyfriend secures the deal and shows me the tickets.”

“You could ask him,” she says, with just enough judgment in her voice to piss me off. You’re a shit feminist, the line of her mouth adds.

“Nah,” I say coolly. “I asked him to officially be my boyfriend. Now it’s his turn to make a move.”

“Well, are you sure about the dress?” She holds it out to me and I notice the cup size. Grapefruits, at least. I look closer. Scratch that. Watermelons.

“It’ll never work.” I point to my chest. “Tiny-tits committee.”

Abigail comes over and hits me in the arm. “We’re being body positive, remember? It was our New Year’s resolution.”

“It’s never the new year,” I say, drifting toward the rack of shoes. There’s a pair of lace-up combat boots almost identical to the ones I’m wearing. “By the time it’s the ‘new year,’ it’s just the year.”

“Oh, shut up, Cham. I put up with so much shit from people about how fat girls can’t dance, and I just keep shaking my ass anyway.” She starts party-girling around Hilary, who laughs.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” I put the boots back and look down at my boobs. “I’m sorry for underappreciating you, my itty-bitty titties that last grew in seventh grade.” I pat the top of my bra, which always drifts away from my chest like a sailor going out on a whim.

“Good girl,” Abigail says, now shimmying in front of the mirror, and Hilary shimmies against her back too. Neither of them has any qualms about dancing in public. I stand beside them and run a hand through my dark, frizzy hair until a knot stops my fingers.

“Shouldn’t you be at dance practice anyway?” Hilary asks, turning to a rack of “special-made” denim items. How do we live in a world where recycled jeans cost more than nonrecycled jeans? “Or do you get to skip because you’re a captain?”

“It got canceled,” Abigail says, frowning at the jeans on jeans on jeans.

While she tells some story about how practice got canceled because her coach’s pug had a panic attack at doggy day care, my phone dings. I look down at it, stepping out of the way of the only shopper in the store besides us, who seems completely unfazed by the recycled-jeans scam as she piles a pair over her arm.

“It’s Gene,” I say a little too loudly. The woman looks over at me judgmentally, but it’s not my fault that seeing his name on my screen creates a little lightning storm in my belly.

“And how is Eugene Wolf?” Hilary asks in the British accent she frequently catches from a mysterious airborne virus. She tries to get her chin over my shoulder to read my text, but I clear my throat and turn from her because I try not to encourage other people’s character flaws. “He says, I have a surprise for you!” I feel a huge grin take over my face.

“There she goes,” Hilary says, crossing her eyes at me, and Abigail laughs. They call it the Cham-in-love grin, but it’s actually the Cham-in-like grin, because until Gene says it, I’m not admitting anything. There’s nothing worse than being in love with someone who’s only in like with you. Not that I know that for sure, but I’d rather not find out.

“Maybe the surprise is a prom ask?” Abigail says. She selects a few dresses from the nearby rack while I pretty much entirely lose interest in shopping.

“I hope it’s a prom ask,” I say, looking down at my phone and wondering which cute-but-chill thing to respond with. “I mean, I definitely want it to be a massive romantic gesture, but I also don’t know if I’m properly prepared for that. I need to wax my mustache before I get a surprise like that.”

“That’s so cheesy,” the woman/girl says. She’s appeared out of nowhere with a box full of hangers. She slaps her hand over her mouth. “Oops, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

I laugh and pocket my phone. “What’s wrong with cheese? I love a good stinky blue.”

She collects more hangers from the rack and adds them to the box. Her ponytail is high on top of her head, and her big hoop earrings look like they weigh a whole personhood. She shrugs. “I’ve just never been that impressed by anything a guy has surprised me with.”

“It’s probably sex,” Abigail hisses, then heads for the dressing room that has a hexagonal mirror and a bright pink feather boa on the door.

“Nah, I think I’m gonna save that for prom.”

“Prom sex! Prom sex!” Abigail chants.

“Shh, Abigail! We’re in public,” Hilary says. When she tugs at a knot in her hair, a few blue strands come out.

“Guys, help me respond,” I say, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror: asymmetrical eyebrows, the skeletons of two pimples, and teeth just straight enough to justify the orthodontic hell of my middle school years. Yup, I’m on my game today. My phone dings again. “He says, Come over,” I report.

“Do it,” Abigail calls. That’s all the permission I need.

“But we just got here,” Hilary pouts.

“Sorry, gotta go,” I say, heading for the door. “But don’t buy your dresses without me! If we don’t buy them at the same time, it’ll be bad luck, and that is not the sort of luck I’m aiming for on prom night.”

“What if we find the perfect ones?” Hilary asks.

“Yeah, sorry, Cham, we’re not making any promises,” Abigail says. She comes out of the dressing room in a short, sleeveless dress, her fantastic boobs doing fantastic things below her gold necklace. I feel a jab of third-wheely-ness, but I’m trying to be less paranoid lately. Just because they both applied to state college (along with 75 percent of our class) doesn’t mean they’re going to get in.

“Good luck with your surprise,” the woman/girl behind the cash register says as I pass her. “And finding a prom dress.”

I smile, pushing the door open into the cold January sunshine. “I’m kinda hoping it’s gonna find me.”

Going to see Gene involves a thorough washing of all the parts of my body that touch him. I, for one, like my smells, but I can understand why others might prefer Fresh Ocean Breeze to Cham-Hasn’t-Washed-Her-Armpits-Since-Her-Eight-Mile-Run Breeze. When the cleaning ritual is complete, I go to my room/mini-universe, where the walls are painted black and a projector casts stars all over the ceiling, my bed, and the floor. With my best outfit on (leggings), I add a little mousse to my hair. It takes the frizzies from brainwashed misfits to rebellious corkscrews with excellent personalities. Even though I spend a fair amount of time in the mirror, I think what I really want is the sort of beauty that has nothing to do with what I look like: beauty that’s always there, even if no one’s around to see it.

Downstairs, all the lights are on in the kitchen. I hurriedly take a mint from the drawer full of things that aren’t mine and keep an eye out for my parents. The counters suggest that Mom was in the middle of making dinner—a box of rice, a pan half filled with water in the sink. Cooking was my dad’s domain before Mom took it over. At first I tried to get her to play Elvis in the morning and whip up pancakes for dinner, but it didn’t feel like home when it was forced.

“Hey,” I call, pulling open the sliding door that separates my parents’ part of the house from all the other parts. “I’m going to Gene’s!”

I used to ask them before I went places, but they kept saying no, so now I just offer my plans up as facts. Or prophecies.

“Wait,” my mom yells. Her voice is muffled by a closed door and whatever else separates us that we can’t see. “Come here, Cham.”

I drag myself down the hall, which is lined with proof of all my awkward stages: fifth grade with the four-braid situation; seventh grade with the braces so big you could pretty much straighten a leg; and freshman year of high school, where I basically look like I do now except I hadn’t mastered my Gill School uniform yet, so I had it buttoned up to my lower lip. Suddenly it smells so strongly of pee I have to breathe through my mouth.

“I was just saying that I’m going to Gene’s,” I say again, my voice sounding nasally as I pause outside the bathroom, where my mom’s bright yellow bucket of cleaning supplies waits. I think she and the bucket are in a codependent relationship, but I guess the lavender-tinged-bleach smell isn’t the worst thing to have seeped into our lives over the past few years. My mom opens the bathroom door, fully exposing my dad on the toilet: pants down, toilet paper in hand, everything private decidedly un-private.

“Judy!” my dad cries.

I slam my eyes shut as he pulls a hand towel over his lap. “Can you guys keep the door closed when you’re coordinating bathroom stuff?”

“Sorry, Cham!” my dad hollers from somewhere in the great abyss of relieving oneself. More quietly to my mom, he hisses, “You always forget about my privacy.”

“It’s okay,” I say with all the okay-ness I can muster.

“I’m sorry, Scott, but I wish you had waited,” she says to him in a voice I don’t think she means for me to hear. There’s a prickly feeling in my throat and my stomach. I think I swallowed a young porcupine. “You have to stay in your chair and wait until—”

“So can I go to Gene’s?” I ask, vision still a little scarred.

“Just a second, Cham,” my mom says impatiently.

I turn my back to her and the bathroom and the entire situation. On the wall behind me, there are younger versions of ourselves. In one picture, the three of us are outside when my dad was still landscaping. I’m naked as a duck playing in the hose while my mom cuts the heads off petunias in her garden. My dad is pretending to mow her flowers down and she’s laughing; they’re in their own world together, while me and the hose are getting along just fine in ours. I don’t know who took the picture.

“Cham, have you ever noticed how clean the cracks between the tiles of the bathroom floor are?” my dad asks. “Your mom does a stupendous job.”

“Yeah, stupendous,” I say, nibbling at my fingernails impatiently. I hear the toilet flush and a paper towel rip.

“Well, sounds like you guys are pretty busy in there,” I say, tiptoeing away backward. My feet have a feathery presence even on something as hard and unforgiving as the floors of our house. “I’m gonna leave you to it and head to Gene’s, okay? Thanksloveyoubye.”

I’m out of the hallway and through the sliding door like a comet. In the dark, overly ordered mudroom, where my mom basically alphabetizes our jackets, I put my sneakers on. That’s how it’s been going lately anytime I could be in trouble with my parents. I’m not complaining. If you think about the solar system and which part you’d like to be, you’d probably say the sun, but if you think about it better, you’d realize the sun blows up eventually, destroying everything and ending life as we know it. Planets like little old Pluto just drift out of the solar system and get forgotten.

2

Days ’til prom: Still 103

ONCE MY BODY REGISTERS WE’RE GOING TO GENE’S HOUSE, every electric current in my human system speeds up: My heart takes over the drums, my thoughts are all past and future and what it was like when he kissed my shoulder during gym class when I was wearing a tank top and what it will be like when we see each other tonight.

“Hey, you,” Gene says, opening his front door and grinning. His hair is actually combed and he’s wearing a pink bow tie, which he adjusts with a totally adorable look on his face. Our eyes connect, triggering the smile response, the heart response, the thought response, and every other human response.

“You’re wearing a suit!” I say, and the light from the house makes him glow like the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. (Read: He’s the only boyfriend I’ve ever had.)

“Not a full suit,” he says, pointing to the blue jeans he always changes into after school. “Just a fairly decent shirt and this great polka-dot thing I found in my mom’s closet.” He steps closer to me, and his head shades me from the blinding porch light. There are thousands of winter moths flying around it, just trying to catch a hot break. He crosses his arms. “Damn, it’s cold.”

“I’ll warm you up.” I wrap my arms around his neck, sandwiching myself between him and the half-open door. It’s taking all my energy not to be like, OMGWHATSMYSURPRISE?!