The Difference Between You and Me Page 2

  Jesse is trapped.

  The bathroom sweep is Snediker’s specialty. Out the door would mean running right into her meaty arms—a one-way ticket to disciplinary. But back into the stall is the fool’s direction: Snediker keeps a long-handled retractable mirror tool on her person at all times that she snaps out to its full length during bathroom sweeps to check under stall doors for toilet-crouchers. Anyway, the boots make crouching impractical. Jesse scans the bathroom desperately for an exit strategy, molten panic bubbling in her chest.

  High up by the ceiling above the radiator unit is a long, narrow portal window, the kind you push out to open. It’s too high and too small for anyone but a moron or a super-hero to try to squeeze through. It’s decoration, not an escape hatch. It’s not part of a realistic plan. Jesse tugs her backpack over her shoulders and clambers up onto the radiator unit to reach it.

  In her mind, Jesse hears Wyatt, calm and firm: Absolutely not. Absolutely not, have you finally, completely lost your mind? First of all it’s as high as your head, you’ll never get up there. Second of all it’s as wide as a Pop-Tart, you’ll never fit through it. Third of all what are you gonna do if you do get through, fly? It’s fourteen feet down to the ground and then you’re trapped in the inner courtyard, where do you think you’re gonna go from there?

  Jesse thinks about Emily’s scrunched-up, confused expression as she left the bathroom: Sorry, sort of!

  She unhooks the window latch and punches the swivel frame out—it opens about twenty inches, not nearly enough for her to squeeze through. She grips the sharp sill with both hands and, sending all her strength to her arms and shoulders, jumps! up and manages to wedge herself into the window frame. Her head and shoulders are crammed through, but her whole back three-quarters is still dangling inside the bathroom. The rounded tiptoes of her fisherman’s boots just graze the radiator cover now—not enough contact there for leverage—and her shoulders are so squeezed she can’t wriggle another inch forward. She tries to reverse course but the backpack, fat with manifestos, has her stuck.

  Behind Jesse, a blast of static. In front of her: a square of gravel, a dwindling horizon of possibilities.

  Jesse hears the squeal of the bathroom door swinging wide on its hinges, feels the rush of air around her that is suddenly sucked through the room when it opens.

  And then, Snediker’s high, mirthless whine:

  “Busted.”

  2

  Emily

  With me, it’s about the person. I don’t believe in labels. I think people should be free to do whatever they want with whoever they want. Some people might say I’m bisexual and the only reason I wouldn’t say that is because I don’t believe in labels of any kind. I feel so grateful to be growing up today, when things are so much more free than they used to be. Nowadays people can just be who they are, they don’t have to define themselves in words.

  I’m very tolerant of all different kinds of differences. I was the one who proposed the Diversity Circus event to student council last year and headed the committee that organized it and found us a venue for it off campus and figured out how to rent the pony for pony rides and it was a ton of work but P.S.? We made a huge pile of money on it—it was one of our top three biggest moneymaking events of the year for student council, after the Fall Formal and the Lasagna Supper, which are always the biggest events of the year and which are traditions, so they’re guaranteed to make money. Diversity Circus was a brand-new event on the student council calendar and still it came in third for revenue for the year, and we used part of the money we made on it to bring in a speaker from the national office of GLSEN, which is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an awesome organization, and even though I didn’t have time to attend that event, I did book the room for it and I had a big part in making it happen and I heard that it went really well. Lots of people came.

  One of the things I love best about our school is that it’s such a diverse place. I have one friend who has a small hand from birth and one other friend who’s a Muslim—she wears a head scarf and everything. At some schools those people might get teased or made to feel unwelcome, but at our school those kids are as welcome as any normal kids. I’m really, really proud of that. As vice president of student council, I feel personally responsible for making our school such a welcoming, diverse place. To me, that’s one of the most important parts of my job.

  But unfortunately, that’s partly why my personal life has to be so complicated. As vice president of student council I have a responsibility to be sort of the public face of the school. When I walk around school, or around town, even, I don’t just represent myself, I represent the entire student body. That’s why I don’t just get to do whatever I want whenever I want to. It’s like, if I wanted to get drunk on a Saturday night and go joyriding in my parents’ car—tons of kids do this, I’ve seen them—I can’t, because I have to think about my public persona and my responsibility to the school. If I wanted to cut class and go do some shoplifting at the mall, or smoke cigarettes in the parking lot, or not do my homework, or do any different kind of rule-breaking thing that other kids do for fun without even thinking about it, I can’t, because for a person with a public persona like me, there are consequences. If I want to get sort of involved with Jesse Halberstam in any way, I have to really, really think about what that could do not just to me, not just to Michael, but to the entire school. It’s a serious responsibility.

  The problem with Michael isn’t even Michael, it’s that we’ve been together for so long. Michael and I have known each other since we were born, and we’ve been going out since eighth grade, which is really too young to start dating someone, I realize now that I’m older. Our parents let it happen because our moms are best-best friends, they’ve known each other forever, since before college even. They love that we’re together, our dads love that we’re together, everyone in school loves that we’re together. We’re the proverbial perfect couple. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what would happen to this town if we broke up—so many people have so much invested in our relationship. I mean, I do, too—I love him, we’ve shared so much over the years, and we know each other so well. We’ve grown up together. We’re practically brother and sister. Which is the problem. You shouldn’t go out with someone who feels like a member of your family.

  Jesse Halberstam does not feel like a member of my family. Sometimes she doesn’t even feel like a member of my species. She’s so… I don’t know, I can’t explain her. She’s a mess. She cuts her own hair with a Swiss Army Knife. She picks the mosquito bites on her arms until they bleed. She wears those unspeakable rubber boots. Half the time when she talks I don’t understand a word she’s saying, and the other half the time she’s saying something totally bonkers about how we have to, like, smash society and live in its ruins like futuristic barbarian cave people or whatever. I just tune her out when she talks like that. If I actually listened to her theories about the world, I’d have to conclude she was mentally insane. But most of the time I don’t have to listen to her theories because she’s not talking, she’s kissing me.

  She’s an incredibly good kisser. I don’t… I can’t explain it. It’s not something I can explain.

  When me and Michael kiss, it’s like I’m making out with a cut cantaloupe. He is the wettest, squishiest kisser on the planet. He’s so cute from a distance, you know, he’s such a good-looking guy, like a male model practically, but then when he goes to kiss me it’s like all the muscles in his face go slack and his lips get all spongy and loose and he opens his loose face and sort of lays his spongy lips all over me and drools his melon-juice spit into my mouth. It’s horrible. I don’t mean to criticize him, I’m sure lots of other girls would think he was a totally amazing kisser, it’s just… sometimes I have to pretend he’s getting too powerful and intense and I push him off me, but really I’m pushing him off me because he’s getting too disgusting. One time he kissed me so wetly for so long that his drool actually dripped down my nec
k. Sometimes right when I’m about to fall asleep, I suddenly remember the feeling of his spit sliding down my neck and I wake up so fast and hard my heart starts pounding in my chest and it takes me, like, hours to fall back to sleep.

  It’s not his fault. He just gets really excited, like a dog. Like a sweet, slobbery golden retriever.

  When Jesse Halberstam kisses me, she’s really focused and really intense. She puts her hands on the sides of my face to hold me where she wants me, or she winds her fingers up in my hair and tugs it tight, and somehow, just by the way she touches me, she makes my mouth open, she makes my eyes close, she makes me breathe faster and faster until I feel dizzy and I think I might black out. Sometimes when she’s kissing me, I swear to God, the edges of my body melt and I become sort of part of her. Sometimes when she kisses me I forget my own name.

  But then when I go home again I remember. I know who I am. I’m Emily Miller.

  3

  Jesse

  The frozen veggie burritos are in the oven. The prewashed organic lettuce is in the salad bowl. The radio is on in the den: All Things Considered—familiar, muted horn salute, the blurred murmur of NPR voices. Jesse is on one side of the kitchen table, and her parents are on the other.

  “What is this, a show trial?” Jesse demands. “A firing squad?”

  “This is not a firing squad,” her father says gently. Jesse’s father has a beard and a bald spot, half-glasses, and a permanent, ever-changing sweater vest. His voice is rich and resonant as a cello solo; he smells of Rooibos tea.

  “When the firing squad starts, you won’t have to ask,” her mother says sharply. Jesse’s mother has super-short, bright white hair—growing in finally after the chemo last spring—and little round John Lennon glasses. Her arms are crossed over her favorite T-shirt, which is green with big white letters that read: DARFUR IS HAPPENING NOW. She smells of soap and Wite-Out. She almost always keeps one eyebrow raised in rueful disbelief.

  “This is a conversation,” Jesse’s father says, “about what happened at school today.”

  “I don’t really feel like having a conversation about what happened at school today.” Jesse shrugs.

  “Well, you’re gonna,” snaps her mother. Jesse’s father lays a restraining hand lightly on his wife’s arm.

  “Sweetheart,” he says to Jesse, “it’s not that we don’t respect your feelings about pep rallies—”

  “Pep rallies revolt me,” Jesse interrupts.

  “And we respect that. You have every right to those feelings. But handling those feelings by crawling through a bathroom window—”

  “Unsuccessfully,” her mother points out.

  “Handling those perfectly legitimate, valid feelings by crawling through a bathroom window, sweetheart, is a maladaptive coping strategy that—”

  “Shrinkydink.” Jesse cuts him off.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll rephrase.” Her father has agreed not to use terms from his family therapy practice with his daughter except in extreme emotional emergencies. “By choosing this way of handling your feelings you… you complicated things, you made things harder on yourself, you—”

  “You screwed up,” her mother interrupts, impatient. “Is this NYU-bound behavior? This bathroom-window Keystone Kops routine?”

  “Fran.” Now Jesse’s father lays his hand on his wife’s shoulder, but she shrugs it off.

  “I’m pissed, Arthur, I don’t want to be calmed down, I want to be angry!”

  “I hear you, but—”

  “What were you thinking?” Fran stares her daughter down. “I hate to have to say that, it’s such a parenting cliché, but what on earth was going through your mind at that moment?”

  Jesse takes a deep breath and presents her case.

  “Pep rallies revolt me. I refuse to attend them and in this quote unquote free country I shouldn’t have to. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you guys! Pep rallies are fascist demonstrations of loyalty and I am not loyal to my school. I hate my school. I’m the opposite of loyal to it. If I wouldn’t end up in jail, I would blow it up.”

  “If you wouldn’t end up in jail, blowing it up wouldn’t be much of a principled statement,” Fran observes. She’s a lawyer; she can’t resist a counterargument.

  “I’m curious about why we’re talking about the violent destruction of property all of a sudden,” asks Arthur.

  “Because apparently your daughter is an incipient terrorist!” Fran shouts, turning on her husband. “And not, I might add, a particularly competent one.”

  Jesse looks down at her lap, stung.

  “I’m sorry.” Jesse’s mother flushes red. She gives Jesse a look of sincere apology. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sure if you were a terrorist, you’d make a wonderful one.”

  “Okay, so what I’d really like right now,” interjects Arthur again, “is to turn away from talking about terrorism and violence and move on to talking about the actual consequences of Jesse’s actions today. Is that okay with everyone?”

  The women in his life nod.

  “All right. So what exactly is ‘alternative’ about this Alternative Suspension Program?”

  Jesse sighs. “You have to like, ‘give back,’ or whatever. They make you come in on Saturday morning and do chores. That way, you don’t miss class and you benefit the school.”

  “Well,” Fran says, “that seems reasonable enough. Maybe if you spend a little time giving back, next time you’ll consider whether skipping a pep rally is really the best place to put your revolutionary energy.”

  “And sweetheart, think of this as an opportunity,” Arthur offers. “You never know what’s going to happen when you take on the establishment. You know your mother and I met in prison after a No Nukes demonstration.”

  “God I know,” Jesse sighs exasperatedly, “please do not tell me the story again and you always say prison and it was not prison, it was a holding area in the gym at the university!”

  “Still,” Fran says. She smiles sweetly, almost shyly, at her husband.

  Arthur strokes the back of his wife’s hand with two fingers. “They booked us one right after the other,” he says dreamily. “I stood behind her in line at the fingerprint station they had set up on this little card table under the basketball hoop. I was there with some of my buddies from the Men Finding Power Through Peace Coalition, and there she was, all alone. She came there all by herself because she saw something wrong in the world and wanted to make it right. And I thought, ‘What a brave person.’ And then I thought, ‘They’re going to press her fingers down in the ink and then they’re going to press my fingers down in the ink right afterward. It’s almost like we’ll be holding hands.’”

  Arthur picks up Fran’s hand and kisses the back of it. She rolls her eyes at him a little, but she’s still smiling.

  “Are you guys about to make out?” Jesse demands.

  “We might,” her father says, not taking his eyes off his wife. “We might make out.”

  “You know”—Jesse gets up from the table—“it’s fine that you guys are heterosexual, your lifestyle choice is none of my business, but I don’t see why you have to rub my face in it all the time. This house is totally gender-oppressive and I’m sick of it. I’m here, I’m queer—”

  “We’re used to it,” her mother sighs.

  ***

  “Typical,” Wyatt sighs on the phone when Jesse explains what has happened.

  Jesse is lying on her bed with her head hanging off the end and her sock feet up on the pillow, talking to her best friend. Since Wyatt left school in the middle of last year to be homeschooled by his aromatherapist-slash-animal-psychic mom, he basically does nothing but read books about finance and wait for Jesse to get home from school so they can talk. “Nice job, getting yourself thrown into jail on the one day you were going to come run interference for me with Howard.”

  “It’s not jail, it’s Alternative Suspension.”

  “Whatever. You don’t seem particularly devastated not to be
spending your Saturday with me and Mr. Willette.”

  Howard Willette is Wyatt’s father. He and Wyatt’s mother got divorced ten years ago, shortly after he accepted Christ as his personal savior—apparently, evangelical Christianity and aromatherapy proved to be incompatible belief systems. Four years ago, Howard married Louise, an even more conservative Christian than he is, and moved to Stonington, two towns away, to Wyatt’s great relief. But he still insists on honoring his monthly court-mandated coffee date with Wyatt, even though they have trouble exchanging even the most basic pleasantries without arguing. (Wyatt is a card-carrying member of the Atheist Alliance International. And the Queer Libertarian League.) For a while now, Jesse has been coming with Wyatt on these coffee dates to distract them both and cut the tension with dumb jokes. She saves up G-rated punch lines and wholesome anecdotes about heroic pets all month long to use as subject-changers.

  “I am so devastated. I’m totally devastated not to be there with you on Saturday. I have, like, three great new knock-knocks all ready to go!”

  “What were you doing hiding in the bathroom anyway? That’s amateur stuff—you know how Snediker is with bathroom sweeps.”

  “No, I know, it’s so dumb, I wasn’t supposed to be in there, or I was, but I was only supposed to be in there for a second. I just—something happened and I got distracted.”