"So what’s wrong with me, then?"
"Doug—"
"No. Really. I’d like to know. I’m too short? Too fat? I can tell you without bullshit that I am maybe the second-strongest guy in school. Do you want to know how?"
"You are not kind!" Sejal said, braced forward, knuckles white around the swing set chains. "You are no better than you have to be. Why are you no better? Because people treat you poorly? You treat others poorly. You treat Jay poorly."
"I’ve been nothing but nice to Jay today—"
"Yes. Today. It is like you’ve been running for office."
They fell silent and the old nag of a swing set creaked and groaned. The leafy tangles at the property’s edge shuddered in the night air.
"You don’t know what you’re doing," Doug said. "It’s not my fault, if you say these things."
Sejal stood, feeling suddenly foolish, and put the black curved seat between her and Doug. It shimmied and bumped against her hips. "I know what I’m doing. I have been trying to find something in you…I have been looking for your heart. There should be something divine in all our hearts." She swallowed hard and her eyes rimmed with tears.
"Hey," said Doug. "Hey, hey, hey, it’s all right." He tried to take hold of her, but Sejal backed away and in between the swing and struts.
"There’s something wrong with me, too, Doug," she said. "Something missing. That is how I can see it. But I’m trying to be better. You’re only trying to be admired."
"Oh, and — and I suppose Adam’s a good person."
"Adam? This has nothing to do with Adam."
"He likes you."
"He likes Sophie," said Sejal.
She was cold and her feet were damp and she wanted to go inside and then to leave with Cat. After a moment Doug said something. Sejal couldn’t make it out as he barely moved his lips, so tight were they over his teeth. He looked as though he might be biting the inside of his mouth.
"I can’t hear you," said Sejal. But Doug didn’t repeat himself, so after a moment she added, "I’m going in." She walked back up the deck stairs and into the house (don’t turn around, she thought, don’t look), and left Doug alone below in the dark.
"How dramatic," she whispered to herself sourly. "I should try out for the school play."
IT HAD RAINED in the early morning. By lunch the world was as fresh and clean as a green apple. The air was spiced with the smell of new possibilities and taquitos. While most of the usual lunch group was occupied with a loud and stuttering debate over whether Andrea did or did not sleep with Blaine on Lexington Avenue (it was like watching toddlers play soccer, this debate — each new idea was swarmed and kicked simultaneously from all directions), Ophelia asked Sejal about the rest of her weekend.
"Saturday we went shopping on South Street," she answered. "Is that right? South Street?"
"Was it all body jewelry and sex shops?"
"There was also a comic book store."
Ophelia nodded. "South Street."
South Street had felt a little more like home than the Main Line suburbs. There was bright, messy life on the streets. Colors. And here the colors had not been washed and scrubbed until they faded into taupe and eggshell.
Not that there weren’t still differences, big differences. There was an almost stultifying array of choices — kinds of people, kinds of foods. Here, amid the produce wallahs of the Italian Market, she’d counted six fruits she’d never even seen before and gasped at a line of ripe mangoes — their blushing skins looking suitably embarrassed to be spotted so far from home and in September. They practically shivered in the autumn air.
"What’d you do on Sunday?" asked Ophelia.
"Ah — I ruined Cat’s Sunday by asking to accompany the family to church."
Cat overheard this and disengaged from the TV show argument, which had just devolved into personal attacks and name calling anyway. "I didn’t say you ruined my Sunday, yaar. I’m just disappointed. I thought you were going to be my Get Out of Church Free card for the whole year."
"I am here to try new things." Sejal smiled. "Tough shit for you!"
"Ho, ho!" Cat shouted.
"New things, huh?" Ophelia purred as she leaned in. "What kind of new things do you want to try?"
Cat puckered her lips in a silent whistle and turned back to the others. That left Sejal alone with Ophelia, so to speak, in this tangle of thorns that had suddenly grown up around them.
"I don’t know," she said, looking at Cat. "Things." She considered what to tell Ophelia about her visit with Doug and Jay when a shadow fell across her lap.
Doug’s head was blotting out the sun. Jay stood behind, looking vaguely apologetic.
Sejal hadn’t expected him to show up for lunch. He had rather pointedly ignored her in math class that morning. "Doug," she said.
"Hey, Meatball, Jay," said Sophie.
"I prefer ‘Doug,’" answered Doug, and he sat down at the base of the tree where the roots were packed in tight, intestinal coils.
"Okay," said Sophie. "Doug. You look different. You got contacts! But there’s something else."
Conversation wilted. Faces turned and became transfixed by this something else, this question of how exactly Doug had changed. Doug seemed unfazed by the attention, almost bored with it. Where he would have previously only had eyes for Sejal, he now examined Abby with all the careless detachment of the mean judge on a reality talent show.
"But, hey," Cat broke the silence. "What about Jay? Isn’t his hair rad?"
Jay flinched as the group came back to themselves and stared at his head. He smiled sheepishly and bobbed it back and forth.
"That looks so good on you, Jay," said Ophelia. "Although — and you know I’m only saying this because I like you — your new hair doesn’t really go with your Simpsons T-shirt."
"Or your cargo shorts," Sophie added.
"It’s like your head’s on the wrong action figure," said Adam, and everyone laughed.
"Fuck you," Doug said suddenly like a whip crack. "You don’t have to take that from him, Jay."
"It was funny," Jay mumbled. "He wasn’t being mean."
"I really wasn’t," said Adam. "I’m just, like, Jay’s too cool for his clothes now. That’s all."
Doug gave a princely nod. Everyone seemed to avoid his gaze. Everyone except Abby.
"Jay and I are going to start a band," Cat said. "Me on bass, him on theremin and MIDI. We’re inventing a new genre — early goth plus nerdcore. We’re gonna call it nerdcave."