Picture Us In The Light(36)
Or maybe it was none of that, maybe it was something much shallower and less nuanced. Maybe it was just that between him and Sandra, obviously I wanted Harry to win.
The SAT is a couple of weeks later, and Monday Harry’s still in a weird mood, worrying about the test. He’s taken it twice already—first he got a 1580 and then the second time he dropped down to 1540, which really rattled him.
“The worst part is, I know I’m always bad with dangling modifiers,” he says as we’re heading to the rally court for lunch, talking loud over the echo of all the footsteps and conversations in the concrete hallways outside the math wing. He’s holding his books against his waist, and it contours all those lines of muscle in his arm. “I swear I miss every single one of those questions. So I studied them all the night before, and I think I still missed them anyway.”
“You dangled modifiers in public? Have some decency.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He smiles, but in an obligatory way. “I wish I remembered the questions so I could look them up.”
“You probably got it this time,” I say. But I kind of hope he didn’t, that somehow his scores will magically be exactly good enough for Brown and no better. We’d be just miles apart.
And then we’re at the planters and everyone’s milling around and eating—no Regina today—and Harry marshals himself for lunch, teasing Priya Dev about something that happened when they were both taking the SAT, sitting cross-legged, his hands on his knees, nodding sympathetically as Margie Rhee talks about how she’s gotten maybe four hours of sleep a night all week. He’s soothing for a while, and then—he has impeccable instincts—knows just when to pivot into joking around again, teasing her about the time she made wristbands with the solubility rules printed in five-point font sophomore year when we all took Honors Chem.
I know him well enough to know he’s still down about his test, though. I’ve never brought up the thing that I always felt like, underneath everything, knitted us together early on: that the truth about Harry is that he’s always felt like he has to distract the world from noticing he doesn’t measure up, that deep down he believes that if you take away the GPA and the test scores and everything he put on his college apps, there’s nothing left.
I wonder where Regina is. I have a goal today, after watching Grace and Mina come find her last week: I want to talk to her. Really talk, not the way we’ve been navigating around each other since last year. I want her to know I miss how it used to be between us and that I’m here for her. I was lying awake last night thinking about all these convoluted ways to try to lead into it, but really probably the easiest thing to do is just say, Hey, I hope you know I really care about you, and I hope things with us are okay.
Regina comes back ten minutes before the bell rings. Harry looks up at her from where he’s sitting on the steps, putting up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and says, genially, “Where’d you go?”
“I was just looking at some things for story assignments.”
“Anything juicy?”
“I was just—no, not really. Just trying to figure out—some things.”
She sits down next to him. Regina and Sandra used to always sit next to each other at the very edge of the planters, sometimes cross-legged with their backs to each other, leaning against each other, or sometimes with their arms linked together, Sandra peering around the rally court and murmuring things darkly into Regina’s ear as Regina laughed or sometimes rolled her eyes in disapproval. They always pooled their lunches together, so you’d sit next to them and not be able to pick out what belonged to each of them. A few times I tried to draw those lunches but I could never quite get the details right, never get it to look like more than just food.
I practice mentally: hey I hope you know I really care about you and I hope things with us are okay. I have the words ready, all arrayed in order like a paint palette, but as soon as I open my mouth they dry out. Regina reaches into her backpack, pulling out a container of soy yogurt and a plastic spoon. I’m eating a satsuma, and I hold it out for Regina to tear off a segment. She either pretends not to see or doesn’t.
I’ve never said this aloud to anybody, and I resist letting the thought form in my own mind, too. But this is the thing I’m most afraid of, the fear that fits its lens over everything Regina ever says or does to me: that she blames me. Even if she doesn’t know the whole story—and it would be so much worse if somehow she did.
I wonder sometimes which moments are the ones where she misses Sandra the most. There’s a case to be made, I think, for when things are rough, when nowhere else in the world is a safe harbor and all that history you built with someone collapsed—every fight she has with her parents, every time the grief overtakes her. But I think there’s something to be said for when it’s just moments like this, too, the mundane ones that you can’t talk about with anyone else because they don’t matter all that much. One time sophomore year after Harry’s sister was already away at Harvard he texted her a picture of their dad casually walking around in a pair of skinny jeans he’d gotten himself. I’M DEAD, Evelyn texted back, and then like twenty skull emojis. DEEEEEADDDDDDDDDD. And I missed my sister all through middle school when my dad was struggling, sure, I missed her every time things were tough at home, but after that I felt cheated by her absence in all those small things and in all those times that were various opposites of hard: how one Christmas my parents, who never buy each other presents, both independently bought each other the same Costco garage opener as their sole gift, or the way my mom looks driving in her gigantic sun visor when no one else is in on the joke. Who does Regina text now about those stupid things that don’t matter enough to tell anyone else, when she sees twin puppies on a walk or when a pair of shoes she’s been eyeing go on sale or when she reads a mildly interesting article and wants to talk about a single line in it—is it Harry? Or do they just wither in the ether?