Look Both Ways(24)

“Really?” Zoe wrinkles her nose. “Isn’t that guy, like, fifty?”

“He’s pretty attractive, though. Russell showed me a picture on his phone.”



“Russell has a picture of him on his phone?”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “I know, right?”

“Yeah, definitely gay. That sucks.”

“Why’d you think Carlos was?”

“This is going to sound awful, but he seemed too respectful to be straight. He looked me in the eyes when we talked, instead of trying to peek down my shirt. My last couple of boyfriends before him basically wanted a set of boobs to hang out with.”

“Can I see a picture?” I ask.

“Of my boobs?”

I laugh. “Of your boyfriend.”

“I know. I’m just messing with you.” Zoe pulls out her phone and opens a picture. Carlos has a stubbly beard, squarish black glasses, and those deep parentheses around his smile that are almost dimples but not quite. His teeth look incredibly white against the tan of his skin. Zoe’s in the picture, too, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and pressing her cheek against his. They look totally at ease with each other, and I’m flooded with an irrational wave of jealousy that there are people in the world who know Zoe so much better than I do. I want to skip ahead to a time when we’ve known each other for years, when we meet new people and they marvel at the depth of our friendship.

“He’s adorable,” I manage to say.

“Isn’t he?” Even though she must’ve seen the picture a million times, Zoe’s still practically glowing as she looks at it.

“How long have you guys been together?”

“About ten months. Are you dating anyone?”



I shake my head. “I was with this guy Jason for, like, five months this past year, but we broke up in April. He was really cute and sweet and everything, but we weren’t into any of the same stuff. We kind of ran out of things to talk about.”

Zoe nods. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine; it was my decision. Plus, now I don’t have to listen to my mom complain every single day about how he’s not right for me.”

“She didn’t like him?”

“She thought he was nice. But he wasn’t a theater person, and my parents kind of have this thing about how only theater people can really understand other theater people. My uncle’s dating this financial analyst, and my mom will not leave him alone about it.”

“Wait, everyone in your family’s a theater person?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wow, that’s crazy. Are they all actors?”

Zoe’s getting uncomfortably close to the truth. I wish I didn’t have to be secretive with her when she’s making such an effort with me, but I can’t tell her about my mom right now, not when our friendship is progressing so well. Maybe I’ll never have to tell her.

“They do lots of different stuff,” I say. “Some of them sing opera or dance or direct or whatever, but pretty much everyone is an insanely talented performer. They all came to Allerdale, and they were all really successful, so that’s why it sucks so much that I’ve basically failed here.”

“You haven’t failed, Brooklyn. You’re being way too hard on yourself.”



“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” I say, hoping she’ll take the hint and drop it.

“Okay.” She shifts, and for a minute I’m afraid I’ve unintentionally ended the conversation altogether. But she just changes position so that we’re both cross-legged and facing each other, knees almost touching. “Road trips, love or hate?” she asks.

It’s so unexpected that I start laughing. “Um, hate, I guess—I can’t drive, I have no sense of direction, and I have a really small bladder. Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know more things about you.”

I feel a small shift deep inside me, a little click, like something tiny has ignited. Zoe, with the Juilliard acceptance letter and the circle of admirers, wants to know more things about me.

“Oh,” I say, because I’m too surprised to say anything else.

“Now you,” she says, and I realize with a surge of happiness that this game could go on indefinitely.

“Okay,” I say. “Um, leggings—love or hate?”

“Under dresses, love. As pants, hate.”

“Me too!”

“Cats, love or hate?” she asks.

“The animal or the musical?”

“The musical.”

I feel pretty neutral about it, but I say, “Hate,” because I know every self-respecting theater person is supposed to hate Cats. “You?” I ask.

Zoe smiles sheepishly. “I kind of love it, honestly. It makes me nostalgic. I used to pin a scarf to the butt of a leotard like a tail and dance to the sound track every day when I was little.”



I love that she answered that way. I also wonder if she was testing me.

“Sleeping till noon, love or hate?” I ask her.

“Love,” Zoe says. “Sex—love or hate?”

I think about lying again, but that’s already backfired on me once, so I decide to go with the truth. “Not applicable,” I say.