Chapter 16

elliot

“I just,” Neema says between grit teeth and sharp pants in the early-morning beach air, “it’s so unfair. I could have just hitched a ride with someone. But, no, because I am obviously just looking for ever and all excuses to be a rebellious, diabolical teenager.”

“That is unfair,” I tell Neema, even though she’s getting to go to a super big Comic Con this summer. Like, yes, it’s for just one day, but it’s kinda somehow a lot to think about? I dunno. I just don’t like the idea that my friends are going to go off and do very cool things without me and then complain about the said very cool things they do without me.

It wasn’t like this before Neema and Duncan started dating. Cool things were done together then. I try not to let the change get to me.

We’re jogging along the beach, all three of us. The morning air is somehow chilly, and my sneakers sink into the sand where the early morning tide has just rolled back out. Duncan is the only one of us who doesn’t even appear to be struggling. He just takes the whole thing in stride.

“I feel like Midoriya,” he says, looking down at Neema between us. Her shapely legs were made more for dancing and being the varsity field hockey goalie than mine or Deku’s—still, she keeps pace with us incredibly well, considering I’m over a foot taller than her, and neither of us enjoy running very much.

“Why” I pant “Midoriya?

“Who,” says Neema, “is Midoriya?”

Duncan lets out a strangled gasp. “Ugh, we will turn you to a weeb yet!”

“Oh joy,” she says, and I can feel that sass radiating from her tiny body. “I can dress up like a loli or whatever, then.”

“Oh gosh no,” I say, right as Duncan says, “Quit attempting to use my kinks against me that it so unfair oh my gosshhh.”

“Blech that is so not okay,” I tell him as we dart around a slightly scavenged seal carcass that wasn’t there when we last all jogged together three days ago—it must have washed up during the storm yesterday. Seagulls have had more of their ways with it by now; the face is already just skin that flaps in the breeze. All the flesh behind it has been picked away, and various fatty spots along the seal’s flank lie open and vulnerable to the salty sea air.

“What, the seal, or my not-actual kinks?” Duncan asks.

“Oh thank goodness they’re not real,” Neema mutters as she and I leap in tandem over a giant stick. I almost slip, but manage to keep up.

“Yeah, dude, that would be gross if you had a loli kink,” I tell him. “Things I learned from 2017 meme culture. It comes from ‘lolita,’ which means—”

“I know, Elliot,” Duncan says in that tone of voice that rarely comes up with him. He already doesn’t want to be talking about this, ‘this’ being what should have been a throw-away joke but shouldn’t be left as such.

A seagull takes off before us, screeching at the overcast dawn. “Wait, like, the creepy old book?” Neema asks. “Gross.”

“Yeah, it’s a pedophilia thing,” I say. “I super wouldn’t joke about it.”

“Elliot. I know this. My mom is a librarian. Lolita is one of the few books she wants to burn.” I don’t think it’s the running that’s making his sentences so short. Duncan just … really does not want to talk about this. Whatever. That is completely fine.

“What do you think of your new coworker?” Neema asks between deeply huffed breaths. We’ll be coming up on the hills that lead to the parking lot in a minute or so, and I can feel my limbs ready to give out. This is the only exercise I get nowadays, after leaving the team. There’s a weight room open at the school, and plenty of other sports where girls could tell me I make them uncomfortable—gosh, why did I think that?—but I never had the motivation to go and participate. Swim was my life for so long, and exercising for myself was too strange.

The morning air is like a cold knife at the back of my throat. I try to push through it. “Um, she’s pretty nice, actually. Like, I can see us becoming friends.” Part of me wants to tell her secret, but I can’t even imagine what that would look like. Telling them. And besides, her creepy brother would probably kill me.

“Is she cute?” Duncan asks. “In a non-objectifying way?”

“I would hit you,” I pant, “but I can’t breathe.” My legs are unstable towers of jello that are liable to melt at any moment. Melt very painfully. This running thing is new; one day (as in, the Thursday a month ago), I decided to crash in on Duncan and Neema’s little ritual, and I am not loving adjusting to working out again.

Neema seems perfectly okay. Duncan is built like a mule, as he constantly forces us to note, but Neema isn’t built quite like he is. At first glance, she’s all curves and softness, but you let her double up on DDD-cup sports bras and give her apt shoes, and she can run. Like the wind. Albeit a very whiny, out-of-breath wind. Right now, the both of them are holding back for me. It’s a mix of kinda appreciated, kinda deprecating. More appreciated, though. My chest is burning and is likely going to combust at any moment.

“You think you could become her friend?” she asks. “Like, okay, friend like you and me and Duncan are? Ugh my lungs are like empty applesauce packets why.”

“Or,” Duncan interrupts, “friends like Duncan and Neema are? Couples goals?”

“Duncan, quit grossing me out.”

“Sure thing, babe. Insert ass-squeeze here.”

“I will murder you. Why is the sun so bright this early oh I want to die.”

Duncan runs ahead and jogs backwards, smiling like the most boyish boy alive, what hair that isn’t plastered to his forehead flopping with his jerky strides and with the wind blowing in from the sea. “Actually, your dad will murder me if I squeeze your ass, so.”

Neema shakes her head. “He is such a buzz-kill, I swear to God.”

“What did he do now?” I ask. Mr. Adriko is low-key famous for being strict. By “famous,” I mean is very strict towards Neema but only we know about it because it’s honestly not that bad.

Neema slows her pace as we reach the hills. Duncan has already flopped down onto the pebbly sand before us, smiling up slightly as his chest hardly heaves. “It was nothing,” she says. “He just yelled at me for being home literally a minute late. It was dumb.”

“Oh,” I say, because I hate the fact that this seems bad. Neema is my friend, and sometimes, her parents really are unreasonable, but looking at her parents’ kind of unreasonable versus my parents’s, I sometimes feel a little hurt. It’s not that her problems aren’t problems. I just … I don’t talk about how my parents frustrate me with Duncan and Neema. And it frustrates me somehow—totally my problem, but that doesn’t make it any better.

Really, generally speaking, I don’t talk—as far as Duncan and Neema are concerned, my parents are rad and dope and cool, and the fact I haven’t come out to them is just me “taking my time.” In a sense, it’s true, but I also think it would be more trouble than anything, coming out now. They’re kind of dickwads? Unintentionally so, but, yeah. Dickwads.

“Yeah.” Neema sits down next to Duncan and leans her head against his shoulder. “It’s stupid. He was all like, ‘If you’re going to abuse the privilege to have a boyfriend, then you’re not going to have one.’ And it’s like, Dad, I am seventeen. I will be eighteen in January. I get to make some of my own decisions. I can date who I want.”

“I mean, everyone should get to date who you want,” Duncan says, meeting my gaze. “Like you and concessions’ stand girl, right?”

I roll my eyes. “Nothing is going to happen between us.”

“You’re a dork. Maybe she likes dorks.”

“Dorks are the best,” Neema agrees. “Dorks be dope.”

“Dorks do, dorks do.” Duncan nods along with her. “And Elliot is about as dorky as it gets.”

My chest still burning, I bark out a laugh and plop down next to them. “You guys are probably more dorky because you hang out with me.”

“Good,” Neema says. “Dorks. Be. Dope.”

“Dorks do,” Duncan mutters, leaning back and resting on the sand. “Dorks. Do.”

We just chill in silence for a minute or so, catching our breaths, cooling off for a moment before Duncan says, “I’m doing the fall musical.”

Neema shoots up to a seated position. Her hands clutch the sand; her almond eyes are literally saucers. “What?”

“Yes,” Duncan says. “I will learn to sing, and I will be the Beast, and you will be Belle, and I will growl and stomp and yeet wolves.”

“OhmyGodDuncan!” Neema squeals, accidentally flinging sand. “Gah! Gah! Gahhh!”

“I know!” he says. “It’ll be a time. Elliot, you should come in and be Gaston. We’ll be theater children, stealing the show and all that jazz.”

“OhmyGodChicago,” Neema exhales. “But yes, honestly Elliot, I’ve heard you sing. You’re super deep. And you’re funny. And tall.”

“I would be a very scrawny Gaston,” I say, playing along even though I know I won’t audition. I still haven’t brought up the possibility of rejoining the swim team with them yet. “I mean, I don’t think I can eat that many eggs. Ever. That would be a lot of eggs. I just can’t egg that hard, Neem.”

“Lies!” cries Duncan as Neema says, “But the whole point is that no one can eat as many eggs as Gaston, babe. You just gotta act like you can. Gotta channel that intense wanting of non-subpar egg consumption.”

“I would be a terrifying Gaston. I have too weak of a chin.”

“Ellie.” She raises her eyebrows, giving me her mom’s signature unimpressed look.

“Also, doesn’t he chew through leather or something? Even if I was kinky enough for leather straps, no way would I be kinky enough to chew through one. That is not something you can fake.”

“Ellie,” she says again.

“The kink? The kink is real.”

Duncan flicks my shoulder. “Elliot, you know you want to hang out with us.”

“Yes!” chimes Neema. “Yes, we don’t see enough of youuuu. Join our theater cuuuult.”

“I literally just went on a run with you people. We watched a couple movies together two nights ago. We’re watching Thor tonight.”

“Theater cult,” says Duncan, beginning to chant. “Theater cult, theater cult, theater cult, theater cult—”

“Cult of theater! O’, magnificent cult!”

“Theater cult, theater cult, theater cult!”

“You guys,” I say, trying to smile. I like the attention, but I can also handle only so much cajoling. “You can probably stop now.”

“Theater cult, theater cult, thea—”

“Seriously.” They shut up.

I untie and retie my sneakers slowly, methodically, staring out at the grey morning sea. “I’ve been thinking about extracurriculars for this year, actually,” I say slowly.

“You should do wrestling with me!” Neema says. “It’s fun. It’s mean hugging. Or field hockey!”

“Nah. Actually, I’ve … well. I’ve kinda been thinking about rejoining the swim team?”

“Okay Ellie,” Duncan says, giving me his Serious Face, “we love you, but why? After what happened last year?”

“I quit. That’s what happened last year. I quit.”

“Bruh,” he says, shaking his head. “Nah. They made you feel like shit.”

“I don’t blame them,” I mutter. “Like, they were uncomfortable and uneducated then, and now, they know better.”

“Unconvinced,” says Neema. “Remember all the shit they put up about Jace? Jace, who is queer and hated by them? They called him ‘disgusting’ and crap. So gross.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I say. I can feel my heart pounding in my throat. “They’ve been super nice to me. They’re changing.”

“They are homophobes,” says Duncan.

“Yes. And you are a homo,” Neema says, obviously trying to get me to laugh with her. I can see the pleading in her eyes. But I’m not feeling it.

I don’t say anything, but make a point of checking my phone. “I have about forty minutes before I need to go to work. Anyone want to get wet?”

“Always,” Neema says, sensing that this is my nice suggestion that we put an end to the conversation.

“Gross,” says Duncan, “I’m your boyfriend, not your sex slave.”

“You can be both.” Neema stands and brushes sand from her purple legging capris. “To the sea! Reeeee!” She runs off into the surf, arms raised high above her head, wooting and cheering and being Neema at her happiest. It’s admittedly fun to watch.

“Hey,” Duncan mutters. I turn my head back towards where he now slowly stands and stretches, popping his shoulder blades out like fins. “Just remember—you don’t owe those assholes anything, okay? Please be careful with them.”

“I will be,” I promise, even though I honestly don’t think there’s anything to be scared of. Last night, I thought long and hard about how the swim girls needed approaching. I’ve decided: if they’re chill, I’m chill. I think they’re maybe still a little immature, but enough less so that it won’t be a problem for me.

Duncan nods once, then darts off to the ocean. “DUNCAN CAN RUN TWICE AS FAST AS GASTON,” he screams.

Always the original, I scream back, “BITCH!”, already laughing as I rip off my laceless shoes and sandy socks, and race to join them.