Am I too big of a prude for college?

  I tiptoe past Lili, slipping into the wide, empty hallway—so quiet, it’s almost unnerving. Even waking at three in the morning to pee, I could still hear chatter and music spilling from a couple of rooms.

  The bathroom’s overhead lights are still off, but the glow from a night-light is enough to see the shower knobs. I pull the curtain closed, and for a moment, I just stand there. Eyes squeezed shut. Still in my pajamas.

  It’s the first time I’ve really been alone since I got here.

  Maybe that’s what scares me most about college. It all feels so public. How do people live so casually with strangers? With roommates? When do you ever get the chance to wind your heart back to normal?

  The moment I step into the hallway, there’s Tessa—in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a tiny Star of David necklace. She stops short. “Scott! I was just about to text you. Any interest in breakfast? Have you eaten?”

  “Oh—yes! I mean, I haven’t.”

  “Okay, awesome. My treat.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t have to do that! I can grab Lili’s card—”

  “Nope. I’ve got meal points to burn.” Tessa pats her back pocket.

  Lili’s still passed out, so I dump my toiletries and pajamas on the end of my bed. Then I swipe my phone off the nightstand, popping off a quick text so she knows where I am.

  Tessa looks up from her phone. “You ready?”

  “Ready.” I smooth the sides of my cardigan down over my shorts. Knowing I got dressed in a shower stall this morning makes me slightly paranoid that I’ve missed some critical buttons or zippers. Just a fun little stress cherry on top of this morning’s anxiety sundae.

  I’m getting breakfast with Tessa.

  Which means I’ll have to carry on a breakfast-length conversation with Tessa.

  Tessa, who isn’t a stranger—but I don’t know if I’m allowed to call her a friend yet either. That’s what makes it so hard, though. No one expects you to go beyond surface level when it’s an actual stranger, so you can step outside your own brain if you need to. Flip the switch into bunny mode. It gets tricky with the in-between people.

  I wish Gretchen were here. She’d know just how to play it. She has this way of turning small talk inside out, finding all the real parts underneath.

  I follow Tessa out through a side door, and the morning chill prickles my legs with goose bumps. “Okay,” she says, “what are we in the mood for? Dining hall? Student center?”

  “Oh! Um. Whichever one has the best spoon applesauce,” I say.

  “Wow, who raised you?”

  “Cory and Kelly Scott.”

  Tessa stops short. “Your mom’s name is Kelly? My mom’s name is Kelly!”

  “Are you saying . . . there’s more than one Kelly?”

  “Okay, Scott—you know what?” She shakes her head at me smiling, and my heart does this stumble.

  “What?”

  She bites her lip, but it still tugs up at the corners. “Nothing.”

  “What?” I smile back.

  “Nothing!” She laughs and turns to face me, walking backward like a tour guide. “I just have you figured out—that’s all.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yup. You’re a closeted goofball.”

  I laugh, startled. “What?”

  “And a troll. But in a subtle way. And you’re very sweet about it. Here, I’m taking you through the quad,” she says, veering us down a short, tree-lined path.

  Suddenly I’m staring at the view from every campus brochure, every postcard, even the website’s landing page—the stone clock tower, flanked by old lecture halls and columned administrative buildings. My gaze lands on the vine-draped registrar’s office, and I realize with a start that it’s the same quad Lili showed me yesterday—just a different vantage point. I can barely take it all in, it’s so beautiful.

  The part that really gets me, though, is the lawn that surrounds it. It’s intersected by sun-dappled paths, lined with quaint wooden benches, and a few of the trees have started to sprout tiny red blossoms. It’s not even ten in the morning, but students are already everywhere—jogging or talking or sprawled out, reading, on blankets. Movement and stillness. The whole space feels alive.

  “Pretty, huh?” says Tessa.

  Before I can even respond, a puppy stumble-runs toward us, almost tripping over her ears. “Oh God. Hi.” I kneel to pet her, my ponytail slipping over my shoulder. “Hi, cutie. Where’d you come from? Are you a basset hound?”

  “New friend?” Tessa crouches beside me.

  I check the bone-shaped tag on her collar. “Aww. Hi, Daisy. That was my goat’s name.”

  “A goat, like, a goat?”

  “Mmm. Yeah, she was the goat kind of goat.” I scratch Daisy’s ears, sighing happily. “Is this what college is like? Puppies materializing out of nowhere?”

  I press my nose to Daisy’s snout, and it’s like pressing pause on the entire world.

  I read somewhere that animals have some kind of hormonal calming power, and I really do think it must be true. At the very least, it’s true for me. Like when I was too shy to talk for my whole first week of kindergarten, until my mom talked my teacher into letting me hold the class guinea pig during circle time. I still remember the twitch of his heartbeat under his fur, the way it seemed to put me under a spell.

  Daisy’s owner jogs over to reclaim her, and I watch her wagging tail recede into the distance. A moment later, Tessa hugs me. “You good?”

  I look up, startled. “Yeah, why?”

  “That just looked like a tough goodbye.” She presses her heart. “No judgment, Scott. Breakups are hard.”

  I elbow her, and she laughs—and I try not to grin at the sound of it.

  Texts with Gretchen

  GP: Imogen, can you explain to me

  GP: Why twenty billion people all just decided to take I-86

  GP: Right now

  GP: At 11 am on a Saturday

  IS: Twenty billion people

  GP: AT LEAST

  GP: We’re not even past Binghamton yet!!!!!!!

  GP: Coming up on 3 hours dfghjklkjhg

  GP: Vassar you better be worth it

  IS: I mean if 20 billion people are heading there, that’s probably a good sign?

  GP: Hahahaha I love you

  GP: Okay I have approached Mama Patterson for comment

  GP: She says “sweetie, please, let me just” and then a horn honk and then “oh come the fuck on”

  GP: Fourth f-bomb in 20 minutes

  GP: College tours are FUN

  IS: I’m sorry!!

  GP: Ehhhh

  GP: It’s fine

  GP: It’ll be fine

  GP: Anyway, how are you???

  GP: Still liking your future?

  11

  My future.

  Gretchen’s not wrong, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. My brain’s so zoomed in on this visit, I keep forgetting it’s just a preview.

  But maybe that’s how it should be. No pressure to build this weekend into something it’s not. No need to shove each moment under a microscope, just to pin down how I feel.

  “I’m taking you back the long way,” Tessa says, as we leave the dining hall. “Have you seen the scissors yet?”

  “The sculpture?” I shake my head. “Just in pictures.”

  I remember Lili’s sheer delight when she first saw it on the website—giant metal scissors made to look like they’re plunged into the ground. At the time, she was still deciding between Blackwell and Ithaca College, but the scissors sealed the deal.

  “It’s a sign.” She turned to me, wide-eyed. “From the town with the world’s largest griddle to the school with the world’s largest scissors.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure they were the world’s largest. And I definitely didn’t see the point of basing huge decisions on the presence or absence of large metal objects.

  What I did know was that Blackwell College was much closer to Penn Yan than Ithaca was.

  “Definitely a sign,” I said, nodding.

  Tessa cuts sharply left, leading me past one building and behind another—and there it is. We’re practically in its shadow.

  “Hi, scissors.” I peer up at the wide-open V of its handles.

  “What do you think?” Tessa asks. “Everything you dreamed of?”

  “Eleven out of ten.” I pull my phone out—and even though I’ve got a pile of unread texts, I tap straight into my photo app.

  “Want to be in it? I can—wait, actually—” Tessa cups her hands around her mouth, jogging toward a guy in a baseball cap. “Andrew!” He stops, circling back to give her a fist bump. Tessa points vaguely at the scissors before handing him her phone.

  The next thing I know, I’m crouched beside her, beaming side by side in the triangular space between the scissor blades. “It’s all about the vibes,” Tessa says.

  “Is the vibe decapitation?”

  She laughs. “Pre-decapitation.”

  Andrew snaps a few more pictures and returns Tessa’s phone, giving her hair a quick ruffle before he leaves.

  “So, how do you know Andrew?”

  “Oh, he’s one of the himbos. Friends with my brother.” Tessa smiles down at the screen for a minute, swiping and tapping. “Okay, texting these now!”

  “Right! I forgot your brother goes here.”

  “Yup!” We set off down one of the paths. “Dan—he’s a junior. He’s the best.”

  “So he’s a himbo?”

  “He wishes.” Tessa laughs. “No. His friends are himbos—he’s how I know the himbos. But he’s kind of, like, you know. Scrawny Jewish guy. Loves sports. Knows all the stats. Emphatically not a jock.”

  “Do you have to be a jock to qualify as a himbo?”

  “You know, it’s actually been a while since I’ve reviewed the himbo qualifications.”

  I grin, and she grins back, and it’s almost unnerving how easy this is. We’ve spent the whole morning together, but I don’t think there’s been a single awkward silence. It’s unprecedented.

  I mean, it’s unprecedented for me.

  We’re almost at the edge of the courtyard. “So, Dan’s twenty,” she says, “I’m eighteen, and our sister, Rachael, is sixteen. All June birthdays, almost exactly two years apart. But they’re both Geminis, and I’m a Cancer.” She nods significantly. “What about you?”

  “Siblings or zodiac?”

  “Mmm. Both.”

  “Okay, well.” I smile a little. “I turned eighteen on Halloween.”

  “A Scorpio. In-te-rest-ing.” She tilts her head.

  I pause, raising my eyebrows for a moment. “And I have a sixteen-year-old sister. Edith.”

  “She’s queer, too, right? Lili told me you have a little baby gay sister.”

  “Definitely. Super queer, really funny. Kind of chaotic?” I nod. “You guys would get along.”

  Tessa bursts out laughing. “Because she’s queer and chaotic?”

  “And funny!”

  “Well, I am a middle-child Jewish lesbian with ADHD.” She waves her hands in a flourish, and I laugh. “Okay, but I’m actually so jealous you have a queer sister. Like. What a win.”

  “Aww. So Dan and Rachael aren’t queer?”

  “Nope. I’m the token gay. I mean, as far as I know.” She tilts her palms up. “They were pretty cute when I came out, though. They kidnapped me and brought me to the Big Gay Ice Cream shop in the Gayborhood.”

  “The what in the what?”

  “In Philly! That’s where I’m from. Well, I’m from the Main Line. The Big Gay Ice Cream shop closed, though. I actually cried. I think it still exists in New York? The city, I mean.”

  My brain sprints to catch up. “I had no idea ice cream could be gay.”

  “It can,” Tessa says. “It even tasted gay. I actually think Dan and Rachael got gayer from eating it.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “Yup,” she says, as we pass a bank of benches at the edge of the quad. “Dan especially—instantly fifty percent gayer. He literally drives a Subaru Outback now.”

  I laugh. “That’s what my parents drive.”

  “Of course they do. They created two queer kids.”

  My chest goes tight. It’s so easy to forget I’ve been lying through my teeth this whole time. I wonder what Tessa thinks I was like as a kid.

  Probably like Edith, I guess.

  Edith, who announced on the first day of preschool that she was going to marry a girl. When she played house, there were always two mommies. Sometimes she’d get distracted in the grocery store, staring at pretty women—once she even plucked a sunflower out of a cut flower display and gave it to one of them in the checkout line. She couldn’t have been older than five at the time. I don’t even think she’d met an out lesbian in real life at that point.

  Queerness was just something Edith implicitly understood—like how babies pick up languages without even trying.

  “Oop,” Tessa says, glancing up from her phone. “Lili needs confirmation that you’re alive. She says you’re not answering your texts.”

  “Oh! God. Sorry. I haven’t checked in a minute.”

  “Your texts or your pulse?”

  I smile a little. “Neither.”

  She presses two fingers to my wrist. And there’s a tiny, soft thump in my chest.

  “Okay,” she declares after a moment. “Pulse is good. You’re definitely alive.”

  I blink. “I should text her, huh?”

  Tessa’s already typing. “Nah—I’m on it. Anyway, we’re home.”

  I text Lili a quick apology anyway, with some extra emojis to drive the point home. Then Tessa lets us into the dorm with her keycard.

  I swipe through our scissor photos while we wait for the elevator, and Tessa grins down at my screen. “Look how totally unfazed we are by our impending decapitation.”

  “Honestly, we seem pretty fine with it.”

  “Good for us!”

  I zoom in a bit to do a closer crop on my favorite of the bunch. It really is cuter than it has any right to be—nothing but easy smiles and sunlit faces.

  I post it to Instagram with a scissor emoji for the caption, right as the elevator doors slide open.

  Texts with Gretchen

  GP: IMOGEN

  GP: WHO ARE YOU SCISSORING

  GP: WHAT’S HAPPENING

  IS: Wait

  IS: What?????

  GP:

  GP: Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for you

  IS: OMG

  IS: I would NEVER

  IS: Post that online I mean!!!!

  GP:

  IS: GRETCHEN NO

  IS: Hahaha omg

  IS: I just meant like

  IS: I don’t want you to think I’m saying OMG I WOULD NEVER, like I’m grossed out or scandalized

  IS: By a very natural and beautiful expression of intimacy

  GP: This

  GP: Wow

  GP: This is my favorite conversation

  IS: Should I edit the caption

  IS: Like would other people read it like that?

  GP: Haha depends

  GP: Are they gay

  GP: You know, this could actually be the test

  GP: What do u think of when you see

  GP: Gay Rorschach!!!!!

  IS: Please say you’re joking

  IS: I tagged Tessa in this

  GP: Aww is Tessa gay??

  GP: Then I guess it’s a grand gesture!!!!!!

  GP: Promposal walked so public scissoring invitation could run

  IS: GRETCHEN PLEASE

  GP:

  GP: Immybean it’s fine

  GP: You’re YOU

  GP: No one thinks you’re dropping sexmojis on the main

  IS:

  GP: Okay also can we just acknowledge TESSA

  GP: She’s actually so hot??

  GP: She used to have longer hair, right?

  GP: I recognize her

  GP: From Lili’s page

  GP: Kind of a soft butch vibe now, huh. I like it

  IS: I don’t know what soft butch means, but she did have longer hair

  GP: Sweet heteropotamus

  GP:

  12

  When we reach Lili’s room, Kayla’s leaning in the doorway like a catalog model—legs crossed, hand grazing the doorframe, locs swept into a ponytail. But she steps into the room when she sees us, leaving space for us to follow.

  “Oh, hey!” Lili looks up from her desk chair. “How was the scissor?”

  My cheeks flood with heat. “Good. Yes! It was great.”

  I sneak a quick glance at Tessa, who seems completely unfazed. Then again, Tessa’s not the one dropping coded sex solicitations into her Instagram captions.

  God, I don’t even one hundred percent know what scissoring is. All I can picture are naked Barbies with interlocked legs mashing up against each other. Which, clearly—

  It occurs to me, suddenly, that Kayla just asked me a question.

  “Oh! Sorry—I zoned out.”

  “You’re good!” Kayla says. “Just gauging your opinion on the issue of small German sausages.”

  I stare at her. Has it always been like this? Has everyone been constantly talking about sex this whole time, and I’ve just never picked up on the code?

  I clear my throat. “You mean—as a euphemism?”

  “Oh, she means a literal sausage,” Lili assures me.

  “Well, technically, it’s liverwurst pate in a sausage casing. But it’s smaller than you’re thinking.” Tessa raises both pointer fingers, inching them closer together to demonstrate. Which turns out to be unnecessary because, a moment later, Kayla whips out the actual sausage. Right here in Lili’s dorm room, with only a single clear sandwich bag for protection.

  She holds it up by the ziplock, eyeing it with begrudging respect. “The beast itself.”

  It’s about the size of my thumb, sealed in orange plastic—the label reads BRAUNSCHWEIGER Liverwurst in Oktoberfest font.

  I almost drop my phone. “Oh, I hate it.”

  “It’s an abomination. Literal violence wrapped in plastic.” Kayla nudges aside my clothes and toiletries from this morning, sinking onto the edge of my bed. “Apparently, it was in a company gift basket Declan’s mom got for Christmas? And for some demonic reason, Dec decided to bring it back with him after break.”