He lasts a song, but then when the next song (the megamix from Six) comes on, he lets go of Avery’s hand and says he’s just going to step out into the backyard for a moment.

  “Are you sure?” Avery shouts over the music.

  “Yeah, you stay here and dance. I need some air. I’ll be back in a few.”

  “Okay!”

  Ryan goes over and takes a can of soda from the refreshment table, then slides open one of the doors that leads into the backyard. When he closes it behind him, the music becomes a quieter version of itself, the joy as played through a pillow. After walking a couple of feet, Ryan turns to watch the scene inside. Pope is proclaiming themself the king of the castle, and Avery is one of the members of their court, bowing gleefully.

  It makes Ryan much more happy than it makes him sad to see this play out on the other side of the glass. It’s not his joy, but he’s glad it exists, that he can exist beside it, that he can know someone who’s taking part in it. He doesn’t feel left out, because he knows he’s taken himself out, because that’s what felt right to do. He doesn’t feel separate from Avery here. If anything, he feels a little closer, to be able to see him as he’d be if Ryan weren’t around, to know that his happiness isn’t relying on Ryan, it’s only complemented by Ryan.

  “Who are you?” a voice asks behind him.

  Ryan turns, and after his eyes adjust, he sees two deck chairs farther off on the lawn. Dennis is sitting in one of them.

  Before Ryan can answer, Dennis leans forward, squinting, and says, “Oh, wait—you’re Avery’s boyfriend, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you. I mean, nobody’s actually told me about you, but I’ve heard things.” There’s a bottle of vodka at Dennis’s feet, and when he sees Ryan noticing it, he picks it up and holds it out. “Would you like some? I can pour it right in your can. The Andersons have far too much trust when it comes to their liquor cabinet.”

  “Aren’t they here?” Ryan asks.

  “Upstairs. They’re not going to interrupt. As I said, they have trust. Trusting actors…can you imagine? Here—sit down. Join me.”

  Ryan can’t think of a compelling reason not to, so he goes deeper into the shadows, then sits down in the second deck chair. Now the living room looks like a scene on a screen, volume turned low.

  He puts down his can for a second, which Dennis takes as an invitation, picking it up and adding some vodka to Ryan’s Coke. Since Ryan knows he’ll be driving later, Dennis has just rendered his soda undrinkable. But he doesn’t say anything.

  “So, what did you think of our little production? I saw you in the audience on multiple occasions. Surely you must have thoughts.”

  “I liked it,” Ryan says, trying to leave it at that.

  “You liked it,” Dennis repeats, as if Ryan’s just handed him an epiphany.

  “I laughed,” Ryan adds, then instantly regrets it, remembering who he’s talking to.

  “You laughed! Well, of course you laughed. But tell me, Avery’s boyfriend—did you feel anything?”

  Ryan knows that I felt proud of Avery isn’t what Dennis is looking for here. So he just keeps quiet, correctly assuming that Dennis will go on anyway.

  “I suspected as much,” Dennis says. Both of them are facing forward, the dancing still unfolding in a rectangle of light. “You see, Don’t Forget Your Shoes! is, by pretty much any standard, a dreadful play. There are dozens if not hundreds of other plays that could actually speak to what’s going on in our country. But no. The high school would rather we put our minds in mothballs. If we play it safe, if we don’t make people feel anything, especially not discomfort, then no one will complain, and if nobody complains—well, that’s the definition of victory in the administration’s mind, isn’t it? But here’s the thing—I don’t accept that. I know it’s pretentious as fuck for high school students to consider themselves artists. But you know what, Avery’s boyfriend? I’m an artist. Or at least an aspiring artist, because one of the first steps to being an artist is claiming it, devoting yourself to it. When given drivel like Don’t Forget Your Shoes!, what does an artist do? I’ll tell you—they see it as a challenge. The whole thing was designed to take people away from their cares, from their feelings. So what if you somehow turned it so they were forced back toward their cares, their feelings? Wouldn’t that be art? Do you follow me?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I’ll take it. You have to understand—most comedies could easily be tragedies. Are you familiar with Twelfth Night?”

  “Not really.”

  “Considered by most to be Shakespeare’s greatest comedy, or at least one of them. It ends with two marriages. One involves a woman who marries a man she’s never met before because she thought he was his sister disguised as a man. The other involves a man who marries a woman who he fell in love with while he was her boss, and while she was pretending to be a man. So I ask you, in realistic terms: Does either of these marriages strike you as particularly promising? Or do you think that perhaps the dynamics at work here, and the sublimating of homoerotic desire, will lead to heartbreak, recrimination, and hostility? Same with Don’t Forget Your Shoes! A young man has his fiancée, his fortune, and his dignity torn away from him by family members he always thought were on his side. Does that sound hilarious to you?”

  “Only if you’re not that young man,” Ryan says.

  “Exactly!” Dennis calls out, so loud Ryan half expects the people inside to turn to the window and look. But they keep dancing and laughing. “I tried to tell people about this, but they didn’t want to hear it. Which only made me understand Lucius’s rage even more. Now it’s over, and all I can say is good riddance. Your boyfriend wanted me to calm down? I’m perfectly calm now. And look—he’s searching for you.”

  Sure enough, Ryan can spot Avery leaving the dancing, peering out the window, not quite seeing them. Ryan attempts a wave. Dennis calls, “Out here!”

  * * *

  —

  Avery isn’t sure what to make of the scene in the shadows, Ryan and Dennis sitting like old friends at the edge of the party. It’s too dark to read Ryan’s expression, but his posture isn’t relaxed.

  “What’s going on?” Avery asks. He tries to make it sound light, but he doesn’t sell the line.

  “Your boyfriend’s been humoring me,” Dennis replies. “And I appreciate that.”

  Ryan gets up from his chair as Dennis punctuates his appreciation with a swig of vodka.

  “I’m surprised you’re here,” Avery says.

  Dennis laughs. “So am I. But I figured it might help me step out of Lucius’s skin, to be here and to see everyone back to normal again.”

  Avery realizes this is the most conversational Dennis has been since rehearsals started. He wonders if this is actually what Dennis is normally like.

  Dennis goes on. “Look, no hard feelings about earlier. I was in the zone, you weren’t in the zone, and as a result you took us all wayyyyyy outside the zone. Inside this meek little play we were handed, there’s a Sam Shepard play waiting to get out…but I couldn’t really free it myself. There were moments I thought I was getting you there—you’ve got the rage inside you, too, and I could see it flashing behind your eyes. But I understand now that it was me you were pissed off at, not Lucius. Fair enough. Can I offer you a drink? I don’t have any cups, but I’ll happily give you a swig.”

  “I’m good,” Avery says. Ryan is now beside him. They exchange a look.

  Dennis gets to his feet more steadily than either Ryan or Avery would have anticipated.

  “No hard feelings?” Dennis asks.

  And Avery thinks, no, the feelings he has toward Dennis are no longer hard. They are liquid now, easily digestible. The play is over; what use is there in being angry or annoyed?

  “No hard feelings,” Avery says.

  Dennis takes this as an invitation to come in for a hug. Instead of backing away, as he would have onstage, Avery accepts it.

  “Someday,” Dennis says, “all this will be forgotten. But maybe some of it will be remembered.”

  Then he turns around and points to a spot to the left, beyond the backyard.

  “See that? That, good sirs, is my house. I think I’ll return there now, without this bottle in hand. My time here is done.” Then he turns back to Ryan and Avery. “I think you two are a good couple. You’re good, both of you.”

  With that, he puts the bottle down in the grass and walks gently into the night, stepping over the backyard fence as if it were a mere prop, not waiting to see if his exit garners any applause.

  * * *

  —

  Ryan is honest with Avery.

  “I don’t want to go back inside yet,” he says. “I want to stay out here with you.”

  Avery looks concerned. “Are you having a bad time?”

  “No—it’s not that. I’m having a good time, and I really want to hang out more with Liz and Hannah. It’s just…I like getting to be alone with you.”

  Avery’s concern dissolves. “I can’t argue with that.” He gestures to the deck chairs. “Shall we?”

  Ryan sits back down in the chair he was in before. Avery moves Dennis’s old chair so their armrests overlap. Avery sits, and his and Ryan’s arms overlap as well, palms kissing, fingers intertwining.

  Inside, the dancing has turned to all-out singing. Ryan can’t make out what song it is, but he watches as Avery’s friends chorus into each other, exuberantly belting with unselfconscious glee.

  Avery watches alongside, imagines what it must be like to see this scene as a near stranger.

  “Nobody’s ever going to mistake us for the popular kids,” Avery says. “I can’t say I mind that at all.”

  Pope is standing on a chair, using a pretzel stick to act as conductor.

  “I’ve never had a group,” Ryan says. “I have friends and everything. But never a group, not like this. There are groups I get along with, but I’m not a part of them, you know? You definitely have a group.”

  Avery rubs his thumb over Ryan’s thumb. Just a little something to keep his heart warm.

  “I’m new to groups, too,” he tells Ryan. “And honestly? I don’t think I noticed how much of a group we’d become until now. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I won’t be seeing them every day after school. It all passes so fast.”

  “I was thinking how you were just starting rehearsals when we met. That was one of the first things I learned about you, that you were in this play.”

  “Now here you are at the cast party. I’d say that’s progress.”

  Ryan leans over and Avery leans in. They haven’t found the exact right angle yet, but they’re close.

  “You know,” Ryan says, “I’ve never been to a party as somebody’s boyfriend before.”

  “An oversight on the universe’s part,” Avery observes. Then he asks, “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going well. I’m not sure I ever would have imagined being here like this. And now I can’t imagine not being here.”

  This is the most truth he’s able to tell. Avery isn’t a place he belongs yet. But Avery is definitely a place he could belong, one day. Because the people you love lead you to places you wouldn’t have ordinarily gone. The people you love become places you wouldn’t have ordinarily gone.

  Ryan doesn’t want to scare Avery away with his gratitude.

  Good enough to hold hands, good enough to talk some more about the people inside. Good enough to have forgotten what’s waiting for him at home. Good enough to feel Avery breathing as he leans imperfectly on Ryan’s shoulder.

  Pope bows from their conductor’s platform. Ryan and Avery watch as the music shifts into something more conversational. The dance floor disperses, mostly to the refreshment table. Pope disappears into the den, then reappears. They ask Baby Winston something, and Baby Winston points to the back door.

  “I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now if you weren’t here,” Avery says.

  Pope throws open the door with a flourish, unleashing all the voices inside to join Ryan and Avery in the backyard.

  Ryan moves his free hand so it finds Avery’s free hand. They join.

  “There you are!” Pope calls.

  Both Ryan and Avery hear the intention in Pope’s sentence.

  For the first time, they’ve become second person plural.

  It fits.

  Welcome to the Ocean

  (the first date)

  Ryan has never done anything like this before.

  It almost feels like he’s in the passenger seat as he steers his way to the community center. He can’t exactly call his actions spontaneous—he’s been going back and forth about whether to go for weeks. And even now, even as he’s driving, at any moment he could still turn back. But back to what? That’s the question.

  So he lets the truck go forward. That’s what it feels like. The truck is taking him there, not vice versa. Yeah, he’s at the wheel, but really he’s a passenger to something larger than his life. He’s giving in to it, because he wants his life to become larger, too.

  The radio tries to encourage him, the sad songs reminding him of now, the anthems reminding him of what’s possible, the dizzying, glorious heights of self-assertion, of love. He is lucky to have a soundtrack for the war inside him—one side marching under an empty flagpole, convinced he isn’t worth much, and therefore deserves less; the other side carrying many flags, some of them rainbow, insisting that love is not only possible but inevitable, changing everything.

  Your loneliness is not your fault, this side chants. We are out there. You will find us.

  The velocity gives advantage to the voices of encouragement; being alone in your bedroom, staring at the ceiling and thinking that nothing will ever change, is very different from being alone in your truck, letting everything around you blur as you make an escape. He allows himself to think that maybe his loneliness isn’t his fault. The love he wants, the belonging he craves, won’t grow in the soil where other people have planted his life. But he is old enough now to begin the process of uprooting. This is it. This is him pulling himself from the earth at seventy-three miles an hour.

  He doesn’t have any goal in mind. He’s not even sure he’ll have a good time. Alicia will be there, and a few kids from town will be there, but if this night ends up being about them, he’ll consider it a failure. He wants to prove to himself that he can be someone else, that his life can be something else, that the world will offer him somewhere else.

  Even if it’s just a community center dance in a small town, it’ll be a start. Or not a start. This started long ago.

  Not a start, but a step.

  * * *

  —

  In Marigold, everyone goes to Liz Macy’s house to pregame the gay prom. There is still widespread disbelief that it’s happening at all—if Kindling is at all like Marigold, Avery figures there will be some people in town who’d rather burn down the community center than have it host a queer event. But apparently they don’t get to decide. Avery chalks this up to progress…though he notes the progress may indeed be written in chalk.

  Avery isn’t sure who first said, “If we’re going to go to a gay prom, we’re going to have to really gay it up,” but this philosophy has been adopted by most of the kids at Liz’s house. Liz and Hannah are dressed in matching Elton John, neon-blue sequined tuxedos, special-ordered by the local tuxedo shop. Jesse Lukas somehow found a blue-and-pink-striped jacket to reflect the trans-nonbinary flag. Pope has bedecked themself in a velvet ensemble, and Lana Yip, who graduated last year but has driven back from college to attend, is wearing a ball gown her grandmother wore to her prom.

  Avery is excited to have the opportunity to wear his suit, an item of clothing he’s proud of but never really has an occasion to wear. When he wears it, he feels more seriously himself, more formally himself. Everyone in the store was sure it would need to be tailored in order to fit, but the moment he tried it on, he knew that wouldn’t be necessary. It fit. It was meant for him, and he was meant to wear it tonight.

  He puts on a white shirt, then the black suit. He doesn’t have too many ties, but figures a black one will work. It takes a few attempts to tie it so that it doesn’t have a tail. Then he heads to the kitchen, to show his parents. His mom becomes all emotional and goes for her camera. But his dad…his dad takes one look and says, “No, that’s not right.” Then he leaves the room, too.

  Avery feels his emotions stutter. What is his dad talking about? Even though Avery is sure of his parents’ support, he can’t help but have that lingering fear that there is something he can do that will make it topple. Being human means never being entirely sure of other people, even if they’re your parents.

  But then his dad returns to the kitchen with the strange contraption from his closet, the hanger with special tabs that hold his ties in a bookshelf row.

  “You need something more celebratory,” he says. “Take your pick.”

  As a child, Avery had always loved this tie-sorter. Not just because of the colors and the patterns, but also because each tie seemed to have its own story, its own place in the chronology of his father’s life. The ties Avery had picked out as gifts for Father’s Day had their own special section, beside the tie Avery’s dad had worn on his first date with Avery’s mom, an ambitious paisley that seemed, years later, beamed from another world.