The State of Us Read online

  I wandered the convention hotel, keeping my head down and avoiding crowds, until I found a quiet hallway with a public restroom I could use because, after all that, I actually did have to go. The restroom was the quietest space I’d been in all day, and I stayed for a minute to enjoy the silence. I grabbed my phone and was going to text my parents and let them know I was probably gonna be a little late when I saw I’d accidentally turned it to silent. There were notifications from my mom, a couple from my dad—all just random BS and nothing important—and a deluge from Dean through Promethean. The boy had been blowing up my phone all night and I’d missed it! He probably thought I hated him.

  I fired off replies to my parents first, then locked myself in a stall so I could read Dean’s messages. They weren’t what I was expecting. They were so real. And still so very Dean. He’d sent the last one less than a minute earlier, so I typed out a response as quickly as I could, hoping he hadn’t put his phone away yet.

  DreOfTheDead: of course we’re friends

  DreOfTheDead: dumbass

  DreOfTheDead: whatre you doing

  DreOfTheDead: can you go to video???

  Dean didn’t answer. Of course I’d just missed his messages. Welcome to my life. I should’ve gone out to find Mel, but I read Dean’s messages over and over, mining the words for every ounce of meaning. Everything about Dean was so different from me. The words he used, the way he formed his sentences, the creepy corpse metaphor. I never would’ve used a word like “ennui.” Mel would’ve called me out for a shit if I had, though Dad would’ve tried to high-five me for using a good SAT word. But for all our differences, I’d never related to something harder than I did to the feelings Dean had described. The isolation. There I was at the con, surrounded by people who were supposedly like me—nerdy like me, outsider like me, freak like me—and I had never felt more lonely. People either ignored me completely or accosted me with questions, treating me like an object rather than a person. Sometimes it felt like even Mel didn’t understand me anymore. She always said she’d be there to catch me if I fell, but she was the one who’d grown wings while I was still stuck on the ground.

  Then there was Dean, pouring out his soul, and all I wanted right then was to talk to him, but I’d missed my chance. “Damn it!”

  My phone buzzed as a Promethean notification popped up asking if I wanted to video-chat with PrezMamasBoy, and I hit that accept button so damn fast.

  “Dre? Dre, it’s Dean. I can’t see you.”

  Dean sounded like he was in the stall with me, and his face filled the screen. “Shit!” My finger was covering the front camera. I shifted my hold on the phone and held it higher. “Dean!”

  “Dre!” Dean’s expression reminded me of the way my gramps looked when he tried to video-chat with me, even though he didn’t really know what he was doing. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “What’s wrong with your face?” I snapped back.

  Dean shook his head and pointed at the screen. “You’re gray. Is that makeup? Are you doing a photo shoot?”

  Oh yeah. I’d forgotten what I looked like. “I’m at a con.” I remembered I was talking to the guy who said “photo shoot” and who introduced himself at the beginning of every text chain, and added, “A comic book convention. There was a cosplay contest. I didn’t win, but it’s okay. What’re you doing?” I peered at the screen. “Are you in the bathroom? Did you call me while you were taking a dump?”

  Dean’s face went fifty shades of red as he stuttered and stumbled to come up with an answer. “I am in a restroom. Public. In a toilet stall, actually. But I am most definitely not ‘taking a dump.’ I swear. I did come in here to use the facilities, but then I sent you a message, and you responded, and I was trying to figure out how to request a video chat and accidentally initiated one.”

  Watching the boy have a mini meltdown was adorable. “If you’re not using the toilet, what are you . . . Are you hiding in there?”

  Dean cleared his throat. “Yes. I’m hiding in the toilet.”

  I turned my phone and flashed it around the stall. “Me too.”

  Dean laughed. A full-throated, no-bullshit laugh that sounded like a hyena gargling hot sand, and it was glorious. I’d seen him laugh in clips that I’d found online, and it looked and sounded nothing like this. This was so unguarded and pure.

  “You got a nice laugh,” I said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t. It’s pretty ridiculous, but I like it anyway.”

  It was weird seeing him. Talking to him this way instead of sending messages back and forth, where we could compose the best versions of ourselves. Like Dean’s laugh, it was awful, but I liked it.

  “Why’re you hiding?” Dean asked.

  “Oh lord. Well, Mel met a couple of guys she likes, and one’s kinda cute but chatty and the other one is hot but quiet, and she’s been trying to figure out which one she likes best all night. I just couldn’t with her anymore.”

  “Is this what we teenagers call ‘drama’?” Yeah. He actually made air quotes when he said it.

  “You’re like a middle-aged economy professor in a seventeen-year-old’s body.” I snapped my fingers. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? You were really a professor at Harvard or something, and one of your professor buddies in the weird physics department figured out how to swap bodies with people, so you killed that dude and stole his invention so you could hijack a younger, hot body. And somewhere out there the real Dean is stuck with wrinkled balls and no idea what the hell happened.”

  Dean was laughing so hard I thought he was going to drop his phone, and that made me laugh, and I did drop my phone, but thankfully, it landed on the floor and didn’t crack the screen because that would have ruined what was turning out to be an okay night.

  “Did you call me hot?”

  “Relatively speaking,” I said, trying to keep my cheeks from turning bright red. “Compared to me, you’re a soft six.”

  “A six?!” Dean held the phone farther away. “But I’m wearing the suit!”

  “Which is why you’re not a five.”

  “Wow,” Dean said. “I hope this isn’t what passes for flirting for you or you might be single forever.”

  “Who said I was flirting?” Was I flirting? Did Dean want me to flirt? Was he flirting? Nah, right? I mean . . . no freaking way. That was not what was happening. Right?

  “Dre?”

  I shook off the confusion and threw my grin back on. “Just keeping it real, you know? But I’m sure there are some circles where you’re like, maybe a seven or an eight.”

  “Well, gee whiz. Thanks.”

  The laughter faded into easy smiles, and the conversation faded into us staring at one another. If we’d been in the same room instead of separated by hundreds of miles, maybe we could’ve let the silence stand, embraced just hanging out, but it was weird over the phone.

  “I liked what you said,” I told him. “I get that way too. Lonely.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “All the time. But it’s boring. You don’t wanna hear about it.”

  “I do!” he said. “Tell me.”

  And I believed him. It wasn’t something he was just saying because he thought it was what I wanted to hear. He was actually interested. “It’s like, all I want in the world is to find one person who gets me for real.”

  “Your friend—Mel?—she doesn’t get you?”

  “She does. Kinda. Parts of me, really. But there’re always gonna be parts she doesn’t get. Like, she thinks I need to take advantage of my dad running for president to raise awareness for stuff, like getting conversion therapy banned and shit. And I’ve got feelings about all that, but she doesn’t understand why I just wanna be me and do my thing. It’s not her fault. It’s just who she is and who I am and who we are together, you know?”

  “I do.”

  “You really do, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”


  “And, like, I’m not so caught up in my own shit to think one person’s gotta be responsible for giving me everything I need, but I feel like knowing someone shouldn’t be so much work. If it’s right, it should be easy. Easier. Easy-ish.”

  Dean’s smile was soft and dreamy. “You’re pretty easy.”

  I snorted. “Bitch, you don’t even know me.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m only playing.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Good. Because I never would have insinuated that you were sexually promiscuous.”

  I rolled my eyes to hide that I was blushing because Dean was so impossibly cute. I doubted he even knew how adorable he was. “Now tell me why you’re hiding.”

  Dean’s smile wilted, and he bit his bottom lip. “You’ll think I’m being foolish.”

  “Probably,” I said. “Tell me anyway.”

  “Last year, I danced with Charlotte McBride,” he said. “She dragged me out for a song where most of the dancing involved jumping up and down. The next song was a slow one, and Charlotte and I danced to that one too. I love dancing, and Charlotte was nice, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Lemme guess,” I said. “She thought something of it?”

  Dean nodded. “By school on Monday, she had already told her friends that we were a couple, which was definitely news to me, and I had to break it to her that our dance had been nothing more than a dance, and that I didn’t have the types of feelings for her that she had for me. She cried in the middle of the cafeteria. It was mortifying.”

  “So you’re hiding in the toilet to avoid breaking another girl’s heart?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Look, you can’t be responsible for how other people feel. If you wanna dance, and I really gotta see you dance someday, then get out there and dance. Don’t let other people projecting their shit onto you get in the way of you having some fun.”

  Dean didn’t look like he was buying what I was selling. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “You need to loosen up.”

  “You try spending the majority of your life in the public eye and tell me how loose you are.”

  “Fair point.” I pursed my lips, looking at him appraisingly. “But we’ve got to do something. You’re tighter than a drag queen’s corset. Why don’t you start by undoing your tie.”

  “Like this?” Dean dipped his finger behind his bow tie and tugged it, giving it a little slack.

  “That won’t do. Just take it off.”

  “The tie?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tentatively, Dean pulled one end of his tie until it came undone, the ends hanging around his neck.

  “Better,” I said. “But you still look a little uptight. It’s the side part.”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “Nothing if you’re a forty-year-old accountant.”

  Dean reached up and combed his hand through his hair.

  “Nope,” I said before he’d even finished. “Mess. It. Up. Dig your fingers in there and really give it a shake.”

  “Like this?” When Dean was finished, his hair looked like he’d rolled out of bed, which was infinitely better than looking like he’d just rolled out of a business lunch.

  “Better.” I scrunched my face, squinting and trying to take in the whole picture of Dean. “One more thing I need you to do.”

  “No matter what you say, I’m keeping my pants on.”

  I fired off a laugh so loud that it echoed through the restroom. “Damn. You’ve foiled my plan. How about instead, you walk out of the stall and go to the mirror.”

  Dean frowned. “Is this necessary?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re gonna go gray by graduation if you don’t learn to relax.”

  Dean hesitated, and I thought he was gonna bail, but he finally left the stall and walked to the sinks to stand in front of the mirror. From what I could see of the restroom, it looked weirdly similar to the gym restroom at my school. Dingy, gross. Probably smelled bad too.

  “Now what?”

  “Now I want you to scream.”

  “Scream?”

  “Scream. Yell. Yowl. Whatever you wanna call it, do it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to get it, you just gotta do it.” I watched Dean look at himself in the mirror, and I wondered what he saw. His lip quivered like he was about to chicken out. “How about I’ll do it with you?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  I closed my eyes and howled like a wolf, filling the restroom with the unapologetic sound of me.

  “Now you!” I said.

  “Dre . . .”

  “Howl, Dean! Do it or I’m hanging up!”

  I let loose another howl, and halfway through I heard Dean’s voice join mine. I peeked at the phone, and Dean was howling and laughing and there he was. No walls. Pure Dean. This confident, cute, hilarious guy who was definitely going to crush me like he’d crushed Charlotte McBride.

  “Dean?” Another voice came through the speaker, and Dean’s howl cut off in the middle. “Uh, everything cool?”

  My screen went black, but I could still hear, so Dean must’ve shoved me in his pocket. “Yes, Mr. Clark. Everything is good. In fact, I think tonight is the best night of my life.”

  “I thought I heard . . . were you howling?”

  “It’s a full moon, Mr. Clark,” Dean said. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll be out in a second.”

  “Um. Okay. I’ll just let you do whatever you were doing.”

  Dean busted up laughing, and when I could see him again, he had tears running down his face and he could hardly talk. “You should have seen the look on Mr. Clark’s face. It was spectacular.”

  “It’s a full moon?” I said.

  “I don’t know! It was the first response I thought of!”

  “That could’ve gone worse.”

  Dean glanced off the screen, and I heard another voice but not what they said. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah, I should probably find Mel before she ditches me.”

  “Thanks, Dre.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping me feel a little less lonely tonight.”

  Before I could come up with a smart-ass reply or tell him he’d made me feel less alone too, the screen went dark, and this time Dean was gone for real. I didn’t know what had just happened, and I didn’t know if Dean was feeling even remotely about me the way I was feeling about him, but I was flying way too high at that moment to care.

  Dean

  HOMECOMING WAS THE last school event I would attend until I either returned to school after the election or began preparing to move to Washington, DC. For the rest of the election, I was given the choice to travel with either my mother or my father so that I could witness the election process in a way few people ever would. I could have traveled with Jeffrey Portman, my mother’s running mate, but while he was a perfectly nice man, he was as dull as a butter knife.

  But rather than tag along with my parents, I was also given the opportunity to go out on my own. I frequently volunteered with Habitat for Humanity near home, and traveling allowed me to do so outside Florida. Schools often asked me to speak to their students about what it was like being Janice Arnault’s son, and I enjoyed standing on a stage talking to people my age about politics, trying to get them involved in the process that governed their lives. These were things I cared deeply about. I had more autonomy and was more active in the campaign than I think any child of a presidential candidate had ever been, and I loved it. I didn’t love the additional attention from the media or how often adults that I met felt empowered to insult me, but that was the price of helping my mother win, and I very much wanted her to win. I also didn’t love not getting to see my friends at school. Being able to talk to Dre helped with that.

  There was an intimacy to talking to Dre over the Promethean app. An intimacy I didn’t feel when I was talking to Astrid or Tamal
or any of my other friends. I think part of it was the feeling of privacy created by the app itself. It was as if there was a line from my heart to Dre’s phone, and I could pour out my secrets one word at a time to no one but him.

  Despite that, I sometimes found myself wishing I could talk to Dre in person. I wanted to see him laugh instead of having to imagine it when he filled the screen with emojis. I wanted to hear the lilting sound of his voice and watch his prominent Adam’s apple bob when he spoke. It had only been a couple of weeks since Dre and I were locked in the greenroom at the first debate, and talking to him had become the thing I looked forward to most, which I found surreal, to be honest. Of all the people in the world to share a connection with, Andre Rosario was not the person with whom I would have expected it to happen. That said, I couldn’t have imagined not having him in my life, and I found myself wanting more.

  “Jackson McMann is a cancer.” My mother sneered at her tablet. She and my father were sitting across from me at the breakfast table on Sunday morning before church, enjoying their coffee and trying to read the news. My parents were not, by nature, morning people, but my mother’s time in the military had made her one, and we were all on her schedule. I’d already gone for a run before getting to the table.

  “He’s not going to win, is he?” I asked.

  “No one’s worried about him winning,” my mother said. “But if he splits the vote, keeping me or Rosario from reaching two hundred and seventy electoral votes, then all bets are off.”

  Without looking up from his iPad, my father reached out and rested his hand atop my mother’s. “That’s not going to happen, love.”

  We had learned about this in my US government class when we’d covered the electoral college. “Doesn’t it go to Congress? The House votes for the president and the Senate chooses the vice president?”