Extraordinary Means

It was farther than I’d remembered to the clearing, and somehow the woods were darker that night, wet and thick with the scent of decay.

Marina and I were the first ones to arrive. We took our sheets out of our backpacks and tried to fasten them into togas, which we probably should have practiced. Lane arrived just after we finished pi

“I thought I was lost,” he said.

“First star to the right, and then straight on till morning,” I said.

“Not a lost boy, lost in the woods.” Lane shook his head, gri

“Thank you,” she said, giving her toga a twirl. “Welcome to Toga Night. We’re going to party like Jay Gatsby.”

Lane snorted.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, no one wants to party like Jay Gatsby,” he explained. “Because he doesn’t even attend his own parties. When he does, he just stands there, sober and unhappy and waiting for a girl who never arrives.”

Marina made a face.

“He’s right,” I said apologetically.

“Fine,” Marina said. “We’re going to party like guests at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, but not like Jay Gatsby himself.”

“Yes, we’ll party like nameless minor characters in a novel about someone else,” I agreed.

“Perfect,” Marina said. “The theme for my party is both togas and forgettable literary characters from misunderstood classics.”

Lane shook his head over the two of us.

“Mind helping me get this thing on?” he asked, holding up his bedsheet with a pleading look.

I’d never realized how intimate it was to wrap a sheet around a boy, how my hands would hover in all the wrong places, and how he’d smile at me the whole time, like we were both enjoying a private joke too dirty to say out loud.

“Toga! Toga!” Nick chanted.

I was still pi

“Hilarious,” I said. “Want Marina to help with yours?”

“I can do it myself,” Nick said, and then draped the sheet around his neck like a cape.

“You look ridiculous,” Marina told him.

“Who has a toga party in the woods? That’s ridiculous,” Nick shot back.

“Well, next year, you can have one at your lame engineering frat,” Marina teased.

Small, casual comments about the future weren’t usual at Latham, and it still felt weird to hear people making them. To hear my friends joking not just about going home but also about growing up.

“I will,” Nick said. “And it’ll be awesome!”

He opened his backpack and took out a bottle of rum, presenting it to Marina with a flourish.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“Thank you, Captain Boozypants.”

It was actually sweet of him. Although we only had lemonade as a mixer, so the drinks were going to taste interesting.

“Should we wait for Charlie?” Marina asked, twisting the top off the Captain Morgan like she really didn’t want to.

“Hell no, he oversleeps, it’s his loss,” Nick said.

We put on the laurel crowns, which actually came out pretty great. The boys fetched rocks and sticks, and we had Nick build up a campfire, since he’d been a wilderness scout.

Marina had brought a bongo drum she’d borrowed off one of the hippie boys, and we swilled the rum, and took turns drumming the bongo, and danced around the fire in our togas. At first it felt stupid, but after more rum, and more drumming, the woods seemed to spin like we were about to rocket off the planet and launch our tiny, contained world straight into outer space.

“Hey, come here,” Lane said, pulling me away from the fire.

We ducked behind a tree, and the not-too-distant firelight made the woods seem to flicker. Lane looked so handsome in his toga that I wished I’d brought my camera to capture it. Then he cupped my face in his hands, and instead of taking a picture, I settled for stealing a kiss.

Our lips were sweet and sticky from the rum, and I could taste a faint hint of his toothpaste, and something about that melted me. I kissed him like there was no tomorrow, like all we had was this moment in the woods, even though that wasn’t true. We were seventeen, and we’d graduate high school and go off to college and grow old and boring and tell stories about when we were young and sick and falling in love. Being at Latham didn’t mean what it used to. The rules, the treatment system, all of it was just a ceremony now, just a way to waste time until the first batch of protocillin was ready. And maybe we could be Pride and Prejudice, with a happy ending, with neither of us burying, or forgetting, the other.

“You know how much I adore you, right?” Lane said.

“I’m crazy about you, too,” I said, leaning my forehead against his chest.

I wished that we were brave enough to use the real word, instead of deliberately choosing the wrong one. But we had time to gather our nerves. We had so much time.

We went back to the group and joined the dancing again. The four of us spun and twirled in our togas, and the fire crackled, and we laughed, getting more than a little drunk. And even though the woods were dark, we were this tiny, perfect circle of light.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Marina said, stopping to catch her breath.

“Don’t say that,” I told her. “You’re not allowed to mourn the future.”

Lane, who was drumming on the bongo, stopped.

“Isn’t that all we do, though?” he asked.

“Keep bongo!” I insisted, a bit tipsy.

Lane started drumming again, a soft patter.

“I mean it,” he said. “We mourn the future because it’s easier than admitting that we’re miserable in the present.”

The combination of his pattering on the drum, and the intensity with which he said that, made it sound like a spoken-word poem, and I thought about it for a moment, probably more seriously than I should have.

“Then maybe we’re not mourning the future,” I said. “Maybe we’re mourning ourselves.”

“Okay, no more rum for you,” Nick said, taking the bottle away from me and sloshing it. “Crap, it’s almost out.”

The woods were still spi

“Is Charlie really not coming?” Marina asked.

“He probably fell asleep,” Lane said, yawning.

But yawns, like tuberculosis, are contagious. And soon everyone had caught his.

“Lane!” I accused.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s the rum. Clearly I’d be a terrible pirate.”

We packed up our things, and Nick kicked dirt over our fire.

“Should we take these off?” Lane asked, motioning toward his toga.

“Leave them on,” Marina said, so we did.

“No one takes off their togas until we’re back at the dorms,” I warned. “Or you are a suckbeast. Nick is already a suckbeast because his is a cape.”

“You never said toga, you just said to wear your bedsheet,” Nick complained.

“Yeah, to a toga party,” Marina said.

We set off in the direction of the cottages, exhausted and still wearing our togas.

Lane slipped his hand into mine.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi back,” I said, smiling at him.

He looked so amazing in his toga, with his floppy hair and the crown of leaves, like he’d walked out of the Greek Acropolis, or whatever it was called. Like there was a statue of him somewhere, in marble, missing its private parts.

“You’re cute,” I said.

“You’re drunk,” Lane said.

“Which is the only time you’re cute, otherwise you’re a potato.”

I giggled. God, I really was drunk.

To my left, a twig snapped loudly. My heart sped up, and I swung my flashlight beam around, but it was just one of those silver rabbits the woods were full of, its eyes luminous in the dark.

“Nothing,” I said.

“I wish Charlie had come,” Lane said.