Cam Girl

Naveen winked.

“Have you seen Ellis?”

“Nah, sorry, mami.”

They thought that was hilarious—calling me “mami.” I punched his arm.

Across the floor, Frankie and Dane stood gazing at a sad photo: a curled fist, red furrows raking across a long blue vein. Ellis and I had debated: Should we show the bad as well, or only the good? I said only the good. Why should Skylar’s suffering linger on? Why not let her rest, celebrate her life? But Ellis said showing the suffering was important because somewhere in that crowd tonight, someone else suffered, too. Someone would see those photos of her pain and feel a resonance. The point of art, of any communion between human beings, wasn’t to make people feel good—it was to make them feel less alone.

She was right. Ellis was always right.

Frankie and Dane looked as elegant as the night we’d met, her in clinging pale silk and him in a smart bespoke suit. As I approached them, I froze. Dane was whispering something in her ear; Frankie’s hand brushed his back. They leaned into each other, intimately.

I turned around, leaving them undisturbed.

So getting details later.

People kept detaining me to chat, and I tried to be the gracious gallery owner but a wildness brewed in me. I spied a flash of rust red in the crowd and chased, only for someone to step into my path. My body was on autopilot. I smiled, carried on entire calm conversations while my heart rampaged. It was a relief when I ran into Brandt.

He sat on a wooden bench before a photo of a washed-up sea raven, a weird fish: dark garnet scales, ragged shreds of skin trailing from its fins, as if it had been torn partially from something whole. Totally Brandt. Totally me, too.

I sat beside him. “Seen your cousin?”

“She was looking for you.”

“Figures.”

He gave me that trademark Zoeller squint. “Trouble in paradise?”

“You wish.”

It was strange, being around him after everything. He and I were the only ones who knew the whole truth about Blue. Brandt looked up to Ellis like she was an older brother. Plus he’d driven a boat to Peaks Island in a snowstorm to rescue me, which was major Boy Scout points.

“Still sure you don’t want to come home with us?” I said.

We were pla

“Yeah. Do me a favor, by the way.”

“What?”

“Don’t mention my name to anyone there.”

I frowned. “How come?”

“Trust me on this one.” He cocked his head. “Ellis was smart to change hers. Some ghosts we deserve, and some we don’t.”

“You’re right. I guess you and I deserve ours.”

Something strange glittered in his eyes.

I still didn’t know what had really happened to him, but we felt similarly about our scars: they were earned.

“You’re nervous about something,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“You keep putting your hand in your pocket. Touching something. Or maybe you’re rubbing one out.”

I elbowed him, and he grunted.

“That left is getting strong,” he said appreciatively.

“Want to know a secret?”

“Always.”

“I’ve been drawing with it.” I flexed my hand, feeling a good, familiar soreness. Still awful drawing lefty, but every day the lines were a little less bad. “I’ll probably never be as good as I was, but I won’t let it stop me. This is who I am. I’m a creator. I’ll keep trying till I’m dust.”

Brandt gave me an odd look. “ ‘Out of the night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“Old poem.” He smirked. “A girl I knew loved poetry. You might say she beat her love for it into me.”

“You are so weird.”

“You have no idea. Hey, there’s my cuz.”

When our eyes met across the gallery, I stood, feeling weightless. Everything else went grayscale and indistinct, a faint sketch beneath the brilliant colors of the only person I really saw. I left Brandt without another word.

Ellis met me in a clear bubble of space under the bright lights. I’d seen her dressed like this a million times—hair raked boyishly above her eyes, plaid sleeves rolled up, all rustic and sylvan as if born and raised in Maine—but every detail took on deep significance. Because tonight would become a memory. One I would never forget.

“There you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for—”

I took her face in my hands and kissed her. Like Klimt’s painting, tilting her head back, pouring all of myself into it, the world dulling, all the colors gathering inside us instead. Her lips opened against mine and she breathed into me. I kissed her like we were the only two people in the room, in the whole world, and for that kiss, we were. When I pulled back we were both hazy-eyed, smiling goofily.

“Happy birthday, baby,” I said.

“Was that my present? Because that was pretty amazing.”

I shook my head. Speech was hard. I took her hand, tugged.

My palm was sweating. Man.

I led her through the gallery, past photos of a pretty girl we were all making new memories of, past our friends and the lights and voices to the doors that let onto the wharf. We got our coats and practically ran outside, drinking in the brisk air, the salt breeze, the stillness. When the doors shut we did run. She dashed off first and I followed, our feet thumping on the dock.

We raced to the end of the pier, screaming for no other reason than that we were alive. Screaming into the face of this cold universe. Against unkindness, against accidents and inevitabilities. Against the randomness of being born into the wrong body or the wrong family, of hurting the wrong hand. Our voices carried over the water long after we fell silent, mine throaty and brazen, hers an avian shriek. At the pier’s edge I collapsed, panting. Ellis sat next to me. For a while we stared out at dark water and clear sky, wild with stars.

“Want your present now?” I said.

She nodded.

I reached into my coat. My hand shook, and she saw.

“Vada,” she said, my name drifting to me in a white scroll of breath.

I withdrew a piece of paper and unfolded it in the starlight. My first sketch of her. The day we met at the train, the two of us sitting side by side. For some reason I’d drawn us with hands clasped, casually, as if we’d been best friends for years. The idea of it had seemed pretty to me. Meeting someone who felt so familiar, so much like home.

“Remember this?”

“You hid it from me. You were terrified I’d think you had a crush on me.”

“ ‘Terrified’ is a strong word. I was mildly concerned.”

“You locked it in a jewelry safe, Vada.”

I laughed, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The paper shivered.

“The truth is, I couldn’t figure out what to get you. I racked my brain. But nothing was big enough, epic enough. Nothing was good enough. So this is it. I’m all you get this year.”

She took the sketch, tucked it into her coat. Cupped my face. “You’re good enough. And you’re all I want.”

My heart was too full. It couldn’t hold this.

I kissed her again, pressed her down to the pier planks. I kissed her mouth, her cold cheeks, her warm throat. “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered. “But I want to be your everything. The way you’re mine.”

“You’re going to make me cry.”

“Not yet.”

Her brow knit, but I kissed her again before she could question me. I could stay here forever. In this eternal moment, in a picture someone would draw of us, a story they would write, so it would never end.

But I wanted the next moment more than anything.

“People will wonder where we are,” I said.

“Let them.”

I smiled, pulled her to her feet. She hung on to my hands.

“Why are you shaking?” she said in a soft voice. “You’re scared. Why?”