I Wanna Be Where You Are Read online

  Who is this guy?

  But then this stranger takes off his sunglasses, and I recognize those deep brown eyes and that crinkled smile.

  “’Sup, guys?” Trey says, opening his door.

  He’s still only a few inches taller than me. But he isn’t skinny anymore. Not only are his arms muscular, but his legs, too. Even his neck.

  Eli and Trey do one of those boy handshakes that turns into a hug. Trey only reaches Eli’s collarbone. They were both so short and skinny when we were younger that sometimes people got them confused. Seeing them together now is fascinating.

  “Damn, bro,” Eli says. “I know you said you’ve been in the gym, but are you there every single day?”

  Trey laughs. “Basically.” He takes a step back and looks up at Eli the way people stand back to view a skyscraper. “And you’re tall as hell. Been eating your Wheaties?”

  Eli laughs and shrugs. “Not really.”

  Actually, Eli would prefer to eat cigarettes for breakfast.

  I almost say this, but I don’t because Trey reaches out to hug me. He smells good, like cinnamon and minty soap. Not like cigarettes.

  “Wow,” he says when he pulls away. “You look great, Chlo.”

  “Thank you.” The last time he saw me, I had a long neck, knobby knees, and braces. I would hope that he thinks I look a lot better now. “You look great, too.”

  Geezer sniffs cautiously at Trey’s sneakers. Trey reaches down and pats his head. “So what are you doing out here?” he asks us.

  I tell him about my audition, but I leave out the part about lying to Mom. Eli tells Trey he’s going to his dad’s house in North Carolina.

  “Road tripping,” Trey says after we are done explaining. “That’s dope. I’m not sure what you’re in the mood to do, but there’s a party I can take you to.”

  He unlocks his car doors for us.

  “A party? Nice,” Eli says, grinning as he climbs into the passenger seat, leaving me to sit in the back with Geezer, who likes to fart whenever he’s in a car. “Where at?”

  Trey glances at me in his rearview mirror before he says, “It’s at my boyfriend’s house.”

  I watch Eli’s face, waiting to see his reaction. But he simply nods and says, “Sounds good. I’ll finally get to meet him.”

  “What’s your boyfriend’s name?” I ask, leaning forward to join the conversation.

  “Eric. We go to school together.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Yeah.” Trey smiles. He hands me his phone and tells me to look through his camera roll.

  There are a lot of photos. I wonder why Trey never posts any of them on his Instagram, and I decide that he might just be a very private person. I pause on a photo of Trey standing arm in arm with a boy who’s about his height. The boy has shiny black hair and golden-brown skin. They’re standing on the beach, sporting wide smiles. They look happy. Like they’re in love.

  “He’s really cute, Trey,” I say, because it’s true. “You did a good job.”

  “Relax, Chlo,” Eli says, shifting to look at me. “Eric is taken.”

  He literally ruins everything.

  “Shut up,” I say, which, of course, only makes him laugh. But I’m shocked when Trey starts laughing, too. “Don’t laugh at him, Trey. He’s not funny.”

  “He can laugh if he wants.” Eli lifts an eyebrow, challenging me. Still mad over the cigarette argument, I see.

  “Whatever.” I lean back and cross my arms over my chest. I’m just going to keep to myself in the back seat. I’d rather smell Geezer’s farts than deal with his owner.

  “You two haven’t changed much,” Trey says. “Still arguing like an old married couple.”

  I pretend to gag. “I’d never marry him.”

  “I’d divorce you before you could marry me,” Eli says.

  “That doesn’t even make sense!”

  “Hey,” Trey says, watching me in his rearview mirror. “You still twitch your nose when you’re mad.”

  “SERIOUSLY?” I say.

  Eli bursts into laughter.

  Chapter 9

  Be Social

  Trey’s neighborhood is a good forty-five-minute drive from the motel. When we get to Eric’s house, cars are lined up along the street, but Trey parks in the driveway. He walks inside without ringing the doorbell. There are people scattered throughout the living room and kitchen, drinking beer and lounging all over the furniture in a way that Eric’s parents probably wouldn’t approve of. Mom would be livid if she saw someone’s sneakers on her couch.

  Trey leads us to the kitchen, where people are taking shots. I glance at the time on my phone just to make sure that it is actually four p.m. I had no idea people did stuff like this during the day. But what do I know? I’ve never even been to a party like this at night. When I go with Reina to a theater club party, we play Uno and Taboo. Every now and then someone will sneak a bottle of their parents’ wine, and that one bottle will be passed around to the twelve or so people who showed up.

  Two girls squeal when they notice Geezer. They run over to pet him, and he freaks out and starts barking like he’s under attack. The girls scramble backward, but their terror eases as they watch Eli bend down and whisper in Geezer’s ear, calming him.

  “Your dog is scary,” one girl says. She’s tall and pale with platinum-blond hair and dark roots. She adjusts the straps on her tank top and isn’t discreet about the way she looks Eli up and down.

  Eli glances up at her, and when he notices that the girls are appraising him he stands upright and smiles.

  “I train him to be tough,” he says. And I give him a look, because I wouldn’t necessarily call Geezer tough. More like a cranky farting machine.

  But who cares what I think, because the girls are giggling, and ugh, gross. I am not about to sit around and watch them fawn over the most annoying human on planet Earth.

  Luckily, I don’t have to, because Trey loops his arm in mine and leads me to the backyard. There are more people outside talking and eating. Someone even brought a wooden table outside for beer pong. I wonder what Reina and the people from theater club would think of this.

  I recognize Eric standing by the grill, flipping burgers and hot dogs. When he glances up and sees us approaching, his mouth breaks into a huge grin.

  “Hey, babe,” he says, stepping away from the grill to give Trey a kiss.

  “This is my friend Chloe,” Trey says. “The one I told you about.”

  Oh no. I feel my eyes go wide. What did he tell Eric? That I tried to kiss him when we were younger because I thought he liked me?

  “You’re the dancer,” Eric says.

  “Yeah.” Relief floods through me. “It’s really nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand for a shake, but Eric pulls me in for a hug instead.

  “You hungry?” he asks me as he places a hamburger on a bun and hands it to Trey, who gobbles it up in two bites.

  My stomach growls, and then Geezer brushes up against my leg. I turn around, and Eli is standing behind me. I look over his shoulder, expecting to see at least one of the girls from the kitchen, but he’s alone.

  “I don’t know about her, but I’m hungry,” he says.

  After Trey introduces Eli and we all have a plate of food, we make our way to a cluster of empty chairs. This short trip takes a bit of time because people keep stopping Trey to say hello or ask how his spring break is going so far. It suddenly clicks that this is happening because Trey is popular. People genuinely care about how he’s doing and what he’s been up to. I wonder if he would have been popular like this if he’d stayed in New Jersey.

  When we finally sit down, Trey pulls his car keys out of his pocket, and I notice a Penn State key chain. I point to it. “Is that where you’ll be going in the fall?”

  “Yep, for wrestling,” he says. “I didn’t really wanna stay on the East Coast for college, but they offered a nice scholarship.”

  “Well, if you’re staying on the East Coast, mayb
e I can come visit you.”

  I really regret that we fell out of touch. Trey must feel the same way because he smiles and says, “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

  “And you and Eli can probably visit each other, too, since he’s staying on the East Coast, also,” I say.

  Trey glances at Eli and quirks an eyebrow. Eli’s mouth breaks into a grin.

  “Actually, I’m still trying to get my parents on board with clown school,” he says.

  They both laugh, but I can tell that Eli’s is a little forced. Maybe he’s embarrassed to talk about how he’s going to study to be a lawyer just like his dad.

  Eric comes back to the table and asks Trey to come help him at the grill. Trey tells us he’ll be back soon, and then there’s just Eli and me. And Geezer, of course.

  Eli is busy scrolling through his phone. I wait to see if he’ll look up and try to start a conversation. He doesn’t.

  “So…” I say once the silence becomes a little unbearable.

  He glances up at me. “So…” he repeats.

  “What happened to your hair?”

  He sighs. “I knew that was coming.”

  “You have a huge bald spot in the middle of your head. You can’t expect me not to ask about it.”

  “Someone shaved it as a joke.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Isiah.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I fell asleep at a party.” He tries to shrug it off, but I can tell it still annoys him.

  It really puzzles me that Eli quit the basketball team out of the blue and dropped all his teammates to become close with Isiah, the slacker of all slackers. Did he need to change his image that badly? Just like with the smoking, he probably did it to get under his mom’s skin.

  I say what I’ve been wanting to say for over a year. “I can’t believe you’re friends with him.”

  “I wouldn’t really consider Isiah a friend.”

  “Then why do you hang out with him all the time?”

  “We stopped hanging out a while ago.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me anymore.” He repeats the exact words I said to him yesterday. Touché, I guess.

  He stands up and pats his pockets. I already know what he’s looking for.

  “I’m gonna go smoke,” he says, tapping a cigarette out of the pack and into his palm. He coaxes Geezer to stand up. “See you later.”

  “What?” My heartbeat quickens. “You can’t leave me sitting here by myself.”

  “Well, I’d invite you to come, but you have that rule about me not smoking around you, so…”

  “But I don’t know anyone here.”

  “Not true,” he says, already backing away. “You know Trey. And now you know Eric.”

  I glance around hopelessly. Trey and Eric were at the grill, but now they’re nowhere to be found.

  “You look like you’re about to face sudden death,” Eli says, smiling. I’m glad he finds this funny. “It’s not that deep. Just … be social.” He starts to walk away.

  “Eli,” I hiss. But I’m long forgotten as he makes his way to the front yard, and the platinum blond with the dark roots falls into step beside him.

  Be social. How does one do that? I never have time to really be social because of ballet. And when I do go out, I can always hide behind Reina, who has more than enough to say for the both of us. Now that she isn’t here, I’m not sure what to do.

  And how is it that both Eli and Trey have grown up to be so popular, while I’m just … well, I’m just me. The type of girl who sits alone at a party, awkward and self-conscious.

  Luckily, the sun is beginning to set, so I won’t be seen sitting alone in broad daylight.

  All I need to do is talk to one person, and somehow be charming enough that they will talk to me until Trey or Eli comes back … which may never happen with the way things look. But even the thought of doing that makes my palms sweat.

  I stand up and start to walk around the backyard slowly, like I’m just minding my business, doing a casual stroll. What I’m really doing is scanning the crowd, trying to catch someone’s eye so I can spark up a conversation. About what? I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone is clustered together in groups. I bet their high school is small like ours, where everyone knows everyone and it’s hard to break into cliques.

  This is useless.

  The good thing is that most people are outside now, so I make up my mind to head inside. If I use the bathroom, that will eat up some time. Maybe when I come back, Trey will be waiting for me.

  There’s a line for the bathroom downstairs. I wait for a little bit, trying not to eavesdrop on the two girls standing in line ahead of me. But it’s hard not to, because one girl is shouting about how a boy named Dave is completely ignoring her, even though she just slept over at his house, and her friend keeps making really disinterested mhmm sounds like she’s about to fall asleep while standing. All I can think is that Mom would crucify me if she ever found out that I’d stayed overnight with a boy. I will never tell her about sleeping in the same motel room as Eli, even though we were in separate beds.

  After a while, I really do have to use the bathroom, and the line doesn’t seem to be moving. In a big house like this, there has to be another bathroom upstairs. I decide to search for it.

  I was right.

  The upstairs bathroom is huge. The tub is a large Jacuzzi and there’s a half wall that separates the tub from the toilet. There’s a window by the toilet, too. This is perfect. I can hide out in here and watch the backyard until I see either Trey or Eli sitting back at our table.

  After I use the bathroom, I ease myself down onto the soft plush rug. I pull out my phone and scroll through my timeline. Reina just posted a selfie with a bunch of her theater camp students. She’s beaming, and the little kid next to her has his finger stuck in his nose. I start to comment on the picture, then I freeze when I hear the bathroom door open.

  Did I forget to lock it?

  The voices drift closer and I hear the door close behind them. Someone turns on the sink.

  I definitely forgot to lock it.

  I start to stand up and announce myself before someone starts doing something … private, but I stop when I realize that I recognize the voices. It’s Trey and Eric. And they’re arguing.

  “There are way too many people here,” Eric says.

  Trey says something back, but I can’t really hear over the sound of the running water.

  “No, most of these people are your friends,” Eric says.

  Someone turns off the sink. Trey clears his throat. “You’re friends with them, too. You didn’t care earlier. I don’t see what the big problem is all of a sudden. I’m so tired of your on-and-off attitude. Why don’t you just say what this is really about?”

  “It’s about you and your need to invite everybody under the sun every time we decide to have a party,” Eric says.

  “No, that’s not it. You’re mad that I’m going to Penn State and not with you to UM. Just say it.”

  Silence.

  I hold my breath like they can hear the sound of my breathing. It’s so quiet they just might.

  “You know what,” Eric says suddenly, “I don’t want to have this conversation right now. There’s a bunch of people here that you invited, and they’re probably fucking up my house as we speak. I need to go back downstairs.”

  “Fine.”

  The door creaks open. “Are you coming?”

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  From the heavy silence, I can tell that Eric is lingering. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Can we talk about this after everyone leaves?”

  “Yeah,” Trey says quietly.

  The door closes. Then I hear his footsteps walking toward the toilet, toward me. This will be very, very bad. And embarrassing.

  But Trey walks right past me and stands in front of the
window. His shoulders sag and he lets out a long sigh. I wait for him to look over and discover me, but he doesn’t.

  He just might stand at the window all night, pondering and brooding.

  I clear my throat. Trey snaps his head in my direction and practically jumps out of his skin. “Chloe, what the hell are you doing down there?”

  I shrug and smile sheepishly.

  He glances at the door and looks back at me. I can tell the wheels are turning in his brain, putting together that I just overhead his argument with Eric.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” I say quickly. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I just happened to be in the same room while you were having an argument.…”

  I don’t know what I expect Trey to do. But he doesn’t get angry. Instead, he sighs and sits down on the rug, leaning his head against the wall with a loud thunk. “We had this plan that we’d both go to the University of Miami next year, but then Penn State gave me a wrestling scholarship. I couldn’t turn it down. I wanted Eric to apply there, too, but his parents aren’t really supportive of the fact that he’s gay, so he wants to get as far away from them as possible. He says Pennsylvania is still too close.” He looks down at his hands in his lap.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Lately, he gets mad at me out of nowhere, and I know it’s because he thinks that I messed up our plan. But he’ll say it’s because of different stuff. Like the other day he got mad that I made us late to school, when he’s never cared about that before. And today it’s because I invited too many people to his house, but he’s had even bigger parties than this.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I nod to let him know that I’m still listening.

  “I just want him to be honest with me, you know? Lying eats you up,” he continues. “It’s exhausting and time consuming and only hurts people.”

  I think about Mom and how I’m lying to her. “I know what you mean.”

  “I was worried that we’d break up because of the long-distance thing, but it might happen before we even go away.” He glances out the window. When his gaze returns to me, he raises an eyebrow. “Why were you sitting on the bathroom floor anyway?”