are caused by those little hell dots. Finally a message:
Will tell you later. Don’t worry, everythings good ☺
What did that mean?
It was then that I remembered what I’d done the night before, the person I’d created.
I went to Instagram to see if “Jake” had been granted access.
He had.
Suddenly Ivy’s feed was right in front of me, hundreds of perfect little squares in full-saturated color. The most recent picture was of Ivy and Gwen from the night before, faces pressed together. WINESTAINSMILE was the caption. There was nothing new of Xavier. Maybe “everythings good” really did mean that he was being smart this time. They had a drunken hug, shared a nostalgic moment. Maybe they’d talked, she’d apologized, and then that was it.
But there were so many more pictures, so much more to look at. I knew I shouldn’t, but somehow I couldn’t stop myself.
There were a few photos of her wearing ballet shoes with regular clothes, doing crazy ballet poses in everyday situations, one of her in full makeup, devouring a meatball sub, a close-up of a Popsicle-stained tongue, a looped video of her rolling back and forth on a pair of roller skates, a few pictures of a very fluffy dog.
I scrolled back a few months, looked at the ones from right around New Year’s. There was a shot of a guy from far away. He was running up a hill in the snow in a T-shirt and shorts, the slanty winter sun setting behind him, surrounding him with light. This was Xavier from the first time the two of them had met.
Xavier had told me the story, and I’d thought about it so many times, I felt like I had been there myself.
He had been out running on a Sunday afternoon, the last day of winter break – he loved to run in the winter, outside in the freezing cold with nothing in his ears but the wind. They lived not too far from each other, Xavier and Ivy, though he hadn’t known that at the time. He was running by her house and she was standing at the end of her driveway, while he made his way up the hill, just standing there watching him. When he got close, she’d yelled, “Hey, I’ll be your alibi if you want.” He stopped, confused, asked her what she meant. “For whatever crime you’re fleeing the scene of,” she said. “That’s the only reason a person would be out running in this. If anyone asks what you were doing, I’ll tell them we were fucking.” And she stared at him and didn’t even crack a smile. Then invited him to come inside her house. He said the whole thing had been so strange and confusing he didn’t know what to do but say yes. And that’s how it started.
Just then a new picture appeared in Ivy’s feed. There was a face out of focus in the background, a shock of blue hair behind one ear, mouth half open, smiling, eyes closed. In the front of the frame was a spoonful of vanilla ice cream with Froot Loops stuck into it. This had been Xavier’s favorite special-occasion treat as a kid. He had asked for it every birthday growing up. It became a tradition for him even after his parents stopped doing it.
Last year, I was the one who got it for him.
The morning of his seventeenth birthday, the first thing Xavier felt was a body sliding up against him, and then a kiss on the cheek, and hot breath near his ear. “Eyes closed, mouth open,” Ivy said.
Then she fed him something. Xavier was smiling before he even swallowed.
She remembered.
He felt her get up off the bed. He opened his eyes. She was across the room, back to him, walking to the bathroom. The summer sun was coming through the window and her sheer curtains. She was naked and unselfconscious in a way he couldn’t imagine ever being. It didn’t feel safe to look at her. It didn’t feel safe because of what it did to him.
Don’t let this happen again, Xavier told himself. He couldn’t believe he was there. He thought about the night before, after all the stuff in the woods, Ivy convincing him to come stay over. She promised they wouldn’t get caught, as though that was the only thing to be concerned about.
“That’s maybe not the best idea . . .” Xavier had said.
“But the maybe-not-the-best ideas are the best ideas, aren’t they?” Ivy had smiled that smile that meant she knew there was no way Xavier could resist her.
And she had been right.
Xavier had texted his mom that he was staying at Sasha’s. His parents trusted him so much that it would never even occur to them that Xavier could lie. Which made him feel especially guilty when he did.
Xavier stared at Ivy’s back, then forced himself to look away. He reached for his jeans on the floor, took his phone out of the pocket, and for a moment Xavier was back in the real world. He saw the text from Sasha sent late the night before.
Sasha.
Xavier thought again about the great birthday time they’d been having. It was the first real fun Xavier had had in so long. And he thought of how for a moment it had seemed like . . . well, Xavier didn’t know exactly. It seemed like the air between them had shifted or something. Like things were inching in a strange direction. Xavier wasn’t even sure if he had been making it up or not. And then Ivy appeared.
But here, in Ivy’s room on the morning of his seventeenth birthday, he felt certain he’d imagined all that Sasha stuff. Which Xavier knew was a good thing, for a bunch of different reasons, not least of which was the fact that Sasha was his best friend on earth.
Now, in the bright light of day, he felt weird that he’d left Sasha and gone off with Ivy. Not that Sasha would care about the being alone part – she liked to be alone – but because she might care about who he’d gone off with.
He found himself defending his decision to Sasha in his head. Defending Ivy. She wasn’t all good or all bad. She was human and complicated and confusing, like all of us. True, she made messes sometimes. But she never meant to and she always felt awful about it after. And Xavier didn’t quite understand her, but then again, could you ever really understand anyone? He didn’t understand Sasha either. Sasha who was always so strong. Who only ever did what was right. She was solid and secure and never needed anyone. But Xavier wasn’t like that.
And besides, Sasha hadn’t heard Ivy apologizing in the woods, and hadn’t seen the look on Ivy’s face this morning when she’d kissed him. Ivy had done some not-so-great stuff, but Xavier didn’t blame her, and maybe it was dumb and naïve not to, but he just didn’t. Life messes us up in so many ways, messes all of us right the hell up. And when we fumble and bumble around, crashing into one another, stepping on toes and hearts, it’s not on purpose. Being a person is nearly impossible.
He heard the toilet flush and Ivy’s bare feet padding back across the shiny wood floors. And then she was back in the room and Xavier forgot everything else. She stood by the door, watching him, one arm raised up against the frame, dark hair sticking straight up.
Xavier started to get out of bed. She sprang forward and then her hands were over his eyes and her mouth was against his ear again.
“Not yet,” she said.
For the next hour, Xavier was just a body. Lips. Hands. Skin. A beating heart. And when they were done, they were wrapped together in her sheets, and Xavier was full
