19 Love Songs. David Levithan

and later wrote a book, Among Boring People ?’ ”

      Damien shook his head. “Not funny. There will be no murder tonight or tomorrow.”

      “Do you realize, if we win this thing, it’s going to come up on Google Search for the rest of our lives?” I said.

      “Let’s wear masks in the photo,” Wes suggested.

      “I’ll be Michelangelo. You can be Donatello.”

      And it went on like this for a while. Damien stopped talking and watched me and Wes going back and forth. I was talking, but mostly I was watching him back. The green-blue of his eyes. The side of his neck. The curl of hair that dangled over the left corner of his forehead. No matter where I looked, there was something to see.

      I didn’t have any control over it. Something inside of me was shifting. Everything I’d refused to articulate was starting to spell itself out. Not as knowledge, but as the impulse beneath the knowledge. I knew I wanted to be with him, and I was also starting to feel why. He was a reason I was here. He was a reason it mattered.

      I was talking to Wes, but really I was talking to Damien through what I was saying to Wes. I wanted him to find me entertaining. I wanted him to find me interesting. I wanted him to find me.

      We were done pretty quickly, and before I knew it, we were walking back to the Westin. Once we got to the lobby, Wes magically decided to head back to our room until the “scrimmage” at eight. That left Damien and me with two hours and nothing to do.

      “Why don’t we go to my room?” Damien suggested.

      I didn’t argue. I started to feel nervous—unreasonably nervous. We were just two friends going to a room. There wasn’t anything else to it. And yet . . . he hadn’t mentioned watching TV, and last time he’d said, “Why don’t we go to my room to watch TV?”

      “I’m glad it’s just the two of us,” I ventured.

      “Yeah, me too,” Damien said.

      We rode the elevator in silence and walked down the hallway in silence. When we got to his door, he swiped his electronic key in the lock and got a green light on the first try. I could never manage to do that.

      “After you,” he said, opening the door and gesturing me in.

      I walked forward, down the small hallway, turning toward the beds. And that’s when I realized—there was someone in the room. And it was Sung. And he was on his bed. And he wasn’t wearing his jacket. Or a shirt. And he was moaning a little.

      I thought we’d caught him jerking off. I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing. And that’s what made him notice we were in the room. He jumped and turned around, and I realized Frances was in the bed with him, shirt also off, but bra still on.

      It was all so messed up that I couldn’t stop laughing. Tears were coming to my eyes.

      “Get out!” Sung yelled.

      “I’m sorry, Frances,” I said between laughing fits. “I’m so sorry.”

      “GET OUT!” Sung screamed again, standing up now. Thank God he still had his pants on. “YOU ARE THE DEVIL. THE DEVIL!”

      “I prefer Antichrist,” I told him.

      “THE DEVIL!”

      “THE DEVIL!” I mimicked back.

      I felt Damien’s hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go,” he whispered.

      “This is so pathetic,” I said. “Sung, man, you’re pathetic.”

      Sung lunged forward then, and Damien stepped in between us.

      “Go,” Damien told me. “Now.”

      I was laughing again, so I apologized to Frances again, then I pulled myself into the hallway.

      Damien came out a few seconds later and closed the door behind us.

      “Holy shit!” I said.

      “Stop it,” Damien said. “Enough.”

      “Enough?” I laughed again. “I haven’t even started.”

      Damien shook his head. “You’re cold, man,” he said. “I can’t believe how cold you are.”

      “What?” I asked. “You don’t find this funny?”

      “You have no heart.”

      This sobered me up pretty quickly. “How can you say that?” I asked. “How can you, of all people, say that?”

      “What does that mean? Me, of all people?”

      He’d gotten me.

      “Alec?”

      “I don’t know!” I shouted. “Okay? I don’t know.”

      This sounded like the truth, but it was feeling less than that. I knew. Or I was starting to know.

      “I do have a heart,” I said. But I stopped there.

      I could feel it all coming apart. The collapse of all those invisible plans, the appearance of all those hidden thoughts.

      I bolted. I left him right there in the hallway. I didn’t wait for the elevator—I hit the emergency stairs. I ran like I was the one on the cross-country team, even when I heard him following me.

      “Don’t!” I yelled back at him.

      I got to my floor and ran to my room. The card wouldn’t work the first time, and I nervously looked at the stairway exit, waiting for him to show up. But he must’ve stopped. He must’ve heard. I got the key through the second time.

      Wes was on his bed, reading a comic.

      “You’re back early,” he said, not looking up.

      I couldn’t say a thing. There was a knock on the door. Damien calling out my name.

      “Don’t answer it,” I said. “Please, don’t answer it.”

      I locked myself in the bathroom. I stared at the mirror.

      I heard Wes murmur something to Damien through the door without opening it. Then he was at the bathroom door.

      “Alec? Are you okay?”

      “I’m fine,” I said, but my voice was soggy coming out of my throat.

      “Open up.”

      I couldn’t. I sat on the lip of the tub, breathing in, breathing out. I remembered the look on Sung’s face and started to laugh. Then I thought of Frances lying there and felt sad. I wondered if I really didn’t have a heart.

      “Alec,” Wes said again, gently. “Come on.”

      I waited until he walked off. Then I opened the door and went into the bedroom. He was back on his bed, but he hadn’t picked up the comic. He was sitting at the edge, waiting for me.

      I told him what had happened. Not the part about Damien, at first, but the part about Sung and Frances. He didn’t laugh, and neither did I. Then I told him Damien’s reaction to my reaction, without going into what was underneath.

      “Do you think I’m cold?” I asked him. “Really—am I?”

      “You’re not cold,” he said. “You’re just so angry.”

      I must’ve looked surprised by this. He went on.

      “You can be a total prick, Alec. There’s nothing wrong with that—all of us can be total pricks. We like to think that just because we’re geeks, we can’t be assholes. But we can be. Most of the time, though, it’s not coming from meanness or coldness. It’s coming from anger. Or sadness. I mean, I see people like me and I just want to rip them apart.”

      “But why do I want to rip Sung