The Best American Short Stories 2018

Kristen Iskandrian Good with Boys ^{from ZYZZYVA}

I was going to sleep in a museum—with any luck, next to Esau Abraham, a boy so gorgeously Jewish he held the entire Old Testament in his name, in the perfect contours of his face. I had this theory about boys, that if they just got close enough to me, and sort of focused in, they would forget about the obvious deterrents, the glasses, the frizzy hair, the underdeveloped body. I was zany, I really went for it, I knew all the good dick jokes. Everyone talks about personality like it’s a bad thing but the fact is, without one, you’ve got nowhere to go but ugly.

It’s the beautiful people, isn’t it, who most often wind up dead or alone.

We took a bus, not a yellow school bus but one of those real ones, with plush red seats and TVs, although we weren’t allowed to turn the TVs on. Esau Abraham’s mom, Mrs. Abraham, was on the bus, one of the parent chaperones. This was a problem but not necessarily a dealbreaker. She loved her son. She wanted what was best for him. We could be allies.

Someone opened up a giant bag of Cheetos. We were going to have dinner in the museum cafeteria but a bus ride demanded snacks. The bag got passed around, and soon the smell of powdered cheese was upon us all like a pollen. I knew even as a kid that kids were disgusting, the constant hand to mouth, the reckless tactility. Most of us did not wash our hands after we used the bathroom—a fact I’d empirically uncovered by spending a lot of time in the bathroom. I hid in stalls to avoid certain things, which was my right, which was all of our right.

The bus driver was a middle-aged woman who clipped her turns close. The second time we bounced off a curb, Mrs. Abraham jostled up to the front and rapped on the Plexiglas. “Hey,” she said. “This is a bus full of kids you’re driving. Can you please be more careful?”

“Lady, I been driving kids a long time. They love it rough.”

She wasn’t wrong. We did like it rough. The higher we bounced, the better.

The year before we’d gone to the planetarium. Esau Abraham wasn’t at our school then. I had big plans for Sam Bell—got behind him in line so that I could sit next to him—but as we entered the darkened room, Allison nudged ahead of me. “Sam,” she’d said. “Sam, you dropped this,” and handed him a VISITOR button. His VISITOR button was fastened to his shirt, so we all knew it was a big fat lie. But I gained a lot of admiration for her just then.

We hit a pothole and I flew a couple inches into the air. “Take it easy!” yelled Mrs. Abraham.

“Not much I can do about the roads!” the bus driver called back gleefully.

There was a rumor that the local news team would be at the museum when we got there, since this was the first time an elementary school class—or any class—had been invited to spend the night. As an event, it was just hitting all the right chords for me: a sleepover, not at my house, at the museum of natural history, with boys.

I just loved boys so much, it was a sickness, it was a secret. I had to pretend I didn’t love them as much as I actually did. I didn’t want to be boy crazy. Once boy craziness became your signifier you couldn’t be taken seriously. Your art would be ignored. I worked so hard on mine, I fully expected to have a gallery showing of my gouaches and charcoal sketches within the year. Esau Abraham was a really good drawer and I looked forward to our future collaborations, the font of mutual encouragement we would fill together.

When we pulled up to the museum and the bus came to an especially jarring stop, I slung my overnight bag over my shoulder, tucked my sleeping bag under my arm, and squeezed into the aisle behind Mrs. Abraham. I leaned in and breathed in to see if I could learn anything additional about Esau. She smelled like Vicks VapoRub and faintly, confusingly, bacon. In the dusk, we gathered on the wide sidewalk in front of the museum. Sure enough, a newsman was talking to Ms. Green, our teacher. What a moment for her, for all of us. She was smiling and talking with her hands, her rosy face exuberant. I could tell she felt famous, and honestly, I think we all did.

Once inside, we were led to the Discovery Room, where we were told to find a place for our bags and sleeping bags. I was startled; I did not expect this to happen so soon. The Discovery Room had a hodgepodge of hands-on exhibits, some insects and fish, a family of stuffed wolves behind glass, and an enormous sculpture of the human brain that you could walk inside. Each of the four lobes was a different color and came with a mini audio tour.

Obviously, the Discovery Room would also be where I “discovered” more about Esau Abraham, if you catch my drift.

Esau followed his mother to a small enclave created by an aquarium flanked by two bookshelves.

“Here, Esau, this is a good spot for us,” she said, taking his navy blue sleeping bag from him and laying it on the floor. “We can look at the fish while we fall asleep!” She unrolled hers—red with a tartan print on the inside—right next to his.

My unsinkable heart sank. I had to be strategic. I put my things down on the other side of the bookshelf closest to Esau. I quickly tested the space and realized that if I stretched all the way out, my head would be more or less in line with his, about four feet apart. Three feet and eleven and three-quarters inches too many.

What could I do but wait, which was of course the one thing I was terrible at. My great aunt told me once, when you dislike doing something, you have to do it more, do it over and over, any chance you got, until you not necessarily liked it—liking wasn’t the goal—but just felt neutral toward it. Neutrality, she said, was the whole purpose. Real Buddhist talk for a woman—my namesake—with a severe QVC addiction. But I thought of her now, and tried to make this situation apply. How to wait more? How to wait over and over? Impossible. Thanks for nothing, Aunt Jill.

Most of the other girls in the class had spread their stuff out in a long rectangle on the other side of the room, closer to the brain. Coyness was never a virtue I cared very much about. Once it was lights out, once Ms. Green and the other chaperones were asleep, those girls would have twice as much work to do, with twice as much risk. Me, I was staying right here, close to my target.

Mrs. Abraham was squeezing hand sanitizer onto Esau’s open palms. I had to be careful not to watch him too much when he was with his mother. It was a turn-off. I took off my glasses and cleaned them on the bottom of my shirt. The only thing worse than a girl with glasses, I reasoned, was a girl with dirty glasses.

I was good with boys because I knew what they wanted. I could enter the simple machines of their minds and see how their gears turned. Most of them needed a lot of oil. To be told, a lot, how correct their opinions were, because most of them believed that opinions were like facts—provable and true. Thinking something, for a boy, meant not-thinking all other things. When two even vaguely conflicting ideas rubbed together, they either quickly chose one and discarded the other, or abandoned them both for a new and better topic, often something they felt absolutely certain about, like a cool video game, or whose bra was visible beneath her shirt, or what was I even doing there anyway. Over time, I could make them talk to me, just by simply existing. I occupied a genderless place where I neither quickened the blood like the obvious girls, nor inspired the bravado often necessary around other boys. Around me, they got to take five. Being a safe harbor may seem dull and sexless (so to speak—nobody’s having sex) but it’s actually a place of power. Deep, hard, penetrating power.

(That’s the kind of riffing I had access to, for example.)

Mrs. Abraham went off to use the bathroom.

“Hi, Esau,” I said casually, coming from around the bookshelf.

“Hi,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be over there, with the other girls? It’s just boys over here.”

“Oh really? I didn’t even notice. It looks pretty crowded over there. I might just stay put.”

Esau rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I wish we could sleep in the brain.”

“Are we not allowed to?” This was a possibility I hadn’t considered.

“I don’t think so. There’s not really a lot of room in there.”

Mrs. Abraham came back from the bathroom. “Who’s this?” she asked brightly, glancing from Esau to me.

“Hi Mrs. Abraham,” I stuck out my hand. “I’m Jill.”

“Well hi, sweetie. Did you find a spot for your stuff? Looks like the girls are going to be on the other side of the room tonight. Probably a good idea, right?” Her eyes were roving over my shoulder to where I’d painstakingly placed my things. I noticed from this close distance that the majority of her eyebrows were drawn on. I was a mothers’ favorite and a grandmothers’ favorite and I had to decide whether I would risk my reputation and stay put, or oblige her and move. But before I could say or do anything, Ms. Green was summoning all of us to the doors. It was time to eat dinner, she said—pizzas had arrived—after which we had forty-five minutes to spend as we wished, in approved areas of the museum.

I got my two slices of pizza and fruit punch juice box and sat with a table of girls. My best friend Sarah was dabbing her pizza with a napkin.

“Why did you put your stuff on the boys’ side?” she asked.

I punctured the foil circle with my straw. “I didn’t actually realize there were ‘sides,’” I said. “Seems like the whole point of being here is to, you know, mix it up.”

Sarah chewed carefully. She was a very careful chewer. She told me once that you were supposed to chew every bite thirty-five times before swallowing it. “Well, I don’t think we’re allowed to sleep on the same side. They were supposed to put us in separate rooms but the other rooms have to be kept really cold or something, that’s what I heard.”

A girl named Caroline tossed her long, pretty hair. “They’ll probably come to our side after everyone’s asleep, and try to be gross. I heard Nick say he was going to steal our underwear.”

“Nick’s an idiot,” I said. “Who even brought underwear? It’s not like we’re staying here for a week.”

Caroline shrugged. “I brought extra, just in case. My mom always says to pack extra underwear, because you never know.”

“Yeah, like, you could pee your pants or something!” Lauren shouted out, and everyone laughed.

I didn’t laugh. I tried not to roll my eyes. Caroline definitely wanted her underwear to be stolen. I could see right through her. I didn’t like this kind of game-playing. I didn’t like silliness, the silliness so often ascribed to our sex. I was constantly trying to get out from under it, kill it as savagely as possible, like a slug you pour salt on even after it’s dead.

If you wanted a boy’s attention, you had to get it. You had to take it.

After dinner, I kept my eye on Esau. His mother was talking to Ms. Green and the two other parent chaperones. With a few other boys he headed toward Ornithology, which was fortunate, since it was adjacent to the Mineralogy wing, where I wanted to spend my time. I had some money to spend in the gift shop tomorrow and I was definitely going to get a few new polished rocks and minerals for my collection. Some agate, maybe. I did not want to lose sight of the educational purpose of this trip. I knew, deep in my bedrock layer, that Esau Abraham would come and Esau Abraham would go. I knew I had to keep a firm hold on my interests outside of boys. I stood looking at an exhibit containing necklaces of jade, peridot, and pink topaz, right next to the clusters of Mississippi pearls so creamy they seemed edible, and I felt stirred, filled with longing.

My desire for boys and my desire for certain other things—often inexplicable, sometimes beautiful, frequently plain, occasionally attainable, like a tiny plastic fifty-cent notebook charm complete with even tinier pencil, for my charm bracelet; sometimes not, like these exquisite jewels that came from places in the earth that no longer even exist—were knotted together as intricately as a DNA double helix. I wanted and wanted and wanted. I believed, like my Great Aunt Jill, that objects had the power to protect me from harm—the harm of loneliness and my own impermanence—and I believed that boys had the same power.

My little voice told me, take what you want. Take what you can. Heal in the long shadows of the taking. My little voice and Aunt Jill’s little voice, maybe, were the same.

I realized I was standing with my hands and forehead pressed to the glass. I heard a few people enter the room and then Esau’s voice, “Adam—wait up!”

“Where are you guys going?” I asked, straightening up.

“Adam wants to go to the dinosaur room, right?” Esau asked. Adam was a shy boy, shyer than Esau, and obsessed with Abraham Lincoln.

“I’m not sure we’re allowed upstairs. I think we’re supposed to stay just on this floor,” I said, unsure of why I was taking the rule-abiding position, especially since I was planning on breaking a few unspoken rules later that night.

Esau looked at Adam. “I could ask my mom,” he said.

“Let’s just go,” I said. Being alone with Esau plus Adam was better than being alone without Esau. And it was fun to take the lead, exciting. “We can pretend we didn’t know.”

The three of us walked quickly to the lighted exit sign. I opened the heavy door to the stairwell and held it for Adam and Esau. I saw Mrs. Abraham craning her neck behind a few kids wandering between Botany and Mineralogy, looking, surely, for her son.

We hurried up a flight of stairs, laughing, which was the sound of our nervous bodies trying to expel their nervousness.

The Vertebrate Paleontology wing was cold and very dimly lit. We fell silent immediately upon entering, tiny insects beneath the impossibly tall ceilings. The air smelled like stone—no, like bone. For a minute we stood there without moving, just inside the entrance. I felt a tingle in my body like a sustained high note, like I myself was an echo chamber for our collective giddiness. This would be a double trespass, I thought to myself. Once for being a forbidden area, twice for being an ancient era. We were moving through time in two directions, forward and backward. I wanted to be in charge of this moment, of being in this ideal place alone with two boys, like some better version of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, one of my all-time favorite books. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask, to believe, that here under the spell of these skeletons and this flattering lighting they would both fall in love with me, and that although I would choose Esau, we would all remain friends and vow to undertake future adventures together. What good was a relationship, after all, with nobody around to witness it?

Adam broke off, breaking my trance, and hastened toward the crown jewel of the entire wing: the seventy-two-foot long Haplocanthosaurus delfsi. His footsteps were loud and sloppy.

Esau started to follow.

“Wait, Esau,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. “Wanna see the T. rex’s cousin?”

I actually didn’t know anything about dinosaurs, but I had seen a sign earlier: the Late Cretaceous Nanotyrannus lancensis, for which the museum had recently acquired a skull.

Esau glanced over at Adam. “Sure—I just want to check out whatever-that-is real quick.”

“Oh—yeah. Definitely. Me, too.” I followed him, suddenly feeling less in charge. Esau stood close to Adam, his striking cheekbones slightly pink.

Adam reached with his index finger toward one of the dinosaur’s tail bones. He reached and reached, but was still at least a foot off. He hoisted himself up to kneel on the platform and tried again, giggling, reaching. When he started to lose his balance, Esau caught his arm, pulling him down. The two of them in a heap on the floor, their laughter eddying through the room like ink in water. I stood above them, surprised by my anger, which felt like a betrayal to all of us, the same kind of massive bummer that happens when an adult walks into a youth situation.

“Ha ha,” I joined in weakly, wanting them to get up off the floor.

Finally, they did. I tried not to look at how Esau was looking at Adam, tried not to register it as anything but boyish camaraderie. I felt a pang of something—sadness, but also panic, and desperation, like I’d been given the chance to re-enter a good dream and had messed it up somehow. I would do anything to get back in, is how I felt. I studied Adam, trying to memorize him so that I could be more like him, look more like him.

He started to say something, but was cut off by the jarring click of an intercom, a loud voice coming from the walls: All students please report to the Discovery Room. Once again, all students please report to the Discovery Room.

“Crap,” I said.

Esau’s face clouded over, exactly the way clouds cloud over the sky. “Let’s go,” he said.

We followed him quickly, wordlessly. When we got back down to the main floor, Mrs. Abraham was waiting outside the Discovery Room.

“Where were you?” she said. She grabbed Esau in a hug and cast a disapproving look toward Adam and me. “I was really starting to worry!”

“We just,” Esau mumbled, “we wanted to see the dinosaurs real quick. Sorry, Mom.”

Maybe I could win him back with righteousness, maybe I could get his mom on my side. “Yeah, I’m really sorry too, Mrs. Abraham. It was actually my idea.”

“I see,” she said. Her face did something I couldn’t decipher. “Well, you’re here now. Go get in line with the girls, Jill. It’s time for all of us to get ready for bed. Tomorrow morning they’re going to release the monarch butterflies, bright and early.”

Reluctantly, I moved my stuff across the room. I followed the other girls into the bathroom, where we changed into our pajamas and brushed our teeth.

“Where’d you go?” Sarah asked, when we were side by side at the sink. She was wearing a soft pink pajama set with satin trim.

“Just, upstairs. To the dinosaurs.” I spit. I was wearing a giant Snoopy nightshirt.

“Esau’s mom was freaking out. It was kind of funny,” she said, dabbing her mouth on a paper towel. “And, P.S., could you be any more obvious?”

We got in our sleeping bags. Ms. Green gave us one final lecture on good conduct, standing there in the center of the room wearing some kind of a sweatsuit. I lay and looked at the ceiling, listening to the whispers and giggles around me, and felt anxious. Across the way, the boys were mostly quiet. Someone let out an enormous belch, and there were staggered titters around the room. In less time than you would imagine, there was absolute silence, the climax of this much-anticipated day folding noiselessly into itself.

I was awake and grew more and more alert. I thought about Esau, I prickled with Esau. I needed his undivided attention. What was this broken mirror inside of me, that showed me I was ugly, showed me I was wrong, but persisted in its reflection that I was better than other people? Could low self-esteem loop all the way around and become narcissism?

I heard breathing, a body intermittently shifting, rolling over. I felt like I was part of the museum, part of an exhibit, the control group of an experiment—proximity to sleep as a kind of stimulant, maybe, since my head buzzed as if from caffeine. Surrounded by bodies, bones, all the inert matter proffered by our tiny planet, I felt neon.

I don’t know what time it was when I knelt cautiously on my sleeping bag, and then stood, and then tiptoed soundlessly to where Esau was lying. It seemed as though the darkness itself was carrying me. I squatted against the bookshelf and could just barely see him, his face wholly at rest, his lips slightly parted. If I could just get him away from his mother, if I could somehow communicate through the thick silence—

“Get back to bed, missy.” Mrs. Abraham’s voice was a sharp whisper.

I fled. I tried not to cry. I didn’t cry. I slept, a hideous sleep of humiliating dreams.

The next morning, we stood shivering in the damp grass of the museum courtyard, squinting at the early sun streaming into our faces. One of the other parent chaperones had lightly slapped my arm to wake me—apparently she and Sarah and several others had tried over the course of twenty minutes, but I wouldn’t budge, and now I was holding up the rest of the class—so I’d thrown on my clothes and rolled up my sleeping bag and raced to meet the line. My mouth felt mossy and the chilly, bright air made me feel extra exposed.

Predictably, Esau stood close to Adam. I watched them openly; I didn’t care about butterflies. Esau looked as though he had slept at a spa, his pretty skin glowing, his eyes fresh. Adam was oblivious, infuriatingly unremarkable—if this were a play he’d be chorus, back row—but what did my opinions matter? I wasn’t in charge of anything. I leaned a little against Sarah, whose tallness usually got on my nerves, and watched three men from the museum set down covered cages on the long table we were standing around. I leaned on Sarah a bit more, bracing myself for a long boring lecture about butterflies and their dumb habits. But the three men merely counted to three and unlatched the doors, and all of us were made to forget for a second, as wings filled the air, what was hurting.