Chapter 7: Inviting the Audience
Two days later the room was still half-broken. The moon came through the curtains in the same thin stripe and found Bessie's mattress floating in the middle of the floor, and the three of them drifted toward Leslie's bed again at eleven without anyone proposing it, the way water finds a low place.
Megan sat cross-legged at the head with her phone in her hand, not looking at anything on it. Leslie lay on her stomach across the middle. Bessie had the foot again, like a standing assignment she'd given herself.
"So," Megan said. "Audience. Thursday. Actual people. We should probably figure out who."
"I've been thinking about that all day," Leslie said. "In two classes. During a quiz."
"Same. I got nothing done. My lab partner asked me a question and I answered out loud and she said, you're being weird, and I said, yes." Megan tossed the phone onto the pillow. "Okay. Options. Nobody on my side, honestly. I don't trust anyone from the party crowd not to make it a thing. And the premed girl is a fantasy, not a person I'd hand this room to."
"You don't know her," Bessie said.
"I know she has nice hamstrings. That's not a credential." Megan picked at the hem of her shirt. "What about Dana?"
Leslie's head came up off her forearms. "Dana lives four hours away."
"Dana taught you how to do all this. I'm just saying, it would be poetic."
"It would be insane. She has a girlfriend. And a life. And I haven't talked to her since spring." Leslie heard her own voice speed up and made herself slow down. "Also, no. That one's mine. She doesn't get to see this room. I want to keep one thing unshared."
"Fine," Megan said, easy. "That was a real answer. Rule's the rule."
The pipes ticked somewhere in the wall. Leslie realized she'd been lying there waiting for Bessie to say something, and Bessie hadn't, and Bessie being quiet meant something different now than it had two weeks ago. It meant she was composing.
"Bess," Leslie said. "Who's yours?"
Bessie looked at her own hands. Then she laughed, one soft breath, and it gave her away completely.
"You're joking," Megan said. "You already have someone. You've had someone since before we even voted on the audience."
"I have a list," Bessie said. "I made a list Tuesday night after we talked. It's got two names on it and they're both on my team and I know exactly what either of them would say."
"Kiara would say yes," Leslie said slowly, watching her face. "Kiara would come, wouldn't she. She'd sit in a chair with her arms crossed and watch the whole thing and never tell a soul."
"Kiara doesn't gossip. Not ever. Four years of locker rooms, she's never repeated anything." Bessie's thumb was rubbing a slow circle on her own knee, unconscious. "She'd want to know why I picked her, though. And I'd have to answer. Honestly."
"And Priya?" Megan asked, and her voice had already slid down into the interested register. "What would Priya say?"
Bessie's face did something complicated. "Priya would say," she started, and stopped, and started again. "Priya would say, what time, and show up ten minutes early."
The room went still in the good way. Leslie could feel both of them arrive at the same thought she did, and nobody said it for a second, and then Megan said it.
"Then text her."
"No." Bessie said it fast, too fast.
"Yes." Megan turned fully around on the pillow to face the foot of the bed. "Bess. Listen. You told us what you want. The shed, the gloves, the whole team hearing. And Thursday we're building the thing. It's sitting in the middle of this room right now. And the person you actually want in the chair is one text message away and you've already told us she'd say yes."
"That's a fantasy. Texting her is a decision. Those are different things."
"Are they though," Megan said. "Because Tuesday you told us the difference between you and everybody else is that you already know everything. You watch. You know what people are before they say it. So you already know what Priya is. You're just scared of being known back."
"That's not fair."
"It's totally fair," Leslie said, and she was grinning into her forearm, she couldn't help it. "You literally made that argument to us in September about the mirror."
Bessie lay back on the mattress, arms at her sides, staring at the ceiling. The moon stripe crossed her collarbones. "If I text her I can't take it back. She'll have it on her phone. Forever. Screenshots exist."
"Okay," Megan said. "Then don't. Honestly. It's your chair, your night, your fantasy. We're not pushing you." She paused exactly one beat. "Unless the honesty rule applies. Does the honesty rule apply?"
"You know it applies," Bessie said miserably.
"Then say the true thing."
There was a long quiet. Leslie watched Bessie's chest rise and fall, three breaths, four. When she finally spoke her voice was flat and even, the composing voice.
"The true thing is I've thought about her every single day since August and if she's sitting in that chair Thursday I will come harder than I've ever come in my life and all three of us know it, and I want it, and I want it so bad my hands are shaking right now, actually, look." She held one up. It was shaking. "There. Known. Happy?"
"Thrilled," Megan said. "Get your phone."
Bessie got her phone. She held it on her stomach for a while without unlocking it, and Leslie crawled down the bed to sit beside her, and Megan scooted until all three of them were crowded around the little screen like it was a campfire.
Unlock. Messages. Priya Patel, last text from eleven days ago, a picture of the practice schedule and the word Thursday? from Bessie.
"Okay," Bessie said. "Okay. What do I even. I can't just say, hey, want to watch me get tied to a bed."
"Why not," Megan said. "That's literally the invitation."
"Because there's a way to say it. There's a tone. If the tone's wrong she screenshots it to the group chat and I have to transfer schools." Bessie's thumbs hovered. "Something casual first. Test the water."
"Oh my God, no water-testing," Leslie said. "You've watched this girl for three months. You know her. Just say the true thing. Rule works on texts too."
Bessie breathed out through her nose. Then she typed. The other two read it upside down as it grew:
hi. weird question. thursday night, our room, 11. me and my roommates do this thing and we need an audience. one person. i want it to be you. it's sexual. you'd be watching me, specifically. you can say no and nothing changes at practice, i promise.
"Send it," Megan whispered.
"Oh my God my hands are so sweaty." Bessie wiped her palm on her thigh, twice, and hit send, and the little delivered tick appeared, and all three of them made a sound at once, a collective intake like they'd jumped into cold water.
Then nothing. The screen sat there. Eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night, and Priya Patel was presumably alive somewhere on campus doing something normal, unaware.
"One minute," Leslie said. "She gets one minute before you spiral."
"I'm already spiraling. I'm fully spiraling. I showed you my hands." Bessie put the phone face-down on her stomach. Then she picked it back up. Put it down. "This is the worst thing I've ever done."
"This is the best thing you've ever done," Megan said. "Hey. Look at me. Whatever she says, this room is still happening Thursday. You already had the best night of your life without her. She's a bonus."
"That is," Bessie said, "actually a really good point," and right then the phone buzzed in her hand, and her whole body jerked, and the screen lit all three of their faces.
Priya had replied. Leslie read it first, upside down, and felt her own pulse slam.
what time thursday. and chen, do i wear the gloves
Bessie made a noise that wasn't a word. Her thighs pressed together under the phone. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God, she. She remembers. She knows about. How does she know about the."
"Breathe," Leslie said, laughing, watching Bessie's face go pink to her ears, watching her squirm against the mattress with the phone gripped in both hands like it might escape. "Answer her."
"What do I say? What do I SAY?"
"Say yes," Megan said, delighted, leaning in. "Say whatever's true. Rule's the rule."
Bessie typed with shaking thumbs, deleted it, typed again, and the three of them watched the reply build, letter by letter, while she bit her lip and shifted her hips and generally came apart on her own bed over a text message.
yes. 11. bring the gloves.