By Hannah Krieg
Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner
His bedroom is smaller than mine. I don’t have the square footage for reference, but my best judgement tells me his bedroom is smaller than mine. Then again, my best judgement would have kept me from ever seeing his bedroom in the first place.
On second thought, it might be an illusion of perceived space due to my vaulted ceiling or a trick of his photography.
His walls are painted a pale yellow that glows olive when lamplight replaces sun. I almost usually see the room in this lighting. His childhood bedroom in Olympia has five photo-realistic paper-dogs strung together on the east wall. This bedroom does not – not in any of the four cardinal directions, which is only mildly disappointing.
Of the decor he does have, the centerpiece is the 5×7 grid of square somethings in varying shades of blue. I want to ask if it’s a calendar, but I’m saving that of all things for later.
When I asked him his favorite color, he circled a square – second to bottom row, third from the left – and he told me the shade came close. He likes easy questions like that, not questions like “what are your plans now that you’ve graduated?” or “am I making you nervous?” or “when can I see you?”
I know what his sheets look like, which is sort of personal. Seeing that he plans to keep us just between the sheets, I’ll keep the sheets between just us.
He cycles through three different pairs of basketball shorts and two pairs of gray sweatpants as pajama bottoms. The first time he saw that I never fuss with those things, he pointed out the large analog clock behind me.
His bedroom is so small, it fits in my hand, a tiny, red pandora’s box that invites me over ten seconds at a time, an instant FedEx with all nocturnal drivers. Blue light allows us to teleport between opposite ends of Ravenna park.
He can hold my naked body in his hands without our skin ever touching. I study his history from an online textbook with a neon yellow cover. And every time I flip the page, it all burns up to make space for the new edition. We have connected our fingertips with fishing line and best of all, the fishing line is clear. There’s no proof any of this happened at all, save empty red arrows.
I can count the number of times I’ve had an in-person conversation with him on one hand – maybe half. His voice is soft and timid, so opposite of the excited ping he is on my phone.
He pulled up to my curb 27 minutes late which was at least three minutes earlier than I had anticipated. For a full hour before, I paced my room, stopping by the mirror at consistent
intervals to practice saying hello and hey and hi and trying them all with a wave and then without and then deciding there was absolutely no greeting appropriate for this occasion.
I don’t remember if I landed on hello or hey or hi. Landed is probably far too graceful a word for how I greeted this suddenly three dimensional boy. I was surprised he existed outside of my phone at all.
He fought the impulse to stare. His eyes switched between meeting mine and drifting like my smile was an ice rink, as though he had difficulty reconciling that I was more than a notification on his lock screen. He couldn’t click away in-person.
It was like our strange relationship, our undefined dynamic had gone analog.
He handed me the AUX, something he called a privilege and I called a pressure.
“I’m gonna play some white girl shit and you’re gonna kick me out of your car!” I worried.
“White girl shit is my shit.”
I worried less.
We drove south on I-5. I looked at him like I was afraid he would disappear in ten seconds. We didn’t say much, but we talked the whole way to Renton.
I bought him Dutch Bros.
“Put your cup in,” I said, situating mine in frame.
“What?” He worried. “Is my face in it?”
“No.”
He worried less.
When we went back to his house, he didn’t have to tell me where the bathroom was. I could draw up blueprints from memory. He didn’t have to tell me where to put my shoes, or show me his favorite painting, or give me a tour of the kitchen where I watched him grate those two fancy cheeses for pasta. It was my first time walking through that door, but I had already been there, and I had already been there naked.
I didn’t dare touch him as I was half certain my hand would slip through this hologram of a boy. I didn’t dare go in his room as I was fully certain I was not ready to stay there more than my usual ten seconds.
We glitched. We buffered. We teetered on the edge of a short circuit. Face-to-face we are more etch-a-sketch than iPhone, clumsy hands twisting cursor into cubist rendition of heart
shapes we would have no trouble rounding on screen. I wanted to shake the sand and gray-out all my get-love-quick-schemes. I wanted to collapse inside a little red box and ship myself across Ravenna Park. I wanted to feel the welcomed tug of invisible fishing line on my fingertips. This connection is only as strong the signal.
After a $9.89 therapy session with a Lyft driver who has now seen me cry more than half of my friends, I was home.
A little red box popped up and asked if I made it back safe.
I saw three plants I never noticed before, the alleged calendar, and olive walls that fear their natural yellowness. The bed sheets that have elected to remain anonymous were gathered to one side to show his hand grasping beneath the waistband of his second-in-rotation gray sweatpants. He uses little white text to tell me I’m pretty, little white lies to get what he wants. I cannot imagine how these words would sound in his soft and timid voice.
In red wrapping, I invited him to my bedroom. In my full-length mirror, I showed him the room and the body I live in. He certainly didn’t notice the fairylights or postcards from Arizona or the polaroid pictures of me with clothes on. He revisited my bedroom even though I only formally invited him once. I do not think he did this to check the time on the large analog clock.
The next night, at 1 a.m., after ignoring me half the day, he sent me a song. Yellow by Myles Cameron with the caption, “your sweater be like”.
“I like that you thought of my sweater,” I messaged him, not knowing how else to respond.
“There’s yellow lint all over my car, of course it reminds me of your sweater,” he said.
“Sorry. I’ll bring you a lint roller,” I promised.
I paused for just a moment. We are both much braver when we see each other as more pixel than person.
“Also, the song is cute and I’m cute, so maybe it reminds you of me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I already have a lint roller.”
He worried less.