IN MY DREAMS, I see her. She pulls me towards the lake, my hand in hers. Sometimes, she kisses me. Sometimes, more than that. Every desire I had when I was seventeen transposing itself into my subconscious, making me relive every pathetic urge of mine, except now there's the distance of time to severe me from whatever I may have felt for her. These aren't good dreams.

            Here's the thing: I don't just see her, anymore. Increasingly, I begin to see him, too. Not him and her. Just him, alone. As if they're both mutually exclusive, as if I can't have them both.  Sometimes he's drowning me, sometimes I'm drowning him. Sometimes we're doing none of that. Sometimes he just stares at me, warm eyes turned cold.

            I keep holding out on bringing him into this story, despite how integral he was, because I am terrified of him. Not that he was scary or anything. You have to understand that he wasn't a bad person. Far from it. Out of all of us, he was probably the best. He was kind, and passionate, and warm, and thoughtful—everything I wasn't. The entire time I knew him, I hardly ever saw his composure slip. The broad shoulders, always carrying some burden, never faltering. Atlas carrying the world.

            Up until her disappearance, I never once doubted the fact that he and I were fundamentally different—he the movie-star, the hero, the champion; me the jealous and snivelling and scheming villain—but we couldn't have been. We both fell for Juliet, didn't we? Roped in by her charm and wrapped around her little finger. I used to think of him as the enemy. Somewhat reluctantly, but I had to. There had to be an obstacle between me and Juliet and he seemed the best culprit. Unfair to him, considering how much of a good person he was, but wasn't it necessary? Did he think the same of me? His life, before I came into it, was fine. Not perfect, but fine. And then I came along, ruining everything.

            So, I wake up from yet another dream. I'm all alone in the room—my roommate's out for the whole week—and I get up, head to the sink, get a glass of water.

            And I am, not for the first time that night, thinking about him.

|||

ONE WHOLE WEEK after the night at the lake, when I'd almost forgotten about the whole thing, Juliet called me.

            It's not that I completely put it out of my mind. It was simply that I'd simply splintered the scene into dozens of tiny fragments, mixed it in all the memories of Juliet I had, and let myself think about her in discrete details, in the back of my mind. Always. As I was doing the dishes, as I was mowing the lawn, as I was driving around the suburbs with Ayah and Hyun, their voices bouncing off of me. I saw her body, lined in silver by the moonlight. I saw her bra strap, barely visible through her shirt. Her eyes, under the harsh shadow of night. Her mouth, billowing out smoke. Pieces of her.

            Hyun hit the back my head.

            "Ow," I said. "What was that for?"

            "For not listening. I was saying, do we go to the mall or not?"

            "The mall, he says," I said. "You can do better, Hyun."

            "I would be able to if you fucking helped."

            It was late afternoon. Another slow summer day. The sunlight filtered through Hyun's curtains, making the dust motes dance. He walked into the light, let it wash over him and I saw, again, what made him so attractive to girls. The comfort in his own skin, the way he seemed to revel in his own being, like he couldn't imagine ever owning a body different than the one he had. Arrogance in the right dose. It was enough to make me envious. I always had a tough time with my body—how chubby I was, how pimply I was, how unruly my hair was.

            Ayah was ignoring him completely in favor of playing some video game on Hyun's behemoth of a laptop. She was letting out a string of curses under her breath, squinting at the screen.

            I said, idly, "Hyun, would you have sex with me?"

            He looked disgusted. "No. Absolutely not."

            "Why not?"

            "Because you're my friend and if your father found out he'd fucking castrate me or some shit, and then like, kill you."

            "So, if it wasn't for my father, and if I wasn't your friend—"

            "I still wouldn't have sex with you."

            "Why?"

            "Because, you're a sad little brown virgin and I don't do sad little brown virgins." He paused. "No offense, truly."

            "None taken, you racist."

            The air outside was sticky and humid, heavy with the oppressive weight of summer. I didn't want to leave Hyun's cool, air-conditioned room. I didn't even want to leave his house. Hyun's family was well-off—Yale and Harvard graduates, people who made a living in law—and his parents were kind enough towards me, but I felt that they held me in a sort of disregard, as if I was a traitor to Asians everywhere because of my pathetically average academic performance. They liked my elder sister well enough, a sophomore in John Hopkins who was bound on the track towards becoming a respected doctor. Earning money, earning respect, getting stellar grades. Something Ayah was probably going to end up being, despite her seemingly heavy addiction to video games.

            "Like I was seeing," Hyun said, a little more loudly. "Do we go to the mall or not?"

            "No," I said. "We are not going to the mall. How about the pool?"

            "Are you crazy?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "And have like fifty half-naked white people stare at the poster children of diversity? Besides—" he gave me a sly, shit-eating grin—"I don't think you brought your burqini."

            Ayah must've been paying a little attention, because she let out what was an approximation of a laugh. "You're a piece of shit."

            "You're a real comedic wit, you are," I said. "As if you've got some real deep-seated self-esteem issues and you cope with that by insulting everyone around you."

            "You got that right," Hyun said, still grinning. "At least I get laid."

            "What does that have to do with anything?"

            "It has everything to do with anything." He sighed, and flopped down onto the bed right next to where I was sitting. "Sigmund Freud said that. I think."

            "You're insufferable, you know that?" I said.

            He put his arms behind his head, and puckered up his lips. "Flattery isn't going to get you anywhere, baby."

            That summer, despite everything that happened the school year following it, was my favorite. And those moments we spent lazing around, too sun-soaked and too bored to do anything but talk and play card games and talk some more were ones I treasured. In writing, when I put down the words me and Ayah and Hyun exchanged—because I can remember them, still—they sound boring and inane. They were boring and inane. Video games and people from school and TV shows and laughing so hard tears streamed out of my eyes and Ayah's hands a dark brown blur as we played poker and go fish and stressing over college. We don't love that which doesn't stand out to us, but I love them precisely because they don't stand out. Everything that followed was something from a cold and frozen nightmare. But even here, Juliet haunts me. Determined to ruin me. Watch.

            As usual, Hyun and I were deep in conversation about some show or the other, talking about some plot twist, when suddenly my phone started buzzing on his nightstand. We both glanced at it. It was on his side.

            "Get it for me, would you?" I asked.

He let out an indignant huff, but reached over anyway, and was about to hand it to me but stopped when he saw the display name.

"What?" I asked. "Who is it?"

            "Juliet," he said, frowning. 

            "What?" I said, and glanced at my phone, and sure enough, there was Juliet's name on the display. "What the fuck? I never gave her my number."

            He was just staring at me. Even Ayah, whom it was near impossible to tear away from whatever virtual world shown on a screen, was staring. My phone kept vibrating in my hand. I was frozen, glaring at the both of them.

            "Answer it," Hyun said. "Don't be a coward."

            I looked helplessly at Ayah, who only shrugged.

            "Real help, the both of you," I muttered, and answered the phone.   

            "Hey!" said Juliet, brightly. "How are you?"

            "Um," I said. My mind was a complete utter blank, my mouth full of cotton. "Why—uh—what—how did you get my number?"

            "Seriously? Come on. You gave me your phone, remember?"

            "Oh. Right." The storm, Juliet wearing my sweater—that whole day seemed like something I'd made up in my head, not reality.

            "Anyways, remember when I said I wanted to pay you back? I'm paying you back." I could almost imagine her twirling a phone cord, if there was one. "I'm having a barbeque, today, my place. Nothing too big, just a few people. Do you want to come?"

            "Um. Give me a moment." I pressed my hand on the receiver end of my phone, and glanced at Hyun and Ayah. Sotto voce, I said, "Do you wanna go to Juliet's for a barbeque?"

            Hyun nodded. Ayah had a strange expression on her face, which I took as agreement.

            "Okay," I said to Juliet. "When is it?"

            "In an hour or two," she said. "Can you make it?"

            "Pretty sure we can," I said. I wasn't sure at all. 

            "Then I'll see you there! Call me when you show up!"

            And she hung up. My insides were tingling, like lightning had struck me. I stared at my phone, not quite believing the conversation that just took place. The day, which had begun out just like any other day, was suddenly full of promise, potential. Things could change.

            "I'm not going," Ayah said, her voice smooth.

            Hyun looked at her, eyes narrowed. Before I could say anything, it was Hyun who spoke up.

            "Why not?" he asked.

            "I don't want to." She wasn't backing down from Hyun's glare. "Don't like Juliet's crowd."

            "I thought you didn't believe in high school cliques," Hyun said, something of an edge in his voice.

            The tension in the room rose by several degrees.

            If Ayah noticed it, nothing on her face showed it. "I don't. I just don't think I should be breaking my fast with a bunch of infidels."

            "I'm an infidel," Hyun said. The edge hadn't left his voice. "You don't have a problem with me."

            "It's not the same," Ayah said, not even looking away from Hyun. "You know it's not."

            "Tell me how it's different, then."

            "You're different," Ayah said, emphatically. "They're—they're not bad people, Hyun. But they're the kind of people who're going to ask me about Somali pirates or what Africa is like this time of the year, and I'm going to sit there and I'm going to have to smile because if I get angry—" she closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. "You know what Olivia said to me, once? You're so pretty!" said Ayah, affecting a nasal tone. "Are you mixed?"

            Hyun winced, face softening into something like guiltiness. I felt guilty too, but not guilty enough to pass up whatever chance I could get at seeing Juliet. Did that make me a bad friend? Probably.

            I began, "Sorry, Ayah, but I—"

            "Too busy drooling over Juliet to even think? Sure, I get it." She didn't sound angry, but thing about Ayah was that she never let on if she was angry or not, which made it all the more worse. "I'm fasting too, so god damn me if I break my fast with whatever the hell Juliet cooks up." 

            I wanted to tell her that I was fasting too, but something in her expression told me that of course she knew this, and she was judging me for going ahead into the barbeque anyway. Hyun and I glanced at each other, and when Ayah turned back to face the screen, he shook his head.

            See? Already, things starting to change.

|||

JULIET'S HOUSE—WHICH was bit of a stretch, it was more mansion, really—was some large colonial style affair which looked like it had been taken from some eighteenth-century lithograph. Some important general might have lived there, once. Maybe there were those country balls or whatever people got up to back in ye olde times, besides the racism and slavery and dying.

            I said as much to Hyun, and he told me to shut up. We were both standing outside of the car, neither of us much keen on going inside of the house. How many times had I driven by here, on my way to work at whatever summer job I had lined up, never once thinking I'd be going inside?

            Hyun nudged me in the ribs, hard.

            "What?" I asked.

            "How do I look?" He pushed back his hair and gave me a smolder. "Do I look sexy? Handsome? Beguiling? Charming?"

            "You look insufferable."

            "Oh, feeling witty, are we?" he said. "Let's hope your wit lasts when we go inside."

            We didn't have to. Juliet was waiting for us at the driveway. Hyun said greeted her, Juliet greeted back. She smiled at me, said hi. I said hi back. We were standing there, just smiling at each other, like two complete idiots.

"You look good, Ro," she said. She reached out and touched my bare forearm. It was a heartbeat of a touch. "I think I prefer you in short sleeves."

            Was she flirting?

            "I'll make sure to cut off all the sleeves off my shirt to a quarter of their length next time I see you," I said, my arm still burning with the memory of her fingertip.

Hyun cleared his throat, and asked, politely, where the barbeque was. Juliet looked at him, a little startled. Yes, she said. This way.

            She led us behind the gardens. Under sweet-gum trees and through grass laid with rocks, past a stone-fountain that was dry, and out to the backyard.

            There were a few people gathered already, all of them scattered around. Some of them sitting on the grass, some of them lounging on the patio, nursing their drinks, a few of them next to the grill, trying to get the barbeque up. All in all, there were about half a dozen people there, give or take. This was nothing like those house parties I was used to, and I hung behind Juliet and Hyun.

             Juliet had her hair tied up in a ponytail, showing off the graceful line of her neck, and I kept my eyes trained on that instead of looking around me, too afraid to make eye contact with people I'd never really seen out of school except for some brief awkward run-ins at the diner or mall or wherever.

            I stayed close to Hyun, who was waving at some people he knew and some of whom I recognized vaguely as you were bound to do in a small town with an equally small population of young people. I saw Mason and Wilhelmina, Rachel and Olivia, and the rest of them I didn't know.

            I met Mason's eyes, and he lifted his drink in a salute. I smiled back.

            Mason was a good guy, as far as I could tell. A well-meaning brick of a boy—ruddy-cheeked, athletic, well-spoken and benevolent. Shame then, that we hardly ever talked, nothing apart from the occasional 'hi' or 'hello.' Hardly anything in common, except Juliet.

Juliet walked over to him, and Hyun and I, uncertain of what to do, only followed.

            "Hey there," said Mason, to our little group. "This is the first time I've seen you out of school. You and Hyun, I mean. I see Juliet every day."

            "You know me," Juliet said, taking a seat next to him. "Clingy and needy."

            "Wouldn't have it any other way," said Mason, loping an arm around her shoulder.

            Boyfriend, I thought, the realization sudden. He's her boyfriend. They must have started dating sometime this summer; they didn't seem too touchy-feely in school, not like now. But. Something wasn't quite adding up. If Mason was her boyfriend, then who was the guy skinny dipping with her that night? Who the fuck was Royce?

            Confusion took away some of the heat of jealousy, and besides, I couldn't begrudge Mason. He was nice-looking, nice-mannered, nice-eyed, just nice. Not the type to go skinny-dipping at night. Or maybe he was. Who the fuck was I to tell?

            Mason and Hyun were talking about football—fantasy football or real football? I couldn't tell the difference, to be honest—and I was bored out of my mind, already regretting coming here. Hyun looked like he was enjoying himself. Mason looked like he was enjoying himself. Juliet looked like she was enjoying herself.

            Occasionally she threw me a glance, saw that I was bored, and tried to get me to talk, but I was too diffident when it came to her that my answers came out awkward and blunt. Juliet had the good grace not to give up. She was still trying to get me to talk, asking me all sorts of questions while I grew increasingly embarrassed at my own incapability, when someone intruded on our conversation.

            He was wearing an apron and wielding a pair of tongs. The sun was behind him, so what I first saw of him was his silhouette.

            "I need help," he said.

            "Dude," Mason said. "You can't be serious."

            "Hey, if you wanted a barbecue, you shouldn't have asked me." He turned his head towards me—shifting such that the sun illuminated him—and said, "Who's this?"

            How funny that I can only vaguely remember Juliet. Discrete images of her, her hair, her smile, like an artifact lost to time. But he is preserved whole in my memory. Everything about him is still intact, and I can recall clearly, his tawny complexion, the honey-brown shade of his eyes, the charming shape of his mouth—always in a perpetual smirk—the color of his hair, amber gold in the sun. A face that you could look at forever.

            I didn't think so at the time, obviously, being more inclined that way than the other. I simply thought him startlingly handsome, and blinked at him before introducing myself. I gave him my name.

            "Oh, sweet," he said, smiling. I had to blink again. "Another Muslim."

            "Hey," said Juliet, slightly irritated. "The barbecue."

            He turned to her again, and I watched them both intently, for something that would let me guess at the nature of their relationship. A softening gaze? A smile?

            Nothing. He let out a huff.

            "I'm having trouble," he said. "I require assistance. Help is needed. Save me, Juliet Yancy, you're my only hope."

            "Fine, fine," said Juliet, standing up. "I'll go look for someone."

            "I'll do it," I blurted out.

            Hyun looked at me with some alarm, and he was probably going to say something, but before he could, barbecue-guy clapped his hands and gave me a dazzling smile.

            "Excellent," said barbeque guy.  "Oh, shit—" charming smile turned self deprecating, hand placed lightly on heart—"where are my manners? I haven't introduced myself."

            He offered his hand to me, and I shook it, not sure of what I was supposed to do.

            "The name's Royce," he said, still smiling at me. Royce from the lake? Maybe. Probably. With those shoulders? Definitely. When he withdrew his hand from mine, my hand felt empty. "Come on."

            Everybody else was already moving on in conversation, except for Juliet, who was looking at Royce. And Royce was staring right back at her.

            "I don't have all day, bud," Royce said, turning his head abruptly to look at me. The weight of his gaze was a shock. The type of guy it was hard to make eye contact with.

            "Sorry," I said, struggling to keep my eyes on him.

            "Don't be," he said, and stepped off the porch.

            Juliet was looking at his back, just for a second—not long enough for anyone to notice, not unless you knew what you were looking for. It wasn't hard to miss. Or maybe I was projecting. I was incredibly confused about Royce's and Juliet's whole relationship—and hey, if Juliet was cheating on Morgan, could I get in on some of that action?—and I didn't know what else to do but follow Royce to the grill.

            "Well," Royce said, and turned to me. "Here's the problem. I can't keep the fire going."

            I looked at the grill. "Did you open the vents?"

            "The what," he said. A slow, sardonic smile made its way onto his face. He lifted up his shoulders, more punctuation than gesture. "Ye-e-es?"

            He smiled a lot, back then. I liked it—made you feel at ease. Other pretty people had a way of being pretty that made you feel conscious of your own tawdriness, but Royce's good looks made you feel that the fact he was looking at you was an achievement in and of itself. Strange, how he made me feel so comfortable and uncomfortable.

            "You'd probably do a better job with two people anyway," I said. "So."

            We got the barbeque up and running in about five minutes.

            In the span of those five minutes, he'd laid out the story of his life. His father was a university professor, up from New York, his mother was a humanitarian, some sort of minor diplomat ("You know what I mean," he said, giving me a knowing sort of look, and I did not know what he meant.) and though he wasn't a military brat by any stretch of the word, he moved around a lot, and our small little bumpkin town was one of the many stops he'd taken in the course of life. He got into Durham—some rich hoity-toity elite academy right on the edge of town that Juliet attended in sophomore year but dropped out after a semester—at the insistence of his father, and now here he was, flipping burgers like a line cook at some stinking diner.

            He said this all in a rush, with a sort of dismissiveness, like he was getting small talk over with before we even had a chance to begin small talk. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it insufferable and charming in equal measure. Insufferable, because I couldn't get a word in, and charming because I liked the way he spoke.

            "I really don't know how to do this," he said. "Barbeques aren't really my forte, I told Juliet that—" he sounded like he was talking to me like he didn't expect any reply (and who could blame him? I was just standing there, looking at him, thinking that I didn't stand a chance against him, not when it came to Juliet)—"but no, she thinks just because I can make lamb chops in an oven I can work with a goddamn grill and—" he turned over a blackened piece of meat with a pair of tongs—"Christ, look at this. It looks like charcoal. This is ridiculous. So where are you from?"

            Hand shifting, stepping back and forth, torso leaning front and backward, tilting head. Was he nervous? No, his fidgeting had a certain grace to it, like some detective from a noir movie.

            He was looking at me expectantly, and it was only then I realized he asked me a question.

            "Oh," I said. "I'm from New Jersey."

            He snorted. "I meant ethnically. Pakistani? Indian? No, no, wait." He squinted at me. "Nepali?"

            I don't know what about my face gave it away, but he said, "Woah, woah, no need to be so disgusted! I'm just curious." He took a step back (when had he gotten close?) away from me. "Just curious."

            "You got it right the first time," I said, and—without thinking—took a step forward. "I'm Pakistani-Bengali. Not that it matters much in this country. Here I'm just brown."

             This close to him, I could smell the expensive cologne coming off of him—something minty and woodsy and not stinking of ozone like mine—and the very faint undercut of sweat on his body. Wholly human.

            "Is that so?" said Royce, tilting his head. "Want to know where I'm from?"

            Something on the grill was starting to burn. I couldn't really bring myself to care.

            "Sure," I said, tilting my head right back at him. "Where are you from?"

            "It's all in the name, see." He raised his eyebrows at me. I could see him in a noir movie. Light falling on his face in black and white stripes. His eyes shaded by a fedora. With one hand accenting every syllable, he said, "Royce Abdul Hamid."

            I raised an eyebrow. "That's a name."

            "You know how it is," he said. "Baba wanted me to be Algerian, Mama wanted me to be American."

            "So what are you?"

            He grinned, and said, "Algerian-American."

            How strange it is, not to recognize your downfall even when it's smiling right at you.

          Stranger still, to smile right back.

***

a/n: college sucks am i right fellas..huehuehue also sorry if i'm not replying to your comments or anything but i'm just...not in that headspace you feel