Page 31 of People We Meet on Vacation

The point was, Alex had known how to play the game, whereas I’d often felt like I’d read the pages of the guidebook backward, while the whole thing was on fire.

When we were together, though, the game didn’t even exist. The rest of the world dissolved until I believedthiswas how things truly were. Like I’d never been that girl who’d felt entirely alone, misunderstood, and I’d always been this one: known, loved, wholly accepted by Alex Nilsen.

When we met, I hadn’t wanted him to see me as Linfield Poppy—I wasn’t sure how it would change the dynamic of our world for two once we let certain outside elements wriggle their way in. I still remember the night I finally told him about it. The last night of class our junior year, we’d stumbled back to his dorm from a party to find his roommate already gone for the summer. So I borrowed a T-shirt and some blankets from Alex and slept on the spare twin bed in his room.

I hadn’t had a sleepover like that since I was probably eight: the sort where you keep talking, eyes long since shut, until you both drift off midsentence.

We told each other everything, the things we’d never touched. Alex told me about his mom passing away, the months his dad barely changed out of pajamas, the peanut butter sandwiches Alex made for his brothers, and the baby formula he learned to mix.

For two years, he and I’d had so much fun together, but that night it felt like a whole new compartment in my heart opened where before there had been none.

And then he asked me what happened in Linfield, why I wasdreading going back for summer, and it should’ve felt embarrassing to air my small grievances after everything he’d just told me, except Alex had a way ofnevermaking me feel small or petty.

It was so late it was almost morning, those slippery hours when it feels safest to let your secrets out. So I told him all of it, starting with seventh grade.

The unfortunate braces, the gum Kim Leedles put in my hair, and the resulting bowl cut. The insult added to injury when Kim told my whole class that anyone who talked to me wouldn’t be invited to her birthday party. Which was still a solid five months off, though it promised to be worth the wait, thanks to her pool’s waterslide and the movie theater in her basement.

Then, in ninth grade, once the stigma had finally worn off and my boobs had arrived practically overnight, there was the three-month stretch during which I was a Hot Commodity. Until Jason Stanley kissed me unexpectedly and responded to my disinterest by telling everyone I gave him an unprompted blow job in the janitor’s closet.

The entire soccer team called me Porny Poppy for, like, a year after that. No one wanted to be my friend. Then there was tenth grade, the worst of all.

It started off better because the younger of my two brothers was a senior and willing to share his Theater Kid friend-group with me. But that only lasted until I had a sleepover for my birthday, at which point I found out how embarrassing everyone thought my parents were. I quickly realized I didn’t like my friends as much as I’d thought.

I’d told Alex too about how much I loved my family, how protective I felt of them, but how even with them, I was sometimes a little lonely. Everyone else was someone else’s top person. Mom and Dad. Parker and Prince. Even the huskies were paired up, whileour terrier mix and the cat spent most days curled together in a sun patch. Before Alex, my family was the only place I belonged, but even with them, I was something of a loose part, that baffling extra bolt IKEA packs with your bookcase, just to make you sweat. Everything I’d done since high school had been to escape that feeling, thatperson.

And I told him all of that, minus the part about feeling like I belonged with him, because even after two years of friendship, that seemed like a bit much. When I finished, I thought he’d finally fallen asleep. But after a few seconds, he shifted onto his side to gaze at me through the dark and said quietly, “I bet you were adorable with a bowl cut.”

I really, really wasn’t, but somehow, that was enough to cool the harsh sting of all those memories. He saw me, and he loved me.

“Poppy?” Alex says, bringing me back to the hot, stinky car and the desert. “Where are you right now?”

I stick my hand out the window, grasping at the wind. “Wandering the halls of East Linfield High to a chant ofPorny Poppy! Porny Poppy!”

“Fine,” Alex says gently. “I won’t make you visit my classroom to teach Billy Joel Radio History. But just so you know...” He looks at me, face serious, voice deadpan. “If any of my juniors called you Porny Poppy, I’d fucking waste them.”

“That has to be,” I say, “the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

He laughs but looks away. “I’m serious. Bullying’s the one thing I don’t let them get away with.” He tips his head in thought. “Except me. They bullymeconstantly.”

I laugh even though I don’t believe him. Alex teaches the AP and Honors kids, and he’s young, handsome, quietly hilarious, and freakishly smart. There’s no way they don’t adore him.

“But do they call you Porny Alex?” I ask.

He grimaces. “God, I hope not.”

“Sorry,” I say, “Mr.Porny.”

“Please. Mr. Porny is my father.”

“I bet so many students have crushes on you.”

“One girl told me I look like Ryan Gosling...”

“Oh my god.”

“... if he got stung by a bee.”

“Ouch,” I say.

---