Page 67 of People We Meet on Vacation

I was thinking about what Julian used to say about art. How it either makes you feel something or it doesn’t.

When I read his story, I started crying for a reason I can’t totally explain, not even to Alex.

When I was a kid, I used to have these panic attacks thinking about how I could neverbeanyone else. I couldn’t be my mom ormy dad, and for my whole life, I’d have to walk around inside a body that kept me from ever truly knowing anyone else.

It made me feel lonely, desolate, almost hopeless. When I told my parents about this, I expected them to know the feeling I was talking about, but they didn’t.

“That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, though, sweetie!” Mom insisted.

“Who else do you think about being?” my dad said with his particular blunt fascination.

The fear lessened, but the feeling never went away. Every once in a while, I’d roll it back out, poke at it. Wonder how I could ever stop feeling lonely when no one could ever know me all the way. When I could never peer into someone else’s brain and see it all.

And now I’m crying because reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I’m not in my body. Like there’s some bubble that stretches around me and Alex and makes it so we’re just two different colored globs in a lava lamp, mixing freely, dancing around each other, unhindered.

I’m crying because I’m relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

18

This Summer

ALEX!” I SHRIEKat the sight of his Tinder profile. “No!”

“What? What?” he says. “There’s no way you’ve read everything by now!”

“Um, first of all,” I say, brandishing his phone out in front of us, “don’t you think that’s a problem? Your bio looks like the cover letter to a résumé. I didn’t even know Tinder bios couldbethis long! Isn’t there some kind of character limit? No one is going to read this whole thing.”

“If they’re really interested, they will,” he says, slipping the phone out of my hand.

“Maybe if they’re interested in harvesting your organs, they’ll skim to the bottom just to make sure you don’t mention your blood type—doyou?”

“No,” he says, sounding hurt, then adds, “just my weight, height, BMI, and social security number. Is what I wrote good at least?”

“Oh, we’re not talking about that just yet.” I pluck his phone from his hand again, angle the screen toward him, and zoom in on his profile picture. “First we have to talk about this.”

He frowns. “I like that picture.”

“Alex...” I say calmly. “There are four people in this picture.”

“So?”

“So we have found the first and largest problem.”

“That I havefriends? I thought that would help.”

“You poor innocent baby creature, freshly arrived to earth,” I coo.

“Women don’t want to date men who have friends?” he says dryly, disbelieving.

“Of course they do,” I say. “They just don’t want to play Dating App Roulette. How are they supposed to know which one of these guys is you? That guy on the left is, like, eighty.”

“Biology teacher,” he says. His frown deepens. “I don’t really take pictures by myself.”

“You sent me those Sad Puppy selfies,” I point out.

“That’s different,” he says. “That was for you... You think I should use one of those?”

“God, no,” I say. “But you could take a new picture where you’re not making that face, or you could crop one that’s you and three biology teachers of a certain age so that it’sjustyou.”

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