We Are Totally Normal

The sun kissed the ocean, and all the heat seemed to sizzle out of the sand. I pulled my hoodie closer and said, “Hey, you want to come hang out?”

“I’ve gotta go back to work.”

“What about after? You could invite Mari! Give it another shot, seriously, dude.”

He looked down; then his eyes went back to me. “Sure. I can give it a try.”

“Do it!” I said. “We’re gonna make this happen.”

Dave tipped up his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and the air whipped his fine hair off to the side.

The way he said that, all nasal and drawn-out, made me laugh, and I ruffled the swoop of his hair.

“Hey!”

“No, but I believe you,” I said. “About Niko. The thing is, there are people like him, who’ve got the magic, and people like us, who need to fake it.”

“You don’t fake it.”

“I’m in so over my head. Pothan’s trying to turn me into”—I thought of trying to hook up with some random girl, maybe tonight, maybe over by the rocks, and my stomach lurched—“into a completely different person. But the crazy thing is: I want to be that person.”

Dave brushed sugar crumbs off his fingers. “Well, to be honest, I’d prefer not to change completely just to get a girlfriend.”

“He’s an idol for nerdy guys. Like, you guys—nonawkward guys—have Pothan. We have Niko. He’s completely oblivious to everything and everyone. And he talks alllllll the time about how terrible he is with girls, and you can see them just looking at him and being like, But you’re so hot, you’re so amazing, except maybe you don’t know you’re hot. Maybe you need my help, my sexual help, to get over your awkwardness.”

“But he wears a fanny pack.”

“I’m telling you, dude.”

Now I laughed. “Okay, so go to Niko for advice.”

“We don’t have to do this. We could just ignore it all.”

“Yeah. . . .”

Dave looked up at me. “You’re not convinced.”

“I don’t know, dude. Those moments, though . . .”

His eyebrows crinkled. “What? What’re you thinking about?”

“Dave, you’re supposed to just let people trail off into silence.”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on. Talking to you is like the only excitement I ever get in my life.”

“Well, I don’t know, I had this weird moment. . . .” I told him about the girl running the brush through my hair on the beach. As the words came out, I saw details I hadn’t noticed at the time, like the way her eyes, seen from below, were so watery and insubstantial.

“No, no.” I nodded my head. “I get it.”

“But do you actually? Or are you just trying to relate? Because shyness doesn’t seem like a problem you have.”

“Mmm.”

“I’ve seen you.”

“Things happen.”

“I kinda never want to see her again.”

“Dude, I get it. Do you know why Avani and I stopped hooking up?”

His eyebrows went up.

The picnic tables were filled, so we leaned against the wooden railing. The wind beat against the collar of Dave’s shirt, and my eyes were drawn to a little smudge of sugar at the corner of his mouth.

I tried to smile. “Come on, dude, you want a churro? Let’s get a churro.”

“You just ate a churro.”

“Let’s get another churro. What? A guy can’t eat multiple churros in one day? You don’t know my life. You don’t know my struggle. Stop food-shaming me.”

He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting rescue, but I grabbed the sleeve of his collared shirt and gave it a slight tug. As we were ordering the churros, my phone buzzed.

Then a bright purple bow tie walked past my table.

“Dave!” I said. “Hey, Dave.”

The wind was loud, and he walked past unhearing, so I ran half a step and said, “Dave, dude. What’s up?”

Bow Tie Dave was my project. I always saw him hanging around the edges of parties, getting way too drunk, not really saying much, but the thing is—he was actually kind of hot. Maybe folks didn’t see it because he was Asian, and they were used to looking past him, but he had an interesting body—thin hipped and broad shouldered—that gave him a hawklike look. His face was nice too, with its high cheekbones and straight nose. In his glasses and blazer he was an Asian Clark Kent. And everybody knows it’s not the fifties anymore: nowadays girls think Clark Kent is way hotter than Superman.

More laughter. By now Ken and Pothan were sitting too. I looked with innocent eyes at the girl, and she shook her head and took everything off my hands. After that, we talked a bit more naturally. I lay down with my head in the girl’s lap, and she fell to stroking my hair. The joint passed, but I didn’t intercept it. The conversation swirled above me while her fingers went through my hair again and again.

“You’re so tangled,” she said.

“These two assholes grabbed me out of bed before I could shower.”

A hairbrush appeared, and she worked it gently through my hair, tugging here and there at knots. Her other hand massaged my ear, scraping out a little of the sand that’d collected inside. Everything was so incredibly perfect. The girl and I smiled at each other. I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t want to know it.

Ken’s laughter broke through. “What the fuck is going on there?”

I got up, shaking my hair, and the girl pulled away, embarrassed, even though we hadn’t done anything.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just brushing out the sand.”