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sadness seemed wistful. Nostalgic. Fragile. Like what I liked most about a beautiful performance. Something delicate and intensely human.
    My sadness tended to repel, to alienate, to isolate. I tried to smile brighter.
    It was nice to have someone sitting next to me to talk to.
    I sighed.
    She sighed back.
    I didn’t want her to have to go home. I looked toward the door because I could hear the garage opening and closing, which meant that either another of Todd’s friends or the pizza had arrived. Yrena stood up and looked apologetic.
    “You must want me to go so that you can go to the party,” she said.
    “The party?”
    And then, just because I did have a party I could go to, and I wanted Yrena to think I was cool, I said, in a kind of big, kind of braggy voice, “I’m going to meet my friends Callisto and Caitlin at a huge party downtown. You should come with me.”
    I didn’t know why I said it, except that it felt good to say it. It felt good to invite her. Thrilling. Daring. Out of control. My pulse quickened, like when I had to do the combination in class by myself, with all of those eyes staring at me. I got nervous. So nervous.
    To calm myself a bit, I started getting ready, as if I really was going to go to the party and Yrena was really coming with me. She followed me around my room as I gathered things up. I put on my shoes. I put on a little makeup. But just before I started brushing my hair, Yrena spoke.
    “Oh. I can’t do that,” she said.
    “Oh. I see,” I said.
    Rejected. Raw. That little spark that I had felt had tricked me into stepping out, but I had been slapped back into place. I was disappointed. I hardened. Something had changed between us. I had misread the cues. I had gone left instead of right.
    I put the brush down.
    “I thought you would go to the party that happens every Friday in your garage,” Yrena said.
    “What party?”
    “I thought maybe since it was just downstairs, that I could go there with you,” she said sincerely.
    “I think you’ve made a mistake. There is no party at my house.”
    When I looked up at her I could see that she looked sorry. Vulnerable.
    “Sometimes, I am at my window and I see the boys going into the garage. And sometimes there is pizza. It looks like a big American party. I have always wanted to go. To be invited.”
    She was talking about my brother’s D&D game, which was about as much of a rager as a mid-afternoon grandpa nap. I realized that it could be hugely misinterpreted as a party, if you didn’t know all the facts. I felt a weight lift off of me. She wasn’t rejecting me. She just couldn’t leave the Bronx.
    “That’s not a party!” I told her. “My brother has his Dungeons and Dragons night every Friday. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
    “Dungeons and Dragons?” Yrena asked, in a way that made it clear that geeky role-playing games with multi-sided dice hadn’t yet made it to Moscow.
    “It’s a game where you pretend that you are a wizard or a fighter or something and you battle orcs and hunt for treasure and play with dice,” I tried to explain.
    “A game party?” She actually looked kind of impressed and interested. “My parents and I play card games together. It is fun!”
    “Dungeons and Dragons is not cool,” I said.
    “Oh,” she said, looking a bit disappointed. “I don’t know what is cool or not cool.”
    That floored me. I would never admit that I didn’t know what was cool or not. That kind of truth could only lead to more humiliation and alienation. I felt protective of Yrena; someone needed to show her how to be a teenager in America, or she would never survive. I knew I was barely surviving myself, but at least I had observed what to do. How to be. I would never consider myself an expert of cool. I didn’thave my own opinions; I was never sure of them. In the past, when we were friends, I had always followed whatever Daisy said. And now I just listened to what everyone around me said was