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jealous.
    Jealous of her skin, inked clean with her thoughts and ideas and feelings. Jealous of her wild black magenta-streaked hair and gauged open ears and shiny piercings — everything pried open. Jealous of the dramatic and sexy exposure of her big, lush body.
    Open. Open. Open.
    Our knees were touching, our hands palm-to-palm between us.
    Before we started the exercise, she had smiled at me, so big that deep dimples pressed into her cheeks and I realized the piercing in her cheek was nestled in that dimple, meant to decorate her smile.
    I nearly told her that I was sorry, sorry for every cruel thought about her that she didn’t even know that I’d had. I hoped she didn’t remember the freshman who’d treated her with such contempt, sent her endless emails “suggesting” how she do her part of the project.
    Instead, I sat on the stage with her, not saying anything.
    She moved to touch our knees, was first to reach out when Maggie told us to rest our palms together.
    This was a Meisnerian exercise of repetition, meant to help us understand the answer to questions like, What are you playing? The exercise would connect us to the authentic actions of our partner.
    We were to start with a simple statement that was true and repeat it back to the other until it felt as true as possible, until we understood the complete possible spectrum of truth in our statement and what it was we were really saying to the other.
    This was meant to prepare us to play together. Maggie promised she would help us understand play all over again. That we’d be able to play as we had as children.
    Sarah had started, “I am here.”
    My hands and knees against hers, I had answered, “You are here.”
    At first, that day in class, I couldn’t contain the spill and scatter of golden light I kept shedding, like glitter, like dust caught in a sunbeam. That was Cal.
    Cal, who had hung a bag on my doorknob the morning after he came to my room filled with banana bread and a container of cream cheese.
    It tasted so good. It tasted like everything good I had ever tasted.
    I knew we were supposed to wait to see each other again when we were here. Except I could almost always see him. I had been going to bed early and sleeping until the last possible moment in the morning, drowsy with the efforts I spent on awareness of him, sleepy from orgasms I gave myself in long, teasing sessions of masturbation.
    “I am here.”
    “You are here.”
    At first, I couldn’t hear Sarah. Cal was sitting with Jason Somer but still reaching out to me. Then, as the voices in the class started weaving together into a blanket of white noise, that new pink and golden place in my brain heard her.
    “I am here.”
    When I answered, You are here , the first time after I heard the truth in her statement, her dimples sank before she even smiled.
    “I am here,” she said.
    Then it was easy. It was Sarah, and she was here. I was here. The truth was her presence, which couldn’t exist without mine.
    “I am here,” she said, and I became overcome with the grief of all of the times she wasn’t here, of all of the times no one was here for me, of the times I wasn’t here for anyone.
    Our tears fell at the same time.
    “I am here.”
    “You are here.”
    At the same time, we reached for each other.

Cal
    “This is Sarah,” Winnie said to me after class, as we fell into step outside the arts building. “Do you guys know each other?”
    Sarah cast me a look that meant, This one’s all yours , and I said, “We had a thing sophomore year.”
    “What kind of a thing?”
    It was such a neutral question that I reached out in my head, wanting a read on her real feelings. She smacked me away, a little psychic slap that I felt across my nutsack.
    Dude, grow up , the smack said. You don’t get to use it like that.
    It was almost fond, though. My nutsack didn’t entirely disapprove.
    “A sex thing,” I said. “Four or five times.”
    Sarah made a scoffing face. “Try