I mean, this whole building gleams. Artsy minimalist light fixtures? Check. Mirrored elevators? Check. Crisp gray couches and metallic triangular coffee tables? Check and check. There’s even a doorman, Morrie, who calls me doctor, which is a thing that happens to me, despite me being sixteen with no medical training. Because my last name is Seuss. And the answer to your next question is no. Not twice removed. Not cousins by marriage. No, I do not like green eggs and ham.
Anyway, my mom works on the eleventh floor. It’s the same firm she works for in Atlanta, but their New York office is at least three times as big. There are lawyers and paralegals and secretaries and clerks, and everyone seems to know one another, and they definitely all know Mom. I guess she’s somewhat of a VIP, because she went to law school with the women who own this firm. Which is how I ended up here instead of directing six-year-olds in Fiddler on the Roof at the JCC.
“Yo,” says Namrata. “Arthur, you’re late.”
She’s got a massive stack of accordion files, which means I’m in for a fun morning. Namrata likes to boss me around, but she’s actually pretty great. There are only two summer associates this year—her and Juliet—so they’re always slammed with work. But I guess that’s how it goes when you’re in law school. Apparently 563 people applied for Namrata’s and Juliet’s positions. Meanwhile, my application process was Mom saying, “This will look good on your college apps.”
I follow Namrata into the conference room, where Juliet’s already thumbing through a stack of papers. She glances up. “The Shumaker files?”
“You got it.” Namrata stacks them on the table, sinking into a conference chair. I should mention that the chairs in here are squishy rolling chairs. It’s probably the main perk of the job.
I scoot back in my chair, kicking off from the table legs. “All these files are for one case?”
“Yup.”
“Must be a big case.”
“Not really,” says Namrata.
She doesn’t even look up. The girls get like that sometimes: hyper-focused and irritable. But, secretly, they’re cool. I mean, they’re not Ethan and Jessie, but they’re pretty much my New York squad. Or they will be, once I win them over. And I will.
“Oh, Julieeeettt.” I roll back to the table, pulling my phone out. “I’ve got something for you.”
“Should I be nervous?” She’s still lost in her document.
“Nope, be excited.” I slide my phone toward her. “Because this happened.”
“What is this?”
“A screenshot.”
Specifically, a screenshot of a conversation that occurred on Twitter at 10:18 p.m. last night with Issa Rae, who happens to be Juliet’s favorite actress, per Juliet’s Instagram, which I secretly follow.
“You told Issa Rae it was my birthday?”
I beam. “Yup.”
“Why?”
“So she’d tweet you a birthday message.”
“My birthday’s in March.”
“I know. I’m just saying—”
“You lied to my queen.”
“No. Well. Sort of?” I rub my forehead. “Anyway, y’all want to hear about my latest screwup?”
“I think we just did,” Namrata says.
“No, this is different. It’s boy-related.”
They both look up. Finally. The squad can’t resist hearing about my love life, not that I have a love life. But they like hearing about the random cute boys I see on the subway. It’s pretty awesome to actually talk about this stuff out loud. Like it’s no big deal. Like it’s just a thing about me.
“I met a boy at the post office,” I say, “and guess what.”
“You made out behind a mailbox,” says Namrata.
“Uh, no.”
“Inside a mailbox,” Juliet suggests.
“No. No making out. But he has an ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh, so he’s gay.”
“Right, or bi or pan or something. And he’s single, unless he rebounds really quickly. Do New York guys rebound quickly?”
Namrata cuts straight to the point. “How’d you fuck it up?”
“I didn’t get his number.”
“Welp,” Namrata says.
“Can you find him online?” asks Juliet. “You seem . . . good at that.”
“Well, I also didn’t get his name.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
“Well, I did. Sort of. I’m like fifty percent sure his first name is Hudson.”
“You’re fifty percent sure.” Juliet’s mouth quirks.
I shake my head slowly. I mean, I could show them the address label. But I’m not sure they need to know about me scrounging for trash on the floor of the post office. Even Jessie thinks that’s creepy. And this is the girl who once told our entire math class she was related to Beyoncé and showed up the next day with Photoshopped pictures to prove it.
“So all you have on this guy is his first name, which . . . might not even be his first name.”
I nod. “It’s hopeless.”
“Probably,” says Namrata. “But you could put a thing on Craigslist.”
“A thing?”
“A missed connection. You know those posts where it’s like, I saw you on the F train reading Fifty Shades of Grey and eating candy corn.”
“Eww, candy corn?”
“Excuse me, candy corn is a fucking gift,” says Namrata.
“Um—”
“Seriously, Arthur, you should do it,” says Juliet. “Just write a post that describes the moment, like, Hey, we met at the post office and made out inside a mailbox, so on and so forth.”
“Okay, do people make out inside mailboxes here? This is not a thing we do in Georgia.”
“Jules, we should write the post for him.”
“Who even fits inside a mailbox?” I add.
“Yo,” Namrata says. “Fire up your laptop, kid.”
Okay, tiny pet peeve: when the girls call me kid. Like they’re so mature and all-knowing, and I’m some kind of half-formed fetus. Of course, I open my computer anyway.
“Pull up Craigslist.”
“Don’t people get murdered on Craigslist?”
“Nope,” Namrata says. “They get murdered for not getting on Craigslist fast enough and wasting my time.”
So now I’ve got Namrata hovering over me, and Juliet beside me, and a million blue links arranged in narrow columns on my screen. “Um. Okay.”
Namrata taps the screen. “Right here, under community.”
“You seem to know your way around Craigslist,” I say, and she smacks me.
I have to admit I love this. The fact that they’re interested. I’m always vaguely paranoid that Namrata and Juliet are exasperated by me. Like I’m some high school kid they’re forced to babysit when they’d rather be doing important things like consolidating the Shumaker files.
The thing is, they’re the only squad I have in New York. I don’t know how people make friends in the summer. There are a million and a half people in Manhattan, but none of them make eye contact unless you already know them. And I don’t know any of them, except the ones who work in this law office.
Sometimes I miss Ethan and Jessie so much my chest hurts.
Juliet’s taken over my laptop. “Oh god, some of these are really sweet,” she says. “Look.”
She rotates the computer back toward me. The screen says this:
Bleecker Street Starbucks/Not named Ryan—m4m (Greenwich Village)
You: button-down shirt with no tie. Me: polo with popped collar. They wrote Ryan on your drink, and you muttered, “Who the hell is Ryan?” Then you caught my eye and gave a sheepish smile and it was very cute. Wish I’d had the guts to ask for your number.
Fuck. “Ouch. That sucks.”
I click to the next listing.
Equinox 85th Street—m4m (Upper East Side)
Saw u on the treadmill, u look good. Hit me up.
Juliet grimaces. “And they say romance is dead.”
“I love the total lack of specificity,” says Namrata. “He’s like, ‘hey, you look good. Why don’t I give you absolutely no frame of reference for who I am.’”