Wide Awake by David Levithan

Stein won by over half a million in the whole country—well, I’ve been down that road. And this time I’m not leaving it up to the damn Supreme Court to vote for the people who brung ’em to the dance.”
    “Honey,” Flora said, putting her hand on his shoulder, “you’re being a real downer.”
    Virgil smiled. “I suppose you’re right. Shall we get jiggy with it?”
    All the members of my generation looked at one another blankly.
    “After all,” Virgil said, “who let the dogs out?”
    Dogs? I didn’t see any dogs.
    “Can’t touch this!”
    Then, inexplicably, he started to do this jump ’n’ thrump move that must’ve been real big when he was real small. Flora cranked up the song, and we all started to laugh and scat.
    The party was saved.
    Nobody turned off the screen, but we kept it muted, so the newsreader could look out at us and only see dancing, as if we knew something that he didn’t for a change.
    I loved dancing with Jimmy because it was one of the few things I knew that could make him look nervous. He’d grown up in a house where classic-classical dominated—his parents weren’t even into neo-classical because they didn’t like the added beats. So when everyone started to thrump, it was like Jimmy felt like he was part of a different playlist. He went looking for the beats instead of letting them permeate.
    I led. I jazzed my hands down his body, then flung myself around him. I could hear Mandy and Janna whooping to my left and could see Virgil and Flora admiring us while they took things a beat or two slower.
    After a few songs of this, I needed a quick bathroom break. The downstairs bathroom was occupied, so I skipped up the stairs to where the bedrooms of the house used to be. I usually kept to the downstairs area, so I wasn’t as familiar with upstairs as I could have been. The first door I opened was a linen closet. The next was the executive office. I realized my mistake immediately and was quietly closing the door when I noticed two figures in the back of the room, silhouetted against the window shade by a streetlamp outside. Keisha and Sara. Which wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary—Keisha was one of Sara’s best volunteers—but when my eyes adjusted a little I could see that Sara’s hand was under Keisha’s shirt, and Keisha was leaning into it like a cat being petted, purring from the joy of it. They were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t see me. Since I hadn’t turned the hallway light on, only a gray shade of dimness came into the room with me. I was so surprised, I nearly cried out. But luckily something deeper than surprise took hold of me, and I managed to leave the room without a sound, closing the door before I attracted any notice.
    Keisha and Sara?
And with Mira right downstairs.
    I almost wanted to open the door again, to make sure what I’d seen was true. That it wasn’t just a trick of the light that caused Sara’s hand to rub against Keisha’s body that way. That it wasn’t Keisha at all, only some other girl who looked like her.
    But of course I didn’t open the door again. I stood in the hallway for too long, paralyzed by hundreds of thoughts that didn’t add up to a single understanding. Then I finally found my way to the bathroom. I turned on the light and stared at my reflection in the medicine-cabinet mirror. I looked messed up, shocked. Which was a very accurate reflection.
    Keisha and Mira had always been the couple that Jimmy and I wanted to be. They seemed entirely at ease with their love, comfortable enough to argue without ever fighting. They believed they were meant to be together, and we all believed it, too. Because their happiness, their comfort, always spilled over to us. Their light was something we could all read by.
    “Keisha and Sara.” I said it out loud. As if someone would peek his head out from the shower and say,
Don’t be ridiculous.
But instead there was only the sound of my voice. And it rang