Everything is Going to Be Fine

“We do this every weekend, it’s going to be fine,” Sandy said, collecting the front two strands of her bright red hair and tying them into a ponytail at the back. Dylan watched as Sandy looked at herself in her iPhone camera and frantically applied mascara to her eyelashes until they were dark black and clumping together. Sandy always complained about her eyelashes being blonde, and Dylan could never understand why it mattered.

“I know, I’m not worried,” Dylan replied, but when he looked down, he could see the way his hands were shaking, making his fake ID bounce up and down between his fingers.

He looked at the Connecticut ID that he had received from Sandy earlier that morning and prayed that the bouncer would not inspect the edges closely enough to see that it was a sticker. He was finally at the college bar that he had heard his friends talking about for his entire senior year of high school. Dylan lived in a small college town in upstate New York, and it was practically a rite of passage for the high school seniors to go to the bar on the weekends with the college freshmen from the local state school. However, it was a rite of passage that Dylan had been left out of the whole year.

Dylan’s father was the chief of police in his town, and had been telling Dylan for as long as he could remember that using a fake ID was a felony, and if he was ever caught with one, he could forget about having his college paid for. That's why, when his friend group went in on a group order for fake IDs, Dylan held off, a decision that turned out to be a mistake that he would pay for. Every Monday Dylan’s two best friends, Sandy and Michael, would come back to school with stories of their weekend nights at the bar. Sandy would go on about the college boys from New York City who would buy her drinks and kiss her at the end of the night. His friend Michael was even more insufferable, describing to Dylan in excruciating detail his weekend escapades with college girls who would invite him back to their dorms. Every time Michael would tell his latest story, he would pat Dylan on the back and say patronizingly, “Don’t worry, your time will come.”

At graduation, right when Dylan was about to walk across the stage, Michael was whispering another one of his stories into Dylan’s ear. At that moment, Dylan decided that he would rather risk years of debt than have to spend one more Saturday night on the couch in his basement watching old classics with his parents. After the ceremony, he went up to Sandy and begged her to help him get one. She squealed in excitement and pulled him into a hug, saying she couldn’t wait to go out with him. In her usual take-charge way she had Evan, the school’s known plug for all illegal activity, print Dylan an ID and she presented him with it two weeks later.

That had been this morning, and Dylan had been filled with nervous excitement, thinking about the endless possibilities the ID had opened up for him. But now, standing in line with Sandy and Michael, he wanted to run away. As the three of them inched closer to the front, Sandy grabbed Dylan’s hand and smiled at him, before quickly letting go.

“Your hands are so clammy," she said with mock disgust as she rubbed her hand on her jeans.

When they finally made it to the front of the line, they were greeted by a bouncer, a middle aged bald man dressed in all black. Michael nudged Dylan’s shoulder, and Dylan handed the man the ID, who carefully inspected it and then took out a flashlight and started shining it over the barcode on the back. Dylan began to panic, and tried to remember the fake birthday that was on the ID, but it wouldn’t come to him. The beers that he and his friends had chugged right before getting on line were starting to cloud his brain. Right when Dylan was about to grab the ID and bolt, the bouncer said, “Ten dollars for guys.”

Dylan pulled a crumpled up ten-dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to the bouncer, who proceeded to step out of the way and let him through. Dylan felt like he was walking on air as he stepped into the dimly lit bar that reeked of beer, sweat, and cigarette smoke. It was crowded with kids his age; guys dressed mostly in casual T-shirts and jeans, some even wearing slides with socks instead of real shoes. Dylan was more dressed up than most of the other guys, wearing a blue polo shirt and linen pants. The majority of the girls' faces were painted with makeup, and they wore black dresses and skirts, or tank-tops and low-rise jeans, which left just a few inches of their stomach covered.

Dylan turned back to the door and saw Michael and Sandy walk in laughing.

“You looked so nervous,” Michael shouted, smiling, swinging his arm around Dylan’s shoulder.

“I should have warned you, they always do that flashlight thing, but it’s stupid, they know that all of the IDs are fake anyway,” Sandy said.

The three of them stood in the corner of the bar and talked, pretending to be interested in what each other had to say, but were mostly distracted by the other people around them. Dylan caught both Michael and Sandy scanning the room while he was saying something, and he had to admit to himself that he was doing the same. It didn’t help that they had to shout at each other to be heard over the blaringly loud music, which was running on a playlist of early 2000s hits. Eventually, a guy with curly dark brown hair, light green eyes, and a tall frame came up to them and broke up their trio. At first, Dylan thought the guy was about to ask him a question, but instead, he made his way over to Sandy and whispered something in her ear.

“What?” she said, laughing and using the music as an excuse to lean in closer.

Dylan’s insides twisted in jealousy as he watched the scene, and Michael quickly pulled him away, whispering in his ear, “This always happens. Sandy gets approached the second we enter. I wish I was a girl, they don’t have to do any of the work.”

Michael led Dylan over to the bar, and bought them two vodka sodas.

“I’m going to get you play tonight,” Michael said.

“I don’t know about that,” Dylan replied with a shrug.

“Come on, who looks hot to you.”

Michael began to point out various girls that Dylan should approach, but Dylan kept making up excuses not to.

“ How do you expect anything to happen if you don’t go up to anyone?” Michael pleaded.

“ How do you know I want anything to happen?” Dylan replied, with more of an edge to his voice than he had intended.

All the while, Michael was eyeing a girl with long blonde hair, who was sitting behind them. Every time Michael would turn back and look, the girl would giggle in her friend’s chest.

“I might go talk to that girl,” Michael said.

“Okay, good luck.”

“Do you want to come? You could try and get with her friend.”

“ I think I’m good here,” Dylan answered shortly.

After a few more minutes of attempting to get Dylan to join him, Michael gave up and left him at his seat.

Dylan spent the next twenty minutes sitting alone mostly trying to ignore, but ultimately staring, at Michael and Sandy as they talked to their respective romantic prospects. Sometimes someone from his class would come up to him and they would have similar conversations about prom, summer plans, and college. It was as though every conversation was based on a script Dylan and his classmates knew they had to follow, and in the end Dylan found himself wishing they would go away, so he could continue to spy on his friends.

Even when Dylan tried to look away from his friends, he saw other people talking, flirting, or making out. But he couldn’t help noticing the way people forced their laughter as they talked to each other, and the way some guys would kiss a girl for ten seconds before drifting to the next. It felt like everyone around him was searching for validation that they couldn’t quite find, and an unspoken game hung over the room: if you got someone to hold you in your arms and smile back at you, even for a moment, you were winning.

It dawned on Dylan that whatever game was being played, he was losing terribly, and he began to feel incredibly lonely. He decided that if he had to spend one more moment in the bar, he’d lose it. Just as he was heading to the door, someone grabbed his arm. He turned around and saw it was Sandy. Her bright curly red hair was coming loose from her ponytail, falling into her green eyes, and beads of sweat made her face shine. She had a carefree smile that could only exist on the face of someone who wasn’t sober.

“Where are you going?” she screamed. She stumbled a little and gripped onto Dylan’s shoulder laughing.

“I was just going to head outside for a second for some fresh air,” Dylan lied.

“ No, you have to stay. I’m so happy you came out with us tonight. It’s so crazy that we were once these ten-year-old kids and now we’re here together. Do you remember when we went to your Grandma’s beach house that one summer?”

Dylan did remember. A couple of summers before his grandmother died, she invited Sandy and Dylan to spend a long weekend at her Jersey Shore house. The house was small and so far from the beach they only made it there one day of the trip. But Dylan and Sandy still had a great time, keeping themselves entertained in a way only kids could. They built a giant fort in the middle of the living room that they slept in for the whole trip. Every night, the two would stay up talking, laughing, and using the house’s landline to prank call random numbers. On the last day of the trip, they got into a water gun fight in the middle of the house, and Dylan knocked over a vase, which shattered all over the floor. Dylan’s grandmother yelled at him until he cried, and afterwards she felt so bad that she made him and Sandy grilled cheese and brownies.

“ Of course I remember,” Dylan replied smiling.

“Dylan–” Sandy started, but before she could finish, she pulled Dylan into a long kiss. He felt her mouth open and her tongue intertwine with his. Dylan tried to focus on the kiss, but his mind was reeling. At first, all he felt was excitement, he was winning the game now. Someone wanted him, and everyone around him could see. But then his thoughts turned to fear when he realized that he wasn’t truly feeling anything. He felt the wetness of Sandy’s mouth against his, could feel her hand running through his hair, and he tasted the alcohol on her breath. But there was no excitement in his stomach. No desire to pull her in closer. Eventually, Dylan pulled away and was met with Sandy beaming up at him.

“Dylan, I’m so happy this is finally happening. I think that I’ve been in love with you for a while now,” Sandy whispered in his ear.

Dylan froze, peering into Sandy’s expectant eyes. Dylan couldn’t deny the envy he felt when he saw people at prom taking pictures with their dates, or when Sandy would describe the time she spent with her junior-year boyfriend–going to dinner and talking late into the night. Dylan had never known what it was like to belong to someone, to be someone’s person, and he desperately wanted that. And now here was Sandy, his best friend, the person he got along with better than anyone, standing in front of him saying that she loved him. But he knew it wasn’t right.

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way. I mean I do love you, but in a different way, not like that,” Dylan muttered.

Dylan watched as Sandy’s face fell. “What do you mean, ‘not like that’? Why would you kiss me back?” she said. Her voice cracked as she spoke, and there was anger in it.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know I got caught up in the moment,” Dylan cried.

Sandy turned around and started walking away. Dylan grabbed her arm to try to pull her back, but she yanked it away. “Leave me alone!” she yelled.

Dylan saw people around him staring at him in disgust like he was about to hurt her, so he backed off, letting Sandy run out of the bar. Dylan thought about going outside and chasing after her, to try and make things right. But he worried that he would only make it worse and he decided that it was best to give her space. Dylan wished more than anything he could go back to the house on the shore, when his worst problems could be fixed with a grilled cheese and a brownie.

Dylan’s next move was to try to find Michael and get him to leave. Dylan began to look for him in the sea of people, but finding him was no easy task, and the bar was beginning to get even more packed with people. As he walked he felt wet splashes fall on his clothes, as people mindlessly spilled drinks on him, either not noticing or not caring enough to apologize.

Just as Dylan was about to make his way to the front of the bar to search for Michael, he saw a man in a blue vest and badge talking to the bartender. A cop. He looked around and spotted three more in, checking kids IDs and taking them outside.

The bar was getting raided. Dylan had heard rumors about it happening, but Sandy and Michael had reassured him that it was just something the college kids made up to scare high schoolers from coming. He thought about running out, but then he saw more cops were standing by the door, and he knew it was too late. Dylan felt his heart flutter and his vision began to fade. His hands and feet started to tingle until they went numb, and his mind was spiraling into the worst possible scenarios. What would his town say, if a cop's son was found at a bar with a fake ID? If his parents didn’t pay for college, he wouldn’t be able to afford it. He imagined himself living at home, going to community college, while Sandy, who would never forgive him, went off to real school and moved on without him.

Just as Dylan was beginning to accept his fate, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Liam, a boy who was in Dylan’s senior-year statistics class. They had one of those friendships where they would only talk in class, and never outside of school. But in that classroom, they could have been mistaken for best friends. Instead of doing their work, they would sit in the back and laugh at Mr. Fitch, their teacher, who was notorious for failing seniors. They would make fun of the sandals he wore year-round and how he wouldn't notice the chalk streaks that he rubbed in his hair.

Liam had blonde hair that fell into his eyes, light freckles on his nose, and cheeks that always looked sun-kissed. Sometimes Dylan noticed the way Liam’s hand would linger on his arm when they were talking, or how a small dimple appeared on his right cheek when he smiled.

“Come on, let's hide in the bathroom,” Liam said, grabbing Dylan’s hand and ushering him away.

Luckily, there was no line to the bathroom and the two of them darted in and closed the door behind them. The small bathroom smelled like a mixture of beer and urine, and had three urinals lined up in a row, as well as a small stall.

“We should hide in the stall, it has to be illegal or something to open a stall door– like an invasion of privacy,” Liam said.

Dylan and Liam stood in the stall for a moment, until their eyes met. Neither of them spoke. For a second they just stared at each other.

Then it suddenly struck Dylan how absurd it all was; he was the chief of police’s son, on his first night out, hiding from the cops in a bathroom stall with a boy he barely knew. Dylan burst out laughing and Liam quickly joined in.

Despite everything that had happened that night, Dylan felt a weight had been lifted off of his chest and he was floating. That was the strange magic of being young, one moment you could feel like you were falling down a hole with no possible way of crawling out, and the next you felt euphoric, not remembering you had fallen in the first place.

Their laughter was cut off by a knock on the door. Dylan, grabbed Liam’s hand, closed his eyes, and braced himself. Whatever awaited him, Dylan knew he was going to be fine.