Isabel a walked into Mexican Radio and looked around for someone who matched the picture she had seen. A boy with brown hair was at the bar, sipping a giant frozen pink drink with mango floating on top. He looked at her and smiled and she smiled back. “Isabel a?” he said in a singsong voice, tilting his head to the right.
“Hey-a,” she said. She meant to say hi, but it came out wrong. It was just that she was shocked that she was on a date with a gay man.
“First obese and then gay,” she said to Lauren later that night.
“At least it wasn’t both at once,” Lauren said.
“Are you ever afraid that you aren’t going to meet anyone?” Isabel a asked Lauren one night. They were finishing their last drinks at the bar, and Isabel a final y asked the question she’d been thinking for a while now. She didn’t want to say it out loud. She was embarrassed that she even thought it, and waited for Lauren to lecture her about being a strong woman. Instead, Lauren finished her drink, crushed an ice cube in her teeth, and said, “Al the time.”
“I’m exhausted,” Lauren said. She was on two kickbal teams, a softbal team, and was an alternate for a beach vol eybal league. “I have scabs al over my legs,” she said, pul ing up her pants. “Look! Look at this!”
“I don’t think the summer of yes should be taken so literal y,” Isabel a said. “It’s not like you have to do everything people ask.”
“Yes, I do,” Lauren said. “That’s what I set out to do, and now I have to fol ow through. I just didn’t know that everyone was going to ask me to be on so many intramural teams. Am I that athletic?”
“Not real y.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Isabel a met a guy sel ing art at a street fair on the Upper East Side. “I’m just trying to make a living doing what I do,” he said. “I’m trying to perfect my craft.”
He was handsome, and so when he asked her to hang out, she said okay. “I wil ignore his weirdness,” she told herself. “I wil not be judgmental.
This is the summer of yes.” She gave him her number and he cal ed the next day.
“A friend of mine from art school is having a party in Greenpoint. You want to go? You can bring some of your girls if you want.”
“Yes,” Isabel a said. She hung up and went to Lauren’s apartment to beg her to come with.
“Please?” she asked. “Please? For the sake of the summer of yes?”
“Fine,” Lauren said. “But if anyone there asks me to play on any teams, then I’m saying no.”
“Fair enough. Oh, and it’s also a costume party,” Isabel a said quickly.
Lauren stared at her. “What kind of costume party?”
“Um, so Kirk kind of explained it as that—wel , um, okay. So, what everyone is going to do is dress up as their spirit animal.”
“Isabel a, are you serious?”
“Yeah. He kind of sprung it on me at the end.”
“He sounds like a freak,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, he might be.”
“I hate the summer of yes,” Lauren said.
“I don’t think I have a spirit animal,” Isabel a said.
Lauren ended up making out with a guy at the party who was wearing a green sweatsuit and shamrock antlers. “What are you?” Lauren asked him when they walked in.
“I’m the spirit animal of St. Patrick’s Day,” he said.
“That’s real y stupid,” she answered.
“That’s what I’m going for,” he said. Twenty minutes later, they were grinding on the dance floor and Lauren was wearing his shamrock antlers.
Kirk was dressed up as a deer. “I’m gentle inside,” he told Isabel a. She wanted to hit him with a car.
“What are you?” he asked her.
“A bunny,” she said.
“That’s your spirit animal?”
“No, it’s just the costume I had.”
“Isabel a, do you mind if I make an observation?”
