She texted the link to Bailey and Fran.Have you seen this insanity?
Fran texted back firstWTF???
Caroline Lash is a horrible person, Bailey responded.
It’s full of lies, Augusta typed.
She makes me sound like an unfit mother, Fran replied.
She makes me sound like a hooker, texted Bailey.
Um, you guys, she makes Colin sound GAY, Augusta texted, and nobody replied.
Augusta’s father calledfive minutes later. “You and Colin need to get a lawyer right now. It’s libelous. They have printed that Colin isgay.This could ruin his career.”
“Really?” Augusta was confused. “I don’t know if—”
“Libel, Augusta. You can’t falsely accuse someone of being gay.”
After they hung up, Augusta googled the issue, and quickly turned up a series of headlines about how saying someone was gay—correct or not—was no longer considered defamation. Augusta had to assume that the most famous magazine in the world had some experience with legal precedent.
She texted Colin the story and asked him to call, but he was at work. She texted Eben as well, but he didn’t respond. The school text chain had gone quiet, and while Augusta wanted to believe it was because they had all gotten bored and moved on, she had a sinking feeling they had just started a private chat. Suddenly, withThe New Yorkerstory, Augusta was thirteen again, standing outside the tent, gossip raging within.
She read thestory again,slower this time. The “Augusta” character Caroline had drawn was an idiot, someone who had willfully snubbed her gay brother in exchange for their rich father’s approval. That wasn’t Augusta at all. Eben had been the one to freeze her out.
Admittedly, her father hadn’t made an effort to get to know Max, but it wasn’t malicious, Augusta didn’t think. It was nothing compared to the way various friends’ and acquaintances’ families had responded to them coming out over the years. A girl from her American history class had told her family she was gay freshman year and her parents had driven up from Florida to bring her home. The girl never came back. A guy from Greenhead, someone she knew from the newspaper club, had moved to California after school and lived with a man, someone his parents would only ever acknowledge as “a roommate.” Looking back to Augusta’s childhood in the nineties and aughts there had been an entire generation of “roommates” and “friends,” shadow partners never truly acknowledged by families. A wealthy older uncle on her father’s side had someone they all called his “companion,” casting the relationship into a gray area that let people assume he was an elder caregiver. It was only at his funeral that she realized they had been a couple. Augusta had never asked about it and had sensed on some level that his wealth prevented her father from saying anything truly rude. But her father had never actually said anything negative about Eben’s sexual orientation. He just didn’t engage with it. Maybe, now that Augusta looked at it in the cold light of day, that was just as bad.
At six o’clockAugusta heard a car in the driveway, but when she opened the door it was Zoey, not Colin. She had forgotten that she andColin had dinner plans, that she’d hired Zoey to babysit. She texted Colin again.Did you miss your train? What’s your ETA?
As she waited for a reply, she dressed carefully in a long skirt and blue sweater, smoothing her hair into a bun and putting in the gold and diamond earrings Colin had given her on her birthday. Once she was ready, she joined Zoey downstairs, pouring herself a glass of wine and perching on a barstool while Zoey helped Jane and Charlie finish their dinner.
“Zoey, when did you decide you were gay?” Augusta took a big sip of the sauvignon blanc. She could feel the wine calming her down, smoothing out the edges of her anxious afternoon.
“Um, well, I didn’t ‘decide I was gay,’ ” Zoey corrected. The girl was wearing no makeup, her hair purposefully messy, her jeans frayed at the ankles.
“No, no, of course. I mean, when did yourealizeyou were gay.” Augusta shook her head, as though shaking off a bad idea.
“I guess I had my first crush when I was five or six?” Zoey squinted thoughtfully. “But obviously I wasn’t examining my identity at that point.”
“Five or six? That seems so young.” Augusta glanced at Charlie. He had spent the past several months talking obsessively about a kid in his class named Nash. He said Nash wanted to marry him. Augusta had written it off as just little kid sweetness, but what if she was wrong? Was Charlie gay? Could he already know that? No. That was ridiculous.
“When did you realize you were straight?” Zoey asked, spearing a green bean and passing the fork to Charlie.
“Realize I was straight?” Augusta barked out a laugh. “I don’t think that’s a moment.”
“Okay.” Zoey grinned. “You know you millennials are the last straight generation, right?”
“The last straight generation?”
“Yeah.”
“What does that even mean?” Augusta smiled in what she hoped seemed a friendly way.
“Millennials still have so much baked-in prejudice. People my age are just more open and willing to be honest about their identity.”
God, when did everyone become so obsessed with the idea of “identity”? The concept hadn’t crossed Augusta’s mind until suddenly it was everywhere. “So really everyone is gay, just people my age don’t admit it?”
“Some people are just straight.” Zoey sighed impatiently. “But it’s telling that among your parents’ generation like three percent of them say they are queer while among people in Gen Z it’s more like thirty percent. Once the stigma is removed, more people come out as bi.”