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“You’re…” August attempts. “I just like everything about you.” She waves her hands at the smile that appears on Jane’s face. “Stop! It’s gross! What I said is gross!”
“Everything about me?” Jane teases.
“No, definitely not that shit-eating grin. Categorically hate that.”
“Oh, I think you like that the best.”
“Shut up,” August says. The darkness, she hopes, hides the blushing.
Jane laughs, popping a bit of orange into her mouth. “It is crazy, though, when you think about it.” She licks a drop of juice off her bottom lip. “You kind of know everything there is to know about me.”
August scoffs. “There’s no way that’s true.”
“It is! And I used to be so mysterious and sexy.”
“I mean, you’re literally sitting on the third rail conducting electricity right now, so, still mysterious. Now, sexy… hmm. I don’t know about that.”
Jane rolls her eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”
August laughs and dodges the orange peel Jane throws at her. “Tell me something I don’t know about you, then,” she says. “Surprise me.”
“Okay,” Jane says, “but you have to do one too.”
“You already know more about me than most people.”
“That’s a testament to you living like you’re under deep cover and can’t compromise your civilian identity, not how much you’ve told me.”
“Fine,” August relents. Jane taps her nose, and August scowls—she’s a pushover for Jane. They both know it. “You go first.”
“Okay… hmm… oh, I’ve made friends with a subway rat.”
“You’ve what?”
“Look, it gets really boring down here!” Jane says defensively. “But there’s this one white rat that hangs out on the Q sometimes. She’s so big and so fat and so round, like a gigantic steamed bun. I named her Bao.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I love her. Sometimes I give her snacks.”
“You’re a nightmare.”
“Judge all you want, but I’m the only one who’ll be spared in the inevitable Great Rat Uprising. Your turn.”
August thinks, and says, “I’ve cheated on one test my entire life. Junior year of high school. I’d been up all night going through public records with my mom, and I ran out of time to study, so I picked the lock on my teacher’s room before school, found out what the essay question was, and memorized an entire page from the book by fifth period so I could answer it.”
“God, you fucking nerd.” Jane snorts. “That’s not even cheating. That’s… being unfairly prepared.”
“Excuse me, I thought it was very edgy at the time. Your turn.”
“My mom started going gray at, like, twenty-five,” she says, “and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna happen to me too. Or at least it would have if I weren’t, you know.” She does a vague hand gesture to express the whole ineffability of being. August shoots a finger gun back.
“In fourth grade, I memorized the entire periodic table and all of the presidents and vice presidents in chronological order, and I still remember it all.”
“I saw The Exorcist opening weekend and didn’t sleep for four days.”
“I hate pickles.”
“I snore.”
