Sublimation
A.S.
November 2025
November 2025
The first night, I didn’t cry. I was better than that. I thought of what my parents had said: “Luca, you’re lucky to go to this camp. This is a great opportunity to meet new people, to see new things.”
In the dorm, there was nothing to look at. A grey carpet covered the room, with a few discolored spots. The walls were bare. Worst of all, the bed was the creakiest piece of furniture I had ever encountered. Simply looking at it would make a noise. You should have seen it. It looked like it was originally a bunk bed, but someone had removed the bottom bunk, leaving long legs and a whole lotta space beneath. The only other pieces of furniture were a small, worn desk and chair. Every dorm in the building looked like this.
The room itself had two doors: one led to the hallway and the other to my roommate’s dorm. You see, my roommate had to walk through my dorm if he wanted to use the communal restrooms or go anywhere or do anything. Not that he ever did anything anyways. His name was Samuel. Every time I would walk in, he'd be there, either on his phone or computer. Samuel had the worst posture, even amongst a summer camp of screen-addicted teenagers.
This was my first time in Silicon Valley, let alone on the West Coast, at Kenley University. My parents had grown up on the East Coast, and so had many generations before me. This summer, they had the idea of sending me to a camp. They decided on a chemistry camp—I had no particular interest in it, but I wasn’t against doing something new.
At the camp, we were separated into dorm groups of around six people, each named after an element. We were the Bromine Group. On our floor of the dorms, one half was divided between the Chlorine Group and us. Groups ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together.
“Yo, kid. Can I borrow your nail clippers? Mine are too rusted,” asked Turner, who was walking into my room with his shirt off, his hairy chest showing.
He was my least favorite person in the Bromine group. Not only was he indisputably unhygienic, but he was also unfunny. Incredibly unfunny. The first time he did his Trump impression, we all laughed. The fourth time, it was no one but himself.
“Hell no. Lights out in five minutes anyways,” I responded. I was sitting on the ground, sorting my suitcase. It was the second night.
“Kid,” he said. I don’t know why he called me a kid. I doubted he was much older than me. He was significantly taller than me, though.
Turner walked deeper into my room, as though he had an invitation, and gave me a stare. He breathed and walked away. Turner had a lot of weird things going for him, and I’d only known him for two days. He would take copious amounts of cookies from the dining hall, and he said he was diabetic. I don’t know too much about diabetes, but I’m sure that’s not good for you.
“Lights out in four minutes!” shouted a counselor in the hallway.
Samuel turned his lights off and closed the door as far as he could. It couldn’t close fully, though. He got into his bed and immediately pulled out his phone.
“Goodnight,” I said.
“Mhm,” he mumbled back.
I turned off my light switch, which was also conveniently placed inside Samuel’s room, yet he hadn’t offered to turn mine off. I got into bed, which creaked loudly, and I stared at the ceiling. The air conditioning faintly rattled.
I began to cry. The bed creaked with every sob.
Every day, there’s morning seminar, lab, and evening seminar. I sat alone for both of the seminars.
The sound of Eric and Martin shouting at each other in Mandarin while they played CS:GO a few dorms down echoed through the halls. They were both from Shanghai, and their English wasn’t good. I waited for the counselors to shut them up eventually. It took a good forty minutes. But now my sobbing was audible. And so was the creaking.
To stop it, I held my breath. My feet hit the ground, and I violently pulled the mattress off the frame. It flopped down, and I slid it into the tall space underneath my bed and curled up on it.
My sobs were silent now.
•••
The next morning, Turner’s plate was stacked only with chicken apple sausages and cookies. Bromine Group sat in the back of the dining hall, away from any light. Samuel was on his phone. Eric and Martin were chatting in Mandarin, likely discussing some video game.
“C’mon, kids, put the phones away. It’s eight in the morning,” chided Jeremy, our counselor.
“Coach is right, you know,” said Jason. He was the one I could tolerate the most in our group. That’s why he was my lab partner. Jason seemed okay. The problem is that he’s a football player, and it’s really the only thing he can talk about. Try to switch the subject, and Jason will find a way to bring it back to football. I’m not sure if he can help it.
During morning seminar, I sat alone again. Two empty spaces beside me. Before the speaker began babbling, a girl who looked about my age decided to sit right next to me. She said nothing at first. I don’t know why she chose to sit next to me, but she did. There were a bunch of other open seats she could have taken.
A few minutes into our lecturer talking about benzene rings or whatever, she leaned to me and whispered, “I like your notebook.”
I had it covered with stickers, mostly of band stickers I liked.
“Thanks,” I whispered back.
“The Cure’s my favorite band.”
“Same,” I agreed.
It wasn’t. They were really good, don’t get me wrong, but I loved Radiohead the most. I do that sometimes. The lying. I don’t like it, yet I do it anyway. I wasn’t entirely lying, though. I like The Cure. We sat in an awkward silence until the lecture ended.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked me.
“Luca,” I said as we got up from our seats.
“I’m Fen.”
“Fen. Nice to meet you. I’ve never heard that name before.” Nice to meet you. God. I hated that I said that. It always feels so… insincere.
“Yeah, it’s a bit of an odd one. My parents weren’t too happy when I chose it. They’re not into anything out of the ordinary,” she said, “Anyways, Luca, are you actually here for the chemistry, or is there another reason?”
“What would the other reasons be?”
Fen responded, “I dunno. To find friendship. To see the college. To get away from it all. To find love.”
I laughed at the last one.
“What’s so funny?” said Fen.
“If I were looking for love, chemistry camp would be that last place I’d go.”
We were now outside of the building, and the counselors started leading everyone back toward the dorms for the pre-lunch activity.
“I guess you’ve got a point. So, what are you here for, Luca the Unloving?”
The campus was so verdant. Kenley probably had some of the best landscapers there were.
“Maybe to kill time.”
“That's a lame reason,” Fen joked.
“What about you?” I asked her.
Fen was quiet for a moment.
“I begged my parents to send me here. Away from them. I told them it would be a break from me, and they liked the sound of that.”
The sidewalks were laid with brick, in perfect formation.
“Why don’t they like you?”
“‘Cause I’m trans,” she said, “But fuck them.”
“Yeah,” I said. I haven’t met many trans people. My father’s friend’s son, and a kid at my school, but that’s it. My father’s friend’s son—I met him one time. His name was Ike. Ike’s family stayed with us when they were visiting. I enjoyed his company. I had never known he was trans until after he left. I realized there are probably people I’ve met in my life who were trans and I didn’t know it. How would I?
Every person I’ve crossed paths with, I knew them as versions of themselves that no longer exist. I knew them with a certain maturity, a certain joy, a certain sadness, and I left, having occupied a space in their head. They are irreplaceable.
Fen and I talked for a while and hung out during the pre-lunch activity. We played cards. Lab was alright. Jason nearly lit himself on fire with the Bunsen burner. I sat with Fen again during evening seminar. I learned she was in Iodine Group. Iodine’s crystals sublimate into a pretty, violet gas.
•••
The third night, I didn’t cry. But I wasn’t holding anything back either. I decided to keep the mattress underneath the frame. Martin shouted something in Mandarin from down the hall. It sounded like a swear. The next morning, Turner’s plate had seven cookies and a brownie. Jeremy told him to lay off the sweets, so at lunch Turner only took two. Samuel had finally reached level fifty-two in whatever game he was playing.
The fourth night, I didn’t cry either. Fen and I had really started to nerd out about music that day, and we kept giving each other recommendations. She told me to listen to New Order, and I told her to listen to Panchiko. Turner had five cookies for lunch. Samuel was at level fifty-five.
The fifth night, I cried a little bit. I was staring at the grey carpet, at a stain in the corner. It looked just like a stain in the basement of my home. When I was younger, I would go around counting all the little imperfections of the house. A stain on the floor, a crack in the ceiling, a smudge on the wall. Dad kinda liked that I did that, so he could go and fix them. But when he tried to, I would try to stop him. I think I thought they made things less boring.
The sixth night, I don’t really remember. I was probably too tired, ‘cause every group did a scavenger hunt. Jason was in it to win it, but the rest of Bromine Group did not care.
On Saturday morning, Fen walked up to me while I was getting food in the dining hall.
“Hey, Luca, do you want to sit with my group for breakfast?” she asked me.
“Uh, sure. I’ll ask Jeremy.”
“Cool,” Fen said, and then walked away.
I put some sausages, fruit, and pancakes on my plate. The maple syrup was that fake stuff that didn’t taste quite right.
“Jeremy, do you think I could sit with another group?” I asked.
He looked around at our table. Most everybody was on their phone. He scratched his scraggly beard and said to me, “Sure, bud.”
I sat down next to Fen. Her group’s table was across the hall, next to one of those big windows instead of being in shadow. I noticed Fen’s eyes were pitch black. It looked as though she had no irises—only pupil.
“Fen, your irises are really dark,” I pointed out.
“I get that a lot,” she chuckled. Fen introduced me to Iodine Group. They seemed like cool people. I wished I had gone to a high school with them all. My high school back in New Hampshire is unbelievably boring.
After lab we had some allotted time to visit the Student Store area before evening seminar. Fen and I bought some snacks and sat on a lawn nearby. I wondered what it would be like to be a college student. A big part of your life is spent on campus. At some point, I’m probably gonna have to be one, too.
“Where in California did you say you’re from?” I said to Fen.
“Bakersfield. My dad drove me up here, to Kenley. It’s like four to five hours.”
The sky was cloudy—the kind of cloudy weather I liked.
“That must have been a sucky five hours,” I said.
Fen said, “Eh, my mom would have been worse. My dad’s kind of just a… bystander. He probably secretly wanted a daughter. I dunno. He doesn’t let on much.”
“I see,” I replied. I didn’t know too much about hating your own parents. Or them hating you. My parents were alright.
Together, we watched people passing by, going in and out of those Mission Revival-style buildings.
Fen turned and told me, “When I was younger. In like third grade, maybe, I begged my mom to take me to the store and buy me a dress. When she told me they weren’t for boys, I didn’t talk to or look at her for over a week.”
I wasn’t sure what to say in response. Fen’s knees were pulled up to her chest, curled like a ball.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have been, like, trauma dumping on you,” she said.
“No, it’s okay, Fen,” I said, “What’s it like? To be born in a body that doesn’t… feel right?”
“Like shit. Imagine if you were forced to wear an itchy sweater that was too big or too small in all the worst places, every single second of every single day. And the collar’s so small that it’s hard to breathe. And everybody around you wants you to keep it on forever. And every time you look in the mirror, you wish you could have something else on that wasn’t that goddamn sweater. As long as you kept that sweater on, nobody, no matter how close, could ever truly know you. It hurts. ”
“That would suck,” I replied.
“Yeah. It does,” said Fen.
“I hope you don’t feel like that anymore, Fen.”
“It’s… a lot better now. Thanks, Luca. We should probably go back to the counselors now.”
That night, I admit that I cried, just a little bit. But this time, it was for Fen. Not for me. In some ways, I understood what it was like to want to be someone else—someone who is more true to how you view yourself, and not how others see you. But it also got me thinking about all the ways I hadn’t felt that pain, that denial to be oneself.
•••
For the next few days, summer camp wasn’t all that bad. My bed didn’t creak ‘cause I had the mattress on the floor, but now the desk and chair were the problem. They creaked too. I did my assignments on the floor because of that. They also finally revoked Eric and Martin’s screen privileges, so I didn’t have to listen to them play FPS games. I’m surprised the camp even lets us have them in the first place.
Also, I got to know Iodine Group better. Phoebe was really cool. She was a rising senior, and there weren’t many of them here. I mean, it was a summer camp. Many seniors have other things to do. But she was clearly into chemistry. There was also Sarah, Cheng Ye, and Louise. It bothered me how good their group was compared to mine.
On Thursday, Fen and I went fountain hopping. Fountain hopping was exactly what it sounds like—hopping into a fountain. The counselors told us it was a tradition at Kenley University. It sounded like fun, and it was.
Fen stood there next to me, kinda shivering in the water. Neither of us packed swimwear, so our clothing was soaked. We dared each other to go under the falling water. While we were talking, I told her about the habit of counting imperfections I had when I was young. She asked me if I still did that.
I thought to myself, before replying, “I guess not.”
As we got out of the fountain and started drying off, Fen said to me, “These two weeks would have sucked without you, Luca.”
Our teeth were chattering a bit, but I knew that the sun would warm us up quickly.
“I’d say the same to you. Fen, I’m gonna miss you,” I said.
Fen responded, “Hey, you still have forty-eight hours of me left. And we’ll stay connected, right?”
“Right.”
At that moment, she hugged me. Both of us were still damp. But who cares?
When Saturday rolled around, I wasn’t sure what to feel. I said bye to Jeremy and thanked him, to Bromine Group with all their weirdness, but I couldn’t find Fen.
After looking around, I found her at a brick walkway near the girls’ dorms.
“I always thought summer camp was weird. You spend a week or two with the same people, getting to know each other really well, only to never see them again,” Fen said.
“Who told you we aren’t gonna see each other again?” I asked her.
“Good point. Luca, take care of yourself.”
“I will, and I think you should do that too. Goodbye, Fen.”
She said goodbye and disappeared into a sea of duffel bags and parents. We didn’t hug or anything. Sometimes you don’t need to.
I went back to my dorm to get my suitcases. That was the last time I saw that stupid elevated bedframe and that stain on the grey carpet. I put the mattress back where it belonged.
On the flight back, I opened my notebook with all the stickers on it. On the page about benzene rings, I found a note that said:
Text me when you listen to New Order
—Fen
Maybe my parents were right.