Authors: Sara Ryan

Empress of the World (11 page)

July 13, 5 p.m., Up in the Big Tree in the Courtyard

“This reminds me of the Indian Tree.”

Battle looks up at me from the lower branch where she’s sitting. “The Indian Tree?”

“It’s this giant, dead tree—it’s been dead for as long as I can remember. All the bark is stripped off so it’s just smooth, like a piece of furniture. I used to climb it all the time with Jamie—I mean James.”

“You said that name like it made you want to spit. An ex?”

“I don’t have any exes. You’re the—I mean, no. It’s like this. When James was Jamie, when we were little, we were best friends. We made potions. We deciphered signs that only we knew were important. When we were nine, he moved away. I missed him so much that I saved up all this money for a whole summer so I could go find him. I went on the bus for hours by myself. When I got there, to his new house, he was already friends with all these boys, and he was James, and he was awful. The End.”

“Ouch. What kind of signs?” Battle has to squint a little to look up at me since the sun is so bright this afternoon.

“Oh—like which way a branch was pointing would be the way we’d walk that day. And you know how when they’re doing work on sewers or power lines or something, they paint little squiggle things on the road and the sidewalk? We’d come up with all these crazy meanings for them. That kind of thing.”

“It sounds great. Sorry he turned out to be a jerk.”

I’m dangling my legs down from my branch, and Battle touches my calf briefly in sympathy. It sends a shock from my leg all the way up my spine.

“Who was your best friend, growing up?” I ask, to regain my composure. I can’t get used to this.

She sighs. “Nic.”

“I’m sorry, is it an awful story? You don’t have to—Oh. You mean Nick-with-a-K. Right?”

She nods. “We were just a really close family. Until we stopped.”

“Anyone besides him?”

It’s funny. Being here, up in the tree, sitting on different branches—it makes it easier to talk somehow. Is it because we can’t look directly at each other?

Battle sighs again. “I’m shy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I hadn’t.” How can she say she’s shy? She’s dated people. She’s the one who kissed me, the first time.

“If Katrina hadn’t made me come over the first day, I probably never would have talked to any of you.” She has a finger in her mouth as she says this.

“But—you’re so—” Beautiful. Brilliant. Amazing. “You seem so sure of yourself, the way you talk, just the way you are. I mean, you’re not like Katrina—you don’t talk a lot, but everything you say, it just feels . . . important.”

Battle’s finger is bleeding. “I don’t talk a lot because words don’t always work.”

Yes, they do, I want to say, but I can’t, for some reason.

Which means she’s right.

But I can’t let the silence hang, either—I ask something that’s been bothering me for a while.

“When he left, what did your parents do? I mean, did they try to find him?”

Battle says flatly, “They fought. Mom wanted to call the police, hire a private detective, the whole shebang. Dad said it was Nick’s choice to leave, and he’d get in touch with us when he was ready.”

“Who won?”

“No one.”

It’s another of her nonanswers. Doesn’t she want me to know anything about her? I try another approach.

“It’s so awful when parents fight. Mine almost divorced when I was nine. They didn’t yell, they just got cold and overly polite—like suddenly we were all living in some strange hotel. Do your parents yell?”

“No.”

All right, that didn’t work either. Third time’s the charm?

“Hey, this is totally off topic, but how long have you had Dante and Beatrice?”

Battle smiles up at me for the first time since we
started talking about
her brother.

“They came from the same litter—the mother belonged to one of the families from church. I got them . . .four years and thirty-seven days ago. They were eight weeks old. Mom and Dad weren’t sure I’d be able to take care of them, but I read every book in the library about dogs and took lots of notes. And I kept track of their growth. I measured them and weighed them every day—I paper-trained them and got them used to being on leashes—oh, I miss them!”

The ache in her voice makes me miss them, too, even though I’ve never seen them except in her pictures, and I’ve always hated dogs.

“Wow, you did all that? That’s really impressive. You’d make a great vet,” I say.

Battle looks so surprised it almost makes me laugh. “That’s exactly what I want to be,” she says softly.

July 14, 6:30 a.m., My Room

field notes:

last night when i was coming out of battle’s room, this girl i don’t know looked at me like i was a three-headed monster, and absolutely scuttled away from me down the hall like she thought i was going to breathe fire or something.

but on the other side, the angst crow who was so mean to me when i liked her dress saw battle and me walking around holding hands and she actually smiled—although she turned it into a scowl as soon as she saw that i had noticed.

alex and ben from class also look at me like i’m a three-headed monster, but then i look at them the same way, and have since day one.

i’ve started to keep track of the number of times i hear someone mutter the word “dyke” in my direction—five so far.

i guess i should be getting angry, or upset, but more than anything it’s just odd—what has changed about me, that makes these people now want to call me this name? do i look different? it’s not as though battle and i have been out necking constantly. not that
i’d mind. or would i? i don’t know—whenever we’re outside, in public, something happens that keeps us from doing anything but holding hands. like magnets that repel each other if they get too close. i’ve also been wondering if it’s a new phenomenon for there to be tons of [boy/girl] couples all over the place, practically having sex on the lawn, or if they’ve been there all term and i’m only just now noticing. i’ve tried to look for other (ahem) same-sex couples, too, but it’s hard to tell. so many girls are all over each other, holding hands or doing each other’s hair or giving each other back rubs. it’s impossible to know if you’re looking at friendship or lust. or both. as for boys . . . there are some jocky-looking guys who are forever punching each other on the arm or slapping each other on the butt. i suppose it’s possible they could have something going on, but you’d certainly never catch them, say, kissing. and there’s another boy i’ve seen, i think he’s in katrina’s class, who often wears long velvet skirts and lots of black eyeliner. but i believe this to be a fashion statement rather than a declaration of sexuality,
since i have observed him making out with various angst crows.

i suppose he could like boys, too, though.

i of all people should remember that.

July 15 (one-week anniversary), 6:30 a.m., My Room

field notes:

battle noticed my viola last night. “how long have you been playing?”

i told her—since i was in fifth grade—and she said, “that’s how long i’ve been dancing. play something for me.”

“only if you dance,” i said, expecting her to laugh and change the subject.

“all right,” she said.

so i opened my case and took out my bow to put rosin on it, something i always do when i’m especially nervous about playing. it didn’t need any rosin, but it gave me something to do for a minute while i tried to figure out what i knew well enough to play from memory while i watched her dance.

finally i remembered a little bach piece i did years ago for the solo-ensemble festival. “this is slow,” i said. “i hope you didn’t want something fast.”

battle shook her head.

the way she was standing, it’s as though her whole body was listening. which i suppose it was.

the strings were remarkably easy to tune. no doubt this was because the rain the other day reduced the amount of humidity in the air, but i prefer to attribute it to the intervention of some patron spirit of music and dance.

i closed my eyes and ran through the first few bars in my head before i put the viola on my shoulder.

i don’t know how well i was playing, but my viola was in very good voice.

violas in good voice sound like expensive dark chocolate tastes, rich and swirling and complex.

and that’s the kind of moves she made, all loose arms and light, long legs, and i knew, just for a minute, what music was for.

July 16, 7:30 a.m., Outside Katrina’s Room

Battle and I have been knocking on Katrina’s door for what seems like hours before she finally stumbles loudly across her room and opens it. “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite lesbians,” she says groggily. “Siddown while I get dressed.”

“I don’t know if that word fits,” I say. “Do you think we’re lesbians, Battle?”

, pulling a violently orange T-shirt out of her cardboard clothes box, “What the hell else would you be? Unless you’d prefer the word . . .oh, god, I can’t remember, it was in this weird old movie I saw . . .inverts, that was it.”

“It sounds like we’d have to stand on our heads all the time,” I say.

Battle promptly puts her hands on the floor and kicks her legs up into a beautiful headstand. I grab her ankles and hold her up, both of us giggling. “Wow, I can do this so much better now that I don’t have hair to get in my face!” she says. Fortunately—unfortunately? —her tank top is tight enough that it doesn’t ride up.

“Seriously though, what’s wrong with being lesbians?” Katrina zips up her jeans.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” I say, holding Battle’s ankles as she walks a few steps on her hands, “I’m just not sure it describes us completely accurately. I mean, I’ve liked boys before. And Battle, didn’t you say that you had dated boys?” I turn my head sideways and peer down at her face, which is getting flushed. She nods.

Katrina says, “But wouldn’t that just be because you hadn’t found a girl yet who was, you know, willing? I mean, it seems like it’s a lot easier to find boys than it would be to find girls—not that I’m looking for a girl, mind you. And come on, Nic, Battle lives in the South. Ho-mo-sex-shuality is probably still, like, illegal there, right?”

Battle shakes her head. “No.”

“Yeah, but your dad’s a minister! Wouldn’t he shit bricks?” asks Katrina. “Come to think of it . . .aren’t they going to be really mad about the whole shaving your head thing, let alone what’s going on with you and Nic? They just didn’t look like free-expression types to me.”

Battle shakes her legs free of my hands, comes out of the headstand and stands up. “Breakfast is almost over,” she says. “Are you ready?”

July 17, 11:39 p.m., Battle’s Room

This is a different kind of shy than I’ve ever felt before. Being shy was always about not knowing what to say to people, being afraid I’d say something stupid that would make them laugh at me.

Now—now it’s about not knowing what to do. If I sit on the bed, is that too forward, like I’m expecting that we’ll immediately start making out? If she wants a back rub, is it too much to kiss the back of her neck?

I’m sitting on the floor trying to do the reading for class tomorrow, and Battle’s sitting next to me. She’s finished her work for the evening, so she’s rereading this incredibly battered copy of All Creatures Great and Small.

“Your hair’s all tangled,” Battle says suddenly. She gets up, walks to her dresser and retrieves a large wooden brush. It still has some blonde hairs entwined in its bristles.

She sits directly behind me and brushes my hair with just the right amount of pressure, not so tentative that I can’t feel it or so hard that my scalp gets sore.

“That’s so nice,” I say, and my voice comes out deeper than I mean it to, almost in a purr.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I guess you must have; your hair was longer than mine’s ever been,” I say.

“There’s that—but also I brush Dante and Beatrice a lot.” She snickers.

I attempt to bark.

“Silly,” says Battle, putting down the brush and leaning in to kiss me.

Now I understand why so many songs talk about desire as electric.

If I could harness what I’m feeling now, I could power a city.