She Loves You, She Loves You Not... (11 page)

“You okay?” Finn treads next to me. I focus on her face. She looks concerned, vulnerable. I rise up and dunk her with both hands.

She yanks me under by the ankle and blows bubbles at me underwater. I grab for her ankle, but it slips away as she propels up and out of sight. I push off the bottom with my feet and break the surface.

She dunks my head.

I pop back up and splash her.

She splashes me back. We laugh, and then our eyes catch and hold. I have this overwhelming desire to kiss her. I’m thankful when she dog-paddles away. “Race you,” she says, flipping over and taking off.

I’m twice the swimmer she is, and I catch up easily. Without warning, she starts choking and flailing her arms. She sinks, and I feel her kicking, clawing at me. Is she faking? If not…

To pull her up, the first thing I grab is her braid.

She coughs and spits out water, yanking her braid away.

“You okay?” I ask.

She flaps back toward the shore, still coughing. I swim up beside her and snake an arm around her waist, ballasting her on my hip, the way I learned in lifeguard training. We reach shallow water where we can stand, and Finn unhooks my hand from her body as she inhales a deep breath.

I slick back my hair. My eyes train on her wet bra, her nipples, and I can’t help staring.

She sloshes awkwardly to shore.

We gather all our clothes and, atop the boulder, get dressed wet, which isn’t easy. I trip and hobble around, falling over as I’m pulling up my shorts. Finn gets done first and sits, drawing her knees to her chest. I want to wring out her braid because it’s dripping. We don’t speak for a long minute, and now it feels weird between us.

What happened? I didn’t do anything.

Out of the blue, Finn says, “Why did you get disowned?”

I turn to her slowly. “Because I’m gay. Duh.”

She seems stunned. Like she didn’t know.

This ice floe seems to spread between us, so I lean away. She says, “When did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you were…” She can’t even say it.

“A lesbian?”

She nods slightly.

“I’ve always known. Haven’t you?”

The change in her eyes goes beyond shock. More like absolute terror.

Oh my God. She hasn’t acknowledged it yet. How could she not know?

Finn gets up and mumbles, “We should go back.”

I think,
You should come out.

We don’t speak again as I put the Mercedes in reverse and nearly plunge off the cliff. Finn reaches over for the wheel, but I correct in time. We start down the mountain. She says, “You should downshift. It’ll be easier on the brakes.”

“What’s downshifting?” I slam on the brakes to hug the
first curve, and Finn tilts to the left, like her weight will shift an SUV. I skid onto a wide gravel area, my heart pounding. Finn moves the gear knob down a couple of notches from drive to D2 or D1. “Downshifting,” she says.

I smile weakly. “Thanks.”

She asks, “Do you want me to drive?”

Do I ever. I shift into park and get out. We change seats.

Merging onto the road, Finn asks, “So, when did you tell your dad?”

“I didn’t.”

She glances over.

“He caught me in the act with my girlfriend.
Ex-
girlfriend.”

Finn’s eyes expand.

“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty.”

She downshifts for a hairpin curve.

“My dad’s a homophobe,” I tell her. “Plus, I’m like his darling little daughter who’ll always be five years old and doesn’t even know how to spell s-e-x. Let alone l-e-s-b-i-a-n.”

I’m back in that moment when Dad caught us. The horror on his face. The revulsion. The moment he decided his little girl was garbage to be thrown away.

We need to change the subject because I don’t want to start crying, and I definitely don’t want Finn to feel sorry for me. “What are you?” I ask. Besides a closeted lesbian. “Like, part Asian? Native American?”

“Inuit,” she says. “Half.”

“What’s Inuit?”

“It’s like Eskimo.”

“Really? Cool. Where are you from?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, so I try again. “Where are you—”

“Canada.”

Canada. Sweet. I almost say,
You know, they have lesbians in Canada. In fact, you can even get married there.

We reach the service road, and Finn shifts into drive. She checks her watch.

“Are you late?” I ask.

“No. Just need a little shut-eye before I go to work.”

“What’s your third job?”

She stifles a yawn. “Bartending.”

That means she’s at least twenty-one. Finn turns into the Emporium lot and parks.

“I could take you home,” I tell her. As a friendly gesture. Nothing more.

She has the car door open, and she’s bending over with her back to me. “I need my bike,” I hear her say. She straightens up and hands me her shoes. “Trade,” she says.

“Really?”

“Until you can go shopping.”

I remove my flip-flops. She slips them onto her feet and then gets out and opens her mouth to say something. Whatever it is never makes it from her brain to her lips. She raises her hand in a wave.

I watch as she shuffles to her mountain bike, loops a leg over, and pedals off.

Her shoes are grody and worn, full of sand. A half size too small, but I can squeeze my feet in. Her giving them to me like that was such a total act of kindness. It’s been a long time
since I’ve felt anyone’s kindness; since anyone cared about my needs. My throat constricts, and it takes all the willpower I can muster to choke down a sob.

“Sorry I missed your call today,” Carly says. “I was with a client and tried to get you later, but you didn’t pick up. Did you get a pair of shoes for work?”

“Uh… yeah.” I gaze up the loft steps at her, speechless. She’s skanked up, meaning thick, black mascara and a short, stretchy red dress over fishnets.

“Paulie called.” Carly hustles down the stairs, although you can’t really hustle in stilettos, can you? “He said he’d wait up for you to call him back.” She stops on the landing to insert huge, loopy earrings in her lobes. “What did your father think would be accomplished by taking away your phone?”

I don’t want to think about Dad. I actually had a pretty good day.

“Alyssa?” Carly bats fake eyelashes at me. I wedge past her and up the stairs. “You didn’t
buy
those shoes, did you? They look like Goodwill rejects.”

The fumes in the loft are staggering. A sneeze backs up in my nose. Ugh. I hate that plugged-up feeling.

“We can afford new shoes, you know. You don’t have to shop at thrift stores.”

I say over the railing, “Can I have eight hundred dollars?”

She swivels her head up, and I can see clear down her cleavage. “For shoes?”

When I don’t answer right away, she says, “I’ve paid four
hundred dollars for shoes before, but they were designer. For a special occasion.”

I bet
, I think.

She cocks her head at me, batting her thick eyelashes. “Are you in trouble, Alyssa? Are you into drugs or something?”

“What? No.” Why do parents always assume you’re on drugs?

“You know you can talk to me….”

“Never mind.” I stomp toward my room.

“Alyssa!” she shouts.

I let out an audible breath and return to the loft railing. I don’t want her stripper money, anyway. Or wherever it comes from. I’ll find eight hundred dollars someplace.

Carly calls up, “I’ll leave you my ATM card. The pin number’s my birthday: 1013. But you can’t withdraw more than two hundred at a time. I’ll just write you a check.”

I can’t believe it. Dad would never give me eight hundred dollars, no questions asked. Not only would he assume I was on drugs, he’d take me in for testing.

Carly checks her cell and adds, “Call Paulie.” She leaves in a cloud of lavender.

I lie down and plug into my nano. I look at my feet, at Finn’s shoes, and click my heels together. They’re not ruby slippers; they won’t take me to Kansas. But they feel magical. I fall asleep with the memory of my hip against her flat belly, my one arm curled around her, and the other stroking hard enough to keep us both afloat.

She left a note on my door.

She can’t spell. She never finished high school, as far as I know. She got pregnant with me. Carly and Dad and I were a family for eighteen months.

I sprawl on the sofa, thinking. Wishing I could go back in time to see how it all went down between Carly and Dad. Wanting to know the truth, to hear it from her. I heard Dad’s version: She left. It had nothing to do with you.

I wonder now if he kicked her out, or bullied her out, the way he did to me.

This house is so soundproofed you can’t even hear chipmunks chattering or birds singing. No passing cars drive close enough to see their headlights. It’s never this dark or quiet at home. There’s always a TV on, a video game, kids riding bikes in the neighborhood.

I go back up to bed but can’t shut off my brain. What if Carly wanted to stay? Did she plead with Dad to keep our family together? I can’t see Carly begging. Did she want to take me with her, though? Was he the one who cut off all contact with her?

Everything I knew, everything I believed, could all be a lie.

I wonder where Carly dances and when she started. Before Dad or after? She said something earlier, before she left the other night. Willy’s. “I have to dance tonight at Willy’s.”

I sprint downstairs and find the phone book, page to… what? Strip joints? Not a category. Men’s clubs?

There are no Willy’s, but under
Bars
there’s a Wet Willy’s on Blue Spruce Road. I didn’t see a Wet Willy’s on Blue Spruce Road today. But then, I wasn’t looking. I was under Finn’s spell.

How can I go to a strip club? I’m underage.

Carly’s left a bottle of wine on the wet bar, corked, but half-full. I pour myself a glass and down it. Then another. My fear or apprehension is slowly replaced with courage or need. I don’t want to see what she does. And I do. I have to know the truth about who I am and where I came from.

The access road down the mountain isn’t lit, and I miss the turn, swerving into a patch of scrub oak. I hear it scrape the paint on Carly’s Mercedes. Shit. I shouldn’t do this. I’m not drunk, but I’m not completely sober either.

I have to do it. The AC’s cranked up to freezing to keep me awake and alert.

It takes me a year to figure out how to turn on the brights.
My brain jumps back to the car accident, to Sarah, but I force myself not to think about it. Think of Carly. The way she was dressed tonight, like a whore. I hate that word.

Think of Finn. How could she not know the fundamental truth about herself? It’s so obvious to me, probably to everyone in town. It’s hard coming out to yourself, but if I’d waited until I was twenty-one, I never would’ve known Sarah. Which would’ve been a blessing.

No. She loved me once. We
were
in love.

I wonder as I’m driving through Majestic if Finn’s ever had sex, if she’s a virgin. I’m glad I got
that
out of the way.

Sarah’s parents’ forbidding her to see me hadn’t stopped her from coming over or calling. I loved her for putting me before them. She said when she told her dad she was bi, he said, “What does that mean? You’re half girl, half boy?”

We all had a good laugh over that. Especially Ben. I still felt sort of betrayed by Ben for breaking our confidence and telling Sarah he was my “convenient” boyfriend, but I felt more guilty about not telling her myself.

Did everything happen during that time I was sick? Maybe she needed me, and I couldn’t be there for her. I know I missed her birthday, January 11, because I was still in bed with mono. I did text her fifteen times, for fifteen years old, with a picture of a burning birthday candle and the message
MAKE A WISH
, but I wanted to do more. When I could finally stay on my feet for more than an hour, I went to the mall and bought her the white-gold necklace and diamond earrings she’d been drooling over. I didn’t care how much of my savings I was using. Sarah was worth it.

Even if I wasn’t a hundred percent available, that was no reason to do what she did.

And Ben. It’s ridiculous to have to make up a boyfriend. The whole time I pretended, I felt I was betraying my and Sarah’s love for each other. I’ll never do that again. Still, when did he decide it was okay to ruin my life?

Tanith said to me one day, “Your dad wants me to take you for birth control pills.”

I was shocked.

She added, “Do I have to take you for birth control pills?”

I couldn’t even look at her. I shook my head no.

She knew the truth. Why didn’t she tell him? Tell him so he’d take it out on her and not me.

I’m such a coward. A fraud. I deserved what I got.

There are no streetlights on this stretch of road, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. I haven’t been paying attention. Two motorcycles roar up behind me, so close that I’m blinded in the rearview mirror. They pass on my left. The one biker is wearing a sleeveless leather vest with no helmet. A girl is clinging to his waist.

My first impulse is to follow them, so I step on the gas. They round the mountain curve and evaporate. Where did they go? Red taillights flash to my right, where I see the Blue Spruce sign. Damn. I missed it.

I have to drive to a gas station near I-70 to turn around, and I see a couple of cars parked on the side of the building with people about my age inside. In the backseat of one car are a guy and a girl, making out. Or it might be two girls. God, I think it is.

The longing seeps back in. After Sarah was
out
out, she had nothing to hide at school, so she cuddled with me at my locker, and I let her. We held hands in the hall. People said stuff, called us dykes, lezzes. Disgusting names, like cunt lickers and munch fuckers. Sarah put on a brave face, but I knew it bothered her. I tried to tell her she’d become immune to the harassment, that there is a never-ending supply of ignorant bigots in the world. That’s the truth.

One day after school these two guys came up behind us—I had Sarah’s hands in my coat pocket, and we were nuzzling and kissing—and one guy went, “Lesbos make me sick.”