The thought of saying no does cross my mind. I mean, if Keeta’s dating half of Tucson’s girls’ high school basketball players, why can’t I go out once with Mia? But it’s just not my style. “Yeah, still seeing someone.”
“Okay,” she says and then starts to dig through my backpack pocket until she finds what she’s looking for. “But you should have my number just in case. I’ll put it in here for safekeeping.” Her fingers move quickly, and within seconds she’s entered her phone number into my cell.
“Thanks,” I say, “is it under Mia or Thurber?”
“Neither,” she says and gets up. After dusting the dead grass off her shorts she stands above me looking like she’s trying to decide something. I guess she comes to a conclusion because then she peels off her Ani tank top and tosses it down in my lap. “Here, you can have mine. I have a feeling it’ll look even better on you. See you around, Abbey.” She starts walking away but then turns around again to give me some last minute advice. “Hey, Abbey.”
“What’s up?” Yeah, that’s right. I’m cool. Inside, though, I’m repeating a Spanish phrase that Garrett taught me today: Esa mujer es toda una mujersota. Translation: She’s a totally hot woman.
“You watch out for those seniors. They’re nothing but trouble.”
I roll my eyes. “I’ll consider myself warned. Thanks for the tank top.”
She walks away and I watch her disappear into the hallway. I hold up my gift to admire it and finally come to my own conclusion. Flirting with Mia is fun and I think I might like to try it again. I reach for my cell to find her number. If it’s not under Mia or Thurber, then what? Does she have a nickname, too? I click through the contacts and I finally find the number. She added it under Future Girlfriend.
*
I’m in my room tonight staring at the tank top Mia gave me and thinking about what happened today. As much as I denied it when I talked to Kate tonight, I actually did like talking and flirting with Mia. She’s funny, cute, and, as an added bonus, not a senior.
Then Keeta knocks on my window like a nocturnal woodpecker, making me jump out of my skin. Before I open the blinds, I toss Mia’s tank top in my closet because I don’t feel like explaining it.
“What are you doing here? You gave me a heart attack, Keeta,” I whisper out to her. It’s almost eleven and I’m just finishing up my biology homework and a long chat session with Garrett.
“Te extraño, Amara. Is it such a crime to miss you? Dame un beso,” she says and leans in to kiss me through the screen.
“No, you can miss me,” I say, and then I kiss her.
“Are you alone?”
“Actually, I’m in the middle of a very important strip poker game. Not. Of course I’m alone, baby. Are you?” I look beyond her and into the moonlit night.
“So, can I come in? Or are you going to leave me out here with the crickets and snakes?”
I pretend to ponder for a minute but finally open my window all the way and take off the screen. “I guess you can come in, but I would have worn something without farm animals on it if I had known you were coming. I totally wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.” I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for her visit, but I kind of like to be prepared for these things.
“Amara, you always look good, girl.” She hops up on the sill with ease, and I can’t help but wonder how many windows she’s jumped through in her lifetime, or in the past week.
I walk over to my door and lock it.
Keeta pulls an envelope from her back pocket after she kisses me again. “I got you something.”
“What’s the occasion?” I ask, as I take the envelope and sit on the edge of my bed. Inside are two concert tickets and a card that reads, Just because you rock my world. “Wow, thanks. How cool.” The tickets are for an all-ages gig at Hanflings with 36-C headlining the show. I downloaded their album last month and have been playing it every time Keeta’s come over. I didn’t think she was paying attention, but I guess she was.
“So, there’s one ticket for you and one for whoever you want to take. I mean, I know your mom won’t let you go with a guy, but you can choose whichever girl you want to take with you.”
I put the tickets back in the envelope and then hide them out of habit in my bedside drawer. “Well, I can think of one girl I’d want to take.”
“I bet,” she says and runs her finger across the spines of my books.
I squint at her. Something’s off. Is she drunk or something? “What’s wrong with you?” I finally ask. “You’re acting weird. Estás bien?”
“I’m fine. I was just saying if there’s someone else you want to take, it’s cool.”
“You mean like Kate? Um, I don’t think she’d be into seeing an all-girl rock band named after a bra size. Trust me. And I can only imagine what the crowd would be like: way too much girl-on-girl love for my little BFF.”
Keeta doesn’t laugh even though I think I’m funny. Instead, she kicks off her shoes, crawls past me, and makes herself comfortable under the covers.
“Well, I guess you’re planning on staying a while.” I smile and lie down next to her. “So what did I do to deserve this surprise?”
“I told you. I missed you.” She turns off the light, but I can still see her face from the glow of my computer. “Why does that surprise you?” Then she pulls me close and gives me a long kiss. Her touch sends me spinning like a CD and I soon lose track of up and down and yesterday and today. The only thing on my mind when we’re like this is how, with just the soft touch of her hands or lips, she can take me to a place of crazy passion I didn’t think was possible.
Then she pulls away and stares down at me with such a serious look that I get a little scared.
“Amara…” she whispers.
“Yes, Keeta?” I say, but in my head I’m thinking, Don’t break my heart yet. Please, just keep me a little longer.
“Te deseo.”
I rack my brain but can’t come up with the translation. “What does that mean?”
“Te deseo, Amara. It means I want to spend the night.”
That translation clears things up very quickly. Suddenly I’m really thirsty and the words I need have dried up and blown away like dead leaves.
She lowers her head and kisses my neck. “I just want to feel close to you. I want to make you feel good. Will you let me? You know you want me to.”
Do I? Maybe I do. I don’t know. Besides, what’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m going to get pregnant.
My lack of response upsets Keeta because she pulls away again. “God, I’m sorry. Look, you’re obviously not ready. I shouldn’t have asked you. I’ll go.”
She starts to get up, but I grab hold of her arm and pull her back next to me. “Don’t go. I’m the one who should be sorry. I don’t know why I’m scared. I want to be close to you, too. I do. Don’t go, K.”
I reach out and touch her face, but she jumps like my fingertips are the sharp fangs of a rattlesnake.
“Keeta, what’s going on?” I sit up and turn on the light. “Come on, just tell me.”
She hesitates but then says, “Maybe we should stop seeing each other. I mean, you deserve someone better and I don’t want to string you along. You’re too good for that.”
“Wait. What?” Her kisses always make me feel dizzy, so I don’t know if the room is spinning from that or because of what she’s just said. “You don’t want to be with me anymore because I won’t have sex with you?”
“That’s not why, Amara. It’s just…you should be dating someone your own age.”
“It’s not like I’m twelve, Keeta. I’m fifteen and you’re seventeen. Why is this a big deal now? Is it because you’re graduating? We can still see each other, you know? There are phone calls and e-mails and I’ll be driving next year.”
She covers her face with her hands like she can’t stand to look at me. “I just think you should move on.”
No, I can’t let you go yet. I take her hand in mine. “Keeta, I know you
probably don’t want to hear this, but…te amo,” I say in a barely audible voice. After I catch my breath and realize what I’ve done, I say it again. “I love you, and I know how you feel about me, too, even though you think you’re too tough to admit it.”
She smiles a little, but it fades quickly. “What about Mia?”
And just like that, she successfully avoids saying that she loves me, too. I guess that’s why I quickly get over feeling guilty about the way I flirted with Mia, but I play stupid instead of telling the truth. “What are you talking about? Mia who?”
“Don’t lie, Abbey. You’re bad at it.”
“So I was talking to Mia. She’s just a girl I met in study hall. That’s all.”
“Well, it seems like you two were doing more than talking on the quad today.” Keeta’s face hardens.
That’s when it hits me. “Oh my God, you’re jealous.”
“Whatever.”
“Keeta Moreno, starting varsity guard who averages twenty points a game, the girl who can learn any song on her guitar in less than an hour, the one I dream of kissing every night, is jealous? This is huge. I have to tell Garrett.”
I dive across my bed for my laptop, but she quickly wraps her legs around me and pulls me back. We wrestle until she’s sitting on top on me, pinning my arms down over my head. I struggle to free myself, but of course I want her to stay right where she is.
“Are you turning into the Hulk, or are you just green with envy?”
“All right, all right. You’ve made your point.”
She releases my arms and I rest them on her legs. “Come on, K. What’s the big deal? I mean, you’re kinda acting like a jealous girlfriend.” I tickle her stomach to try and make her laugh, but she just keeps a stoic look on her face.
“How can I not be jealous? She took her shirt off for you.”
I try to think of an explanation for that strip scene on the quad and come up with nothing, so I tease her a little more instead. “So were you spying on me? How girlfriendy of you.”
“No, I wasn’t. Everyone in the library and cafeteria could see you, Abbey. It’s not like it took long to hear about it from Tai.”
“Foiled again by my nemesis, Tai,” I joke, but I can tell Keeta needs some reassuring, which is a nice change. “First of all, Ms. Moreno, I just liked her shirt, not her.” It’s not a total lie. I mean, she’s cute, but I don’t know if I like her, like her. “And, second of all, you are who I want.” I try to pull her down to kiss her, but she resists and leans back. I guess she needs a little more. “Besides, I told her I was seeing someone. She’ll probably never talk to me again. And it’s not like I wanted to talk to her to begin with. No te preocupes.”
“You’re welcome to date whoever you want. I mean, it’s cool with me.”
She’s being so stubborn about the whole thing that I put an end to it once and for all. I grab her shirt, pull her down, and give her a long kiss.
When we come up for air, her face has softened. “Man, what am I going to do with you, Amara? You’re too much for me.”
“This is true, but in the meantime, how about you stay with me for a little bit and hold me close.”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” she says, but one look at me with her beautiful amber eyes, and I know she’s mine, at least for a few hours. “Okay, it’s the least I can do.”
She lies down next to me and covers us up.
*
“Wake up, Amara.” Keeta’s voice sounds like it’s underneath three thousand gallons of water.
I open my eyes and she’s brushing my tear-soaked hair off my face.
“It’s just a bad dream, baby girl.”
I turn my head away from her and wipe my face with the corner of my pillow. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m here.”
It’s four in the morning. The jolt of my body must have woken Keeta up and startled her, but my crying is what seems to be worrying her. I’m so used to waking up this way from my dead-dad dreams that for a second I wonder why she looks so concerned. “God, we totally fell asleep,” I whisper.
“Are you okay? Do you want to tell me about it?”
I’ve never told anyone but Kate about them. I don’t even tell my mom because I know it’ll just upset her. But if I trust Keeta with my heart, I guess I can trust her with this. “It was about my dad. I’ve had them before.”
“You dream about him a lot?”
“It used to be every night, but now it’s like once a month and they’re always awful.”
“Like what?”
“In this one he was driving our station wagon, and I was with him, but then he dropped me off at a friend’s house. Then there was this huge cliff ahead, but he didn’t see it because he was waving good-bye to me in the rearview mirror. And, well, you can guess the way it ends.”
“Can I do anything for you?” she asks sweetly.
I shake my head. “No. Thanks, though.”
“How about I hold you until you fall asleep, then?” She slides her arm under my head and pulls my body into hers.
We fit perfectly together, like LEGO pieces, but I break us apart and turn on my back. “It’s late. You should probably go.” I want her to stay, but I feel embarrassed. Plus, I don’t want to get caught with Keeta in my room. “My mom will be up soon, anyway.”
“I’ll wait for you to fall asleep, and then I’ll leave. Okay?”
I give in quickly. “Okay.”
A few minutes go by and I can feel myself about to drift off to sleep again. Then without really meaning to, I whisper, “I love you, Keeta.” I don’t know if she hears me because she doesn’t say anything back, but I feel safe in her arms and fall asleep.
*
“Abbey? Abbey…”
That’s my name, don’t wear it out, I think, as I try to open my eyes. Then I wonder, Who’s waking me up and who is this sleeping next to me?
I turn over and there’s Keeta. The same Keeta that was supposed to wait for me to fall asleep and then leave. “Leave” being the most important part of the plan.
“Abbey?” It’s my mom at my bedroom door.
I shoot up in bed and look at my clock. It’s already seven. Jenn will be here to pick me up any minute. I shake Keeta to wake her up, and the look on her face shows her panic. “Sorry,” she mouths as she scrambles out from underneath the covers.
My mom rattles the doorknob. “Why is your door locked? Are you okay? You’re going to be late for school. Abbey?” she says, louder.
“Uh,” I say, as I gather Keeta’s pants and shoes and throw them at her. “Hold on, Mom.”
“Why is your door locked? What’s going on in there?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I say and turn the window handle to let my big lesbian secret out, but the screen is attached and there’s no time. I shove Keeta into my closet then run to my bedroom door, unlock it, and swing it open. “Hey, Mom. Sorry, I overslept.” I’m totally out of breath and hope she doesn’t notice.
“Why was the door locked?” my mom asks with her arms crossed over her chest.
May my lying skills not fail me now. “Well, if you must know, I was reading a really super-duper scary book last night about an ax-murdering psychopath from Maine and got freaked out, so I locked the door. Sorry.” Whew, good one.
“Really?” she asks slowly.
“Yeah, why? What do you think I was doing in here? Having an orgy or something? God.”
“Okay, you don’t have to get all dramatic. I believe you, but I’ve told you not to read those books. They’ll rot your brain.”
“I guess you were right,” I say, hoping the compliment will help my situation.
“Well, you better hurry if you’re going to get to algebra before the late bell. I’ll tell Jenn you’re riding to school with me.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I’m about to shut the door on her when she uses her foot to stop it from shutting. “Is that yours?” she asks, pointing to a black bra on the floor.
Keeta�
��s much more developed in the bust area than I could ever dream of being, so there’s no way my mom will believe it’s mine. “Um, no,” I truthfully say.
“Well, whose is it?”
“Keeta’s,” I say and break out in a sweat. Come on lies. Start snowing down.
“Why is it on the floor?”
I bend down and pick up the sexy bra and resist the urge to smell it. “Well…” I twirl it on my finger and spin it around to make it seem like less of a big deal. “She left it in the locker room and I put it in my gym bag so I could give it to her, and then I forgot it was in there, so when I discovered it in my gym bag last night I put it on the floor so I wouldn’t forget to give it to her. And, see? It worked.”
My mom looks at my face carefully, and I just smile. I mean, what else can I do?
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Abbey.”
I let out a nervous laugh and fling Keeta’s bra over my shoulder. “You’re not supposed to, Mom. I’m a teenager. It’s my job to confuse you.”
She shakes her head and walks down the hall. “Well, you’re doing a good job, then,” she says over her shoulder. “You might consider giving yourself a raise.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
A week later, Kate and I are barely enduring Gila’s second day of track tryouts. As we finish our third lap, I’m already regretting my decision to join. How could I have forgotten that I hate running outside?
“Oh my God, how many more?” I pant as we round another corner of the track. “I’m going to die.”
“We’ve only got two more laps to go, Abbey. Suck it up.”
“Geez, are you channeling Mrs. Schwartz or something?”
Kate shoves me and I nearly fall onto the grass. “Shut up and run.”
“Yes, master.”
“So, what did your mom say when you asked her about track tryouts?”
“At first she said no way, of course, but I told her she could put me back on a weekly contract with Ms. Morvay if she wanted. She took that deal but made me promise to go to study hall again.”
Freshman Year Page 26
