by Siera Maley
They were gone the next night, as well, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been for Sarah to come over. We hadn’t gotten farther than the singular attempt to get my shirt off, and tonight seemed like a likely time. I wanted my first time with a girl to be special.
I waited for her in the living room, clicking through television channels to pass the time, and she entered without ringing the doorbell, a stack of board games under one arm. I raised an eyebrow at her. “You brought board games?”
“Just in case you didn’t want to do other stuff,” she elaborated. “I know it’s all new to you. I mean… it’s new to me too, of course. I don’t know. Last night was…”
“Nerve-wracking?” I filled in.
“Yeah,” she laughed out nervously. “I mean, it was good, I just don’t… actually know anything. About anything. Which I’m not used to.”
“Welcome to my world,” I acknowledged, sweeping an arm as though introducing the living room to her. “I might as well be a sexless amoeba.”
“You’re cuter than an amoeba.” She collapsed beside me on the couch, smiling over at me. “Wanna just watch a movie?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. It’s your turn to be big spoon, though.”
“I hate being big spoon.”
“Well, you’ll just have to deal.” She stretched out her legs and cuddled into me, and I settled on a channel five minutes into some eighties horror movie. I didn’t really pay attention to it. Being with Sarah like this was unlike anything I’d never felt before. Yes, there’d been Austin, but hanging out with Austin felt like hanging out with a friend who had a crush on me. When I was with him, it was a chore, and when we did anything past kissing I’d just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. But I wanted to sit here with Sarah forever.
I laid my head on hers for a moment and told her, “You smell nice.”
“You feel nice,” she whispered back.
“You look nice,” I countered quickly.
“You taste nice,” she shot back, almost accusingly. When I gave her a questioning look, she stuck her tongue out to touch my neck.
“Gross!” I wiped it off with my hand and flicked her in the bicep.
“You started it,” she mumbled, burying her face into my neck again. I relaxed into her and closed my eyes. “Neither of us are watching this movie,” she admitted a few minutes later.
“Nope,” I agreed.
She raised her head and kissed my cheek, then tilted my chin with her hand until we were face to face, our noses nearly touching. “Would it totally freak you out if I wanted to go up to your bedroom?”
“I don’t know,” I said instinctively.
“Your heart rate says yes,” she joked, gesturing to where her chest was pressed to mine. “Or maybe that’s mine; I can’t tell.”
“Why are you nervous?” I asked, brushing her nose with mine. “It’s me.”
“That’s why I’m nervous. Things are so nice with you. They’re perfect. I want this to be, too. What if I screw it up? I mean, I’ve screwed everything else up.”
“No, you haven’t.”
She shifted, sitting up and facing me. “Yeah, I kind of did. I shouldn’t have spent so much time on Sam. Or any time on him. I knew he was an ass, and I knew you were right. I didn’t know how you felt, but I knew he was using me and I knew it was wrong to hook up with him. If I’d just listened to you we wouldn’t have fought as much as we did.”
“If I’d told you I liked you we wouldn’t have, either,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but you can’t be blamed for that. You didn’t know how I felt.”
“And you didn’t know how I felt. So we’re even as far as I’m concerned.”
She chewed at her lip for a long moment, then leaned forward to kiss me. My eyes fluttered shut, and then opened when she pulled away. But instead of moving away from me, she came forward again and kissed my cheek, then my jawline, and then my neck. I let out a shaky breath and rolled my head to one side. I couldn’t think, and breathing was getting harder.
She kissed back up to my lips and then watched me, smiling faintly as I looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “Dazed?” she whispered, amused.
“And confused,” I confirmed.
“Hey.” She leaned in to kiss me again, and then pulled away and moved her lips to my ear. “Thank you for being so perfect. I don’t think I deserve you.”
I wound my arms around her and pulled her closer. “You deserve me. Thank you for the fake relationship idea.”
She giggled into my ear. “Bet you thought you’d never say that, huh?”
“Let’s go to my room,” was my response.
“Hate to say I told you so…” Jessa teased, catching up to me at my locker the day before the Winter Formal. I’d seen her at LAMBDA meetings before now, but this was the first time she’d caught me alone since Sarah and I had begun dating.
“Well, I am happy to say you told me so,” I joked, smiling over at her. “Thank you for being supportive… in your own, you know, not at all supportive way.”
“So you’re gay,” she stated. “And Sarah’s…?”
“Bisexual.”
“Okay.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think I could like you guys.”
“We’re not open for threesomes,” I remarked.
“Ha ha. Hilarious. I meant I might like you as people. With enough time. God knows it’ll make LAMBDA meetings less hellish. Everyone else there worships you two so I might as well jump on the bandwagon.”
“You only like us because we actually turned out to be gay?” I asked her, feigning a gasp. “Doesn’t that make you a little… heterophobic?”
“Oh, shut up,” she replied, rolling her eyes at me. I grinned back at her. “Just win the crowns tomorrow night, you big faker.”
“That’s the plan,” I confirmed. Jessa waved goodbye to me and hurried away, and I moved to shove two textbooks into my locker. The hallways had already thinned out; the bell would ring any moment now.
“Sooo…”
I turned in the direction of the new voice to see Christine Goddard leaning against the locker next to mine. She looked smug.
“Hi,” I said, simply. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Nice open conversation in the hallway,” she complimented. “I learned a lot. Really helped put the puzzle pieces together, you know?”
My heart dropped when I realized what she meant.
I’d let my guard down. Things had been so easy lately, what with losing the stress of faking a relationship and with things going so well with Sarah now. Jessa’d backed off of us, and we were so close to winning the crowns at Winter Formal. I should’ve known it was all too good to be true at this point, but for a moment, I’d truly thought Sarah and I were going to get out of this unscathed.
“The driver’s license was bad, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this,” Christine remarked coolly. “I just figured she was cheating on you.”
“You knew they were sleeping together, and that didn’t strike you as something you should talk to your own boyfriend about?”
“I don’t care what Sam does,” Christine shot back. “I really don’t. I just want that crown, and he’s popular enough to help me win it.”
“Aiming high,” I complimented, my voice dripping with sarcasm. She leaned in closer to me and lowered her voice.
“Everyone’s gonna hate you and Sarah when they find out your relationship started out as a pathetic attempt at getting attention from Sam.”
“Well…” I hesitated, and then shut my locker. “It’s real now. You’re a little late.”
“I don’t think I am. Because if you two win those crowns, I’ll tell everyone the truth. And you can say goodbye to all your new queer friends.” The bell rang, and she smirked at me and then stalked off, leaving a lump in my throat in her place.
I sat down with Sarah in my next class, and she immediately noticed something was off. “Are you okay?”
“We need to talk,” I hissed, and swallowed hard.
“Is there anything we can do about this?” I paced back in forth in Sarah’s bedroom, fists clenched at my side.
“I mean… she knows. I don’t think there’s anything we can do about that.”
“God, I’m such a screw up,” I groaned out. “We were finally done with all of this. We were together, and things were so close to not being complicated anymore. We could’ve kept our friends and stayed in LAMBDA and did all of the things we said we were going to with them. It’s ruined now.”
“It’s not ruined. Look, I’ve screwed up way more than you have. Remember me accidentally doing things that made Jessa suspicious? And actually being the one to let her know the truth?”
“Okay, but Christine is worse than Jessa. So much worse. She has no reason to keep this to herself.”
“Yeah, she does. She gave you her reason: she wants to win the crown tomorrow.”
“So? We can’t control everyone’s vote, Sarah.”
“We could drop out.” She looked to me and shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, if you wanted to.”
“And do that to LAMBDA?”
“I guess so.” She shrugged again. “I don’t really want to, but…”
“If we do that, we lose them,” I pointed out. “And Jessa might tell everyone the truth anyway.”
“Might. But if we don’t drop out, we probably lose them anyway, thanks to Christine. And we lose everyone else.”
“Maybe… maybe if we just…” I tried, and then exhaled loudly when I came up empty.
“Katie, I don’t think there’s a right answer here. We can drop out last-minute and risk Jessa, or we can stay in the running and hope for a loss. If we lose, we lose. Maybe Jessa keeps her promise and doesn’t say anything. And if we win… then we win.”
“And Christine tells everyone everything,” I acknowledged.
Sarah shrugged her shoulders again. She looked thoughtful now. “Well… not necessarily.”
“How? If we win, she’s telling. We’re not going to change her mind.”
“But she doesn’t have to be the one to tell,” Sarah pointed out. “We could. I could. I’m the one that started it.”
“For the last time, you’re not taking all of the blame here,” I sighed out.
“Okay. I won’t. But I could do the talking. Maybe if our friends hear it from me it’ll soften the blow. Maybe I can explain it all.”
“What, and they forgive us since we actually wound up gay?” I asked. “That hardly makes what we did any better. I mean, Jessa can think one thing but that doesn’t mean everyone else will agree.”
“Hey, if Jessa’s cool with us now, I bet anyone could be,” Sarah joked. “I mean… it’s worth a try?”
“So that’s it,” I said. “We don’t drop out?”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
I stood in silence for a moment, thinking. I couldn’t envision a scenario where dropping out made everything right again. LAMBDA would have a lot of questions. And besides… I kind of wanted to win. “Yes. Let’s stay in. It’s the right thing to do.”
“You wanna kick Christine’s ass,” she replied, a knowing look in her eyes.
“That too.”
Winter Formal wasn’t as big as Prom, but it was pretty damn close. People grouped up and packed into limos all over Flowery Branch, and at eight o’clock sharp, we all entered a gym full of refreshments, balloons, and blaring stereos. A stage sat at one end of the gym, and a lone mic rested front and center.
Sarah and I went with a few of the LAMBDA kids in her car, with the promise to meet Dina, Josephine, and the others at the dance. As we arrived, Jake pointed to the stage and grinned. “That’s where your crowning moment will take place, ladies.”
“If we win,” I reminded him.
“Are you kidding? You’ll win,” Hattie cut in, patting us both on the back. “Enjoy your night; I’m making Jake dance.”
“Oh, God,” Jake mumbled, but let Hattie pull him away nonetheless. Sarah and I shared a grin, and she guided me toward the refreshments.
“You look so pretty,” she told me. “I love that dress on you. Blue is so your color.”
“You literally dragged me to the mall and picked it out for me,” I reminded her. “But you did a good job.”
She grinned at me and then turned away to pour us two cups of punch, and I eyed her while she was distracted. She was gorgeous. Her hair was up in a bun with small ringlets hanging down to frame her face, and her dress was a sea foam color that worked perfectly with her skin tone. I hadn’t been able to keep from staring at her back in her car.
“Here you go,” she said, handing me my drink. “I don’t know if it’s been spiked, but I’m kind of hoping it has. I could use the liquid courage tonight.”
“God.” I looked around at our classmates out on the dance floor and grimaced. “They could all hate us by the end of the night.”
“Not all of them. Just the ones with any respect for gay people.”
“But remember: It’s okay to fake it if you actually end up gay in the end,” I joked.
“Right? Good luck to us.”
“More like RIP our social lives,” I corrected, and she touched the lip of her plastic cup to mine. We both took a long drink, and then Sarah set her cup down, took mine away, and then trashed it and led me to the dance floor. I pulled a face. “I don’t dance.”
“Liar,” she retorted, and pulled me closer.
“Hey! Katie and Sarah!” That was Connor, naturally. He barged into our dance, half-drunk already, and was soon joined by an apologetic Graham and Bonnie and a laughing Dina and Josephine.
“Where’s Hannah?” Sarah asked them.
“Flirting, of course,” Dina replied. “She said she’d find us later. So, unfortunately, it seems we have an odd number here. Let’s see… if Sarah and Katie pair off, and then one of us unlucky girls dances with Connor-”
“Hey!”
“-and another gets Graham… we still have an extra girl who needs a boy to pair off with.”
“We’ll switch off,” Graham suggested. “I’ll start with-”
“Actually,” Bonnie cut in, drawing our attention to her, “…I’m gay. So I think I might find a girl to go dance with.” She forced a smile, waved goodbye, and then she was gone. The rest of us stood in the center of the dance floor, stunned into silence. I exchanged a look with Connor and realized we were thinking the same thing: Our lunch table was quite the statistical anomaly.
“Well,” Dina said at last, recovering. “Um… I didn’t see that coming, but since Bonnie’s busy, looks like this’ll work out. I call Graham.” She grabbed his hand before Josephine could argue, and, grudgingly, Josephine settled in front of Connor, who smirked as he took her hand. I looked back to Sarah, who seemed distracted.
“Bonnie, though. Who would’ve thought?” she asked.
I let out a chuckle. “Come here. We don’t have much time left.”
And we didn’t. Half an hour into the dance, Principal Crenshaw called for silence, and stood in the center of the stage, the mic in front of him. “Could all of our nominees for King and Queen please come to the stage, please.”
“Ready for this?” Sarah whispered to me.
“Not really,” I murmured, but gripped her hand and followed her nonetheless.
Chapter Fifteen
So here we were. The official winners of our school’s Winter Formal crowns. And there Sarah was, explaining everything. A cold chill had settled over the crowd and I hadn’t stopped feeling queasy since she’d started. I was almost thankful now that Sarah’s speech seemed to be coming to an end.
“I can’t express how truly sorry I am. How sorry we are. And… I get that the fact that I’m in love with her now doesn’t change what my intentions were when this started. I know for some of you guys that may not be enough. And if that’s the case, I understand. But…” she trailed off, and I heard her let out a shak
y breath. “I have learned so much from this experience, and I want the members of LAMBDA especially to know that. I understand what it’s like for you to go to this school every day and feel like you’re out of place, like you don’t belong. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone, and you don’t deserve it. Any of it. And for that reason, and because I fell in love, I wouldn’t change any of it. I’d do it all over again, and I mean that in the most sincerest of ways, I swear. I just hope you guys can all forgive us for lying. I’m sorry. Katie’s sorry.”
She stepped back from the microphone to total silence, and moved to hand it to our stunned principal. But I rushed forward abruptly and took it instead with a prompt, “Wait.”
Confused, Sarah handed me the microphone instead. I turned and faced the crowd, and immediately felt my cheeks heating up. I took a deep breath. “Um… hi. Look, I, um…” I trailed off, sucked in another breath, and forced myself to relax. “Okay, I don’t want to get preachy here, because we all know it’s lame and we shut down as soon as we hear it. Like, yes, we tried to do something good here.”
I paused. “But… I think that the biggest thing I learned from all of this is that people are people. When I joined LAMBDA, I had some expectations about what the people there would be like. We all stereotype, you know? But that wasn’t the case with them, and it’s usually not the case with anyone else. And, I mean, the people I eat lunch with every day? Three months ago I thought I couldn’t tell them anything. I thought every conversation we had would always be shallow. But I was wrong. They surprised me. People can surprise you. The kid you helped when he was getting picked on could wind up being one of your best friends. Even if he is gay. We’re all human.”
I glanced to Sarah as I continued, and she shot me an encouraging smile. “I love a girl. That’s one part of me. I’m sorry that I hurt people by lying about my relationship with Sarah. But, like her, I’m not sorry I did it. I think we could all learn a lot about each other by spending three months in the shoes of someone gay. Thanks.”
