“So . . . you quit because Rachel told you to.”
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
She smiles. “Maybe a little.”
I don’t know how I’m thinking about this girl. Bianca. I’m not sure why I can’t stop watching her and I’m not sure any of the possibilities are okay, because there’s no answer that makes her not a severely eating-disordered straight fourteen-year-old, so I smile at her a little and then look away and sip my coffee.
She says, “So, um,” and she doesn’t even need to say anything else before I know she’s doing some mind reading of my creepy half-lesbian brain, and shit, shit, she knows I was looking. “You, uh, are attracted to girls?”
Damn. I really wasn’t looking at her like that, I swear. “Yeah. And boys too.”
“So I guess it’s hard from both sides.”
She’s the only person who’s ever figured that out on her own. I put my cup down.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I’m never gay enough and never straight enough.”
“Sounds scary.”
“Just lonely, really.”
“So do you, like . . . How did you know?”
“It was finding out that everyone else wasn’t bisexual that was the shock, honestly. I thought it was like . . . you know, how some guys like blondes better. I thought that some people like girls better but that everyone likes both to some degree, you know? And I guess I thought people just usually married the other one because it was easier. And you know what?”
“What.”
“I kind of thought that maybe a bunch of them were cowards who just didn’t want to tell their parents. I guess I knew it was something my parents would disapprove of before I knew it was a thing.”
“It’s been hard? With your parents?”
The truth is I feel shitty about complaining because I know so many people have it much worse. My mom hasn’t kicked me out. She hasn’t told me she disapproves. No, she told me she loved me and accepted me and of course it’s okay with her, nothing would ever make her less proud of me. Yeah, well, talk is cheap, and apparently . . . Apparently when you’re sitting on the couch trying to talk about your new girlfriend and you just get these averted eyes and cleared throats and changed topics, when you invite the girl over for dinner like she told you you were allowed to and she spends the entire time talking around both of you and giving you the occasional awkward smile while she directs every single comment to your sister instead . . . well, apparently silence is cheap too.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s been rough.”
She stirs her coffee idly with her pinky finger. She says, “I don’t think my parents would be okay with it.”
“They’re religious, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. Not as much as me in actual . . . thought, I don’t think, but they’re so ingrained in that church culture and everything. I don’t even like church all that much. I like the singing and the stained-glass, but mostly . . . mostly I just like, you know, me and God, at the end of the day. None of the middlemen or whatever. But I don’t . . . I mean, you understand. I don’t think you’re bad or anything.”
“I like you,” I say.
“I like you, too.”
“My mom isn’t religious. She votes Democrat. She loves gay people until there’s one sitting at her dinner table.” I wave my hand a little. “I’m not gay.”
“If James ever told my parents . . .”
“Oh, whoa, okay. You . . . I mean, you think James is . . .”
“Come on,” she says. “Obviously James is.”
“And that’s . . . I mean, you’re okay with it?”
The pause is too long.
I say, “I’m not . . . It is different. When it’s sitting at your dinner table. I’m not judging. It’s allowed to be hard for you.”
“It’d be easier if he’d just tell me,” Bianca says. “If he’d trust me with it.”
“How sure are you that he’s gay?” I’m just testing the waters, I think. It is not my place to give him away.
“Twenty thousand percent. Or, like, . . . sixty. I don’t know.” She plays with her hair, and I see some fall out in her hand. Baby.
“He loves you,” I say.
“I know. Of course.”
“He’s just trying to protect you.”
“Maybe if he didn’t . . . didn’t act like it was something I’m supposed to be protected from . . .”
“You’re a smart girl, y’know that?”
“Yeah. Perfectionist, hypercritical, anorexic. I’m so not interesting.”
I try to do this sympathetic little nod, but the truth is that my brain is stuck on the word “anorexic” because Jesus Christ, the size of this girl, she’s got to fit all those stupid little criteria. This girl is actually anorexic, and we’re sitting here discussing musicals and gay boys like we’re normal people, when all I want to be doing—God, all I should want to be doing—is grabbing her by the skinny damn wrists and begging her to tell me all her secrets. Why is it that no matter what way I look at this eating disorder thing, I’m always doing it wrong?
“Maybe he needs some gay friends,” Bianca says, in this measured, neutral little voice that makes me smile. “I have Bible friends.”
“Everyone needs some gay friends, but it’s not . . . I don’t know. I guess I’m questioning that habit of segregating. And come on, you do musical theater. You can’t tell me you don’t know gay people.”
“No, of course we do. We just . . . I mean, we don’t, I mean James doesn’t have a group of just people like that.”
“Like I did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I . . . I don’t know. I really only ever liked one person in my little group.” It’s not that simple, though. Like, no shit, Rachel and I were the closest, but it’s not like I didn’t ever do phone calls with Titania or go over to Isabel’s house just us. Natasha and I were into old sitcoms in a way the others totally weren’t, so we’d bond over that, and when Isabel’s parrot died, I was the one who was all over that shit, and while the others were going, I don’t get it it’s just a bird, I was designing floral arrangements. I was good at being a friend. I was just really good at it. But the thing is that they were too. If there had been some prior hint of it, some time now where I could look back and be like, Well they’d always been dropping clues they’d someday turn on me and treat me like shit, maybe this would be easier. But that’s not what happened. We fought like normal friends, and there was always a little tension between me and Natasha just because we were these girls who probably wouldn’t have been friends without the gay thing who were pushed together and learned to love each other maybe without learning to like each other, whatever, but we were close. We were best friends for all of high school. And now all of a sudden I’m dropped, and I don’t care how much bullshit you hear all the time about some girls are just bitches, because, you know, no, they are not just bitches, they were my best friends for three years and this doesn’t make sense, and yeah, a part of me still thinks Rachel is going to pick up the phone.
“I don’t miss them because I miss gay friends, you know?” I say. “I don’t even miss them because I miss friends. I miss them because I miss . . .”
“Them.”
She’s good at filling in sentences. People sit around talking for her when really she could be filling in all our sentences.
“Yeah,” I say. “I miss them. Or I miss her.”
And then I take a sip of my coffee and the bell on the door chimes and the song switches and I look up and who just walked in, who the hell could have just walked in, but Rachel.
• • •
Rachel.
Beach vacations with our moms, swimmer’s ear, snow cones.
Broken hearts, chipped nail polish.
Making out against mango stands when there were straight people around.
Practicing sex positions.
Always coming back to her.
She was never my girlfriend. She was never my sister. I sa
y she was my best friend because there is no word for every. damn. thing.
There’s no word for a girl you’ve seen almost every day for fourteen years who still makes your heart race every time she walks into a room.
• • •
I don’t even know if I say anything to Bianca. I just know that I’m standing here at the counter while Rachel waits for her drink. I always feel like such a little kid next to her. She has eight inches on me and hair that hangs flat and perfect down to my eyes. I could hide behind her like it was nothing. But she never let me. You’re a star, Ett, she’d say. And this is not an eclipse. I didn’t tell her eclipses don’t have anything to do with stars. I never listened very hard to the words when she talked, not really. When you’re friends with someone that long, you don’t have to.
“Rachel?”
It’s such a word. It’s so sharp. It never really felt like a name that fit her, and that always made me love it so much more.
I didn’t know if she was pretending to ignore me, but when her head snaps up and she looks at me, I know immediately that she really didn’t know I was there.
I know a few other things too.
I know that I’ve been bouncing around waiting for her for months. I know we haven’t had a single conversation since that night I met Ben at Cupcake, just a few Rachels? from me cut off by a load of just leave her alone, Etta, okay?s from the Dykes. I know that I’ve just been on pins and damn needles ready to find out if she’s the leader of all of this, if she’s the head bitch in charge of ruining my life, or if she’s—please, please—letting them run the show right now, letting them make all the decisions to freeze me out. Maybe she was even a little mad at me at first but she isn’t anymore. Rachel’s either going to be the angriest of the whole group or not angry at all, and how have I been sitting around with no idea how this person, this person I know every single damn inch of, is feeling about me?
Especially when now she’s looking at me and the answer is so obvious.
I hurt her.
I fucking hurt her.
And the fact that I hurt her—look, I’m not forgetting this, not even ignoring it—is stupid, because I didn’t do anything wrong. But oh my God this is Rachel and who cares if it was a mistake or it wasn’t a mistake, because it shouldn’t have had to have been a mistake because I didn’t do anything wrong, and who cares if this betrayal is in her head or if it’s legitimate and standing right the hell in front of her, here I am, here I am, and I hurt my best friend.
And I’ve been lying around feeling like the only damn victim here.
God, this sucks.
“Hey, Etta,” she says.
I haven’t heard her this quiet since she had laryngitis in ninth grade.
I have no idea what to say.
“Caramel apple latte?” I say.
She just looks at me.
“I didn’t hear,” I said. “I just, you know, guessed. They’re only here for another couple of weeks.” Rachel’s diabetic, but she’ll always take an extra shot for the caramel apple lattes.
“Right.”
The punch line of this conversation is that we both got A’s in public speaking.
“I heard you were sick,” I say.
She shrugs her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not, really. I’m better practically. I just couldn’t really deal with school right now.”
“Because of me?”
She sighs, but it doesn’t sound sarcastic. It really doesn’t. “Why would it be you, Etta? Nothing’s changed in months.”
“Then why does it sound like it’s me?”
“Because I’m working through it. I’m trying to get over it, okay?”
“You mean get over me.”
“No, Ett, I don’t.”
If I could see over her shoulder, I’m sure I could see Bianca watching us. God, I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if she thinks I’m completely losing at this conversation.
Jesus, I’m talking about winning a conversation? This isn’t public speaking. This is my best friend.
Rachel shoves her hands into the pockets of her parka. “Do you have any idea what the past few months have been like for me?”
“You haven’t exactly been cluing me in, no.”
“My parents are asking me, so are you going to date a boy now, all hopeful and shit. The Dykes can’t look at this as anything but some big political whateverthehell and God, they’re . . . and I am still trying to deal with the fact that maybe me and my best friend and our wives aren’t going to grow old together, okay? Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not.” I’m not.
“I don’t . . . You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says, and despite everything, I still want to pick these words up and frame them. “But this isn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” She shakes her head fast and shoves her hair behind her ears. “It’s not what you did, and I don’t blame you, it’s just I had this picture in my head of who you were and what our lives were going to be like, and now maybe it’s not going to be like that and maybe I’m being stupid but I just . . . I need time, okay? I know you think this is stupid, but I’m fucking shattered.”
“Ben and I broke up, though. It wasn’t even anything.”
“But that’s just one guy. How am I supposed to know this was just a onetime thing?”
And what am I supposed to say here? Because I’m not going to tell her I’m not going to date guys ever again. I’m not going to tell her this is some phase. He was the first guy I slept with. I liked it. I always knew I would. I’m not going to pretend the reason Ben and I weren’t anything is because he was a guy. It was just because my particular relationship with that guy didn’t particularly turn out to be anything.
I’m not going to lie to her. She’s my best friend, and I was making out with a guy all of an hour and a half ago.
But if I did lie to her, if I just could, then maybe there wouldn’t be any more ranch-dressing condoms in my locker, you know?
But no. No. “You always knew this,” I say. “I always told all of you that I was bi, and you all just ignored it.” (Natasha used to say shit she thought was so funny, die-sexual, one foot in the grave.)
Rachel says, “God, I must sound like a fucking . . .”
“Heterophobe? Yeah, you do, and it’s not really cute and alternative when you’re pointing it at me.”
“Don’t you miss us, though?”
“We should still be able to goddamn be friends.”
“Not us. Not the Dykes. The . . . community. Look, you and I both know that you didn’t just stop going to Pride because you didn’t fit in anymore. How can you really be part of this if you’re dating a guy?”
“Yeah, well, how can Pride really be Pride when they send me passive-aggressive emails about why don’t you stop coming, that’s the freaking reason, Rachel.”
“They shouldn’t have done that,” she says quietly.
“Yeah, well.”
“Straight people have still given us more shit than Pride ever could.”
I heard a bitch in my gym class today mumbling to some other bitch in my gym class that good thing Etta’s ugly, since she’s apparently sleeping with guys now. Rachel really doesn’t need to remind me that there’s not a single group that likes me.
She says, “But that’s kind of what I’m talking about, y’know? The community is never going to think of straight people the same way—”
“Bisexual, Rachel, I’m bisexual, it’s a fucking word.”
“But the whole world isn’t going to see you like that. They’re going to see you as gay or they’re going to see you as straight, depending on who’s holding your hand, so can you just . . .”
Can you hold my hand.
She doesn’t have to say it.
She’ll never be my girlfriend. It’s not like that.
But we were supposed to grow old together.
She thought she knew me.
“At some point you’re going to make a choice,” Rachel says. “And
whatever that choice is, you’re going to lose one half of this bi thing, and you’ve already come out, okay, and you have the whole community on our side and we’ll get you back in there and you have us, okay, you have me, we can take on anything, right? You and me. And you guys broke up, so good, that’s done, so we can . . . we can rebuild from here, okay?”
“Ray . . .”
“I need some air.” She’s breathing hard. She does this sometimes.
Her drink comes up, and I hand it to her. It’s hot chocolate. Oh.
“I need to go outside,” she says. “Can you come?”
“I’m with a friend,” I say. “Sit with us?”
She turns around. “Who is she?”
“Bianca. She’s . . .” I don’t feel right about saying Bianca’s in my group, not without her permission. “. . . auditioning for something with me.”
“Yeah? You’re doing an audition?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s . . . that’s great, Etta. Not ballet, right?”
Rachel was the one who helped me bury my toe shoes in the backyard. Rachel said ballet was a symbol of everything that’s holding me back and tying me down and telling me that I have to look and be a certain way. She said ballet was making me miserable and I need to be triumphant and throw it away and that that means I will triumph over it instead of it triumphing over me. She said the tenets of ballet are discipline and poise and body control and that’s not you, Etta, you should never be restrained like this.
Probably right, you know?
“No,” I say. “No, not ballet.”
“I don’t want to interrupt. . . .”
“It’s okay, just . . .”
She shakes her head and says, “I’m a mess,” and yeah, she kind of is. She dabs her eyes on the cuff of her glove and says, “I’ll see you, Etta.”
“Can I call you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right.”
“I’ll see you.”
• • •
“Etta?”
“Not now, Kristina.” I’m busy kicking my boots off into the corner and hating everything. I managed to act normal and bubbly through dropping Bianca off, but I’m tired and I’m not normal and bubbly and all I want to do is eat an entire box of Oreos and shove my hand down my throat so yeah, not at my damn best right now, I love you, little sis, but ten minutes, maybe? (Not to binge-purge, just to calm myself down. Promise.)
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