by Lexa Hillyer
The final rest period slips by in a breath, and before she knows it, she’s face-to-face with Ellis. Through the mesh mask, she could swear she sees Ellis wink. Zoe feels a familiar surge of twin emotions—determination and defiance. Like that time there was way too long a line at a Robyn concert, so she and Cal found discarded bracelets in the Dumpster nearby and snuck in through a back door, dodging two bouncers and snickering in the darkness. Or the time Joey Reynolds called her a dyke on the steps of the high school freshman year, and she told him to fuck off, shoving him against the main door, in front of a teacher and everything. Or the time her mom left for three days—just drove away with no explanation and no word about whether she’d come back—and Zoe didn’t cry, she didn’t panic, she simply got on her bike and rode to the grocery store to stock up on macaroni and other food she knew how to cook herself.
When it really matters, Zoe doesn’t cave.
And so, she leans in now.
The timer sounds and their bout begins. Immediately, Zoe gets three touches, almost back to back. To her surprise, Ellis is the one who seems distracted.
At least at first. But she seems to snap out of it, and returns with renewed force. Zoe stops trying to think, lets her body just move. She and Ellis have practiced together enough that she can feel what’s happening between them, the call and response.
Back and forth they go, touch after touch. Zoe’s in a daze when the timer sounds again, impossibly soon.
“Fifteen–fifteen,” the moderator announces. “Priority toss.”
The timer is stopped, and they break with twenty-five seconds left to the bout. Zoe shifts her mask, trying to get in a deep breath. She hadn’t realized she was sweating, but her skin is on fire now, and her muscles throb, full of power. Priority means tiebreaker. The moderator comes over and tosses the coin. It lands in Ellis’s favor. She has priority. That means the timer’s reset and it’s Ellis’s win, unless Zoe can score one last hit in the next minute.
They get into stance. The timer sounds again. For a full five seconds, neither of them moves, and something deep in Zoe’s heart freezes.
Then she lunges.
Ellis dodges and comes back at her, but Zoe deflects and leaps back.
Forty-seven seconds left on the new time.
They circle, each taking an empty thrust.
Thirty-eight seconds.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-six.
Zoe breathes deep and a hunger swells up inside her, insatiable. She steps, spins, and lands a touch—harder than she intended. Ellis stumbles. The timer dings.
The touch was legit. Which means the bout’s over.
A rush of electricity zings down Zoe’s spine. She has won.
The medal ceremony is short and sweet. Everyone’s sweaty and wants to change. Ellis gets silver. Two Meadowlarkers share the bronze. Patelski seems satisfied. Zoe feels numb and grim. She was so focused on victory, she didn’t think about what would come after.
They line up to shake hands with the Meadowlarkers. She shivers. Now that she’s got the medal, she’s going to find out once and for all whether they can get back to the present—tonight.
And before that she’s got to confront Ellis. It may be her last chance.
She’s not sure what she’s more nervous about—talking to Ellis, the thought of possibly not making it back to the present if the photo doesn’t work the way she insisted it will, or the thought of having to leave if it does work.
Standing in line, she takes off her mask and, one by one, shakes the hands of the Meadowlark team. One of the girls Zoe beat nods at her again and congratulates her. Zoe nods back, as the adrenaline of the day races out of her. They get to the end of the line and head to the locker rooms.
Ellis leans in toward Zoe, so close her lips actually brush Zoe’s ear. “I see you took my advice,” she says.
Her words tickle against Zoe’s neck, and Zoe steps away, sucking in a breath. “Can we talk after this?” she blurts.
Ellis raises an eyebrow. “Sure. Want a ride back to camp?” she offers.
Zoe nods. “That’d be great.”
She changes in a hurry, then ends up waiting fifteen minutes for Ellis to finish getting ready. She lets Coach Patelski know she’ll be getting a ride back and doesn’t need the bus. He obviously figures gold and silver are off to celebrate, and he simply claps her on the back. “Nice job, Albright” is all he says.
A hint of expensive perfume trails Ellis when she finally emerges from the steamy locker room, her hair damp from a shower. It’s the first time Zoe has seen her with her hair down. She has the strange urge to touch it.
Ellis looks even prettier than usual, in a crisp pair of shorts with gold nautical buttons at the front and a sheer tank tucked into them, showing off the outline of a lacy white bra underneath. “Come on,” she says.
Outside, the sky is thick and heavy, and a gentle rain is falling. The parking lot pavement shines silvery gray. They duck toward the convertible—its roof is on. Inside the car, Ellis’s floral scent is even stronger, covering everything. Zoe’s sure her own skin will soon smell like Ellis’s. The rain patters lightly against the windshield.
“Nice win,” Ellis tosses over her right shoulder as she starts the engine and pulls out of the parking spot. “I told ya you had it in you.”
“I already knew I had it in me,” Zoe says defensively, picking invisible lint off the knee of her leggings. The words come out automatically—she’s not trying to be a brat, but it’s true. After all, she already won it once, two years ago. But of course, Ellis doesn’t know that, doesn’t know that she’s the primary reason for Zoe’s doubts over the last few days.
“So what’d you want to talk about?” Ellis asks with a side grin. She leans across Zoe’s lap, and Zoe startles, letting go of her knees.
But Ellis simply pops open the glove compartment and grabs a tube of lip gloss. She sits upright again, applying the gloss carefully as she drives.
“Well,” Zoe starts, clearing her throat. This is much harder, much more awkward than she expected it to be. “I actually wanted to talk about, um, last night. What happened at the party.”
Ellis says nothing, so Zoe pushes on. “What happened upstairs. Between us.”
Ellis turns toward her, a goofy smile on her face. Then she looks back at the road. “I believe the technical term is we made out.”
Once again Zoe feels thrown off, unnerved. She will not be the butt of this girl’s jokes. “I know we made out,” she says, trying to sound cool and casual instead of exasperated. “I just meant . . . like, why me?”
Ellis shrugs. “You didn’t want to?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Was there, like, something about me?”
Ellis sighs, putting on her right blinker. “Zoe. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. You think too much. Like I told you, it was just for fun. No one has to know. No one should know. It’s not their business,” she says, pulling over onto a dirt road.
“What are we doing? Where are we?” Zoe asks, realizing they’ve taken a detour.
“I want to show you something,” Ellis says.
They get out and begin running through the light rain down the dirt road. Zoe can make out a giant house at the end. “Is this a driveway?”
“Maybe!” Ellis calls, running ahead. Before she gets to the house, she veers to the left and disappears around a fence.
Zoe runs after her, and finds Ellis standing in a gazebo on the far end of a gorgeous piece of property, facing Lake Tabaldak. She catches her breath, approaching Ellis to see what she’s looking at.
Ellis points. “See that? Just past that bend in the big lake? That’s Okahatchee. I like coming here. The owners are never home. And everything looks so small from here. Doesn’t it?”
Zoe stares through the rain for a second in silence. Camp does look small, just a tiny clust
er of brown and red peaked rooftops amid the trees, even though it’s only a little ways downhill from here. You can’t even see the actual lake, which is minuscule compared to Lake Tabaldak.
But what comes out of her mouth is, “I think there’s been a, um, misunderstanding between us. I . . . I have a boyfriend.” It might be a small lie, but it’s in service of a greater truth.
Ellis smiles. “Me, too.”
“You . . . what?”
“John. We’ve been together for a year and a half.”
“And you . . . I mean obviously you like him,” Zoe clarifies. She doesn’t add, and not me.
Ellis sits down on the bench that lines the inside of the gazebo. “I think I do. He’s great. But let’s not talk about John. He’s in Spain. And he’s okay with whatever I want to do. He likes how free-spirited I am.” She says the last bit with air quotes.
Zoe is dizzy with all this new information. She doesn’t know what to make of it, so she simply sits down next to Ellis, feeling like a spun top. For some reason, a paper she wrote on Macbeth for senior English pops into her head. She’d gone on for five whole pages about the lines: “Stars, hide your fires./Let not light see my black and deep desires.” She’d written paragraph after paragraph about how Shakespeare was trying to show Macbeth’s moral conscience with those lines, how people could do bad things knowing they were wrong but wanting them too badly to stop themselves. How the whole theme of the play is desire and shame. It’s weird, though—Ellis seems, well . . . shameless.
She listens to the rain beat against the wooden columns and roof. “So what can we talk about?”
Ellis leans back, her golden tanned legs stretching out toward the center. She turns to face Zoe. “Do we have to talk at all?” she says quietly. “There are much more fun things we could be doing.”
Zoe doesn’t respond, but her nerves instantly ignite. What is the right response? What does she actually want?
Ellis sits up again, looking around. “No one can see us in here.”
She reaches up and touches Zoe’s cheek, turning her so that they’re facing each other. She trails her hand down to Zoe’s neck and leaves it there, resting it lightly at the base of her head, underneath her hairline, as she leans in and kisses her, softly, on the lips.
It’s happening . . . again. Zoe can’t quite believe it. Her whole intention had been to get some clarity from Ellis—who knows, maybe even an apology.
Instead, they’re kissing.
Still, Zoe feels the knot in her stomach untying itself, tight and tangled at first, but gradually looser, making it easier to breathe, easier to not freak out. She’s so good at this. That’s all Zoe can think as she melts forward, not flinching as Ellis’s hand finds its way down to her waist. She kisses Ellis back, starting to explore more—pulling away enough to make Ellis lean in for it; then Ellis does the same and Zoe leans in. She’s once again reminded of their fencing bout.
But this is less precise. It’s different. The rules change as they go.
Zoe tries to swivel to get a better angle—just one more, and then they’ll stop, then she’ll figure this out, explain that it’s wrong.
She bangs her right elbow against the column. Ellis snickers, leaning into her and grabbing both of Zoe’s knees; her laughter brushes across Zoe’s cheek.
“This bench is too small,” Zoe says in a laugh-whisper.
As if in unison, they both sink to the floor of the gazebo, easily sliding off the edge of the bench and onto their knees, then lying on the floor. The rain beats down harder now on the roof. They kiss more, touching each other’s faces. Ellis puts her hand on Zoe’s waist again, her fingers finding their way underneath Zoe’s loose T-shirt. Electricity flies up Zoe’s body and she arches slightly, wishing she knew what to do with her own hands. But it’s as though they know more than she does. Her right hand guides itself into Ellis’s flowing, soft hair, still damp from her shower and from running through the rain. It’s like her hand wants—no, needs—to get tangled in there.
Ellis responds by rolling on top of her, writhing against her. Zoe can’t believe how mad she was at Ellis only moments before, and now she wants this to keep happening, on and on. It’s like she has found her perfect match.
A blaze of lightning flashes in the not-so-far distance, putting Zoe on alert, as though they’ve just been caught on camera. It’s enough for Ellis to pull herself off Zoe, rolling next to her again. She laughs, and Zoe suddenly feels left out of the joke.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, still catching her breath.
“Nothing,” Ellis says, her voice high and soft. “You’re just kind of a natural at this.”
Instantly, the knot re-forms in Zoe’s gut. The wild truth of the situation occurs to her now, as swift and bright as a lightning bolt: This isn’t Ellis’s first time. With a girl. Like this.
Far from it. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
And what she’s doing is using Zoe. Because it must be obvious Zoe doesn’t want this.
It is obvious.
Isn’t it?
For some reason, Tali’s words during their fight float back to Zoe. Content to stay stuck. Something is illuminated, deep inside Zoe’s chest now—harsh and sudden as the lightning—something she’s been tamping down for a long time, plugging up like a persistent leak. A secret knowledge writhing within her that has wanted to breathe, to break the surface, for so long.
Ellis is talking, saying something else she apparently finds funny, but now all Zoe hears is Joy’s voice. Joy from when they were both thirteen, just graduating middle school. At a sleepover party at Joy’s house. Everyone had gone around saying the name of the boy they had a crush on. And Zoe insisted she didn’t have one. But she did spend a lot of time staring at Joy’s family’s foreign exchange student, a tall, pretty blond girl named Katie, from Switzerland or Norway or somewhere. She was older, and effortlessly beautiful. Confident, too, even though she barely knew the other girls. Katie had an avid crush on a boy named Orlando at the high school; he liked to wear floppy hats and his brother was a big-time jazz musician or something. Katie played their newest album on repeat. And when Katie went into the room she was sharing with Joy to change into her pajamas, she left the door open, like they all always did—no one made a big deal about it. They were always getting dressed around one another. But for some reason, for Zoe, this was different. Katie was like an exotic animal, something fascinating and transfixing in the way she moved and dressed and spoke. Zoe watched Katie take off her clothes, swallowing repeatedly, her throat inexplicably dry. Later that night, Joy and Zoe were alone. The other girls had gone outside to tell ghost stories, and Joy and Zoe were looking for extra flashlights in Joy’s kitchen. Joy turned to her then, when no one was around. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, Zoe, you can, ya know,” she said. “I promise I won’t judge you or anything.”
Her words were innocent and kind—typical Joy—but to Zoe they felt like the time Luce’s little brothers attacked her with punches. But worse, she also felt exposed, endangered, like she was standing naked in the middle of a highway.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joy,” she said then. And whatever small flower of truth had been blooming inside her withered.
Over the last few years, Zoe has added more and more dirt to the pile, burying the voice of truth inside her.
And now, here it is.
“What’s the matter?” Ellis is saying.
Everything, Zoe thinks. You. This. The kiss.
But she knows. She knows it isn’t just this. It isn’t just the kiss.
It isn’t just Ellis.
She pushes herself up off the floor of the gazebo and begins to run.
“Zoe!” Ellis shouts, but the rain drowns her out.
Zoe heads for the sloped part of the woods that leads downhill toward camp. She runs hard, her muscles
still alive and vibrating from the tournament. The gold medal bounces against her chest bone like an angry metronome, counting her steps as she runs farther and farther away from that gazebo, away from herself.
I do not want to like her, she insists in her mind, picturing Ellis’s odd, fox-like grin, then dismissing it. She’s spoiled and horrible. I definitely don’t like her. And I don’t want to BE like her.
The thoughts repeat rhythmically: I don’t want to like her. I don’t want to BE like her. I don’t want to like her. I don’t want to BE like her. The inner chanting strangely calms her as she races downhill and the entrance to Camp Okahatchee comes into view in the distance. I don’t want to like her. I don’t want to BE like her. The rain blurs her eyes, but she keeps running.
I don’t want to like her. I don’t want to BE like her.
Finally, heaving, out of breath, and surrounded by trees, Zoe can run no farther. She looks up at the swaying branches of the evergreens, gray like the sky, dappled with the rain pouring down on them. She touches her face. Is she crying or is it just the rain?
She drops her hand and stands there, getting soaked, blinking into the rain, staring and staring at the sky, waiting for an answer.
Finally, the answer comes:
I DO like her.
And then, a distant echo: I AM like her.
The certainty thuds deep down into Zoe’s chest, and she sways, almost dizzy, backing up as though if she could only rewind her life, retrace her steps, she might come to a different conclusion.
She swivels around in the density of the woods, panic seizing her, that old nightmare of being buried alive creeping over her now, reaching around her neck, choking her.
She staggers through the thick trees, rain pummeling her, and that’s when she stumbles upon it:
A body.
Shaking and shivering on the forest floor.
Joy.
24
