The Bermudez Triangle

by Maureen Johnson

  “Ave?” she mumbled. “The room is moving.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “It is?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s going in circles.”

  “I know.”

  “Ave? Why is it doing that?”

  “It’ll pass.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep,” Avery said, patting Mel’s head gently, “I’m sure.”

  A Roman candle whizzed and popped nearby.

  “Ave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for staying.”

  “No problem.”

  Thirty seconds later Mel was snoring lightly in the crook of Avery’s arm. Avery stayed still, not wanting to disturb Mel. She liked this, just how things were at this exact moment. She caught a whiff of mingling odors of fabric softener, old smoke, and perfume. A cozy smell. She looked down at Mel’s sleeping face. Her hair spread over the pillow so perfectly, you would have thought a stylist had arranged it, like for a conditioner commercial. It would still look good in the morning, Avery could tell. In contrast, when Avery woke up, she would look like she’d been spinning plates on her head all night.

  With Mel, everything was just kind of delicate and perfect all the time, in a goofy kind of way. An endearing way. It was no wonder that you had to get in line to have a crush on her. Who wouldn’t have a crush on Mel? She had universal appeal, like baby seals and koala bears. Avery should have gone ahead this afternoon and kissed her. It would probably have been great.

  She’d kind of wanted to do it then. She kind of wanted to do it now.

  What?

  Avery took hold of herself. Never before had she even considered hooking up with another girl, except in the most purely theoretical sense. She wasn’t biased. She’d given the issue its due consideration, and up until this moment, in the sexual preference category, her vote had been squarely for guys.

  Besides, this was not just some random person she would only see once—this was Mel. Anything she did with Mel went on the Permanent Record. If this was a bad idea, then the results would be horrific because for the rest of her life she’d have to look at Mel and know that this thing had passed between them. Yet this also meant Mel was the very best person to try this experiment with. Here was someone she knew she loved, really and truly and totally. No surprises. No hidden agenda. This was someone she could trust. It would be secret.

  And was it so weird, really? Somewhere in Avery’s mind there was a thought that nothing truly awful could happen in a white canopy bed, one with a well-worn mattress that dipped in the middle and scooped the two of them together in a soft pocket of cotton sheets and comforter. This was womblike….

  Bad, bad, bad comparison. A comparison to be immediately forgotten.

  Maybe she should sleep on the floor.

  No. The floor was hard and cold. The bed was broken-down soft and perfect. Too good to leave.

  She could sleep on the stuffed animals.

  Too lumpy. She’d have noses and eyes and ears and beaks in her back all night, which was not recommended by the American Sleep Federation or whoever it was that came up with those ideal mattress guidelines. Neither were extremely soft mattresses, for that matter, but Avery liked them anyway. Especially this one.

  She put her face next to Mel’s on the pillow. Mel was gone, totally insensible. She could put her lips to Mel’s and try this theory out and Mel would never, ever know.

  No. That would be very creepy. Besides, it probably wouldn’t even tell her much since Mel would respond with all the passion of a CPR dummy. There was no way Avery could get a true reading.

  Avery forcefully shut her eyes, knowing that however awake she felt right now, the alcohol would put her under if she just stayed still. Eventually it worked, but not before Avery had opened her eyes a number of times, hoping to see Mel looking at her, suddenly awake and encouraging.

  There was light now.

  Mel opened her eyes and stared across the pillow at the tufts of brown-black hair that were inches from her face. She played with the tips of them. This gesture caused Avery to stir. She flipped over and faced Mel. Her mascara and eyeliner had smudged a bit, giving her vampy eyes.

  “You’re alive,” Avery said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m shocked. How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  “Fine?”

  “Maybe a little thirsty.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Avery said, rubbing her temples. “It’s actually kind of annoying.”

  “Sorry.” Mel grinned. “Wanna get up?”

  Avery groaned dramatically. “No. Need coffee. Will die. Please help.”

  “I think we have some downstairs,” Mel said, thinking for a moment. “I’m not sure. I’ve never made it.”

  “Be really quiet for a few minutes. I’m going to communicate with Starbucks by telepathy.”

  “Ooh. Get me a chai.”

  “Chai?” Avery said, looking over in horror.

  “I like chai,” Mel said defensively.

  “You also keep twelve hundred stuffed animals in your bed,” Avery said, nodding at the heaped menagerie. “What does that say?”

  “Well, I have to have something to keep me company at night. I don’t like sleeping alone.”

  Avery smirked at Mel’s explanation. “I guess you got lucky last night, then. A whole live person.”

  “Right,” Mel said, tucking her head against Avery’s on the pillow. “You’re more interesting than they are. You talk and everything.”

  “I never shut up.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Not much.”

  “I could make you shut up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Avery said, turning her face to Mel’s. “How?”

  In a way, Mel’s answer was a surprise to both of them. She simply sealed Avery’s lips with her own.

  And she was right. That seemed to shut Avery up.

  6

  After Avery had gone home, Mel laid flat on her back on her bed in the exact spot where she had been when Avery was there. Avery’s head dent in the pillow was gone, but Mel tried to preserve it.

  She’d known for a long time that this was going to happen someday; she just hadn’t realized that it would be today. And obviously it was going to be with someone, but she’d had no idea that someone was going to be Avery. She’d never mentioned it before because there was nothing to tell. It was all in her head. And now it had escaped. It was on the loose.

  For years the signs had been there, but Mel had chosen not to interpret them. There were the pangs she felt when she saw Nicole Kidman floating above the crowd on her swing in Moulin Rouge. There was her weird obsession with the nurse with the long brown hair on ER. And while she loved Harry Potter, it was Hermione that she couldn’t get off her mind.

  When it came to people in her actual life whom she tended to think about a lot, Mel had plenty of excuses. Micky Jameson in seventh-grade band always covered for Mel when she messed up her flute parts. The girl with the shoulder-length blond hair and the slight lisp in her sophomore-year geometry class had always lent her a pencil or a piece of paper when she asked. And so what if she imagined going to Paris with her junior-year French teacher, Mademoiselle Hall, the woman with the dark curly hair and the sly smile? Who cared that in Mel’s imaginings, they walked hand in hand through the market from page 76 of her French II book or that they went to dinner together in the romantic bistro pictured in chapter five, “Au restaurant"? She was just … thinking about French stuff.

  But she’d known. She’d absolutely known. The only thing she’d never done was write the word in the caption of the self-portrait that she kept in her head. That kept it from being real—because if it was real, she would have to deal with reality—and who even knew what the reality of being a lesbian was? That meant coming out and all kinds of complicated things that she really didn’t feel like thinking about before.

  But now it also meant that she could have this morning happen again, over an
d over. With Avery. It was too good to be true. Avery, who she’d always liked and loved, had suddenly become Avery who she liked and probably loved. Avery who had slept over a hundred times before, but this time Mel could say that Avery had been in her bed and it meant something very different—so unbelievably strange and great that she wondered if she was still drunk or if she’d gone insane and hallucinated the whole thing.

  She sat up and looked at herself in the mirror on her dresser.

  “I’m gay,” she told her reflection.

  The girl she saw staring back at her looked puzzled.

  “I’m a lesbian,” she tried again. Somehow she drew out the word in such a way that it sounded French. She tried it more slowly. She put the emphasis on every syllable in turn—LES-bi-an, les-BI-an, les-bi-AN.

  Nope. The girl in the mirror still wasn’t buying it.

  “You, Melanie Forrest,” she said firmly. “You are a lesbian.”

  This caused her to involuntarily raise her eyebrows and move back. She’d actually startled herself. She dropped back onto the bed and held her hands out in front of her face. They were so tiny and pasty white—washed-out little twig hands. She grabbed a handful of her dry orange hair. Should she cut it? Get herself one of those cute little pixie cuts? She always liked those. Or was that too much of a statement cut? Did she want to make a statement?

  If she got one of those cuts, she would look exactly like Peter Pan.

  With her long orange locks, her petite frame, and her alabaster skin and gold freckles, Mel had long been an object of desire to some, envy to others. Mel, however, had always wished for a voice that was more than a high-pitched whisper, that her flaming locks weren’t quite so Day-Glo, that her frame looked more like sleek muscle than spun glass. On top of it all, she had very, very slight points at the tops of her ears. Most people, when and if they noticed these, thought they were adorable. Mel didn’t think so. She thought her pointy ears made her look just like something that lived in a magical glade under a giant toadstool.

  She wasn’t only gay, she was a gay elf.

  She heard her father’s car pull up in the driveway and pulled herself away from the mirror. Her legs felt shaky and light as she went down the stairs, and she had to hold on to the rail for support. She was amazed at how sunny it was—she could clearly see the dust motes floating around in the sunbeam that came in through the three glass panels on their front door.

  “Doughnuts,” her father said, coming in and holding up a white box that was already developing the telltale clear grease marks that really good doughnuts always left behind.

  “Yum,” she said automatically.

  She followed him into the kitchen. One thing about living with her dad for the last nine years—they behaved like roommates in a lot of ways, and they ate like college kids. A dozen doughnuts was a perfectly acceptable breakfast. They’d be able to polish them off by the afternoon. It was a good thing that they were both naturally thin, and that he worked in construction and exercised off the fast food and pizza that constituted the majority of their meals.

  “Did you guys have a good time last night?” he asked, setting his things down on the floor.

  “It was good.”

  Mel kept her eyes trained on the box. She was sure that if she looked up, he would be able to see it all in her face, everything she’d done that morning. Some kind of mark had to be on her— some physical sign. But he just grabbed a chocolate doughnut and glanced through the mail that was scattered on the table.

  As close as she was to her dad (this was the man, after all, who’d had to give Mel the “something happens to girls every month” talk), she somehow didn’t think that he would know what to make of this new information. Two subjects always made him a little upset: Mel dating and Mel going to college and leaving home. They usually got around these because Mel didn’t ever date anyone for very long (for reasons that were now abundantly clear) and because she hadn’t even started thinking about college yet.

  It was possible, Mel realized, that he might be happy to know that this thing had happened with Avery. He knew Avery. He liked Avery. Avery was familiar. And Avery wasn’t some guy who’d get her pregnant or something like that.

  She brightened. Already she’d found one advantage to this whole situation—pregnancy would never be an issue. She would have to remember to use that when and if this subject ever came up.

  “Was camping good?” she asked.

  “Nice night. Yeah. Not too hot.”

  The phone rang. Mel’s head jerked up, and she involuntarily sprang out of her seat.

  “I’ll get it,” she said. She ran out to the hall and snatched the phone from the table.

  “Hey.” It was Avery. Mel couldn’t hear her brothers screaming in the background—this meant that Avery had barricaded herself in the basement bathroom, her most private phone spot.

  “Hi,” Mel said, hurrying up the stairs. She could feel her heart beating in her ear. Every word Avery said had to be listened to carefully and interpreted. This was uncharted territory, to say the least.

  “Are you … good?” Mel asked.

  Very loud pounding in her ear now. It almost hurt. She got to her room and shut the door.

  “Really good.”

  “Really?” Mel asked.

  “Want to do something later? Watch a movie or something?”

  “Or something” had never sounded so good. Mel sank down into the pile of animals that Avery had thrown to the floor and plunged her hand into them, squeezing them at random, trying to release the strange, wobbly feeling that was coming over her again.

  Not too eager, she told herself. Don’t sound desperate. It’s only Avery. Don’t act like a freak.

  “Sure,” she said. “If your brothers are bothering you, you can come over here and we could hang in my room.”

  Oh God. What was she saying?

  She was saying what she’d said ten million times before, except in the last two hours the meaning had changed. She grasped a handful of hair in agony.

  Like she could hide anything from Avery anyway. Avery had sixth and seventh and eighth senses and could tell more from the way someone stood or said “see you later” than Mel could if she stole the person’s diary and read it cover to cover.

  Avery didn’t answer right away.

  “Or something else,” Mel said.

  “No. That sounds good.”

  Avery’s tone didn’t give anything away, but Mel could tell. She was saying yes. Yes to coming back to Mel’s room. Yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes…

  Mel jumped up and got a head rush, and for a moment she couldn’t tell if she was in the most bliss she’d ever experienced in her life or if it was just one of those things she got when she stood too fast. (Pale, redheaded, anemic—it all went together.)

  “I have to practice for a few hours,” Avery said. “How about six?”

  “Okay,” Mel said, sinking back onto the bed. “See you at six.”

  When she hung up, she listened to her father moving around downstairs, turning on the television. She tried to peel herself off the bed to join him, but it was impossible. She was stuck there, heavy, dizzy—and she didn’t want to do anything that would make the feeling go away.

  When Avery emerged from the bathroom with the phone, she found that two of her younger brothers were chasing their collie, Bandit, around the basement, banging into the piano bench in the process. No wonder the thing was starting to fall apart.

  “Did you eat?” her mother shouted down from the kitchen. “I’m about to put this lunch meat away.”

  Avery dodged the chase scene and headed upstairs.

  “Okay,” her mom said, pointing at various square Tupperware containers that were stacked on the table. “Turkey. Ham. Salami. Roast beef. Yellow cheese. Orange cheese.”

  Avery popped open these last two containers and examined the cheeses. “Provolone and American,” she corrected. “Not yellow and orange.”

  “Rolls are in the bag on
the counter,” her mother went on. “There’s white bread in the freezer. You want mustard? I got the kind you like.”

  Avery nodded, and her mother produced a jar of thick, grainy mustard from the refrigerator. Avery was a sucker for this mustard. She would eat it with anything.

  “I’m taking these two to the mall for some sneakers,” her mom said. “Have fun last night?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Good. I have a chicken defrosting in some water in the sink. Can you check on it every once in a while and see how it’s coming? If it’s not totally defrosted by four, stick it in the microwave?”

  As her mother corralled her two brothers, Avery got herself a roll and made a sandwich. The events of that morning still weren’t really sinking in. Making out with your best friend for an hour, making a turkey sandwich with provolone and mustard—these two concepts didn’t belong in the same universe. Avery felt lightweight. Her legs were still shaking, and she was smiling involuntarily.

  When Mel had kissed her, Avery had first felt a rush just knowing that she had guessed correctly. But then they didn’t stop. Either of them. And though Avery had been curious the night before, she didn’t expect for it to feel as comfortable or natural as it did. There were lots of little differences kissing a girl. Mel was smaller than she was, which felt kind of strange. Avery’s arms went around her completely, with arm to spare. There was never a point where Avery felt like she had to be careful or that things might go too far. It was fun, and Mel giggled a lot, and Avery was soon experiencing a stupefying out-of-time feeling that she still hadn’t recovered from.

  She had, for instance, just used up about a fifth of the jar of mustard in quick, generous strokes. That was a lot, even for her. She put the lid back on the jar.

  “I’m going now,” her mom said, poking her head into the kitchen. “All right?”

  “Yeah.” Avery nodded. “It’s all good.”

  7

  Some facts.

  Fact: It is difficult to commit microeconomic concepts to memory when your roommate’s cell phone goes off once every two minutes and then she screams very intimate information to friends in a loud enough voice to be heard across the country without the aid of the phone.