All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

  But now, when all I wanted was to save her, he was determined to keep us apart.

  I wondered if he would know, when she died, that his stubborn grip on the past had taken her from both of us.

  * * *

  When lightning struck, I was elbow deep in chicken feathers out back. Pulling my weight. Staying close. One moment it was just the dull ache of the inevitable, as it had been for weeks. The next I was on the ground, panting for breath, choking on summer dust and marigolds.

  There was a weight on my chest, so heavy I couldn’t get up.

  There were feathers in my hair.

  A bucket of blood had spilled; it was seeping into the dirt.

  In their enclosure, the chickens were restless.

  Those were my last thoughts before the sky closed up and I drifted into darkness.

  When I woke up, my abuela was leaning over my bed, silhouetted in the light from the gray sky beyond the window. I reached for her, but when I blinked again she had my mama’s no-nonsense face.

  My heart fell, and she saw it, and for a moment I was sorry.

  “You’re going to Tío José’s,” she said. And this time I knew: even my most grown-up sadness wasn’t going to change her mind.

  I wanted to hate her, to scream, to beg. But the marigold scent was gone, and my chest still ached and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to be the girl who used to live here. A girl who barely remembered Rosa going or already gone.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “He’ll come for you tomorrow. Your papa walked to the telephone to let him know.”

  I nodded. My head was heavy. My heart was nowhere to be found. “Would you make me some hot water with a cinnamon stick?” I asked, and when she smiled, I smiled.

  “Of course, m’ija,” she said. She laid her hand briefly on my forehead, sniffing before disappearing into the hallway.

  I reclined back into my pillow, closed my eyes and with everything I was, I tried to wish Rosa well, in life or in death. To forgive her father, even though it was his fault. Even though it was all his fault.

  The world disappeared; the empty place throbbed. There was so much cold in the world. Maybe at Tío José’s, in a country that knew me, though I had never known it, I would get to be warm again.

  But first, I had to let Rosa go, and my dreams seemed to know it. As I slept I lost her in a million ways, and it hurt and hurt and hurt.

  When I woke, the dark air was thick with cinnamon, and my mother was screaming.

  I put my feet on the floor, expecting to feel dizzy, but everything was still and clear, and I walked to the door like someone was leading me there.

  Metal and smoke and booze filled the room, and I knew him before I saw him. Rosa’s father.

  “Tell me where she is,” he growled, advancing as my mama hit him again and again with the house shoe from her own foot.

  “Get out of my house!” she screamed. “I won’t let you hurt her!”

  But he didn’t want to hurt me. I could see grief beading up on him like the sheen of whiskey sweat. In the air between us, his heart was breaking, and it was more powerful than his hate.

  “It’s all right, Mama,” I said, and for once she didn’t argue. Maybe she could feel it, too.

  The walls whispered, Be still, as he approached. Closer. Closer. Until I could see every vein in his bloodshot eyes. Until I could see his heart beating.

  Wait. Be still.

  “She’s dying.” His voice was gravel on glass. “She’s... I’m losing her.”

  Wait.

  “She says you can help. Says your...grandmother...showed you how.”

  Just a little longer.

  He sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to give him an easy out. I could almost hear the clock ticking in his chest, shaking his skull until his teeth ground together. “Save my little girl,” he said around a lifetime of fear. “Please.”

  My heart was a cage that had been unlocked, and a thousand hopeful birds took flight.

  “Thank you,” I said. And then I ran.

  There was no time to go back for the bones and pink candles or the stones I hadn’t buried, but with Abuela whispering in the wind I grabbed handfuls of sage, rosemary, desert willow and lavender. My heartbeat urged me on. My memories told me my intentions mattered more than my tools, and Rosa was alive. Alive and waiting for me.

  Her house rose like its own sun on the horizon as I drew closer, the burn in my legs nothing to the desperation in every step. The texture of the walls, the rounded edges—so familiar, so bright with the joy of her being.

  “Rosa!” I cried, banging through the door like I’d never been banned. “Rosa! I’m here!”

  Her whisper was too quiet to be heard, but I felt it. I would have followed it anywhere.

  “You brought flowers,” she whispered through parched lips that cracked when she smiled. “For me?”

  The skin stretched tight across her cheeks; her eyes were swollen and red. The hair I’d once delighted in braiding with tiny bright flowers lay limp and lifeless against her pillow.

  “I love you,” I said, crossing the room to lay the herbs across her chest.

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the desert. “I love you, too.”

  The words were a string from her heart to mine, and in its pull I could read what would come. When I touched her forehead with mine, when I pressed my lips to hers, it wasn’t because I couldn’t be sure. It was because I could.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what hurts.”

  She closed her eyes tight. “I can’t,” she said. “You know I can’t. You’re here, querida, and it’s enough. Just say goodbye.”

  “Nobody’s saying goodbye,” said a gruff voice from behind me.

  “Papa!” Her eyes were wide and fearful. “It’s not what you think! She only...”

  “Rosa,” he said, his eyes clear for once and focused on her wasted face. “Tell her.”

  She closed her eyes, and something like peace touched their corners. “Thank you,” she said, and I could feel the tears in his throat that kept him from answering. But he wasn’t the one that needed healing today.

  I turned back to Rosa, placing my hands on her chest, just above the place I’d always wanted to. Inside her was a darkness so thick it made my pulse pound, and it was swirling around her heart.

  Her eyes were closed, and I could feel her gathering strength. The darkness hissed and spit at the light, and I let her be for the moment. We needed all the fight we could muster.

  My mama came in with candles, lit them and bound the herbs I’d gathered into a broom with bright red string from an apron pocket.

  “You came?” I asked.

  “She would be proud of you” was her only answer. She placed the broom in my hands before taking Rosa’s father’s arm and leaving us alone.

  “Rosa,” I said, and she opened her eyes. “It’s time.”

  She nodded, and despite the weakness of her body there was determination there.

  “It started with the dreams...” she began, and I followed her inside her darkness. “I’m small, hanging over my papa’s shoulder. He’s running and it’s hurting me, and there are gunshots and screaming and everything smells like smoke.” So this was it, the war my mama had never let me hear a word of. The war that had brought Rosa and her papa desperate to our door all those years ago.

  “I’m screaming, too,” she said, her voice far away, fleeing a war that had stolen her family and her home half a lifetime ago. “He tells me to be quiet. The noises are too loud. The smoke is too thick. I can’t breathe.” She choked then, and I held her steady by her frail shoulders until the coughing subsided. The candles flickered, burning low as the darkness began to stir in the air between us.

  A quiet voice in my heart told me to stay still, to let the thread un
furl, and for a moment I smelled my abuela’s rose water cologne.

  “I’m crying for my mama,” said Rosa, sightless eyes still lost in the past. “The noise took her. The smoke. And my papa says she’s coming but his eyes are too sad...” Her own eyes were sparkling with tears unshed, and her hand found mine between us, the bony fingers applying the slightest pressure. “There’s blood. Blood on his jacket. Blood on my bare feet.”

  She was breathing too fast, starting to sob, choking like the stuffy air in her room was on fire. The candle burned brighter, and I closed my eyes into the feeling around me, trying to smell the smoke of her fear, trying to breathe it all in and hold it.

  “I know she died,” she whispered, a break in the tears. “I know there was a war, and we ran, and he saved us. I’ve never told anyone about the dreams.” She took a deep breath. “Not even Papa. What right do I have? When they all died, and I got to live? But when I wake up my heart is pounding, and I feel so weak. Food tastes like dust. My head spins.” She closed her eyes against the spinning, and for a moment I felt it, too. Like we were one heart living in two bodies.

  “Keep going,” I said, and lit incense from her bedside table that made her cough till her cheeks were pink.

  “At first it only happened when I woke up,” she said when she could speak again. “But now it never stops. I smell the war, the metal and the gunpowder and the burning. I see the blood everywhere, and I miss my mama, and my papa hates me for having her face and...” She was reaching the limits of what she could stand. I could feel the darkness taking shape as her words and the herbs and the candles drew it from her chest. “He saved me, but I’m dying anyway. I’m dying and I’m so sorry...”

  She was sobbing in earnest, big racking sobs. The darkness ran from her in rivulets and I swept the incense over her body like I’d seen my abuela do a hundred times. Her fear was sucking at us, both of us, but I wouldn’t stop. Not until she was free.

  Pray, said the roses and the walls, and Rosa must have heard them, too, because she closed her eyes again, moving her lips now, beseeching. I fanned her with incense and swept her body with the broom. My heart wanted nothing but to beg for her life, and I let it, opening wide, letting all the light inside me loose as an offering to whoever would listen.

  Please. Please. Please.

  In that dark, smoky womb we joined our wills and waited. Until sweat poured from our skin. Until a second was an hour and a minute was a year. Until I thought my legs would have no choice but to give way.

  And then—were my eyes open or closed?—the darkness that had puddled on the floor rose up, a feathery creature indistinct in the haze. When I looked into its cold, punishing eye, I wanted to run. Everything inside me quaked and shook and all the joy healing my Rosa had brought threatened to go out like a candle in the wind.

  My own fear swelled in my belly, answering the call, and it was all a horrible mistake. Me, coming here. Me, believing I could heal her darkness when I couldn’t even face my own.

  But out of nowhere came the smell of cinnamon, the memory of my abuela’s strong hand in mine as I battled to get free all those years ago. I could do this. I had done this. And she was here, in the haze. I didn’t have to see her to know.

  “It’s time to go,” I croaked, and it laughed a sinister laugh for my ears alone.

  “It’s time to GO!” I shouted, and it quivered in the air.

  With the herb broom I beat the shadow toward the window, shouting wordless banishments, and Rosa was shouting, too. The door opened with a bang, and my mama ran to the window, throwing it open into the night.

  “Be gone!” bellowed Rosa’s grief-soaked father.

  With a last sweep of the broom that I was sure would take my arms with it, I felt the last wing beat of the dark feathers leave the room.

  My mother slammed the window shut.

  All was quiet.

  The flame of each candle grew to twice its size until the room was bathed in golden light. On shaking, unsure legs I crossed to Rosa’s bedside.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, all the hope in the world at the back of my throat.

  “See for yourself,” she said, and guided my hands to her chest, closer than ever to the place they’d always wanted to be.

  I closed my eyes, and plain as a picture, saw my abuela smiling.

  See for yourself.

  In the tangle of veins and pulse and heartbeat, I looked for the darkness. But where it had been, there was nothing but light.

  * * *

  It’s springtime now, and the cactus flowers are in full bloom. Rosa’s cheeks bloom, too, as she traces one along the planes of my stomach, painting hearts until I giggle and pull her down beside me.

  The days are getting longer, the darkness on its heels for another season.

  In the setting sun, I kiss her, and she tastes like marigolds.

  * * * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Dahlia Adler (she/her) is an associate editor of mathematics by day, a blogger for the B&N Teen Blog by night and a writer of kissing books at every spare moment in between. She’s the author of Behind the Scenes, Under the Lights, Just Visiting and the Radleigh University series, and a contributor to the historical young adult anthology The Radical Element. She’s also the founder of LGBTQ Reads, a resource dedicated to promoting LGBTQIAP literature for all ages. She and her overstuffed bookshelves live in New York City.

  Sara Farizan (she/her) is the daughter of Iranian immigrants and grew up feeling different in her private high school, not only because of her ethnicity but also because of liking girls romantically, her lack of excitement in science and math, and her love of writing plays and short stories. So she came out of the closet in college, realized math and science weren’t so bad (but not for her), and decided she wanted to be a writer. She is an MFA graduate of Lesley University and holds a BA in film and media studies from American University. Sara has been a Hollywood intern, a waitress, a comic book/record store employee, an art magazine blogger, a marketing temp, and an after-school teacher, but above all else she has always been a writer. Her first novel, If You Could Be Mine, was the 2014 Lambda Literary Award winner for youth fiction, and both the Debut Fiction and LGBT Fiction Triangle Award winner. Her second novel, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, was named one of the 2015 Capitol Choices: Noteworthy Books for Children, and was a finalist for Young Adult Fiction in the 2015 Indies Choice Book Awards.

  Tessa Gratton (she/her) has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, then settled down in Kansas to tell stories about monsters, magic and kissing. She’s the author of The Blood Journals series and the Gods of New Asgard series, coauthor of YA writing guides The Curiosities and The Anatomy of Curiosity, as well as dozens of short stories available in anthologies and on merryfates.com. Her current projects include Tremontaine at Serial Box Publishing, her adult fantasy debut, The Queens of Innis Lear, from Tor, and YA fantasy Slaughter Moon from McElderry, both available in 2018. Visit her at tessagratton.com.

  Shaun David Hutchinson (he/his) is the author of numerous books for young adults, including The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley, which won the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal in the Young Adult category and was named to the ALA’s 2015 Rainbow Book List; the anthology Violent Ends, which received a starred review from VOYA; We Are the Ants, which received five starred reviews and was named a best book of January 2016 by Amazon.com, Kobo.com, Publishers Weekly, and iBooks; and At the Edge of the Universe. He lives in South Florida with his adorably chubby dog, and enjoys Doctor Who, comic books and yelling at the TV. Visit him at shaundavidhutchinson.com.

  Kody Keplinger (she/her) is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The DUFF, Lying Out Loud and Run. She is a writing teacher, a fashion and makeup lover,
and a cofounder of disabilityinkidlit.com. She lives in NYC with her service dog and two black cats.

  Mackenzi Lee (she/her) is a Boston bookseller with a BA in history and an MFA from Simmons College in writing for children and young adults. She is the author of the young adult historical fantasy novels This Monstrous Thing, which won the PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award, and The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. You can find her on Twitter, @themackenzilee, where she curates a weekly storytime about badass women from history you probably didn’t know about but should. She loves Diet Coke, sweater weather and Star Wars. On a perfect day, she can be found enjoying all three.

  Malinda Lo (she/her) is the author of several young adult novels, including most recently A Line in the Dark. Her novel Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and was a Kirkus Best Book for Children and Teens. She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda’s nonfiction has been published by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, the Huffington Post, The Toast, The Horn Book, and AfterEllen. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their dog. Her website is www.malindalo.com.

  Nilah Magruder (she/her) is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. From her beginnings in the woods of Maryland she developed an eternal love for three things: nature, books and animation. She is the author of How to Find a Fox, a picture book. Her young adult webcomic, M.F.K., won the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in 2015 and was published in print by Insight Comics in fall 2017. She has also drawn for Disney and DreamWorks, and written for Marvel. When she is not drawing or writing, Nilah is reading fantasy novels, watching movies, roller-skating and fighting her cat for control of her desk chair.

  Tehlor Kay Mejia (she/her) is a YA author and poet at home in the wild woods and alpine meadows of southern Oregon. When she’s not writing, you can find her plucking at her guitar, stealing rosemary sprigs from overgrown gardens or trying to make the perfect vegan tamale. Her debut novel, We Set the Dark on Fire, is forthcoming from Katherine Tegan/HarperCollins.