by Liz Miles
She took out one of her headphones. “Are you okay?”
“I told Mira,” I said. I had confided in Katie about my crush at lunch after our last Poetry class. I was going to burst otherwise.
“Oh, my God.” She pulled out her other headphone and scrambled off her bed, coming to sit on mine.
“So?”
I told her about the conversation we had, before dinner. Afterwards, Katie sat back on her palms.
“I so knew she liked girls.”
I shrugged. “You really can’t always tell.”
“Yeah, but still.” She bit her nails. “How’d you leave it?”
“I don’t know. I mean, we didn’t talk about it at dinner. Obviously. And it’s not like I could get any more alone time with her now.”
Katie thought. “Yeah, you could.”
“How?” I asked, incredulous.
She shrugged. “Sneak out later.”
“But the wardens are like police out there.”
“Not after they’re asleep.”
I thought about this. “How late do you think I’d have to wait?”
“Like midnight? Maybe one?”
“Wouldn’t Mira’s roommate tell?”
“Joan?” Katie laughed. “C’mon, she probably sleeps like a bear. Mira even says she snores.”
I nodded, then flopped back on the bed with a sigh. “Oh, my God, I couldn’t. I have a boyfriend.”
“So?” Katie laughed. “It’s not like you’re going to fuck her.” I held my breath. Katie’s eyes bugged out. “Wait, are you?”
“I don’t even know what that means!” I wailed. Turning over, I pushed my face into the pillow and yelled.
There was a swift knock at the door. Our warden Kelly poked her head in.
“What’s going on in here?”
“Boy talk,” Katie chirped, a sweet smile on her face.
Kelly smiled back and closed the door. “Keep it down, okay.”
We burst out laughing.
“Just go talk to her,” Katie said, lowering her voice. “C’mon, you can’t start that conversation and not end it.”
“I should just let it go,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, but then you’re just gonna obsess over it.” She pointed a finger at me. “It’s like, find out if she likes you now, or spend the next like ten months wondering if you should drive up to Vermont and ask her yourself.”
I laughed. Katie took off her watch and began jamming the buttons. “Here,” she said, “I’m gonna set my alarm for midnight. You can decide then.”
“You’re the best,” I said.
“Anything for love,” Katie chortled, and my heart swelled and felt sick at the same time. Love? This was a crush. Tommy was love. But I was beginning to doubt the difference.
• • •
I didn’t sleep much. I kept waking up every few minutes to check Katie’s watch, which she had left on the floor between our beds. Finally, when it said 11:57, I fiddled with the alarm to turn it off and gingerly got out of bed.
The hallways were dark, except for a mix of moonlight and fluorescent street lamps coming in from windows at both ends of the hall. Downstairs the light in the common room had been left on and shone orange light through the banisters.
My heart was thumping quickly even though I had rehearsed it a million times—if anyone asked, I would say I was going to the bathroom. Mira and Joan’s room was actually the door across from the girls’ bathroom, so I could, if I got caught twisting their doorknob, say I got confused. I tried to imagine Lisa or Kelly believing me, but shut off my imagination when it got that far.
At their door, I kept my hand on the doorknob a long time. I hadn’t thought it this far. After what seemed like for ever, pins and needles forming in my bare feet, I slowly twisted the knob and pushed the door open, praying it didn’t creak.
Mira was, luckily, sleeping in the bed closer to the door. She stirred, and I held my breath. Her body turned over toward me, and I saw her squint, then sit up quickly, then squint again.
I held a finger to my lips. She smiled. Getting out of bed, she pulled on a pair of jeans, then looked at me. “Let me get my cigarettes,” she whispered.
I stepped back from the door, the racing fear in my heart turning to giddiness. Mira Albany, my heart sang, Mira Albany, Mira Albany.
She came out into the hallway and slowly pulled the door shut behind her. She then stood very close in front of me, our faces nearly touching.
“Where should we go?” I whispered, trying to make my voice as far from audible as I could.
“The bathroom?”
“Someone could come in.”
She turned away from me, and when she did so, she put her hand on my hip. I thought I might die.
“The boys’ bathroom,” she said. “C’mon.”
At the other end of the hall was the boys’ bathroom, smelling of bleach, the blue cakes of cleaner untouched in the urinals. She lead the way to a rectangular window at the other end, by the shower stalls, and pushed it open a sliver. I leaned against the wall, the tiles cold on my shoulder. She turned toward me, and I thought I would lose everything—my ability to speak, my ability to see.
She took her cigarettes from her back pocket and pulled out the two we had started earlier. “Here,” she whispered, and I liked it that we were still quiet, that this was still a secret.
I put the cigarette in my mouth and she struck a match, the sudden light coming between us. I closed my eyes as I inhaled, then pulled back, blowing smoke toward the window. She lit her own, shook out the match, then tossed it out the window.
“I’m so glad you came and got me,” she said.
“I had to,” I smiled.
By the tiny light of our cigarettes, I could see her smirk. “I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t think you were the kind to sneak out.”
I shrugged. “It was Katie’s idea.”
“Katie?”
I realized what I was revealing here, and quickly sucked on my cigarette. “Well,” I said, “she knew who my crush is.” The next words came to me and I said them with a cool look of nonchalance. “She wanted to make sure that I got to see her.”
Mira tucked her chin into her chest and laughed. Looking back at me, she whispered, “I guess your crush isn’t Michael Strout.”
We both laughed, and the sound echoed off the shadows. I looked at the door for a moment, remembering the danger of where we were and what we were doing, and felt momentarily panicked again. We both smoked in silence. Then I reached up to smudge my cigarette out on the concrete of the window pane, and flicked it outside.
“Amber,” she said. And when I turned back, she kissed me.
Mira was only the fourth person I had ever kissed in my whole life, and it was awkward, at first. Her teeth banged up against mine. I found myself putting my hand on her hip, and she slowed. I bit her lip, and she pulled away, a small laugh. We looked at each other, and then she kissed me again, and her hand slid under my T-shirt and my breath caught in my throat. I tucked my mouth against the warmth of her neck. I could hear her breath quicken, and when she spread her full palm over my stomach, I sighed.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, and I grinned into her neck.
Was it cheating? Was this cheating? Was I cheating? It seemed a whole different plane. I was 400 miles, a six-hour train ride, three states from home.
As if reading my thoughts, she pulled back and looked at me. “Is this okay?”
I still had one hand on the back of her head, her hair brushing against my fingers. “Yes,” I said. “No. Sure. I don’t know.” A nervous burst of laughter passed my lips. She smiled, leaning forward to kiss me again. We pressed up against the wall, my bare foot crushing her pack of cigarettes on the tile floor.
Outside, someone coughed. My shoulders seized up around my ears, and she whipped her head around, her fingers tight on my hip.
“Shit,” she breathed.
“Who—’ I said, but she squeezed me wh
ere her hand was and I shut up.
There was the creak of the door to the girls’ bathroom down the hall, then a gentle bang when it closed.
“We should go back,” I said.
Mira hadn’t relaxed and was continuing to stare at the door with hard eyes. I ducked to pick up her cigarettes and held them out to her, nodding to the hallway. “C’mon, c’mon.”
“Okay,” she said, “I’m coming.”
I pulled the door open slowly and we slipped out. It was disorienting, to be among the shadows of the hallway, our eyes adjusting to the dark. Mira held her hands out behind her as we walked along and I took them, lacing our fingers together. We were close to the door to her and Joan’s room when we heard the toilet flush, the sink go.
We froze. I had let go of her hands to push her along, when the bathroom door opened. As she sprinted the last few feet, a voice behind us hissed. “Albany.”
We whipped around.
Kiana was bent toward us. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt with splatters of glow-in-the-dark paint on it, and her hair was wild from not being in a ponytail.
She hurried toward us. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Mira whispered. She looked from me to Kiana, then turned and slipped into her room.
I looked at Kiana. She had a perplexed look on her face. “What were you doing?” she asked again.
My legs felt weak. What had we been doing? “Nothing,” I whispered, then, after a pause, “We were having a cigarette.”
Kiana sucked her teeth in the quietest manner possible. “Right,” she smirked. Then she turned to go back to her room.
“Kiana!” I whispered, louder than I intended. She turned around and looked at me.
“We were having a cigarette,” I repeated.
From one of the rooms where the wardens slept, there was the sound of someone shuffling about. Kiana made an about-face toward her room, and I turned, speeding toward my room and quickly shutting myself inside.
Katie was asleep, her arm splayed out above her head, her jaw slack. In the dark, her dreadlocks looked serpent-like. A teenage Medusa.
In bed, I stared at the dark of the ceiling and listened to my heart race. I kept trying to memorize it—Mira Albany’s lips, Mira Albany’s hand on my hip, where her palm had touched my stomach, how her breathing had shifted, how it felt to bow my mouth to her neck.
I had never so fiercely wanted to keep a memory that I also wanted to erase.
Tommy and I had talked about cheating once. Or rather, we had talked about girls, and how I liked them. It was the day Tommy told me why women wear high heels. We were sitting on one of the faux leather couches that had cropped up around the mall, fake plants and coffee tables, like the mall was part hotel. The couches were usually filled with department-store clerks on their lunch breaks, or groups of teenage girls rummaging through their bags to talk about what they had bought. That day we had found a couch all to ourselves and were people-watching. When he asked me what kind of girls I thought were cute, it took me a long time until I saw someone who I found attractive.
“Her,” I whispered, nodding toward a girl walking out of the music shop. She had short messy hair and a mean face. She was wearing combat boots and cargo pants, vaguely boyish.
“Really?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “I mean, she looks like she could be gay or something. Maybe.”
“What about girls who don’t look gay?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t you think they’re hot?”
I made a face. Tommy scanned the people walking by, and then smiled. He turned to me, trying to look nonchalant.
“Girl who just came out of Sunglass Hut. By the escalator.”
I turned. There was a girl in one of the short skirts that were in all the magazines this month. Hers was black, and she wore it with black tights and dark-gray high heels. The purse on her shoulder was some kind of designer thing with big gold clasps on it. She wore her hair in a tight ponytail, smudged make-up around her eyes.
“In the heels?” I asked, skeptical.
“She’s smokin’,” he laughed. I rolled my eyes, smiling. We both watched her get on the escalator. She looked around her with an air of boredom, like she couldn’t wait to leave the place.
“You know why women wear high heels, right?”
I looked at him. “Ugh, no. They’re so pointless.”
Tommy smirked. “They’re not. They have a purpose.”
I raised my eyebrows. He continued, “They raise the woman’s ass. And they do something to the legs, or the calves, maybe. Believe me, there’s a reason women look good in heels.”
I turned back to the escalator to look. The girl with the ponytail was on the second level now, and I watched as she walked above us, passing the T-shirt shop and the candle boutique, the same bored expression on her face. I tried to watch her ass, to see if it looked especially desirable, or different, than the ass of any other woman on the face of the earth.
I didn’t notice anything, but I blushed, unabashedly checking out women like this. I felt small butterflies of desire bloom in my stomach.
“Do you check out girls a lot?” Tommy asked. A few moments passed, then I shook my head.
“Not really. I mean, sometimes I see girls who I think are cute. Like when we’re in the city.”
He nodded, looking a little hurt. I scooted closer to him, leaning my head on his shoulder.
“It’s not about you, though,” I said. “It’s different. Like …” I thought for a few moments. “If you were on a diet of just strawberries. Sometimes you might see a box of blueberries, and it would look good.”
Tommy was quiet. “But what if you stop liking strawberries?” he asked.
I burst out laughing. He turned his face from me, scowling at the potted plant beside the couch we sat on. “Oh, Tommy,” I laughed, putting my arms around him.
“I’m serious,” he said.
“Listen. I like you. I like you a lot. And I like you now, and I’ll like you tomorrow, and for a long, long time. As long as you like me back.”
“I like you, too,” he said quietly.
“Lucky for you,” I added, “I love strawberries. Love them.”
He blushed, and I kissed his cheek, lingered there, then kissed him full on. When we pulled away from each other, he held my hand. I felt good and safe, like I wasn’t lying. He knew I liked girls. Someday I would date girls. Right now, I was dating him. I loved him.
That night at Alfred, though, before I went to sleep, I decided I wouldn’t tell him.
• • •
The breakfast on the last day was more casual. Kids’ parents had started arriving, and they were all eating in groups, showing their mothers and fathers around campus, introducing their new friends. Some people’s families just ate breakfast and left.
I ate breakfast by myself, although both Katie’s family and Lindsay’s family came over to say hello and invite me to sit with them. I gestured to my book and said that I was okay, thanks. At noon, one of the wardens was going to drive me to the train station for my 12:30 train back home. I wouldn’t get in until eight. There were two hours to wait between trains in New York, and Tommy had talked about coming up to meet me, so we could hang in New York for a tiny bit, then go the rest of the way back together. I was relieved that the idea hadn’t panned out. The idea of seeing him in four hours was too much.
My true reason for sitting alone was my hope of talking to Mira. Every time someone entered the cafeteria, I looked up, waiting for her to come through the swinging doors. Joan had come down with her mom. They were sitting at a table by the window. I thought about asking Joan if Mira was still asleep, but I didn’t want to be rude. Or desperate. Kiana had come to say goodbye. She was with Jackie and Jackie’s cousin, a gorgeous guy in his twenties who had come to drive them both back to New York. They were as loud and raucous as anything. The wardens seemed relieved to not be in charge of them any more. I waited f
or her to say something when she said goodbye, but she didn’t. She and Jackie and I exchanged emails, and Jackie said that if I was ever in the city we should hang out together. I loved it, that suddenly New York was a possibility, a city with friends to visit.
I watched Joan and her mother bring their trays to the clean-up station. They were about to leave when Joan stopped and dug through her purse, pulling out a folded paper. She scanned the cafeteria, then brightened when she saw me. She walked over quickly, her purse flapping behind her.
“Hey,” she said. “Are your parents coming?”
I shook my head. “I have a train at 12:30.”
“That’s so cool,” she said. “I don’t think my mom would ever let me take a train so far by myself.”
I shrugged. “It’s just six hours. It’s not so bad.”
She nodded. Then she held the paper out for me. “Mira asked me to give this to you.”
“Is she upstairs?”
Joan looked confused, then shook her head. “Oh, no. She left way earlier. Her dad came.”
“She left?” I knew I sounded dejected. I hope I just sounded crazy and not, well, heartsick.
“Yeah, he came at like eight this morning. She wasn’t even packed yet, but they left right after that.” Noticing my hurt look, she added, “I don’t think she got to say goodbye to most people.”
“Right,” I said. I put my hand on the paper and slid it closer to my tray.
“Well,” Joan smiled, “Have a good summer! I wrote my e-mail address in your poetry book, yeah?”
“Yeah, totally,” I said, returning a smile. She put her arms out and I stood up so we could hug. I gave a polite wave to her mother and waited until they were safely out the swinging doors before folding open the paper.
Inside, Mira had written her e-mail address and her phone number. Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye, she wrote. Call me if you want to, it’s gonna be a long summer, yeah? There were some words she had erased, and over the gray smudges she wrote, I crave your lips and will dream of the night ours met. XX, Mira
