by Robin Talley
I was watching Dad’s face as he talked—his slow, patient delivery, the same way he gave sermons at church—so I didn’t look at Drew until Dad was finished. When I did turn to face my brother, he was shaking, too.
We’d never known our uncle, but still, tears sprang into my eyes at the thought of him walking into that recruiting center all alone. Just like Drew did yesterday.
“I swore afterward that I would do everything in my power to support peace.” Dad’s eyes were still locked on Drew’s. “Because there is no reason for anyone’s brother or sister, or son, to put their life on the line for someone else’s politics. And I assure you, Drew—and you, too, Aki—that’s all wars are. The very worst kind of politics.”
Drew was shaking harder than ever. “You never told us.”
“I know, son, and I’m sorry, but—”
“All these years.” Drew was yelling now. I could feel the strength of his fury. It scared me. “You lied to us. You. You’re a minister. You’re our dad, and you lied to us.”
Dad’s eyes widened. “Son, that’s not—”
“You lied!” Drew rocked from side to side where he stood, his hands balling into fists. “I can’t believe you!”
Then he turned and half ran, half stumbled toward the street. When he reached the pavement, he took off in a flat-out run back toward the old church.
Dad stared after Drew. He was still shaking, too.
I couldn’t stay here. I ran after my brother. “Wait! Drew!”
But I was too slow, or he was too fast. He’d seemed tired before, but now he was running at full tilt, and his legs were a lot longer than mine. “Wait! Please, wait for me!”
But too soon he was out of my sight. He must’ve passed the church and kept on going.
I slowed, my breath coming in gasps. Up ahead, I spotted something familiar.
My suitcase. The one I hadn’t seen in three weeks. It was lying against the side of the church, next to a dusty red pickup truck.
Carlos was standing next to it.
He waved. “Aki! I’m sorry it took us so long, but we drove into Tijuana yesterday, and here it is!”
And maybe it was because I was mad at Dad or Drew or Nick or even Christa. But in that moment, my hatred for Carlos surged up all at once until it consumed me.
I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to act as if everything was normal. As if he wasn’t having a disgusting affair with my underage former best friend.
I’d promised Lori I wouldn’t say anything. But—ugh, the man was repulsive. If I kept quiet, it could go on forever.
Someone had to do something.
Besides, I knew what it meant now to be with someone you really cared about. Carlos was cheating Lori out of experiencing that.
I ran up to him, the adrenaline still surging through me. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but the right words would come when I got there, I was sure of it.
Before I could open my mouth, though, Lori grabbed my arm.
“Gracias,” she said. “Thank you, Carlos.”
Carlos looked from me to Lori. His smile wavered slightly.
“You’re welcome.” He tipped his hat to me, then Lori. Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away, glancing back over his shoulder at us as he went.
“Wait!” I started to call. Lori held her hand over my mouth. I pushed her away, but it was too late. Carlos was out of earshot.
“You can’t keep doing this.” I jerked out of Lori’s grasp, grabbed my suitcase and hauled it up. It was dustier than when I’d seen it last. “If you don’t end it, I’m going to tell someone. I swear. You can’t do this, Lori. It isn’t right.”
“I know.” When I looked back at her, her lower lip was trembling. “It isn’t.”
“Then what on earth are you doing it for?” I heaved the suitcase up the church steps. It was incredibly heavy. I could barely remember what I’d packed.
My breath was starting to even out. I couldn’t process everything that had just happened. My dad—my brother—my uncle, God, my uncle.
I couldn’t think. All I could do was lug my suitcase across the dark, deserted church, not caring when I bumped into people’s stuff, when I stepped on the boys’ strewn sleeping bags.
Lori followed me and watched in silence as I dropped the suitcase next to my sleeping bag with a final heave. When I turned back to her, she was crying. Full-on, tears-running-down-her-face crying.
“I’m not,” she said. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “With Carlos. I made it up.”
“You—what?”
I couldn’t process this, either.
Why would she say something like that if it wasn’t true? And the way Carlos had looked at her just now—
Wait. He’d looked at me, then at her. With his forehead wrinkled up, as though he was confused.
He hadn’t looked guilty. He’d looked lost.
He’d thought I was acting weird. Because I didn’t thank him for going all the way to Tijuana for my suitcase. Instead I’d stood there, glaring at him.
Lori really had made the whole thing up.
“Why?” My anger surged all over again. “Why would you tell me that?”
Her tears were noisy. The messy sounds echoed in the empty church.
“Because it’s embarrassing, okay?” She blew her nose on her sleeve. “Everybody else has stuff going on. You’ve got stuff going on. And I’m just sitting around, waiting by myself. I guess I wanted to have stuff going on, too.”
“Even if it was something you made up?” It seemed so obvious now, that she’d been lying. I couldn’t believe I’d bought it. But Lori and I had never lied to each other before.
Lori shrugged, her tears coming faster. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Why?” What was happening? Why were so many things wrong all at once? “Because of the stupid fling pact?”
“No, it’s not that.” Lori scrubbed at the tears running down her cheeks. “It felt like—like I’ve been waiting forever for my real life to start. I thought maybe if I started acting as if something was happening, something really would.”
Oh. That—I could sort of understand that.
“But it’s not like there’s a rush,” I said. “We’ve got lots of time to start our real lives.”
She blew her nose again. “These are our real lives. Besides, you’ve been in a massive rush ever since we got here. You and that girl went from zero to sixty in a day.”
“No we didn’t!” I shook my head furiously.
Then I stopped to think about it.
I’d met Christa three weeks ago. Then, this weekend, I’d had sex with her.
That was never how I’d thought it would go. When Lori and I used to talk about our first times, with our first serious boyfriends—and it was definitely always boyfriends back then—we always thought we’d be with a guy for a long time first. “Not until you’ve been on, like, fifty dates,” Lori had said once, while I nodded along. “Not until you’ve gone out wearing a fancy dress and he’s brought you roses.”
We were kids then. We didn’t know what we were talking about.
Still, though.
I’d never thought it was possible to feel about someone the way I felt about Christa. Yeah, it had only been a few weeks, but they’d been a really intense few weeks.
And despite all that...what Christa and I had wasn’t serious. It couldn’t be. Sure, it felt that way sometimes, but she was already serious with somebody else.
That thought twisted in my chest until I pushed it away.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I get it. Kind of. But please tell me you wouldn’t do this in real life. Carlos is old. He’s married.
”
“God, no.” Lori shuddered. “I was kind of offended you believed me, actually.”
“Okay, good.” I looked at my sneakers. “And I’m sorry I told Christa all that stuff. I can’t believe she told Madison. She feels really bad about that now, by the way.”
Lori looked away. “I know that stuff shouldn’t matter, but it does. I hate knowing people are talking about me.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah. If it helps, though, no one’s really talking about you and her lately. At least not from what I hear. You guys are old news.”
“Not anymore.” I told her about what Nick had done on the bus. Lori’s face paled.
“He’s not going to—” She swallowed. “Oh, my God. He wouldn’t really, would he?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I hope he’s bluffing.”
“I mean, that’s a seriously awful thing for him to do. I knew he was pissed about you getting him in trouble, but—”
“You did?” I frowned. “Has he been going around talking about that?”
“Yeah, they have, some.” Lori’s words came out in a rush. She looked really worried. “But I can’t believe Nick would seriously threaten you that way.”
“Yeah, it would be really bad. If he seriously sends that photo around, Christa’s parents will see it, and that would be awful for her.”
“Ugh. I’ll try to see what I can find out, okay? Jake might know something, too. He always knows what’s going on.”
I nodded, grateful. From the way she was acting, Lori must think we were friends again. I was glad. She couldn’t un-say the things she’d said—but then, neither could I. And the truth was, I needed my best friend back.
“Can I tell you something else?” I asked her, glancing around again to make sure we were totally alone.
“Sure, what?”
In a rush, I swore her to secrecy, then told her what had happened with Drew and what Dad had just told us. By the time I was done, I was blinking back tears again.
“Oh, my God.” Lori’s mouth hung open. “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible about your uncle.”
“It’s weird. I don’t even know how to think about it. He died before I was even born. But I can’t even register what this means. I can’t believe my parents would keep this a secret. For my whole life, you know?”
“Yeah. For real.”
We were both quiet. I was feeling so many different things, all at once.
“Also, um...” I covered my face with my hand. Even with everything else that was happening, my brain kept pulsing, You had sex last night. You had sex last night. YOU HAD SEX LAST NIGHT. “On a totally different subject, can I tell you some, um, news? From this weekend?”
Lori’s lips turned up into a huge grin. “You and her did it, didn’t you?”
I winced. “Guilty.”
Lori clapped her hands and laughed. “I knew it!”
I let out a tiny giggle. “Am I that predictable?”
“Kind of. I mean, two nights in a dorm? And you guys didn’t show up to a single party. Hello, what else could’ve possibly been happening?” She grinned. “So what was it like? Did it hurt?”
“I don’t know. I guess it did a little, but not that much. I mean, we’re both girls, remember?”
“Oh, right. I guess it only hurts a lot if there’s a guy involved.”
“I guess. Does it always hurt, though? Or does it depend on if the guy is, you know, big?” I giggled again. Giggling with Lori felt amazing after everything that had happened.
Lori’s face turned pink. “I don’t know! Anyway, quit changing the subject. Tell me details!”
I laughed. “It was just really nice. She’s incredible, you know? It was so sweet. Like we were closer to each other than we’d ever been before.”
“Oh, gag me,” Lori said. “Don’t talk to me about sweet. Talk to me about the sex!”
I laughed. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know.” She fidgeted. “What do lesbians do, anyway? Did you actually use those dental dam things?”
“Um. How do you know about those?”
“Whatever, I have Google.”
I gaped at her. “You Google lesbian sex tips?”
“I Google lots of things.”
I grinned. “The dental dams actually weren’t bad. Tasted kind of weird, though.”
“Ew!” Lori clutched at her chest as if she was going to puke. “It’s so gross to think about tasting it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well it’s gross to think about tasting a guy’s, you know.”
“Oh, really?” She raised her eyebrows high. “What, so are you totally a lesbian now that you’ve done it with a girl?”
“No, I’m still bi. I’m only saying, the idea of having oral sex with a guy is gross when you actually think about it that way.”
Lori made a face.
I decided to change the subject. “No one else knows yet what happened.”
“Your dad couldn’t tell?”
“No! I was sure he would, too.”
“That would be so weird if he could. I mean, your parents don’t even know you’re gay. I mean, bi.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to think about that right now, either. “I had to go to the health center on campus to get dental dams. It was so embarrassing.”
Lori howled with laughter. “They let you take them?”
“Yeah. I mean, they aren’t cigarettes. There isn’t a law about them or anything.”
Lori laughed even harder. “Can you imagine if there were? If they had a bouncer in the health center checking IDs?”
I put on my best gruff voice. “Excuse me, young lady, it is highly inappropriate to engage in lesbian safer sex activities without your parents’ written permission!”
We both nearly died laughing. There were tears at the corners of my eyes.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d really done it. Everything was different now.
I was different now.
I’d always wondered what my first time would be like. Usually I’d pictured it with a guy. Someone cute, who wore nice clothes and held my hand a lot. I’d thought we’d go into a dark room with a big, soft bed, and the guy would pick me up and carry me over to it. I’d envisioned myself wearing a fancy dress and the guy taking it off me slowly.
Come to think of it, when I’d pictured my big Day of Doing It, it had never involved me doing much of anything. Instead my faceless boyfriend did all the work while I lay there and enjoyed it. Also, in my fantasies I’d usually skipped over the actual sex part and cut to later when we were lying in each other’s arms, cuddling.
Real sex had been different. I definitely hadn’t skipped any parts, and I hadn’t wanted to, either. There had been no being carried around, and no boyfriend, for that matter.
And I’d definitely done way more than just lie there.
The only part I’d gotten right in my daydreams was the lying in each other’s arms afterward. That part had been awesome. But so had the rest.
Being with Christa was way better than being with some generic well-dressed boyfriend, even if she didn’t bring me flowers. The who mattered a lot more than the what, across the board. I hadn’t had sex with a guy yet, but I was pretty sure I was right about this. How you felt about someone was way more important than, like, parts.
“Everything okay?” Lori said.
“Yeah. Sorry, I spaced out for a second.”
“No worries. Um, so can I ask you something? I’m only, you know, curious.”
“Sure.” Now that Lori and I were friends again we had a lot of missed time to make up for. “Of course.”
“Did you and Christa say you loved each other before you did it?”
; I paused. Part of me wanted to say yes. I wasn’t going to lie to Lori after everything that had happened, though.
“No,” I said. “She has a boyfriend, remember? This thing with me and her isn’t about that.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“It’s a summer fling.” I shrugged.
“You don’t talk about her like she’s a summer fling. You talk about her like you lurrve her.”
I could tell Lori was trying to be funny, so I laughed.
“Do you think it makes a difference?” she said. “Having your first time be with someone you aren’t, you know, in love with?”
“I—” Suddenly, my throat closed up.
Breathe. Breathe. It’s all right, it’s only a question. Just breathe.
I stumbled over my words as I tried to force out an answer for Lori. “I... Wow. I guess I, I mean. I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. It...it was pretty awesome the way it was, though.”
Lori nodded. “I guess that’s what matters.”
“Right,” I said.
I didn’t know if I really meant it, though.
Lori’s question had kind of hurt my soul.
CHAPTER 21
“Adiós, Ah-ki,” Juana called as she ran after the other girls. The pink-and-white ribbons I’d hot-glued onto her new barrettes streamed after her in the breeze.
It was such a relief to see her playing like she used to. I didn’t know what had happened about the guitar, exactly—the adults must have done something, but they hadn’t said anything to me. Either way, I was glad Juana had started to smile again.
I’d wanted to make the ribbon barrettes in our first week here—who doesn’t love ribbon barrettes?—but Lori said we should save them for the end. It turned out she was right, because the girls got obsessed with the glue gun as soon as they saw it. Every time I set it down on a blanket, someone would snatch it up and start gluing her fingers together with glee. Now that the lesson was over they were running off with glue all over their hands, their clothes, even their faces. I cringed at the thought of Señora Suarez’s face.
