My Year Zero

by Rachel Gold

  He took a step back and cleared his throat.

  “I need to have friends,” I said, surprised that my voice came out a lot steadier than I expected. “I need to be around people who like me. You don’t get to ignore me when it’s convenient and expect me to show up and be your daughter when you want. You can call the cops and get me dragged back to Duluth and I’ll play nice for a few days, maybe even weeks, and then I will lose it, very loudly, very publicly. Maybe at temple, maybe at school, maybe at a work party. I will scream and rant and throw things. If you think you know what embarrassing the family looks like, you have no idea.”

  “You will not,” he said.

  I went on talking, evenly. “I hope you do call the cops because I’d like to talk to them about how often you leave me alone. You make such a big deal about how I’m not old enough to be down here on my own but you barely stay at the house.”

  I glanced at Isaac. He’d given me the idea to research what qualified as neglect, even for a teen. But bringing him up would make it worse. I brushed my hand across my face and squared my shoulders.

  “It’s neglect,” I said. “How would it look to have one of Duluth’s top litigators investigated for neglecting his kid? I am not going back there. My grades are good enough, I have the credits. Let me finish high school here.”

  As I talked, his expression went from flat to sharp-lined intensity. My legs were shaking.

  He said, “You may be sick of being my child but have you ever thought about how sick I am of being your parent? Do you know what I could be doing if I didn’t have you to raise?”

  “Then do it,” I said.

  “You need to learn how hard life is. I’m cutting you off.”

  Cyd opened her mouth and half-raised her hand, but Isaac spoke before she could. He said, “Wait. La, you have to eat. You should probably be paying rent. You might be able to switch to Mom’s health insurance, but if anything happens you’d need cash for the co-pay and all that.”

  “I’ll get a job. I’ll figure it out.”

  “You’ll have to anyway,” Isaac said. “But hey, you told me there were programs that let high school kids take college courses. Is there one here in the Cities?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s see if we can get you into that. Dad, if she’s taking a college course, you can tell everyone that she moved down here to do that. You got two smart kids, one of them so smart she’s got to move to the Cities and go to college at seventeen. But you don’t cut her off.”

  My father stepped away and stared out the window for a long time. Finally he said, “Lauren lives down here. I pay half the rent and groceries, no more.” He turned around and glared at me. “And you come up twice, spring and summer, for events I specify.”

  “Let me guess. You want me to wear a dress.”

  “That would be ideal.” Humorless. He added, “Someday you’ll understand what a mistake you’ve made.”

  I wanted to say “fuck you,” but one benefit of being raised as a robot is having the self-control not to. I was getting what I wanted, so I smiled as sweetly as I could and said nothing.

  “Are we all agreed or do I need to write this down?” Isaac asked.

  “We’re agreed,” my father said. He walked out the front door. I heard the car start and drive away. I turned to Isaac.

  He said, “I’m in a hotel at the airport. Flew in last night. Cost a ton. I had Dad pick me up on his way here. He was coming to get you himself, not going to call the cops. At least I don’t think so. Anyway, I can take a cab back.”

  “No offense,” Cyd said, “but he is a real piece of work.”

  “He wasn’t that bad a few years ago,” Isaac said. “La, I’m sorry.”

  “He was that bad,” I told him. “Just not to you because you’re his golden boy. But thanks for…bailing me out.”

  Isaac shrugged out of his suit jacket and hung it across the back of his chair. The tie came off next, the button-down shirt unbuttoned, untucked, revealing a gray college T-shirt.

  “You want a piece of pizza and some Pepsi?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. That’d be great.” He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “Man,” he said.

  I touched his shoulder and went into the kitchen. As I pulled the pizza box out of the fridge, I heard Isaac ask, “So, you’re my sister’s girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, hi,” Blake said, her voice rough with emotion.

  I paused with my hand on the refrigerator, tears blurring the world.

  Chapter Aleph Zero

  I lay in the warmth of the blanket pile and slid my arms more tightly around Blake’s sleepy form. I nuzzled into the familiar sweet earth scent of her.

  “Cold nose,” she mumbled. “Don’t poke me.”

  I didn’t move away and she rolled toward me.

  “Why is your nose freezing?” she asked, eyes half-open in the dim light.

  “Because it’s cold out.”

  “Blankets,” she said and pulled the whole stack over our heads.

  “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “Good morning,” I told her with a huge grin. “I like getting to say that to you from the same bed.”

  She kissed me hard. A little breathless she said, “Good morning, Goose. I like waking up with you too.”

  I ran my hand down her side and traced the curve of her hip. She caught my wrist. “Breakfast.”

  “I can make pancakes.”

  “Let’s go out. We’ve got university classes soon. We should celebrate our freedom while we can.”

  “Uh, I’ve got like five bucks. Total. For the week.”

  Blake kissed me again. “Good, you’ll let me buy. Come on, maybe Cyd and Bear want to come with.”

  “Bear’s out snowshoeing again. Are you texting Cyd? See if she wants to bring her guy. We should check him out.”

  Blake slid part way out of the blankets and got her phone from the pocket of her pants. I took the opportunity to run my hand over the curve of her butt.

  “Cut that out,” she said. “I’m hungry. If you keep doing that…”

  I stopped and watched her type into her phone. She kept peeking over at me and grinning.

  “Cyd says she’ll meet us and she’s bringing her guy. A few more and we’ll have a party. Okay if I text Kordell?”

  I nodded. Before I could stop myself, I asked, “If he wasn’t dating someone else, would you want to hook up with him?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I wouldn’t.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yeah. I’d never be like, ‘I know you moved down here and all, but I’m going to keep hooking up with someone else and expect you to be okay with that.’ That’s highly shitty.”

  “Sierra would,” I said.

  “Forget her.” Blake’s voice was edged with anger. She rolled onto me, sat up, pulling up the blankets and letting in a blast of cold air. Her hands were heavy on my shoulders as she leaned over me. “What do you want?”

  “You!” I said.

  “Exclusive?”

  “Yes! Completely totally yes. I want to be your fucking girlfriend with all the stuff: flowers and candy and singing cherubs.”

  “You are my fucking girlfriend,” Blake said.

  I half sat up and wrapped my arms around her as hard as I could. She laughed into my ear and kissed the side of my face. There was more kissing and rolling sideways…and realizing all the blankets were off and we were going to freeze.

  We scrambled to get the blankets back around us and ended up sitting up against the wall together.

  “We have to get another thing clear,” Blake said.

  “What?”

  “No flowers. You hate flowers.”

  I laughed. “No flowers.”

  “And no cherubs, they’re creepy.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Numbers and micron pens and funny movies where animals eat people. And you say that you’re my girlfriend a hundred more times.”

  “I’m your gi
rlfriend,” she said. “Ninety-nine to go.”

  “I wish…” I started and wasn’t sure I wanted to say the rest of it, but she was watching me so I went on. “I wish you’d been my first. I feel like…what kind of messed-up lesbian am I that I ended up with Sierra? Here I am in year one of being lesbian, of dating and all that, and I’ve screwed it up already. Like I should get to re-roll my sexual orientation and start over, except I don’t want to be anything else. But now I’m always going to be that stupid, stupid person who dated her.”

  Blake threw her legs over mine and caught my face between her hands. “Hey, she’s not your first. I am.”

  Her eyes were deep water with sunlight shining down through.

  “I kissed you first,” she said. “I loved you first.”

  “When I said the thing about black holes?” I asked.

  “Nah, then I just thought you were cool.”

  “You said you kind of loved me.”

  “I kind of love a lot of people,” Blake said. “But I don’t want to be their girlfriend.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Over that whole first week you were here. The way you asked questions and were frankly curious about what our answers were. You never asked anything so you could pick a fight, like Roy does, or so you could say your point of view, like Dustin, you really asked. And I thought that if I ever had a shot with you, I was taking it.”

  She paused and laughed and said, “And in the middle of that I told Kordell, so he already knew when he dared you to kiss me.”

  “I was a jerk about that kiss. At least in my head.”

  “You were beautiful,” Blake said.

  “That was the first time I kissed a girl too,” I admitted. “I was mad that it was part of a game, but now it’s the best.”

  We made ourselves get out of our cozy blanket space and find our clothes. As she was putting on her shirt, Blake said, “And there’s one other error in your thinking.”

  “Only one?”

  She flashed me a broad grin. “This isn’t year one. It’s year zero.”

  “Huh?”

  “I kissed you on April tenth last year, so until April tenth this year we’re in year zero of your lesbian life. You know like when a baby’s born we don’t say it’s one year old, not until it’s lived a year.”

  “So I get to be a baby lesbian and mess up all kinds of stuff and it doesn’t count because it’s my year zero?”

  “That’s more than what I was saying. And better. Let’s go with that.”

  “And after April tenth it’s Year One?”

  She stood up from putting her shoes on. “If you want, but I think if we’re girlfriends it should be more like Aleph Zero.”

  I scanned back through my brain to the conversation about infinities. I remembered the Alephs because I knew the letter, because it already meant something sacred to me. And zero was the first of them—the first infinity.

  “We’re infinite?” I asked Blake. “Or irrational?”

  “The first,” she said. “Because the number line…wait. Are you trying to one-up your Fibonacci joke?”

  I said, “You got me. But can you add one to humor? Or is it like love, an infinity?”

  Resources

  Safer Sex

  If you’ve made it to here, you’ve probably noticed that Lauren is not having safer sex in this book. (The author has had a talk with her about this and she now knows what to wrap and how.) This can be a common experience for teen girls having sex with girls, in part because good resources are hard to find. If you’re having sex with people whose sexual histories you don’t know, please practice safer sex. Here are good resources for learning how:

  The Scarleteen website, particularly: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/gender/figuring_out_how_to_be_a_lesbian_safer_sexpert

  Teensource: www.teensource.org/blog/2011/11/what-‘safe-sex’-teen-girls-who-have-sex-other-girls

  Allison Moon’s GirlSex 101, which has great information about negotiation and consent, in addition to safer sex, and is very trans-inclusive.

  Bipolar Disorder

  Books I read to research this story (all of which were very good):

  Welcome to the Jungle: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Bipolar but Were Too Freaked Out to Ask by Hilary T. Smith

  Facing Bipolar: The Young Adult’s Guide to Dealing with Bipolar Disorder by Russ Federman PhD and J. Anderson Thomson MD

  Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder: Understanding and Helping Your Partner by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston PsyD ABPP

  An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

  The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar by Terri Cheney

  The Disorder Survival Guide, Second Edition: What You and Your Family Need to Know by David J. Miklowitz

  Emotional Neglect

  Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jonice Webb (Author), Christine Musello (Contributor)

  Additional Resources

  National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) http://www.nami.org/ or helpline: 800-950-6264

  Trevor Project, suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/and 866-488-7386 BP Magazine: http://www.bphope.com/

  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (24/7 across the US): http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

  Boy’s Town (not just for boys) a 24/7 helpline for youth and families: http://www.boystown.org/

  Bipolar Burble, Natasha Tracy’s site and blog: http://natashatracy.com/topic/bipolar-blog/

  Bella Books, Inc.

  Women. Books. Even Better Together.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  Phone: 800-729-4992

  www.bellabooks.com