“My parents are in love,” Daisy said. “It
does look like it feels good. Even when bad stuff is going on, they
always, I don’t know,
want
each other. I’ll see him take a
couple steps closer to her, or she’ll touch his sleeve.”
“That sounds nice.” Riva sat up and crossed
her legs. “But people are always saying things like, ‘Relationships
are hard work,’ or, ‘I love him right now, but I don’t like him.’ I
bet that doesn’t feel good. I get confused. I want it to be like
your parents, but then I feel stupid expecting it to be that way
all the time.”
“It’s probably not that way all the time,”
Daisy allowed. “Not even for my parents.”
“So how much bad is normal? And how much bad
is
bad
?” Riva cocked her head.
Daisy wanted to tell her that nothing should
be bad for her. Riva’s questions made her think, though. If her
fantasies came true, and she and Riva ended up together, would they
be happy with each other all the time? “God,” Daisy said. “I don’t
know.”
“You’re probably glad you don’t have a
boyfriend, huh?”
“Yeah.” Daisy dropped her gaze quickly,
afraid of being betrayed by her expression. “Look, I’m sorry I
can’t help you. I wish I had something smart to say.”
“It’s smart to say you don’t know.
Seriously.”
Riva’s fingers came into Daisy’s line of
vision, brushing her bare leg. She hooked them tentatively around
Daisy’s hand. The gesture shocked Daisy so much that she let her
hand hang limp for a moment, trying to work out whether this was
real. It was only when Riva began to pull away, her lips trembling
with uncertainty, that Daisy caught and held her fingers.
“You
are
helping me,” Riva said. “I’m
really…Look, I don’t know how to say it. I’m just glad you’re still
okay with hanging out with me. A lot of popular girls won’t take
any risks, you know? They’re too scared of whatever people are
saying. And I really need someone, so I appreciate it.” Riva tried
to pull away again, shaking her head. “I’m making myself sound like
a loser. I always do that with you.”
“No, no, don’t worry,” Daisy said quickly.
She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. “I need someone,
too.”
“You do?” Riva’s voice was doubtful, but her
hand remained entwined with Daisy’s.
“Really.” Saying it out loud made Daisy
realize it was true. It wasn’t just that she liked Riva and wished
she could be her girlfriend. She needed to be herself with someone.
If it wasn’t Jo, it needed to be someone. She squeezed Riva’s hand
gently. Daisy wanted to find the courage to trust Riva with the
view of her whole self—including her secret.
But not quite yet. She couldn’t exactly spill
the truth about being a lesbian right now, while holding Riva’s
hand and listening to her turmoil over her boyfriend. That wouldn’t
look right. She could practice, though. Silently, Daisy promised
herself to find
someone
she could tell, and to do it before
the end of Spring Break. She didn’t want to keep pretending with
Riva.
* * * *
The door to the art building swung shut with
an industrial-sounding bang. Emmy Barnes jumped and wiped her hands
frantically. Mrs. Figueroa didn’t care if she played The Avengers
in the studio when no one else was around, but other people might.
On the song blaring from the speakers, Penelope Houston launched
into a particularly foul-mouthed rant, and Emmy cringed and grabbed
her iPod to shut it off. She left a messy smear of paint and clay
across the device’s touchscreen.
She glanced up quickly, wondering who besides
herself and Mrs. Figueroa would show up at school on the first
Monday of Spring Break. Daisy Mejia appeared around the corner,
looking uncertainly at various art supplies as if they’d arrived on
an alien spaceship. Emmy scowled. She’d messed up her iPod for no
good reason, and she wouldn’t have minded blasting proper, perfect
Daisy with a little profanity.
The tall volleyball player came closer, all
long legs and gold jewelry, and Emmy’s stomach did a slow,
nauseating flip. How had she never noticed that Daisy looked a lot
like her ex, Iris? They both had the same thick, gorgeous black
hair, and those eyes.
Yeah. Hair. Eyes. They’ve both got hands,
too. And feet.
Maybe Daisy didn’t look like Iris at all, and
Emmy was still just seeing Iris everywhere she looked.
She flexed her fingers. Even being in the art
building was hard since the breakup, because Iris used to hang out
here all the time while Emmy worked on projects, studying,
flirting, and joking around. It was part of why she’d come to
school over the break. Emmy hadn’t made as much progress on her
final project as she should have. She’d been avoiding the studio
lately, pretty much since the first time she’d seen Iris in the
hall holding hands with Nico Mathis.
She shook her head. The last thing she needed
was to start thinking about Iris and get stuck on her project
again. “Are you looking for Mrs. Figueroa?” she asked Daisy as she
flipped the music back on.
Daisy winced at the crashing guitars and
Penelope’s shrill shouting. Emmy held back a satisfied smile.
Daisy leaned against a table, then pulled
away from it suddenly, frowning at a line of half-dried paint that
had rubbed off onto her forearm. She craned her neck behind her,
obviously trying to figure out if it had gotten on her clothes,
too.
“It’s all over your butt,” Emmy said with
fake helpfulness. She bent over her project, squinting at the
selection of paints she’d laid out beside the half-formed clay.
“Ugh.” Daisy rubbed at it, but only succeeded
in smearing it over an even wider area of her denim cutoffs.
Emmy forcefully held back memories of
Iris’s
denim cutoffs. Iris hadn’t even bothered to
officially break up with her. She’d basically fulfilled Emmy’s
worst nightmare, acting as if their relationship hadn’t even
counted because Emmy was a girl. It didn’t matter that they’d been
together for over a year, or that they had said they loved each
other. It was as if all that had been erased. Within a week, Nico
Mathis had been meeting Iris’s parents as her boyfriend. Emmy had
never gotten any sort of official acknowledgement, even though
everyone had known she and Iris were girlfriends.
She broke off a piece of the clay by accident
and snapped back to the present with a groan.
“Was that on purpose?” Daisy asked from
alarmingly close to Emmy’s shoulder. “Is that part of your, um,
method?”
Emmy turned, glaring. She sort of wanted to
cry, and she really didn’t want an audience for that. “What are you
doing here, Mejia? Mrs. Figueroa’s in her office. Shouldn’t you be,
I don’t know, trolling the mall with Jo, looking for dumb college
boys willing to buy you piña coladas?”
Daisy stumbled back as if she’d been slapped.
She said something, way too quietly to be heard above Penelope’s
howling rage. Emmy
almost
felt bad for being mean, but why
should she? Daisy had never said two words to her before. She
hadn’t given Emmy any particular reason to be nice, and lately,
Emmy hadn’t felt like being nice to anyone.
Emmy turned back to her project. That
snapped-off clay messed up her whole plan. She’d either have to
repair it or change the proportions of the entire object. Neither
option sounded appealing. She wanted to grab the piece and drop it
on the floor.
She could hear her dad’s encouraging voice in
her head, assuring her that her work was awesome and would totally
get her into SCAD, RISD, or whatever art school she wanted to
attend. But she’d already been waitlisted at RISD, and it didn’t
matter anymore if she got into SCAD because she didn’t need to
worry about going to school close to Iris if Iris was with Nico
Mathis, did she? Emmy wanted to forget everything and just move to
LA. She had a cousin out there who was also a lesbian and had a
bunch of queer friends. Emmy knew there must be queer women at SCAD
and RISD, too, but she was so sick of being the only visible one at
her school that she just wanted to jump straight into her cousin’s
big, interconnected group.
“Actually,” Daisy shouted, “I wanted to talk
to
you
.” She’d chosen a moment between songs, and her words
echoed through the studio. The darkness of Daisy’s cheeks
deepened.
Emmy couldn’t help thinking of Iris’s
awkwardness the first few times they’d talked. It had seemed like
everything Emmy did made her blush.
Argh.
What would it take
to get that girl out of her head?
“So talk,” Emmy growled.
“Can you…would you mind…can you turn down the
music?” Daisy wove her fingers together in front of her body, then
separated her hands and wove them together a different way. “Or
maybe we could go somewhere for a while? It’s almost
lunchtime.”
“I’ve got lunch already.”
“Please. Look, I know we don’t really know
each other, but I really need to talk to you.”
Oh.
Emmy knew what this was about.
She’d lost track of the number of times girls had come to her with
questions
. It was like they thought being out meant she was
a certified counselor, not that she didn’t know how to be anything
else.
“I don’t really have time to reassure you
that you’re not a lesbian for not wanting to have sex with your
boyfriend yet, no matter what he tells you. I’m working on
something.”
Daisy flinched again. Emmy felt another curl
of conscience in the back of her head, but she didn’t
want
to let it affect her. She put on the sort of fierce expression she
imagined Penelope would have had all the time in the 70s, before
she became a folk singer.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Daisy said, her
voice oddly stiff. “And I’m not asking you to tell me I’m not a
lesbian. I, um, know I’m a lesbian.”
Emmy stared. That was new. All the girls who
had come to talk to her about their questions had desperately
wanted her to comfort them and tell them they hadn’t caught the
gay—even if the kind of comfort they wanted involved making out
with Emmy. She’d been tired of that since about five minutes after
she’d come out.
Her surprise, however, was quickly replaced
by another flash of irritation. If Daisy was gay, too, and knew it,
why had she been letting Emmy take the brunt of everyone’s
homophobia and curiosity all these years?
“Good for you,” Emmy said coldly. “Why don’t
you try telling the rest of the school? See what they think of you
now.”
“I’m trying,” Daisy said simply. “You’re the
first person I’ve told. I mean, ever.” She took a deep breath, her
body visibly trembling.
“Congratulations.” Emmy couldn’t keep the
grudging tone out of the word, and Daisy’s face fell even
further.
“I thought…I thought you might want to talk
about it a little more.”
Emmy frowned. The first person she had come
out to was her dad. He’d given her a big hug and taken her out for
ice cream. What she’d liked the most was that he hadn’t said
anything about how he loved her no matter what. Emmy had feared
that phrase. When she’d heard of parents saying that, she couldn’t
help thinking that was the same thing they’d say if their kid had
leukemia or a criminal record. Her dad had just taken the
information in. After they ate the ice cream, he’d asked if she had
any questions, and she’d told him she didn’t because she’d already
done a lot of reading.
Daisy was smart enough to have done the
reading, too.
“What do you want to talk about? I’m not a
therapist, you know.”
“I know.” Daisy wrapped her arms around her
chest and rubbed her sides. “I’m sorry to bother you.” She turned
to go.
Emmy’s stomach cramped. Coming out to her dad
had made her feel like he was really cool about her being a
lesbian. He’d reacted no differently than if she’d told him she
really enjoyed soccer. Coming out at school after that had been
quite the rude awakening, and she knew not everyone was lucky
enough to have a dad like hers.
“Wait,” Emmy said. “Hang on a sec.”
Daisy stopped walking, but didn’t face
her.
“I’m being a jerk. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Daisy said. Her voice was still
far too soft, and Emmy finally turned off the music, hoping the
gesture would make up for some of her coldness. “I get it. It’s not
like we’re friends or whatever.”
Friends.
Emmy had been realizing
lately that she didn’t have any. She had people who laughed at her
jokes, but Iris had been her best friend as well as her girlfriend.
She hadn’t been able to figure out how to fill the gaping hole that
had been left in Iris’s wake. She’d thought about trying to replace
Iris with new friends, but graduation was so soon, it didn’t feel
worth it to make the effort.
“Being out at this school sucks,” Emmy said
to Daisy’s back. “I’m just mad about it.”
“No, I get that.” Daisy shuddered. Emmy
feared she was crying, but she couldn’t approach her about that
now—not after shutting her down so hard. “And I’m a big coward,
right? Running around with Jo Quang, letting everyone think I’m
just a prude.”
A sudden suspicion entered Emmy’s mind. “You
and Jo aren’t…”
Daisy snorted. “No way. Her picture’s on the
Wikipedia entry for
boy crazy
. And I told you. I haven’t
talked about this to
anybody
before.” Her breathing sounded
like that of a broken, struggling animal.
“Look, I’m really sorry. I should have…Do you
still want to get lunch?”
Daisy did turn around then. Tears streaked
her face. “I’m just going to go,” she said. “I think maybe I’m not
ready to talk about this after all.”
Emmy’s heart twisted in her chest. This was
her fault. She’d failed a fellow queer, the first one who’d come to
her without also trying to earn an experimental makeout. But on the
heels of her guilt came more anger. Was she not allowed to be sick
of this? Being out at a generally homophobic school was hard
enough. Did she also have to bear the responsibility for every
closeted queer person in the student body? Was she some sort of
representative
now?