Our Own Private Universe

I hadn’t seen Christa all afternoon. Not since the “boyfriend” thing.

She’d told Lori she was into girls. Sure, maybe she was bi, but still—why had she been flirting with me last night if she already had a boyfriend?

All afternoon I’d worked outside, digging that stupid ditch with Drew and the others. When the work day ended I waited for Christa to come out so we could talk, but I never saw her. She must’ve been avoiding me.

I’d thought this summer was going to be when my life actually started to happen. Now I was right back where I’d started.

“I didn’t know Benny was your dad,” Jake said.

“Yep.” I leaned over the table for more toast. “Want any?”

“Yeah, thanks. That stuff is great.” Jake held out his empty plate. A fellow picky eater. “Hey, cool bracelet.”

“Thanks.” It was one I’d made last year, when Lori and I were into embroidery. It was emerald with white stitching that said, Music should be your escape. “It’s a Missy Elliott quote.”

“Super cool,” Jake said. I could tell he had no idea who Missy Elliott was. “So, he’s going to be a delegate at the national conference, right? Your dad, I mean?”

I shrugged. “All I know is that he’s going. He wanted to take some pictures to show there.”

Dad, true to his word, had rounded up half a dozen girls from the local church for our first jewelry-making workshop. They’d been gathered on a blanket near the work site waiting for Lori and me when we got back from lunch with our supplies. Dad was already taking pictures. The girls were mostly around seven or eight years old, and I couldn’t understand a single word they said. Lori managed to talk to them, though. She and I had taken the same Spanish class with the same teacher and gotten the same grades, but Lori was the only one who could say more than “¿Hola?” and actually have people understand her. We’d planned to make beaded safety-pin bracelets, but the girls had trouble getting the tiny beads we’d brought onto the pins, so Lori told them to stick with fastening the safety pins together to make loops. The girls loved it. They’d kept giggling and stringing safety-pin chains around my arms. One of them thought my baseball cap was so cool I wound up trading it to her for a safety-pin necklace.

The problem was, now we were out of safety pins and I had no idea what to make with them tomorrow. Plus, Lori was irritated with me. She’d had fun with the girls, but she kept complaining that she was having to do all the work since she was the only one who could talk to them. I thought I’d helped plenty, so whatever.

“No, he’s definitely a delegate,” Jake said. “He’s on the list on the conference website.”

“You got onto their website?” I put my toast down and turned to Jake. “Do you get internet on your phone here? Can I borrow it?”

“No, I, uh.” Jake scratched the back of his neck. “I printed out the list of delegates before I left home.”

I smiled again. “You’re really into this conference thing, huh?”

“Yeah, our little Jakey’s a big old nerrrrrrrrd,” the guy sitting across from us said, dragging out the word in a way that I was sure he found hilarious. This guy looked older, maybe Drew’s age, and he was wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on it, even though we weren’t in America. “He’ll talk to anybody who’ll listen about that stuff.”

I didn’t like the way the guy was grinning at Jake. I didn’t like the way Jake was staring down at his toast, either.

“Do you go to the church in Harpers Ferry?” I asked the guy across the table.

“Yep.” He waved his fork at me. “I’m Brian.”

“I’m Aki. I go to Silver Spring.”

Brian frowned at me. “How do you spell your name?”

I sighed. “A-K-I.”

“Oh,” Brian said. “So it’s Ahh-kee?”

I sighed again. This had been happening my entire life. I told someone my name, and they told me I was pronouncing it wrong.

It was my brother’s fault. When I was born, he was four and still learning how to talk. (When I told people this story, I always said he was actually still learning how to talk now, but if Drew was nearby that was a good way to get a sharp elbow in my rib cage.)

My parents had just brought me home from the hospital. They put my baby carrier on the floor next to Drew and told him I was his new sister, Akina. Drew didn’t even try to say my real name. He pointed at little me, turned to Dad, and said “Ack-ee?” Apparently the way he said it was so cute, Mom and Dad decided to call me that from then on. Thus sentencing me to a lifetime of explaining myself to dudes like Brian.

“Ack-ee,” I corrected him.

“Oh.” Brian looked confused. I might as well accept that no one around this place was ever going to learn my actual name.

One of the nice Mexican ladies who’d served our meal came over to clear our plates away. I jumped up, ready to help her, but she laughed and put her hand on my shoulder, pushing me gently back onto the bench. The same thing had happened at lunch. I’d always been taught to help clean up when I was someone’s guest. One more adjustment to get used to.

The sun was almost down. Seeing the church ladies in their dresses carrying our plates inside reminded me that I hadn’t cleaned up after work today. None of us had, but still, I felt scuzzy and sweaty in my paint-spattered, too-small clothes.

(That was another thing Lori was annoyed at me for. I’d gotten paint and dirt on her clothes. But what was I supposed to do? I didn’t have any of my own clothes, and everyone got paint and dirt all over everything today.)

I stretched my arms over my head. Once dinner was over we had to go to vespers. Every single night we were here, the chaperones would take turns leading us in prayers and songs so we could reflect on the work we were doing. I’d never been much for reflection, but I was a preacher’s kid, and I could play along with the best of them.

“Hey!” I yelped suddenly. Someone was tickling my armpit.

At first I thought it was Brian, and I was ready to yell louder if I had to, but when I turned, Christa was there. “Oh. Sorry! Hi.”

“Hi.” Christa pulled her hand back. She was giggling again. “I couldn’t resist. You do that a lot, you know?”

“What, stretch?”

“Yeah. Is it because you’re tall? Do you need to flex your limbs and stuff?”

Christa was smiling, but I didn’t smile back. I wasn’t going to act as if everything was normal.

“No,” I said. I decided to head her off before she could ask any of the other questions everyone always asked me, too. “And no, I don’t play basketball.”

“Sorry.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t mean to...”

“Hi.” Next to me, Jake stuck out his hand. “I’m Jake. You’re Christa, right?”

Christa’s head swiveled toward him. “Uh, yep, that’s me. Hi, Jake.”

“Want to sit with us?” Jake scooted over on the bench to make room.

“No, thanks.” Christa fumbled with her hands. “Listen, Aki, do you want to go somewhere for a second?”

I glanced around the table. Jake suddenly seemed very absorbed in his food. No one else was paying attention to us.

I followed Christa around the corner of the house. We couldn’t go far, not with vespers in a couple of minutes.

The view back here was incredible. On the bus ride in from Tijuana the day before we’d mostly seen hills and sparse trees and a pretty, golden landscape. Since we’d arrived in this tiny town, Mudanza, we hadn’t seen that much besides houses and churches. But now Christa and I were standing on the town’s northern edge, with Mudanza on one side of us and empty country on the other. Ahead of us were hills, valleys and trees as far as the eye could see, with a painted pink sky to frame it all.

Christa was walking toward the hills now, into the last sliver of sunlight. It shone on her dark hair and reflected off her long bead necklace. She was wearing a fresh, clean T-shirt that clung to her body and jeans that looked brand-new and paint-free. She must’ve changed for dinner.

She turned around and smiled at me over her shoulder. “I missed you this afternoon. I mean, I wound up less covered in polka dots compared to this morning, so there’s that. But it turns out painting by myself is way more boring than getting polka-dotted by cute girls.”

I stood motionless. “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”

The smile fell from her face. We’d passed the peak of the hill. When I looked back, I couldn’t see the rest of our group. We were alone out here.

“I—” She paused and took a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you that way. It sort of slipped out.”

“Slipped out?” How could she be so casual about this? And right after she’d said that thing about getting polka-dotted by cute girls that made my insides want to melt? “Who is he?”

“His name’s Steven. He goes to a private school in DC. I met him at drama camp a few years ago. He’s a really talented actor.”

“Oh.” I tried to stick my hands in my pockets, but Lori’s track pants didn’t have pockets. I stuck my thumbs in my waistband as though that was what I’d meant to do all along.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Christa had flirted with me, but it wasn’t as if she owed me anything. If she’d flirted with me even though she had a boyfriend, he was the one who had a right to be annoyed about that, not me.

Plus, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be self-righteous about telling the absolute truth. Not when I was still straight-up lying to her by acting like I still did music.

The boyfriend thing hurt, though. A lot.

We’d made it to a little valley between two rows of hills. They were sort of hills-slash-sand dunes, now that I looked closer, with trees scattered along the peaks. We couldn’t even see the town behind us anymore. We’d barely come any distance at all, but it was as if we’d gone straight into the wilderness. It was cool enough that for a moment I stopped thinking about how upset I was.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s gorgeous out here.”

The sun was almost down. Everything was gray and hazy. All I could see were sand and hills, trees and sky.

And Christa. She was gorgeous, too. She was biting her lip and brushing her hair out of her face and looking at me with her steady brown eyes and I wanted... I didn’t even know what, exactly. I just wanted.

“You’d like Steven,” Christa went on. “He’s really smart and funny. Open-minded, too.”

“Great.”

“Yeah. We’re actually a really modern couple. Steven hates all those old-school rules about how relationships are supposed to work, and I do, too.”

“That’s great.” I wished she’d shut up about Steven.

“Everyone’s stuck in this 1950s mentality,” Christa went on. “As if people still ‘go steady.’ I mean, what a boring idea, that you’re supposed to be with one person all the time and never so much as look at anyone else. Haven’t we evolved past that as a culture?”

I was about to reach my breaking point with this conversation. “What are you talking about?”

Christa looked down at her hands. “The thing about Steven and me is that we’re taking a break for the summer.”

“A break?” I watched her closely. “What does that mean?”

“You know.” She met my eyes for a second and then looked away, her shoulders shifting. “We don’t believe in that old-fashioned rule about how you always have to be totally monogamous. It isn’t human nature, you know? So, since I was coming down here, we decided we’d take the summer off from our relationship. So we could see other people for a little while. If we wanted to, I mean.”

“Oh.” Ohhhhh. “So you mean—he was your boyfriend up until this week, and he’ll be your boyfriend once you get back home, but right at this moment, you’re boyfriend-free?”

She nodded. “That’s the general idea.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about him last night?” My annoyance was fading fast, but I tried not to let it show. This kind of changed everything.

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I should have. Steven and I agreed before I left town that we’d both be totally up front about the whole thing so no one gets the wrong idea.”

“And what would the right idea be, exactly?”

She looked back up at me, her mouth set in a straight line. “The right idea would be...that even though I technically have a boyfriend, I could still like a girl. A particular girl, I mean.”

My chest felt fluttery. Damn it. I was supposed to be mad at her.

Also, this meant Christa was definitely bi. The same as me. I’d hardly known any other bi people.

“I mean.” She stepped closer. “You know my thing for artist types. Because as it happens, there’s this one artist girl, a musician in fact, who I happen to like a lot. But only if she’s okay with the temporary thing, since that’s all I can do. And only if she likes me back.”

This time, I was the one who looked down at my hands. She was being honest with me, but I wasn’t being honest with her. She still thought I was an artist type, like her. And like the super talented actor that was Steven.

“Because the thing is,” she went on. I glanced back up. She was still biting her lip. Was she nervous? Did Christa get nervous? “I mean, if that particular musician girl did like me back, then, well, we’re here in this totally new place, where we hardly know anyone. Where we can basically start a whole new life, just for ourselves, just for these next four weeks. No one even needs to know about it. It could be our own private universe. And then once we get on the plane at the end of this trip, we go back to the real world.”

Christa tugged at her shirt again. She looked so awesome, especially next to me in my paint-splattered pants. Had she changed her clothes because she knew she was going to see me?

I looked away again so she couldn’t tell I was smiling.

Christa had a boyfriend. If we really did hook up, a little summer thing was all we could have anyway. We’d say goodbye at the end of the trip with no harm done. It would be a fling. Exactly like the one Lori and I had fantasized about that morning.

Maybe it wasn’t even a big deal that I’d lied about my music. It wasn’t as if Christa and I were getting married. For a summer fling, getting all the details right didn’t matter quite so much.

This was my chance to see if I really liked girls. It would be an experiment. The coolest experiment ever.

Suddenly I felt very sophisticated. Or, as Christa had said, modern. Why should we have to stick to rules about monogamy that some old white guys made up a million years ago? We were young. We should be having fun.

Christa was looking at me expectantly.

“I...um...” I sounded horribly inarticulate after all that amazing stuff she’d said about universes. “It would be a total secret, right?”

Christa nodded. Good. I couldn’t picture going up to Dad after he was done leading us in one of his long, rambling prayers at vespers and telling him I was bisexual. Or anything-sexual.

Come to think of it, we were probably already late for vespers. Oh, well.

Christa was still watching me. Waiting.

I took a step closer to her. She looked right at me. The smile was in her eyes as much as her lips.

Oh, God. We were going to kiss.

I thought I’d be nervous, but I wasn’t.

I felt awesome, actually. Better than I remembered feeling in, well, ever.

So when Christa stepped toward me, I didn’t wait. I leaned over and pressed my lips against hers.

I could feel her smiling as she kissed me back.

And...oh.

She tasted like the sky.

Kissing her felt sweet and strong and urgent all at the same time. As though we were made to kiss each other.

We didn’t bump against each other awkwardly, the way I usually did with boys. Instead we kissed gently. Slowly.

I’d never kissed anyone that way before. As though it really meant something. I wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but I didn’t care.

After that things got kind of—well—intense. She ran her hands along my back. I played with her hair. It turned out the pink streak wasn’t real. It was just clipped in, as I discovered when I accidentally pulled it out. We both giggled at that, but only for a second, because kissing required every bit of attention we had.

When we finally pulled apart, I felt breathless and raw, and it was getting dark. I should’ve been worried—we were late for vespers, and we were out in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country—but my heart was beating too hard to focus on anything but Christa.

She looked as if she felt the same way. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. Our arms were still wrapped around each other, and our breasts were touching through our clothes. I thought again about that bra strap poking out from her tank top earlier. I was getting flushed, too.

“We should go to vespers,” I said. “Dad will notice if I’m not there.”

“Okay.”

But we didn’t let go.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see the stars overhead.

“We should, um.” I tried not to think about how she felt. “We should go.”

We kissed again. And again after that.

The stars were all around us, spinning, whirling, carrying me off with them into the sky.

By the time we finally left those hills, kissing Christa was the only thing I ever wanted to do.

PART 2

If I Was Your Girlfriend

CHAPTER 5

“So did you full-on hook up or just make out?”

“Shut it, Lori!” I darted my head from side to side. No one was close enough to hear, but still. “Discretion, please!”

Lori laughed. “I need to know if it counts toward the tally. Three hookups, remember?”

“Well, this definitely counts as one.”

“Mmm, I’m not sure. Did you only go to first base?”

I put my hands on my hips, tucking the ball of pale purple thread I was untangling into my palm. “That’s none of your business!”

“Yeah, right.” Lori laughed again.

She had a point. I’d been dying to tell Lori what happened ever since Christa and I stopped kissing last night. Actually, maybe even before that. I vaguely remembered looking forward to telling Lori about kissing Christa while I was still actively in the process of kissing Christa.

But I had to wait. By the time we got to vespers that night the meeting was already halfway over, and there was no chance to talk. Christa and I had slunk in through the shadows from the candlelight while Señor Suarez played hymns on a beautiful old twelve-string guitar. We’d kept our heads bent as if we were praying. Dad didn’t say anything about it, so he must’ve thought we were there the whole time.

All through the prayers and the singing, it was impossible to act normal. I kept running my fingers over my lips and sneaking glances at Christa. She was glancing at me, too.

After vespers, we all walked back to the old church in a big group. Then we waited in line to use one of the two indoor toilets. (Everyone hated the porta-potties. Some of the guys had started peeing outside so they wouldn’t have to wait in line. It was so gross.)

After that we went to bed in the dark again. All around us, people talked and laughed and acted as if it were any other night. For them, I guess it was.

Now, finally, I had my chance to tell Lori all the details. We were sitting on the blanket outside the work site. In a couple of hours we’d meet with the local girls and teach them a simple lanyard knot to make friendship bracelets. That should keep them busy for a few days at least. We had to sort the thread first, though. It had come out of Lori’s suitcase pocket in a big tangled pile.

“It’s weird,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve ever seriously been into a girl, and the thing is, I don’t remember ever liking a guy as much as I like her. So what’s that about? I mean, I could be just as into a guy, right? I’ve been into guys before, but not this much. What I’m saying is, this doesn’t mean I’m not bi anymore, does it?”

I’d never thought this much about what it really meant to be bi. I should probably be talking to Christa about it instead of Lori, since Christa would relate more, but I couldn’t exactly analyze our relationship with her.

I’d already told Lori all about Christa’s boyfriend situation, though, and Lori, at least, seemed to think it was perfectly normal. Apparently her mom was always watching some old TV show where couples were constantly taking breaks and having flings and fighting with their significant others about it. Once Lori told me that, I actually felt weirdly better about the whole situation.

“Well?” I asked Lori now. “What do you think?”

Lori looked up from the threads that wound between her fingers. “I’ve got to be honest, Aki, babe, I didn’t quite follow all that.”

“It’s only—I should know by now, shouldn’t I? If I’m straight or gay or bi or, I don’t know, whatever? I mean, I’m fifteen already. If I haven’t figured this out yet, am I ever going to?”

Lori frowned. “I don’t know. I think I’ve always known I was straight. I never thought I might be anything else, at least. Well, there was that girl at camp one time who I thought I had a crush on but we were, like, eight, so...”

“Yeah, see? You’re supposed to have always known. Crap. What if I never hook up with a guy again? Then how will I be sure?”

Lori put her thread down. “Don’t you want to hook up with her again?”

“Oh, well I mean, yeah, of course. I’m only thinking ahead.”

“Since we’ve only been here for a day, I’d recommend concentrating on the girl at hand.” Lori poked through the pile to find the blue strands. “You know you’re a total badass, by the way. Going to first base lesbian-style your very first day in an exotic land.”

I grinned. “No one’s ever called me a badass before.”

“Get used to it, badass.” Lori bumped my shoulder, making me drop the lanyard strands I’d been sorting. I bumped her back. “Now I’ve gotta get moving on my own end of the bargain so we can both be badasses.”

“Yeah? With who? Paul?”

“No, actually, I’m—”

“Wait, Paul’s a badass? Since when?”

A shadow loomed over us. I looked up slowly, worried one of the chaperones had caught us cursing.

Nope. It was Christa.

I beamed up at her.

“Hiiii.” I could hear the breathiness in my voice but I was helpless to make it go away. Next to me, Lori chortled.

“Hiiii,” Lori whispered so only I could hear.

I bumped her shoulder again. “Shut up.”

“No, Paul’s not a badass.” Lori giggled. “We were just talking about how last night—”

“Shut up.” I bumped her shoulder harder this time, but Christa didn’t seem fazed.

“So, uh.” Christa twirled a lock of hair around her finger. I still couldn’t get over how cute she was. “What’s with all the thread and whatnot?”

Lori told her about the jewelry project while I kept smiling dorkily.

“We’re sorting this stuff now,” Lori said when she was done explaining. “You can help if you want.”

“Sure, totally.” Christa dropped down next to us on the blanket. Her jeans were caked with dirt. She must’ve been working on the fence. I was trying to stay away from both dirt and paint since I’d had to borrow clothes from Lori again. But that meant I couldn’t do any actual work, so I’d been alternating between setting up for the jewelry class and walking around acting as if I had somewhere to be.

Christa pulled some thread out of the pile and tried to straighten it out. I watched her hands move, her fingers running delicately over the strands. Her palm had a blue and purple design on it today. A sun and moon drawn in marker. It was cool that she did that sort of thing. She had a true artist’s spirit. Not like me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d created something new.

I reached out and stroked her finger with mine. Then I got nervous—what if she thought that was weird?—and pulled away. I dipped my hand back into the pile to get more lanyard thread instead.

Christa reached into the pile, too. Her fingers slipped under the tangles of thread until her hand was touching mine.