Our Own Private Universe

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling too obviously. It didn’t work.

“You guys.” Lori laughed. “You are way too cute together.”

“Lori! Shhh!” I tried to put my hand over her mouth, but she pulled away, laughing.

I gave Christa a sheepish grin. She snickered.

“I’m not a fan of the word cute,” Christa said. “Little kids are cute. I prefer to associate myself with more mature words. Let’s say charming.”

“Sweet,” I suggested.

“Adorable.”

“Delightful.”

“Quixotic.”

“Quixotic?” I tilted my head down at her. “I don’t think that means the same thing as cute.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but it’s a cool word anyway. You and me, we’re the quixotic-est.”

My chest got warm when she said that. Before I could think of a witty rejoinder, I saw a new figure coming toward us. Jake, with a paper and pen in his hand.

“Hey, you guys.” He squatted down on the ground across from us. He looked nervous. “I came to see if you wanted to sign my petition.”

“A petition? What’s it about?” I craned my neck, but he was holding the paper too far back for us to see. I’d signed online petitions before, but I didn’t remember ever seeing an actual physical petition.

“It’s for one of the planks they’re voting on at the national conference,” Jake said. “I’m trying to get a core mass of youth to sign on before I present it to the delegates.”

“‘A core mass of youth’?” I eyed Jake warily. I couldn’t imagine getting worked up over anything that included the words plank or delegates or national conference. Social Studies class was my daydreaming time.

“Which plank is it?” Lori asked. Jake handed her the paper, and Christa and I leaned in to look.

Lori read it out loud. “Resolved: To recognize and perform marriages between same-gender couples.” She looked up at Jake. “This is about gay marriage?”

“Yeah.” Jake’s head bobbed eagerly, but his hand trembled where he held the pen. “Holy Life is finally putting together an official, national policy on whether to perform wedding ceremonies for LGBTQIA people.”

Lori counted the letters off on her fingers. “Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer—wait, is it queer or is it something else?”

“It’s queer or questioning.” Jake turned pink. “And intersex and asexual.”

“I’ll definitely sign that.” Lori grabbed the pen and scribbled her name. “It’s dumb that they’re even having to vote on this.”

Jake looked like he wanted to kiss Lori. “Thank you. Wow, thank you so much.”

“Who else has signed it so far?” I asked.

“Well.” Jake pointed down at the paper. There was only one name at the top of the list. “Just me, actually.”

“Are we the first people you’ve asked to sign?” Lori frowned.

“Uh.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “I asked some people from my church, but they weren’t up for it.”

“What, like that guy Brian from last night?” I shook my head. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a tool.”

“I would never have asked Brian.” Jake shook his head. “I asked Hannah, and Olivia, and Emma. None of them wanted to put their name down.”

“What? None of them? That’s so dumb.” Lori waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Don’t let them get to you. We’ll all sign it.”

“Uh.” Christa drew back, hooking her thumbs into her glittered belt. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t. If my parents found out, I’d be in huge trouble.”

Lori stared at Christa, openmouthed. I did, too, at first. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should be careful myself. I didn’t want to deal with my parents on this, either.

“Whatever,” Lori said. “Everyone from our church will totally sign. Right, Aki?”

“Uh. I don’t know.”

I studied the petition in Lori’s hand. I didn’t exactly keep up with church politics, but even before I figured out I liked girls, I knew it was stupid for there to be rules about who could get married and who couldn’t.

“I don’t know if everyone will sign it,” I said, reaching for the pen. “But I will.”

Jake grinned. “You rock, Aki.”

“Why does she rock?” Lori asked as I signed my name. “What about me?”

“You both rock, but it especially rocks for her to sign it ’cause her dad’s a minister. And a conference delegate.”

“So?” I handed the petition back to Jake. I was getting nervous now. Who did he plan on showing this to?

“It’s cool, that’s all.” Jake tucked the petition back into his bag. “You sure you can’t sign, Christa?”

“I’m sure.” Christa climbed to her feet. Some of the glitter from her belt had fallen onto our blanket. It shimmered. “I’m going to see if they need help outside. See you guys later.”

She left, and Jake followed her, waving thanks to Lori and me. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lori turned to me, her voice lowered to a whisper that was approaching a hiss.

“Why won’t she sign the dang petition?” Lori looked incredulous. “You have to support gay marriage if you’re a gay person, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s complicated. She doesn’t want her parents to know.”

“So what? Your parents don’t know you’re gay, but you signed it.”

“I’m not gay,” I whispered back. “I think maybe I’m bi, that’s all.”

“‘Maybe’?” Lori whispered. “What, now that you’ve finally actually done something with a girl, it’s ‘maybe’?”

“No. I don’t know.” I sighed. “That’s complicated, too.”

“I don’t see what’s complicated. She’s gay. She should sign a stupid gay rights petition.”

“She’s not gay. She’s bi.”

“You know what I mean.”

“All I’m saying is, there’s a difference.” I dump the last lanyard threads into their piles. I was getting annoyed.

“I mean, okay.” Lori looked halfway contrite. “I know. But I don’t see what the big deal is about signing this petition thing.”

“Well, yeah, because you’re straight. You can’t get what it’s like for Christa and me.”

Lori got quiet after that.

Soon the kids started showing up for our jewelry class, and Lori and I had to stop talking. But our class that day wound up being scary. We were halfway through teaching friendship knots when Guadalupe, one of the little girls, started hacking out of nowhere. I could tell it was an asthma attack because I’d seen the same thing happen to a boy at the clinic last year. That kid had sucked on an inhaler until he was fine, but when I looked around frantically for Guadalupe’s inhaler, it turned out she didn’t have one. I took her over to a cool spot under a tree and tried to soothe her until her breathing started to calm down a little. After that I tried to go find her parents but she wanted me to stay and help her finish her friendship bracelet instead. Kids were so weird.

For the rest of the day, Christa was super quiet. I could tell she was upset. I tried to talk to her at dinner, but she barely answered me. Eventually I gave up and sat alone at the long table, eating toast and acting as if I wasn’t totally depressed.

Vespers was even worse.

Like the night before, we met in the minister’s living room, piled on the floor in rows while the adults sat on the couches above us. First we watched the news on TV for a while, even though we couldn’t understand it since it was in Spanish. The chaperones had this thing about us “not losing sight of what’s happening in the wider world,” but I thought it was mainly because they didn’t have service on their phones, either, and they were desperate for information. That night, the news showed a sad story about some really young American soldiers who’d been killed overseas and how their families back home were coping. We all got depressed even without totally understanding what the news anchors were saying.

I think the chaperones must’ve realized the news was kind of a downer, because Dad turned the TV off quickly and went straight to leading prayers and songs by candlelight. The local minister’s wife, Señora Perez, was trying to teach us songs in Spanish while Señor Suarez played his gorgeous old guitar. That part might’ve been kind of fun if I wasn’t sitting right across from Christa. She studiously looked around in every direction but mine.

“Let’s sing ‘If I Had a Hammer,’” Dad said from the couch. The other adults in the room laughed. The rest of us groaned. “If I Had a Hammer” was this old, boring song that people like my grandad loved.

We started off in those droning voices you have to use when you sing old-people songs. When we got to the end of the first verse, Drew hopped to his feet and went to stand next to Señor Suarez. When the second verse started—it’s about what you’d do if you had a bell instead of a hammer (I told you this song was dumb)—Drew held up one hand as if he was dangling a bell, then pretended to whack the invisible bell with a stick. We all giggled through our singing. As the song went on, Drew kept banging on the bell, and his gestures got more and more elaborate. He pranced around the room while everyone laughed even harder. I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out of my head when Drew got to the next verse, about what you’d do if you had a song, and he started waving his arms dramatically, opera singer–style. Everyone was laughing so hard they could barely sing.

Everyone except me. I watched Drew carefully, and after the first verse, I could tell his heart wasn’t in this little show.

There was something behind his smile. A glimpse of what I’d seen that day in the airport.

He wasn’t enjoying this. He was only playing the part.

He made everybody else believe it, though. Dad was watching Drew with an indulgent tilt to his head. If I’d acted like that much of a fool during vespers, Dad never would’ve let me hear the end of it.

Drew’s life had been perfect when he was my age. He’d done well in school, he’d had a ton of friends, he’d played ball, and he’d always been grinning about something. But all that had changed when he started college. I should’ve figured out that something was up, but I hadn’t even known there was a problem until he broke down and told me. I was too obsessed with everything that was wrong in my own life. I hadn’t even really thought about Drew’s.

It hurt, now, to think about what a bad sister I’d been. I turned away so I couldn’t see him.

Maybe by accident, or maybe not, my eyes landed on Christa.

This time, she was looking at me, too.

She looked away just as fast. But I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

Dad dismissed us when the song was over, and we all climbed to our feet and started down the dark path to the old church. Everyone was still laughing and talking about how hilarious my brother was. I walked with Lori and our friends, but I never stopped watching Christa. She was walking alone at the edge of the group.

Above us, the open field of stars stretched for millions of miles. Trillions.

In two minutes, we’d be inside the church, under the dark, thick ceiling with everybody else. We’d use our shaky flashlight beams to find our spots. On the girls’ side of the room, everyone had laid their sleeping bags perpendicular to each other so our feet wouldn’t wind up in each others’ faces. It hadn’t worked. Worse, now that we’d been here for a few days, I was smelling more than feet.

I didn’t want to be in that room. I wanted to stay out here. Under those stars.

With Christa.

We were almost at the church by the time I screwed up the courage. I tried to act casual, sidling up next to her with my hands tucked into the pockets of my borrowed jeans.

Christa glanced at me, but didn’t say anything.

“Hey,” I said.

She didn’t meet my eyes. “Hey.”

After another minute of walking in silence, I said, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.”

“Is this because of Jake’s petition? Are you annoyed that I signed it?”

“No.” She looked away. “I wish I could have.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say. I wished she’d signed it, too. “Do you seriously think your parents would find out?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But they could. It’s easier when I’m at home. They don’t have a reason to question whether I’m straight or not, you know? But with me down here...”

Right. She meant that back home, her dumb boyfriend Steven made her life easier.

I didn’t want to hear any more about how great Steven was. It felt as if she’d picked him over me before I’d even had a chance. Maybe she thought I wasn’t worth bothering with after all. The most we ever could’ve had was a summer fling, after all.

I was so frustrated I could’ve yelled. Instead I swallowed hard.

Maybe this was going to be it for me. One night. One kiss. That was the whole story of my big summer lesbian experiment.

“Well if your boyfriend’s so great, what am I even doing here?” I said.

“Shhh.” Christa wrapped her arms around her chest and swiveled her head from side to side. Checking to see if anyone was listening, probably. I tried to think back to see if I’d said anything incriminating.

Wait, though—incriminating? Not wanting your family to know was one thing, but Christa was acting as though there was something wrong with just talking to me. Even though the night we’d met, she’d been the one acting all flirty.

“This isn’t about him,” Christa whispered. “We’re taking a break, remember? I’m only saying that it’s really convenient when I don’t have to worry about my parents finding out I’m, you know, not completely straight.”

“Would it be so terrible if they did? I mean, they’re going to have to know eventually, right?”

I realized as I said it, though, that her parents didn’t have to find out, not ever. That was the thing about being bi. If Christa only ever told them about going out with guys, she really could keep it a secret forever.

I guess that was true for me, too. I’d been thinking of coming out to my parents as inevitable, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I could stay hidden, too, if I wanted to.

Did I want to?

“You don’t understand.” Christa turned to look me right in the eyes. “My parents aren’t cool the way your dad is. After I first got my period, my mom sat me down and gave me a speech about how I had to make absolutely sure I never had sex, because if I got pregnant, they wouldn’t support me. That’s literally what she said. ‘We won’t support you.’”

Wow. I couldn’t imagine my parents saying anything that awful. Not that they’d love me getting pregnant or anything, but they’d help me if it happened, I was sure of that much. “Have they said specific stuff about what would happen if you were gay?”

“No, but I can guess. They won’t let my brother and me watch any shows with gay characters, even stupid sitcoms. They say shows like that ‘promote an amoral agenda.’ Once when I posted a photo I took of a crowd on the Fourth of July that had two men holding hands in the background, they confiscated my phone and took down my whole Instagram account until I promised to delete the picture.”

“Wow. I’m sorry. That’s really awful.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m so obsessive about this stuff. If they found out I liked girls, they might—I don’t even want to guess. Ground me forever? Refuse to pay for college? Honestly, I don’t know, and I really want to make sure I don’t find out.”

Now I felt bad for being annoyed at her.

We were almost at the entrance of the church. Only a few people were still outside, and they were all way too engrossed in their own conversations to listen to us.

“Look.” My heart was pounding so hard it was embarrassing. “I—Look, you know... I like you, okay? And it’s okay if you don’t actually like me that much. I mean, I know you already have a boyfriend and everything—it’s only that last night I thought maybe you kind of did, you know, like me. So...”

Christa stopped walking. I stopped, too. She stared at me.

Then she looked around. Almost everyone had disappeared into the darkness of the church.

Christa grabbed my hand and ran, pulling me behind her.

I stumbled after her, trying to figure out what she was doing, trying to figure out how to ask. Then she pulled me behind the dark church wall and kissed me, hard.

It was totally different from our kisses the night before. Those had been slow and warm and sweet.

This one was fierce. Visceral.

It took me a second to start kissing her back, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. She was delicious. She was incredible. And for that moment, she was all mine.

She pushed me against the cement wall. It was hard and cold against my back. Somehow that felt incredible, too.

We were crushed together, her hand tight on the back of my neck, my hand on her hip holding her in place. I’d never kissed anyone like this before. As if I was kissing her with my whole body.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew that anyone could walk out and see us at any moment. That idea only made me wrap my arm around her waist and hold her even closer.

She slid down so she was kissing my neck, moving back to my ear. The sudden shock of air on my lips was so intense that I had to do something. Say something. I murmured, low, unintelligible words. I wasn’t even sure what they were. Oh, my God, maybe.

That tiny murmur must’ve been what snapped her out of it. Christa pulled back a few inches, her eyes blinking into consciousness.

I gazed back at her. I don’t know how my face looked—I felt lost, dazed, unfocused—but hers was beautiful.

Her eyes tore away from mine, darting left, then right. There was no one around.

“We should go someplace else,” Christa whispered.

I nodded. “There are hills around here, too.”

So we walked out into the dark hills that rimmed the town. I reached for her hand, the muscles in my fingers twitching, afraid she’d pull away.

She didn’t. She jumped as I slipped my hand into hers, but then she intertwined her fingers with mine and squeezed.

And somehow, it was everything, that single squeeze.

That squeeze meant I hadn’t made this up in my head. This weird thing that I felt—I didn’t know what it was exactly, but now I knew she felt it, too.

We climbed the hill into the little valley. Our little valley. I slipped my arms around her neck and she kissed me, again, slower and lighter than before.

We didn’t need to hurry. We had all the time there was.

Maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t only an experiment. Maybe this was something else altogether.

Maybe it was even something real.

CHAPTER 6

“¡Oye, mira por aquí!”

“¡Volver!”

Two boys, maybe nine years old, were shouting to each other across a dusty street, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. A third boy joined in and they took off down the block. My friends and I ducked out of the way just in time to avoid getting slammed by either a ball or a kid.

“Ahh-ki!” someone shouted. At first I thought it was one of the girls from our group—half of them still pronounced my name wrong—but it was Juana Suarez from our jewelry-making class. We’d started having lunch at the Suarezes’ house every afternoon, and Juana’s mom was an amazing cook (that was according to Christa—I was still mostly sticking with my toast). Her dad played the guitar for us at vespers, and he was teaching Juana to play, too. She’d explained that to Lori and me one afternoon by singing a hymn and accompanying herself on air guitar. It had been adorable, but I’d had to resist the urge to correct her technique.

“Hola, Juana.” Now that I’d been in Mexico for a week, I could say a few words in Spanish without feeling like a complete fail. “¿Cómo estás?”

“Bien.” Juana didn’t seem to think my speaking two complete sentences in Spanish was quite as big a deal as I did. She grabbed my hand and tugged me toward where the other kids were playing in the street. “¡Vamonos!”

I laughed and swatted away a buzzing mosquito. “No puedo.” I pointed to the light blue dress I was wearing, trying to show her that I didn’t want to get it dirty. Which was true. I’d borrowed it from Lori, and it was the first time all week I’d worn something that I didn’t expect to get covered in paint.

Juana pouted at me for about half a second. Then she dropped my hand and ran after the ball.

I laughed again. Then I must’ve forgotten where I was, because I started to reach for Christa’s hand. At the last moment I settled for smiling at her instead.

We were walking into town with a dozen or so people from different youth groups. It was Saturday, and we had the morning off. This afternoon we had to be back at the Perezes’ house for some kind of dance performance, but for now, we were free.

We hadn’t really gone anywhere but the old church, the work site and Reverend Perez’s house the whole time we’d been in Mudanza. The town was small, but still big enough to get lost in, so the chaperones had told us to make sure we traveled in groups today. In the few blocks we’d come so far, all we’d seen were a lot of gravel roads and squat buildings with pink walls and corrugated metal roofs. Oh, and two more churches.

Christa and I were near the front of the group. She had two cameras hanging from her neck, a fancy digital one and an old-fashioned one that took black-and-white photos. She’d worn a dress today, too—it was black and fit snugly around her waist—with three strands of gold Mardi Gras beads wound around her wrists.

Most of the girls in our group had dressed up. It was the first chance we’d had since the welcome party to look halfway decent. I’d even borrowed some of Lori’s mascara. I didn’t wear makeup much back home, but now that I was sort of dating someone, I figured I ought to make an effort.

Except Christa and I weren’t dating. She was already dating someone else. The two of us had just been sneaking off into the hills behind the church to hook up on a nightly basis.

Well, but still.

“Hey, puppy!” Lori called out to a dog trotting along the sidewalk near us. Christa stopped walking and lifted her camera to take the dog’s photo. Lori stooped to pet it, but it ran away before she could get close.

“I wouldn’t pet any stray dogs in Mexico,” said Sofía, one of Drew’s friends. She was tall, Hispanic and intimidatingly pretty. “You never know who’s got rabies.”

“You can tell if dogs have rabies,” I said. “They foam at the mouth and stuff.”

“Not always,” Sofía said.

“Yeah, you can’t always tell with dogs,” Drew echoed. I was positive Drew didn’t know if that was true any more than I did, but I knew how it was when you liked a girl.

“There’s a chicken up ahead,” Christa said, clicking away on her digital camera. I thought she was kidding, but I looked and, sure enough, a chicken was wandering around between two houses. Just hanging out, as if it had nothing better to do. “Should we check it for diseases to be safe? You never know with chickens.”

Lori and I laughed. Drew covered his mouth, but I was pretty sure he was laughing, too.

We’d reached the end of the block, where the kids were kicking the soccer ball around. Two of them stopped playing and turned to watch us.

I wondered how we looked to them. A huge gang of mostly white people walking along their dusty road on a Saturday morning, all dressed up as if we were going to a party.

“Sure, I’ll sign it,” Gina said behind us. At first I thought she was talking to me—Gina went to our church back home, and she hung out a lot with Lori and me—but when I turned, she was talking to Jake. “You got a pen?”

“Yep. Thanks, Gina. You’re awesome.” Jake passed her a pen and paper. Gina stopped walking and held the paper against the nearest pink wall, scribbling her name on it.

“I thought it was mostly over,” Becca said to Jake. I’d only talked to Becca once or twice before. She was white, and she went to Christa’s church. “The war, I mean.”

“We still have troops stationed over there,” Jake said. “The plank they’re voting on calls for us to withdraw all US military from the region except humanitarian aid missions.”

I interrupted them. “Wait, is this a different petition from the one before?”