“I don’t want to storm in there and embarrass her,” she said. “She probably doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Are we taking her back with us?”
“I’d like her to go home until we figure out what happened, but I don’t know if she’ll want to leave or not. She’s pretty stubborn with this stuff.”
“I can imagine. It’s a tricky balance,” Loch said. “You don’t want to put yourself in danger, but you also don’t want to back down from the bullies.”
“I was never that smart about it.” Amir tapped the steering wheel with her thumb as she watched Kiran walk toward the parking lot. “I just got in fight after fight. The girls were just as awful to me when I was in school, or at least the popular ones were. And when I finally got a girlfriend, someone outed us, and all hell broke loose.”
Loch and Amir got out and shut their doors as Kiran got to the truck.
“Uncle Hamid called you, didn’t he?”
“Yep,” Amir said. “And I’m not here to hassle you, I just want to get a look at that eye and make sure you’re okay.”
Amir reached toward Kiran’s face, but she stepped away. “Look, I’m fine. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Loch reached back into the cab of the truck and looked around. “Hey, you work from this truck, do you have a first aid kit in here?”
“Under the seat.”
Loch found it and left the door open to shield them from view.
“Get over here, let me look at it.” Loch smiled, and she was evidently hard to resist because Kiran stepped close enough for her to get a look at the cut across the top of her nose. Loch dabbed at a smear of blood along the side with an antiseptic wipe and looked closer at her eye.
“It looks worse that it is,” Kiran said. “The football guys said they were just reminding me what locker room to use.”
“Let me guess,” Loch said, squinting at her. “By slamming your face into the door?”
“Good guess.”
Loch turned Kiran’s face toward Amir.
“It doesn’t look broken,” Amir said, leaning closer to look and squinting in the sunlight. “But that eye is going to look bad for a couple of days.”
“How do you know?” Kiran said.
“What,” Amir said, bumping Kiran’s shoulder with hers. “You think you’re the only butch to get into fights in high school?”
“Did you really?”
“Hell yeah,” Amir said. “Ask Hamid, he jumped into one on the field one day and got suspended trying to protect me.”
“What were you fighting about?”
Amir raised an eyebrow. “Same thing you were.”
“Wow,” Kiran said, smiling. “I never knew that.”
“The good thing about this,” Amir said, smiling and dropping her voice, “is that your girlfriend is going to be all over you making sure you’re okay, which makes it almost worth it.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.” Loch swatted her arm with the first aid kit. Amir and Kiran thought that was hilarious, and pretty soon, Kiran was smiling again.
“You’re totally right about that one,” she said, glancing back toward the school. “Amy’s pissed as hell and didn’t even want to leave my side to go to class. It’s not all bad.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Amir asked. “I’ve never seen her.”
Kiran pulled up a picture of them on her phone with Amy standing behind her kissing her cheek, long blond hair falling over Kiran’s shoulder.
“Damn, she’s pretty,” Amir said. “You guys look great together.”
“She went nuts for you after you did that music video last year, by the way,” Kiran said to Loch, sliding her phone back into the pocket of her jeans. “Half the girls in school were in love with you.”
“What?” Amir leaned back on the truck and smiled at Loch. “What music video?”
“Oh, my god, you haven’t seen it?” Kiran looked at Amir like she was crazy. “She transforms herself from a guy to a girl with just clothes and makeup in the same video, and you’d never know it’s the same person.”
“The artist was a friend.” Loch looked at Amir and shrugged. “He had this idea for the video and wanted me to do it. It’s totally his thing, though, I was just the visual. I had already heard the song and loved it, so I said I’d do it. He donated the profits to an LGBTQ youth charity in London.”
“How do I not know this?” Amir said. “That’s amazing.”
Kiran looked back at the school again, biting her lip as she glanced down at her watch.
“I’ve got to go back in there. I can’t just not show up at lunch like they hurt me and I ran home or something.”
“So, you don’t want to go home?” Loch asked.
“Hell no,” Kiran said. “The last thing you want to do is look like you’re scared.”
Amir nodded. “I hate to say it, but you’re right.” She held Kiran’s gaze. “But if you want to go, I’ll take you.”
“Hey, Kiran.” Loch looked up at the front doors of the school. “Do you think many of the guys in there saw that video?”
“Actually, every one of them saw it because they showed it at a mandatory assembly during diversity week last month. They were all drooling over you as that girl.”
Loch looked at Amir, then back at Kiran. “Feel free to say no to this, but how do you feel about some company for lunch?” She hesitated, thinking for a moment before she went on. “If you’re sure it wouldn’t make things worse.”
Kiran stepped back. “Are you kidding me with this?”
Loch shook her head, smiling.
“I don’t know why the hell you’d want to go in there,” Kiran said. “But I’m not about to turn it down.”
“Well, that’s that,” Amir said, a slow smile spreading across her face as she locked up her truck. “Let’s go.”
Loch and Amir stopped at the office to sign in and get visitor passes, then Kiran directed them to the cafeteria. As they walked through the double doors into the dining area, the steamy, familiar smell of cafeteria food enveloped them, and Amir felt Kiran take a slow breath beside her. Heads swiveled toward them in a slow, surreal wave that started at the back of the room and moved like falling dominos to the front. Bar Harbor High wasn’t a big school, and there were only about a hundred kids dotted in groups around the room, but within a few seconds, every single one of them was looking at Loch.
“Just pick a table with no varsity jackets,” Kiran whispered. “I’ll grab some drinks from the line.”
Amir took Loch’s hand and led her through the tables until she found a smaller one that was empty except for a forgotten Algebra book. Amir looked around as they sat down.
“Yep,” she said. “It’s like I never left. They haven’t changed a thing in here.”
A petite redheaded girl with freckles approached the table then and tapped Loch on the shoulder.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder at a table of captivated girls a few yards away. “But you look like that model from that Ed Sheeran video.” She hesitated. “…The one where you go from a girl to a boy?”
“That’s me,” Loch said with a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Oh, my god.” She looked back and nodded at the table she’d come from. “It is her!”
That was all it took to start a flood. Every one of them came over to the table, all asking questions at once and asking Loch to sign their notebooks. Flashing camera phones were going off in every direction, and for the first time, Amir started to realize what it meant to be someone everyone recognized.
“Can you sign this for my little brother?” A heavier girl so shy she could barely get the words out thrust a sheet of notebook paper in Loch’s direction. “He’s gay, too, and you’re like his idol.”
“Sure,” Loch said, smiling as if that girl was the only other person in the room. “What’s his name?”
“Michael.”
She studied Loch�
�s face and hair as she signed the paper and added a short personal note to Michael.
“Here you go.” Loch handed it back and looked up at her. “And you have really pretty eyes, you know. It’s rare to see such a light green color.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling for the first time.
Someone touched Loch’s shoulder just then and pulled her into a new conversation as Kiran returned with three cans of soda.
“Geez,” Amir said to her, nodding toward the rush of kids still piling deeper around Loch. “You weren’t kidding.”
Loch turned and whispered something in Kiran’s ear, giving her a big smile as she went back to the throng of kids.
“What did she say?”
Kiran spoke quickly, her voice low and hushed. “She said the football guys are walking up behind us right now—don’t you dare look, by the way—so she wanted to be sure they saw that she was here with us.”
And that was it. That was the moment Amir knew she was falling in love with Loch. This wildly successful woman giving up an afternoon to hang out with a bullied teenager in some small-town high school cafeteria. The same one who was leaving any day to go the hell back to Manhattan.
Five athletic-looking guys in varsity jackets gathered around the outside edge of the group, and one of them pushed his way through to be close enough to get Loch’s attention.
“So,” he said, looking her up and down. “You’re the chick from that video?”
Loch nodded, her gaze locked on his. “No woman is a ‘chick,’” she said. “But if you’re asking my name, it’s Loch Battersby.”
“What are you doing at Harbor High?” He looked back at the other guys and smiled, then swept her body with his eyes. “I can think of a few things I’d like you to teach me.”
Amir stiffened and resisted the urge to step closer. Loch turned and nodded toward Kiran.
“Kiran’s a friend of mine, and I was in town, so I stopped by to see her.”
One of the other guys laughed, but someone elbowed him, and he stopped abruptly. Cameras were still going off in every direction, but the room now seemed suddenly quiet.
“That kid is your friend?” He nodded toward Kiran.
“Yep.” Loch held his gaze. “And my girlfriend lives here, too, so I see her a lot.”
“Yeah,” he said finally, glancing back at his friends. “She’s pretty cool.”
One of the cheerleaders got Loch’s attention and asked her about some other celebrity, and she turned away to talk to them. The guy stepped back to join his buddies, and they headed back to their table in a group, most of them still staring at Loch as they passed.
A few minutes later, he came back to where Kiran was standing and cleared his throat to get her attention.
“Hey, man,” he said. “I’m sorry about today. I told them that shit wasn’t cool.”
“That’s okay,” Kiran said. “It was no big deal. You weren’t even there.”
“Yeah, but I heard about it.” He glanced over his shoulder toward his table. “I’ll make sure they don’t bother you again. They were just being dicks.”
Kiran nodded, and he bumped her fist with his as he left.
The bell rang, people started to scatter, and Loch signed the last of the autographs the students had time to ask for before the cafeteria was suddenly empty.
“Jesus Christ.” Amir rubbed her temples and looked around in the thick sudden silence. “That was insane.”
Kiran came over to Loch and hugged her hard. “Thank you for doing this for me.”
Her voice was low, and it almost sounded like she was going to cry. Loch squeezed her back.
“It was no big deal. I think we got our point across.”
Kiran just looked at her, then over at Amir. “It was a huge deal. And I won’t forget it.”
“Just do it for some other gay kid someday, although hopefully by then, you won’t need to.” Loch said. “Someone did something like this for me once and I never forgot it, either.”
“I will,” she said, brushing a cheek with the back of her hand. “I promise.”
Amir handed Kiran her jacket. “Now get to class before I get called to the principal’s office for keeping you out here.”
They watched as Kiran disappeared through the swinging cafeteria doors, suddenly taller and walking with a confidence that reminded Amir of Loch. As they headed out to the truck, Loch looked over at Amir like she wanted to say something, but then changed her mind.
“Yes?” Amir said, smiling at her.
“I just wanted to say…” Loch paused so long Amir wondered if she was going to change her mind. It was the first time she’d ever seen her look nervous. “That it’s not like I really think you’re my girlfriend or anything.”
“Well, that’s a shame.” Amir opened the truck door for her. She leaned in and brought Loch’s face to hers, kissing her for longer than she should have in a high school parking lot and barely resisting the urge to do more than that. “Because that was my favorite part.”
Later, when they pulled up to Loch’s house, Loch ran in to get her bag and swung it into the back of the truck before she climbed back into the cab.
“By the way,” she said, looking through the back window. “What’s all that stuff you have wrapped up in the back of your truck?”
“None of your business, ma’am.” Amir reached over to put her hand on Loch’s thigh.
“Don’t make me get back there and get into it,” Loch said with a smile that told Amir she was serious. “Because I will.”
Amir started up the truck. “I’m taking you camping.”
Loch just stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. You said you’ve never been.”
She kissed Amir’s cheek with an excited smile and sat back in her seat, sliding her hand underneath Amir’s on the gearshift. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to go camping?”
“Since you were a kid?”
She nodded. “I was supposed to go with Samia and Colleen twice, but both times, we got rained out. Then when I turned fifteen, I started working, so it just never happened.”
“Well, I checked the weather, and there’s no rain predicted till next week, so I think we’re safe. And I reserved my favorite campsite, so all we have to do is drive in and set up.”
It was a short drive to Seawall Campground within Acadia National Park, and Amir followed the narrow camp road around until it came to the end and Amir parked, taking Loch’s hand as they walked out to where the evergreens thinned and the land narrowed into the shape of an arrowhead. The furthest point of it pierced the clear blue sky, and sheer cliffs on both sides of it dropped into the sea below. Swirling waves crashed against the huge rocks at the base of the cliffs and launched cold white spray into the sky that hovered in the air, still and sparkling, an iridescent mist between the sea and the sun.
Loch walked slowly out to the point and stared down the two ragged cliff faces into the foaming sea below. She closed her eyes and breathed in the cold salt air, letting the water shake her like thunder as it crashed into the rock. Amir walked up behind Loch and wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close.
“This is so beautiful,” Loch said, leaning back against Amir. “It’s like you’re standing at the end of the world, the last bit of earth before everything drops off into the ocean.”
“And there’s a full moon tonight,” Amir said, her words soft against Loch’s neck. “So, you’ll still be able to see the waves spray up the sides of the cliffs even at midnight. It’s gorgeous. It looks like liquid silver in the moonlight.”
“I can’t believe you brought me here. I totally didn’t expect this.” Loch turned around and slipped her hands underneath Amir’s shirt, following the cuts of her abs with her fingers.
“God, Loch, you’ve got to stop,” Amir said, closing her eyes and leaning into her. “If you start touching me like that, I’m not going to be able to stop.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to,” Loch wh
ispered, sliding her hands around to Amir’s bare back and running her nails lightly up her sides.
“Jesus.” Amir traced Loch’s lip with the tip of her tongue, her hands warm against the sides of her face. “We’ve got to get the tent up before I take your clothes off right here and we get arrested.”
Loch laughed at that and followed her back to the truck, where Amir handed her a green duffel bag. “This is the tent. If you want to, you can unpack this while I get the rest of the truck unloaded.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you unload? There’s all that wood and stuff.”
“I think I can handle it.” Amir winked at her and started stacking the wood by the firepit, but she kept an eye on Loch, who lined everything up in perfect piles on the ground. Rainfly, tent, footprint, and then the poles in three separate piles, with the poles and stakes across the top. Amir was unpacking the last of the equipment when she saw Loch holding the bag up and shaking it, looking inside it and feeling around in the corners.
Amir finally stood in the back of the truck and looked over at her, trying not to smile. “What’s the problem over there, Battersby?”
“I have everything unpacked, but I can’t find the instructions. I think I lost them somehow.”
Loch went over to the tent she’d carefully laid out and looked underneath it.
Jesus, Amir thought, watching her search carefully through the folded rainfly. She’s literally the cutest girl in the world.
She hopped off the tailgate and took the bag that Loch was still peering into. “Don’t worry, you didn’t lose them. There are no instructions.”
“But…” Loch shook the bag again, sudden worry wrinkling her forehead. “How do you know how it all goes together?”
Amir gave up trying not to smile. “I think between the two of us we’ll be able to figure it out.”
Loch looked doubtful but handed Amir the empty bag. “Okay, what happens first?”
Amir let Loch decide where she wanted the tent, and she chose the halfway point between the firepit and the cliffs, about thirty yards back from the edge of the cliffs. After the footprint was down, it only took about ten minutes to get the tent up and staked.
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