Plunge

  I didn’t frost my brownies, but I did like them to be extra chocolatey, which was why I added chocolate chips. A few years ago, there had finally been a mix on the market that was perfect; so rich and fudgy that it made me a bit queasy, but absolutely satisfying. The mix had come with a bag of chocolate chips and you were supposed to mix some into the batter and then sprinkle some onto the top after they’d cooked for ten minutes. Of course it didn’t take long for them to be discontinued, so I had set about creating my own replica. It took a few tries, but once I had taken the time to experiment with ingredients, I’d created the perfect chewy, gooey brownie.

  When my batch was pulled from the oven and cooled, I arranged them on my mom’s favorite serving platter. It was old and the violets were a bit faded from use, but it reminded me of when I was a kid and Mom had out together tea parties for the two us. She wasn’t ever big on hands-on play, so the time we’d spend alone together had always been some of my favorite. She would ask me about my day and actually listen to me talk; it bummed me out to think of it, but listening to me was something neither parent did anymore. My family never talked unless there was some sort of big drama and then nobody wanted to listen, they just wanted everyone else to listen to what they had to say. For once it was my turn. Both of my parents were home, I’d made a snack, and I was going to call a little meeting of my own.

  The brownies sat on the table in front of me. Everything was ready for me to call my parents, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. For what was likely the ninetieth time, I thought about Noah. His way really was the easiest way. I could do it that way. I didn’t owe my parents my honesty. They’d never done anything to earn it. But I couldn’t make myself subscribe to a middle ground. For me, it was all or nothing. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to my parents. I asked them to come down so that we could talk.

  My mom looked worried as she walked into the living room; Dad looked annoyed. He was so tall and he looked down on me with eyes so narrow that I could practically hear him asking me who I thought I was to summon him. My resolve almost broke, but I thought of Hannah and what I could have.

  “I need to talk to you both about something,” I said. I gestured to the plate of brownies on the coffee table. “Please help yourselves to a brownie I made.”

  My arm hovered stiffly in the air and the whole thing felt so awkward I just wanted to die. Mom took a brownie and a cocktail napkin and held the two on her lap. I waited for her to take a bite, but she didn’t. Dad looked from the brownies to me, then crossed his arms with a roll of the eyes.

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  I didn’t sit down. I liked the little bit of authority it gave me to be higher than them for a change, to be the one looking down instead of being looked down on. I cleared my throat. I had tried to plan out a speech in a million different ways, but nothing had felt right, so I decided I would use the brownie metaphor to explain it and hope for the best.

  “I made these brownies today,” I started. A wave of heat rolled my belly and I thought for a minute I was going to have to make a run for the bathroom, but the nausea passed. “I made these brownies because lots of different parts have to go into brownies for them to be good. If the parts aren’t the right combination of different things—”

  Dad cut me off. “Lennox, I don’t bake. I don’t care what goes into your brownies. Please just get to the point.”

  He couldn’t even give me five minutes of his life to get my thoughts together. I had given him most of my life; given it over to him to control like a puppet master while more and more things I had loved were stripped away from me. I had tried every day to be less of myself to please him and Mom and he couldn’t even give me five minutes.

  “Okay,” I said, and I could feel the cool settle over me. My own arms crossed as I looked down on the couch where he sat next to Mom. “I’m a lesbian and I’m in love with a girl. I am going to date her, and I am not spending another day pretending this isn’t who I am.”

  Stillness settled over the room so thickly that it stopped the air flow. I tried to keep firm, not to back down or cower, but I could feel the muscles in my lower lip tremble and twitch from anxiety. As the moments passed, I was so desperate for someone to talk that I almost said more just to end the silence.

  Dad stood up, his movements slow and controlled. He walked so close to me that I thought maybe he was going to hug me or reach out to me. He didn’t. He leaned in, back at straight angles and hard, eyes narrowed.

  “If you think for one second that I’m going to let you throw your life away, you are crazy,” his face was so close to mine that little beads of spit were landing on my chin every time he enunciated a word. It was crazy; there were so many times I had hated my dad, like a deep-in-the-bones- kind of hate, but I had never actually been scared of him before that moment. I tried to tell myself that there was no reason to be. He wasn’t even shouting. It was his stance, the way his body leaned rigidly into my bubble. The way I could see in his eyes that he hated me.

  With a hard swallow, I matched his rigidness. He could threaten and bluster. He could do whatever he thought he needed to do to make himself a man, but I wasn’t giving up another day. I blinked back tears and answered him. “No, Dad, throwing away my life is what I have already been doing. I’ve thrown away my whole freaking childhood trying to make myself be something you could be proud of and I am not throwing away one more day.”

  I didn’t yell and I was proud of my control when everything inside of me was screaming. My nerves were humming with built up adrenaline and that whole fight or flight thing was really kicking in. I wanted more than anything to turn and run from the room. But I didn’t. I stood firm.

  “And all this is about some girl you think you love? Some pervert like you?” he asked.

  It was like a slap in the face. All the adrenaline was washed away, and I wasn’t scared or confident anymore. All it took was that one question to make me feel exhausted. Everything that had been steady wanted to collapse.

  “No, Dad. It’s not about Hannah, the girl I’m in love with.” Even as I said the words, I knew they were true, that my stance was so much bigger than her. “I do love her, but this is all about me. I am sick of not having the chance to love someone. I am sick of never being able to tell anyone how I feel because I don’t want to embarrass you. This is all about me being me.” I slapped my chest. “Me. Lennox. Who I am.”

  Our eyes locked and as I saw his water, hope flooded me. Please let me be getting through to him, I prayed, so desperate for God to hear me. Instead of answering me, my dad turned away from me, looking down at Mom. Just like that, I was gone to him.

  “This is why you should have let me send her to God’s Promise,” he said as he glared down at her. “So we could have nipped this in the bud.”

  My mother stood up then and looked Dad in his eyes. Her face didn’t change, and her voice didn’t raise, but it was steady when she answered him. “I told you what would happen if you ever mentioned that place in our home again. I don’t love this, but this is who Lennox is. My daughter won’t be tortured into pretending she’s something she's not.”

  I couldn’t see what passed between them because my dad’s back was still facing me, but some unspoken words must have been exchanged. In his stance I could see Dad’s defeat; his rigid back slumped, his shoulders hunched. He turned away from Mom and without another word, left the room. A moment later, he left the house.

  “I still don’t know about being gay,” Mom said quietly. “It was something people just didn’t talk about when I was a child.” I wanted to point out that at just under forty, people were definitely out as gay when my mom was young. Instead I kept my mouth shut and waited for her to continue. “Your dad loves me, and I don’t ask for much, so I know he will come back. He loves me and I love you, so he will be back. But he will never accept this.”

  She looked so young then, her eyes so wide and scared. I don’t think she had ever stood up to
my dad about anything. She believed the wife submitted to her husband, that it was her job to be his helper. I wished with all my heart that she could be okay with who I was, but I couldn’t be ungrateful to her sacrifice. She had given up a part of who she was and what she believed in order to give me back myself.

  “I love you, Mom” I said.

  “I love you, too, Lennox.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hannah

  When I woke up the next day, one thing felt certain: I wasn’t leaving my room except to grab snacks and use the bathroom. Even the bathroom thing barely counted since I had my own. I was too drained from the day before to face anyone but Ari or Marley and if they wanted to see me, they could come up. I was on strike from everyone else with their mixed messages and selfish ways.

  All fall I had been desperate for Winter Break. I couldn’t wait to break up the same routine and do all these new things. Not one of them had turned out the way I planned. Instead of feeling fulfilled and brave, I felt trapped in a cell. A nice cell, but still a cell.

  Feet still heavy from a night of tossing and turning, I stomped my way over to my computer desk and plopped down heavily at my chair. After pulling up my social media and Pandora, I logged into Lavender Menace to check for new messages. I didn’t have any, but I hadn’t even been online a full minutes before a notification popped up. The message was from Window.

  Window: Hi.

  Since she’d written me a message that was just a greeting, I figured she could see I was active and had decided to reach out for a conversation. All the talking and tension of the past few days was making me want to dig a hole and crawl inside it, not have an on the fly conversation with a potential romantic interest. She’d already seen I was online, though, and taken the time to reach out. Since it felt rude not to reply, I answered back just as simply.

  HanHan: Hello!

  Window: Got any big plans for the day?

  HanHan: Not really. Avoid my family. Listen to mopey music. You?

  Window: I don’t know. Maybe just see if I can make this pretty girl from the internet smile. Seems like she’s having a rough day.

  Oh my God, how cheesy, I thought to myself, but that didn’t stop the grin from spreading across my cheeks. It wasn’t like it was the first time someone had called me pretty, but after the recent blows to my ego, the attention made me feel like I might blush.

  W: That was cheesy, I’m sorry.

  HanHan: Ha! No worries. I guess your flirtations are more appropriate on this kind of app than my gloominess, anyway, so have at it.

  W: That was pretty much all I’ve got. I’m not a natural flirt.

  She might not be, but I was and even without knowing the girl behind the screen, a flutter started in my abdomen. I thought about the little flips I could give her words, little ways to fill them with more meaning than they really had. I decided to play it cool.

  HanHan: No? So what are you a natural at?

  HanHan: See, that’s all it takes to flirt. Take a perfectly harmless sounding phrase or question and make it sound like it has innuendo dripping from every letter.

  Window: Wow, you really have a way with words. I like the way you put things.

  HanHan: Oh, you will like the way I put things.

  HanHan: :)

  Window: Getting brazen with the flirting!

  HanHan: Yes, but only for educational purposes.

  HanHan: And speaking of educational, educate me: what’s your screen name about?

  Window: It was basically my way of saying that I feel like I’m a Window in a Mac world . . .

  I glanced out the window at the street below. Another warm day meant kids out on bikes, people walking dogs, everyone laughing and happy with leftover Christmas energy. All my Christmas spirit was left in a past that I was fighting not to be transported back in to. I could relate so hard to the idea of being Windows in a Mac world.

  The weird part of it all was some part of me blamed myself for the way things had gone. Hadn’t I started the winter break all pissy and mopey that my life was too simple? Hadn’t I wished that something big and life changing would happen to me? Wish granted, right? Thanks, Santa. No matter how hard I had wished, I would give it all back. It turned out that being normal wasn’t actually a problem.

  Wasn’t this normal, though? What I was doing? I was meeting someone new. I was socializing. I was flirting. Maybe normal hadn’t gotten too far out of reach yet and, even if I could never undo all the things I’d learned over this break, I could make things return to some level of status quo.

  HanHan: Hey. This banter stage is fun, and I know this is probably kind of fast, but do you want to meet? You’re giving me good vibes.

  After three minutes passed without a response, I decided to give up and log off. My mouse was literally hovering over the log off icon when a chime told me she’d come back just in time.

  Window: I can’t. My parents won’t let me go out today because they need help putting the decorations away. Tomorrow? At Starbucks at 11?

  I suddenly felt like I might be sick, which was ridiculous since I was the one who suggested we meet. As soon as she said yes, I realized I was surprised. Because she hadn’t even used a profile picture, because I hadn’t even seen what she looked like, I assumed she’d be hesitant to meet. I thought our relationship would unfold over time and, if it heated up at all, it would be a slow boil. Instead I had taken the whole thing and shoved it right under the broiler.

  The ball was still in my court. I had invited her for today; if I wasn’t ready to meet, I could just offer up a stupid excuse. I could pretend to go out of town or just say I was busy without making an excuse. I could ghost. There was no rush. There was no rush until suddenly there was. Until suddenly inside me was a rush of need to propel things forward. I’d had enough of wait and see.

  HanHan: Yes. How will I know who you are?

  Window: I’ll have an infinity scarf with book quotes all over it.

  HanHan: Awesome :)

  Locking myself away in my room became less boring after that, partly because it didn’t really matter what room I was in. Once the plans were firmed up with Window all I could do was ride the homemade rollercoaster of dread and joy that I’d crafted with my own two hands. There were the shallow worries (what if she’s ugly?) and the practical ones (what if she’s a forty-year-old, male unicorn hunter?). There was outfit planning, accessory coordination, and a pre-date playlist to create.

  I drew myself a bath so that I could soak while I planned, and I sat in the tub until my toes turned to prunes. My mom hated when I stayed in the water so long that I had to drain some out to add fresh hot water, but I didn’t care. I was going to enjoy every moment of sudsy peace that I could. The bubbles were fluffy and full and the smell of gardenia and lilies made my skin smell like a garden.

  As I melted against the back of the tub, I allowed myself to daydream about the good possibilities that waited for me the next day. I couldn’t picture a human face to attach to my fantasies, but I could envision soft laughter, happy chatter, and a hand reaching out to take mine. Maybe this would be what I needed. Maybe it would be fun and light and I’d be able to be with someone who just made me happy. No more second guessing every expression or lack thereof. No more wanting to kick myself for prying too much. Just inside jokes and smooches.

  Just as my muscles were turning to butter and dissolving inside my flesh, Lennox popped back into my head long enough to bring all the tension back in waves. Frustrated, I felt my jaw tighten. I wasn’t mad at her. This was all me. Why couldn’t I just get her out of my head? Why did I keep letting her in? With a groan, I pulled the stopper from the drain and watched as the water slowly emptied leaving nothing behind but some residue from my oils. My towel was fluffy and warm, but not even that could put a dent in the sadness I had allowed to ruin my good mood.

  I didn’t even get dressed. With my towel wrapped tightly around my torso, I flopped onto my bed and called Marley. The phone rang six tim
es and I was just about to hang up when she finally picked up, her voice winded.

  “Were you exercising?” I asked, with a slight scowl. Committed couch potatoes, neither Marley nor myself had ever been much for workout routines.

  With a small laugh, Marley answered, “No, I just left my phone upstairs. Had to run upstairs to get it.”

  I pulled the phone away from my face and looked at it. The idea of Marley existing in a room without her phone was infinitely more unbelievable than the idea of her exercising, especially if there was some sort of scandalous edge to the exercise. An aerobic striptease video, perhaps. But forgetting her phone? Not even realizing it wasn’t attached to her hand? Inconceivable.

  “What do you mean?" I asked her and she actually snorted in response.

  “Geez, Hannah, it’s my phone, not my oxygen tank,” she responded with an air of haughtiness. “I can live without it.”

  “No, you can’t,” I huffed. I cheered up and remembered why I was calling. “Guess who has a blind date with the chick from Lavender Menace tomorrow?” I chirped in her ear.

  She squealed in response and immediately started firing the questions off like bullets. I told her what I knew, but admitted my reluctance about what I didn’t and we both shared a deep concern about the whole no picture issue. Marley agreed with my optimism, though, and pretty much told me to get over it. If I didn’t vibe with the person, what had I really lost? The price of a cup of coffee and a half hour? I found myself nodding at the phone before finally asking her if she had time to come over and help me strategize for my date.

  There was a long pause. “I’m actually busy tonight,” she said, her voice trailing at the end of her thought. When I asked her what she was busy with, she got vague and tried to change the subject, which was definitely weird for Marley.