by Malinda Lo
Amber turned to the mirror, examining her reflection soberly. She ran a hand through her hair, tousling some of it, smoothing down other bits. “It’ll do.” Then she looked down at her wet shirt and laughed. “I made a mess, though.” She lifted the bottom of her tank top and pulled it off, brushing past Reese as she exited the bathroom.
Reese watched as Amber went into her room and emerged a moment later, tugging on a new, dry tank top. This one was blue, with spaghetti straps. Amber stopped in the hallway, hands on her hips. “What? Do I look weird or something?”
“No. Sorry. I’m—” She shook her head. “Never mind. You look fine.”
“Do you want something to drink?” Without waiting for an answer, Amber headed back to the front of the flat.
“Sure,” Reese said, following.
“Have a seat,” Amber said as she opened the fridge. “We have… let’s see. Diet Coke? Water? Beer?”
“Whatever you want.” Reese sat on the edge of the sofa. It faced the big picture window, and she had a million-dollar view of multicolored homes stacked on the hillside, all the way down to a glimpse of the downtown skyline.
Amber joined her with two Diet Cokes cradled in one arm and two glasses of ice. “Too early for beer?” she said with a grin, and sat down beside Reese, folding her legs up beneath her.
“Thanks.” Reese picked up one of the cans. The soda fizzed as she poured it over the ice, and when she took her first sip, the bubbles on her tongue felt like tiny little sparklers. Everything here—the couch, the view, Amber and her new blond hair—everything was so sharp, so crisp. She felt as though she suddenly had superpowered vision.
Amber was studying her with a little smile on her lips. She was wearing pink lip gloss; it shone in the light pouring through the windows. It would be tacky, slightly sweet, Reese thought. Like candy. The thought made her feel warm all over, and she took another sip of her Diet Coke.
“So,” Amber said conversationally, “what do you think of the view?”
“It’s—it’s great.”
“Yeah. I love it. I could just sit here staring out the window for hours.”
Silence descended on them, and Reese became aware of the sound of a clock ticking in the distance. She heard Amber’s breath beside her; the rustle as she shifted on the couch, leaning forward to pour her own soda; the ice rattling in the glass. She even heard the sound of Amber swallowing.
Amber said, “I’m glad you could come over.”
“Me too,” Reese said. Was this her cue to offer to play tour guide? The idea of taking Amber to Alcatraz or Fisherman’s Wharf now seemed completely ridiculous. She wouldn’t want to go there. She looked at Amber. She thought she could see the view reflected in her gray eyes.
Amber leaned forward. “I wasn’t sure if you were into girls.”
The words snapped back at Reese. “What?”
Amber smiled slightly. “Girls. I thought so, but maybe not.”
Reese felt as though her head were suddenly inhabited by a thousand buzzing bees; all she could hear was static in her ears, trying to drown out the emotions erupting within her. Confusion, denial, the delirious sensation of seeing Amber bend toward her with her mouth slightly open, her hand stretched out—and then Amber had simply placed her frosty glass on the coffee table, barely brushing her hand against Reese’s knee as she sat back again.
“I’m straight,” Reese managed to say, her heart pounding so loudly, she thought Amber surely must hear it.
Amber quirked one eyebrow up. She hadn’t bleached her brows; they were perfectly shaped dark brown arches. She leaned forward again and Reese almost backed away, but Amber was only reaching for her soda. She took it out of Reese’s cold, damp fingers and put it on the table next to her own, the glass clinking gently.
“I don’t think you’re straight,” Amber said, and part of Reese was simply shocked by her directness. Who even said that?
“What?” Reese said again. She had to work on being more articulate.
Amber took her hand, and Reese let her lace her fingers with hers. “You heard what I said.” She pulled at her, like a girl tugging on the string of a balloon that has floated nearly all the way up to the sky, and just like that balloon, Reese felt herself drawn downward, half-floating, half-sinking, toward Amber.
The lip gloss did taste like candy. It was slick and hard at the same time, and as soon as their lips touched, Reese thought she was going to fall apart from shaking so much. Amber laughed a little, releasing Reese’s hand and cupping her face to keep her steady. Reese felt like an awkward schoolgirl; she didn’t know where her hands were supposed to go. Her body was bent at a strange angle, and she wanted to move it. She scrambled, not wanting to stop kissing Amber; she twisted around and her leg smashed against the coffee table.
“Hey, be careful,” Amber said laughingly, against her mouth, and she pulled Reese’s arms around her waist, and her body was soft and curved and warm and full of breath and heat. Her mouth opened, and her tongue was cold from the icy soda, which was so odd, because everywhere else she was undeniably, unmistakably hot.
And then Amber, pushing her back ever so gently, said softly, “See, I told you, you’re not straight.”
CHAPTER 16
Reese walked home in a daze. The entire city, covered in late afternoon light, seemed to glow. Every street, every building, even the steel streetcars, became wondrous things: artifacts of a day when her entire world turned upside down.
As she passed the hardware store on Twenty-Fourth Street, she halted, transfixed by the display in the window. Long rolls of paper had been covered with paint in different shades of red, from pink to darkest maroon. That color—the second-brightest pink—was the same color as Amber’s lip gloss. And that one—the third red from the right—was the exact shade of the red that dripped down the walls in her dream.
The thought struck her so forcefully that she gasped. She put her hand out to touch the window, as if she could feel the sensation of the paint through the glass. The cool, hard surface gave away nothing. She backed away, her handprint clinging to the window momentarily, and then, as if she were being led by someone she could not see, she went into the hardware store and found the paint aisle.
There were so many colors here. She ran her eyes over the hundreds of paint chips displayed on the wall, seeking out the single shade of red that she had recognized. She began to pull out the paint chips in the red spectrum, moving faster and faster as she discarded the wrong colors in a growing pile on the floor. Sour cherry, brick red, holly berry, Ivy League crimson, love knot, strawberry fields… she had never known there could be so many shades of red or so many bizarre names for paint. Finally she found the color she was looking for: bittersweet root.
“Can I help you?” said a clerk from behind her.
She jumped, looking up. “No, I found it.”
The clerk glanced at the pile of paint chips nearby.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll clean it up.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it—I’ll put them in the right place. Do you want a sample of that color?”
She glanced at the little paper chip. “Isn’t this a sample?”
He smiled. “Never painted a room before, have you?”
“Um, no.”
“That’s just a paint chip. A sample is some of the actual paint.”
“Oh. Sure, I’ll take a sample.”
She left the hardware store a few minutes later with a tiny can of bittersweet root in a brown paper bag and headed home.
Upstairs in her room, she cracked open the paint can on her desk. It looked lighter in liquid form than on the paint chip. Tentatively she dipped a finger in the paint and held it up to the light. The red crawled down her finger in a bloody line, dripping onto the desktop. “Crap,” she muttered, and grabbed a tissue to wipe it up. She put the lid back on the can of paint and went to rinse off her hands. As the water washed the color down the drain in a pink stream, she was suddenly
confused by why she had taken the sample. What was she going to do with it? She wasn’t planning to paint anything that color.
She returned to her room and lay down on her bed, tracing a damp finger over the shape of her lips, remembering the way it had felt to kiss Amber. Warmth flushed her body. Did this make her gay?
She had never really kissed anyone before. There was that fourth-grade kiss on the playground, but that had been on a dare and she didn’t think it counted. It hadn’t particularly bothered her, though; her friends seem to think her lack of kissing experience was more important than she did. Sophomore year, during a party at Tyler Pon’s house when his parents were gone, they had tried to get her to kiss someone. It hadn’t gone well. Tyler was a junior on the soccer team and the party was full of athletes, but because Tyler’s younger sister Madison was on the newspaper, everyone on the Kennedy Leader got invited too. Kennedy wasn’t like the high schools on TV, with their strict divisions between jocks and nerds and theater geeks, but friendship circles still tended to form along shared interests. So Reese spent most of the party hanging out with the other journalism kids in the relatively quiet family room in the back of the house, while the music got louder and louder in the living room at the front.
Madison was obsessed with finding a boyfriend that year, and she couldn’t stop talking about which boys were cutest and whether or not she should go into the living room and talk to them. Julian thought she was amusing and egged her on, but Reese was barely paying attention. She had drunk a cup of the disgustingly sweet vodka punch and it had made her sleepy, and the L-shaped couch was so comfortable. She stirred when Madison grabbed her foot and shook it. “What?” she mumbled, opening her eyes.
“Everyone’s going around saying who’s the cutest guy at the party,” Madison said. “You’re up, Reese.”
Reese propped her head up on her hand, blinking at Madison. She was dressed in a fuchsia tank top and a white jean miniskirt, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail on top of her head. “I don’t know,” Reese said. “Does it matter?”
Madison shook her head dramatically. “Oh, Reese. You know.”
“Maybe she doesn’t,” said Briana Martinez, who was sitting on the rug and leaning against the edge of the sofa. “Don’t push her.” Bri had short black hair and was wearing a T-shirt that said DYKE on it as part of her attempt to shock the soccer players.
“Who would you pick?” Reese asked.
Bri grinned. “If I had to pick a dude, I’d go with Julian here.”
Julian was lying on his stomach and playing a game on his phone. “Sorry, Bri, you’re not my type,” he said.
“Come on,” Madison said, pouting at Reese. “I think you’re just embarrassed to say who you like.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” Reese said. “Why would I be embarrassed?”
“Crushing on someone would ruin your reputation as the distant but intense loner with a heart of gold,” said Julian.
“That is not my reputation,” Reese objected, and threw a pillow at him.
“It totally is,” Bri insisted.
“Yep,” said Robbie Revilla. He wrote music reviews for the Leader and dressed like a goth rock star. “They’re right. Own it, Reese.” He raised his plastic cup of punch to her and took a sip.
Reese’s head was too fuzzy to come up with an appropriate comeback. So she changed the subject. “If I had to pick a dude,” she said, quoting Bri, “I’d go for David Li.”
Madison squealed, bouncing up onto her knees. “David Li?”
“Sure, why not? He’s cute.”
“He’s like Captain America.” Madison laughed. “I can’t believe you would go for him!”
“She has a hero streak in her,” Julian said. “Writing all those op-eds about asshole cops harassing students. I could see it.”
“Do you like him?” Madison asked.
“Who?” Reese said deliberately.
Madison rolled her eyes. “David Li, you dork.”
“I don’t like anybody,” Reese said.
“Would you go out with him?” Madison pushed.
“No, I don’t date anyone.”
“Right on, Reese,” Robbie said. “We’re too young to be tied down.”
Bri gave Reese a curious look. “You wouldn’t date anyone?”
Reese shrugged. “I’m not interested. I like being on my own.”
Madison asked, “But if you were interested, you’d date someone?”
Reese sat up. “Jeez, I don’t know. Why?”
Madison smiled. “No reason, just asking. Have you ever kissed anyone?”
Reese thought for a minute. “Yes. In fourth grade I kissed Eli Campbell on a dare at recess. Does that count?”
Bri cracked up. “No. It does not count.”
“Have you kissed anyone?” Reese countered.
Bri turned red. “None of your business!”
“Dude, it’s okay, you can out me as your secret lover,” Robbie said, waggling his pierced eyebrow at her.
Madison giggled. “So Bri’s totally kissed someone. Robbie, despite his supposed preference for being single, dated Stephanie Chen last fall. Julian’s dating that guy he met over the summer. And I at least had a real kiss at the Fall Formal. You know what that means?”
“What?” Reese asked dubiously.
Madison smiled. “You should kiss someone tonight!”
Bri and Robbie both seemed to think it was a great idea, but Reese shook her head. “No. That’s ridiculous.”
Her objection made Julian take notice. “Why?” he asked. “You should do it. It’s not like you have to date the guy.”
“Or the girl,” Bri put in.
“You guys are crazy. What am I supposed to do, just walk up to someone and be like, ‘Hey, you wanna kiss me?’ ”
Robbie started laughing, but Madison was seriously considering the question. “No, we’ll set it up for you,” she said.
Reese’s eyes widened. “What? No.”
Madison seemed excited. “Yes! It’ll be great. Who do you want to kiss? I’ll go ask them!”
Reese shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“She likes David, what about him?” Bri suggested.
Madison shook her head. “He’s dating Riley now. Haven’t you seen them going at it?”
“Hmm,” Robbie said. “You should get a David lookalike. Your brother!”
Madison made a face. “Ew. I’m not asking my brother.”
“You guys, I don’t want to do this,” Reese said, but her objections were falling on deaf ears. When Madison fixated on a crazy scheme, she had a way of making it happen. Reese figured Madison would be editor in chief of the Leader by the time they were juniors.
“Eric Chung,” Julian said. “I bet he’d do it.”
“Oh my God, that’s perfect,” Madison said. “Julian, you know Eric, will you go ask him?”
Reese swung her legs over the edge of the couch, her face darkening. “You guys, I’m not doing this.”
Madison finally looked at her. “I’m just saying maybe you should try it.”
“Why? What does it matter if I’ve kissed anyone before?”
Madison scrunched up her face, puzzled. “Don’t you want to?”
“No!” Reese turned red. “Look, it’s not my ultimate goal in life to kiss anyone or find a boyfriend. That’s your deal, Madison, not mine.”
Madison’s face went white. “What are you saying? That I’m some boy-crazy idiot? I’m just trying to have some fun. You’re overreacting.”
Reese’s entire body stiffened as heat suffused her skin. “I am not overreacting,” she snapped, and before Madison or anyone else could respond, she got up and left.
She couldn’t go to the living room—it was packed full of drunk kids dancing to hip-hop—so she headed to the back of the house. The kitchen was a mess, the counters strewn with paper plates and crushed plastic cups. The punch bowl, still half full of the unnaturally pink drink that tast
ed like a gallon of syrup mixed with paint thinner, was surrounded by empty beer bottles. A couple was making out in the corner, and they didn’t even look up as she banged into the trash can, causing a tower of pizza boxes to crash onto the floor. She saw the back door behind the couple, and she brushed past them and pulled the door open, letting it slam shut behind her. She thought she heard the couple squeak in surprise.
Outside, the yard was deserted. It was March, and it was freezing. Fog cloaked the neighborhood in the kind of damp chill that soaked through to your bones, but the cold air felt good on her flushed cheeks. She pulled her hood over her head and zipped up her sweatshirt, crossing her arms as she gazed across the long, dark yard. Her breath steamed out, mingling with the fog that crept through the light from the kitchen door. The neighbors were still awake, their windows visible through the mist in fuzzy yellow squares.
She barely had time to take a few breaths before the door opened behind her and Julian said, “Reese, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. Madison’s words still burned, making her tense and defensive.
Julian dragged a couple of metal deck chairs toward her and sat down in one. She didn’t say anything more, waiting for him to give up and leave. But instead he took something out of his pocket and struck a match. His face was lit by a flame as he cupped his hand around a cigarette. “When did you start smoking?” she asked.
When the match sputtered out he laid it carefully on the armrest. “Couple weeks ago.”
She watched him smoke. He seemed fairly proficient at it. “Sean smokes, doesn’t he?” Sean was the guy Julian had started dating recently; he was only a year older but had run away from home and was trying to make it as a musician. Julian had met him at a queer youth event at the Center.
Julian flicked the ashes at the ground. “Yeah. So?”
“So it’s a bad habit to start.” Reese sat down in the other chair, watching as Julian exhaled plumes of smoke into the fog. She had gone with Julian to one of Sean’s gigs at a dive bar where they had snuck in the back. The band sucked, but Reese could see why Julian liked Sean. He was all swagger, spiky dark hair and eyeliner and lips like a girl’s.