When my mom came home, I turned my head at the sound of her coming in the back door.
Mom looked at me sharply. “Is your hearing back yet?”
I turned away. “Yes.”
She went to the counter and put down her bag. “See, I told you that you’d probably heal on your own. And now maybe you’ll remember what happened.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fortunately, I also got class notes from a friend at school, so I didn’t miss out on anything this week.”
“There you go.” Mom left the room.
I clenched my hands together and took a deep breath. She still believed that she’d done the right thing not to help me, and leave me struggling for three days—what kind of teacher, what kind of mother was that? One of these days, I was going to snap and give my mother a piece of my mind.
On Tuesday after school in the middle of October, all of my friends were busy with one thing or another. I dropped Akasha off at the library and then I had some time to spend by myself. I stopped by What a Drip for chai tea and thought about going next door to visit Mom. Then I changed my mind and wandered down the street in the other direction without any real aim in mind.
It was a beautiful day outside, still sunny and warm in the beginning of October. The leaves on some of the trees had just started to turn yellow and orange, but most of the trees around here were evergreen, especially the giant sequoias, so there wasn’t a lot of fall color. The huge twisted madrone tree in the center of town had green leaves and the new bark that had grown over the summer was starting to darken into a reddish brown; big, red berries were starting to appear in the branches. I stopped and looked up to admire it.
Then I heard someone call my name, and turned around. Kai was waving at me from the other side of the street. I waved back with faint surprise. When was the last time that I’d seen Kai hanging around downtown?
Kai crossed the street and walked over to me.
“Hi, Kai,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes, it is.” He stood next to me and looked up at the twisting branches overhead.
Once, this tree had to compete with other trees for sunlight, forcing it to contort into odd shapes in order to catch the sunlight; now, most of its fellow trees were gone, leaving behind the single madrone in a large open square of grass with only a few small Douglas firs nearby and several large, blackened stumps that remained from a fire that had happened long before the town was founded. The town had planted the grass and trimmed back the other trees to leave room for our namesake.
Kai took a deep breath. “Whew! It’s impressive. Have you ever taken a picture of it?”
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. Even standing in the shade of the tree, my face felt hot. “Yeah, I’ve taken a few shots before, but I don’t think one picture can really capture it completely. It’s so—big.”
Kai met my eyes and smiled. “I know what you mean. But I’m sure your pictures of it are beautiful. I always love your work.”
I looked away from him, unsure of what to say. I stared at the tree and pretended to sip my chai.
“Actually, I just wanted to say hi. See what you’re up to. Hang out.” He looked around. “Are you meeting someone here?”
I shook my head. “Just me. I’m wasting time while my sister’s at the library.”
“Oh. I don’t usually see you by yourself.”
“Yeah, usually Lindsey comes and hangs out with me while I wait.” Or Heather, now that Lindsey was with Peter. I felt that distant twinge again when I thought about Lindsey, but it went away again almost before I noticed it was there: the spell was still holding. “I don’t usually see you outside of school at all,” I said.
Kai glanced away from me and swallowed. “Um, well, no, I don’t usually, uh, say hi to you. When I see you around. You know, when I’m just around, hanging out. With other people. I’m not usually by myself either.”
I tried to remember if I’d noticed Kai hanging out with other people in the background, but I guessed I didn’t pay enough attention. “Oh. Well, there’s not much to do in town when you’re by yourself. It gets lonely.”
“Yeah. Lonely.” He stared up into the tree branches again.
I took another sip of my tea and looked down the street. “I was just going to go for a walk, um, around. Do you want to join me? It’s going to be at least an hour before my sister wants me to pick her up.”
He flashed me a big grin. “Yeah, sure. Where shall we go?”
I gestured down the street with my free hand. “Just wander anywhere. I don’t really care.”
“Lead on, fair maiden, and I shall follow.” He made a little half bow and gestured ahead.
I had to laugh a little at that. Kai was nothing like the elegant, courtly Fae—he was on the short, stocky side, and he had this twisted little smile like he was always joking even when he was being totally serious—so their mannerisms were strange on him.
When he straightened up again, Kai offered his arm, and without thinking, I followed along in the game and accepted it. We walked down the street together past the shops, making small talk about the displays in the windows and the other people who were walking around.
I told Kai about bowling in Fenton with Heather, Ashleigh, and Glen over the weekend, leaving out the end of the night when I broke down at Ashleigh’s.
“That sounds like fun,” he said. “We should go do that sometime.”
“Yeah, if we get a few more people together, we could have two lanes next to each other and all hang out,” I said. “I think they do the whole black light thing every weekend. Maybe we could invite Lindsey and Peter, and then we’d have room for one more—maybe one of your girlfriends?” I suggested, since I couldn’t think of a single other person that I would invite.
Kai stiffened a little. “I told you, I don’t have any girlfriends.”
“I know, just girls you date sometimes.” I twisted my arm in his so that I jabbed my elbow into his ribs gently. “Well, you could sometimes date them at the bowling alley with the rest of us. Or anywhere else we hang out. We don’t mind extra company.”
“So it’s all one big group date, then? Lindsey and Peter, Ashleigh and Glen, then that leaves you and Heather, right?”
“I’m not dating Heather!” I said quickly.
“I know, you don’t date anyone.” Kai’s voice softened.
We’d reached the end of the shops on the street, and the area changed to residential on one side with forest on the other, so Kai stopped. “Where are we going?”
Lindsey’s house was down that street. I turned and steered us into the forest. “What I meant was, we’re all just hanging out together as friends. Some people are couples and some of us aren’t. We’d have an empty space open for bowling, since there’s four people to a lane, so I was trying to be nice by letting you invite a girl. You don’t have to bring a date.”
Kai was silent for a long moment. Then he said, in a low voice, “I keep trying to get up the courage to ask you out.”
I stopped walking again and turned to look at him. My heart was pounding in my throat, but I tried to stay calm. “Kai,” I said slowly, because I was struggling to keep my voice even, “there’s a reason why I don’t date anyone.”
He turned to face me, but he kept my hand trapped in his arm. He looked straight into my eyes: we were the same height. “I don’t care. Don’t call it dating, if you like.”
I started to recite my old arguments. “Whatever you call it, it’s a distraction. I already have a lot going on at school and at home and I don’t have the time—”
“You have time for your friends.” He shifted closer to me, and took my hand in his. His hand felt very warm and surprisingly soft. “Just hang out with me. How would that be any different?”
“It just—would be.” I was having trouble thinking of the right words to say. I knew in the back of my head that my mom and I had talked about me dating before, and every time it always came
out making sense that I shouldn’t date anyone, but now that I was looking straight into Kai’s eyes like this—they were a deep brown, almost black, and if I kept looking into those eyes I was going to fall in—had I ever noticed before that Kai had such long, thick eyelashes? Up this close, there was almost a feminine quality to his features: eyes close together, high cheekbones, narrow eyebrows. I guessed that was the fox in him showing through.
All of the arguments in my head disappeared.
His face was only inches away from mine. I leaned in the rest of the way and pressed my mouth to his.
I kissed him, and he kissed me back, and then our arms were around each other. I dropped my tea on the ground. The rest of the world shrank until it was nothing more than a tiny bubble surrounding us.
A minute later, I pulled back. Kai was smiling at me, and at first I was smiling too, but then I shook my head, as hard as it was.
“I’m not supposed to do this,” I said breathlessly. The guilt was already building.
His face fell. “Who would it hurt?”
I pulled out of his arms and took a step back. The farther I got out of his contact, the more my head began to clear again. “I can’t do this,” I said again. “I’m sorry. If you want to hang out as friends, I can do that, but this is too, um—I can’t lose control around you.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
He started to say something else, but I turned and walked away. I began marching back up the street the way we’d come. My heart was still pounding but now I was starting to get angry. Why had I done that? And why was it wrong? I needed to get my head sorted out.
I had a long time to think as I walked. There were two different ideas fighting in my head. One of them was the old idea that my life had always been simpler without dating, that I’d always been happy just having friends, concentrating on school, and spending time with my family. It was a full life and I’d never quite been able to see where a boyfriend or girlfriend would fit into that. Besides, dating added drama and the risk of getting hurt, like with Lindsey. That wasn’t going to happen with my friends or my family.
But there was another, new idea. This idea said that dating someone casually, or even being in a relationship, wouldn’t have to take up all of my time. After all, most people seemed to find a way to balance it, didn’t they? Lindsey was just a bad example. She chose to let boys take up all of her time, and ditched her friends; and created drama because she was selfish and just looking for attention. I didn’t have to make her mistakes; I wasn’t the best student at school, but I was smart in my own way, and I liked to think that one of my strengths was understanding and dealing with other people. Why shouldn’t romantic relationships be one of those things that I could be good at?
The idea sounded logical. But part of me dreamed of having someone who could sweep me off my feet, the selfish part of me that said I wanted to be happy and worry about myself instead of trying to please everyone else all of the time. And my friends still had time for me even when they were in relationships. Glen and Ashleigh had always been a pair, but I never felt like Ashleigh wasn’t available for me because of Glen. Lindsey was—well. I was trying to let go of that jealousy.
There was emotional stuff behind the old argument, too—dating was something new and kind of scary. How much of my attraction to Kai was just the lure of the forbidden and the unknown? Maybe if I actually did date him, then this tendency to feel my heart pound and my palms sweat and my stomach tie up in knots around him would go away after a while, and I’d find that his joking manner just irritated me or his pretty boy looks would stop being attractive. And even thinking about dating someone felt like a betrayal of my family.
Every step brought up another thought, and every pound of my heart was another emotion. I couldn’t calm down. I had to fix this.
When I got to the end of the street and saw my mom’s shop, Rose’s Garden, I went straight in the front door. I paused only long enough to make sure that there were no customers in the store, and then I burst out, “Mom, I need to talk to you. I think it’s way past time for you to let me start dating.”
Mom was sitting behind the front counter. She was tying together little sachets of dried herbs, but she stopped to look up at me. She seemed to be measuring me. After a moment, she said, “We’ll talk about this when I get home tonight.”
“No, I want to talk about it right now.”
She let out a heavy sigh and began cleaning up her half-finished work. “All right, I’ll close up the shop early for today, and then we can go home and talk. I won’t discuss it here.” She glanced behind me. “Where is your sister?”
“She’s still at the library,” I said. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Oh, yes.” She stood up and gathered her box of supplies to take to her workroom in the back. “Well, go get your sister while I clean up here, and then you can give me a ride home as well.”
“Fine.” I turned to go.
“Would you please flip the sign over to ‘closed’?” Mom called after me.
I took a step back, flipped the sign over, and turned the lock on the door behind me. I didn’t stop to say good-bye.
The drive home was quiet. Akasha sat in the back, already reading one of her newest library books. Mom’s broom was in the trunk. Mom sat up front in the passenger seat next to me, and Menolly sat in her lap. We were lucky that the cat would stay calm in the car as long as she could sit with Mom, and she never got car-sick, but I guessed any familiar would get used to that after flying on a broomstick every day.
I tried to think about what I was going to say. I’d already told her what I wanted, so there was no backing down now. I was going to present my rational arguments about why I should be allowed to date. We could negotiate some ground rules. It was going to be simple.
I did wonder why I didn’t insist on this before. Last year, when Lindsey and I were getting closer and I’d let myself think that I might be able to have a relationship with her, I’d thought about how I would talk to my parents about it. That had been scary, because I’d never quite gotten around to telling my parents that I was bisexual. I didn’t know for sure they would take it badly, but I also didn’t know if they’d be accepting, either. Was it easier to tell my parents that I was ready to date now because I was interested in a guy? Yeah, probably.
Well, I could worry about the other conversation if I met a girl later. One thing at a time.
When we got home, Mom told Akasha to take her books up to her room and then called me into the kitchen. She sat down at the table and folded her hands in front of her. “Okay, let’s talk.”
I didn’t feel like sitting down. I stood at the other end of the table and leaned forward with my hands on the back of the chair. “I’m not a flighty girl like Lindsey and you don’t know for sure that I would ruin the rest of my life if I was allowed to date someone. I should get a chance to try.”
Mom pursed her lips together. “I think that you need to calm down, Rosamunde. You’re obviously tense. Why don’t you sit down?”
The cat was winding around my legs and butting me with her head, but I pushed her away. “I don’t want to sit down and I don’t want to be calm. You’ve been putting me off with excuses for a long time now and I don’t think it’s fair anymore.”
Mom looked down at her hands. “I don’t want to argue with my daughter,” she said quietly. “You need to understand that I’ve never tried to control your life. I just want you to be safe. It’s a mother’s job to protect her children.”
The cat jumped up into the chair in front of me and rubbed her head against my hands. I straightened up, letting go of the chair, and folded my arms.
Before I could think about it, I found myself saying, “I don’t want to argue with you, either.” I frowned and took a deep breath, then tried to get back on track. “I just want you to see it from my side. I don’t need you to protect me from everything now. I can take care of myself.”
Mom unfolded her hands and spread them apart. She
was staying very calm, but her eyes stared me down. “I know. You’re growing up so fast. I know that I have to let you go sooner or later. There are just some hard lessons that I don’t want you to have to learn yet.”
I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it again. Why was it so hard to just stand up for myself? I looked down at the table. “But I—”
“We’ve had this talk before, Rosamunde. Don’t you remember what we agreed on?”
“That I wouldn’t date until I was done with school.”
“And do you remember why?”
“Because dating is a distraction.” I hung my head. “I just don’t think I would have to let it be a distraction. I balance my time for everything else, like my friends and music and witchcraft. Just because some people make the mistake of letting dating distract them from their schoolwork and everything else, doesn’t mean that I have to let it.”
Mom looked up at me again. Her face looked sad. “Is it really that important to you? What’s more important, your family and your future, or some good-looking guy that you can’t really trust?”
“I—” I wanted to say that it shouldn’t be a fight between the two. I wanted to say that the choice should be mine. I wanted to say that even if I was going to make a mistake, I should at least be able to try it out for myself and learn from it, instead of having my mother trying to protect me, because it wasn’t going to be the end of the world—
I found myself staring at the cat. She blinked her large yellow eyes at me and began to purr. “My family is the most important thing,” I said. I shuffled my feet back and forth. “I’m sorry that I brought it up. I—I don’t want to upset you.”
Mom stood up and walked around the table toward me. She put one arm over my shoulders. “I knew you didn’t really mean it, dear,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve really thought it through. You seemed so agitated. Is there something else bothering you, a problem at school or something?”
“Of course, Mom,” I said. I reached out and hugged her. “I think I’m just tired. I’m sorry for taking it out on you.”
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