by Jodi Picoult
Back then I thought that I was running away from Ellie, but now I wonder if I was actually running away from myself.
I wasn’t upset because my best friend unexpectedly kissed me.
I was upset because I started to kiss her back.
For two hours I drive aimlessly, but I think I know where I’m headed even before I get there. There is a light on upstairs at Vanessa’s house, so when she opens the door I don’t feel guilty about waking her.
“Where have you been?” she bursts out. “You’re not answering your phone. Dara and I have both been trying to reach you. You never went home tonight—”
“We have to talk,” I interrupt.
Vanessa steps back so that I can come into the entryway. She is still wearing the clothes she was wearing today at school, and she looks like hell—her hair’s a mess; there are faint purple circles beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean for you—for me to—” She breaks off, shaking her head. “The thing is, Zoe, nothing happened. And I can promise you nothing will happen, because it’s way too important for me to have you as a friend than to risk losing you because—”
“Nothing happened? Nothing happened?” I can barely breathe. “You’re my best friend,” I say. “I want to be with you all the time, and when I’m not, I’m thinking about being with you. I don’t know anyone—including my mother, and my ex-husband—who gets me the way you do. I don’t even have to speak a sentence out loud for you to finish it.” I stare at Vanessa until she looks me in the eye. “So when you tell me Nothing happened? You’re dead wrong, Vanessa, because I love you. And that means everything happened. Everything.”
Vanessa’s jaw drops. She doesn’t move a muscle. “I . . . I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us,” I admit.
We never know people as well as we think we do—including ourselves. I don’t believe you can wake up and suddenly be gay. But I do believe you can wake up and realize that you cannot spend the rest of your life without a certain individual.
She is taller than I am, so I have to come up on my toes. I put my hands on her shoulders.
It is not like kissing a man. It’s softer. More intuitive. More equal.
She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.
And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.
I have loved before, but it didn’t feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn’t burn me alive.
Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it’s an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that, even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.
VANESSA
When I was little, I became obsessed with the prizes offered on Bazooka Joe comics. A gold-plated ring with my initial, a chemical magic set, a telescope, a genuine compass. You remember those wax papers, wrapped around the nuggets of gum? A fine white dust coated the Bazooka and would rub off on your fingers as you read the joke, which was rarely if ever funny.
Each prize sounded more exotic than the last, and could be mine for a pittance and a ridiculous number of Bazooka comics. But nothing captured my fancy as much as the one I found on a gum wrapper in the spring of 1985. If I could just manage to amass $1.10 and sixty-five Bazooka comics, I could have my own pair of X-ray vision glasses.
For a full week I would go to sleep at night wondering what you could see with X-ray vision. I pictured people in their underwear, the skeletons of dogs walking in the street, the insides of jewelry boxes and violin cases. I wondered if I would be able to peer through walls, if I would know what was going on in the teachers’ lounge, if I could read through the manila folder on Ms. Watkins’s desk and see the answer key for the math test. There was a world of possibility in X-ray vision, and I knew I could not live another day without it.
So I began to save. It didn’t take long to scrape together $1.10, but the Bazooka comics were another story entirely. I bought twenty pieces of gum that week with my allowance. I traded my best Topps baseball card—a Roger Clemens Red Sox rookie—to Joey Palliazo for ten Bazooka comics (he had been saving up for the decoder rings). I let Adam Waldman touch my boob for another five (believe me, it didn’t do anything for either one of us). Eventually, within a few weeks, I had enough comics and change to mail off to the address listed. In four to six weeks, those X-ray vision glasses would be mine.
I spent the time imagining a world where I could see beneath the surface. Where I could eavesdrop on the conversations of my parents about my Christmas gifts, could see what leftovers were in the fridge before I opened it, could read my best friend’s diary to see if she felt about me the same way I felt about her. Then one day, a plain brown box arrived with my name on it. I ripped it open, unraveled the Bubble Wrap, and pulled out a pair of white plastic glasses.
They were too big for my face and slid down my nose. They had slightly opaque lenses with a fuzzy white bone etched in the center of each one. When I put them on, everything I looked at was printed with that stupid fake bone.
I couldn’t see through anything at all.
I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It’s bound to disappoint you.
You would think, after that first kiss, there would have been some kind of apology, an awkward pause between us. And in fact the next day, after eight hours at school analyzing every moment of that kiss (Was Zoe drunk, or just a little buzzed? Did I encourage her, or was that entirely her own idea? Was it really as magical as I thought it had been, or was that twenty-twenty hindsight?), I met Zoe at the hospital where she was working with burn victims. She told the nurses she was taking a ten-minute break, and we walked down a long hallway, close enough to hold hands, except we didn’t.
“Listen,” I said, as soon as we were outside and out of earshot of anyone who happened to be eavesdropping.
That was as far as I got before Zoe launched herself at me. Her kiss was blistering. “God, yes,” she breathed against my lips, when we broke apart. “That’s exactly how I remembered it.” Then she looked up at me, her eyes bright. “Is it always like this?”
How was I supposed to answer that? The first time I’d kissed a woman, I felt like I had been shot into space. It was unfamiliar and exciting and felt so incredibly right that I couldn’t believe I’d never done it before. There was an evenness of the playing field that was different from the kisses I’d shared with guys—and yet somehow it wasn’t soft and delicate. It was surround-sound, earthshaking, intense.
But that said, it wasn’t always like this.
I wanted to tell Zoe that, yes, the reason it felt like her skin was on fire was because she was kissing a woman. But more than that, I wanted to tell Zoe that the reason it felt like her skin was on fire was because she was kissing me.
So I didn’t actually answer. I just reached for her, cradled her head in my hands, and kissed her again.
In the three days since then, we have spent hours in her car, on my couch, and in the supply room at the hospital making out like we are teenagers. I know every inch of her mouth. I know what spot on her jaw, when brushed, makes her shudder. I know that the hollow behind her ear smells of lemons and that she has a birthmark shaped like Massachusetts at the nape of her neck.
Last night when we stopped, flushed and breathing hard, Zoe said, “What happens next?”
Which is how I’ve ended up where I am right now: lying on my bed, fully clothed, with the curtain of Zoe’s hair covering my face as she kisses me. With her hands moving tentatively over the terrain of my body.
I think we both knew tonight would end up like this—in spite of its humble beginnings of an Italian dinner and a bad movie. How does sex ever happen between couples, except as an electrical storm that’s been gathering in the space between
the two people, which finally combusts?
But this is different. Because even though it’s Zoe’s first time, I’m the one who has everything to lose if it’s not perfect. Namely, Zoe.
So I tell myself that I’m going to let her go at her own pace, which means the most incredible torture, as her hands move from my shoulders to my ribs to my waist. But then she stops. “What’s the matter?” I whisper, imagining the worst: she is disgusted by this; she is feeling nothing; she knows she has made a mistake.
“I think I’m scared,” Zoe confesses.
“We don’t have to do anything,” I say.
“I want to. I’m just afraid I’m going to do it wrong.”
“Zoe,” I tell her, “there is no wrong.”
I slip her hands beneath the hem of my shirt. Her palms brand my stomach; I am sure I will wake up with her initials seared into my skin. Slowly, her hands inch up, until they are touching the lace of my bra.
Here is the thing about lesbian sex: it doesn’t matter if your body isn’t perfect, because your partner feels the same way. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never touched a woman, because you are one, and you already know what you like. When Zoe finally takes off my blouse, I think I cry out, because she covers my mouth with hers and swallows the sound. And then her shirt comes off, too, and the rest. We are a tangle of smooth legs and peaks and valleys, of sighs and pleas. She grabs for me, and I try to slow us down, and somehow we meet in the glorious middle.
Afterward, we curl together on top of the covers. I can smell her skin and her sweat and her hair, and I love the thought that, even when she is gone, my sheets will still retain that memory. But things that are this perfect don’t last very long. I have been down this path before with a straight woman, so I know that having a fantasy come true doesn’t always mean it will be permanent. I can believe Zoe wanted this to happen between us. I just can’t believe she’ll want it to continue.
She shifts in her sleep and rolls over, so that she is facing me. Her leg slides between mine. I pull her closer, and wonder when the novelty of me will wear off.
Two weeks later, I am still waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop. Zoe and I have spent every night together—it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even ask if she wants to come over after work, because I know she’ll already be there waiting with Chinese takeout or a DVD we had been talking about watching or a fresh-baked pie she insists she can’t eat by herself.
There are moments I cannot believe how happy I am. But there are just as many moments when I remember that, to Zoe, this is still just the bright, shiny new toy. In private, Zoe is so, so gay. She reads all my back issues of Curve. She calls her cable company and gets Logo. She starts talking to me about Provincetown: if I’ve ever been, if I’d ever go again. She acts the way I did when I first embraced who I really was—like I’d been let out of my cage for the first time in twenty years. However, she’s never told anyone—not even me—that she’s fallen for a woman. She’s never been in a relationship before that causes people on the street to whisper when she walks by. She’s never been called a dyke. This isn’t real yet, for her. And when it is, she will come back to me and tell me it’s all been a wonderful, fun mistake.
And yet . . . I’m too weak to turn her away now, when she wants me. When it just feels so damn good to be with her.
Which is why, when she asks me to observe her second session with Lucy, I immediately agree. I had asked to be there last time, but now I wonder if that was only so that I’d get to see Zoe working, and not because I was thinking of Lucy’s welfare. Zoe had refused anyway, and she was right—but she’s changed her tune this week, after Lucy’s abandonment. I think, frankly, she wants me there to bar the door if Lucy tries to run again.
Today I help her lug in a bunch of instruments from her car. “Lucy plays this?” I ask, as I set down a small marimba.
“No. She doesn’t play any musical instruments. But the thing about the ones I’ve brought today is that you don’t have to play an instrument to sound good. They’re all tuned to the pentatonic scale.”
“What’s that?”
“A scale with five pitches. It’s different from a heptatonic scale, which is seven notes, like the major scale—do re mi fa so la ti. You find them all over the world—in jazz, blues, Celtic folk music, Japanese folk music. The thing about it is that you just can’t play a wrong note—whatever key you hit, it’s going to sound good.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You know the song ‘My Girl’? By the Temptations?”
“Yeah.”
Zoe lifts the lap harp she’s holding and plays the instrumental intro, those six familiar rising notes that repeat. “That’s a pentatonic scale. So is the melody that the aliens understood in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And a blues scale is based on a minor pentatonic scale.” She puts down the harp and hands me a mallet. “Try it.”
“Thanks but no thanks. My last experience with an instrument was violin, when I was eight. The neighbors called the fire department because they thought an animal was dying inside my house.”
“Just try it.”
I take a mallet and tentatively strike a bar. And another. And a third. Then I hit the same pattern. Before I know it I’m striking different bars, making up a song as I go. “That,” I say, “is pretty cool.”
“I know, right? It takes all the stress out of music.”
Imagine if there was a pentatonic scale for life: if no matter what step you took, you could not strike a wrong note.
I hand her back the mallet just as Lucy sulks through the door. That’s really the only way to describe it—she takes a look at Zoe and then glances at me and realizes she is not going to escape as easily this time around. She throws herself into a chair and starts gnawing on her thumbnail.
“Hi, Lucy,” Zoe says. “It’s good to see you again.”
Lucy snaps her gum. I stand up, grab the trash can, and hold it under her jaw until she spits it out. Then I close the door of the special needs room, so that the noise in the hall doesn’t interrupt Zoe’s session.
“So, you can see that Ms. Shaw is with us today. That’s because we want to make sure you haven’t got a pressing appointment somewhere else again,” Zoe tells her.
“You mean you don’t want me to ditch,” Lucy says.
“That too,” I agree.
“I was thinking, Lucy, that maybe you could tell me one thing you liked about our last session, so that I could make sure we get to do it again . . .”
“That I cut it short,” Lucy replies.
If I were Zoe, I’d probably want to throttle the kid. But Zoe just smiles at her. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll make sure we keep things moving along then.” She takes the lap harp and puts it on the desk in front of Lucy. “Have you ever seen one of these?” When Lucy shakes her head, Zoe plucks a few strings. The notes are sporadic at first, and then rearrange themselves into a lullaby.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” Zoe sings softly, “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.” She puts down the harp. “I never really understood those lyrics. I mean, wouldn’t you rather have a mockingbird that could say everything you taught it to say? That’s so much cooler than a piece of jewelry.” She strums the harp a few more times. “Maybe you’d like to try this?”
Lucy makes no move to touch it. “I’d rather have the diamond ring,” she says finally. “I’d pawn it and use the money for a bus ticket and get the hell out of here.”
In the year I’ve known Lucy, I have never heard her string so many words together in a response. Stunned—maybe music does work wonders—I lean forward to see what Zoe will do next.
“Really?” she says. “Where would you go?”
“Where wouldn’t I go?”
Zoe pulls the marimba closer. She begins to tap out a rhythm that feels vaguely African, or Caribbean. “I used to think of traveling around the world. I
was going to do that after graduating from college. Work in one place, you know, waiting tables or something, until I got enough cash to travel somewhere else. I told myself I never wanted to be the kind of person who had more stuff than she could carry in a knapsack.”
For the first time, I see Lucy actively look at Zoe. “Why didn’t you do it?”
She shrugs. “Life got in the way.”
Where, I wonder, did she dream about going? A pristine beach? A blue glacier rising from the center of an ice field? The crowded bookstalls on the banks of the Seine?
Zoe begins to play another melody with the mallet. This one sounds like a polka. “One of the really cool things about these two instruments is that they’re tuned on a pentatonic scale. Lots of world folk music is based off that. I love the way you can hear a piece of music, and it brings a snapshot from another part of the world into your mind. Next best thing to being there, if you can’t hop a plane because you’ve got math next period, for example.” She taps the mallet, and the tune sounds Asian, the notes jumping up and down the scale. I close my eyes and see cherry blossoms, paper houses. “Here,” Zoe says, handing the mallet to Lucy. “How about if you play me a song that sounds like where you wish you were?”
Lucy takes the mallet in her fist and stares at it. She strikes the highest bar, just once. It sounds like a high-pitched cry. Lucy strikes it one more time, and then lets the mallet roll from her fingers. “This is so unbelievably gay,” she says.
I can’t help it, I flinch.
Zoe doesn’t even look in my direction. “If by ‘gay’ you mean happy, which you must, because I can’t imagine you’d find anything about playing a marimba that points to sexual orientation—well, then, I would have to disagree. I think Japanese folk songs are pretty melancholy, actually.”
“What if that’s not what I meant?” Lucy challenges.
“Then I suppose I’d ask myself why a kid who hates being labeled by everyone else, including therapists, is so willing to label other people.”