by Sara Quin
“He’s kind of a hippie” was my explanation when she mentioned it to me later.
There was a humiliating attempt to discuss birth control, which I shrugged off, but later felt relieved about. That she suspected I was having sex with Cameron ensured a respite from her probing questions about Naomi.
After a month of dating, I agreed to meet Cameron at the reservoir near his house. The trip took an hour and a half, and when I finally arrived he was waiting for me at the bus stop in sandals and a tank top, beach towels slung around his neck. He was like a golden retriever—always in a good mood, unashamed about his desire for affection. He picked me up in a bear hug and swung me around.
“You brought a bathing suit, right? You’re going to love this spot. It’s very remote.” He seemed so pleased to be alone with me, for a day devoted to just the two of us. The park surrounding the reservoir was lush, and he guided us to a narrow path, which we eventually abandoned for the flat rocks along the river. The current carried teenagers on tubes and blow-up rafts. The sun was molten, but the breeze off the water was cold. We arrived at a bend in the river, where a deep pool was carved into the cliff. He spread our towels on the rocks and stripped off his tank top. I pulled my shirt over my head and bunched it self-consciously on my lap. I was still wearing shorts and a bathing suit, but I’d never felt more naked.
“You look hot,” he said, kissing my shoulder.
We stepped into the water and he dove under, coming up seconds later with a guttural hoot. My legs went numb: the water was as cold as ice. I finally submerged myself with a scream. He pulled my arms around his neck, and, shivering, I wrapped my legs around his waist. It was a gesture that should have been sexual but felt paternal. When the sun split itself in half behind the mountain, we dried off and put our clothes back on. We walked back along the river, through the park and into the neighborhood where he lived. His house was a large ranch-style bungalow, spread out across a manicured lawn. Inside, each room was drenched in orange light from the sunset. The furniture and books were just so, like something from a movie. I felt like an intruder.
He flopped down onto his unmade bed. The door to his bedroom was open, and I reflexively turned and closed it, though it seemed no one was home. There were guitars strewn about, books stacked on the shelves and the floor. His room smelled like him, a mix of musk and the metallic tang of stale cigarettes. We’d never fooled around sober. I had the strongest urge to rest inside his frame like a nesting doll, to study him so I would know what it was to be him. I found the obvious pleasure he took in his body intoxicating. As if by osmosis, I adopted the same swagger and ease in my own just by lying next to him. We made out, and a lightheaded urgency that often preceded sex with Naomi washed over me. I was surprised to find that I was turned on—evidence that I wasn’t entirely what I feared. I pulled off my jean shorts and swimsuit, and he scooted back toward my hips and placed his mouth between my legs. The keen desire that had gripped me seconds before evaporated. It wasn’t different from when Naomi did it, but it felt utterly wrong. I pulled him up by the ears, hoping he caught the drift that what I wanted down there wasn’t his face. He kissed me, and then rested his full weight on the bed; his arm stretched across my hips. His face was flushed, serious.
“It seems like, maybe . . .” He got quiet. “Like you want to go further than we normally do.”
“Maybe.”
“I just don’t think you should do anything you’re not ready for.”
Did he think he knew more about what I wanted than I did?
“We should talk about it more. Like, before we—or if we ever . . . You know.”
“Yeah, I guess we should,” I said.
“Dad should be back with the pizza soon.”
“I should really get going.”
“Really?”
“It’s such a long way back, and—”
“I’ll take the bus with you!”
“No, that’s crazy.” I grabbed my clothes from the floor and dressed quickly, keeping my eyes down at the carpet. I went out into the hall and ducked inside the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I braided my hair and straightened my clothes. My cheeks and the tip of my nose were sunburned. The person in the reflection didn’t look like me. Was he right? That I wasn’t ready? He was with the wrong girl. He should be with one who knew when the right time to have sex was, who wanted to spend a day alone at a secret swimming spot and laugh with his family over pizza. I felt like an interloper, a bad fit.
* * *
When I finally got home, it was almost midnight. My body felt like leather, toasted. I sank down onto my bed and called Cameron to tell him that I was home safe.
“Thanks for coming all the way to my house. I really loved spending the day with you,” he said.
“It was fun,” I said.
“Hey, I wanted to say, I hope it wasn’t weird, what I said about—”
“It wasn’t.”
“I just don’t want to rush.”
“Okay.”
He was quiet, and I stared out the window at the street.
“Is what we did today as much as you’ve ever . . . done?” he asked.
Because he was a guy, I knew it wouldn’t threaten him if I told him the truth, however wrongheaded that idea was. Plus, his best friend, Zach, was gay, and I’d heard him tell people off for using the word “fag” in front of him.
“I’ve done that with Naomi,” I said, listening hard at his breath on the phone.
“Oh.”
“I haven’t really told anyone that—”
“Hmm.”
“We used to do stuff with each other a lot, actually.”
“And you liked it?”
“Yeah. Are you grossed out?”
“No! It’s hot. I mean, not like, ‘It’s hot,’ but like . . . Whatever.”
“I think it’s cool that you’re so accepting of . . .” I paused. “Zach. A lot of guys wouldn’t be.” I had wanted to say “accepting of me.” The line got quiet again.
“I don’t care that Zach’s . . . gay. Like, at all.”
I was unsure what to say next.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“What we did today—how did I compare to Naomi?”
I buried my head in my pillow. “Oh! Yeah, it was great.”
“Cool.” He sounded relieved.
Cameron’s indifference about what I’d told him had an unnerving effect. I was uncomfortable that he could accept about me what I couldn’t accept about myself.
Before school started again, I broke up with him.
30. TEGAN THE HICKEY
Everything changed when grade twelve started. First, Alex told me she was going to go to university abroad. All of a sudden we realized we had only one year left together. We committed to making the most of the time we had, promising to spend every second we could together before the year ended and she abandoned me to go away to school. The imminent threat of being apart dominated every conversation, influenced every plan we made, and crowded every room we were in together. We became inseparable, codependent, bound together like chain. And everyone noticed.
“Why don’t you girls get up and get some air?” Alex’s mom suggested nervously from the doorway to Alex’s room one Sunday. It was midafternoon, and we were still shoulder to shoulder in Alex’s single bed.
“Haven’t seen Christina or any of the girls around here recently,” Mom commented one afternoon after Alex had left to go home after a weekend at our house.
“You guys are so gay,” Sara scoffed on another afternoon when she’d grabbed something from my room while Alex and I were studying on the bed together, our textbooks and binders spread between us. I’d bristled when she said it, worried Alex would feel uncomfortable, that it would cause her not to want to be close to me. But Alex hadn’t said anything, hadn’t seemed hurt or disgusted.
On another night when Alex was studying at Naomi’s, she called me. We were on the
hundredth “No, you hang up first,” “No, you hang up first” when Naomi yelled, “Say goodnight to your girlfriend already!”
“Goodnight, girlfriend.”
Every hair on my arms had stood up when Alex said it. I knew she was joking; she always took the teasing and taunting in stride. But afterward, I sat for a long time, blushing and bathing in the feeling it had generated in me to hear her say it.
Even Spencer seemed to notice. One night I asked him for a cigarette at Grace’s birthday, and Alex told him not to give it to me.
“She can decide what she wants for herself.”
“Yeah.” I smiled, a cigarette dangling from my lips as I did.
Alex had stormed off after he leaned into me to light it.
“Better go find your girlfriend and apologize,” he’d quipped, a little hurt showing behind his eyes.
When I asked Alex to explain what made her feel so upset in these moments, she would cry, become frustrated, admit she wasn’t sure. “I just feel so crazy sometimes. I know I overreact. He just . . . makes me feel jealous. I don’t know why.”
I would try to console her, to be patient. Though I’d kept it to myself, I’d struggled with the same kind of irrational emotion.
When Alex had gotten a boyfriend over the summer while she was at camp, I’d felt sick with jealousy when she told me—and then fat with relief when she called crying a few weeks later, telling me they had broken up. But even after they broke up, it still bothered me that he’d been worthy of her tears. I’d felt like the most important person to her, and it nagged at me that she’d let a boy close to her heart. When she showed me photos of him when she got home, I’d felt a rising pressure in my chest; the sight of him with his arms around her in her bathing suit made me feel displaced, as if I didn’t belong anywhere, not even in my own body. When she cried about Spencer or acted jealous, I felt like I understood the feeling, even if I didn’t understand where it came from or what it meant. I tried to find the words to tell her all this, but they always seemed to fall short of making her feel better.
But the biggest shift between us came one afternoon in late fall. Alex changed in front of me in her room, and I accidentally glanced at her at the moment her shirt was off, and then our eyes met. I blushed and looked away. I felt crushing embarrassment and fear. It had been an accident, but I felt sick because maybe she’d think otherwise. But she just laughed and said, “Whoops.” We never mentioned it again. Still, I couldn’t forget what I’d seen. That night on the phone as she rambled on about something, almost without thinking I found myself writing to her about it in the journal we shared. I wanted to go back to that moment and not look away, not let her pull her shirt down and cover herself. In our journal, I wrote out what I had become consumed by: her. Printing the words felt exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I grew convinced that what I felt wasn’t just inside me. I was sure I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. She must, too. It explained so much: the jealousy between us, the fact that we’d only grown more interested in each other, not less, as our friendship had developed over the last two years. I wanted desperately to rip the page out later but forced myself not to. I wasn’t going to mess this up like I had with Emma and all the other girls I had become close to. This time was going to be different.
* * *
Later that week as we waited for Alex’s mom to come pick her up after a weekend together, she went to the bathroom and I grabbed the book from the bench seat in my room where I’d hidden it. I opened it to the page where I’d confessed how I felt about her. Dragging my finger along the words, I felt sure I was going to faint. When I heard Alex come out of the bathroom, I ripped the page out and shoved it in my back pocket, snapping the book closed just as she walked through my open bedroom door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing, just . . . grabbing the book. I actually forgot to write in it. I started but messed up. I owe you twice as much next week.” I was talking too quickly. Acting too nervous.
“Oh, want me to throw it out for you?” she asked, extending her hand toward me, a smile sneaking out as she did.
I smiled back. “No.”
We both started to laugh at the same time. Then, she lunged at me. I darted around her, dropping the book, and tripped toward my bed. I landed hard on my mattress and flipped onto my back, putting my body between Alex and the note as she pinned me down.
“What are you hiding?” she asked.
“I’m not hiding anything.” I giggled, twisting and squealing, already out of breath.
“Really? You’re putting up a big fight over nothing.”
Sitting astride my hips, her fingers pecked at my sides. The more I laughed, the weaker I got. She managed to wedge her knees into the soft part of the underside of my upper arms, pinning me to the bed. I bucked; hysterical laughter scored our struggle. We kept it up for a full minute and then she stopped, sat up, and stared down at me.
“What did you rip out of the book?”
“Nothing.”
“What does the note say, Tegan?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me what it says.”
“It’s nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, show me.”
“No.”
She stared at me without saying anything. Then without warning, she leaned down and kissed me. She held her lips to mine for no more than six seconds, but those six seconds rearranged me, completely.
“Tell me what it says,” she said, a smile spreading across her face as she sat up.
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“No.” I grabbed her sweater and pulled her toward me so I could kiss her again.
When Alex’s ride arrived, she left me with the note and a hickey the size of a nickel. I gasped when I saw it in the mirror of the plywood changing room at Value Village an hour later. Pressing my finger into the bruised skin, I leaned in, immediately paranoid someone had seen it. How would I explain a hickey after a weekend alone with Alex? My fingers drifted back and forth over the misshapen purple spot; I imagined Alex’s mouth where my fingers were. I leaned against the cheap wood and raced through excuses I could give if Mom or Sara mentioned it.
“You done in there?” Mom called from outside.
“Almost,” I said.
I locked eyes with myself in the mirror, tugged my hoodie up, and felt relieved to see it mostly covered the hickey. I knew I’d have to figure out how to cover up the bruise when I got home. But for a minute, I let the hickey, and what it meant, sink in. She liked me. She kissed me. She hadn’t seen the note. She had no idea how I felt about her, and yet she knew, had likely known all along. I placed my palm over the mark, let myself feel Alex’s mouth one more time before I unlatched the door. Smiling at myself in the mirror, I felt the happiest I ever had in my entire life.
31. SARA PSYCHO
“What are you doing!” Tegan shouted from the other side of my bedroom door. I was pushing against it, trying to close it. I straightened my legs, driving my body harder into the wood. “Fuck off!” I said. I lunged forward again, and the inches between us disappeared as I slammed and locked the door. She punched at the door with a fist. I lunged for the phone that was sitting on top of my bed. I could hear her rushing back to her bedroom. I picked up the receiver and dialed Naomi’s number, the seven digits blurring under my thumb. Nothing. No ringing, just Tegan’s heavy breath on the line. I slammed my phone down into the base. In the hallway, I could hear the metal end of a coat hanger being jammed in the doorknob. She was trying to pop the lock on my door. I rushed to it and leaned against it with all my weight.
“It’s my fucking turn to use the phone!” I said.
She ignored me, patiently moving the object inside the doorknob.
“Why are you such a fucking bitch?” I yelled.
Suddenly the door burst open against my shoulder.
“Who are you going to call anyway?” she said through clenched te
eth. “Nobody fucking likes you.”
I pitched my shoulder against the door, closing it in her face.
“If you slam the goddamn door again, I will take it off the fucking hinges!” Bruce shouted up the stairs.
“It’s my turn to use the phone!” Tegan screamed back.
“I don’t give a damn whose turn it is!” Bruce yelled.
These fights happened constantly. Almost every other day. We’d been caught in this kind of territorial battle since we could lift our chubby arms and throw each other’s toys down the stairs. Shoes, clothes, a chord change, the last drop of Coke in the bottle. It didn’t matter what it was; everything was a battlefield.
I raced back to the bed and picked up the phone. Tegan had already dialed a number and it was ringing.
“Get off!” she said.
I ran my fingers vertically across the glowing white keys, beeping out her conversation. I could hear Tegan in the other room shouting in between the monotones. When her friend hung up, Tegan rattled my door and kicked at it with her feet in frustration.
“You’re so fucking embarrassing!” she said.
Then I heard Bruce stomping up the stairs. I couldn’t see what was going on, but Tegan was protesting. I maintained my defensive stance with my forehead pressed to the door. There was a single knock and I sighed.
“Open it,” Bruce said.
I did. He pointed a screwdriver at the silver hinges on the door frame.
“See these?” He deftly set about pushing and pulling at the pins of the hinges and popped the door off the bracket.
“You can’t do that!” Tegan said, crying from the doorway of her own room.
“Where are we supposed to get dressed?” I added.
He swung his arm down the hall, pointing to the bathroom. “Right there.” And he turned back to my door, his fingers poking at the bottom hinge.
“We won’t slam them anymore!” I said.
“You can’t take our doors,” Tegan said.
“I can. And I will.”
Without a door and a lock, I had nothing. He might as well have taken the walls around me.