Ask the Passengers (17 page)

At seven thirty the doorbell rings.

Claire fast-walks to the door to open it, and I stand up because I can hear Kristina giggling outside, and then Kristina and Donna drag me out the door.

“Have fun, girls!” Mom says.

They lead me down the walk and into a car. Kristina seems to be my best friend again. She even loops her arm through mine rather than Donna’s.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“We’re heading to a clean, fun and safe college sorority party. Which is what I told Claire, and it’s actually true.” She deposits me into the backseat of Donna’s car and then gets into the passenger’s side.

“Are you and Dee okay now?” she asks.

“We’re fine,” I say.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she says in the weirdest voice ever—like she’s not glad to hear it.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a weird week,” I say. “I’m just all over the place, I guess.”

“Bummer,” she says. That’s it. Just “bummer.”

For the rest of the drive, Kristina and Donna talk as if I’m not there, and I try not to feel like Kristina’s socially retarded dumbshit friend again.

When we get there, a Lady Gaga song is playing so loud, it’s bouncing the road outside the house. Kristina has talked about spending more time at Donna’s dorm room, but her roommate is a douche, and if she knew Donna was gay, she’d probably freak out and call an exorcist. So Donna has joined a not-so-official sorority called Gamma Alpha Psi (ΓΑΨ), which is a GLBT hangout with an off-campus house. This is Kristina’s first time here, too.

“We’ve got two hours before we leave. Have some fun.
Mingle,” Kristina says as she disappears up the stairs with Donna.

Mingle.

I look around the room. This is not like Atlantis. Most of the people are keeping to themselves, and there are no leathery biker ladies with whistles who were sent from the gods to make me smile. There are just strangers. So I go out the back door past the two smokers, and what do you think is in the farthest and darkest part of the backyard?

A picnic table.

There are tall trees obstructing most of my view, but I can see the occasional plane, and I send it my love. Then I have a conversation with myself about Kristina.

I sit up and look around. A few more women are outside smoking now. They are facing me but looking up to the stars. I look up too, and I get up to try and make conversation and not be an antisocial nerd. Plus, I have to pee.

I walk past them and say, “Hi,” but all I get is a series of grunts in return. Inside, I smile at people and ask where the bathroom is, and when a woman tells me, she says, “I think it’s out of paper. You got a tissue?”

I laugh at this, thinking it’s funny—whether it’s true or not.

No one else laughs.

Do I not show up on their gaydar? Or is this just how they are here at Gamma Alpha Psi? Either way, I don’t have a tissue, so I look around and go back to the kitchen, where the back door to the picnic table is, and there I find a napkin, so I grab it and put it in my pocket in case the woman is right about the paper.

I go up the steps and pass a couple coming down the steps and say hi, and they half-smile. Everything feels territorial—like I’m trespassing.

I pee, and there are several rolls of toilet paper on a holder right in front of the toilet. I use the napkin anyway because I feel an intense paranoia that if I use their toilet paper, they will be even more pissed off with me than they already seem to be.

I look at myself in the mirror above the sink, and she is more visible here—the girl inside my Unity Valley suit. She’s telling me to go out there and be myself and talk to people. I hear my dad’s voice:
You have to let people get to know you before you decide they don’t like you.

I plaster a big fat smile across my face and go back downstairs. I say hi to a few people and then I find a girl who’s standing on her own reading the back of a CD cover and I say hi to her and she looks up and smiles at me.

“Never saw you here before,” she says.

“First time.”

“Ah,” she says. “That explains it.”

“You go to school here?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’m a poli-sci major. Here to change the world,” she says. “You?”

“My best friend is dating someone from here. We’re only visiting tonight.”

“Who?”

“Donna?”

“Oh! So you’re in high school, right? Her girl’s from high school, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. We’re seniors.”

“You the one who was lying on the picnic table for the last hour?”

I nod and try not to blush.

“What were you doing out there?”

“Just looking at the sky. And at the airplanes. It’s what I do, I guess.”

“Huh,” she says. “Wanna show me how you do it?”

I look around, and I see the others looking at us. Still, no one is really smiling or being all that welcoming. I don’t get that. These are supposed to be my people. I didn’t think they’d be douches at all.
Note to self: Not all gay people will be cool. Not all straight people will be not cool. When did you get so us-and-them, Astrid?

As we walk out to the table, I ask my new friend, “Is it me, or is everyone at this party kinda standoffish?”

“That’s just how they receive strangers.”

“It’s weird,” I say.

“Not really. It’s hard. You’ll understand soon,” she says. “Plus, it’s early. In another three hours, the place will be packed and everyone will be drunker and the mood will lighten considerably.”

“Good. Because it’s a little like a funeral in there.”

“What’s your name?” she asks.

We get to the table. I sit on the bench. She sits next to me. “Astrid.”

“I’m Kim. My ex should be here any minute, and I’m kinda not okay with it.”

“Bummer.”

We both spend half a minute looking up into the sky.

“Have you told your family yet?” she asks.

I laugh. “God no.”

“Anyone?”

“Just my two best friends. And my girlfriend,” I say.

She laughs. “I hope so!”

“Yeah.”

“Are they going to be okay with it, do you think?”

I nod. “I think so.”

“I thought mine would be cool. They are now, but they weren’t at first. I think it’s a shock.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You know, you’re really cute,” she says.

I let out a shy laugh. “Thanks. You too.”

She steps onto the bench and sits on the table and then lies down. “Is this how you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Look at the planes.”

“Well, yeah, but those trees don’t help,” I say, pushing her over so I can lie next to her.

“There’s one!” She points. “Can you tell what kind they are from here?”

“Sometimes. Not at night, though.” I spot the blinking white taillight. “Did you know that every plane has a red light on the left wing and a green light on the right for navigation?”

“So you’re cute
and
smart,” she says.

“So the white strobe you see”—I point—“is the tail.”

She softly pulls my hand down and onto her chest and holds it with her two hands.

We don’t say anything for a while. I can feel her heart beating.

“Do you mind if I kiss you right now?” she asks.

And my mouth says no, even though it knows I am dating Dee. (It also knows that Dee has never been polite enough to ask me anything before she does it.) As we kiss—and Kim is a spectacular kisser—I begin to think about what this means. This means I’ve kissed two girls in my life. Which is one more than the one boy I’ve kissed—if you don’t count Jeff Garnet, who I’m not really kissing. It means I am more of a lesbian than I was only a minute ago when I was just looking at Kim and thinking about how cute she is. It means that one day I will have to tell my parents. And Ellis, who says things like
lesbian luncheon
. It means that maybe I will finally drive my pseudo-agoraphobic mother into full-fledged hiding.

Or maybe I will save her from Unity Valley, and this will finally get her to move back to New York City, where we belong.

They’ll say:
Good riddance to her. She thought she was so damn special.

“Wow,” Kim says.

Then we go back to kissing, and I clear my mind of all those thoughts and I just feel stuff. I feel aroused and happy, and kissing becomes harder when I smile a little, and when she feels me smile under her lips, she smiles, too. I bring my hands up to run them through her hair.

We stop and look at each other in the dim light. And then I hear “Asteroid!”

And I say, “Shit.” I roll off the table and sit on the bench for a second, and Kim follows me and sits next to me, and I can tell we’re both trying to look innocent and failing.

“Should have known I’d find you here,” Kristina says. She looks at Kim, who moves her hand in a wave. “Are you ready to go?”

“Sure,” I say.

Donna looks at her phone. “We’ll be really late if we don’t leave now.”

“And Dee’s waiting, right?” Kristina adds.

“Yeah,” I say.

Kim walks with us to Donna’s car. We fall behind them, and she says, “It was nice meeting you. Come back any time you want.” She slips her number into my back pocket and then says, “See you guys!” as if we had just played on the swing set in fourth grade together.

“She seems nice” is the last thing Kristina says to me.

I bring my hand up to my face and see if I can smell Kim on my hands. I realize how stupid I am for doing this.

Since Donna and Kristina are talking and listening to music up there as if I’m not in the backseat, I summon Frank to sit next to me. He winks as he arrives. Then he gives me a thumbs-up.

I have no idea why he’s so happy for me. I could have just ruined everything.

BY THE TIME WE PULL INTO
the bar parking lot, it’s 10:42. Earliest we’ve ever been. Dee is here, in her car, waiting for me. I make my exit while Donna and Kristina start making out in the backseat and Justin texts Chad because he’s not here yet.

When we kiss, it overflows into a longer kiss and then a longer one and then a passionate, sink-down-in-the-seats kiss, and I feel a blanket of desire over me like I’ve never really felt before. Not ever. She grabs my hair and twists it. She squeezes my hip, and I put my right hand up her shirt and touch her through her bra and then slide my index finger around her waistband. Just a little.

FACT: I WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING TO SAY ABRACADABRA RIGHT NOW.

FACT: I’D RATHER STAY HERE IN DEE’S CAR THAN GO INTO THE BAR.

FACT: NEITHER OF THESE THINGS IS GOING TO HAPPEN.