Out of Order (11 page)

“The night you
kissed
me,” she elaborated. I glanced away, uncapping the tube of Neosporin.

“We already talked about it. We were
high
,” I said, trying hard not to blush under her stare. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my neck, and felt my hackles rising. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” I applied the cream liberally to the cut on Kate’s foot, being as gentle as possible.

Kate hissed and jerked away from my touch anyway. I grabbed her leg once more to steady her. “Almost done, almost done,” I murmured quickly, rubbing my thumb over a little patch of blonde hair she’d missed when she shaved her legs in preparation for our beach day.

“It doesn’t
have
to mean anything,” Kate echoed, curling her toes anxiously as I reached for a bandage. “I’ve been thinking about that. That it doesn’t have to mean anything doesn’t mean that it
doesn’t
mean
anything.”

I didn’t look at her as I opened a package of sterile gauze and began to wrap it slowly.

“What does that mean?” I asked, not getting my hopes up. “Do you…
want
it to mean something?”

Kate sighed in a dramatic, put-upon way, as if I was the one being cryptic. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Do
you
want it to mean something? Because I think it might already mean something.”

“Well, what do you think it means?” I held her bandaged foot in both my hands, rubbing it softly. Her toes were ice-cold.

“I think it means that you like girls,” she said bluntly, and at my sharp intake of breath added, “Which is okay. It’s okay to like girls.”

“I also like boys,” I pointed out, letting go of Kate’s foot. She seemed to take it back reluctantly, not quite putting it back down. “I kiss boys sometimes.”

“And you kiss girls sometimes,” Kate laughed awkwardly, wrapping her arms around herself. I stood up and met her eyes.

“Just you, actually.” I bit my lip. “I almost had to kiss Lisa Zimmerman in a game of seven minutes in heaven, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad you were my first girl-kiss.” My heart was racing about a mile a minute, but I kept going. “You’re much prettier than Lisa Zimmerman.”

Kate smiled genuinely for a second before she bit her lip and it fell away. “If I… also, maybe….” She trailed off, dragging the toes of her injured foot back and forth across the concrete.

“Liked girls?” I ventured, treading carefully in unfamiliar waters. My stomach fluttered anxiously.

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. How did you know?”

“I don’t know anything,” I laughed. “It’s just… a hunch. A feeling, maybe, that it’s not any different. Looking at a guy and thinking that I wouldn’t mind if he kissed me, and then looking at a girl, and….”

“Not minding if she kissed you either,” Kate finished for me, sighing. She nodded decisively. “I get that part. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“I thought it might weird you out. Or, you know, Jessa can be a little—literal, when it comes to the Bible, y’know? And even though she supported my Gay-Straight Alliance in theory, it’s….”

“Different, yeah.”

I took a step closer to Kate, keeping eye contact. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. I thought, maybe—

The door swung open and the both of us jumped. I took a step back, realizing for the first time just how close to Kate I’d been standing. Leaning toward her, too close to be innocent.

“There you are!” Jessa crowed, spotting us and throwing her hands up. “You two disappeared without telling us where you were going!”

“Kate cut her foot,” I said quickly, my heart racing as though I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. “I was just fixing her up.”

“Yep,” Kate corroborated, her lips smacking on the
p
. “All fixed up. See!” She held up her foot as proof. “Dr. Corinna to the rescue!”

Jessa looked between the two of us, her eyes narrowed. “You two are up to something.” She blinked and then looked at Kate, her face falling. “You
told
her, didn’t you?” She pointed an accusatory finger. “Blabbermouth!”

“I didn’t,” Kate said in the same moment I asked, “Told me what?”

Kate and Jessa had a staring match, and possibly an entire conversation with their eyebrows that I couldn’t decipher. “Why don’t you go collect the others, and then we can go for ice cream after Corinna and I clean this mess up?” Kate said slowly and deliberately.

Jessa nodded quickly, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Duly noted.” She turned tail and walked out of the change room without a glance back.

“What was
that
about?” I asked, pulling a face at Kate. Instead of responding, Kate walked up to me and pressed her mouth to mine in a soft, dry kiss. I blinked and it was over. She rocked back on her heels, pulling away. “And what was
that
about?” I repeated, not even caring about the first thing anymore.

“Since we have school on your real birthday, we’re having your party today. You’re getting an ice cream cake. Brandon and his friend have gone to pick it up.”

“Robert,” I corrected instinctively. “And I meant—why’d you kiss me?”

“Every girl should be kissed on her birthday,” Kate said sweetly, and then bent down and swept the mess of supplies back into the first aid kit. “It’s like, a rule.” She clicked the box shut with a resounding noise. “Besides,” she continued, not looking at me. “I wanted to test something.”

“And?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and suddenly feeling very exposed in a thin white dress covering my two-piece bathing suit. “What was the result of your experiment?”

“I proved my hypothesis.” Kate turned to me, finally, and I could see that she was smiling. “I mean, I don’t think I’m ready to, like, take you to prom or anything. But—yeah. I, um… I don’t have to be high not to mind.”

“I don’t mind either,” I said. She took my hand briefly and squeezed it before we left the change room together. We sat next to each other at the ice cream shop where I pretended to be surprised about my ice cream cake, and in the back of Jessa’s car on the long drive home her bare knee was pressed against my bare knee, and I didn’t move my knee even though I could have. Because I didn’t mind.

(I got a real kiss on my real birthday too, the next morning before school. I didn’t mind that either.)

A
FTER
TAKING
a staggering number of photographs inside the limousine, and a good dozen more outside of it, we finally made it to prom. We barely made it through the door before there were more photographs, taken by a professional photographer: groups, couples, groups of couples. We got a few of the six of us, and some with just us four girls. Kate took one with me and then one with Jessa, and I took one with Ricky making dumb faces. We left Jessa and Brandon to take a million cutesy shots together and wandered into the ballroom.

The theme of our prom was Starry Night, and the prom committee had
committed
. The ceiling was hung with black paper and faerie lights glued into constellations and the tables were covered in star-shaped confetti. Cardboard stars adorned every chair, construction paper stars were taped to the walls, plastic stars hung from the ceiling; and stars made from every medium were stuck in every inch and corner of the rented room.

“It’s so gaudy,” Kate said, her voice sounding awed. She raised her camera and snapped a shot of the whole room, which was filling up quickly with our classmates. “I
love
it.”

“The prom committee
really
committed to the theme,” I agreed.

“The prom committee should
be
committed,” Kate laughed, spinning around in her ridiculously high heels taking pictures of everything. “Smile, Cor!”

I quirked up my lips on demand just as Jessa bounded up behind me and put her arms around my neck, grinning wildly for the photo. “I photobombed you!” she crowed, laughing daintily.

The prom committee played a video during dinner, the usual photos and video clips set to overplayed pop music. Unsurprisingly, many of the photos prominently featured members of the prom committee. The dinner itself was mediocre; the chicken was overcooked and the beef underdone. Jessa’s vegetarian “option” was a wilted salad with some kind of bean thrown in for protein.

“This is kind of depressing,” Kate said after a while, once all the customary small talk had been exhausted and we’d all thoroughly discussed the sad state of our food. “You pay sixty bucks, dress up all fancy, and for what?”

“Maybe it’ll be better once the dancing starts,” Jessa suggested, sounding hopeful. “Besides, this is the last opportunity for you to dress like this until your wedding and God
knows
how long it’ll take you to—” She seemed to hear how condescending she sounded and cut herself off before any of us could. “Sorry.”

“And with whom do you suggest I dance?” Kate asked, throwing me a wink before she stared down Jessa. “Our group seems a little unbalanced to me.”

“I’m sure Brandon wouldn’t mind taking turns, right?” Brandon made a noncommittal noise as he finished off what was left of his potatoes. “See? He’ll dance with you. And you look
stunning
. You’ll be asked to dance all night!”

“Shh, look! It’s us!” Ricky squealed excitedly. We all glanced up at the screen in time to see a picture of me, Jessa, Kate, and Ricky starburst into yet another image of Janet Morrison, yearbook editor and prom committee chairman. “We made it into the video! When was that taken?”

“After I won valedictorian,” I said, remembering the day vividly. Janet had approached me just after first period the day the announcement had been made and demanded a photo for the yearbook, cornering me like a scared animal at my locker. Feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of having a picture of just myself taken, I pulled the other three in as they came out of Calculus II and posed for the photo.

“When was that, April?” Ricky asked, fiddling with her third napkin. A little pile of shredded paper was growing beside her plate, the remnants of the first two.

“End of March,” Kate corrected, glancing at me and then looking pointedly away, embarrassed. I touched her knee lightly under the table in reassurance. Her hand covered mine and remained there, solid and unseen.

“I’
M
SO
pumped!” Kate threw her backpack down onto my bedroom floor and then did a high kick to express how pumped she was. “Yeah!”

“How is it that you’re still running off adrenaline from
my
victory?” I asked, putting my own book bag down much more carefully. “And watch where you’re kicking. Don’t knock over a lamp.”

Kate flopped down on my bed and toed off her shoes, little silver ballet flats with pink bows at the toes. “You’re going to be
valedictorian
. That’s so rad.”

I unlaced my Converse and then lined our shoes up beside my bed, climbing in after her as if I were made of all limbs. She had to duck to avoid one of my legs colliding with her head.

“No one says rad anymore,” I said.

“I’m bringing it back.”

I pulled out my laptop and chemistry textbook, ready to start studying. Kate groaned and then took my textbook from me and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor. I made a noise that could be accurately described as a squawk and flailed my arms.

“Break time!” Kate announced.

“We haven’t even started yet!” I protested, trying to reach over her for the lost book. “There’s going to be a quiz on Tuesday!”

“We’ll get to it. But first!
First
, you have to write a kick-ass valedictorian speech.” Kate rolled onto her stomach and pulled my laptop up close to her face. She opened the web browser and began to plod away at the keyboard with two fingers, misspelling “valedictorian” in her search query.

“I have plenty of time to write my speech,” I pointed out but made myself comfortable next to her anyway. It had only been two weeks since we’d last been in a bed together, and that had been a very different experience. I could still remember the taste of her lips, the smell of her skin. She’d fallen asleep in my arms, and I’d woken to an empty room—Kate having snuck back home in the wee hours of the morning, before her mother discovered her missing.

“You wouldn’t want your mother to think you were procrastinating and
write it for you
, would you?” Kate reasoned. It was a valid argument. The only reason my mother hadn’t yet tried to give me a list of ideas or possible openers was that she didn’t yet know I’d won the election.

“Well, what does the Internet tell me I should write about? I don’t have the first idea how to write a valedictorian speech. If I don’t have to convince people to vote for me, what do I
say
?”

I felt a great weight shift onto my shoulders. I would be the last voice heard at our graduation ceremony. I would have to stand in front of my peers, their friends and families, and make some sort of huge observation or sweeping generalization that would instill confidence in their educations and inspire them to go on to achieve greatness. I was, in a way, responsible for the future achievements of every graduate at my high school. If my speech sucked, how would anyone be inspired to cure cancer or develop lamps that run on urine or any number of things I couldn’t possibly imagine yet?

“I can feel you freaking out,” Kate said. “Stop it. You’ll be great. You’re the best woman for the job, and everyone clearly knows it. You were voted in for a reason!”

I put my head down on my outstretched arms, breathing heavily. “I was the
only
female applicant. Did everyone vote for me because they’re sick of having straight, white, male valedictorians? Is this just affirmative action in action?”

“Don’t have a panic attack on me, Corey. You weren’t elected as a political statement.” She began to pet my hair gently. I was soothed. I turned my head so that I could look up at her, perched on her elbows above me. “You were elected because you are smart, qualified, and your speech was hella memorable.”