Truth & Dare (13 page)

“
I keep thinking
,” she slammed, “
is it you? Is it you?
” She turned her gaze, eyes meeting mine, a funny smile on her lips. “
Is it you
?”

I nearly missed the ending, my brain wrapping around the look she just gave me. She’s just performing, my brain told me, she’s just showing off. That wasn’t about me. That wasn’t about me.

Everyone clapped and some hooted. I clapped and laughed at the same time, giddy with admiration for Mira. She brought her lanky form back to the table and hopped up beside me.

“That was fantastic,” I told her, and she responded by leaning her head on my shoulder, then burying her face there.
And I don’t know what did it, I don’t know what came over me, but I turned and kissed her on the head. Just small. But enough. George was saying something to us all at the front of the room. When I kissed her, she lifted her head, and anticipating disgust, I found her face lit up with surprise. She grinned.

“I don’t know what you are all planning to go to college for,” George was saying, “but poetry is something you should continue. Major in it, minor in it, write it on the sly, but for goodness’ sake, keep writing,” he begged us. He led us in a discussion of our poems, asking some of us to repeat lines, to talk about images, to ask how we thought up a particular line or part. When we talked about my poem, Jackie whipped her head around.

“Was that about your boyfriend?” Everyone laughed. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, eyebrows raised.

“No, actually.” Everyone laughed again. Jackie made her eyes wide at me, like, can you believe this girl?

“Who’s it about?”

“That might not be important,” George interjected, but everyone ignored him.

“It’s about your crush, isn’t it?” Mira was giving me a sly look. I threw my head back when I laughed, bright red.

“Who’s your crush?”

“I fear this discussion has veered away from poetry, ladies,” George said. “What is it about the poem that makes you want to know?”

“Because,” Katie said, “it was about wanting someone before you get them. Right?”

I nodded.

“That’s the best part,” Kiana mused.

“
Sweetness jammed up against my heart
.” Joan tapped her pen. “I wrote that down, I loved that so much.”

“What did you mean by that?”

I shrugged. “It’s just how I picture it, I guess. What I want.”

“Who you want,” Jackie corrected, causing everyone to laugh again.

Mira hadn’t taken her eyes off me the whole time. We had moved closer, so that our thighs touched. And sure, other girls were sitting this way, too, but I wanted this to mean something. It was a difficult thought, one that I didn’t want to let myself think and kept cutting myself off at—it’s nothing, I thought feverishly, this is nothing. This is coincidence. She doesn’t like you. And even if she did, what about Tommy?

Tommy was the most dreadful thought. It was like they couldn’t even compete. If Mira were a boy I would not have been flirting at all; I wouldn’t even have dreamed of it. But Mira, with her mop of black curls and awkward tall body, her daring, the way she paid attention to me …

I didn’t know what I wanted to happen before Sunday, nothing or anything, but suddenly Sunday seemed way too close.

For our last night, they took us all out to dinner in town. While we waited for the reservation, milling about on the small sidewalk—the wardens looking like nervous sheepherders—Mira found a stairwell around the corner and sat there to smoke a cigarette. “I’m right over here,” she said loudly, waving her arms at her warden, who nodded, then blinked. I had followed Mira over because my cigarettes had run out and she said I could have some since she had taken one of mine the first day there.

Pulling out two cigarettes, I reached for one, but she pulled them away, a sudden smile lighting up her face.

“Wait a minute,” she said.

“What?”

She cocked her head at me. “I will give you this cigarette on one condition.”

“Technically that is
my
cigarette, since you owe me.” I was glowering at her, but it quickly became a laugh. “What?”

She pinched the cigarettes close to her chest. “Tell me who your crush is.”

“Oh, God.”

“Tell me!”

I looked away, smiling, but the slight pause bloomed into an awkward moment of silence. Mira stared me down.

“It’s complicated,” I said finally. I turned to see what comment she’d throw at such bullshit, but she just kept looking at me. I put my hands out in front of me.

“Have you ever liked two people at once?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Well, what if they were really different? Like, so different they couldn’t even compare?”

She squinted. “That’d make an easy choice, though. You’d choose the better one.”

I bit my lip. “It’s not like that. It’s like …” I exhaled. “It’s like, Tommy is my boyfriend. But my crush is a girl.”

I held my breath. She nodded.

“Have you been with a girl before?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, even though everyone was half a block away.

“My first kiss was a girl.”

She raised her eyebrows, a quick smirk.

“But have you ever slept with a girl?”

I shook my head.

“Do you want to?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

She nodded. “Me too.”

“You do?” My laugh was too loud for our conversation. I
clapped a hand over my mouth and moved back. She smiled.

“I think about it a lot. I mean, but I don’t know anyone, who, you know, so.”

I nodded.

“There are, like, just two hundred kids in my whole high school. I know everyone. I grew up with all the girls. They’re all …” She frowned, then she turned, putting both cigarettes in her mouth and lighting them. She handed one to me and I took a drag, turning my face to blow away the smoke.

“They’re seating us now,” Lisa called to us.

Mira held up her cigarette. “Can we come in a minute?”

Lisa scowled. “They’re seating us
now
.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mira mumbled, taking a drag on the cigarette. I watched her for what to do.

“We can save them,” I offered.

She rolled her eyes. I felt awful, like the closeness I had just felt for her was being violently pulled away.

“Okay,” she said, stubbing hers out on the wall. I did the same and we carefully slipped them into the box.

Walking toward the restaurant, she turned to me and put her hand on my wrist. “Sit with me, yeah?”

“Of course,” I said.

We were all on curfew after the bra incident, so while the kids from the other groups roamed the halls and watched movies in the common room, we were made to stay in our rooms after nine. In our room, Katie was reading a magazine and listening to her headphones. I wrote for a while, and I wondered if I should have called Tommy. I felt guilty, and then I looked at Katie.

She took out one of her headphones. “Are you okay?”

“I told Mira,” I said. I had confided in Katie about my crush
at lunch after our last Poetry class. I was going to burst otherwise.

“Oh, my God.” She pulled out her other headphone and scrambled off her bed, coming to sit on mine.

“So?”

I told her about the conversation we had, before dinner. Afterwards, Katie sat back on her palms.

“I so knew she liked girls.”

I shrugged. “You really can’t always tell.”

“Yeah, but still.” She bit her nails. “How’d you leave it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, we didn’t talk about it at dinner. Obviously. And it’s not like I could get any more alone time with her now.”

Katie thought. “Yeah, you could.”

“How?” I asked, incredulous.

She shrugged. “Sneak out later.”

“But the wardens are like police out there.”

“Not after they’re asleep.”

I thought about this. “How late do you think I’d have to wait?”

“Like midnight? Maybe one?”

“Wouldn’t Mira’s roommate tell?”

“Joan?” Katie laughed. “C’mon, she probably sleeps like a bear. Mira even says she snores.”

I nodded, then flopped back on the bed with a sigh. “Oh, my God, I couldn’t. I have a boyfriend.”

“So?” Katie laughed. “It’s not like you’re going to fuck her.” I held my breath. Katie’s eyes bugged out. “Wait, are you?”

“I don’t even know what that means!” I wailed. Turning over, I pushed my face into the pillow and yelled.

There was a swift knock at the door. Our warden Kelly poked her head in.

“What’s going on in here?”

“Boy talk,” Katie chirped, a sweet smile on her face.

Kelly smiled back and closed the door. “Keep it down, okay.”

We burst out laughing.

“Just go talk to her,” Katie said, lowering her voice. “C’mon, you can’t start that conversation and not end it.”

“I should just let it go,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, but then you’re just gonna obsess over it.” She pointed a finger at me. “It’s like, find out if she likes you now, or spend the next like ten months wondering if you should drive up to Vermont and ask her yourself.”

I laughed. Katie took off her watch and began jamming the buttons. “Here,” she said, “I’m gonna set my alarm for midnight. You can decide then.”

“You’re the best,” I said.

“Anything for love,” Katie chortled, and my heart swelled and felt sick at the same time. Love? This was a crush. Tommy was love. But I was beginning to doubt the difference.

I didn’t sleep much. I kept waking up every few minutes to check Katie’s watch, which she had left on the floor between our beds. Finally, when it said 11:57, I fiddled with the alarm to turn it off and gingerly got out of bed.

The hallways were dark, except for a mix of moonlight and fluorescent street lamps coming in from windows at both ends of the hall. Downstairs the light in the common room had been left on and shone orange light through the banisters.

My heart was thumping quickly even though I had rehearsed it a million times—if anyone asked, I would say I was going to the bathroom. Mira and Joan’s room was actually the door across from the girls’ bathroom, so I could, if I got caught twisting their doorknob, say I got confused. I tried to
imagine Lisa or Kelly believing me, but shut off my imagination when it got that far.

At their door, I kept my hand on the doorknob a long time. I hadn’t thought it this far. After what seemed like for ever, pins and needles forming in my bare feet, I slowly twisted the knob and pushed the door open, praying it didn’t creak.

Mira was, luckily, sleeping in the bed closer to the door. She stirred, and I held my breath. Her body turned over toward me, and I saw her squint, then sit up quickly, then squint again.

I held a finger to my lips. She smiled. Getting out of bed, she pulled on a pair of jeans, then looked at me. “Let me get my cigarettes,” she whispered.

I stepped back from the door, the racing fear in my heart turning to giddiness. Mira Albany, my heart sang, Mira Albany, Mira Albany.

She came out into the hallway and slowly pulled the door shut behind her. She then stood very close in front of me, our faces nearly touching.

“Where should we go?” I whispered, trying to make my voice as far from audible as I could.

“The bathroom?”

“Someone could come in.”

She turned away from me, and when she did so, she put her hand on my hip. I thought I might die.

“The boys’ bathroom,” she said. “C’mon.”

At the other end of the hall was the boys’ bathroom, smelling of bleach, the blue cakes of cleaner untouched in the urinals. She lead the way to a rectangular window at the other end, by the shower stalls, and pushed it open a sliver. I leaned against the wall, the tiles cold on my shoulder. She turned toward me, and I thought I would lose everything—my ability to speak, my ability to see.

She took her cigarettes from her back pocket and pulled out the two we had started earlier. “Here,” she whispered, and I liked it that we were still quiet, that this was still a secret.

I put the cigarette in my mouth and she struck a match, the sudden light coming between us. I closed my eyes as I inhaled, then pulled back, blowing smoke toward the window. She lit her own, shook out the match, then tossed it out the window.

“I’m so glad you came and got me,” she said.

“I had to,” I smiled.

By the tiny light of our cigarettes, I could see her smirk. “I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t think you were the kind to sneak out.”

I shrugged. “It was Katie’s idea.”

“Katie?”

I realized what I was revealing here, and quickly sucked on my cigarette. “Well,” I said, “she knew who my crush is.” The next words came to me and I said them with a cool look of nonchalance. “She wanted to make sure that I got to see her.”

Mira tucked her chin into her chest and laughed. Looking back at me, she whispered, “I guess your crush isn’t Michael Strout.”

We both laughed, and the sound echoed off the shadows. I looked at the door for a moment, remembering the danger of where we were and what we were doing, and felt momentarily panicked again. We both smoked in silence. Then I reached up to smudge my cigarette out on the concrete of the window pane, and flicked it outside.

“Amber,” she said. And when I turned back, she kissed me.

Mira was only the fourth person I had ever kissed in my whole life, and it was awkward, at first. Her teeth banged up against mine. I found myself putting my hand on her hip, and she slowed. I bit her lip, and she pulled away, a small laugh.
We looked at each other, and then she kissed me again, and her hand slid under my T-shirt and my breath caught in my throat. I tucked my mouth against the warmth of her neck. I could hear her breath quicken, and when she spread her full palm over my stomach, I sighed.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, and I grinned into her neck.

Was it cheating? Was this cheating? Was I cheating? It seemed a whole different plane. I was 400 miles, a six-hour train ride, three states from home.

As if reading my thoughts, she pulled back and looked at me. “Is this okay?”

I still had one hand on the back of her head, her hair brushing against my fingers. “Yes,” I said. “No. Sure. I don’t know.” A nervous burst of laughter passed my lips. She smiled, leaning forward to kiss me again. We pressed up against the wall, my bare foot crushing her pack of cigarettes on the tile floor.