Page 23

One Year Before

“When did you know?”

Lenny asked . They’d just shared their first kiss in the break room of the thrift store where they both worked. It was after hours, the place quiet save for the pounding of ’s heart.

“On your first day here,”

replied, relishing the waxy feel of Lenny’s lipstick on her own lips, the tangle of Lenny’s neatly manicured nails playing in her messy hair. She shifted herself and rested her head in Lenny’s lap, smiling as she thought of the day, one month—and an entire lifetime—ago, when Lenny had walked into the store to apply for the job working the cash register and arranging the displays.

Tristan, the store’s manager, had offered the job to first but she’d turned it down.

Most people didn’t like sorting the used clothes that came in but she loved it, no matter how old, how stained, how smelly the items were.

When she held a piece, she could sense the life of the person who had owned it.

A pair of ripped jeans, with I Heart Rob markered on them—she imagined someone her age who’d had their heart broken by a boy named Rob, and, realizing he was unworthy, had gotten rid of the jeans.

A smock with snaps up the back—she pictured a grandmother, pockets full of treats for her grandkids.

A pocket watch—she imagined it being passed from generation to generation, the last of the line dying out, and now the watch was in search of a new family.

A lot of people might consider these things junk, but knew they left a shadow presence behind.

It was a way someone could be here and gone at the same time.

When Tristan introduced to Lenny, she felt a wave of energy travel from her head to her toes, stopping, for good measure, between her legs. Was this the proverbial lightning bolt? She’d never felt anything like it before. She’d had crushes, plenty of crushes, but nothing like this.

It wasn’t just that Lenny was gorgeous—black bobbed hair, olive skin, Cupid-bow lips painted her signature red—and stylish, coming to work each day in the most incredible outfits: a 1940s rayon dress and combat boots one day, a skinny suit and ballet flats the next.

That was window dressing.

Lenny was forceful and funny and sharp.

She could do the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle. She loved cat memes. She had the best laugh, a low husky chortle with a snort at the end that made laugh every time she heard it.

And Lenny, she laughed all the time. didn’t realize how much she’d missed laughter in the years since Amber died until she heard Lenny’s constant and boisterous chuckle.

“My first day here? Didn’t know you believed in love at first sight.”

Lenny rolled her eyes—impeccably made up with charcoal eyeliner. “Anyhow, love at first sight is a narrative construct, like money.”

“Bet you twenty dollars Tristan disagrees with you.”

“Har, har, I see what you did there,”

Lenny said, kissing her neck. “And that’s not what I was asking. I was asking when you knew you were gay.”

closed her eyes; the fluttering in her chest was warm and light and golden, like happiness incarnate. She considered Lenny’s question. “I think I always knew. I just didn’t know what I knew. That’s why I was always watching people. To see if they could help me understand myself.”

“Baby spy. You must’ve been so cute.”

Lenny stroked ’s forehead and the pleasure was almost unbearable. She truly had not known a body, let alone her body, could feel this way. “Did watching other people help?”

“I think so. We have a neighbor who’s a lesbian, and I don’t know, I think when I met her, I recognized something in her. She helped me come out to my parents, but it was my sister who really got me through.”

“How?”

“She was like two people. There was Amber as I knew her: drama queen, devoted to her boyfriend, always with her clique of girlfriends.”

“A basic bitch?”

Lenny says.

“Pretty much. But then there was this other side of her, so protective of me. So loving. I thought if she could be two people, so could I. I thought there was some secret.”

“Was there?”

She smiles. “The secret was to be me. She told me that.”

“So you came out when you were ten?”

Lenny asked.

“Fourteen.”

“I thought your sister died when you were ten.”

At first, and Lenny circled each other, always finding excuses to be near the other.

Lenny would join while she sorted the clothes, claiming right of first refusal on any potential thrift score.

kept going to the cash register, asking Lenny to change a twenty for no reason except to be near her.

Soon, they found themselves lingering after closing, leaving at the same time, walking in the vague direction of one of their houses, stopping for a frozen yogurt or a cookie along the way.

They talked about silly stuff: Lenny’s obsession with 1980s soap operas like Falcon Crest, ’s aversion to eating any foods that were red.

And more substantial things.

knew Lenny had done her DNA testing and had been surprised to find out she was 20 percent West African and had been trying to untangle that complicated heritage.

Lenny, meanwhile, knew that was thinking of delaying college a few years; she wanted to travel, maybe follow in her aunt’s footsteps and become a flight attendant.

“A butch flight attendant,”

Lenny joked. “All the queers will be banging on their call buttons.” And of course Lenny knew that ’s sister had died.

But what Lenny didn’t know was how constantly the sisters spoke. Daily. Much more than when Amber was alive and always out at play rehearsal, or hanging with Casey and Alexa, or being all couply with Calvin.

It had started before the funeral, when a thought would enter Missy’s mind, a question, a musing, and Amber would be there, clear as can be, to reply to it. Even then, understood it wasn’t really Amber. It was the part of Amber that lived in her. But it didn’t seem to make a difference. Amber was there, could talk to her, and Amber would talk back. And this Amber was the best version of herself, the kind and generous and funny big sister.

Not long after her thirteenth birthday, when finally began to connect the words gay, lesbian, and queer to the mystery about herself she had long been trying to solve, it was Amber she told first.

I’m not like you, she said.

No shit, her sister had replied.

No, I’m really not like you, she had reiterated.

Thank God for that, the Amber in her head had returned.

didn’t mind Amber being like this. On the contrary, it was how she knew that in some sense she really was talking to her sister. If Amber had said, Oh, Missy, you’re just like me, would’ve known then she was some wish-fulfillment, Hallmark-card figment of her imagination. But this Amber, she sounded like Amber.

danced around telling her sister that she was gay until finally, one day, after said something vague about not being like everyone else, Amber had impatiently said, Oh, just spit it out already.

had not spat it out. She was not ready. But she was getting closer.

Several months later, she came out, really came out, to Amber.

I’m gay, she told her.

Actually, Amber replied, you’re kind of mopey. You’re not gay at all. You could use more gaiety in your life.

No, I’m gay, like I like girls.

But do girls like you back? It was such an Amber answer, so bratty and so comforting.

She came out to Amber every single day for months, to the point that Amber grew tired of it. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Amber asked.

What’s that mean?

Amber rolled her eyes, exasperated. Does it matter if you’re gay if no one knows it? Particularly other girls who might also be gay?

knew she was right. She knew she had to tell someone else, someone here, and she had an idea of who to confide in. She’d psyched herself up to do it when, once again, life got in the way and it had to be postponed.

Why aren’t you telling anyone? Amber kept asking her.

She didn’t tell Amber why. Only that she would.

And when she finally did tell Peg Weston, Peg held her hand until she was ready to tell her father, who just seemed uncomfortable about the whole thing, and later Peg sat outside on the front porch when she told her mother.

“Do you really want to know about this?”

asked Lenny, who was running her nails, lightly, across the lids of ’s closed eyes, amping up the agonizing pleasure flooding ’s body to an even higher pitch.

“I want to know everything about you,”

Lenny said.

“You’ll think I’m weird.”

“That’s been established. You won’t eat apples.”

“I’ll eat the yellow and green ones.”

“The prosecution rests.”

And so took a deep breath and told Lenny something she had not told anyone else, not her mother or father or Peg or Father Mercer or anyone at the teen support group she’d been sent to after Amber died, where she understood that she wasn’t grieving like everyone else because she hadn’t lost Amber the way everyone else had lost their person.

As she spoke, Lenny’s hand stilled, falling to her sides, leaving ’s skin cold and questioning: Had she gone too far?

“What are you thinking?”

asked after a nerve-racking silence.

“I’m wondering what I did right in this world to land a job at the same thrift store as you.”

Hope flared in ’s chest. She’d been honest with Amber, and it hadn’t hurt her. And then Peg. And her parents. And now Lenny. Life had beckoned her out of the shadows, and the sun felt so good on her face. She took another breath. “Good. Because I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Lenny responded with a generous helping of her perfect laugh. “Oh, girl, I’m already in love with you.”

“I thought love at first sight was a social construct,”

teased.

“Oh, shut up,”

Lenny said. And then, still laughing that musical, life-affirming, joyful trill of hers, she kissed , and after that, the talking stopped.