Page 34 of Here We Go Again

She clenches her jaw as tight as her hands on the steering wheel. “I’m not joking.”

“She’s not joking,” Joe echoes. “And you should know better than to think queerness is supposed to look a certain way.”

Logan—who is wearing a backward baseball hat over her greasy, unwashed hair, and a pair of shorts she definitely bought in the men’s section at Target—flops her mouth open and closed in shock. “Wait, are you being serious?” She sits up in her seat and cranks her head to look at Joe, then Rosemary in rapid succession. “Youare gay?”

Slowly, Rosemary nods once in affirmation.

“Since when?” Logan explodes.

“Since… always. I think that’s how it works….”

Logan whips around to Joe again. “And you knew about this?”

Rosemary watches in the rearview mirror as Joe flips his invisible scarf. “Not to brag, but I was the first person she told.”

“People know! Students know! Other teachers know! Your dad definitely knows!” Rosemary explodes. “I’m out, and I’m not exactly hiding my gayness.”

“But—” Logan’s mouth gapes open and closed a few more times. “But I didn’t know.”

“That’s because you’re oblivious and self-obsessed! You don’t care about other people!”

For the first time in twenty years, Logan doesn’t have a snappy rejoinder at the ready. She sits there, stroking Odysseus’s floppy ears, unnervingly quiet. Rosemary refocuses on the road in front of her until Logan eventually breaks her silence.

“You’re really, actually gay?”

“Yes.”

Logan lapses into another round of stupefied silence. Then, in the same way that Rosemary can always sense incoming rainfrom the subtlest shift in barometric pressure, she canfeelLogan’s mouth stretching into a smirk even as her gaze remains fixed ahead.

Through that infuriating smirk, Logan finally says, “So isthatwhy you kissed me at the pool party?”

There had been two kisses, actually. Rosemary remembers them both perfectly.

The first was an exhibitionist one performed for horny eighth grade boys who thought it would be funny to see two girls kiss. It was a joke. A laugh. Usually, you were allowed to re-spin the bottle if it landed on a girl instead of a boy.

Rosemary hadn’t wanted to play Spin the Bottle in the first place. She’d been lured into Jennifer Platt’s bonus room by Jake McCandie, and she caved under the pressure and spun the bottle when it was her turn.

Only it hadn’t landed on Jake McCandie like he had planned. It landed squarely on Logan, sitting across from her in the circle. Logan, who had red Popsicle juice on her chin.

“Oooo,” the boys all moaned, elbowing each other excitedly.

“Spin again,” Jake ordered.

“No, you have to kiss whoever the bottle lands on,” Jennifer Platt said with complete authority. She had an in-ground pool and a Nokia cell phone. Whatever Jennifer Platt said was law.

Rosemarycouldn’tkiss Logan. Logan was her best friend, and a girl…. so why couldn’t she stop staring at the sticky red juice on Logan’s face?

Suddenly Logan—amid Jake’s protests and the other boys’ catcalls and the other girls’ expressions of revulsion—rolled her eyes and crawled forward. Her butt stuck into the air, the giant T-shirt she wore over her bathing suit opening around her throat soRosemary could see all the way down the front. Rosemary’s heart jumped into her throat. Logan closed her eyes and leaned in.

Rosemary was too shocked to even close her eyes when Logan’s mouth pecked hers.

The briefest connection, the loudest smacking sound. Over before Rosemary could register it.

The room erupted in noise, but Rosemary couldn’t hear it over the sound of her heartbeat roaring like the ocean in her ears.

“Lesbians,” Jennifer Platt muttered under her breath.That, Rosemary heard. Across the circle, Jake McCandie pouted.

Only Greta Le defended them. “You made them do it! That was messed up.”