Page 13 of Touch the Sky

“I know itsoundscrazy to say Joaquin lured me to the top of the muck pile just to knock it down on purpose,” I insist, “but you don’t know that little fucker like I do. He’s a mastermind. He has plans too dark and twisted for any of us to understand.”

Maddie stretches out in the armchair she’s claimed for herself and waves for me to keep the conversation moving. “Okay, okay. He did the muck pile on purpose, but do you really expect us to believe a donkey intentionally tried to embarrass you in front of a woman you think is hot?”

My jaw drops, the pillow in my lap tumbling to the floor.

“I don’t think she’s hot!”

Natalie smirks as she bends over to grab the pillow. “Jass, you spent like two minutes telling us what her bulging arm muscles look like. You obviously think she’s hot.”

I snap my gaping mouth shut and glare at both of them.

“I mean,Idon’t think she’s hot,” I try again. “I can understandwhysome people would find her hot, but the whole point is that she’s another butch. She’s like a…a…super butch, or something.”

Natalie cackles. “A super butch?”

I can feel my chest and neck heating up, the blood getting dangerously close to creeping into my cheeks.

“You know what I mean!” I flick my hand out like I’m gesturing at an invisible Super Butch standing in the middle of the floral rug. “Like, all tall and strong and shit, with the rolled up t-shirt sleeves and that haircut where it’s long on top and short on the sides.”

I press the sides of my bob to my scalp to show them what I mean. Maddie joins Natalie in another round of laughing at me, which just makes the flush on my chest burn hotter.

“Ben ouais, we know what you mean, Jass,” Maddie says, still giggling. “You seem to have remembered a lot of details about her.”

I cross my arms. “I amnotattracted to her. I just do not see a lot of women that butch around here. It…threw me off.”

I smooth down the denim of my jeans to keep from watching the way Maddie and Natalie lean in a little closer, their laughter fading.

“What do you mean?” Natalie asks.

I shrug, gaze still glued to my thighs. “You know. It was just…I didn’t expect that.”

When I look up, Natalie is watching me with her head tilted to the side.

“There are butches in La Cloche,” she says. “Right? I mean, it’s not exactly the femme capital of Québec.”

Maddie points at her chest and then at Natalie’s. “Yeah, even we wear flannel all the time.”

Theyareboth wearing flannel shirts today, and I know what Natalie is trying to say. Out here in the country, there’s no shortage of outdoorsy, truck-driving women who march around in work boots. There are also plenty of members of the artsy crowd in La Cloche who aren’t into ‘traditional expressions of femininity.’ I’m far from the only woman to wear a carabiner on my belt loop, but I’m talking about something more specific than that.

“Okay, yeah,” I try to explain, “but there’s a difference between being a rough around the edges country girl lesbian and, like,butch.”

They both give me an expectant look, like I’m a professor at Butch University about to give a lecture, but after opening and closing my mouth a few times, I realize maybe this is just one of those things I can’t explain to them.

It’s one of those things I haven’t really been able to explain to anyone. It’s the thing that set us apart even when we were kids, the thing that made grown-ups chuckle when they called Natalie a tomboy but stand with their backs all straight and their jaws tight when they said the same thing about me.

It’s like there was an acceptable line for how ‘boyish’ you were allowed to be before people decided it went from cute to creepy, and I crossed their creepy line before I was even old enough to realize there was a line at all.

“Voyons. Forget it.”

Natalie shifts on the couch like she’s going to pat me on the shoulder or even pull me into a hug, but I get to my feet instead. I start pacing up and down the length of the rug, my steps tracing the vines twining between the patterns of roses and daffodils.

“I just don’t trust her,” I continue. “She used her friendly Ontario person charm to convinceMamantwo of the horses were starting to show signs of thrush and charged us extra for handling it. That can’t be true. You think I wouldn’t notice if my own horses were getting thrush?”

I blow out a sharp burst of air, making my lips flap like I’m a horse myself.

“Youhavebeen kind of busy lately.”

I wheel around before I’ve reached the end of the carpet, planting my hands on my hips to stare Maddie down.