My heart raced. My hands shook as I reached for her.
“You know porn?” The words just came out, and now I had to go with them, no matter how badly I wished that I’d never said them. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
“Sure,” she murmured into my neck.
“You know the girl-on-girl stuff?”
“Maeve?” She pulled away.
“I’ve seen it,” I said. “You know, little bits of it, on the internet.”
“Okay.” Salix drew out the word, hanging it up at the end. “And?”
“The straight stuff is all dicks and balls and vaginas and tits and butts and mouths and humping. And the girl-on-girl stuff is so fake. It’s not real. That’s not what girls do, you know? The girls in porn are automatons.” I did my best robot voice. “I-lick-you-you-kiss-me-pinch-my-nipple-arch-your-back-bend-over-moan-moan-sigh.”
“It’s okay,” Salix said.
“Porn?”
“I mean it’s okay if you don’t know what to do.” She took my hand. “I don’t know what to do either.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really.” She kissed my hand. My wrist. The soft crease of my arm.
A man and a woman. We all knew that. A man and a man, easy to figure out. I even knew that Dan liked to be on the bottom, and what that meant. But the mechanics of two girls? Two real girls? Not two porn robots? No one had told me. No one talked about it at school. There was no health class about this, two girls in bed together.
—
Salix took her shirt off too, and then we were getting naked, and then we were naked, and I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the weight of Salix on top of me, and the blood rushing to all the right places, and Salix’s tongue on my nipple and her hand between my legs and the electric buzz of the two of us together. This. Us. Together. This was the only thing. The one and only thing.
I didn’t want to see any of them.
Not Claire.
Not the boys.
Definitely not Dad.
I didn’t want to know if he was doing well, or if he was sliding.
I didn’t want to see him succeed, and I didn’t want to see him fail.
I didn’t want to hear from Mom about anything that she needed me to do for the house.
I didn’t want to hear from her about Raymond. Things are so good between us, she’d written. He treats me so well, Maeve. I imagine good things.
I didn’t want to sign for the package that was the birth pool. I didn’t want to be there when the midwife checked the heartbeat and laughed with the boys, who would argue over who was going to cut the cord.
I wanted to be with Salix. All the time.
She wasn’t messy. She wasn’t fucked up. She was a good thing. And she had nothing to do with the mess at home.
“Do you think Raymond will come home with her?” she said.
“Look up.” I took her hand and pulled her into the park. “Look up.”
A murder of crows across the sky, coming from the north at an angle.
Hundreds and hundreds of them, going home.
Give your father a chance, Claire had said when she’d seen me the day before, already on my way out. He’s doing great so far.
Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe it would last. Maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to sit in the murky unknown. I wanted to stand on concrete. I wanted to stand on concrete and hold hands with Salix and look up at the sky, at the crows heading surely home.
It was Salix who picked up the letter from Ruthie. The mail was behind the door when we came from the park for lunch one day. Dad was at work. Claire and the boys were out at a bird sanctuary more than an hour away. We had the place to ourselves for at least half the day.
“Hydro, bank, and something for you,” she said as she came up the stairs.
A postcard from my mom, I assumed. But it was an envelope, with a return address of ASRA, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. ASRA, which stood for Alaska Summer Research Academy. I recognized Ruthie’s writing right away. My stomach clutched into a knot.
“Who’s it from?”
“A girl.”
“A girl.” Salix held me from behind and looked over my shoulder. “Why are your hands shaking?”
“I told you about Jessica.”
“This is from her? I thought she lived in California.”
“She does. This isn’t from her.”
Inside was one sheet of paper, a row of little Tardises marching along the bottom.
Dear Maeve,
I was going to email you back, but we don’t have internet in the field, and it was down when we went into the main campus, which is a four-hour drive. So I’m writing you a letter. How weird is that? Not that weird, I guess. If you’re a geek.
I’m so sorry to hear about Mrs. Patel. I know that she was a very good friend. And I’m so sorry that you were the one to find her. I can’t imagine.
Is your dad better now? Claire? The boys? The baby? The baby isn’t due for a while, I know. But all that before-birth stuff. It’s okay?
I hate writing letters. Especially this one.
You know, I didn’t know what to say to you ever since that day, but now I do.
I’m sorry for what I did.
Really sorry.
Your friend,
Ruthie.
ps. I have a girlfriend. She can name all the Doctors in order, along with who played them and the dates. She told me that I should’ve apologized by now. She’s right. I was violent. I should never have put my hands on you like that. And I’m sorry that I was weird about you and Jessica. I shouldn’t have kissed you. And I should’ve stopped when you said no.
I’m so sorry.
pps. Q. What do you call an “e” that runs away?
A. An escapee!
“It’s from Ruthie.” I handed the letter to Salix. “My best friend. Or, she used to be.”
After she read it, she looked up, confused and concerned.
So I told her.
—
Things ended when Jessica moved back to California not even a month after she arrived. I love you, she said. I love you, I said. Come see me! I will! Two weeks later she emailed me to say that it was over and that she’d found a new girlfriend, and she hoped that I would find the right person and fall in love. What we had, Maeve, was a two-sided crush, you know? But I didn’t know, and without thinking, I forwarded it to Ruthie. My feelings were hurt, and I wanted someone to know. But it was also kind of funny, too.
Her reply was so fast, it was hard to believe she’d had time to compose it. An invitation to make hexaflexagons was exactly how someone like Ruthie smoothed things over. So I went, because I missed Ruthie. I wanted things to go back to normal. As I walked up her front steps, I knew what I was going to say. Now we have BJ—Before Jessica. Not blow job, Ruthie. It’s not funny. And AJ—After Jessica. She was just a blip in our timeline, that’s all.
Ruthie’s mother answered the door and ushered me down to the basement. I tried not to think back to all the papier-maché and broken glass on the floor, but it was hard not to. There was Ruthie, standing at the bottom now, smiling. She handed me a pair of scissors.
“I have a template.”
“A template?”
“For the hexaflexagons,” Ruthie said. “I need to make one for each person in my class. Final project.” I followed her into her bedroom. Doctor Who was playing on her computer.