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“No, but I can guess. They won’t let my brother and me watch any shows with gay characters, even stupid sitcoms. They say shows like that ‘promote an amoral agenda.’ Once when I posted a photo I took of a crowd on the Fourth of July that had two men holding hands in the background, they confiscated my phone and took down my whole Instagram account until I promised to delete the picture.”
“Wow. I’m sorry. That’s really awful.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m so obsessive about this stuff. If they found out I liked girls, they might—I don’t even want to guess. Ground me forever? Refuse to pay for college? Honestly, I don’t know, and I really want to make sure I don’t find out.”
Now I felt bad for being annoyed at her.
We were almost at the entrance of the church. Only a few people were still outside, and they were all way too engrossed in their own conversations to listen to us.
“Look.” My heart was pounding so hard it was embarrassing. “I—Look, you know... I like you, okay? And it’s okay if you don’t actually like me that much. I mean, I know you already have a boyfriend and everything—it’s only that last night I thought maybe you kind of did, you know, like me. So...”
Christa stopped walking. I stopped, too. She stared at me.
Then she looked around. Almost everyone had disappeared into the darkness of the church.
Christa grabbed my hand and ran, pulling me behind her.
I stumbled after her, trying to figure out what she was doing, trying to figure out how to ask. Then she pulled me behind the dark church wall and kissed me, hard.
It was totally different from our kisses the night before. Those had been slow and warm and sweet.
This one was fierce. Visceral.
It took me a second to start kissing her back, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. She was delicious. She was incredible. And for that moment, she was all mine.
She pushed me against the cement wall. It was hard and cold against my back. Somehow that felt incredible, too.
We were crushed together, her hand tight on the back of my neck, my hand on her hip holding her in place. I’d never kissed anyone like this before. As if I was kissing her with my whole body.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew that anyone could walk out and see us at any moment. That idea only made me wrap my arm around her waist and hold her even closer.
She slid down so she was kissing my neck, moving back to my ear. The sudden shock of air on my lips was so intense that I had to do something. Say something. I murmured, low, unintelligible words. I wasn’t even sure what they were. Oh, my God, maybe.
That tiny murmur must’ve been what snapped her out of it. Christa pulled back a few inches, her eyes blinking into consciousness.
I gazed back at her. I don’t know how my face looked—I felt lost, dazed, unfocused—but hers was beautiful.
Her eyes tore away from mine, darting left, then right. There was no one around.
“We should go someplace else,” Christa whispered.
I nodded. “There are hills around here, too.”
So we walked out into the dark hills that rimmed the town. I reached for her hand, the muscles in my fingers twitching, afraid she’d pull away.
She didn’t. She jumped as I slipped my hand into hers, but then she intertwined her fingers with mine and squeezed.
And somehow, it was everything, that single squeeze.
That squeeze meant I hadn’t made this up in my head. This weird thing that I felt—I didn’t know what it was exactly, but now I knew she felt it, too.
We climbed the hill into the little valley. Our little valley. I slipped my arms around her neck and she kissed me, again, slower and lighter than before.
We didn’t need to hurry. We had all the time there was.
Maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t only an experiment. Maybe this was something else altogether.
Maybe it was even something real.
CHAPTER 6 (#ue673357d-9ab4-5a23-bea8-7079eaad7871)
“¡Oye, mira por aquí!”
“¡Volver!”
Two boys, maybe nine years old, were shouting to each other across a dusty street, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. A third boy joined in and they took off down the block. My friends and I ducked out of the way just in time to avoid getting slammed by either a ball or a kid.
“Ahh-ki!” someone shouted. At first I thought it was one of the girls from our group—half of them still pronounced my name wrong—but it was Juana Suarez from our jewelry-making class. We’d started having lunch at the Suarezes’ house every afternoon, and Juana’s mom was an amazing cook (that was according to Christa—I was still mostly sticking with my toast). Her dad played the guitar for us at vespers, and he was teaching Juana to play, too. She’d explained that to Lori and me one afternoon by singing a hymn and accompanying herself on air guitar. It had been adorable, but I’d had to resist the urge to correct her technique.
“Hola, Juana.” Now that I’d been in Mexico for a week, I could say a few words in Spanish without feeling like a complete fail. “¿Cómo estás?”
“Bien.” Juana didn’t seem to think my speaking two complete sentences in Spanish was quite as big a deal as I did. She grabbed my hand and tugged me toward where the other kids were playing in the street. “¡Vamonos!”
I laughed and swatted away a buzzing mosquito. “No puedo.” I pointed to the light blue dress I was wearing, trying to show her that I didn’t want to get it dirty. Which was true. I’d borrowed it from Lori, and it was the first time all week I’d worn something that I didn’t expect to get covered in paint.
Juana pouted at me for about half a second. Then she dropped my hand and ran after the ball.
I laughed again. Then I must’ve forgotten where I was, because I started to reach for Christa’s hand. At the last moment I settled for smiling at her instead.
We were walking into town with a dozen or so people from different youth groups. It was Saturday, and we had the morning off. This afternoon we had to be back at the Perezes’ house for some kind of dance performance, but for now, we were free.
We hadn’t really gone anywhere but the old church, the work site and Reverend Perez’s house the whole time we’d been in Mudanza. The town was small, but still big enough to get lost in, so the chaperones had told us to make sure we traveled in groups today. In the few blocks we’d come so far, all we’d seen were a lot of gravel roads and squat buildings with pink walls and corrugated metal roofs. Oh, and two more churches.
Christa and I were near the front of the group. She had two cameras hanging from her neck, a fancy digital one and an old-fashioned one that took black-and-white photos. She’d worn a dress today, too—it was black and fit snugly around her waist—with three strands of gold Mardi Gras beads wound around her wrists.
Most of the girls in our group had dressed up. It was the first chance we’d had since the welcome party to look halfway decent. I’d even borrowed some of Lori’s mascara. I didn’t wear makeup much back home, but now that I was sort of dating someone, I figured I ought to make an effort.
Except Christa and I weren’t dating. She was already dating someone else. The two of us had just been sneaking off into the hills behind the church to hook up on a nightly basis.
Well, but still.
“Hey, puppy!” Lori called out to a dog trotting along the sidewalk near us. Christa stopped walking and lifted her camera to take the dog’s photo. Lori stooped to pet it, but it ran away before she could get close.
“I wouldn’t pet any stray dogs in Mexico,” said Sofía, one of Drew’s friends. She was tall, Hispanic and intimidatingly pretty. “You never know who’s got rabies.”
“You can tell if dogs have rabies,” I said. “They foam at the mouth and stuff.”
“Not always,” Sofía said.
“Yeah, you can’t always tell with dogs,” Drew echoed. I was positive Drew didn’t know if that was true any more than I did, but I knew how it was when you liked a girl.
“There’s a chicken up ahead,” Christa said, clicking away on her digital camera. I thought she was kidding, but I looked and, sure enough, a chicken was wandering around between two houses. Just hanging out, as if it had nothing better to do. “Should we check it for diseases to be safe? You never know with chickens.”
Lori and I laughed. Drew covered his mouth, but I was pretty sure he was laughing, too.
We’d reached the end of the block, where the kids were kicking the soccer ball around. Two of them stopped playing and turned to watch us.
I wondered how we looked to them. A huge gang of mostly white people walking along their dusty road on a Saturday morning, all dressed up as if we were going to a party.
“Sure, I’ll sign it,” Gina said behind us. At first I thought she was talking to me—Gina went to our church back home, and she hung out a lot with Lori and me—but when I turned, she was talking to Jake. “You got a pen?”
“Yep. Thanks, Gina. You’re awesome.” Jake passed her a pen and paper. Gina stopped walking and held the paper against the nearest pink wall, scribbling her name on it.
“I thought it was mostly over,” Becca said to Jake. I’d only talked to Becca once or twice before. She was white, and she went to Christa’s church. “The war, I mean.”
“We still have troops stationed over there,” Jake said. “The plank they’re voting on calls for us to withdraw all US military from the region except humanitarian aid missions.”
I interrupted them. “Wait, is this a different petition from the one before?”
“Yeah.” Jake pointed to the paper. “This one’s on whether Holy Life will officially call for an end to the war. Want to sign?”
“Wait, it’s my turn next.” Becca took the pen from Gina. Jake grinned.
“Are you still doing your other petition?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but this one’s gotten way more signatures.” Jake looked massively pleased with himself. I was impressed, too. I hadn’t thought many people would be willing to sign a petition over something as random as church policy.
“What’s the other petition on?” Gina asked.
“Marriage,” Jake told her. “There’s a plank to make it so Holy Life ministers can perform same-sex weddings.”
“They can’t already do that?” Becca handed the pen to another guy so he could sign. Jake looked happier than I’d ever seen him.
“They can, but it isn’t officially recognized by Holy Life national if they do,” Drew said.
It was weird to hear my brother talking about this. He’d had a ton of friends in high school, but none of them were gay. Or if they were, he hadn’t mentioned it.
Maybe that was why I hadn’t told him about Christa. I was used to telling Drew pretty much everything—I’d even told him about the dumb pact Lori had gotten me to make, about both of us having a fling this summer, and I’d stood there and acted like it didn’t bother me when he laughed so hard his face looked about to fall off—but I’d kept this part secret. I didn’t know how he’d react. His whole high school world was all about super hetero dates with pretty girls and parties with his ball-playing friends. When I was a kid I used to be so jealous.
Maybe I still was. It was frustrating sometimes, going to my tiny school where I’d known everyone since we were little. My plan had always been to transfer to MHSA for high school, but then I got rejected.
I’d dreamed of spending my high school years becoming a real musician. Instead I wasted ninth grade doing nothing but hanging out with Lori, doing the same things we’d always done.
I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was running out of time to start doing cool things.
Well, I was doing something this summer, at least. I smiled at Christa, who was adjusting something on her black-and-white camera. She glanced up and met my eyes. Then we both ducked our heads before anyone could notice.
“I heard they aren’t sure if the marriage plank is going to pass,” Sofía said. “There’s a lot of controversy.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Lori huffed. “Why does anyone even care if gay people get married? What business is it of theirs?”
“Well, it’s caused big problems for some denominations,” Jake said. “Whole national church groups have split in half because they couldn’t agree on whether to recognize same-sex marriages.”
“For real?” I’d never heard that before.
“Yeah.” Drew looked at me like I was dumb. “It was all over the news a few years ago.”
“Jeez,” Gina said. “How do you guys think your dad’s going to vote on it?”
“Uh.” I had no idea. I knew Dad would vote to end the war—he and Mom hated everything to do with the military; they’d even tried to get a religious exemption to keep Drew from having to register for the draft when he turned eighteen—but I’d never heard him talk about the marriage thing.
Drew shrugged at Gina. “I don’t know.”
“A lot of black people don’t support gay marriage,” Becca said. “Church people especially.”
Everyone got quiet then. I had no idea what Becca was talking about.
“My dads told me that,” she said, when she realized we were all staring at her. “They’re gay, so they should know.”
“That’s completely not true,” I said. “And if your gay dads told you that, they—”
“Hey, I think this store sells that toast you’re so obsessed with.” Christa tapped her finger on my arm kind of hard. That was the most she’d ever touched me in front of other people, so it was enough to shut me up. “Want to go see?”
She was right. We were in front of a tiny grocery store with a sign in the window for the brand of toast I’d been eating to the exclusion of almost everything else since we’d come to Mexico.
“Okay,” I said. Becca was eyeing me. I really wanted to keep talking about her dads (and to ask what it was like to have gay dads in the first place), but Christa was probably right. That conversation wasn’t going to end well.
The store was tiny. When Christa and I ducked inside, we took up nearly all the available space. A woman was sitting behind the counter, reading a newspaper. I smiled and said, “Hola,” but I was too anxious to try to say anything else.
The store definitely sold toast, but I didn’t see the point in buying any since our hosts put it out at every meal we ate. It felt like we should buy something, though, so Christa found a pack of ponytail holders and went up to pay, fumbling in her purse for the pesos we’d all gotten at the airport. I walked around, gazing at the shelves of canned vegetables, then caught a reflection in the store window that said Salud. Salud meant health. I turned around.
Across the street was yet another one-story cement building. A stone fence stood around it, and the front of the building was plain except for the painted words Casa de Salud above the door. In my head, that translated to house of health, but it probably sounded cooler in Spanish.
The name made it sound like the building was some kind of doctor’s office, but it didn’t look anything like the clinic where I’d volunteered back home. This place looked old and deserted.
I’d seen doctors’ offices in Tijuana when we drove in from the airport. They’d looked pretty similar to doctors’ offices back home—neat and shiny, with giant signs announcing the doctors who worked there and what their specialties were, in Spanish and English.
Maybe there was a big, shiny doctor’s office in some other part of Mudanza. I was still curious about the Casa de Salud, though.
“I’m all set.” Christa pocketed her ponytail holders. “Sure you don’t want to grab some toast, seeing as how nothing else in the whole country is edible for you?”
“Oh, whatever. Listen, do you want to go check out that building across the street?”
“What? Oh, uh.” Christa craned her neck to read the sign, then looked at me quizzically. “Sure.”
“I only want to stick my head inside. See how it looks.”
Christa reached for her digital camera and followed me across the street, through the opening in the stone fence and up to the front door of the Casa de Salud.
