Chapter 22
Ninth Grade
(age fourteen)
Am had developed a habit of climbing on top of things, or crawling underneath them, pushing her body to go everywhere a body in Callisto’s low gravity could possibly go.
Kelli did not share her enthusiasm, but she was easy to cajole into going along.
They crawled into the maintenance tunnels when no one was looking, and Am pointed out everything her maintenance engineer cousin had told her: which pipes were for air circulation, which for potable water, which for sewage, which for fuel.
Which wires were for electricity and which were for data.
They climbed every tree Am could find in the public parks.
In one of the smaller parks, a little courtyard at the side of Basic Housing, there was a more daring option.
If they climbed up to the big branch that stuck out near the top of the biggest tree, the rough concrete sides of two buildings formed a kind of chimney.
If they were very brave, linked arms back to back, and stuck out their feet, they could shimmy all the way up to a secret nook at the very top of the Basic Housing dome.
It wasn’t a big and fancy dome like the one Kelli would live under, later, as an adult—just a tiny concrete arch over the alleyway between the buildings, with a little ledge big enough to sit on.
The robots that washed the walls and ceilings parked on that ledge sometimes to recharge, and in the lunch breaks and afternoons it was usually empty.
Am and Kelli could sit up there and look down at the alleyway and the park, the people small like ants down below—which was the closest anyone in Basic Housing ever got to real expansiveness, real space around them, apart from those short jaunts on the hyperloop that showed them the darkness outdoors.
“Could Orlande be a lesbian, you think?” Am asked, kicking her feet idly out over the dropoff.
“Absolutely,” said Kelli. She was too shy to kick her feet, but she sat very close to Am, eating her packed lunch, the sides of their bodies touching. “If she wanted to. Being a pirate when you’re a girl is a very lesbian thing.”
This was the topic of many of their conversations now.
It hadn’t taken long at all for Kelli to figure out that Am had given her that data chip, not only for Kelli’s benefit, but out of a keen hope that Kelli would summarize the good parts for her.
Which Kelli had done. She’d combed through the files with gleeful single-mindedness to see which ones would be easiest for a restless person like Am to stay focused on.
Throwing the First Brick was good—lots of punchy, sharp, emotion-filled speeches that got to the point.
Queer Film Classics wasn’t bad either, once you got past the long introductory chapters; the film reviews themselves were each shortish, and intriguing, and the book had quite a lot of them.
Kelli liked to say that if there’d been so many queer people back in the old days, then there could be again.
She liked to say that maybe she’d change things, when she grew up, in the ways that the books talked about changing things.
Kelli was smart enough she could actually be a professional, if she put her mind to it.
People had been lesbian, gay, and all those other things out in the open once, respectably.
Maybe, if someone with power wanted badly enough to make it happen, then they could be again.
Am liked hearing Kelli talk like that. But power sounded complicated, and Am already knew a restless, disobedient person like her would never have it, even if somehow Kelli did.
She liked it better when they talked about ordinary lesbians: how they’d found each other in gay bars, using secret codes.
How they’d seduced other women when no one was looking, even when it was against the law.
How they’d pretended to be roommates and people looked the other way.
That sounded like a thing Am could do when she grew up.
She also especially liked when they talked about fictional lesbians, like now.
“Do you think she’s super butch?” said Am.
That was the other thing she liked: lesbians, in the old days, had gotten to dress up like boys.
Am wanted to do that very much. She wasn’t allowed to wear boys’ clothes at school, and the teachers had suspended her when she’d tried, but there weren’t as many rules about hair.
Despite her mother’s tearful protests—Amelia, your beautiful hair, you’re hurting yourself—she had recently cut hers short.
There wasn’t much the teachers could do about too-short hair, unless they wanted to make her wear a wig, or skip two whole months of school growing it back, which they didn’t.
Kelli had been shocked by the change but intrigued, and now she kept wanting to touch the newly short shape of it, which gave Am all sorts of weird fluttery feelings.
“Do you think she disguises herself as a man, sometimes?”
“Maybe,” said Kelli, thinking it over. “But I think when you’re a pirate you can look how you want to. There doesn’t have to be any disguise.”
“Do you think people ever called her bad names about it?”
Some people in the books, to Am’s delight and Kelli’s consternation, had called themselves dykes on purpose. Am wanted to do that—to prove you could be called that word and survive—but Kelli had put her foot down. You can’t call people swear words, Kelli had said, and that had been final.
“If they did,” said Kelli, “she’d duel them, and she’d take them prisoner and take all their belongings.
Pirates don’t have to be scared of things like that.
As long as she had her pirate hat on and her rapier in her hand, no one would dare to say a thing.
She could brazenly walk through and kiss the most beautiful woman in town, and they’d have to let her. ”
Kelli’s hand bumped into hers, and Am instinctively wrapped two of her fingers around Kelli’s. They’d started holding hands, on these excursions, more often than not. But this time, Am cleared her throat, thinking of Orlande and those women, suddenly shy.
“Kelli,” she said, and then she stopped.
Kelli looked over at her. “Yeah?”
Am tried again, gathering her strength. Her voice came out in a squeak. “Are we girlfriends?”
“Of course we are,” said Kelli, blinking. “I think? I mean—we talk about lesbians all the time and we hold hands. Isn’t that what girlfriends do?”
“Well,” said Am, gathering her nerve, swoopy with relief and terror all at once, “then, how come you’ve never kissed me?”
Kelli bit her lip, considering. Am watched her teeth against her lower lip.
More and more these days, she’d been noticing the way Kelli looked.
Kelli never put on makeup like the other girls, and sometimes she forgot to brush her hair, but still her eyes were so guilelessly thoughtful, her cheeks so perfectly formed, her mouth so stern and careful.
Am had been thinking of it more and more these days, touching Kelli the way boys in the schoolyard casually touched their girlfriends, a hand round their waist and a peck on their lips.
It would be so good, probably. It terrified her.
“Well,” said Kelli, “I think you’re supposed to wait for a romantic moment.
Or you’re supposed to say something really good, or save the person from a roving band of cannibal shark-people, or come back from the war and fall into their arms. Something like that.
You have to make sure the first one is good, and not just a random kiss. ”
But that was a good answer, because it meant Kelli did want to kiss her, as long as the moment was right.
Am picked up Kelli’s hand, holding it between them formally, trying to talk confidently over the thumping of her heart.
“Well, I want to kiss you, Kelli Reynolds. If we’re girlfriends. Name your price.”
Kelli blinked back at her. A weird, thrilled little smile played over her face, and all at once Am realized that Kelli might take name your price literally.
She might ask Am, in this moment, to do absolutely anything.
Sword fight an older boy. Steal a big diamond.
Swan dive right out of this nook. And Am wanted her bad enough that she might actually do it—any of those things.
But all Kelli said was, “Tell me what I mean to you. If we’re girlfriends. Nicely.”
“You’ve been my best friend forever,” Am said. “You’re the only one who gets me. And you’re super cute. And I love you.”
“Me, too,” Kelli whispered. “All those things, right back.”
Am held her breath as they both leaned in.
It was a short contact, closed mouthed, gentle.
In the chilly air up at the top of the dome, Kelli’s breath was warm; her lips were soft.
She tasted like the fruit snacks she’d been eating.
Am was so very aware of the curve of her own jaw, the hitch of her lungs, the tension of Kelli’s hand in hers. Every inch of skin on her body tingled.
People milled around like ants down below. The ceiling dome was opaque, white-painted concrete, but Am could see the stars above it in her mind’s eye. Her heart flew up and up, past the red crescent of Jupiter, into the sun.
A few weeks later, while Am’s head still spun with the newness of knowing she had a girlfriend, Elaine came back. Am hadn’t even been paying attention to Elaine, but one day between classes, when Kelli wasn’t around, Elaine cornered Am in the hall.
“Am,” she said without preamble, “you have every right not to, but can we talk? I owe you an apology.”
The words sounded rehearsed, like maybe her therapy chatbot had told her the right words to use when she wanted to say sorry. Girls said things like this sometimes without meaning it. As a trap. Am could have told her to go take a hike outside without a space suit.
But there was something in Elaine’s eyes that brought her up short. Something vulnerable and exhausted.