Chapter 9 #2
Am crossed her arms. “I’m not telling you who found them.”
“But . . .” Elaine tugged at her hair, furrowing her brow. “Why isn’t Kelli here? She’s always hanging off of you the rest of the time, but you always come and see me alone.”
“She doesn’t like skipping class. And she’s still mad at you for what you did to me before. That’s why.”
Elaine frowned and looked at the floor.
Am didn’t know quite what possessed her, just then, to say what she said next. But it tugged at her heartstrings when that expression crossed Elaine’s face. The secret sadness she’d always known was there, bobbing painfully closer than ever to the surface.
“Look,” she said, “if you want to get back on Kelli’s good side, just talk to her.
Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her the story of how you figured out that what you did was wrong.
Tell her what the books have meant to you.
Tell her why you want to be friends again and what you like about her and how you’ve missed how she used to tell stories.
Kelli could use more people who like things about her.
But it has to come from you.” She pointed at Elaine accusingly.
“And only say it if it’s true. Because if you ever lie to Kelli, I will hunt you down and make you walk the plank. ”
Elaine gave her a hurried, wobbly, grateful nod.
What Am felt in that moment—in the ugly, tiled fluorescence of the bathroom—was strange to her indeed.
Like maybe she was a hacker after all, and maybe prompting worked on people too.
Maybe—if she said every word exactly right—she could make it all work out in the end.
Several days later, while they cuddled in the maintenance tunnel, Kelli turned in Am’s arms and said abruptly, “Okay, maybe Elaine can hang out with us.”
Am couldn’t help but grin in triumph. “What did she tell you?”
“Just all this stuff about how sorry she was. And how she missed me.” Kelli looked down at the water pipes.
“She said she missed being a shark. Having people walk the plank to her. Because sharks are allowed to be bad. You wouldn’t yell at a shark or give them detention because why would you yell at a shark? So that’s better than being a person.”
Am thought she saw something in Kelli’s face. She thought she saw Kelli wishing she could be a shark too. Something that could play by its own rules. But Kelli would never admit that out loud.
“Can I kiss your forehead?” said Am.
“Yeah,” said Kelli, still staring at the water pipes.
Am kissed her in pure possessive delight. So: not just a couple, but a community. That’s what they were going to be from now on.
The community met on a park bench, with Am between the other two girls, with grass and trees and fake stone paths making a tidy square around them. Not much, because none of the parks on Callisto were much—but just enough space to run around and play pretend in again, if they wanted to.
“Do you guys still tell stories?” Elaine asked in a low voice.
“Sometimes,” Kelli said guardedly. She looked at Elaine with a suspicious expression, like Elaine might suddenly turn evil again at a moment’s notice.
“Are they dyke stories?” Elaine asked.
“The word is lesbian,” Kelli snapped. “You can’t call people swear words. If you want to be our friend then you can’t ever do that again, do you understand?”
“Okay, sorry,” said Elaine meekly. “Are they lesbian stories?”
“Sometimes.”
It was more than just sometimes, although Am could understand Kelli playing it down.
Almost all of their stories had become lesbian stories.
They were often dashing romances, where beautiful women fell into Orlande’s arms, overcome with gratitude at how she’d rescued them from those other, worse pirates.
Or they were broad, silly, guesswork versions of what they imagined that those movies from Queer Film Classics must have been like.
A pair of gay soldiers on opposite sides of a war; a pair of gay bandits robbing banks; a pair of fashionable musicians freewheeling through the underworld of some old Earth metropolis.
Those stories usually ended with kissing, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to talk about that with Elaine.
“Can I be a lesbian?” Elaine asked.
“You can be what you want,” said Am, who had thought this part out in advance.
“In the stories or in real life. Only you can’t date us, because we’re already dating each other.
You can’t date us in a story either. But if you wanted to tell a story about, like, lesbians in general, that’d be fine.
Like, maybe there’s a crew of lady pirates, and they raid a town for supplies, and they end up at the gay bar. ”
“There are gay bars?!” Elaine said in delight.
“Sure there are,” said Kelli. “People used to pick each other up there, back on Earth, except sometimes the Earth police would raid them and put everyone in jail.”
Kelli relaxed a little once the conversation was about facts she’d read.
Kelli was great at telling people the facts she’d read, and she was the one who’d actually read all the books, cover to cover.
So it went from there: Kelli explaining the facts, Elaine asking fascinated questions, and Am between them, delightedly encouraging them both.
“Did you want us to tell a story where you’re a shark?” Kelli asked at last.
“Maybe. Or just a villain; I could do whatever. Or, um. . . .” Elaine leaned forward and lowered her voice even more. “Could I be a villain who’s a boy? Just to try it.”
“I knew it!” said Am, nearly jumping off the bench. “Of course you can be a villain who’s a boy. Do you want to be Lukas? I know you want to be Lukas.”
“No, I don’t, dummy. Lukas is old news.” Elaine made a gesture like swatting away flies. “But I could be . . . a boy pirate. An evil, mean, old, ugly one. And Kelli’s your girlfriend, and I’ve kidnapped her and stolen her away to my evil ship and you have to come rescue her, how about that?”
Which got all three of them going again, spinning out ideas as fast as they could, like old times.
All the different awful things that Elaine’s character would try to do to Kelli.
All the different ways Orlande—Am was Orlande, of course—would rescue her.
Kelli warmed to the topic and told them both how her character was a strong woman who would fight back even before Am got there, and then how there was a sudden storm at a dramatic moment, heaving waves and lightning that cracked the sky, and sharks circling.
It felt right for there to be sharks with Elaine, even when Elaine was a human.
Am felt herself suspended like a gleeful particle, halfway between the opposite poles of Kelli and Elaine.
In some wild and lovely way that she didn’t quite understand, this all felt even better when it was three of them.
Kelli always thought through all the facts; Kelli knew how the story should go.
But Elaine never cared how the story should go.
Elaine was even wilder than Am, gleefully evil, snapping her shark jaws or shaking her masculine fists.
Am needed both of them, that space of possibility that opened up in between.
She didn’t even know why it delighted her so much, watching Elaine be a boy.
Am hated boys, but there was something about the look on Elaine’s face when she tried being one.
It wasn’t a sex thing. It was more like it made Elaine happy in a particular way.
Am wanted to prod and scratch at that happiness until it yielded up its secrets, like a zit.
“What if I tried being a boy, too?” she asked later, when she was alone with Kelli at Kelli’s house, curled up together on Kelli’s strict and tidy bedspread. “You know, just to see. Elaine and me could both be boys and we could fight over you. We could be bad boys; lots of girls like those.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Kelli, stroking Am’s short hair. “We’re lesbians. The whole point of being a lesbian is that we’re both girls. Besides, you always hated boys.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Am, shrugging uneasily. Kelli was usually right.