My Year Zero Read online

  Sierra spun it and it came to rest pointing at Dustin.

  “Truth,” he said.

  She rubbed the tip of her index finger under her crimson lips and asked, “What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to do in bed but haven’t yet?”

  “Do I have to answer out loud or can I whisper it to you?” he asked. “If you say the latter, you’ll get a better answer.”

  “Oh, okay, whispering is fine.”

  He unfolded himself, leaned over to her and said a long sequence of words into her ear. She blushed a few shades shy of her lip gloss. I burned with jealousy and envy, smashed together as one big sucking emotion.

  He spun the bottle and it pointed to Blake. Her inky wardrobe for the day included jeans and an oversized button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to elbows, the dark curve of an undershirt showing at the neck. She’d tucked her feet up on the couch when Kordell went to sit on the floor and it made her seem smaller.

  “Truth,” she said, jutting her chin forward.

  “Other than Kordell, who in this room are you most attracted to?” Dustin asked.

  She considered each person in the circle and when she came to me, her eyes flicked away. Her hands folded and unfolded in her lap.

  “Lauren,” she said quietly as she leaned forward and pushed the bottle into motion.

  I watched the bottle, but my name was humming in my ears, making my face warm. Was she only saying that because she’d been challenged about her bisexuality? Was it because I was new? Was it that thing I said about black holes and the event horizon? Was it simply that she wasn’t into Roy and didn’t want to pick from Sierra and Dustin, so that left me?

  If I got to ask Sierra a question, would I have the guts to ask her the same and find out how she felt about me?

  The bottle swung around and chose Roy.

  “Dare,” he said.

  Blake turned to Kordell and a silent question passed between them. He shook his head.

  “I dare you to show us what kind of underwear you’re wearing,” Blake said.

  That was a brilliant choice because it let Roy bluster and fluster and make a big show of turning away and taking down his shorts—and then showing us how he was already half hard in his boxer briefs—but no one had to touch him or anything. He was still protesting as he spun the bottle.

  It pointed at Sierra.

  “Truth,” she said.

  “What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?” he asked.

  “A kids’ playground in the middle of the night. I swear that horse-on-a-spring thing was staring at me the whole time—and it liked it!”

  We all laughed, Roy, Kordell and Blake louder than me and Dustin. Maybe because we both knew it wasn’t either of us in that playground. Sierra spun and this time the bottle picked me.

  “Truth,” I told her.

  “What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?” she asked me.

  “I haven’t,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I could be the only virgin in the room and my face got blazingly hot.

  “Ooh, a virgin,” Roy said, and I felt sure I was not the only virgin in the room.

  “Remember, Duluth.” I pointed at the center of my chest. “There are three other girls who like girls, and I’m not into them. I haven’t found the right person.”

  “You could hook up with a guy,” Roy said.

  “So could you,” Blake told him. “But I don’t see you lining up for that opportunity. Lauren, spin.”

  I did and the traitorous bottle picked Blake. She didn’t look away from me.

  “Truth,” she said.

  “What’s one thing you don’t want people to know about you?” I wondered if she’d talk about having bipolar disorder. She hadn’t brought it up, even in the introductions, and I’d been thinking maybe Sierra shouldn’t have told me.

  Blake’s gaze held mine for another breath and then dropped. In a low voice, she said, “How hard it gets when everything goes dark.” She took a breath and continued, “I feel like I want to lie down forever. The world is covered in death, everyone is dying and crumbling away and they don’t know it, but it’s all I see. Everything is worthless and dead and hopeless and I’m supposed to keep breathing anyway but I can’t remember why.”

  I wanted her to look at me again so I could see the flash of her eyes, but she wouldn’t. She shoved the bottle hard and it spun for a long time before it settled on Dustin.

  “Dare,” he said.

  “I dare you to kiss Roy,” Blake said without hesitation. She peeked up, mouth twisting wryly, eyes like aquamarine shattered on granite.

  “No way, man, don’t do it!” Roy said, hands up between him and Dustin.

  Dustin grabbed one of his hands, brought it to his lips and kissed the knuckles.

  “You didn’t specify how I had to kiss him,” Dustin told Blake. She laughed, open-mouthed, too loud, but her shoulders were relaxing again.

  Dustin’s spin got Kordell.

  “Dare,” Kordell said.

  The dares were becoming a good strategic choice as the “truth” questions got deeper. Dustin struggled to come up with something devious.

  At last he said, “I dare you to do something with Blake that you wouldn’t normally do in front of other people.”

  “Ha!” Kordell’s laugh was short and sharp. He turned to Blake, “Well, dearest, are you ready?”

  “Of course. Will we need props?”

  “What’ve you got in your backpack?”

  She pulled her backpack from the side of the couch and sat on the floor with it between them. Kordell opened the front pocket and rummaged around, coming up with a tube of lip gloss. Blake held still while he carefully applied flamingo color to her lips. He kissed her hard enough that he came away with half of the lip gloss on his mouth. He rubbed his lips together and made a kissing motion at Dustin.

  “If that’s not enough, she’ll probably let me tidy up her eyebrows if anyone has a tweezer,” Kordell offered.

  Dustin rolled his eyes.

  Roy said, “I don’t know how you’re not gay.”

  “The love of beauty and sexual orientation are different parts of the brain,” Kordell told him.

  Blake returned to her spot on the couch.

  Kordell put his long fingers on the bottle and spun it. The bottle rotated, wobbled and stopped with its mouth pointing at me. I was more afraid of the questions he could come up with than the actions.

  “Dare,” I said.

  “I dare you to kiss Blake,” he announced. “On the lips, for more than ten seconds.”

  “What?!” Blake and I both said the word at the same time, but mine came out incredulous and hers was all surprise and laughter.

  “Then Roy can’t needle you about not having kissed a girl,” Kordell told Blake. She shook her head at him but her smile didn’t fade.

  There was no way I’d admit that I hadn’t kissed a girl either—and that Blake was not where I’d planned to start. I’d already admitted to not having sex. Saying I hadn’t kissed anyone would wreck my official lesbian status.

  “Here?” I asked.

  Kordell shrugged. “I don’t care. You guys want to go in the other room, fine with me.”

  Roy deflated at that, but neither he nor any of the other people around the circle protested. I wanted Sierra to step in and claim me as hers, to tell Kordell this wasn’t cool, but she was watching me and Blake with interest, as curious as everyone else in the room.

  I stood up and went into the kitchen, my chest stinging. The kitchen had to be a safe room to kiss someone in, not suggestive like a bedroom and not small like a bathroom.

  Blake hesitated at the threshold, glancing at me and away, not smiling anymore. Framed by the doorway and wrapped in shades of ebony on obsidian, still small.

  She stepped into the room and asked, “How do you want to do this?”

  It wasn’t fair that this was going to be my first kiss for forever—that it was part of
some game, a casual request from her boyfriend. I’d never get to tell a “my first kiss” story that made me feel proud rather than ashamed. But it wasn’t fair to Blake either if I was a jerk about it. Intensity had come over her again, as if she couldn’t fit her energy into her body.

  “Come here.” I held out my hand.

  Her skin was cold. Against my hand, her fingers were flawless honey with the greenish undertone that gave olive its name. In my palm the blood rushed unevenly under the surface, creating four or five shades of ruddy sienna. I looked like a sweaty human holding hands with a finely carved statue.

  I was going to say something (the words had gathered behind my lips ready to babble out in a nervous stream), but she reached her other hand around the back of my head. Cool fingers pressed against the top of my neck as she pulled me down to her.

  Her mouth was wider than mine. I opened my lips a fraction to fit better. She opened hers too, sending a rush of heat up the inside of my body.

  My hands fit neatly on her hips: the hard ridge of bone under my palm, the edges of my thumbs just over the line of her jeans. I liked feeling the softness of her waist through the fabric of her shirt. But her hands shouldn’t have been cold and she shouldn’t have been vibrating with nervous energy. I was supposed to be kissing solid, confident Sierra.

  I nearly pulled back but the tip of Blake’s tongue touched my lips. Shivering, I touched it with mine. Her tongue was rough, like a cat’s, and it made me dizzy.

  Ten seconds? Was she counting? As her tongue moved across mine, I couldn’t remember what numbers were. She tasted like barbecue sauce and citrus energy drink. I was hungry. I wanted my arms all the way around her, to feel her body against mine.

  My brain rebelled, reminded me this was Blake.

  I pushed the feelings away, straightened up and stepped back. That had to be ten seconds.

  “Dare accomplished,” I said, trying not to sound breathless.

  “Yeah.” She grinned at me, a broad flash of mischief, humor, and warmth. Turning away, she walked back into the living room like it was nothing.

  Maybe it was nothing. Why would I complain? It was a pretty good first kiss. Nobody mashed into anybody else’s teeth or took a nose to the eye. Too bad it was with the wrong person.

  I gasped in as much air as I could and went after her so it wouldn’t look like she’d knocked me off-balance or left me trying to catch my breath in the kitchen or any of that stupid crap. Blake was settling into her spot, feet tucked up under her. Kordell cocked his head to one side and she winked at him. He chuckled.

  “Still bisexual?” Dustin asked her.

  “Very,” Blake said. She studied me as I got back to my seat and added, “Thanks.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, driving around the state affirming girls’ nonhetero sexualities.”

  Everyone laughed except me.

  I wanted there to be a First Kiss Tribunal that I could appeal to—find out if it really counted if you got your first kiss as part of a Truth or Dare game. Could that kiss be disqualified? I’d go back to needing a first kiss and maybe Sierra would oblige. Not that I wanted to break up her and Dustin, but they’d only been together three months and they seemed more like friends who were hooking up. Sierra flirted with me. I’d read back over her emails a number of times (just short of fully obsessive) and there was clear flirting.

  And Blake was playing around, but I wasn’t a game. I didn’t have a lot that was purely mine. Art, stories, being lesbian—that was it. Everything else belonged to the outside world. Everything else was a place I had to get it right. And now I was proving that when it mattered, I still couldn’t get it right.

  Kissing girls should be mine alone. Not for people to play with and talk about.

  The game went back to truth questions and broke up shortly after that. I think Dustin was afraid that Kordell would ask him to kiss Roy again and everyone was starting to realize how much information we had that we didn’t want to share.

  Chapter Eleven

  Friday night Sierra suggested going out to a movie. I assumed it was going to be the whole gang again, but it ended up being me and Sierra. I didn’t know if the others had been invited and couldn’t make it, or if Sierra hadn’t even invited them. She put on a long-sleeved short dress with diagonal slashes of reds and pinks, plus the delicious knee-high boots, so I abjured my flannels for a sea-green V-neck sweater.

  I drove us to the theater early and we ate at a little Mexican place across the parking lot. I ordered shrimp tacos and didn’t bother making any unkosher jokes.

  As we were waiting for our food, me with a Pepsi and her with a slender, pale beer, she asked, “What do you think of everyone?”

  “They’re cool. Thanks for having me come down,” I said. I globbed salsa into a little dish and dragged a chip through it.

  “Specifically what do you think?”

  At least the week let me be around her enough that I could chew and swallow like a normal person now.

  I said, “Oh, Roy’s kind of a letch, but I think there’s a decent guy in there somewhere.”

  Sierra gave her tight, don’t-mess-the-lip-gloss laugh. She said, “That’s spot-on. What else?”

  “I like Kordell. He’s mellow but you can see he’s smart and he thinks about things. Blake…I don’t know what do think about her.”

  “You don’t want to kiss and tell?” she asked.

  “Uh, the kiss was fine. But that was a game. She seems interesting but kind of, I don’t know, emotional. Not like emo, but way more expressive than I’m used to.”

  “Lauren, are you used to any kind of expressive?”

  “I guess not so much.”

  “But you’re right, she’s super variable, goes through a lot of different stuff.”

  That wasn’t what I’d meant. Bipolar or whatever, she didn’t seem highly changeable. I’d been trying to say that Blake was emotionally loud, that you always knew something about how she was feeling. And while that scared me some, it was weirdly easy to be around.

  “Cyd’s great,” I said. “We talked some about her sister. That was awesome. It’s cool to be around people who understand.”

  “You should be around people who understand all the time,” Sierra said. “I’m so bummed you have to go home on Sunday.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “What do you think of Dustin?” she asked.

  “He’s nice. I might be a little jealous.”

  Her face brightened.

  “Good,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.

  Our food showed up and I concentrated on not dropping anything out of the back of a taco onto my sweater. After we ate for a bit, Sierra said, “Everyone likes you a lot. And Dustin thinks your drawing of the Queen and Zeno is fantastic.”

  “You showed him?” I tried to remember if I’d told her that was all right. I was fairly sure that I hadn’t.

  “Was that not okay?” Her expression was innocent and slightly pouting, as if she was ready to be upset with herself if I said it wasn’t.

  “No, I guess, if he liked it,” I said.

  We talked about the drawing and about the story and about her week in general. I paid the bill and we walked over to the movie.

  Despite being billed as a “science fiction thriller,” it was slow. But beautiful with epic scenery and wicked special effects. I spent the first hour wondering if there was any way I could drop or fumble myself into touching Sierra’s hand, but I couldn’t work it out.

  Coming home, I went up the front steps of the house and moved to the side so Sierra could unlock the door. She stood two feet away, watching me in the weak yellow light from the porch bulb. It made her look like a vampire. A sexy, predatory vampire in her black leather jacket and sanguine dress.

  She shoved the keys back into her jacket pocket. Before I could figure out why, she put her hands on the sides of my face and kissed me. I froze, but with my mouth open in shock, so it was kind of like I was kissing back. Except my li
ps were stiff, as were hers, so our mouths mashed together hard. By the time my brain kicked into gear, she’d pulled away.

  I grabbed the front edge of her jacket and tugged. She kissed me again, messy, her mouth loose and open, some tongue. My lips felt clumsy on hers, off rhythm. When our tongues hit together it got better. I almost knew what I was doing.

  I put my arms around her. I was kissing a girl! I was kissing the right girl and it was like in the movies: the heroes standing in a puddle of light, surrounded by night. The cool wind made the sides of my face feel even hotter than they were. I was finally that girl: the heroine, the one who wins the love of the compelling stranger, the fucking princess.

  There should have been music.

  We stopped and she unlocked the door. In the living room, she pulled me onto the closest couch and we kissed for a while. I kept moving away from her mouth to kiss the sides of her neck because I couldn’t figure out if it was okay to kiss and breathe at the same time. But she seemed to like that; she rested her head back against the couch and held me tightly while I ran my lips along her neck and up to her ear.

  That was better than the plain kissing and trying to get my lips to line up with hers or against hers in a way that felt less wet.

  It was super late. She got up and said, “We should go to bed. Do you want to sleep in my bed?”

  I had a million questions. What did this mean for us? What did it mean for her relationship with Dustin? What were we doing? Was this a relationship thing or was she fooling around?

  But I couldn’t ask them. I was afraid of the answers.

  “Uh yeah,” I said.

  “Cool.”

  I brushed my teeth and got into my T-shirt and boxers. She was in the bed before me and I climbed in carefully, staying on my side because I wasn’t sure what was kosher and what wasn’t. She rolled toward me and threw an arm over me. I snuggled back into her, thinking that I’d never manage to fall asleep with her hot body pressing the length of mine, but I did.

  * * *

  In the morning, we woke up and kissed, made breakfast and kissed, got washed up and dressed, and kissed. I was getting the hang of breathing. I decided it was okay to breathe through my nose midkiss if it meant I could keep kissing, but I’d forget, and stop breathing, and have to break away to catch my breath.