My Year Zero Read online

  The breaks were good, useful even. We were getting the beat of things. The kissing felt less smothering. I started paying attention to other parts of her body, like her collarbones and, yeah, her boobs. I wasn’t sure what to do there. When I fooled around with myself I didn’t bother with my breasts because that seemed kind of porny. Now I regretted the lack of practice.

  “I’m so bummed you have to go tomorrow,” she said in one of the pauses.

  “I’ll come back. As soon as I can,” I promised.

  “I miss you already.”

  “Me too!” I agreed. “I mean you. I don’t miss me. I’m not even sure why you miss me.”

  She laughed. “We should write a sex scene between the Queen and Zeno.”

  “Totally. I’ll work on that during class.”

  Her phone buzzed and she went to get it and came back a shade whiter than she’d been.

  “Dustin’s coming over,” she said and I got what the paleness was about.

  Cyd had said that Sierra fell in love quickly and often. That had to be a tough thing, if she wanted to be with me now and didn’t know how to tell him. They’d only been together a few months. I didn’t know if that made it easier or harder.

  “I’m not going to tell him,” I said. “It’s up to you, whatever you want to do.”

  “For real? You’re not upset?” she asked.

  “Should I be?”

  “No, no, of course not. I need time to figure this all out.” She rubbed her hand across the back of her neck, a tousled fallen angel in sweatpants and a breast-clinging tank top.

  “I have to drive home tomorrow anyway,” I said. “There’s plenty of time.”

  She came over and kissed me. It turned into a longer kiss than either of us expected so we didn’t have a whole lot of time before Dustin was due to show up.

  “Thank you,” she told me as she dragged her torn jeans over her curvy legs. “You’re wonderful, fantastic, amazing. I don’t want this to end. I need time to talk to him.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. Anything that led to more kissing Sierra would be okay.

  Chapter Twelve

  By midday, everyone was back over at the house and I fiercely wanted to be alone with Sierra. First Dustin had showed up with a big box of doughnuts. He and Sierra and I sat around talking about the story, planning out the details of how Lord Solar (who was not known for his subtlety) could possibly kidnap Cypher from the Queen of Rogues.

  It didn’t bother me as much now to see Dustin’s arm around Sierra. That was a passing thing. I knew from the way we’d kissed that she’d end it with him. I wouldn’t see her for a month or more anyway, which felt like a million years.

  Based on the kissing, I figured that she was lesbian too, but for whatever reason she hadn’t been willing to go all the way there. Dustin was her last-ditch attempt to like guys. The way she sat with him, close but also fractionally away, made me think that she wanted to like him more than she did. I felt sorry for him. And I had the sneaking suspicion that I might be kind of a jerk.

  Roy showed up with a bunch of DVDs in his backpack, insisting that we watch them immediately. Dustin started one on his laptop, but then he and Sierra disappeared into her room, leaving me and Roy to watch a SyFy channel series about people taking their clothes off and having sex—oh plus some magic and all that.

  I pulsed with hope that Sierra was in her room breaking up with Dustin so she could date me. I convinced myself that was the deal, then unconvinced myself.

  I was starting to feel shaky when Blake and Kordell came in the kitchen door. I hopped up and hugged them both because I was so relieved for the distraction.

  “We should play Mystics,” I said, meaning: please save me!

  “We have a convert,” Kordell announced. He got the box out of his bag and started setting out the decks.

  Roy pouted about his show, but Kordell told him to shove the laptop over and we could all play and watch at the same time. Roy was even worse at cards while trying to watch a show, so it started to look like I had marginal skill at this game. I played defensively and managed to outlast Blake, but Kordell trounced me.

  “I’m going to make more coffee,” he said, stretching his arms up (ultramarine today). He picked up his mug and Blake’s and headed for the kitchen.

  I helped gather up the cards and set Kordell’s pile at his spot while Blake shuffled hers.

  “It’s too bad you have to go back tomorrow,” she said. “This is more fun with more people.”

  “Yeah,” Roy agreed. “But what I don’t get is how your dad let you drive down here for a week. Aren’t you like sixteen?”

  “Yep,” I told him. “He knows I don’t drink or use anything.”

  “Huh, cool,” he said, getting up from his spot. “We need the doughnuts in here.”

  As he walked out of the room, Blake watched me with her kingfisher eyes. No judgment, no clear opinion, curiosity maybe.

  “I don’t,” I told her.

  “Sure,” she said, no argument in her tone.

  Silence settled over us. It didn’t seem to bother her, but it made me itch under the skin of my shoulders. I thought some pretty uncharitable things about Blake: that if she was the crazy one, I could tell her whatever I wanted and if she repeated it I could deny it. Maybe nobody would believe her anyway or she’d forget what I’d said because she’d have her own shit to deal with.

  “He’s not there much,” I told her. “But his latest girlfriend dumped him, so I bugged him a lot when he was home. He said he was sick of all my drama. As long as I come back before school starts, he doesn’t care what I’m doing. He’s probably glad I’m gone. I don’t think he likes me being in the house.”

  She nodded. “Good choice,” she said.

  What choice? My father’s or mine? She was turning over cards from her deck, peering at them, arranging them on the carpet.

  “Coming here?” I asked.

  “That too,” she said, glancing up and lopsided smiling. Her gaze flicked back to her cards but she continued talking, “You get that you can tell me things. Anything. We’re alike in some ways. It would be a shame to miss discovering that because you feel shy.”

  Eyes on mine again, upturn of her mouth breaking into a full grin, she said, “Cast caution to the four winds. Agreed?”

  I wasn’t in my real life anymore. The whole week wasn’t my real life, but now I was so far removed from it that we could have been in another galaxy—the one from the story.

  I saw us as our characters—as Zeno the confused shape-shifter and Cypher, Master of Secrets—sitting together in a loading dock on a giant space station. The two of us shooting the shit about being henchmen for the Queen of Rogues. The image made me laugh.

  “Agreed,” I said quickly so she wouldn’t think I was laughing at her. “You can too. Tell me things. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “You did me a great favor, you know,” she said.

  “What?” I couldn’t figure it, we’d known each other for all of nine days.

  “I always thought I’d be in a relationship with a girl someday, but I kept pushing those feelings aside because I wasn’t sure. Now I know. I was right; I do like girls too. I got to bring that sense of myself all the way to the surface and make that a fully working part of me. So, thank you. Now maybe I’ll see about seducing a female friend of mine…” she trailed off, looked in the direction of Sierra’s room, glanced down, peeked sideways at me. She added, “No one you know.”

  “Kordell’s okay with that?” I asked.

  After a long pause, she said, “We’re not dating or any kind of formally together. We let people think that because it works.”

  “What are you?”

  “Friends who have sex,” she said. “But there isn’t romance and jealousy and all that.”

  I didn’t understand how that was different from being boyfriend/girlfriend. I wanted to ask but Roy came back from the kitchen with the doughnut box and half a roll of paper towels. Beh
ind him, Kordell carried mugs of freshly brewed coffee for everyone.

  Sierra and Dustin returned and the whole house got loud again. In my mind there remained an image of Zeno and Cypher sitting on the edge of a massive crate, combat boots dangling over the side, softly talking about everything.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sierra texted and emailed me every day. She wasn’t supposed to text during work hours, but there would be a message in the morning and another one around lunchtime. She called me “Baby” and talked about how much she missed me.

  Except for her being so far away, it was exactly what I wanted—this cute, funny, confident girl sending me sweet messages or a pic of the bottom of her dress and her boots so I’d know what she was wearing that day.

  I texted Isaac: Figured it out! I think I have a girlfriend.

  He wrote: gratz, La! What’s she like?

  Super cute, I said. She lives in the Cities, though, sucks.

  So, you have that car.

  Permission, I told him.

  Do what Dad wants and he’ll let you do what you want, Isaac texted back, as if it was that simple. For Isaac it probably was. He didn’t have to wear dresses.

  Sierra also sent pics from her job of funny new products or clothing she was thinking about snagging with her awesome discount. Some nights I called her. Usually we got animated and laughing, so if my father was home and working, I’d have to cut the call short.

  On the weekends Sierra had more time and we’d work on the story together. The group had decided that King Solar would hire Cypher to go assassinate someone, but it would be a setup.

  When Cypher showed up to kill the guy: boom, ambush!

  There was a lot of debate about whether Solar would have to torture Cypher to get her to agree to do what he wanted. It was kinky as hell coming from Roy. Did that bother Blake or—because she sometimes called Cypher “that silly wench”—was she not that invested in her character and willing to be used as the dramatic linchpin?

  I wondered if Sierra didn’t have a crush on Blake. Everyone seemed fascinated with her. Although Roy had said, “Blake looks like she’s going to have sex with you, but she isn’t,” he watched her like he thought any moment she’d make a special exception for him. Sierra and Dustin both seemed unable to leave the character of Cypher alone.

  Kordell was the one least preoccupied with her. Was that why they weren’t dating? Was he the disinterested party?

  The good part of Cypher being captured by Roy—I mean, Lord Solar—was that it upset the Queen of Rogues a lot. And in Zeno’s efforts to comfort her, the two of them could fall into bed together. I had so many ideas for that scene, but I couldn’t manage to write any of them down. I thought about it all the time. But I hadn’t had sex with anyone so what if I screwed it up? What if Sierra read it and didn’t like it?

  In the middle of all that obsessing and trying to keep up with school and stay out of my father’s way, I got great news. He was going to a litigation conference in Chicago for the middle weekend of May.

  I texted Sierra right away and asked if she wanted me to drive down.

  She replied: He’s leaving you home alone?

  Yeah, it’s not like I’m 12.

  I could catch the bus up. More privacy. ;)

  Oh? I thought, Oh! OH!!

  I wrote back: Yes! Come up! I’ll stock the fridge.

  I spent the first two weeks in May freaking out about having Sierra in my house. Was it too big? What would my bedroom look like to her? Omg, I was going to have a girl in my bedroom. Would I know what to do with a girl in my bedroom?

  Chapter Fourteen

  I tried to figure out at what point during Sierra’s visit I was no longer a virgin. Not when we were making out on the huge couch two minutes after she arrived, even though we had our hands under each other’s clothes. Not even when she took my hand and put it down her pants and everything was super wet and soft and I knew what to do because I’d been practicing on myself for years.

  Maybe that moment when she came, when her back arched up and I felt like I’d won the whole world.

  Or later when we were in my bed, pulling off each other’s clothes: that first instant when our naked bodies pressed together and I thought I was going to pass out from the overload of all that bare skin on mine.

  I for sure started losing my virginity there. And kept losing it through everything else from that full naked delirium to the point where—well it went on for a while, so I guess the point where we fell asleep.

  In the morning, I snuck off to brush my teeth, and we had another round in the bed. This time I slid a finger into her and felt like I wanted to explode or do backflips or something else wholly impractical in a bedroom.

  She lay back and let me play around, moving inside her, watching her reactions. Trying two fingers, feeling how she liked that. She didn’t look at me, but her body was easy to read. It was better that way; I didn’t feel so self-conscious.

  Being inside her, I knew in my gut how turned on she was, how much she wanted me. Her muscles, involuntary, caressed me, whispered to me that I was needed, tugged at me. The molecules of my skin registered how my touch changed her.

  I’d put fingers in myself before and it wasn’t like that. By myself it was fun and good but always somewhat mechanical.

  Being inside Sierra felt like when you read a book and the words are right and they settle over you like a cloak of light. Like when you see a piece of art, just so, and it changes how the world looks. Like when sunlight streams down from between the clouds as if God is high-fiving the world.

  When we got hungry, we nuked frozen dinners, curled up on the big couch together and watched one of the Underworld movies (the third or fourth, I forget the order).

  How strange it was being the one with my arm around a girl on the couch in the primo-seduction living room of the cabin-mansion. (With a hot vampire/werewolf romance on the TV, as if I was good at this.) It transformed the cold, airy house for me. From now on, I’d always see Sierra on this couch. I’d always have the memory of her in my bed.

  * * *

  Sunday evening, she didn’t want to go. She offered to wait until we saw my father pull into the driveway at which point she’d duck out the back and run all the way to the bus stop.

  “It’s two miles away,” I reminded her.

  “I don’t care. I want to be here with you as long as I can.”

  Her eyes were deep cobalt blue under her purple bangs and I thought the Renaissance masters should have painted angels more like this.

  “I’ll come down and visit,” I said. “You can’t be here when he gets home. Let me drive you to the bus station.”

  “Okay, but wait with me there.”

  “I can’t. I have to be home when he gets home,” I explained.

  “Or what?”

  I shrugged. “He’ll wonder where I was.”

  “So?”

  How to explain there was a fifty-fifty chance of him ignoring me or cross-examining me like a hostile witness? And in the latter case, I sucked at lying.

  “I don’t want to have to lie to him,” I told her.

  “I thought you were out to him.”

  “Yeah, but…it’s one thing to tell him I’m a lesbian and another thing to prove it. And if he knows, maybe he’d say I couldn’t come visit you.”

  “Oh gotcha. Good thinking.”

  I drove her to the bus station and we kissed in the car. I made her get on the bus and leave, even though I wanted her to stay in bed with me for weeks.

  I got home a half hour before my father, which gave me time to walk around and tidy everything. I greeted him and listened to him talk about his trip. When enough time had elapsed that I could politely excuse myself, I went up to my room to see if Sierra had texted me from the bus.

  She had: Baby, I miss you so much already. When can you come down? I had such a great time. You’re really an amazing kisser. It’s like I can still feel you kissing me. I miss you!

&nbs
p; I read that a few times and went to work on the story. Now I could probably do the scene with Zeno and the Queen. How much of what happened should I put in there? I mean, people we knew were going to read this and I didn’t want them in my sex life. Especially Roy. He had a bit of a stalker-in-training vibe going.

  I was staring at the screen, but I was remembering having sex with Sierra and I could not stop grinning. I opened my journal and started writing it down so I’d have an excuse to go through it all again.

  * * *

  Writing the scene between Zeno and the Queen remained hard. I tried a few opening paragraphs but when I read it back, it didn’t seem right. After a few days, I gave up and sketched it.

  The Queen was very tall, unlike Sierra, her face elongated and graceful, with long pointed ears and small fangs. I drew Zeno ordinary looking, like me but with better cheekbones. But I didn’t like that.

  I made her face more lupine, then more human. I tried to draw her hand so that it dissolved into a cloud of nanites. (Okay technically since nanites are microscopic robots you couldn’t see a cloud of nanites, but for the sake of art I decided bunches of them could clump together and be visible.) Blake had suggested Zeno be able to turn into any form and in the sci-fi setting the easiest way to do that was nanites. If Zeno was composed of tiny robots instead of living cells, the tiny robots could put themselves together into any form they wanted.

  Cool idea, but the illustration came out disturbing. I didn’t know how to show shape-shifting on paper.

  Finally I drew Zeno with her back to the viewer, kissing the Queen. We could see a sliver of her face but much more of the Queen’s. I scanned it and sent it to Sierra.

  This is so beautiful, she texted. No one’s ever given me art like this before. I want to frame it.

  I beamed at the screen and wrote: Let me make a more finished version if you’re going to print it out.

  But this is perfect. We look so good together, she said.