Fifteen-year-old Aki Simon has a theory. And it’s mostly about sex.

No, it isn’t that kind of theory. Aki already knows she’s bisexual—even if, until now, it’s mostly been in the hypothetical sense. Aki has dated only guys so far, and her best friend, Lori, is the only person who knows she likes girls, too.

Actually, Aki’s theory is that she’s got only one shot at living an interesting life—and that means she’s got to stop sitting around and thinking so much. It’s time for her to actually do something. Or at least try.

So when Aki and Lori set off on a church youth-group trip to a small Mexican town for the summer and Aki meets Christa—slightly older, far more experienced—it seems her theory is prime for the testing.

But it’s not going to be easy. For one thing, how exactly do two girls have sex, anyway? And more important, how can you tell if you’re in love? It’s going to be a summer of testing theories—and the result may just be love.

Also available from Robin Talley

Lies We Tell Ourselves

What We Left Behind

As I Descended

For all those who stare at the stars.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Also available from Robin Talley

Dedication

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

PART 2

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

PART 3

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

PART 4

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

PART 5

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extract

Copyright

PART 1

Kiss

CHAPTER 1

The stars above me danced in the cool, black Mexico sky. So I started dancing, too.

My body buzzed with the lingering vibrations from all those hours of flying. The music poured through my headphones and straight into my soul. I twirled, I soared, my head tipped back as I watched the stars.

I’d never seen a sky like this one. All my life I’d been surrounded by cities. Lights had shone on every side of me, drowning out the world.

I never realized that before. Not until I came here.

Here, in the middle of nowhere, all the light came from above. The sky was pure black with a thousand dots of white. Millions, actually, if I remembered Earth Science correctly. The air above looked like one of those lush, incomprehensible oil paintings my mother was always staring at whenever she dragged us to a museum back home.

I wanted to float up among those stars.

Nothing to think about. Nothing to do but soak it in and watch them shine.

The song’s beat pulsed through me. It was my favorite—well, one of my favorites. It was the one I’d never told anyone about because I didn’t want to deal with the looks I’d get.

Listening to it without dancing was impossible.

With my headphones on and my eyes on the sky, my body in constant motion, I was oblivious to the world on the ground. So I didn’t know how long Lori had been trying to get my attention before I felt her sharp tug on my arm.

“Hey!” I lowered my gaze to meet my best friend’s. She winced.

“You don’t need to yell.” Lori rubbed her ear. “I’m right here.”

“Sorry.” I pulled off my headphones.

“You always shout when you wear those. One day you’re going to do it in the middle of church and get kicked out.”

“I never wear headphones in church. Mom would slaughter me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to slaughter you right now if you keep acting so antisocial. What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

“Oh, uh.” I glanced back across the darkness toward the courtyard I’d abandoned. The house where the party was being held was on the far edge of town, backing up into the empty hillside. Behind me I could hear the sounds of voices and laughter and faint faraway music floating out over the walls. “Sorry. I guess I forgot.”

Lori laughed. “You’re lucky you’re hot, because you can be a total weirdo when you want to be. Come on, we should mingle.”

Right. I was supposed to be trying.

I followed Lori across the hills and through the courtyard’s tall, swinging wooden door. We passed a few people gathered along the back wall and went up to a table where some chips were set out next to flickering decorative candles.

At least half the party was gathered around the table, talking and rubbing their eyes. We hadn’t all taken the same flights, but everyone had been on at least two planes today, and most of the group looked like they still felt dizzy.

Someone had set up their phone to play music through its little speaker. The melodies were tiny against the open dirt and dotted sky beyond the courtyard walls.

I said hi to the people I knew from church. Lori chattered at everyone, flirting with the guys and fiddling with the bracelet that dangled from her wrist. It was one I’d made. Our allowances were pathetic, so Lori and I made jewelry to sell at school.

I wasn’t sure if saying hi to people and following Lori around officially counted as trying. Maybe it was something close, though. Something closer than dancing by myself under the stars.

But, God, those stars. I had to fight not to let my gaze drift back out into the open air.

Trying wasn’t optional, though. Not this summer.

Because, well. I had this theory.

Granted, all I ever had were theories. That was the whole problem. My life, all fifteen years of it, had been all about the hypothetical and never about the actual.

I was a hypothetical musician (I hadn’t played in more than a year). I was a hypothetical Christian (it wasn’t as though I’d tried any other options). Despite the age on my birth certificate, I was essentially a hypothetical teenager, since real teenagers did way more exciting stuff than I ever did.

But as of this summer, there was one particular theory that was taking up way more space in my brain than I had to spare.

To be honest, my theory was mostly about sex. But it applied to life in general, too. If I wanted to have an interesting life—which I did—then there was no point sitting around debating everything in my head on a constant loop.

If I wanted my life to change, then I had to do something. Or at least try.

And it was now or never. This summer, the summer we’d come to Mexico, was the time to test out my hypothesis.

The problem was, I was really good at sitting around and debating things in my head. Trying stuff? Actually doing it? That wasn’t really my jam.

Lori was different, though. She wasn’t any better than me at doing things, but she sure loved trying.

“We’ve got to go to the welcome party tonight,” she’d whispered to me that afternoon, seconds after the bus dropped us off at the church. “How else are we going to meet all the new guys?”

“I am absolutely not in the mood for a party,” I whispered back as I helped her haul her stuff inside. I’d already decided that, due to jet lag, my theory could wait at least one more day for testing. “I’m all woozy. Like I’m still on that plane, the one that kept shaking around.”

It had taken three different planes followed by a four-hour bus ride to get from home, in Maryland, to this tiny town somewhere way outside Tijuana. I’d never flown before, and now that we were on steady land all I wanted to do was put on my pajamas, go to bed and sleep until noon.

Except it turned out we didn’t have beds. Just sleeping bags lined up on the cement floor of an old church.

I didn’t have pajamas, either. The airline had lost my suitcase.

So I gave up fighting it. My theory was getting tested, jet lag or no jet lag.

“The new guys are going to be incredible,” Lori had whispered to me as we walked to the party with the others.

“They’re going to be exactly the same as the guys we already know,” I whispered back.

“Not true. These guys are way cooler. Much less boring.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Look, I’m an optimist, okay?”

For the next month, the youth groups from our church and two others would be working together on a volunteer project. All Lori cared about was that we’d be spending four weeks with guys who weren’t the same seven guys we’d been hanging out with since we were kids.

I didn’t see what was so bad about the guys at our church. Sure, most of them thought of me as a dorky, preacher’s-daughter, kid-sister type, but, well, that was pretty accurate. And I’d never been great at meeting people. I wasn’t shy or anything. It was only that sometimes, with new people, I didn’t know how exactly to start a conversation. I liked to listen first. You could learn a lot about someone that way.

The welcome party was at one of our host families’ houses. The local minister’s, maybe. But all the adults—my dad and the other ministers and chaperones, plus our Mexican host families—spent the whole time in the living room, which meant the forty-or-so of us from the youth groups had the outdoor courtyard to ourselves. That was a good thing, since whenever the adults were around I could hardly understand what anyone was saying. I’d gotten an A in freshman year Spanish, so I thought I’d be able to get by in Mexico all right, but we hadn’t even made it out of the Tijuana airport before I’d found out the truth. The woman at customs had asked me a question and the only part I understood was por favor. So I stared at her with my head tilted helplessly until Dad whispered for me to unzip my purse so the woman could check it for bombs or whatever.

Along the back wall of the courtyard, where the adults couldn’t see them from inside, a handful of people had started dancing. I turned back to Lori and stole a chip out of her hand. She pushed her long, curly blond hair out of her face and raised her eyebrows at me.

“See, aren’t you glad we didn’t skip this?” Lori lowered her voice. “The guys on this trip are already way more interesting than our usual crowd.”

She meant that they were older. Lori and I were the only two sophomores who’d been allowed to come on this trip. The others were mostly going to be juniors or seniors in the fall. Some, like my brother, Drew, were already in college. Lori and I got special permission because my dad was our church’s youth minister, and he and Lori’s aunt Miranda were both chaperones on this trip.

“Why are you so into meeting new guys, anyway?” I asked Lori.

“I don’t know. I just want to expand my horizons. Have something new, something that’s all mine. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. It sounded like Lori was testing a theory of her own.

We fell into silence. A new song had come on, one of the big songs of the summer that had been playing in every store back home for weeks. Half the group was up and dancing. One of the guys from our church and his girlfriend were swaying slowly with their arms wrapped around each other, even though the song was a fast one.

“Do you want to go dance?” Lori asked.

I gave her a weird look instead of answering. Lori knew very well I never danced in front of people.

I tilted my head back to get another look at those stars. They swam dreamily in the sky.

“Stop looking up so much,” Lori whispered. “Your neck is already freakishly long. People are going to think you have no face.”

“My neck is not freakishly long,” I said, but I lowered my chin anyway.

Two white girls I didn’t know were half dancing, half standing in the darkest corner of the courtyard. One girl had hair so short you could see her scalp and leather cuffs with silver buttons on both wrists. The other girl had dark hair that curled around her ears, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her head, a tiny silver hoop in her nose and a quiet smile that made me want to smile, too.

“Aki, you’re staring,” Lori said.

“Sorry.” I looked away from the girls.

“Do you like one of them?”

“No.”

“It’s okay if you do. You can tell me.”

“I don’t. I was distracted, that’s all.”

Last year I told Lori I thought I might be bi. Ever since, whenever she saw me looking at a girl, she asked if I liked her. Lori didn’t get that sometimes it was fun just to notice people without having to think about whether you liked them or not.

The girl with the sunglasses turned toward Lori and me. Oh my God. She wasn’t that far away. Had she heard us? I was going to kill Lori.

The girl was still smiling, though.

She was cute, but she made me nervous. I wasn’t used to looking at girls that way. Being bi, just like the rest of my life, had always been mostly hypothetical. I scanned the crowd, trying to look for a guy who was equally cute.

“Is there anyone here you might like?” I asked Lori.

“Maybe.” She nodded toward a super-tall blond guy drinking from one of the frosted glasses our host family had set out. “What do you think of him?”

I studied the guy. He had to have been a senior, at least. He had a T-shirt with a beer company logo and he was laughing loud and sharp at something his friend had said, his mouth open so wide I could see the fillings in his back teeth.

“He looks like a tool,” I said.

“Whatever, you think everybody looks like a tool.”

The girl with the sunglasses was coming toward us. She was even cuter up close.

Oh, God.

“Look who it is,” Lori whispered.

As though I hadn’t already seen her. As though she wouldn’t see Lori whispering and think we were incredibly obvious and immature.

“Hi.” Somehow, the girl was now standing in front of us, her head tilted at a startlingly attractive angle. “You guys seem cool. I’m Christa.”

I had no idea what to say. I shoved a chip in my mouth.

“Thanks.” Lori glanced over at me. “I’m Lori.”

“Hi, Lori.” The girl turned toward me, expectant, but I was still chomping on my tortilla chip. I probably looked like the biggest tool in Mexico.

But Christa didn’t seem bothered. “What church do you guys go to?”

“Holy Life in Silver Spring,” Lori said. I swallowed, nearly choking. Lori ignored me. “What about you?”

“Holy Life in Rockville,” Christa said, her eyes still on me. Then she turned back to Lori. “Does your friend talk?”

Lori nudged me.

“Um. Hey.” I was positive there were chip crumbs on my face. Would it look weirder to leave them there or to wipe them away? What if I was just paranoid and there weren’t chip crumbs on my face, and it looked like I was wiping my face for no reason like a total loser? “I mean, hi.”

My face must’ve been bright red. Why was Christa still looking at me?

“What happened to your girlfriend?” Lori asked, tilting her head toward where Christa had been dancing before.

“She went out around the back to smoke.” Christa lowered her voice and added, “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Smoking is revolting,” I said, because I didn’t want to say anything about whether Christa did or didn’t have a girlfriend. Or whether she might want one.

“For real, right?” Christa said. “I try to tell her, but some people, you know?”

She smiled at me. I smiled back. There was a pink streak in her shoulder-length hair that I hadn’t noticed before. She was wearing jeans and a yellow tank top, and her sneakers had red hearts drawn on the sides with a marker. I’d never known it was possible for a person to look as cute as Christa did.

“I’m gonna go get more salsa,” Lori said.

I shook my head at her frantically. I couldn’t do this by myself.

Lori only grinned and left. Christa stayed where she was. Damn it.

“So, what’s your name?” Christa asked me.

“Aki.”

“That’s pretty.”

It was so hard not to giggle. But I managed to keep my face relatively composed as my insides jumped for joy.

“It’s short for Akina,” I explained.

“Akina.” I liked how she said my name. She pronounced it slowly, as though it was some spicy, forbidden word. “That’s even prettier.”

Was this flirting? I’d never really flirted before. Sure, I’d hung out with guys, but they never told me my name was pretty. Instead they made stupid jokes and then looked really happy when I laughed.

Was it even okay to flirt with a girl here? If someone saw us, would they be able to tell we were flirting from across the courtyard? Or did flirting just look like talking?

And if Christa was flirting, what made her think I wanted to flirt back? Was it something about how I looked? What I was wearing? Did she know I wanted her to flirt with me?

Did I want her to?

If she was really gay, she probably had a girlfriend back home. I didn’t know if I was ready to have a girlfriend. I’d never even had a boyfriend for longer than a couple of weeks.

“Wait... Aki?” Christa cocked her head, as if she was studying me. “Aki from Silver Spring. I’ve heard about you.”

“Yeah?”

Oh.

My stomach tensed. This cute girl, the first girl ever to flirt with me, knew exactly who I was.

Of course she did.

I was the black girl with braids. I was Pastor Benny’s daughter. Everyone in all of the Holy Life community knew who I was. I was one of a kind.

But then she said, “You’re like a really talented musician, aren’t you?”

And my stomach didn’t know whether to twist tighter or do flips in the air.

“I. Um.” I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve definitely heard about you.” The smile spread wider across Christa’s face. “You play a bunch of instruments, right? And you write music and you sing? My friend went to a service at your church where the whole choir sang something you wrote. He said it was gorgeous and that everyone cheered and talked about how amazing you were.”

That had been during Advent in eighth grade. The piece we performed was the same one I’d used for my audition for MHSA. Even thinking about it made me want to throw up.

But this girl. God, this girl was so amazing.

And she was staring at me as though she thought I was amazing, too.

So I nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. It’s not that many instruments, though. Mainly I play guitar. And a little piano.”

Okay. So that wasn’t totally true.

But it wasn’t really a lie, either. It was just an inaccurate verb tense. I used to do that stuff, after all. If I’d said played instead of play it would’ve been a 100 percent accurate statement.

Either way, it totally didn’t count as lying.

Either way, I was glad I said it the way I did when Christa beamed at me in response.

“Oh, wow! That’s so cool.” Christa nodded over and over again. “It’s so neat to meet someone else who’s seriously into artistic stuff. I’m not anywhere near your level, but I’m an artist, too. I do photography sometimes.”

“You do?” I seized on the chance to talk about something that wasn’t me and music. “What kind of photography?”

She took out her phone. “Most of it’s on my Instagram, but...” She sighed. I understood. We’d all gradually realized on our bus ride into town that our phones didn’t work here. No service. We could play games and take photos, but no internet, no texting. It was like missing an arm.

Christa swiped through the photos on her phone. I tried to crane my neck to see them, but she held it out of my reach. “No, no don’t look at that one, that one’s awful. That one I need to crop. That one’s not—hey, actually, you can look at this one. This one’s good.”

I leaned in until my face was only inches from hers. I had to force myself to focus on her phone screen instead of the soft, warm scent of her skin.

I didn’t know anything about photography, but even so, I could tell it was a good photo. It was better than any pictures I’d ever taken with my phone, anyway. It showed a kid’s bare feet hovering in midair over a pool of water on a bright green lawn, as though the kid had been in the middle of jumping into the puddle when the phone was taken. You could see individual ripples and the reflection of the kid’s toes in the water.

“I really like that,” I said. “Are those your little brother’s feet?”

“Yeah. At least the little demon is good for something.”

I laughed and reluctantly stepped back from her phone.

“Do you go to King?” I asked her.

King was the big public high school in our area. My brother had gone there, but Lori and I went to Rowell, a tiny private school. There were only twelve people in our grade.

Christa nodded. “I do.”

“Do you know Eric?” I asked. “He’s the president of our youth group. He goes to King, too.”

Crap. I should’ve just stayed quiet. Things had been going great when we were looking at her phone, but now I was asking her the most boring questions ever. Why couldn’t I think of something cool to say? Christa was going to think I was boring with a capital B.

But she didn’t look bored.

“Sure, I know Eric. He’s okay.” She tilted her head to one side. “For a straight, privileged white guy, you know?”

She laughed. I did, too.

Her saying that had to mean she was gay. Or bi, at least. She must be into girls one way or another. Right?

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, trying to be clever and praying it was working. “I have lots of friends who are straight, privileged white guys, and I’m totally okay with them. I think they should have equal rights, just like the rest of us.”

Christa laughed again. Her eyes crinkled up, as though she actually thought I was funny. “As long as they don’t flaunt it, right?”

I laughed again. Christa slid her shoulder up against the wall right next to me and leaned forward until her face was only inches from mine.

My heart thudded in my chest. I was too nervous to look back at her.

I did it anyway.

Maybe this qualified as doing something.

I could barely remember what we’d been talking about, so I was halfway relieved when a smiling black guy I didn’t know came up to us. “Christa, are you bothering this nice young girl?”

I wished he hadn’t called me young. Or nice. Those two words added up to the opposite of sexy.

“I don’t know.” Christa turned toward the guy, then looked back at me. Her light brown eyes glimmered in the dim light. “Am I bothering you, Aki?”

“No,” I breathed.

The guy and Christa both laughed, and she introduced us. His name was Rodney. He went to the same church as Christa, and they were both going into their junior year at King. I was surprised Christa was only one year older than me.

The three of us sat down on the tile patio and Rodney grabbed a pile of chips for us to share. I took an inventory of the courtyard while Rodney and Christa talked about their friends from school. I counted only five black people, including Rodney, my brother, Drew, and me.

I wondered if that was why Rodney had come over to talk to us. There were plenty of black people in our part of Maryland, but most of them went to all-black churches. Only a handful of black and Hispanic families went to our church, and I figured the same was probably true at Christa and Rodney’s, too. The other church who’d sent their youth group on this trip was in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I didn’t know much about West Virginia, but from what I did know, I had a feeling that church was all white, all the time.

Rodney wasn’t bad-looking. I probably should’ve been excited that he wanted to talk to me. But all I wanted was to be alone with Christa again.

Other people came over to sit with us. Christa kept saying stuff that made everyone laugh, me especially. Then the group got so big that a bunch of different conversations were going on at once.

A short white guy came over and sat down next to me.

“Hi.” He waved awkwardly. “I’m Jake. I go to Holy Life of Harpers Ferry.”

“Hey, Jake.”

Jake, it turned out, was really, really chatty. He kept trying to ask me questions about the people who went to my church and about the national conference that was coming up at the end of the summer for all the Holy Life churches. I knew absolutely nothing about the conference, so I mostly nodded while Jake talked.

It actually turned out to be kind of cool hanging out with new people—people who didn’t automatically see me as a music-dork preacher’s kid—but even so, I couldn’t focus. I wanted to talk to Christa again. She was funny. And I liked how her eyes caught the light.

Lori came over and motioned to me, so I apologized to Jake and got up. It was good to have an excuse to get away. It was hard to think clearly with so much happening around me.

I followed Lori through the courtyard’s tall, swinging wooden door. A patch of gravel ran behind the row of houses and faded into dirt as the hills rose up behind the edge of town. Lori and I walked out a few yards past the gravel into the pitch-black night so we could talk without anyone hearing us. It took all my energy to focus on Lori instead of those stars again.

She wanted to tell me about the blond guy she’d spotted earlier. She’d found an excuse to talk to him. It turned out his name was Paul, and he went to Christa’s church in Rockville.

“He’s going to be a senior at King,” Lori said. “He has a car and everything. A Toyota.”

“Do you like him?”

“Uh-huh. He’s really cute and funny. Plus, older guys are more mature, you know?”

“Do you mean mature, like, emotionally, or mature, like, he’s done it?”

“Oh, shut it.” Lori giggled. I did, too. “I took a picture of us goofing around. Want to see?”

Lori took out her phone and showed me a poorly framed photo of her and Paul sticking their tongues out at the camera. It made me think of Christa and her gorgeous photography. I flushed, glad it was dark so Lori couldn’t see.

“Do you think you’ll ask him out or something?” I said.

“I don’t know. What is there to even do around here? Maybe we’ll just hang out at the volunteer site. And find someplace to sneak off to when the time is right.”

We both laughed again.

We were supposed to start work tomorrow. None of us were sure exactly what that meant. We’d come here to do construction on a church that the local congregation had already started building. None of us knew the first thing about construction, but my dad and the other chaperones said they’d teach us. I only hoped they didn’t make me climb ladders. I was afraid of heights.

My back felt stiff from sitting on the ground, so I stood on my tiptoes and stretched my arms over my head, arching my spine so my braids hung straight down. This time, I couldn’t resist gazing up at the stars. They were closer out here than they were within the stone courtyard walls.

In that moment, it felt like we were the entire world. Just me and those gorgeous stars.

It was colder out here, too, away from the lights of the houses. We weren’t really in the desert, even though that was what I’d expected when I signed up to come to Mexico. Here there were trees and stuff, and it had been hot during the day but not that hot. Now that it was dark, it was only sixty-something degrees.

I lowered myself back down from my toes and rubbed my bare arms, wishing I’d worn more than my T-shirt and jeans. Then I remembered my missing suitcase. I didn’t have anything else to wear.

“We’re going into town on Saturdays, right?” I asked Lori. “Maybe you and Paul could do something while we’re there.”

“Or maybe you and that girl could.” Lori smirked.

“Oh, whatever.” But I couldn’t help smiling.

I wasn’t sure if lesbians even went on dates. Did anyone, really? I’d been on one official date in my entire life, to a dance at a school I didn’t go to with a blue-haired guy who threw up because he drank a beer.

I’d wondered what it would be like to have a real boyfriend. Maybe a girlfriend, too. Someday.

Just the idea of a girlfriend seemed like it was from a whole different life. I mean, even if Christa had been flirting with me back in the courtyard, that didn’t mean she actually wanted to go out with me. She must’ve been able to tell I didn’t know anything about being gay.

Heck, she probably thought I was straight. I might as well have been, for all I’d done so far.

Was Christa bi, too? Maybe she was into Rodney. Or someone else. Maybe she hadn’t really been flirting with me at all.

“So do you like her?” Lori asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe?”

“I knew it!” Lori pumped her fist. “I could so tell when you were looking at her before.”

“It doesn’t matter. She isn’t interested.”

“How do you know?”

I shrugged. There was no reason someone like Christa would want someone like me. I’d never even kissed a girl.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to. Lately, kissing was all I thought about. Boys. Girls. My daydreams didn’t discriminate.

That was where my theory had really gotten started.

Christa had probably kissed tons of girls. And done more than kiss.

I’d been daydreaming about that a lot lately, too.

“You’re smiling again,” Lori said.

“Oh, shut it. Hey, do you think—”

Before I could finish, Lori clapped her hand over my mouth and held her finger to her lips, her eyes bulging. Now that we were quiet, I could hear it, too. Gravel crunching behind me, then footsteps on the dirt.

“Hi, you guys,” a voice said.

I turned. It was too dark to get a good look from this distance. But I knew it was Christa.

“Hey there.” Lori was grinning, as usual. “I’m glad you came out here. I wanted to ask you something.”

Oh, no. I was too far away to elbow Lori, so I glared at her. She ignored me.

“Shoot.” Christa was close enough now that I could see a design on the inside of her wrist. It looked like a tattoo, but I could’ve sworn it wasn’t there when I’d seen her in the courtyard earlier. It was purple. Some kind of complicated knot.

Lori lowered her voice. “You’re into girls, right?”

My eyes jerked up. I couldn’t believe Lori said things like that. I would never say something like that to someone she had a crush on. But Christa didn’t seem to mind.

“For sure,” she said. “But don’t tell my parents, okay?”

“Deal.” Lori laughed. “So what kind of girls do you like? You know, generally. Tall, short, long hair, short hair...”

Christa glanced over at me. I tried to smile, but my face felt all wobbly. I shifted from one foot to the other. Why did Lori have to be this way? Why?

“I think,” Christa said slowly, “right now, if I were to describe exactly the kinds of girls I like, I’d say...tall, with long hair, in braids. With big dark eyes and pretty smiles. Oh, and I especially have a thing for preacher’s daughters who wear vintage hip-hop T-shirts.”

I beamed and tugged on one of my braids. I’d worn my favorite Usher shirt on the plane. It was only three years old, so it didn’t exactly qualify as vintage, and Usher wasn’t so much hip-hop as R&B with some light hip-hop influences. But I did not care even the tiniest bit about those things right then.

“And I like girls with nose rings who draw stuff on their wrists,” I said. It wasn’t the cleverest thing I could’ve come up with, but the truth was, just saying “I like girls” took so much out of me, I didn’t have energy left for cleverness. It was the first time I’d admitted it to anyone but Lori.

Now I was definitely doing something.

Christa took a step toward me. Someone else was coming through the swinging door, but I didn’t look to see who it was. I didn’t want to see anyone but Christa.

“That’s truly excellent news,” Christa said. “Because I happen to believe that the process of creating is what makes people interesting. Any kind of creating, I mean, but let’s be honest—music is the best art there is. It’s the purest. And, well, I’m actually a little obsessed with musicians. It’s kind of my thing.”

My stomach tightened again. I could tell from her voice that Christa was joking, at least sort of. But now I really wished I hadn’t messed up my verb tenses earlier. I’d already promised myself to never again create so much as a single note.

But with the way Christa was looking at me now, I knew there was no way I was ever going to tell her that.

And that meant I was now most definitely lying to her. About something she seemed to care about a lot.

I swallowed and dropped my gaze down to my feet.

“Er, I mean, sorry, Lori, no offense.” Christa turned her still-joking voice to my best friend. “I don’t know if you’re an artist. It’s totally okay if you’re not.”

“I make jewelry,” Lori offered.

“That totally counts!” Christa turned back to me, smiling. I met her eyes, folding my shaky hands behind my back. “Anyway. I have to go, because I promised my friends we’d go back early to claim the best spot for our sleeping bags. But can I come find you tomorrow?”

“You most definitely can.” My palms felt all tingly. I couldn’t believe I was talking this way, as if this conversation was no big deal at all.

“Excellent,” she said. “Maybe you could play me something, if you have anything recorded? Or even just sing something? Is that weird of me to ask?”

“Um.” I could feel Lori’s quizzical eyes on me. I silently begged her not to give me away. I hadn’t sung since my MHSA audition, not even in the shower. Not even in church when the rest of the congregation opened their hymnals. But how could I tell Christa that now, after she’d just said you had to create art to be interesting? “I, um—”

“You coming, Christa?” someone said behind us. It was the girl with the short hair Christa had been hanging out with at the beginning of the party.

“Yeah.” Christa smiled at me, then ducked her head. I smiled back at her goofily. Then she turned around and was gone.

“Wow.” Lori was already by my side as Christa and the other girl disappeared through the swinging doors. “You were wrong. She definitely likes you.”

“I guess.”

Lori let out a mini squeal. “And you like her.”

I shifted again. “I guess.”

Lori’s eyes shone. “And what was all that about you singing for her tomorrow?”

I scrubbed my face with the heel of my hand. “That part is...actually kind of a problem. She’d heard I did music stuff, and I didn’t tell her I’d quit, and somehow it turned into this.”

“So you’re, what—pretending you still do all that stuff?” Lori’s forehead wrinkled. “I mean, there’s no way she won’t find out. Everyone from our church knows how obsessive you are about not ever singing or anything. Your brother talks constantly about how he wants you to get back into music.”

“I know.” I scrubbed my face with my hand again. “Listen, promise you won’t say anything.”

“Yeah, of course.” Lori’s lip quirked upward. “Wouldn’t want the truth to stand in the way of true love. Or true hooking up, at least.”

I forced a laugh. Yeah, I wanted to hook up with Christa. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to. In fact, standing in the dark, watching her walk away, I realized exactly how much I wanted to.

But was she only into me because of a lie? Because she thought I was some amazing artist, when in reality I’d proven to be anything but?

I didn’t know what to think. I’d never dealt with anything like this before.

There was only one thing I knew for sure.

What I’d done tonight definitely counted as doing something.

So far, my theory was proving 100 percent correct. Doing stuff was a lot more fun than not doing stuff.

And, yeah, maybe some of the stuff I was doing wasn’t completely honest. But I’d deal with that later.

First, I needed to focus on testing out my theory some more.

Because now that I’d met Christa, there was suddenly a lot of stuff I wanted to do.

CHAPTER 2

“I can’t believe we have to sleep in there.” My paintbrush glided down the back wall of the church, leaving a thick wet trail of primer. “For a whole month.”

“I know,” Lori said. “I feel stiff all over.”

“The adults totally get to sleep in beds. And take showers. In houses, even.”

“My aunt said we’re staying in the church because we’re young and our backs still function. I told her my back wasn’t going to be functioning after this, but all she did was laugh.”

The night before, we’d slept on the floor of the town’s old church. The pews had been stacked along the walls to make room for the mats and sleeping bags we’d brought from home. My suitcase full of clothes was still somewhere in the Dallas airport, so I was stranded in Mexico with nothing but my duffel with my sleeping bag, a toothbrush, and some underwear, plus the clothes I’d worn on the plane. Lori had lent me an old pair of track pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt to wear today, but I was a lot taller than Lori, so my ankles, wrists and part of my stomach were bare.

Plus, we had to shower outside in these camp shower things the chaperones had brought. They were basically really small tents with a bag of tepid water at the top that sprinkled on you if you pulled a cord. That morning I’d showered for about sixty seconds while a line of girls huffed and waited for me to finish. The experience had left me feeling decidedly unfresh.

Not that it mattered, given that our agenda for the day consisted of manual labor in an un-air-conditioned cement building. We were painting the town’s new Holy Life church. When it was done, this one would replace the old building where we were camping out.

“Is this how we’re supposed to do it?” I lowered my brush and frowned. The church walls were tall, probably twenty feet high, so we were only painting what we could reach. Our little patch of white primer looked kind of pathetic.

“Who knows?” Lori dabbed her brush in the paint tray. “Just keep going.”

I’d tried to pay attention during that morning’s painting lesson, but I’d been standing toward the back of the group, and Christa was at the front. I kept craning my neck to get a better look at her.

I hadn’t seen her after the party. By the time we got back to the old church someone had hung up a tarp to separate the boys’ half of the floor from the girls’, but the single lightbulb that lit the whole room was on the boys’ side. Our side was a strange dark cave, quiet except for a few people whispering and swarms of mosquitoes buzzing past the windows. There was no way to spot Christa in the dark. Plus, every time I saw a shadow move I was positive it was a snake. (I had a thing about snakes.)

“So, question.” Lori painted another slow, uneven line. “Regarding your new paramour.”

“She’s not my paramour.” I smiled.

“Only a matter of time, babe.” Lori glanced at me with her eyebrows raised. “But what’s your dad going to say about you being gay? I mean, bi?”

I’d carefully avoided thinking about that. I returned my focus to my paintbrush. “I don’t know.”

“What about your mom? And your brother?”

“Come on, they don’t all have to know everything. Mom isn’t even here.”

“Ooh, so you and that chick are going to sneak around Mexico having secret liaisons under preacher daddy’s nose? Gnarly.”

“Liaisons?” I laughed. “Gnarly? What is this, 1980?”

Lori laughed, too. “For real, though. If you’re not having secret liaisons, what are you going to do, lesbian it up right in front of everyone?”

I shifted again. “I met this girl five seconds ago. Nobody’s lesbianing anything yet. Besides, I still like guys.”

Lori tried to arch one eyebrow, but she couldn’t do that very well, so her face just wound up amusingly strange and contorted.

“You know what I really want to do this summer?” she said. “Have a fling.”

I laughed. “What kind of fling?”

“You know, where you have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend or whatever, but only for the summer. You hang out, you hook up, and at the end of the summer you go back to your regular life. Short, meaningless, but fun.”

“What’s the point of that?” I said. “Don’t you want a regular boyfriend?”

“Yeah, sure. But this summer is our perfect fling opportunity. Most of the guys here go to other schools, so we’ll basically never see them again. The girls, too.”

Hmm. “I sort of see what you mean.”

“I know what we should do.” Lori put down her paintbrush and grinned at me. “We should both have a fling. Let’s make a pact.”

I laughed again. Lori and I used to be really into pacts. When we were younger we’d make pacts to eat the exact same number of conversation hearts at the Valentine’s Day party, or to include the word hickey somewhere in our fifth-grade Life Science reports. In middle school, Lori was obsessed with having her first kiss, and she got me to make a pact that we’d each kiss someone before the end of the school year. But when I kissed Tim Mayhew at the school Chrismukkah party that December, she’d been furious. I’d actually forgotten about the pact by that point—I only kissed Tim because he came up to me at the party wearing one of those mistletoe headbands all the guys had that year and I liked the way his green eyes locked on mine when he smiled—but Lori remembered everything. She said I’d violated the pact because we were supposed to have our first kiss at the same time, even though I didn’t remember agreeing to that part at all. It turned out to be fine because Lori kissed Barry Tuckerton at his New Year’s Eve party the next week, but I still felt kind of bad. Barry Tuckerton’s breath smelled like cheese.

“We should do it,” she said. “For real. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

I thought about Christa’s face again. Her voice. I especially have a thing for preacher’s daughters...

“Yeah. Let’s do it.” I was getting excited now. “Okay, rules. We’ll each hook up with someone—um, how about three times? Three’s a good number.”

“Okay,” Lori said. “And it doesn’t have to be that girl and Paul—it can be anyone. Also—wait, how are we defining hookup, exactly? Is kissing enough, or does it have to be more?”

I acted surprised, even though I’d been wondering the same thing. “Wow, that’s—um. Do you really think—”

She started laughing. “Kidding. Of course kissing counts. I mean, that’s all either of us has done before, right? But whatever we wind up doing, we have to tell each other every last, sweaty detail, the way we always do. So, are we both in?”

She held out her hand, her little finger curved up, for our standard pact-agreement pinkie swear.

I glanced around the cavernous space of the church. I didn’t see any sign of Christa now, but I remembered how she’d smiled at me in the dusty shadows the night before.

I’d have given anything just to have her smile at me that way again.

I grinned and linked my finger with Lori’s. “I’m definitely in.”

“Hate to interrupt your girl talk, ladies, but you have too much paint on your brushes, there.” Lori and I turned slowly. Dad’s voice had come from far enough behind us that I was pretty sure he hadn’t heard anything, but still, when a parent sneaks up on you, it’s almost never a good thing. Especially when you’ve just finished making a pact that involves kissing other girls. “When you load paint onto your brush, you need to tap off the excess on the edge of the pan, this way.”

Dad took Lori’s brush and demonstrated. Globs of paint dripped off the brush. I could tell he was right, but I rolled my eyes anyway. Dad loved nothing more than telling me I was doing something wrong.

“Thanks, Benny.” Lori smiled as he handed her back the brush. She never understood when I complained about my dad. Her own dad had moved out when she was in elementary school, and she hardly ever saw him. She was supposed to spend a few weeks with him every summer, but her summers were always so packed with activities that it usually only wound up being a weekend trip. Maybe she didn’t realize how annoying dads could really be.

“You ought to be using rollers, though.” Dad stroked his chin. “I’ll see if I can pick some up in town. By the way, Aki, want to come talk to me for a sec?”

I groaned under my breath and followed Dad outside. The sun charged straight into my eyes, so I pulled on my baseball cap. My brother, Drew, and bunch of people were digging a ditch for the new fence, and they all had giant sweat stains under their armpits. I was glad I’d gotten an indoor job. Our whole family sweated a lot, me included, but Dad and Drew got it the worst.

“How are you liking Mexico so far?” Dad asked me, wiping the back of his neck.

“It’s okay. You didn’t tell me we’d be sleeping on a cement floor.”

Dad chuckled. “Why did you think we told you to bring sleeping bags?”

“I thought we’d go on a special camping trip or something. For, like, one night.”

“Well, don’t worry. Sleeping on the floor will build character.” Dad chuckled again.

“Whatever.” Mom and Dad both loved to say anything Drew and I complained about would “build character.”

“Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” Dad said. “You remember that our first Holy Life national conference is coming up?”

I nodded. Jake, the guy from Harpers Ferry, had said something about that at the party last night.

Some of my friends at school thought our church was weird, but it wasn’t, really. Holy Life started out in Maryland after a couple of nondenominational churches decided to start doing some activities together. Then some churches in other states joined in and even a few in other countries, like this one here in Mexico. Holy Life churches aren’t the kind where preachers talk constantly about how abortion is evil and how we should all vote Republican or anything, though. I mean, some people at my church probably do vote Republican, but mostly we don’t talk about that stuff. Instead we get together for picnics and ice-cream socials, and on Sunday mornings we sing hymns and listen to sermons about whatever Jesus did that week.

But now the different churches were trying to get more officially organized. Everyone had been talking about the conference since Christmas, but I’d sort of tuned it out. Usually, if I paid attention to church stuff, it was because I’d done something wrong that week and knew I should pray about it so I wouldn’t feel guilty.

“Well, the delegates who’ll be at the conference are very interested in this trip,” Dad said. “It’s the first time we’ve brought multiple churches together for an overseas mission project.”

“We didn’t come over the sea to get here,” I said. “It’s more of an overland project.”

Dad ignored me. “I’ll be giving a presentation about this trip at the conference, and one of the things the delegates want to hear will be how we worked with the local congregation. Since you volunteered at that clinic last summer, I thought you and some of your friends might want to take on a side project here with the local kids.”

A side project? Dad wanted me to do more work? “What kind of project?”

Dad shrugged. “Whatever you think they might enjoy. Could you teach them a praise dance or a worship song?”

“Dad.” I side-eyed him. After a moment he gave up and looked away.

My parents knew very well that I’d stopped all that. I didn’t sing in the church choir or the school chorus anymore, and I’d dropped out of the dance class I’d enrolled in the summer before.

I was done with music. After what had happened with MHSA, there was no way I could ever go back. Mom and Dad may have thought they were dropping subtle hints when they asked me to lead a worship song or left a brochure for my old music camp on the kitchen table, but I knew exactly what they were trying to do, and it wasn’t going to work. I’d made up my mind.

No more spending hours with my stupid guitar. I played lacrosse now, and I’d joined the math team, too.

No more music camp, either. I’d signed up to come on this trip the same day our church’s lead pastor announced it was happening. Mainly so my parents would stop bugging me about music camp.

“Well, maybe you could all do a presentation together at the end of the summer,” Dad said.

“Ugh, do we have to?” That would be even worse than doing a song. I hated standing up in front of people and just talking. In class, whenever we got assigned to do a presentation, I begged the teacher to let me do a separate extra credit project instead. In church I always kept my head down when they asked for volunteers to read Bible verses.

I didn’t want to present. I wanted to perform. But I wasn’t good enough for that, apparently.

“Well, it could be anything to keep the kids engaged,” Dad said. “What did you do at the clinic?”

“Crafts, mostly.” Last summer, after I’d dropped out of music camp at the last minute, I’d wound up volunteering at a health center in downtown Silver Spring for people who didn’t have insurance. I’d thought I was going to learn how to bandage people’s cuts and test them for viruses and stuff—I’d signed up to work there because I was into math and science, after all—but instead I was a glorified babysitter for the little kids in the waiting room. On my second day I brought in craft supplies from home and the next thing I knew, I was the most popular volunteer in the place. All the kids wanted me to show them how to make my special paper airplanes that were guaranteed to fly in loop-di-loops. “But I don’t have any craft supplies here, except for the jewelry materials Lori and I brought. Those are for us, though.”

Lori and I had been making jewelry since middle school. I’d found some bead patterns online and gotten obsessed with them. I loved anything that involved neat, orderly rows and following a bunch of steps to get it right. Lori and I started wearing our jewelry to school, and soon people were asking if they could buy it. We wanted to sell it online but our parents were afraid people would try to take advantage of us. Parents had no idea how the internet actually worked.

“Well, we could reimburse you for the materials,” Dad said. “I guess it’s my fault for not mentioning this before we left home. I thought you could do a dance or something that didn’t need supplies.”

“Dad.” I groaned.

Dad rubbed his neck again. “For the jewelry, do you think you could have them make Christian-themed pieces? You know, cross necklaces, that sort of thing?”

“Sure.” I didn’t know if we had any cross-necklace supplies, but Dad would probably forget he’d asked me that anyway.

“Good. Well, this is an excellent plan. You can start today after lunch. I’ll talk to Carlos about rounding up some of the girls and I’ll swing by to take photos of you for my presentation.”

“Today? Wow, okay.” It was a good thing we’d brought the jewelry stuff in Lori’s suitcase and not mine.

I went straight back in to tell Lori while Dad stayed outside to help with the fence work. I was trying to figure out how many supplies we’d brought with us and how we were going to teach jewelry making to a bunch of kids whose language we didn’t speak when I saw that a girl in a bright pink hat had taken my spot by the wall. She and Lori had their backs to me, and they were talking and laughing as they painted.

It was Christa. I recognized her by the pink streak in her hair. Which clashed horribly (and, somehow, adorably) with her hat.

I stopped walking. Suddenly I was...what? Afraid? Nervous? Jealous?

What was I supposed to do, exactly? What should I say? The night before everything between us had just sort of fallen into place, like magic.

But that night had been special. That night, I was special. Today I was regular old Aki, with too-short track pants and smears of white paint on my hands.

Lori bent to dip her brush into the pan and saw me. She waved. “Aki! Look who came to help!”

Christa’s face broke into a grin as she turned around. Her heart-shaped sunglasses dangled from a string around her neck. “Sorry! Did I steal your brush?”

She reached up to adjust her hat. There was a speck of white paint on the side.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t a hat. It was a beret.

A raspberry beret.

Wow.

Not only did Christa own a raspberry beret, she’d brought it with her to Mexico.

I didn’t know a single fellow Prince fan who was younger than my mother. It was as if Christa had been custom-made for me.

Just like that, things were easy again.

“Yeah.” I grinned. “But I guess I’m willing to share.”

“Okay.” Christa held out the brush to me. “I’m a big fan of sharing, myself.”

I took the brush from her and smiled when my fingers met hers on the handle. It was the first time we’d touched.

And I was certain it wouldn’t be the last.

CHAPTER 3

“What did your dad want?” Lori asked.

I was still grinning at Christa. “What?”

“Your dad? He took you outside for something?”

“Oh, yeah.” I forced myself to turn toward Lori. “He wants us to make jewelry with the kids here. I told him we’d start after lunch today.”

“‘We’?” Lori paused her painting mid-brushstroke. “Who, you and me?”

“Yeah. He said we should do some kind of side project and I told him we already had the supplies. They’re going to reimburse us.”

“Oh. So we’re doing this for the whole trip?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Christa had found another paintbrush somewhere and was dipping it into the pan. When she bent over I could see her bra strap peeking out from the neck of her tank top. “I guess?”

“All right.” Lori looked out the window, studying the yard critically. “We can set up over there if someone can loan us a blanket for the kids to sit on. During lunch we’ll need to go back to the old church to get supplies and plan what we’re going to do. Will they give us a translator or something?”

“Um,” I said. Christa was wearing sweatpants. How was it fair for anyone to look that cute in sweatpants? “I don’t think so.”

“So we’re teaching a bunch of kids in a language we barely speak how to make the jewelry designs it took us two years to learn?” Lori narrowed her eyes.

Christa reached up to paint a new section of the wall. The movement made her tank top ride up. Her skin was tan under the hem of her white shirt. I could see her belly button. She’d drawn a star around it with a purple marker. I wondered how it felt to touch her there.

“Actually, never mind.” Lori handed me her paintbrush. “I’m going to go see if they need help outside.”

“See you later, Lori,” Christa called after her.

“Yeah, see you.”

I leaned down to dip Lori’s brush into the pan, making sure to tap off the extra paint. When I glanced up, Christa was watching me. I looked away so she wouldn’t see me getting flustered.

After a minute, I stood back up and we painted in silence. I snuck glances at Christa every so often. The third time I looked her way, she was watching me, too.

“I thought you’d be wearing another vintage T-shirt today,” she said, nodding at my outfit.

“Oh, yeah. Well, actually the shirt I had on yesterday was from his 2014 tour so it isn’t vintage, it’s...” I trailed off before I said something totally nerdy. “But anyway, I don’t have any of my other clothes here. They lost my suitcase on one of the planes.”

“Oh, that sucks.” Christa made a sympathetic face, her lips turned down. Once again, I wanted to touch her. “Let me know if you need to borrow anything. I mean, you’re about two feet taller than me so my stuff probably wouldn’t fit you, but still.”

I imagined putting on Christa’s sweatpants. My skin, right where hers had been.

I needed to change the subject before I had a total meltdown.

“That’s a great beret,” I told her.

“Thanks.” She touched it, spreading the white paint farther along the side of the hat. “They said we should bring a hat, since we’d be painting, so I went to the thrift store. I thought this one was hilarious. I wear a lot of funky stuff, but I never heard of a bright pink beret before.”

“Well, it’s a raspberry beret,” I said.

Christa blinked at me.

“You know,” I said. “The Prince song?”

“Oh.” Her smile faded. “Do you mean the singer Prince? The guy from back in the eighties or whenever?”

All right. Okay, so she wasn’t a fan after all.

Well, most people our age weren’t weirdo Prince obsessives like me. This didn’t have to be a bad sign.

I recalibrated.

“Yeah.” I tried desperately to think of something new to ask her. “So, um, did your parents make you come on this trip? Or did you beg them to let you? It seems like everyone’s either one or the other.”

Christa gave me a sudden sharp look. At first I thought I’d said something wrong, but then her face softened. “I guess it was my parents’ idea. Pretty much whenever there’s a church trip anywhere, whether it’s counting cans at the food bank or painting walls in Mexico, they sign me on without even asking me about it first. All they care about is church.”

“I hear you. My family’s pretty hardcore about church, too.”

“Yeah, I’d guess, with your dad being a youth minister and all.”

“It’s annoying. Some days I think I’d rather just be a heathen, you know?”

For a second Christa got that sharp look again, but then she laughed. “Most of my life consists of trying not to let my parents know about my heathen ways.”

For some reason, that sounded really sexy. I flushed and looked away.

“How did they react when you got your nose ring?” I asked.

“They flipped. They tried to order me to get rid of it, but I refused, so they grounded me for two months. They thought I’d change my mind and take it out, but it was nothing I didn’t expect. I mean, if I’m totally honest, the main reason I got it in the first place was to piss them off.”

“Wow. You went through all that just to annoy them?”

“Well, at first. But now I think it’s legitimately awesome.” Christa turned so I could see the ring glint in the light from the window. It was really simple, only a little silver hoop, but it made her look amazing. Rebellious. Hot, too.

Okay, she probably would’ve looked hot anyway.

Crap, I was getting flustered again. I had to distract her so she wouldn’t see what a fail I was.

“Are you allowed to get paint on it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Probably not?”

“Then look out!”

I reached up with my paintbrush like I was aiming for her nose. She squealed and jerked back, reaching out to steady herself, so I tapped her bare elbow with the tip of my paintbrush. “Got you!”

“Hey!” she pulled her arm away, laughing. “What, are polka-dotted elbows the new trend?”

“Sorry! It was an accident.” I held up my hands in fake shock/apology. “Besides, I mean, you’re into art, right? Consider it an artistic statement. An accidental one, I mean.”

As soon as I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want to remind Christa about the art thing. The guilt from my lie the night before rose up in my throat.

“Well, I suppose accidents do happen...” She lunged toward me with a cackle and painted a streak across my bare wrist. It looked like I’d been slashed by a snowman.

“That was so not an accident!” I tapped her cheek with my brush, leaving a tiny white dot. Behind it, she was blushing.

“Hey!” She shrieked and bopped her brush onto my nose.

“What are you guys doing over here?” We both turned, hiding our brushes behind our backs. My brother stood behind us, holding a dirt-caked shovel over his shoulder. He chortled when he saw me. “Sis, you look like a shrink-wrapped Rudolph.”

I rolled my eyes at Drew and bit back a snappy reply. I was trying to be slightly less snarky to him than usual, which was hard.

Drew and I had always been close, especially when we were younger. But things changed when he left the private school we’d both gone to since kindergarten and transferred to the public high school. He liked going to school with more people, he said, and getting a chance to play on a bigger basketball team. He was always bringing his new friends home.

After I didn’t get into MHSA, I asked my parents if I could transfer to Drew’s school instead. They said no. Dad thought I wouldn’t like it as much as Drew did, but I never knew how he was so sure about that. It wasn’t as though Dad had gone there.

Drew’s life in high school, as far as I could tell, was basically perfect. When he got to college, though, things changed. I hadn’t realized how much until the day before in the Tijuana airport.

When we’d landed in Mexico and gone to pick up our bags, everyone had grabbed their suitcases off the turnstile right away except for me. The bags kept going around in their loop, and mine kept not showing up. Dad went ahead with the others and told Drew to wait with me until my suitcase showed up.

For a while my brother and I talked about the usual stuff. Dumb TV shows. Basketball. How annoying Dad had been on the plane with the way he kept trying to read out important geographical facts about whatever we were flying over—The Gulf of Mexico didn’t even exist until the Late Triassic period! Did you know that, kids?

Then out of nowhere, Drew said, “Okay. Listen. I’ve got to tell you something.”

I looked away. I was certain this would be more of the same.

After I didn’t get into MHSA when I first auditioned at the end of eighth grade, everyone I knew—but Drew most of all—kept nagging me to audition again the following year. It would be my last chance, since MHSA didn’t let anyone in after ninth grade.

They had tons of different programs—acting, singing, dancing, visual art, instrumental music—but I’d auditioned for the music composition program. I brought my electric guitar and played them the best piece I’d ever written. Then I got a callback where I had to sight-read and play my piece on the piano, which was harder. Two weeks after that, a slim envelope appeared in the mailbox with a single sheet of paper inside. “Although you show significant promise, we are unable to admit you to the Maryland High School for the Arts at this time.” It might as well have said You’re a giant loser. Buh-bye.

“You’re amazing at guitar,” Drew kept saying when this year’s audition season was coming back around. “Why do you have to get in for composition? They have a regular music program. All you have to do is play them one of those Prince guitar solos you’re always practicing at home. Those judges will throw down their stupid scorecards and beg you to come to their big nerdy art school.”

I didn’t bother explaining that there weren’t judges or scorecards—just a single bored teacher with a simpering smile—or that the idea of getting into MHSA just to play an instrument made me want to cry. Anyone could play guitar. I’d been doing it since I was a kid, when I first picked up the choir director’s old acoustic while Mom and Dad were in one of their endless meetings at church.

I loved playing, sure—I loved it even more once I started taking actual lessons, and especially once I started picking out my own songs on it for the first time—but I didn’t want to get into my dream school for something that came so easily it was basically one step up from breathing.

I wanted to get in because I was special. I wanted to get in because I could do something, create something that no one else could. And I wanted to spend four years learning how to do it better.

Prince wrote a song every single day of his life. I’d only written a handful, but even my very best song wasn’t good enough to get me past the starting line.

There was no way I was going to put myself through that a second time.

So that’s what I thought Drew was going to talk about in the airport that afternoon. I thought he was going to berate me again for throwing away my greatest opportunity ever, blah blah blah.

I folded my arms and braced myself. Then he surprised me.

“This past semester wasn’t so good,” Drew said. “I didn’t let anybody see my grades, but listen—Sis, they were bad. Really bad.”

“What?” I’d known Drew had some problems with his first semester of college—he’d gotten a D in his required math class, which was weird because he’d always been good in school when he was younger—but he’d done okay in his other subjects. “How bad?”

“Academic probation bad.” Drew swallowed. “I’m going to have to take pretty much everything over again.”

“Everything? Are they holding you back?”

Drew shook his head. A new load of suitcases came across the belt, but my bag—purple with red flowers—was nowhere in sight. “It isn’t the same as high school. You don’t get ‘held back.’ But it’s the same idea.”

“Wow.” I was still struggling to get my head around the thought of Drew failing. My brother had always won at everything he’d tried. “Dad is going to freak.”

“You can’t tell him, okay? Promise you won’t tell him.” I’d never seen that look on Drew’s face before. Drew was usually a cheerful guy, always making other people laugh. But there was no trace of a smile on his lips now.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. So what are you going to do, take all the same classes when you go back again this year?”

“Maybe.” He tugged on his ear. “If I go back.”

It took me a second to understand what he’d said. When I got it, I whirled around to face him, the hunt for my suitcase forgotten. “If?”

“Calm down, Sis.” Drew held up his hands. “You don’t need to turn into a banshee on me.”

“Are you talking about dropping out of school?” He might as well have said he was considering Satanism. All Mom and Dad had been telling us since birth—probably even longer; they probably told us while we were still in utero—was how important our educations were.

“I don’t know.” Drew ran a hand over the back of his head, the way he did when he was anxious. Dad did that, too. “All I’m doing is considering my options.”

I stared at him, my jaw on the floor. How long had he been thinking this? I’d thought I knew everything about my brother. I thought his life was golden.

“Listen, for real,” he said. “Promise you won’t tell Dad.”

“Of course I won’t.” I was offended he’d even ask. Drew and I had been keeping each other’s secrets forever. “But tell me when you decide, okay? And if you need help in math, I can tutor you.”

Drew laughed and elbowed me. “I’m not getting tutored by my kid sister.”

“Whatever, I’m better at math than you. Even college math.”

“Yeah, okay, genius.” Drew scanned the belt again. “Also, Sis, I hate to say this, but I don’t think your suitcase is here.”

“Oh...crap.”

We went to the airline counter to tell them about my suitcase. Drew had to do most of the talking, since his Spanish was better than mine. Then Dad came back to check on us and we didn’t have another chance to talk about what Drew had said.

But I kept thinking about it. My brother—dropping out of college? Mom and Dad would never let him. They’d kill him.

“We’re priming the wall,” I told Drew now, since I couldn’t say any of that.

“Yeah, looks like it’s getting there.” Drew eyed our white patch, which still looked really uneven. “You’re Christa, right? From Rockville? I’m Drew, Aki’s brother.”

“Hi.” Christa stifled her giggles. She set her paintbrush back in the pan and tried to wipe the paint off her elbow. “I hate to tell you this, but your sister is kind of a meanie.”

“Oh, I’m well aware.” Drew grinned at her. Christa was still rubbing at her elbow. God, she was cute. “By the way, Sis, your clothes don’t fit.”

“They’re Lori’s clothes, genius.”

“Right, your suitcase.” Drew scratched his head. “I’ve got some stuff you can borrow if you want.”

“Drew, you’re, like, a guy.”

“Oof. Harsh.” He clasped a hand to his heart. I rolled my eyes again. Drew turned back to Christa and pointed to the patch of wall she’d been painting when I came in. “Hey, Christa, did you paint this section?”

“I sure did.”

“I figured,” Drew said. “It’s the only part that looks halfway decent.”

“Hey!” I reached out to swipe Drew with my paintbrush, but he stepped away in time.

“Come on, Aki’s section looks great,” Christa said. I beamed, even though she was totally lying.

“Had you painted before you came here?” Drew asked her.

“Yep. Well, I’ve painted one room, anyway.”

“Your room at home?” Drew asked.

“No.” Christa bent down and wiped her paintbrush on the edge of the tray. “I helped my boyfriend paint his room at his dad’s house.”

“Your ex-boyfriend?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard.

Christa stood up, biting her lip. “Uh, no. Current.”

I dropped my brush. Paint splattered onto my pants. Drew jumped out of the way to avoid getting hit.

“Hey, you three!” one of the pastors from the West Virginia church called over. “No roughhousing!”

Christa stood up straight. When she called back to the pastor, her voice was totally different than it had been when she was talking to us. She sounded calm. Demure, almost. “We’re very sorry, sir.”

The pastor came over to us, looking with a frown at our uneven paint job. “I don’t think it’s really going to take all three of you to finish what’s left of that wall. You two are Benny’s kids, right?”

Drew and I nodded, keeping our sighs to ourselves. Preacher’s kids never got a break.

“Come out here and we can get you to work on the ditch.” The pastor nodded to Christa. “You can finish up that wall on your own.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, still in that strange voice.

Stop, I wanted to say to Christa. Wait. Tell me what this means.

“Come on, Sis,” Drew said. Preacher’s kids did as they were told.

I tried to catch Christa’s eye before we left, but she didn’t look my way. She’d already turned back to the wall.

She was out of sight long before I’d stopped shaking.

CHAPTER 4

I poked the rice with my fork. It looked like rice, anyway. It was hard to tell. There was all sorts of...stuff in it. Beans, and other things I didn’t recognize.

Mexican food in actual Mexico, it turned out, wasn’t anything like the Mexican food at Taco Bell. Everyone around me was gobbling down whatever was on their plates, but I preferred to be sure I knew what, exactly, I was putting in my mouth.

Lunch had been torture. We’d split up into groups and gone to the local families’ houses to eat. A nice Mexican lady kept putting more and more food on the table in front of me, but all I could do was nibble on some corn. Then I’d gotten a lecture from Lori’s aunt Miranda about being respectful of local cultures.

At least for dinner we didn’t have to eat in people’s houses. Instead we were sitting at a row of picnic tables near the church. A whole team of ladies had set out big bowls full of rice and vegetables and tortillas and stuff. It was really pretty outside at this time of day, right when the sun was going down. Beams of light shone through the scraggly trees that dotted the hillsides to the west. Plus, this time I didn’t have to worry about getting a talking-to from a chaperone about what I was eating. The adults were at their own table, so far away we could barely see them.

A big pile of toast stood in the middle of the table, still in a plastic bread wrapper. I grabbed three slices. Maybe I could make it through four weeks in Mexico eating nothing but corn and prepackaged toast.

“Hi, Aki.” Jake, the guy I’d met at the party last night, swung into the seat next to me.

“Hi.” I tried to smile through my mouthful of toast crumbs, but I could feel my face arranging itself into an embarrassing half smirk instead. “Did your day go okay?”

“Yeah. I’m beat, though.”

“I know. Me, too.”

I tried again to smile, but it still wasn’t easy.

I hadn’t seen Christa all afternoon. Not since the “boyfriend” thing.

She’d told Lori she was into girls. Sure, maybe she was bi, but still—why had she been flirting with me last night if she already had a boyfriend?

All afternoon I’d worked outside, digging that stupid ditch with Drew and the others. When the work day ended I waited for Christa to come out so we could talk, but I never saw her. She must’ve been avoiding me.

I’d thought this summer was going to be when my life actually started to happen. Now I was right back where I’d started.

“I didn’t know Benny was your dad,” Jake said.

“Yep.” I leaned over the table for more toast. “Want any?”

“Yeah, thanks. That stuff is great.” Jake held out his empty plate. A fellow picky eater. “Hey, cool bracelet.”

“Thanks.” It was one I’d made last year, when Lori and I were into embroidery. It was emerald with white stitching that said, Music should be your escape. “It’s a Missy Elliott quote.”

“Super cool,” Jake said. I could tell he had no idea who Missy Elliott was. “So, he’s going to be a delegate at the national conference, right? Your dad, I mean?”

I shrugged. “All I know is that he’s going. He wanted to take some pictures to show there.”

Dad, true to his word, had rounded up half a dozen girls from the local church for our first jewelry-making workshop. They’d been gathered on a blanket near the work site waiting for Lori and me when we got back from lunch with our supplies. Dad was already taking pictures. The girls were mostly around seven or eight years old, and I couldn’t understand a single word they said. Lori managed to talk to them, though. She and I had taken the same Spanish class with the same teacher and gotten the same grades, but Lori was the only one who could say more than “¿Hola?” and actually have people understand her. We’d planned to make beaded safety-pin bracelets, but the girls had trouble getting the tiny beads we’d brought onto the pins, so Lori told them to stick with fastening the safety pins together to make loops. The girls loved it. They’d kept giggling and stringing safety-pin chains around my arms. One of them thought my baseball cap was so cool I wound up trading it to her for a safety-pin necklace.

The problem was, now we were out of safety pins and I had no idea what to make with them tomorrow. Plus, Lori was irritated with me. She’d had fun with the girls, but she kept complaining that she was having to do all the work since she was the only one who could talk to them. I thought I’d helped plenty, so whatever.

“No, he’s definitely a delegate,” Jake said. “He’s on the list on the conference website.”

“You got onto their website?” I put my toast down and turned to Jake. “Do you get internet on your phone here? Can I borrow it?”

“No, I, uh.” Jake scratched the back of his neck. “I printed out the list of delegates before I left home.”

I smiled again. “You’re really into this conference thing, huh?”

“Yeah, our little Jakey’s a big old nerrrrrrrrd,” the guy sitting across from us said, dragging out the word in a way that I was sure he found hilarious. This guy looked older, maybe Drew’s age, and he was wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on it, even though we weren’t in America. “He’ll talk to anybody who’ll listen about that stuff.”

I didn’t like the way the guy was grinning at Jake. I didn’t like the way Jake was staring down at his toast, either.

“Do you go to the church in Harpers Ferry?” I asked the guy across the table.

“Yep.” He waved his fork at me. “I’m Brian.”

“I’m Aki. I go to Silver Spring.”

Brian frowned at me. “How do you spell your name?”

I sighed. “A-K-I.”

“Oh,” Brian said. “So it’s Ahh-kee?”

I sighed again. This had been happening my entire life. I told someone my name, and they told me I was pronouncing it wrong.

It was my brother’s fault. When I was born, he was four and still learning how to talk. (When I told people this story, I always said he was actually still learning how to talk now, but if Drew was nearby that was a good way to get a sharp elbow in my rib cage.)

My parents had just brought me home from the hospital. They put my baby carrier on the floor next to Drew and told him I was his new sister, Akina. Drew didn’t even try to say my real name. He pointed at little me, turned to Dad, and said “Ack-ee?” Apparently the way he said it was so cute, Mom and Dad decided to call me that from then on. Thus sentencing me to a lifetime of explaining myself to dudes like Brian.

“Ack-ee,” I corrected him.

“Oh.” Brian looked confused. I might as well accept that no one around this place was ever going to learn my actual name.

One of the nice Mexican ladies who’d served our meal came over to clear our plates away. I jumped up, ready to help her, but she laughed and put her hand on my shoulder, pushing me gently back onto the bench. The same thing had happened at lunch. I’d always been taught to help clean up when I was someone’s guest. One more adjustment to get used to.

The sun was almost down. Seeing the church ladies in their dresses carrying our plates inside reminded me that I hadn’t cleaned up after work today. None of us had, but still, I felt scuzzy and sweaty in my paint-spattered, too-small clothes.

(That was another thing Lori was annoyed at me for. I’d gotten paint and dirt on her clothes. But what was I supposed to do? I didn’t have any of my own clothes, and everyone got paint and dirt all over everything today.)

I stretched my arms over my head. Once dinner was over we had to go to vespers. Every single night we were here, the chaperones would take turns leading us in prayers and songs so we could reflect on the work we were doing. I’d never been much for reflection, but I was a preacher’s kid, and I could play along with the best of them.

“Hey!” I yelped suddenly. Someone was tickling my armpit.

At first I thought it was Brian, and I was ready to yell louder if I had to, but when I turned, Christa was there. “Oh. Sorry! Hi.”

“Hi.” Christa pulled her hand back. She was giggling again. “I couldn’t resist. You do that a lot, you know?”

“What, stretch?”

“Yeah. Is it because you’re tall? Do you need to flex your limbs and stuff?”

Christa was smiling, but I didn’t smile back. I wasn’t going to act as if everything was normal.

“No,” I said. I decided to head her off before she could ask any of the other questions everyone always asked me, too. “And no, I don’t play basketball.”

“Sorry.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t mean to...”

“Hi.” Next to me, Jake stuck out his hand. “I’m Jake. You’re Christa, right?”

Christa’s head swiveled toward him. “Uh, yep, that’s me. Hi, Jake.”

“Want to sit with us?” Jake scooted over on the bench to make room.

“No, thanks.” Christa fumbled with her hands. “Listen, Aki, do you want to go somewhere for a second?”

I glanced around the table. Jake suddenly seemed very absorbed in his food. No one else was paying attention to us.

I followed Christa around the corner of the house. We couldn’t go far, not with vespers in a couple of minutes.

The view back here was incredible. On the bus ride in from Tijuana the day before we’d mostly seen hills and sparse trees and a pretty, golden landscape. Since we’d arrived in this tiny town, Mudanza, we hadn’t seen that much besides houses and churches. But now Christa and I were standing on the town’s northern edge, with Mudanza on one side of us and empty country on the other. Ahead of us were hills, valleys and trees as far as the eye could see, with a painted pink sky to frame it all.

Christa was walking toward the hills now, into the last sliver of sunlight. It shone on her dark hair and reflected off her long bead necklace. She was wearing a fresh, clean T-shirt that clung to her body and jeans that looked brand-new and paint-free. She must’ve changed for dinner.

She turned around and smiled at me over her shoulder. “I missed you this afternoon. I mean, I wound up less covered in polka dots compared to this morning, so there’s that. But it turns out painting by myself is way more boring than getting polka-dotted by cute girls.”

I stood motionless. “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”

The smile fell from her face. We’d passed the peak of the hill. When I looked back, I couldn’t see the rest of our group. We were alone out here.

“I—” She paused and took a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you that way. It sort of slipped out.”

“Slipped out?” How could she be so casual about this? And right after she’d said that thing about getting polka-dotted by cute girls that made my insides want to melt? “Who is he?”

“His name’s Steven. He goes to a private school in DC. I met him at drama camp a few years ago. He’s a really talented actor.”

“Oh.” I tried to stick my hands in my pockets, but Lori’s track pants didn’t have pockets. I stuck my thumbs in my waistband as though that was what I’d meant to do all along.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Christa had flirted with me, but it wasn’t as if she owed me anything. If she’d flirted with me even though she had a boyfriend, he was the one who had a right to be annoyed about that, not me.

Plus, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be self-righteous about telling the absolute truth. Not when I was still straight-up lying to her by acting like I still did music.

The boyfriend thing hurt, though. A lot.

We’d made it to a little valley between two rows of hills. They were sort of hills-slash-sand dunes, now that I looked closer, with trees scattered along the peaks. We couldn’t even see the town behind us anymore. We’d barely come any distance at all, but it was as if we’d gone straight into the wilderness. It was cool enough that for a moment I stopped thinking about how upset I was.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s gorgeous out here.”

The sun was almost down. Everything was gray and hazy. All I could see were sand and hills, trees and sky.

And Christa. She was gorgeous, too. She was biting her lip and brushing her hair out of her face and looking at me with her steady brown eyes and I wanted... I didn’t even know what, exactly. I just wanted.

“You’d like Steven,” Christa went on. “He’s really smart and funny. Open-minded, too.”

“Great.”

“Yeah. We’re actually a really modern couple. Steven hates all those old-school rules about how relationships are supposed to work, and I do, too.”

“That’s great.” I wished she’d shut up about Steven.

“Everyone’s stuck in this 1950s mentality,” Christa went on. “As if people still ‘go steady.’ I mean, what a boring idea, that you’re supposed to be with one person all the time and never so much as look at anyone else. Haven’t we evolved past that as a culture?”

I was about to reach my breaking point with this conversation. “What are you talking about?”

Christa looked down at her hands. “The thing about Steven and me is that we’re taking a break for the summer.”

“A break?” I watched her closely. “What does that mean?”

“You know.” She met my eyes for a second and then looked away, her shoulders shifting. “We don’t believe in that old-fashioned rule about how you always have to be totally monogamous. It isn’t human nature, you know? So, since I was coming down here, we decided we’d take the summer off from our relationship. So we could see other people for a little while. If we wanted to, I mean.”

“Oh.” Ohhhhh. “So you mean—he was your boyfriend up until this week, and he’ll be your boyfriend once you get back home, but right at this moment, you’re boyfriend-free?”

She nodded. “That’s the general idea.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about him last night?” My annoyance was fading fast, but I tried not to let it show. This kind of changed everything.

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I should have. Steven and I agreed before I left town that we’d both be totally up front about the whole thing so no one gets the wrong idea.”

“And what would the right idea be, exactly?”

She looked back up at me, her mouth set in a straight line. “The right idea would be...that even though I technically have a boyfriend, I could still like a girl. A particular girl, I mean.”

My chest felt fluttery. Damn it. I was supposed to be mad at her.

Also, this meant Christa was definitely bi. The same as me. I’d hardly known any other bi people.

“I mean.” She stepped closer. “You know my thing for artist types. Because as it happens, there’s this one artist girl, a musician in fact, who I happen to like a lot. But only if she’s okay with the temporary thing, since that’s all I can do. And only if she likes me back.”

This time, I was the one who looked down at my hands. She was being honest with me, but I wasn’t being honest with her. She still thought I was an artist type, like her. And like the super talented actor that was Steven.

“Because the thing is,” she went on. I glanced back up. She was still biting her lip. Was she nervous? Did Christa get nervous? “I mean, if that particular musician girl did like me back, then, well, we’re here in this totally new place, where we hardly know anyone. Where we can basically start a whole new life, just for ourselves, just for these next four weeks. No one even needs to know about it. It could be our own private universe. And then once we get on the plane at the end of this trip, we go back to the real world.”

Christa tugged at her shirt again. She looked so awesome, especially next to me in my paint-splattered pants. Had she changed her clothes because she knew she was going to see me?

I looked away again so she couldn’t tell I was smiling.

Christa had a boyfriend. If we really did hook up, a little summer thing was all we could have anyway. We’d say goodbye at the end of the trip with no harm done. It would be a fling. Exactly like the one Lori and I had fantasized about that morning.

Maybe it wasn’t even a big deal that I’d lied about my music. It wasn’t as if Christa and I were getting married. For a summer fling, getting all the details right didn’t matter quite so much.

This was my chance to see if I really liked girls. It would be an experiment. The coolest experiment ever.

Suddenly I felt very sophisticated. Or, as Christa had said, modern. Why should we have to stick to rules about monogamy that some old white guys made up a million years ago? We were young. We should be having fun.

Christa was looking at me expectantly.

“I...um...” I sounded horribly inarticulate after all that amazing stuff she’d said about universes. “It would be a total secret, right?”

Christa nodded. Good. I couldn’t picture going up to Dad after he was done leading us in one of his long, rambling prayers at vespers and telling him I was bisexual. Or anything-sexual.

Come to think of it, we were probably already late for vespers. Oh, well.

Christa was still watching me. Waiting.

I took a step closer to her. She looked right at me. The smile was in her eyes as much as her lips.

Oh, God. We were going to kiss.

I thought I’d be nervous, but I wasn’t.

I felt awesome, actually. Better than I remembered feeling in, well, ever.

So when Christa stepped toward me, I didn’t wait. I leaned over and pressed my lips against hers.

I could feel her smiling as she kissed me back.

And...oh.

She tasted like the sky.

Kissing her felt sweet and strong and urgent all at the same time. As though we were made to kiss each other.

We didn’t bump against each other awkwardly, the way I usually did with boys. Instead we kissed gently. Slowly.

I’d never kissed anyone that way before. As though it really meant something. I wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but I didn’t care.

After that things got kind of—well—intense. She ran her hands along my back. I played with her hair. It turned out the pink streak wasn’t real. It was just clipped in, as I discovered when I accidentally pulled it out. We both giggled at that, but only for a second, because kissing required every bit of attention we had.

When we finally pulled apart, I felt breathless and raw, and it was getting dark. I should’ve been worried—we were late for vespers, and we were out in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country—but my heart was beating too hard to focus on anything but Christa.

She looked as if she felt the same way. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. Our arms were still wrapped around each other, and our breasts were touching through our clothes. I thought again about that bra strap poking out from her tank top earlier. I was getting flushed, too.

“We should go to vespers,” I said. “Dad will notice if I’m not there.”

“Okay.”

But we didn’t let go.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see the stars overhead.

“We should, um.” I tried not to think about how she felt. “We should go.”

We kissed again. And again after that.

The stars were all around us, spinning, whirling, carrying me off with them into the sky.

By the time we finally left those hills, kissing Christa was the only thing I ever wanted to do.

PART 2

If I Was Your Girlfriend

CHAPTER 5

“So did you full-on hook up or just make out?”

“Shut it, Lori!” I darted my head from side to side. No one was close enough to hear, but still. “Discretion, please!”

Lori laughed. “I need to know if it counts toward the tally. Three hookups, remember?”

“Well, this definitely counts as one.”

“Mmm, I’m not sure. Did you only go to first base?”

I put my hands on my hips, tucking the ball of pale purple thread I was untangling into my palm. “That’s none of your business!”

“Yeah, right.” Lori laughed again.

She had a point. I’d been dying to tell Lori what happened ever since Christa and I stopped kissing last night. Actually, maybe even before that. I vaguely remembered looking forward to telling Lori about kissing Christa while I was still actively in the process of kissing Christa.

But I had to wait. By the time we got to vespers that night the meeting was already halfway over, and there was no chance to talk. Christa and I had slunk in through the shadows from the candlelight while Señor Suarez played hymns on a beautiful old twelve-string guitar. We’d kept our heads bent as if we were praying. Dad didn’t say anything about it, so he must’ve thought we were there the whole time.

All through the prayers and the singing, it was impossible to act normal. I kept running my fingers over my lips and sneaking glances at Christa. She was glancing at me, too.

After vespers, we all walked back to the old church in a big group. Then we waited in line to use one of the two indoor toilets. (Everyone hated the porta-potties. Some of the guys had started peeing outside so they wouldn’t have to wait in line. It was so gross.)

After that we went to bed in the dark again. All around us, people talked and laughed and acted as if it were any other night. For them, I guess it was.

Now, finally, I had my chance to tell Lori all the details. We were sitting on the blanket outside the work site. In a couple of hours we’d meet with the local girls and teach them a simple lanyard knot to make friendship bracelets. That should keep them busy for a few days at least. We had to sort the thread first, though. It had come out of Lori’s suitcase pocket in a big tangled pile.

“It’s weird,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve ever seriously been into a girl, and the thing is, I don’t remember ever liking a guy as much as I like her. So what’s that about? I mean, I could be just as into a guy, right? I’ve been into guys before, but not this much. What I’m saying is, this doesn’t mean I’m not bi anymore, does it?”

I’d never thought this much about what it really meant to be bi. I should probably be talking to Christa about it instead of Lori, since Christa would relate more, but I couldn’t exactly analyze our relationship with her.

I’d already told Lori all about Christa’s boyfriend situation, though, and Lori, at least, seemed to think it was perfectly normal. Apparently her mom was always watching some old TV show where couples were constantly taking breaks and having flings and fighting with their significant others about it. Once Lori told me that, I actually felt weirdly better about the whole situation.

“Well?” I asked Lori now. “What do you think?”

Lori looked up from the threads that wound between her fingers. “I’ve got to be honest, Aki, babe, I didn’t quite follow all that.”

“It’s only—I should know by now, shouldn’t I? If I’m straight or gay or bi or, I don’t know, whatever? I mean, I’m fifteen already. If I haven’t figured this out yet, am I ever going to?”

Lori frowned. “I don’t know. I think I’ve always known I was straight. I never thought I might be anything else, at least. Well, there was that girl at camp one time who I thought I had a crush on but we were, like, eight, so...”

“Yeah, see? You’re supposed to have always known. Crap. What if I never hook up with a guy again? Then how will I be sure?”

Lori put her thread down. “Don’t you want to hook up with her again?”

“Oh, well I mean, yeah, of course. I’m only thinking ahead.”

“Since we’ve only been here for a day, I’d recommend concentrating on the girl at hand.” Lori poked through the pile to find the blue strands. “You know you’re a total badass, by the way. Going to first base lesbian-style your very first day in an exotic land.”

I grinned. “No one’s ever called me a badass before.”

“Get used to it, badass.” Lori bumped my shoulder, making me drop the lanyard strands I’d been sorting. I bumped her back. “Now I’ve gotta get moving on my own end of the bargain so we can both be badasses.”

“Yeah? With who? Paul?”

“No, actually, I’m—”

“Wait, Paul’s a badass? Since when?”

A shadow loomed over us. I looked up slowly, worried one of the chaperones had caught us cursing.

Nope. It was Christa.

I beamed up at her.

“Hiiii.” I could hear the breathiness in my voice but I was helpless to make it go away. Next to me, Lori chortled.

“Hiiii,” Lori whispered so only I could hear.

I bumped her shoulder again. “Shut up.”

“No, Paul’s not a badass.” Lori giggled. “We were just talking about how last night—”

“Shut up.” I bumped her shoulder harder this time, but Christa didn’t seem fazed.

“So, uh.” Christa twirled a lock of hair around her finger. I still couldn’t get over how cute she was. “What’s with all the thread and whatnot?”

Lori told her about the jewelry project while I kept smiling dorkily.

“We’re sorting this stuff now,” Lori said when she was done explaining. “You can help if you want.”

“Sure, totally.” Christa dropped down next to us on the blanket. Her jeans were caked with dirt. She must’ve been working on the fence. I was trying to stay away from both dirt and paint since I’d had to borrow clothes from Lori again. But that meant I couldn’t do any actual work, so I’d been alternating between setting up for the jewelry class and walking around acting as if I had somewhere to be.

Christa pulled some thread out of the pile and tried to straighten it out. I watched her hands move, her fingers running delicately over the strands. Her palm had a blue and purple design on it today. A sun and moon drawn in marker. It was cool that she did that sort of thing. She had a true artist’s spirit. Not like me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d created something new.

I reached out and stroked her finger with mine. Then I got nervous—what if she thought that was weird?—and pulled away. I dipped my hand back into the pile to get more lanyard thread instead.

Christa reached into the pile, too. Her fingers slipped under the tangles of thread until her hand was touching mine.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling too obviously. It didn’t work.

“You guys.” Lori laughed. “You are way too cute together.”

“Lori! Shhh!” I tried to put my hand over her mouth, but she pulled away, laughing.

I gave Christa a sheepish grin. She snickered.

“I’m not a fan of the word cute,” Christa said. “Little kids are cute. I prefer to associate myself with more mature words. Let’s say charming.”

“Sweet,” I suggested.

“Adorable.”

“Delightful.”

“Quixotic.”

“Quixotic?” I tilted my head down at her. “I don’t think that means the same thing as cute.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but it’s a cool word anyway. You and me, we’re the quixotic-est.”

My chest got warm when she said that. Before I could think of a witty rejoinder, I saw a new figure coming toward us. Jake, with a paper and pen in his hand.

“Hey, you guys.” He squatted down on the ground across from us. He looked nervous. “I came to see if you wanted to sign my petition.”

“A petition? What’s it about?” I craned my neck, but he was holding the paper too far back for us to see. I’d signed online petitions before, but I didn’t remember ever seeing an actual physical petition.

“It’s for one of the planks they’re voting on at the national conference,” Jake said. “I’m trying to get a core mass of youth to sign on before I present it to the delegates.”

“‘A core mass of youth’?” I eyed Jake warily. I couldn’t imagine getting worked up over anything that included the words plank or delegates or national conference. Social Studies class was my daydreaming time.

“Which plank is it?” Lori asked. Jake handed her the paper, and Christa and I leaned in to look.

Lori read it out loud. “Resolved: To recognize and perform marriages between same-gender couples.” She looked up at Jake. “This is about gay marriage?”

“Yeah.” Jake’s head bobbed eagerly, but his hand trembled where he held the pen. “Holy Life is finally putting together an official, national policy on whether to perform wedding ceremonies for LGBTQIA people.”

Lori counted the letters off on her fingers. “Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer—wait, is it queer or is it something else?”

“It’s queer or questioning.” Jake turned pink. “And intersex and asexual.”

“I’ll definitely sign that.” Lori grabbed the pen and scribbled her name. “It’s dumb that they’re even having to vote on this.”

Jake looked like he wanted to kiss Lori. “Thank you. Wow, thank you so much.”

“Who else has signed it so far?” I asked.

“Well.” Jake pointed down at the paper. There was only one name at the top of the list. “Just me, actually.”

“Are we the first people you’ve asked to sign?” Lori frowned.

“Uh.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “I asked some people from my church, but they weren’t up for it.”

“What, like that guy Brian from last night?” I shook my head. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a tool.”

“I would never have asked Brian.” Jake shook his head. “I asked Hannah, and Olivia, and Emma. None of them wanted to put their name down.”

“What? None of them? That’s so dumb.” Lori waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Don’t let them get to you. We’ll all sign it.”

“Uh.” Christa drew back, hooking her thumbs into her glittered belt. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t. If my parents found out, I’d be in huge trouble.”

Lori stared at Christa, openmouthed. I did, too, at first. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should be careful myself. I didn’t want to deal with my parents on this, either.

“Whatever,” Lori said. “Everyone from our church will totally sign. Right, Aki?”

“Uh. I don’t know.”

I studied the petition in Lori’s hand. I didn’t exactly keep up with church politics, but even before I figured out I liked girls, I knew it was stupid for there to be rules about who could get married and who couldn’t.

“I don’t know if everyone will sign it,” I said, reaching for the pen. “But I will.”

Jake grinned. “You rock, Aki.”

“Why does she rock?” Lori asked as I signed my name. “What about me?”

“You both rock, but it especially rocks for her to sign it ’cause her dad’s a minister. And a conference delegate.”

“So?” I handed the petition back to Jake. I was getting nervous now. Who did he plan on showing this to?

“It’s cool, that’s all.” Jake tucked the petition back into his bag. “You sure you can’t sign, Christa?”

“I’m sure.” Christa climbed to her feet. Some of the glitter from her belt had fallen onto our blanket. It shimmered. “I’m going to see if they need help outside. See you guys later.”

She left, and Jake followed her, waving thanks to Lori and me. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lori turned to me, her voice lowered to a whisper that was approaching a hiss.

“Why won’t she sign the dang petition?” Lori looked incredulous. “You have to support gay marriage if you’re a gay person, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s complicated. She doesn’t want her parents to know.”

“So what? Your parents don’t know you’re gay, but you signed it.”

“I’m not gay,” I whispered back. “I think maybe I’m bi, that’s all.”

“‘Maybe’?” Lori whispered. “What, now that you’ve finally actually done something with a girl, it’s ‘maybe’?”

“No. I don’t know.” I sighed. “That’s complicated, too.”

“I don’t see what’s complicated. She’s gay. She should sign a stupid gay rights petition.”

“She’s not gay. She’s bi.”

“You know what I mean.”

“All I’m saying is, there’s a difference.” I dump the last lanyard threads into their piles. I was getting annoyed.

“I mean, okay.” Lori looked halfway contrite. “I know. But I don’t see what the big deal is about signing this petition thing.”

“Well, yeah, because you’re straight. You can’t get what it’s like for Christa and me.”

Lori got quiet after that.

Soon the kids started showing up for our jewelry class, and Lori and I had to stop talking. But our class that day wound up being scary. We were halfway through teaching friendship knots when Guadalupe, one of the little girls, started hacking out of nowhere. I could tell it was an asthma attack because I’d seen the same thing happen to a boy at the clinic last year. That kid had sucked on an inhaler until he was fine, but when I looked around frantically for Guadalupe’s inhaler, it turned out she didn’t have one. I took her over to a cool spot under a tree and tried to soothe her until her breathing started to calm down a little. After that I tried to go find her parents but she wanted me to stay and help her finish her friendship bracelet instead. Kids were so weird.

For the rest of the day, Christa was super quiet. I could tell she was upset. I tried to talk to her at dinner, but she barely answered me. Eventually I gave up and sat alone at the long table, eating toast and acting as if I wasn’t totally depressed.

Vespers was even worse.

Like the night before, we met in the minister’s living room, piled on the floor in rows while the adults sat on the couches above us. First we watched the news on TV for a while, even though we couldn’t understand it since it was in Spanish. The chaperones had this thing about us “not losing sight of what’s happening in the wider world,” but I thought it was mainly because they didn’t have service on their phones, either, and they were desperate for information. That night, the news showed a sad story about some really young American soldiers who’d been killed overseas and how their families back home were coping. We all got depressed even without totally understanding what the news anchors were saying.

I think the chaperones must’ve realized the news was kind of a downer, because Dad turned the TV off quickly and went straight to leading prayers and songs by candlelight. The local minister’s wife, Señora Perez, was trying to teach us songs in Spanish while Señor Suarez played his gorgeous old guitar. That part might’ve been kind of fun if I wasn’t sitting right across from Christa. She studiously looked around in every direction but mine.

“Let’s sing ‘If I Had a Hammer,’” Dad said from the couch. The other adults in the room laughed. The rest of us groaned. “If I Had a Hammer” was this old, boring song that people like my grandad loved.

We started off in those droning voices you have to use when you sing old-people songs. When we got to the end of the first verse, Drew hopped to his feet and went to stand next to Señor Suarez. When the second verse started—it’s about what you’d do if you had a bell instead of a hammer (I told you this song was dumb)—Drew held up one hand as if he was dangling a bell, then pretended to whack the invisible bell with a stick. We all giggled through our singing. As the song went on, Drew kept banging on the bell, and his gestures got more and more elaborate. He pranced around the room while everyone laughed even harder. I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out of my head when Drew got to the next verse, about what you’d do if you had a song, and he started waving his arms dramatically, opera singer–style. Everyone was laughing so hard they could barely sing.

Everyone except me. I watched Drew carefully, and after the first verse, I could tell his heart wasn’t in this little show.

There was something behind his smile. A glimpse of what I’d seen that day in the airport.

He wasn’t enjoying this. He was only playing the part.

He made everybody else believe it, though. Dad was watching Drew with an indulgent tilt to his head. If I’d acted like that much of a fool during vespers, Dad never would’ve let me hear the end of it.

Drew’s life had been perfect when he was my age. He’d done well in school, he’d had a ton of friends, he’d played ball, and he’d always been grinning about something. But all that had changed when he started college. I should’ve figured out that something was up, but I hadn’t even known there was a problem until he broke down and told me. I was too obsessed with everything that was wrong in my own life. I hadn’t even really thought about Drew’s.

It hurt, now, to think about what a bad sister I’d been. I turned away so I couldn’t see him.

Maybe by accident, or maybe not, my eyes landed on Christa.

This time, she was looking at me, too.

She looked away just as fast. But I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

Dad dismissed us when the song was over, and we all climbed to our feet and started down the dark path to the old church. Everyone was still laughing and talking about how hilarious my brother was. I walked with Lori and our friends, but I never stopped watching Christa. She was walking alone at the edge of the group.

Above us, the open field of stars stretched for millions of miles. Trillions.

In two minutes, we’d be inside the church, under the dark, thick ceiling with everybody else. We’d use our shaky flashlight beams to find our spots. On the girls’ side of the room, everyone had laid their sleeping bags perpendicular to each other so our feet wouldn’t wind up in each others’ faces. It hadn’t worked. Worse, now that we’d been here for a few days, I was smelling more than feet.

I didn’t want to be in that room. I wanted to stay out here. Under those stars.

With Christa.

We were almost at the church by the time I screwed up the courage. I tried to act casual, sidling up next to her with my hands tucked into the pockets of my borrowed jeans.

Christa glanced at me, but didn’t say anything.

“Hey,” I said.

She didn’t meet my eyes. “Hey.”

After another minute of walking in silence, I said, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.”

“Is this because of Jake’s petition? Are you annoyed that I signed it?”

“No.” She looked away. “I wish I could have.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say. I wished she’d signed it, too. “Do you seriously think your parents would find out?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But they could. It’s easier when I’m at home. They don’t have a reason to question whether I’m straight or not, you know? But with me down here...”

Right. She meant that back home, her dumb boyfriend Steven made her life easier.

I didn’t want to hear any more about how great Steven was. It felt as if she’d picked him over me before I’d even had a chance. Maybe she thought I wasn’t worth bothering with after all. The most we ever could’ve had was a summer fling, after all.

I was so frustrated I could’ve yelled. Instead I swallowed hard.

Maybe this was going to be it for me. One night. One kiss. That was the whole story of my big summer lesbian experiment.

“Well if your boyfriend’s so great, what am I even doing here?” I said.

“Shhh.” Christa wrapped her arms around her chest and swiveled her head from side to side. Checking to see if anyone was listening, probably. I tried to think back to see if I’d said anything incriminating.

Wait, though—incriminating? Not wanting your family to know was one thing, but Christa was acting as though there was something wrong with just talking to me. Even though the night we’d met, she’d been the one acting all flirty.

“This isn’t about him,” Christa whispered. “We’re taking a break, remember? I’m only saying that it’s really convenient when I don’t have to worry about my parents finding out I’m, you know, not completely straight.”

“Would it be so terrible if they did? I mean, they’re going to have to know eventually, right?”

I realized as I said it, though, that her parents didn’t have to find out, not ever. That was the thing about being bi. If Christa only ever told them about going out with guys, she really could keep it a secret forever.

I guess that was true for me, too. I’d been thinking of coming out to my parents as inevitable, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I could stay hidden, too, if I wanted to.

Did I want to?

“You don’t understand.” Christa turned to look me right in the eyes. “My parents aren’t cool the way your dad is. After I first got my period, my mom sat me down and gave me a speech about how I had to make absolutely sure I never had sex, because if I got pregnant, they wouldn’t support me. That’s literally what she said. ‘We won’t support you.’”

Wow. I couldn’t imagine my parents saying anything that awful. Not that they’d love me getting pregnant or anything, but they’d help me if it happened, I was sure of that much. “Have they said specific stuff about what would happen if you were gay?”

“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

“¡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.

The door swung open. Christa lowered her camera. Inside, the building looked just as old as it had outside, but it was far from deserted. In fact, all I could see no matter which way I looked were people, waiting. There must’ve been at least thirty of them, mostly women and kids, swatting at the mosquitoes that buzzed around them.

There were only a few chairs, so most people were sitting on the floor or standing. At first I couldn’t see what they were waiting for, but then I spotted a desk strewn with papers in the far corner of the room. Behind it was a door that must’ve opened into another room. A young woman in a button-down shirt sat behind the desk, talking to a woman with a baby on her lap. The baby was crying. The woman behind the desk was trying to explain something, but the woman with the baby was arguing with her. I wished I could understand them.

An older woman came up to Christa and me, speaking rapid Spanish. She was wearing a stained gray sweatshirt and holding a jar of bandages, and she didn’t look particularly happy to see us. I dipped my head in an apology and murmured “Lo siento” before backing out the door with Christa.

“Did you see any medical equipment in there?” I asked when we got outside.

“Some bandages, I think?” Christa glanced back over her shoulder. “Most of the equipment was probably in the other room. That must be where all the doctors and nurses are.”

I had a feeling that wasn’t the case.

The clinic where I’d volunteered back home wasn’t anything fancy, but it was neat and mosquito-free. And it had rooms full of equipment. Machines that the orderlies wheeled around. Drawers and drawers full of medicine and syringes.

I didn’t know what to think of any of it. Maybe I should ask Dad. He probably understood it all better than I did.

“I think we lost them.” Christa pointed up the street. We could still see the rest of our group, but they were so far ahead of us now, we couldn’t tell who was who.

I didn’t actually mind, though. There was only one person I’d been looking forward to spending time with today, and she was standing right in front of me.

“Well.” I turned to meet Christa’s eyes. “If they’re that far off, I guess there’s no point trying to catch up.”

Christa smiled.

“I’m quite confident,” she said, “that we can have a lot more fun on our own.”

CHAPTER 7

We spent the rest of the morning exploring the town by ourselves, stopping so Christa could take photos whenever we saw something interesting. And now that I was actually paying attention, there was a lot of interesting stuff. Mudanza was beautiful, with the hills in the distance and wide, open streets. Everyone we saw smiled and waved at us. One man even tipped his hat. When Christa asked a few women standing in front of a shop if she could take their photo, they beamed and twisted into so many different poses Christa finally had to tell them she was running out of storage space on her camera.

I asked her questions about the photos she was taking, and it turned out that was really interesting, too. She had a whole method she’d learned from classes and from reading tons of articles online.

“This camera shoots on film,” she told me, holding up the old black-and-white camera. “I only have so much film, so I have to be really choosy about what I shoot. I’m using it for artsier shots, where there are cool shadows and stuff. Those are the ones I want to print out and play around with in the darkroom once we get back home.”

“Darkrooms are still a thing?”

“Yeah! I mean, not many are still around, but my school has a tiny one in the art department. They have a way fancier one at the school I wanted to go to, but my parents wouldn’t let me apply. Hey, did you ever think about going there? Your parents would probably be cool with it. It’s called MHSA, the Maryland High School for the Arts. It’s a public school, so it’s free, but you have to apply, and they only take the very best. They have lots of different programs. Visual art, theater, music.”

Sweat broke out along the back of my neck. I should’ve known this might come up. “I, uh...”

I could tell her the truth. This would be the perfect time to tell her the truth.

But I didn’t want her to know I was so bad at writing music that I hadn’t even gotten in. Besides, I’d have to admit I’d lied to her, and right when things were going so well between us.

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