In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.

Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.

In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.

ROBIN TALLEY is the author of the highly acclaimed Lies We Tell Ourselves, which was a New York Times bestseller, as well as What We Left Behind, As I Descended and Our Own Private Universe. Robin lives in Washington, DC, with her wife and their daughter. You can find her on the web at www.robintalley.com or on Twitter, @robin_talley.

Also by Robin Talley

LIES WE TELL OURSELVES

WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND

AS I DESCENDED

OUR OWN PRIVATE UNIVERSE

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Robin Talley 2018

Robin Talley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9781474069564

To the rich community of queer writers, editors and publishers

who changed the world so many times over and are still changing it today.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Who’s Who and What’s What

Acknowledgments

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter 1
Friday, September 15, 2017

It took all of Abby’s willpower not to kiss her.

She’d gotten pretty good lately at staring at Linh without making it obvious. Most of the time, at least. Some days were harder than others, though, and today might be the hardest yet.

They’d just gotten back from a Starbucks run, and Abby kept darting looks at Linh out of the corner of her eye. They were sitting only inches apart on the lumpy old couch in the senior lounge, and as Linh sipped her drink and scribbled in her notebook, Abby couldn’t shake the memory of precisely how the echo of iced coffee tasted on Linh’s lips.

She knew she should stop thinking about this. Or at the very least, she should pretend to stop. She and Linh were officially “just friends” now, for reasons Abby was still trying to forget, and she was supposed to be doing her very best to act like that arrangement was perfectly fine with her.

So as she sat next to Linh, her feet tucked under her, Abby really did try to focus on the laptop screen balanced on her knees. Even though it was basically impossible to tear her eyes away from the spot where Linh’s soft brown hair curled into the nape of her perfectly sloped neck.

The senior lounge was nothing special—just a tiny room in a far-off corner of the fourth floor, with a few couches and a dusty TV that had probably last worked in the nineties—and everyone at school except Abby and Linh seemed to have forgotten it existed. Which made it the perfect place for Abby to secretly pine after her ex-girlfriend, since no one else was around to notice and make fun of her for it.

“I can’t believe Mr. Knight already wants my first lab done by Monday.” Linh wrinkled her nose down at her notes. Abby didn’t know if it was good or bad that Linh was so oblivious to her silent yearning. “Don’t the teachers know fall of senior year is supposed to be about college applications? We shouldn’t have to start our projects until next semester.”

Abby didn’t want to talk about college applications or senior projects, but she did like it when Linh made that cute wrinkly-nose face. “Yeah, you’re totally right.”

“Do you have something due next week, too? What did you pick for your topic anyway?”

Abby scooted over to peer down at what Linh was writing. It was a blatant and probably pathetic attempt to get close to her, but Linh didn’t seem to mind. She glanced up at Abby with a smile and went back to jotting notes about molecular techniques.

When they were this close, it was so easy to remember how it used to feel. Kissing her. Being encircled in a pair of arms that had no intention of letting her go.

Kissing was Abby’s favorite activity in the entire world. It was pure sensation. When you were kissing someone, all you had to do was follow your instincts. There was no point stopping to worry about what came next.

That was the best part of being in love. The way it set the rest of the world on mute.

“So for real, what are you going to write? Poetry?” Linh finally met her eyes, and Abby blushed. Ugh, as if she wasn’t transparent enough already.

Not that Linh seemed to mind that, either.

“Nah, I’ve decided my poetry sucks.” Abby tried to arrange her face into a casual smile. They were halfway through their free period, and she was determined to get through the rest without giving herself away. “In eighth grade I had to write a love poem for French, and the best I could do was Je t’aime, ma puce, je t’aime tellement.”

Linh took Chinese, not French, so she asked, “What does puce mean?”

“Flea.” They both laughed.

It would be so easy to close the space between them. Last year, that was exactly what Abby would’ve done. Linh would’ve leaned in, too, and they would’ve kissed, and everything would’ve been perfect. No need for pining or pretending.

But this wasn’t last year, so Abby forced herself to keep talking instead. “No, but in France calling someone your flea is the same as calling them, like, sweetie or something.”

“You wrote a poem about how much you adore your sweet pet flea?” Linh grinned.

“Basically.”

Their faces were still only inches apart, but Linh had made no effort to move away. Was Abby imagining it, or was there some decidedly nonplatonic tension in the air this afternoon?

When they’d broken up, back in June, Abby had been sure it was temporary. They were both going out of town for the summer, Linh to visit family in Vietnam and Abby to creative writing camp in Massachusetts, but once they were back home in DC she was positive they’d put their summer-of-breakup behind them.

So far, though, there had been no definitive progress in that direction. Sometimes the two of them still acted mildly flirty with each other, and sometimes they acted like friends. But since Linh never gave any clear signals of what she wanted, they seemed stuck in this constant awkward limbo.

And so, once again, Abby kept talking.

“It was the only term of endearment I could find that was always female.” Abby tried to sound breezy. “You know how I was back then—all about the gay.”

“Oh, as opposed to now.” Linh smiled again.

Okay, this really, really felt like flirting. And more than just the mild kind.

Abby loved flirting almost as much as she loved kissing. She loved all the trappings of romance. Sending flowers on Valentine’s Day. Picking each other up for dances. Posing for couple-y selfies and going for long walks in the park hand in hand on sunny afternoons.

And being held. Abby loved being held most of all.

She should know better than to get her hopes up. It had been months since there was anything romantic between her and Linh. Still...

“Well, I have a more nuanced understanding of gendered nouns these days.” Abby held her gaze. She remembered how to flirt, too. “I’m still all about the gay, though.”

“Obviously.” Linh laughed again. “So when’s your project plan due anyway?”

Oh, who cared about the stupid project plan?

Abby broke eye contact. She flopped back against the couch, and the moment between them evaporated in an instant.

Everything had been going so well. Why did Linh have to keep asking about her project? Sometimes Abby wished she went to one of those schools you saw in shows, where everyone cut class and no one cared about homework.

“I keep forgetting.” Abby turned away. “I just need to pick my genre.”

“What? You don’t even know when it’s due?” Linh’s tone shifted from flirty to concerned. “Do you seriously not have any ideas at all?”

Abby squirmed, but this time she didn’t laugh.

Fawcett was a magnet school, and all the seniors had to do a yearlong thesis project. Linh was doing a big, complicated experiment Abby didn’t understand for her Molecular Techniques and Neuroscience Research class, and Abby had chosen to do hers in Advanced Creative Writing. She was supposed to write a novel, or a collection of short stories or poems that was long enough to be a novel.

Usually, for Abby, coming up with creative writing ideas meant choosing from the dozens of possibilities that had already been circling through her mind. This time, though, she was at a loss. The creative part of her brain had fizzled sometime around the day she and Linh broke up.

Or maybe her entire brain had fizzled. That would explain a lot, come to think of it. Lately, Abby seemed incapable of remembering anything she was supposed to do except obsess over her ex.

“This is a big deal, Abby.” Linh sat up, putting way too much space between them. “I turned in my plan two weeks ago. If you don’t get started soon, how will you have time left for your college applications?”

“I know, I know.” Abby tried to think of some explanation that would get Linh off her back. “My brother’s been sucking up all my time lately. I keep having to take him to dance class since my parents are always out of town.”

The truth was, just thinking about college applications made her shudder. She hated how competitive everyone got over that stuff. As though they were all suddenly reduced to SATs and GPAs and other quantitative acronyms that had nothing to do with who they really were. And the essays weren’t any better. How could anyone seriously sum up their view on the world in five hundred words?

Senior projects were the same way. Everyone at Fawcett obsessed over them as if they were curing cancer or painting the Sistine Chapel instead of doing glorified science fair projects and book reports.

“Hey, maybe I could get credit for writing Broken Dreams fanfic.” Abby grinned. “Do you think I could just write a bunch of short stories about Velma being a lesbian and change the names?”

That did the trick. Linh laughed and pulled off Abby’s cat-eye glasses, balancing them on the tip of her own nose.

Okay, this couldn’t only be happening in Abby’s head. They were definitely flirting.

“You and your fifties obsession.” Linh flipped the glasses up at Abby, giggling. “That show’s been canceled for, what, a year?”

“Two years. Anyway, Broken Dreams wasn’t the fifties, it was the early sixties.” Abby smiled and grabbed her glasses back. As much as she wanted to keep up the playful vibe, she couldn’t let Linh have her glasses. Abby loved how they looked, but she could also barely see without them.

“Is Broken Dreams fanfic even a thing?” Linh asked.

“Definitely.” Abby slid her glasses back on and reached for her laptop. “Want to read about Walter and Earl getting it on in the back of the accounting office?”

“Ew. Although kind of, now that you mention it.” Linh pulled the computer onto her lap and started a search.

Abby laughed. In ninth grade, she and Linh used to read fanfic together every day. They were obsessed with a dumb show called The Flighted Ones. Their favorite pairing was Owen/Jack, or “Ojack,” as the true fans called them. Abby had stayed up late at night writing long, overwrought stories describing Ojack’s first date, or their first kiss, or their First Time. (This was back before Abby had had a First Time of her own, so writing fictional versions felt deliciously scandalous.)

“Ha, look at this.” Linh turned the screen so Abby could see it. “Someone made a list of all the gay stuff that ever happened on this show. Do you remember a woman trying to lick Velma’s neck?”

“What? No!” As Abby leaned in to see the screen, an ad off to the side of the main article caught her eye.

In the image, a woman in a tight red dress with a gorgeous flipped hairstyle stood behind a bed. In front of her another woman, wearing an old-fashioned skirt and blouse, was lying down. The words I PREFER GIRLS loomed beside them in giant red font.

Abby pointed. “What’s that?”

“Huh, I don’t know.” Linh clicked on the image. “Are those characters from Broken Dreams?”

“I don’t think so. Those look like fifties outfits to me.”

If there was one thing Abby knew, it was fifties fashion. She’d been a devotee since middle school. She used to make her own fifties-inspired outfits, starting with simple wrap tops and pencil skirts, until the year her grandparents gave her a sewing machine for Hanukkah and she upgraded to sailor suits and cocktail dresses.

Finding the old patterns and sewing them was fun, but it took forever. After she’d spent months making her prom dress sophomore year, Abby decided she’d had enough of ironing musty old fabrics and sorting through tangled piles of thread. Now her sewing machine sat in the attic and she ordered retro-style clothes online.

Which meant the outfits were the first thing Abby noticed when Linh clicked through to the page with a bigger version of the same image. The women under the I Prefer Girls label were dressed simply—a clingy sleeveless dress on one, a pink blouse and black skirt on the other. The blouse was unbuttoned nearly down to the woman’s waist, so you could see her slip beneath. Or maybe that was her bra.

The page’s headline read “The Best of 1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction.”

“Wait a second. Is this seriously from the fifties?” Abby pulled the computer onto her own lap. “Is that a book cover?”

“I didn’t know they had lesbian porn back then.” Linh leaned in to see. “Oh, wait. There’s another one—Wow. Scroll down.”

Abby scrolled. Below the picture of I Prefer Girls was another cover. This one was called Warped Women, and it also featured a woman in a red dress. She was holding a whip and leaning threateningly over another woman who was crouched on the floor. The crouching woman’s blouse was unbuttoned, and underneath she was wearing a black lace bra. Her left boob was basically hanging out of it.

“What kind of books are these?” Linh’s mouth was agape.

Abby kept scrolling. Image after image, with more of the same. The covers showed women in varying states of undress, and they had titles like When Lesbians Strike and My Wife the Dyke and Twilight Girl. The captions beside each cover listed publication dates—1963, 1955, 1959, 1965...

“Fifties lesbian porn.” Linh laughed harder than ever. “Hey, I think we’ve found your genre!”

“Can you even imagine?” Abby kept scrolling. The images got sexier the farther she went. “I can’t believe they got away with this. I mean, there aren’t even books like this today, as far as I know. Plus, they had censors in the fifties. That’s why all the movies sucked.”

“Here, let’s make a new one. For your senior project.” Linh leaped to her feet and grabbed the cement column that stood next to the couch. She pulled down the neckline of her T-shirt, stuck out her chest, lifted one knee onto a cushion and tilted her head forward, imitating the woman on the cover of the last book on the page, Dormitory Women. “Did I get it right?”

All Abby could think was that there should be a law banning your ex-girlfriend from doing sexy poses in front of you before you’d officially gotten back together. Seriously, this had to be a legitimate form of torture.

But she did her best to keep acting nonchalant as she held up the computer screen to compare. Linh did look kind of like the woman on the painted cover, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, even though Linh’s warm eyes and inviting smile were a thousand times prettier than the cover model’s. Not to mention that Linh was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, and the Dormitory Women model was in a tight white blouse and severely belted skirt.

“Hmm—I think your hand needs to be lower down...” Abby carefully adjusted the position of Linh’s hand on her thigh and brushed her hair forward over one shoulder, trying to act as if her intentions were solely artistic. As if touching Linh didn’t activate any still-in-love-with-her segments of Abby’s brain, or other body parts. “Pout your lips more. There, that’s perfect.” Abby lifted her phone and snapped a photo.

“You do one next.” Linh pointed her chin toward the laptop screen.

“Okay!” Abby scrolled until she found a cover she liked. The book was called Woman Doctor, and the cover showed a woman, a psychiatrist apparently, sitting in a chair taking notes on a pad while a younger woman with curly blond hair lay on a couch behind her. The whole design seemed to be some bizarre male fantasy, because the patient appeared to have gone to her therapy appointment wearing an old-fashioned slip and nothing else.

Abby’s hair was brown, straight and boringly plain instead of blond, thick and curly like the woman on the cover’s, and she was wearing a green shirtdress instead of a tight-fitting slip. Still, she tried to imitate the patient’s pose, throwing herself facedown on the couch and twisting so that her butt and her boobs were angled toward Linh at the same time. “Ow. This is not a natural position. Ow.”

“That’s awesome, though. You’ve almost got it, but you need to pull your hair over your face more.”

Abby pulled. “How’s that?”

“Better.” Linh laughed and reached for her phone. Abby laughed, too, lifting her head from the cushion. “Hey! You’re breaking the pose. I didn’t get a photo yet.”

“I can’t help it. I’m a warped woman!”

Linh was still laughing, but when she sat back down she moved to the other couch, putting two armrests between them. Abby sat up, trying not to let her disappointment show, and tugged the hem of her dress back down.

“I want to read one of those books.” Linh pointed to Abby’s computer. “I bet they’re hilarious. Plus, those covers are pretty hot.”

“The covers are basically just ads for cleavage.”

“There are worse things to advertise.”

“True.” Abby flushed. “Let’s find an ebook.”

She balanced her computer on her knees and turned so Linh could see the screen, then ran a search for lesbian pulp fiction. While the results loaded, Abby drummed her fingers on the edge of her laptop and tried to think of a good excuse for her to move to the other couch, too.

“Huh, okay, so there’s like five million results.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Here, that one has a list.”

Abby clicked through and skimmed the article. “I was right about the censors. This says the books basically always ended with someone either turning straight or dying. Otherwise the publishers could’ve gone to jail.”

“Whatever, I don’t care. I just want to read the sex scenes.”

Abby laughed, delighted, and scrolled down. The article had a list of books at the bottom, with more of those ridiculous covers. “These titles are so weird. Strange Sisters. In the Shadows. Voluptuous Vixens.”

“Voluptuous Vixens?” There was so much glee in Linh’s voice that Abby giggled, too.

“Edge of Twilight. The Third Sex. A Love So Strange.”

“Boring. See if you can find that Warped Women one.”

“Hey, wait, the article says this other one’s good. And it’s free to download.” Abby cleared her throat and read.

“The classic and enduringly popular novel of two young girls coming of age in Greenwich Village. The story’s heroines, Paula and Elaine, stand alongside such classic lesbian pulp characters as Beebo Brinker and Leda Taylor.”

Linh cracked up. “Beebo? What kind of names are these?”

“Fifties names. Here, get this—the author’s name is ‘Marian Love.’ So cheesy. Her book came out in 1956. It’s called Women of the Twilight Realm.”

“Why do so many of these books have Twilight in their name? Is there lesbian vampire subtext?”

“Well, I’m downloading it, so I guess we’ll find out. Wow, check it out, this cover is cheese-tastic, too.”

The image on the screen had rips running through it, as though someone had taken a photo of an old, beaten-up copy of the book and uploaded it as the official cover. The picture didn’t have as much cleavage as some of the other books, but Abby could tell it would still have been shocking by fifties standards. It showed two women sitting on a bed together, one with short brown hair and one with long blond waves. The blond one, dressed in a filmy nightgown, was crying onto the brown-haired woman’s shoulder. The brown-haired woman was smoking, wearing a necktie, patting the other woman’s shoulder and staring at her boobs. Above the title a tiny line of type read “They were women only a strange love could satisfy. A daring novel of the third sex.”

“I didn’t know people were allowed to smoke on book covers,” Linh said, studying the screen.

“Everyone smoked everywhere in the fifties. They didn’t know it was gross yet.”

“Whatever. Turn to the beginning. I want to read about the strange love these two ladies get up to.”

Abby clicked into the text and read the first line out loud.

“Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.”

Abby stopped reading. “What’s cellophane?”

“You don’t remember that song from Chicago? ‘Mr. Cellophane’?”

“Oh, right.” Abby and Linh had both done theater in middle school, before their schedules got so packed. “Well, is cellophane bulletproof or something? Why would you wrap your heart in it?”

“How would I know? Come on, find the sexy parts.”

“Here, you can look.” Abby passed her the computer.

“Okay...” Linh clicked through the pages. After a minute, she frowned at the screen. “This is all just talking so far. Everyone’s sitting around in a bar with all their clothes on.” She clicked again and again, still peering down. “And...that’s the end of chapter one already. What kind of porn is this? These covers are false advertising.”

“Keep going. Maybe the porn’s in chapter two.”

While Linh clicked, Abby turned to her phone to look up cellophane.

The characters on the cover of Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t look that much older than Abby. She wondered who’d broken Elaine’s heart so badly that she needed to protect it.

And would that even work? Wrapping your heart in metaphorical armor? Maybe you could keep yourself whole just by concentrating hard enough.

Before she could find anything, her class-reminder chime popped onto the screen.

“Shit!” Abby’s panic bubbled, wiping away all thoughts of vintage lesbians. She snatched the computer from Linh and shoved it into her backpack. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Sloane in three minutes. Shit, shit!”

“Ms. Sloane?” Linh didn’t get up, but there was alarm in her eyes. “Isn’t she your project advisor?”

“Yes. Shit, shit!”

“Wait—is this your meeting about the project proposal? The one you still don’t have a topic for?”

Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”

“Abby, this is serious! You could get in real trouble!”

“I know, I know. I’ll figure something out on my way there.”

Abby threw open the door without waiting for Linh to say anything more and charged down the hall, ignoring the sophomores who turned to stare from the doorway of the art room.

She tried, desperately, to come up with an idea. Any idea.

Maybe she could write fanfic after all. She’d posted a Flighted Ones story back in middle school that had ninety-seven chapters, and some of them had even been good. Maybe she could pull out some of the chapters, change the names and rework them into something Ms. Sloane would find acceptable.

It wasn’t a great idea, but it was all Abby had. She raced across the hall and down the stairs to the third floor, her platform Mary Janes thundering on the tiles. She’d probably have to take the story offline before she turned in her project, in case Ms. Sloane ran one of those plagiarism searches. It would suck to lose all those reader comments, though.

“Abby?” Ms. Sloane stepped through her classroom door. Abby came to an abrupt halt. “Are you all right?”

“I’m great.” Abby tried to smile, but she could barely catch her breath.

“What were you doing? Did you go for a run during your free period?”

“Um, yes.” Abby cursed inwardly as Ms. Sloane peered down at her Mary Janes. Her creative writing teacher was an old-school lesbian, and Abby should’ve known she’d have strong opinions about sports attire.

Ms. Sloane was Indian-American, and in the wedding photo she kept on her desk, her dark curly hair was striking next to her wife’s sleek blond chignon. The effect made their matching cream-colored wedding dresses look that much more practical-lesbian-chic. It was obvious they’d planned every last detail to maximize the striking visuals while also making sure there would be no long trains to trip over or bobby pins poking their ears. The two of them probably shared a whole closet full of affordable yet top-quality and carefully coordinated running shoes.

“All right, well, come on in.” Ms. Sloane held the door open. At least she wasn’t dwelling on Abby’s feet. “I’m excited to see what you’ve got for me. The rest of the seniors have already started their projects, so we’ll have to play some catch-up. I was surprised you signed up for the last advising slot. Last year during our workshops you always tried to be ahead of the game.”

Abby tried to breathe evenly as she followed Ms. Sloane inside. This classroom was her favorite place in the whole school. It was narrow and cozy, with a long, oval-shaped table where everyone sat for their discussions. Abby used to relax the second she entered this room, but today it was having the opposite effect.

“Um, well.” She tried to think of what to say. Teachers never understood that homework couldn’t always be priority number one every second of every day. When you were deep in postbreakup withdrawal, were you seriously supposed to work ahead in every single class? “Nothing to fire up the creative muse like tight deadlines, right?”

“Wrong, in my experience. Nonetheless...” Ms. Sloane smiled and sat at the head of the long table, gesturing for Abby to sit beside her. She’d always been easy to talk to, and she was the main reason Abby had stuck with creative writing, even when the boys in last year’s workshop had made her roll her eyes into the back of her skull when she was forced to critique their pretentious wish-fulfillment hetero foreplay scenes. “So, let’s see your proposal.”

Ms. Sloane held out her hand. Abby stared at the outstretched brown palm.

Riiiiiight. She’d somehow forgotten she was supposed to turn in a written proposal.

Shit.

“Um, well...” Abby tried to act as if this was all going exactly as she’d planned. “I wanted to ask if I could have until Monday for the written portion. My computer had a meltdown last night when I was going to hit Print.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Ms. Sloane didn’t blink, but she glanced down at Abby’s backpack. A corner of her laptop poked up through the zipper. Shit, shit. “You know, I’ve been told I’m talented with computers. Why don’t you let me take a look. I’ll see if I can get the file to load, and then we can review it together here on your screen.”

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Abby tried to think rationally. What was the adult thing to do in this situation? Whatever it was, she should do that instead of freaking out.

But Ms. Sloane was wearing her you-won’t-fool-me expression. No matter what she said, Abby was going to disappoint her.

Abby gave up on being an adult and just focused on not crying. “I... I’m sorry, Ms. Sloane.”

“You’re sorry,” her teacher repeated. After a moment of pained silence, she sighed. “Abby, this isn’t like you. Last year, you turned in all your assignments early. You always came to class prepared, even eager, to join the discussions. Is anything wrong? Maybe something going on at home?”

“It’s nothing. I’m sorry. It’s senioritis, that’s all.”

“Senioritis comes in May, not September.” Ms. Sloane’s expression was so serious it was making Abby’s head hurt. “You can talk to me, Abby. If there’s a problem, I want to help.”

Ugh. Adults could seriously be the worst. If they weren’t ignoring the fact that you existed, they were falling all over themselves acting like they knew better than you.

As if Abby couldn’t be just plain heartbroken. Of course, in Ms. Sloane’s mind, there had to be “something going on at home.”

When, in reality, nothing was going on at home. That was kind of the definition of Abby’s home, in fact. She could barely remember the last time anyone in her family had voluntarily interacted with anyone else.

“No. There’s nothing.” Abby shook her head forcefully. “Can you please just take points off my grade, or whatever?”

“That’s not how senior projects work. It isn’t about earning points, it’s about creating something worthwhile. It’s about coming out of the year with a concrete result that’s meaningful to you on a personal level.”

“I know.” Abby wished desperately that she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Words like worthwhile and meaningful always made her want to hurl.

“All right, well.” Ms. Sloane leaned back in her chair and frowned. “We’ll talk through your plan today and you can email me your formal proposal over the weekend.”

“Okay.” Abby began to frantically rework her Flighted Ones story in her head.

“I must say, I’m already looking forward to reading your new work,” Ms. Sloane went on. “I know you’ve been struggling to break away from the fanfiction you used to write and create something wholly yours. Not that there’s anything wrong with fanfiction, of course—I always tell my younger students that it can be a lot of fun, and a great way to develop your writing skills—but this new project is a real opportunity for you to force yourself out of your comfort zone so you can mature as a writer. You’ve been on the verge for quite some time, and I hope that with this project you’ll truly allow your creativity to take hold.”

Shit. Ms. Sloane had seen through her again.

Abby tried to think fast, but the only story on her mind just then was Women of the Twilight Realm.

“I—um, well. I’ve been thinking lately about lesbian pulp fiction,” Abby heard herself say. “You know, those books from back in the fifties.”

“Have you?” Ms. Sloane’s eyebrows shot up. As though Abby had genuinely surprised her for the first time today.

“Yes.” Abby tried to figure out where to go from here. She’d always been good at bullshitting. “I’ve been researching the genre, and I thought it might be interesting to try to reclaim it from a modern queer perspective. I mean, apart from the gorgeous clothes the fifties were basically awful, especially for marginalized communities, so I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the books from a contemporary point of view.”

“Well, the genre’s already been reclaimed, of course.” Ms. Sloane’s usual I’m-an-expert-in-everything tone had already returned. “Although surely you came across that in your research. Lesbian-owned publishers have been rereleasing the pulp classics specifically for queer audiences since the eighties.”

“Of course.” Abby hoped she didn’t look as thrown as she felt. If that was true, she had to switch tactics fast. “Well...what I want to do is write one of these books that’s genuinely, you know—good. I want to break away from the gay tragedy trope.”

Ms. Sloane nodded. “Some would argue that many of the books from that era are already good, if that kind of value judgment is possible with literature, but I understand your perspective. It’s an unusual proposal, but I think it has a lot of potential. My concern, though, is that this could wind up simply being another fanfiction exercise for you. It’s important that your senior project be written entirely in your voice. That it be unique, not simply following a formula or imitating an existing style.”

“Oh, I agree. Ah...” Abby tried to think of what else Ms. Sloane might want to hear. “I was thinking I’d invert the formula. Take a critical look at the conventions of the genre and turn them on their heads. Examine the notions of romance and oppression and come up with something unique. Particularly in light of the election, and how so many people’s opinions on social justice seem to have started regressing in the past year or so.”

Abby only had a vague idea of what she was talking about, but it must have sounded as if she did, because Ms. Sloane raised her eyebrows again.

“All right, you’ve sold me.” Her teacher held up her fingers and began ticking things off. Abby took the hint and reached for her pencil. “You’ll still need to submit your formal proposal, and since you’re writing historical fiction, you’ll need to research the period as well as the genre. Which of the pulp books have you read so far?”

“Women of the Twilight Realm, by Marian Love.” She’d read a few sentences, at least.

“Only one? Okay, then you’ll need to read at least three more before the end of the semester. Aim for a wide range—no two books by the same author. One of the books you read should be The Price of Salt, but you can get that from the public library. Patricia Highsmith had a lot of terrible beliefs, but the writing itself is unparalleled. You’re familiar with the conventions of the genre already?”

“Totally.” Abby tried to remember what the article had said as she jotted Ms. Sloane’s instructions into her binder. “Lesbian romance novels that ended with the characters dying or turning straight.”

“Of a sort. Still, a lot of them, whether intentionally or not, also touched on the bigger issues facing the LGBTQ community in the fifties and sixties. That means you’ll need to spend even more time at the library. Read up on the bar raids, the Lavender Scare here in DC, all of it. Start a research journal to keep track of what you learn. Remember, this was pre-Stonewall and pre-second-wave feminism, so there’s a reason all the pulp authors wrote under pseudonyms—it might as well have been the Dark Ages for queer women. It was also the Jim Crow era, so you’ll need to read about racial segregation, too. The pulps were overwhelmingly white, but you’ll need to know about the real world of that time regardless. And you should study up on the overall postwar American economy while you’re at it.”

“Uh.” That was a lot of research. It was a good thing Abby liked the library.

“After you’ve made some headway, let me know and I can set up a meeting for you with a friend of mine,” Ms. Sloane went on. “He’s a historian focusing on LGBTQ political movements. He can point you to more resources.”

“All right,” Abby said, though she had no intention of meeting Ms. Sloane’s historian friend. She hated going up to strangers and asking them for stuff.

“You can work on the research over the next few weeks, but I’ll expect your proposal by email tomorrow, and an outline for the novel and at least twenty hard copy pages from your first draft a week from Monday.” Ms. Sloane stood up. “Don’t worry. We won’t critique them in the workshop until I’ve given you notes and you’ve had a chance to revise.”

“Okay.” Sensing the meeting was over, Abby climbed to her feet. Ms. Sloane held up a finger.

“And...” Ms. Sloane watched her pick up her backpack, her fingers fumbling as she wound the straps over her shoulders. “I’m here. If you ever need to talk.”

Abby nodded briskly and left the room.

There were still five minutes left in her free period, so Abby found an empty spot in the courtyard and took out her laptop. Women of the Twilight Realm was still open on the screen.

Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.

Abby wanted to know who had broken Elaine’s heart. But most of all, she wanted to know if the cellophane had worked, and where she could get some of her own.

She clicked through to the next page.

Chapter 2
Monday, June 27, 1955

Janet had made a terrible mistake.

Two weeks ago, when she’d written the letter, she’d still been flush with her discovery. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.

But her mother was always telling her she was rash and reckless, and Janet had finally proven her right: it was only after the postman had already whisked her letter away that she’d realized a reply could come at any time. That it would be dropped into the family mailbox alongside her father’s Senate mail, her mother’s housekeeping magazines and her grandmother’s postcards from faraway cousins. That anyone in the family could reach into the mailbox, open that letter and discover the truth about Janet in an instant. And that they could realize precisely what that meant.

So Janet had spent every afternoon since perched by the living room window, listening for the postman’s footsteps on the walk.

Each day, when she heard him coming, she leaped to her feet and tore out the front door. Sometimes she beat him there and burst outside while he was still plodding up the steps to their tiny front porch. On those days, she forced a smile and held out trembling fingers to take the pile of letters from his hand.

Other days she was slower, and stepped outside just as he’d departed. Those days she pounced on the stuffed mailbox, flinging back the lid where JONES RESIDENCE was written in her mother’s neat hand.

Then there were afternoons like this one. When Janet was too late.

She’d made the mistake of getting absorbed in her reading, and when she heard the slap of brown leather filtering through the window glass she’d told herself it was only the next-door neighbor, a tall Commerce Department man who left his office early in the evenings and never looked up from polishing his black-rimmed glasses.

And so Janet’s eyes were still on the page in front of her—it was one of her father’s leather-bound Dickens novels; Janet’s parents had been after her to read as many classics as she could before she started college in September—when the mailbox lid clattered. Before she realized what had happened, her mother’s high heels were already clacking toward the front door. “Oh, there you are, Janet. Was that the postman I heard?”

Janet bolted upright, the Dickens spilling from her lap. She bit back a curse as she knelt to pick it up, smoothing back the bent pages as her mother frowned at her. “Really, Janet, you must take more care with your father’s things. And what is that getup you have on? You know better than to wear jeans in the front room, where anyone walking by could see you.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Janet tucked the volume under her arm and stepped past her mother, narrowly beating her to the door. Janet was an inch taller than Mom now, and her legs were still muscled from cheerleading in the spring.

She jerked open the front door and slid her hand into the mailbox before Mom could intervene. Three letters today. Janet tried to angle her shoulders to shield the mail from view.

The first two letters were for her father, in official government envelopes with his address neatly typed on by their senders’ secretaries. The third letter bore Janet’s name.

It had come.

A short, sharp thrill ran through her as her fingers reached for the seal. Would this be the day everything changed?

Two weeks ago, she’d discovered that slim paperback in the bus station. That night, she’d read every page and found herself so enraptured, so overwhelmed, that she couldn’t help writing to its author. Now here it was—a reply. The author of that incredible book had written a letter just for Janet.

But Mom was still standing right behind her. Could Janet slip the letter into her blouse without her seeing?

“What’s gotten into you today?” Mom reached over Janet’s shoulder and plucked all three letters from her hand. Simple as that. “What’s this one with your name?”

“It’s nothing.” Janet ached to snatch the letter back, but forced herself to breathe instead as Mom tucked her finger behind the seal. Everyone in the family had always felt free to open Janet’s mail. She was eighteen years old, but still a child in their eyes. She’d have to think of a lie quickly.

The letter had been addressed to Janet by mistake. That was what she’d say. Whoever had sent it must have found her name on some list of recent high school graduates.

No, of course Janet couldn’t possibly imagine what the letter might refer to. She’d never heard of any “Dolores Wood” or “Bannon Press.” As a matter of fact, the letter could be a cleverly disguised Communist recruitment tool. For safety’s sake, they really ought to burn it before the neighbors saw.

Though the idea of burning that letter, before she’d even had a chance to read it, made tears prick at Janet’s eyes.

“Oh, it’s from the college.” Mom withdrew a single sheet of paper from the envelope and scanned it. “It isn’t important. Only a packing list.”

“The college?” Janet hadn’t even glanced at the return address on the letter, but there it was. The letter was from Holy Divinity.

Janet couldn’t believe she’d been so foolish.

“Well, you won’t be needing this.” Mom tucked the letter into the pocket of her apron. “They must send it out to all the new girls, without regard for which will be moving into the dorms.”

Janet nodded, hoping her mother couldn’t hear her heart still thundering in the silence.

“Are you all right?” Mom frowned again. “You look flushed. Your father and I had planned to go to the club for dinner, but if you need us to stay home—”

“It’s nothing, ma’am.” Janet shook her head, but she could feel blood rushing to her cheeks under her mother’s scrutiny. “I, ah—I have to get ready for work or I’ll be late.”

Mom’s frown deepened. “I didn’t realize you were working tonight.”

“I am.” Janet wasn’t. Another stupid, rash thing to say. Now what could she do? Put on her uniform and show up at the Soda Shoppe, ready to trot milkshakes out to station wagons on her night off?

To put off that decision, Janet dashed past Mom into the row house and ran up the narrow wooden stairs, her footfalls echoing behind her. Dad was always after her not to run in the house, saying it would disturb her grandmother’s rest, but Dad wasn’t home. Besides, Grandma always said it did her heart good to hear a child scurrying about the house and that Dad should shut his cake hole.

Janet reached the second-floor landing and threw open the door of her small bedroom, the hot air hitting her like a steaming kettle. The room was the same as always—the bed neatly made with its delicate pink spread, the flowered wallpaper that was starting to peel around the edges after a decade of Washington summers, the round mirror over her dresser with photos tucked into the frame. They were school portraits of her friends, mostly, plus an old yearbook photo of Janet and Marie in their cheerleading uniforms with pom-poms at their hips, their bent elbows lightly touching.

That photo was Janet’s favorite.

Marie, her shiny hair framing her dark-rimmed glasses and always-gleaming smile, had been Janet’s best friend all through school. For years they’d done everything together, sitting side by side in every assembly and every lunch period. In junior high they’d been the only two girls to enter the science fair at the boys’ school, growing mold in carefully labeled jars and winning a red ribbon for their trouble. In high school they’d practiced their cartwheels and splits on the football field, giggling every time they fell onto the grass and making up silly variations to the official St. Paul’s cheers. Janet had never been happier than when one of the chants she made up provoked a fresh bout of laughter from Marie.

Marie was a year ahead of Janet, though, and after she graduated Janet’s senior year had been lonely indeed. Marie had spent the year at secretarial school, learning to type and take stenography and do other important things while Janet sat in Latin class again, wearing her childish uniform blazer and holding out her palm for the nun to strike when she forgot a conjugation.

That morning, eager to hear her voice again, Janet had tried to call Marie, but she was out, as usual. Janet had been forced to leave a terribly awkward message with her mother instead. Mrs. Eastwood had always seemed to think Janet was somewhat odd, and she could only have made that impression worse with the way she’d stumbled through the quick call.

She’d tried to explain that she was only calling to ask about Marie’s job search. Now that she’d finished her business classes, Marie had been so busy with applications and interviews they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. Janet was desperate to talk to her again.

Most of all, she longed to tell Marie about the book she’d found. Janet couldn’t wait to hear what she thought of it—even though she could probably guess. Despite their shared memories, Janet knew it was unlikely Marie would want to remain her friend once she knew her secret. No normal person would.

Still, Janet was determined to tell her. There was no one else she could talk with about this. Certainly no one in her family. If her parents ever found out... Janet didn’t dare to think of it. Marie was the only one who might be willing to listen.

Janet broke her gaze from the glossy photo and knelt on the floor next to her bed. She lifted the pink spread and in a single, practiced move, slid her hand between the mattress and bedframe until her fingers reached the cracked paper spine. She checked again to make sure the bedroom door was fully closed before carefully withdrawing the book from its hiding place.

She needed to find a better spot for it. The weight of the mattress had not been kind to the binding. The cheap glue had already started to come undone, and a few pages were loose, but Janet tucked them back into their proper place. She sank onto the rug between her bed and the wall, where she’d be out of view of anyone barging in, and gazed down at the book’s cover.

Its background was a deep, glaring shade of red. That color was what had first caught Janet’s eye when she’d spotted the wire rack full of books at the Ocean City bus station. It had been surrounded by similarly glaring paperbacks—detective fiction, gangster stories, the sorts of books you saw certain men reading on the streetcar. The sorts of books her father dismissed with a sniff as trash.

But it was the drawing, the strange image that stood out starkly from that palette of red, that had held Janet’s eye for far longer than it should’ve.

It showed two girls, neither much older than Janet herself. One girl had blond hair and one brown. Both had long, dark eyelashes and full, red lips. The dark-haired girl perched on a bed in the foreground, her legs long and slim, her skirt pulled up above her knees. Her green blouse was unbuttoned far enough to show a hint of pale slip beneath and a curve of bosom above. The blond girl stood farther back, dressed in nothing but a white nightgown that clung to her curves and a pair of deep brown stockings, the hems at the thighs fully visible below her shockingly short gown.

The dark-haired girl sat twisted around on the bed, so that the two girls’ eyes met. The blond’s lips were parted, as though to speak to the other girl.

Or, perhaps, to kiss her.

Janet blushed at the thought, as she did every time. Though she knew well enough that within the book’s pages the girls did kiss, and even more besides.

Janet had only glanced around the bus station for a tiny moment before she slipped the book under her blouse. It still mortified her to remember. The price on the cover was thirty-five cents, and Janet had had two dollars in her purse, but she couldn’t imagine showing her purchase to that smirking boy behind the cash register.

That novel was the only thing Janet had ever stolen in her life. She’d read it straight through that first night, and she’d stared at the cover in secret every day since.

Yellow letters above the drawing screamed the book’s title, A Love So Strange. Smaller black text below read, “A world spoken of only in whispers, where women enjoy twisted passions. Betty knew it was wrong...but she was powerless against her unnatural attractions.”

At the bottom, in the smallest type on the cover, was the author’s name, Dolores Wood.

Janet had read each of those words more times than she could count. Still, whenever she gazed at that cover, her eyes were pulled to the illustration. To the girls’ eyes where they met across the room. To the shapes of their bodies in their skimpy clothes.

Janet pressed one finger into the dip in her lower lip. Her breathing had grown heavier.

She’d never imagined there was a word for the strange feelings she’d had so many nights, alone in her bed, in the dark silence of her room.

Lesbian.

The word made her shudder. But it sent a tiny shiver down her spine, too.

Janet had never understood, not until she turned the thin brown pages of Dolores Wood’s novel, that other girls might feel the way she did. That a world existed outside the one she’d always known.

It had never occurred to her that life could be different from what had already been set out for her. Ill-fitting uniforms and nickel-sized tips at the Soda Shoppe. Her parents pausing in the dining room to listen as Janet made phone calls in the kitchen. Solemn history and mathematics lessons taught by stern-faced nuns. Then, someday, an equally solemn wedding to a faceless man, and a future spent baking solemn casseroles for solemn, faceless children.

Janet had never thought books like A Love So Strange could be written, let alone published and sold—and right in the middle of a public bus station, too. She’d never imagined some girls might actually do the sorts of things Janet had only furtively imagined in those brief, solitary moments between waking and sleeping.

Reading A Love So Strange had made Janet remember some things differently, too.

The way she and Marie had talked and laughed while they’d practiced their cheers. The way they’d touched, lying side by side on Marie’s back porch while her parents were out on warm summer afternoons.

The way Janet would trail her fingers along Marie’s bare arm after she’d pointed out some item in a magazine. The way Marie would smile and wait several moments before she drew her hand away.

When Janet thought of kissing a girl, the way girls kissed other girls in the pages of Dolores Wood’s book, she always thought of kissing Marie. When she thought back to Marie’s smiles on those lazy afternoons, she wondered if Marie might feel the same way, too.

If Janet could only show that book to Marie, it could change everything.

Still, she should never have sent the letter.

She’d been so foolish, to dream of writing a book of her own. To scrawl out that letter with all her silly, immature questions for Mrs. Wood. To address it to the publisher listed on the book’s cover and drop the envelope into the mailbox, as though it were as simple a matter as sending in for a catalog.

Downstairs, she heard the front door open, then close again. “Janet! Come back down!”

At the sound of her mother’s voice Janet scrambled to her feet, shoving the book back into its hiding place. She winced as she felt the cover bend. “Coming, ma’am!”

Only then did Janet remember she’d said she had to work tonight. Mom would wonder why she hadn’t already changed into her uniform. She tried to think of another lie—she’d checked her schedule upstairs and realized she wasn’t working that night after all; there, that one was simple enough—but all thoughts of lies and excuses left Janet’s mind when she reached the bottom of the staircase and saw Marie in the foyer, smiling at her now-apronless mother and fiddling with the strap of her purse.

A delicious thrill ran through Janet all the way to her toes. She wished she’d thought to reapply her lipstick.

Marie looked as she always had, with each dark curl in place, her glasses polished to a gleam. Yet she looked older than usual, too, somehow. Her suit was neat, the skirt perfectly tailored where its hem fell around her calves. The jacket was a matching blue flannel, and the string of pearls her parents had given her for her eighteenth birthday was wound around her neck.

Janet had never seen her friend look so much like a real grown-up. A lovely grown-up, at that.

“There you are, Janet.” Mom turned from Marie with a lingering smile of her own. Janet’s mother had always been fond of Marie. She talked about her using words like stable and settled. Especially when she sought to admonish Janet.

Janet ignored her and bounced toward Marie. “I’m so glad you came! I have so much to tell you.”

“It’s been ages, hasn’t it?” Marie’s smile was wide enough to match Janet’s own. “I’m terribly sorry I missed your call this morning. I was at an interview.”

“An interview.” Janet’s eyes drifted down to Marie’s neat suit. She flushed. “Of course.”

“I’ve been so nervous.” Marie smiled, and fumbled again with her purse. “It’s wonderful to see you, though.”

“Marie has the most exciting news.” Mom held out a hand, ushering them into the living room. She didn’t approve of dawdling in the foyer. “I’ll bring you girls some refreshments.”

Mom left for the kitchen, where she could still overhear every word they said. Even so, as Janet and Marie took seats on the sofa, Janet leaned in close and said, “I was just looking at our photo from the cheerleading squad last year. I remember that as if it was yesterday.”

“Do you?” Marie smiled. She looked even more sophisticated from this distance. “It seems like a hundred years ago to me.”

Janet’s smile began to fade.

“There we are.” Mom set down a tray of chocolate chip cookies and two glasses of milk, sitting primly in the armchair opposite the cold brick fireplace. “Now, Marie, I simply can’t wait one moment longer to hear what Janet thinks of your news.”

“Well, then, what’s your news, Marie?” Janet wished Dad were here, so they could smile together at this ostentatious etiquette. Mom treated every visitor like President Eisenhower.

Laughter sparkled behind Marie’s eyes, too, but, ever demure, she didn’t let it reach her lips. “I’ve been offered a job, just today. I’m going to be a typist at the Department of State!”

“Marie!” Janet clapped her hands. “That’s marvelous! That’s the kind of job we all dreamed of having, do you remember?”

“Of course.”

Any sort of government work had seemed glamorous to the girls of St. Paul’s Academy. Their mothers had all gone to work as “government girls” during the war, of course, but they’d retired once the men came home. These days only the most elite girls, those capable of passing stringent tests and maintaining the highest personal decorum, were hired to work as government secretaries and typists. Janet’s own distant ambition, of studying journalism in college and working for a newspaper or magazine someday, was far less exciting.

Working for the State Department was perhaps the most prestigious government position of all, surpassed only by working in the White House itself. At the State Department, a girl might meet a famous ambassador or foreign film star. Perhaps there might be a need to travel overseas, to take dictation for an important summit in Paris or Rome, or even some far-flung country like China.

It was all temporary, of course. The true goal, spoken of only through happy whispers over cafeteria lunches, was to meet a government man with an impressive job of his own, perhaps one with a title like director or even undersecretary. Once you were married, you’d leave your job to set up housekeeping so you’d be ready when the children came along.

Of course, though, it was far too early for Marie and Janet to think about any of that.

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Janet said, still beaming. “Didn’t you have the highest marks of all the girls coming out of school?”

Marie cast down her eyes. “Thank you, Janet. I was hoping we could go out tonight to celebrate, but your mother said you’re working.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. Let’s go celebrate!” When Mom raised her eyebrows, Janet hastily added, “Sorry, ma’am, I was confused about my schedule. May I please have permission to go out with Marie?”

“Certainly.”

“Wonderful! If we leave now we can catch the streetcar pulling in.”

Marie rose instantly, nodding toward the untouched milk glasses. “Thank you for the refreshments, Mrs. Jones.”

“Of course.” Mom’s plastered-on smile stayed firm as she eyed Janet’s plain blouse and jeans. “Janet, Marie and I will wait here while you change.”

Janet longed to be out the door, but her mother was right. Janet rarely wore much makeup, and most days she preferred Bermudas and button-downs to frills and fashion, but no restaurant in Georgetown would let her in for dinner wearing pants. “I’ll be fast, I promise.”

She ran upstairs, exchanged her jeans for a simple plaid skirt and stockings, and ran back down. Mom eyed her again, probably wishing Janet had at least taken the time to run a comb through her short blond curls, but all she said was, “You girls have a lovely evening. Marie, please do send your mother my regards.”

“I will, ma’am, thank you.”

Janet grabbed her purse, took Marie by the arm and pulled her out the door before her mother could launch into a new round of pleasantries. The streetcar was already clanging as it approached the end of their block, and the girls had to run. Marie’s high heels made her stumble, and Janet, in her ballet flats, was faster. She stepped onto the wide streetcar platform and held out her hand to help Marie aboard as the car pulled out, both girls laughing so hard the driver admonished them with a glare as they started north up Wisconsin Avenue.

It was exhilarating to be going out without her parents on the spur of the moment this way. Janet was certain Mom wouldn’t have allowed it if she’d been with anyone but Marie, and she flushed with pleasure at the thought.

“I thought we’d go to Meaker’s for dinner.” Marie squirmed through the crush of after-work passengers, struggling to keep her footing as the car lurched forward. A man in a fedora reached for her elbow to steady her, nearly dropping his cigarette.

“That sounds perfect.” Janet smiled at the man until he released Marie’s arm.

The two of them made their way to the back of the car. Janet couldn’t stop herself from staring down at Marie’s clothes. The perfect fit of her suit. The way she stood gripping the ceiling strap, with one heel turned out to steady herself as the streetcar rocked over bumps. The shape of her legs, so pretty in her stockings. It reminded Janet of—

The book. It reminded Janet of the picture on the cover of A Love So Strange.

She swallowed and tried, again, to make herself breathe.

“Are you all right?” Marie peered at Janet tremulously as the streetcar swung beneath them.

“I’m fine.” Janet had never felt finer, in fact.

“You’re sure? Meaker’s is just another block, but we can catch the car going the opposite way if you need to go home.”

“I don’t want to go home.” As they reached their stop, Janet hopped past Marie down to the sidewalk, glad to feel earth beneath her feet once more. She wasn’t quite sure what type of place Meaker’s might be, but she didn’t care. “We have to celebrate, don’t we?”

Marie smiled and took Janet’s arm. “We certainly do.”

The restaurant turned out to be a small, quiet place on a side street off Wisconsin, with worn white tablecloths and dim lamps overhead. The girls were seated right away, and Marie ordered for both of them, smiling up at the waiter with a poised nonchalance Janet envied.

Marie was so strong and composed. She showed none of the clumsy awkwardness Janet always felt. It was a lucky thing Marie had wanted to celebrate with her.

Janet smiled fondly across the table as two drinks appeared in front of them. She recognized the glasses from her parents’ cocktail parties. “What are these?”

“Martinis.” Marie smiled and lifted her glass. Janet imitated her, trying to look equally refined. The waiter hadn’t said a word about identification, so he must’ve thought the girls looked older than their eighteen and nineteen years. No one here at Meaker’s, it seemed, had realized Janet was nothing but a plain schoolgirl. “My father always orders them on special occasions.”

Janet took a swallow. The drink was cool, with a hint of spice. It tasted very adult. She could picture the girls in A Love So Strange sipping drinks like these alone in their apartment one evening.

Marie asked about a friend from high school she hadn’t seen lately, and soon they were caught up reminiscing about their high school days. Before long, Janet’s glass was empty and a fresh drink had taken its place. She wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed, and she couldn’t quite remember what had just been said that had made her laugh so hard. All she knew was that Marie was laughing, too, and that was all that seemed to matter.

Their food had arrived, but Janet had barely eaten. Marie’s pot roast and potatoes were in a similar state.

“So this fellow Mom wanted me to go out with tonight,” Marie was saying, as she took another sip, “he’s a college man in town for the summer. Dartmouth. His uncle works with Dad at Treasury, and he’s a dreadful bore—”

“How do you know he’s a bore?” Janet interrupted. “Have you met him already?”

“No, no, but you know how these college men are.”

Did she? This was the first time Janet had heard Marie talk about college men that way. Or was it merely the first time Janet had noticed it? Had Dolores Wood’s book changed the way she saw everything, all at once?

“In any case,” Marie went on, “Dad’s up for a promotion—that’s why they’ve been going to the club so often—and so Mom thinks I ought to go out with this Harold Smith fellow, since his uncle would be Dad’s boss if he gets the new job. But I told Mom I didn’t want to go out with some strange college man. I said I wanted to go celebrate with my best friend. Mom huffed and puffed, but what could she say in the end? Soon I’ll be earning my very own paychecks, and she and Dad won’t have any say over what I do.”

“Really?” Janet hadn’t thought of that. “Won’t you go on living with them, though?”

“Well, sure—unless I were to move in with some of the other State Department girls, I suppose. A few of my business school classmates invited me to share an apartment, but I didn’t have a job yet so I had to tell them no. Wouldn’t that be magnificent, though? Not to have to follow anyone else’s rules? To be able to go out whenever you chose, with whomever you wanted?”

Janet nodded, but in truth she couldn’t imagine such freedom. Until she’d read A Love So Strange, her dreams had only extended so far as a college dorm. It seemed a lovely idea, though, to be away from her family’s watching eyes.

But in a dorm, of course, there were still strict rules and curfews. Living at Holy Divinity, only a mile or so up Wisconsin Avenue, might be even more restrictive than living at home. At least in the house Janet was allowed to use the phone when she chose, provided Mom, Dad and Grandma didn’t need to make a call.

“I must admit, I’m a bit nervous.” Marie bit her lip, and Janet forgot all her musings about college and apartments.

In their place, her hope flared bright. Could Marie be nervous for the same reason as Janet?

“What will everyone in the office think of me?” Marie gazed down into her drink. “What if I don’t keep up with the other girls? What if my boss expects more of me than I can do?”

Janet tamped down her disappointment. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. They’ll all adore you. How could they not?”

Marie smiled up at her, yet she still looked bashful. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“I’m not being kind. I’m being honest. You’re perfect, Marie.”

The words were out of her mouth before Janet could think about how they sounded. Now she felt bashful, too.

Yet Marie didn’t look embarrassed as she held her gaze across the table.

Neither of them spoke, but something passed in that shared look that Janet couldn’t have named. It buzzed through her with an energy she’d never known.

Unless that, too, was solely in Janet’s imagination.

The waiter came to take their empty glasses, inquiring if they needed anything else. His eyes were on Marie and she answered for them both, in a voice so grown-up Janet couldn’t believe she’d ever found cause to be nervous about anything. “No, thank you. I suppose it’s getting late.”

The waiter left, and Marie withdrew a few bills from her purse and tucked them under the glass. Her every movement was mesmerizing. “We ought to catch the streetcar. Your mother will be worried.”

“Oh, forget my mother.” Janet laughed and climbed awkwardly to her feet, holding the table to right herself.

Marie laughed, too, and followed. On the way out of the restaurant, she took a matchbook from the front desk and slipped it into her purse with a smile. Janet grabbed one, too, giggling.

The sidewalk was dark under the burned-out streetlight as the girls stumbled outside, the pavement grit caking under their heels. Up ahead, on Wisconsin, people were walking quickly along the sidewalk, but out here there was no one out but the two of them.

“I’m glad you didn’t have to work tonight after all.” Marie tucked her arm into Janet’s as they began to walk. “This afternoon, the very instant the man at State told me I’d gotten the job, I knew the only person I wanted to celebrate with in all the world was you.”

Janet closed her eyes, tasting the words.

If she were Sam, the main character from A Love So Strange—if she’d had Sam’s courage, her knowledge of girls, her understanding of the world—she would kiss Marie. Right where they stood.

Sam didn’t bother with waiting. She went after what she wanted.

Of course, even Sam wouldn’t dare kiss a girl out in the open darkness, where anyone might see them. But maybe they could move somewhere out of sight. Duck beneath the awning of the shuttered corner shop, perhaps.

Sam would’ve said a clever line, too. Something witty and alluring.

Janet opened her eyes.

She meant to think of something clever. Truly, she did. In the end, though, the words that came out were, “Um...let’s go over there.”

Marie didn’t seem to mind her abruptness. Her eyes were bright, her answer quick. “Yes, let’s.”

They hurried around the corner and stood, silent, their eyes locked on one another’s. Janet could no longer think about books or jobs. She couldn’t think about anything but Marie and that look they’d shared across the table.

She closed her eyes. And all at once, there in the darkness, it was happening. It was real.

Janet was kissing her.

It was madness. She knew it was madness, because in that moment Janet could not have prevented herself from kissing Marie if all the world had tried to stop her. And so it was some time before she began to understand that Marie was kissing her back.

She could scarcely breathe. In all the world, there existed nothing but Marie’s lips on hers. Marie’s hair, soft under her hand. Marie’s body, pressed so close Janet could feel the seams in her flannel suit.

“Hey!”

The girls sprang apart, four feet of space materializing between them in an instant. There was no way to tell where the shout had come from.

Who’d seen them? Would her parents find out? Already, before Janet had even truly found out for herself?

“Is it the police?” Marie whispered. Janet hadn’t even thought of that.

“Hey!” The shout came again. This time, it was punctuated by a round of laughter from high above. A girl’s laughter.

Whoever had shouted, it wasn’t the police.

Janet tilted her head back, looking for the source of the sound. Next to her, Marie did the same.

They both saw it at the same time. A girl, framed in an open window. An apartment two stories above the darkened store.

A man leaned toward her, and the girl ducked out of his way, still laughing, holding a bottle of beer. The girl’s eyes were locked on his.

She hadn’t seen Janet and Marie.

Only then did Janet feel the full weight of relief crashing down around her.

She lowered her gaze, locking eyes with Marie. Marie’s breathing was rapid, but a smile danced behind her glasses. The madness of their kiss had touched her, too.

The sound of the streetcar made Janet’s heart beat faster. It was late, and the next car may not come for some time. They’d have to dash for it.

She longed to take Marie’s hand—that was what Sam would’ve done—but she didn’t dare. Instead, they turned and ran in a single movement.

This time, Janet didn’t beat Marie to the curb. This time, they stayed together.

They climbed onto the sparsely populated car and took seats side by side. They didn’t dare to touch, but they watched each other carefully. After another moment, they began to laugh.

Janet waited for her heart to slow, for normalcy to retake her mind. Yet as long as she waited, it never came.

Chapter 3
Monday, September 18, 2017

It was decided, then. Elaine would go to New York.

The prospect gave her a special pleasure. When she told others her plans, though, they gave her sympathetic looks.

“You know what they say.” Aunt Fay wagged her finger at Elaine. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. The day after you get there, that fellow of yours will see what he’s been missing out on. We’ll be dancing at your wedding by spring.”

“I’m not going to New York so Wayne will propose,” Elaine tried to tell her. “I’m going to start a new life of my own.”

“Of course you are, honey.” Her aunt winked. Elaine didn’t bother arguing further.

Wayne was a nice enough boy, she supposed. He was polite to her parents, and he called Elaine “sugar.” When he drove her home after their dates, he kissed her quickly and pleasantly in the front seat of his car, and he didn’t try to fight her when she pushed his sweaty hands away from the front of her dress.

Even so, Elaine wasn’t disappointed that, after a year of going steady, he hadn’t yet offered her a ring. Elaine wanted more from her future than Wayne Ellis. She wanted more than her aunt or her parents or anyone in Hanover could ever understand.

Abby rolled her eyes and switched off her phone screen. So far, this Women of the Twilight Realm book was thoroughly predictable.

“You won’t believe how over-the-top these books are.” Her breath was coming out in pants. The fourteen-story escalator at the Tenleytown metro station had stopped running and Abby, Linh and their friends were climbing it with their rally posters over their heads. “This one is so corny.”

The health care protest they’d gone to downtown with the rest of the Genders & Sexualities Alliance had been awesome, with lots of quality chanting and creative homemade signs. It wasn’t actually over yet, but they’d had to leave early. Linh and Savannah had practice, Ben had a Black Student Union officers’ meeting at Panera, and Vanessa was supposed to go straight home to work on college applications.

“Is it the same book we started reading on Friday?” Linh shouted over her shoulder. She was ahead of Abby, even though she was carrying three signs and a leftover six-pack of bottled water.

Linh was on the cross-country team, and sometimes she ran up and down the stalled metro escalators to clear her head. It was pretty adorable. Last year Abby used to come to the station to watch sometimes, leaning against the pillar at the top of the tunnel with a fond smile. When Linh finished her workout she’d come up to meet her, looking all disheveled and glowy. They’d grin at each other for a few happy, wordless moments, until Linh’s stomach started growling audibly, and then they’d go off hand in hand to get smoothies.

Breaking up was the worst idea they’d ever had.

“Yeah, Women of the stupid Twilight Realm,” Abby called up to her. “So far it’s all about how this woman has to move to New York because her boyfriend—and pretty much every male character we’ve seen so far in her little town in the boonies—is a giant tool.”

“Was that the fifties version of feminism?” Ben asked from behind Abby. He was panting, too. Ben shared Abby’s aversion to extracurricular activities that involved getting unnecessarily sweaty. “Leaving town to find a less tool-ish dude to go out with?”

“Probably,” Linh called back. “As if fifties New York was full of enlightened, eligible guys.”

“Well, it’s a lesbian book, right?” Savannah shouted from the top. She ran cross-country, too, and she was the only one in their group who could keep up with Linh. “So soon she’ll find some enlightened, eligible ladies.”

“Dude.” Vanessa poked Ben in the back with their I Am Not a Preexisting Condition poster. “You can’t just pause halfway up the escalator. If I’m not home in fifteen minutes my mom’ll be waiting for me at the door with a stopwatch and the Common Application.”

They all groaned, Abby loudest of all.

“My dad’s worse,” Linh called back. “I’m supposed to write an essay every single night, and he makes me print out every draft before I go to bed. Then he slides them back under my door the next morning with notes in the margins.”

“Did you decide how many schools you’re applying to?” Vanessa asked. “My mom keeps saying I need to do all the Ivies. I tried to tell her everyone says that’s a bad strategy but she won’t listen.”

“What? That’s a bad strategy?” Savannah sounded alarmed. “That’s what my cousin’s doing. He said if you can get into all eight you get to meet Anderson Cooper.”

Abby sped up until she was behind Linh, her breath heaving and her wedge sandals thumping on each step. If she intervened fast enough, sometimes she could get her friends to stop with the college talk before they remembered they were competing for slots and started eyeing each other warily.

“I don’t want to apply to any Ivies,” Linh was saying. “My dad thinks I should, but I just want to go to MIT. I’m starting to think about Hopkins, too, though.”

“So anyway, I guess all these books are like that,” Abby interrupted. She tried to raise her voice so they’d all hear, but that wasn’t easy given how hard she was panting. “I read a bunch of plot summaries over the weekend, and they’re all ridiculous and tragic. Plus, lots of them are about these really young characters, some even younger than us, who get seduced by way older women. Like in their thirties.”

“Ew.” Linh wrinkled her nose. “That’s so gross. Not to mention illegal. Why would they even want to?”

“Because they don’t seem to realize it’s gross? I don’t know, it’s weird. I skipped ahead, and at least this Twilight Realm book isn’t that way—the characters are twenty-one and twenty-five, which I guess isn’t that sketchy. But all the stories are such clichés. The characters go to these lesbian bars in Greenwich Village and have melodramatic conversations about how terrible it is to be a lesbian, and then they go home and have melodramatic lesbian sex. Then by the end they either check themselves into an asylum or die in botched abortions or cult rituals or whatever. And if they do survive, most of them wind up forgetting they’re gay.”

“What, do they turn out to be bi?” Linh tilted her head hopefully. She was bi, and she was always talking about how impossible it was to find bi characters anywhere. Abby agreed with her—she used to identify as bi, too, before she realized that whenever she started to imagine kissing a guy, she usually got too bored to finish—but it wasn’t exactly easy to find lesbian characters most of the time, either.

“That would seem logical, right?” Abby threw up her hands. “I thought that was where they were going with it at first, but I guess maybe they didn’t realize being bi was a thing yet? Because all these women seem to suddenly discover that they were totally straight all along. Even though two chapters earlier they were getting it on with their thirtysomething lady friends and very obviously into it. I was thinking that maybe in my book, though, I’d have one of the characters have sex with her boyfriend and actually enjoy it, and realize that she is bi. Then she’ll have to stress over how to tell her girlfriend. That never happens in these books, so I think Ms. Sloane would like it. I’d be inverting genre tropes.”

Abby was completely out of breath by that point, so she stopped talking and turned around to help Ben as they emerged into the open air of Wisconsin Avenue. Savannah and Linh stood waiting at the top, watching as a pair of Secret Service police cars sped through the intersection ahead of them. Abby wiggled her eyebrows at Linh in what she hoped was a flirty way, but Savannah, to her chagrin, had already changed the subject back to college.

“You won’t have to miss the Maryland meet when you go visit Penn, will you?” Savannah’s tone made it clear that missing the meet would be a ridiculous thing to do. She was only a junior, so she was slightly less obsessed with college than the rest of them.

“No, I can do both. The meet’s not until that Sunday.” Linh turned back to Abby. “By the way, I meant to ask you. I’m trying to get my parents to let me go visit Penn on the fourteenth. It’s a one-day trip, up and back on Amtrak. Do you want to come? They won’t let me go by myself but they said if you went, too, we could go together. They already said they’d buy our tickets, and it’ll be fun. Your parents will let you, right?”

Linh was asking her to come on a trip? Just the two of them?

Abby wanted to say yes right away, but everyone had climbed off the escalator by then, and they were all watching. She didn’t want to look desperate. “Um.” She reached for her phone. “Let me check my calendar.”

“I hope you can.” Linh had that overeager look she got sometimes when they talked about college. Uh-oh. Maybe this wasn’t about wanting to spend time alone with Abby after all. “It’s time you started visiting schools. I know Columbia’s your first choice, but you should probably come up with a list of ten or so, don’t you think?”

Abby unlocked her phone and did her best not to react. Sometimes Linh came on kind of strong when there was something she thought Abby should do. Still, any time with her was better than none. “Let’s see, it looks as though—okay, yeah, I guess I’m free the fourteenth.”

“Uh, Abby, your calendar isn’t even up.” Ben had come up out of nowhere and swiped Abby’s phone from her hand, glancing up at Linh with a smirk. “Also, just FYI, you two aren’t nearly as subtle as you think you are. You might as well—Hey, wait a second, what is that?”

Abby grabbed the phone back. Ben had somehow switched her phone screen to her collection of pulp book covers. She seized the chance to change the subject.

“It’s one of those bizarro novels,” she told Ben, pulling up the Satan Was a Lesbian cover and holding it out for them to see. “They were all like this.”

One by one, her friends started laughing as they got a look at it, exactly as Abby had expected.

“That can’t be real.” Ben squinted down. “It’s got to be Photoshop.”

“Nope! It was an actual book.” Satan Was a Lesbian was the weirdest cover, and title, Abby had found so far. It showed a woman in mom jeans brandishing a whip at another woman in lingerie while the titular Satan watched gleefully from above. “But in my book, I’m going to invert the usual boring gay tragedy story. My main characters will wind up getting sent to a mental hospital that they think will beat away their gay, but it’ll turn out to be this secret lesbian commune in Vermont, and they’ll live happily ever after and adopt a bunch of cats. Except it can’t be totally conflict-free, so I’m also going to have one of their queer friends die a really gruesome death. She’ll get decapitated by her girlfriend’s ex or something.”

“You should have her get killed by Satan himself.” Ben pantomimed stabbing someone. “Herself, I mean. She can whack your protagonist with a magic Lesbian Satan death blade. Hey, the school’s calling you.”

He passed the buzzing phone back to Abby. The caller ID read Fawcett School. Weird. “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Ms. Jackson in the middle school office calling. I’m trying to reach Abby Zimet?”

“Yes, this is Abby.”

“Oh, good, I’m glad we found you. If you’re still on campus, could you come to the office, please?”

That was even weirder.

Something didn’t feel right about this, but there was no real reason to say no. Abby wasn’t exactly on campus, but she was only a block away. And at least this would get her out of having to go home and interact with whichever of her parents was in town today. “Uh, okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Abby told her friends what was going on, and they all got ready to leave. Linh tried to catch her eye, but Abby pretended not to notice. Flirting was one thing, but she’d learned the hard way that it was best to stay quiet when it came to stuff that may or may not turn out to be actual problems.

Everyone split up and waved goodbye, tucking their signs under their arms. Abby tried to maneuver her sign without bending it. It said Women Deserve Health Care! If You Don’t Believe Me, Ask the Woman Who Gave Birth to You, and she wanted to save it for the next protest.

As she turned to start up Wisconsin, squinting in the bright sun, a groaning 96 bus rolled past her. Abby adjusted her backpack, took out her phone and pulled up the website she’d found.

She was already behind on her research for Ms. Sloane, so she’d Googled gayness in the fifties earlier that afternoon and landed on some ancient government report. It was a faded, scanned PDF, dated December 15, 1950, and titled Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government. Abby had put off reading it, since it didn’t exactly sound cheery, but now she picked a page at random and zoomed in.

There are no outward characteristics or physical traits that are positive as identifying marks of sex perversion.

Undoubtedly, the authors of this report had thought themselves brilliant to have made this point. Also they were apparently using “sex perversion” as a synonym for not being straight, so that was...interesting.

Abby glanced up as she crossed the alley in front of the Whole Foods, then turned back to her phone.

Sex perverts, like all other persons who by their overt acts violate moral codes and laws and the accepted standards of conduct, must be treated as transgressors and dealt with accordingly.

Well, that sucked.

Abby scrolled, looking for something more relevant to what Ms. Sloane wanted from her, but this document read like a parody of an old textbook. There was no way people in the fifties, or any other time for that matter, seriously sat around worrying this much about each other’s “moral codes.”

One homosexual can pollute a Government office. This subcommittee is convinced that it is in the public interest to get sex perverts out of Government and keep them out.

Abby sighed and closed out of the PDF while she waited for the light to change. She was almost back on campus, and this document had nothing to do with lesbian pulp novels. The characters in Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t exactly sit around reading government reports.

Besides, Abby had spent her entire life in DC. She knew how much the people in Congress loved to hear themselves talk. Some guy was running for Senate who’d said homosexuality was evil and should be against the law, but him saying that didn’t change the fact that gay marriage had been legal for years. That guy might believe Abby was going to hell for being in love with Linh, but that didn’t make it true. Abby didn’t even believe in hell.

She crossed the parking lot and reached the bottom of the short hill that separated Fawcett Middle School from Fawcett High. Abby had barely been inside the middle school building since she’d finished eighth grade. Walking down the green-tiled front hall felt like going back in time.

She was startled out of her nostalgia when she pushed open the office door and saw her eleven-year-old brother, Ethan. He was sitting alone in the waiting area in his dance class uniform—a white T-shirt and embarrassingly tight black leggings. His arms were folded across his chest, and when he saw Abby, he groaned.

“What are you doing here?” Abby’s mouth fell open. “Why did they call me?”

“Abby. Good, you’re here.” Ms. Jackson, the office assistant, gestured to her from behind a desk. “We’ve been trying to reach your parents. Do you have another number for either of them?”

She’d come all the way here for this? Abby tried not to let her frustration show. “Probably. Which numbers have you tried?”

They compared phone lists, and Abby read out the numbers for Mom’s work cell and Dad’s assistant. Ms. Jackson thanked her, then vanished into an inner office and shut the door. Abby carefully laid her protest sign by the desk, but she kept her backpack strapped to her shoulders so she could get out of here fast when this was over.

Meanwhile, her brother was staring at the ceiling as though Abby wasn’t even there. Ethan was in that weird stage halfway between looking like a little kid and an almost-teenager. All he cared about was dancing—he took regular classes with the rest of the sixth graders during the school day, plus extra advanced classes in the afternoons—and he didn’t bother to change clothes afterward, which didn’t do much to offset his overall awkwardness. It was as if puberty was being intentionally mean to him, and he hadn’t noticed yet.

Abby and Ethan had been pretty close when they were younger. They used to have a running joke about how they were a two-person superhero team. Their parents were the villains, especially when Dad was trying to limit their screen time or Mom was making them eat vegetables.

Once, when Abby was in fifth grade and Ethan was in kindergarten, he’d fallen from the climbing gym on the temple playground and his nose turned into a bloody mess. Abby had wiped off his face and hugged him until he stopped crying. When their mom got there, Abby didn’t really want to let him go. It had been kind of nice, feeling needed.

Lately, though, she’d been avoiding her parents and Ethan altogether. Mom and Dad were just insufferable—on the rare occasions when one of them tried to relate to her, they only made it that much more obvious that they had no idea what it was like being a teenager, much less a queer one, in 2017—and as for Ethan, he’d basically turned into a different person than the kid she remembered.

“Okay, so.” Abby put her hands on her hips, the stiff fabric of her vintage dress rustling. “What’s going on?”

Ethan shrugged and tilted his head back, avoiding her gaze.

“Don’t be a dick, Ethan.” At that, his head shot up. She’d never called her brother a dick before, but if he was going to act like a dick... “Did you get in trouble?”

“I didn’t do anything.” His eyes trailed down to his sneakers. “Mr. Salem started it.”

“Mr. Salem?” Abby didn’t hide her surprise. “What did he do?”

Ethan loved his dance teacher. When they used to have family dinners he’d always go on and on about what Mr. Salem had said in class that day, or what funny twist he’d added to the choreography, or how he’d told Ethan he was the most promising student he’d had in years.

Abby had seen Ethan dance. He wasn’t bad or anything, but she was still dubious about the authenticity of that last comment.

“He was being a jerk.” Ethan shrugged. “He kicked me out of class for being, like, two minutes late.”

“Well, yeah.” Abby remembered that from her own dance-class years. “You know you aren’t allowed to be late to the studio. Besides, I thought you always tried to be there five minutes early, since you’re a dance dork and everything.”

“I’m not a dance dork.” Ethan leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. His face was red and blotchy. Shit—had her goofy kid brother been crying? “Anyway, it was only two minutes.”

“Okay, but what’s the big deal? School’s over. Why didn’t you just go home?”

Ethan looked away.

“So you are in trouble.” Abby tried to sound stern. “What did you do?”

“It isn’t some huge deal.” Ethan rolled his eyes. “I only told him it was a dumb rule. Then I kind of, um—” Ethan’s voice fell. “Threw my water bottle at his head.”

“What?” Abby’s jaw dropped. This was so unlike Ethan she might as well have fallen into an alternate universe. “Did you hit him?”

“Um. Kinda.” Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose again. “He moved, and it kind of—bounced off his shoulder.”

“That’s horrible!” Abby kept expecting him to say he was joking. Ethan was always thirsty, and he carried one of those huge metal water bottles everywhere he went. Getting hit with it would be incredibly painful. “You could’ve really hurt him!”

“Yeah. I know.”

“What the hell?” She couldn’t believe he was just sitting there, impassive. “Did you want to hurt him?”

“I only...” Ethan bent down so far all Abby could see was the back of his head. His thick brown hair pointed into a tiny V at the base of his neck. “I only wanted him to leave me alone.”

Abby didn’t understand. The Ethan she’d grown up with would’ve at least been sorry for doing something like this.

“Do you think Mom and Dad will both come?” Ethan didn’t look up. “They did that time I got sick in gym.”

“Yeah, well, your appendix ruptured. You had to be hospitalized. Water-bottle throwing probably isn’t on the same level.”

Ethan let out a noisy breath. “It’s like you want me to almost die again.”

“You didn’t almost die.” Abby rolled her eyes, but she was thinking, If you want to see Mom and Dad voluntarily in the same place at the same time again, almost dying is probably your best bet.

“Anyway.” Ethan wouldn’t meet her eyes. “They’re calling them both, right?”

“I don’t know. They’ll probably see who they can get to come. Dad was supposed to get back into town this morning, but he’s only staying one night before he has to leave again. Maybe they’ll call Mom, but she’s in—”

“Pennsylvania. I know.”

Abby sat down beside him on the bench, her backpack thumping heavily behind her. “She’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Because Dad’ll be gone by then.”

Abby pretended not to hear the resentment in his voice. “They have to travel for work, Ethan.”

He shrugged and didn’t answer, even though he had to know it was the truth. Their mom was the president of a think tank, and Dad was a lawyer for the National Institutes of Health. They both worked long hours, and they were always having to leave DC for conferences and meetings and other stuff Abby had given up trying to keep track of.

“Everyone’s parents travel for work.” Abby fixed her eyes on her sandals. “It isn’t a big deal.”

“I don’t know anybody whose parents travel as much as Mom and Dad do.”

And a memory swam into Abby’s mind before she could stop it.

It was a week after the fight—the big fight, the one Linh saw—and everyone at home was being even quieter than usual. Well, Ethan and Abby were, at least. Mom and Dad, whichever one of them was home at any given time, were trying to act normal. Except they kept smiling too hard or sighing too loud, and making it that much more obvious that they were faking.

But their Tudor-style row house was a hundred years old, and the walls were thin. When you were upstairs, it was nearly impossible to have a conversation without everybody else on the second floor hearing you. Most of the time there was nothing to hear, since no one in the family spoke to each other anymore, but that night was different.

Mom was on the phone in her room. Abby could tell she was trying to keep her voice down, but it wasn’t working.

“No, no. Fine. Stay in New York if that’s what you want. I’ll be here, doing everything. Again.” There was a thin, pained note in her voice Abby had never heard before. As though she was actively trying to sound like she was suffering. “No, he’s fine, but I already told you she’s upset. You don’t remember? I think she had a fight with her girlfriend, and—yes, it was about that. What did you think? No, no, she didn’t say anything, you know she never tells me anything, but if you paid attention to anything other than yourself, maybe you’d start to realize—”

Abby didn’t hear any more after that. She shoved a pillow over her head, dug out her headphones and turned the music up loud enough to drown it all out.

Now, though, she kind of wished she’d kept listening. As far as she knew, that phone call was the last time her parents had actually spoken to each other.

“They’re never both home at the same time,” Ethan was muttering. “You’re hardly ever home, either.”

“I have a lot of work to do. I’m a senior, dude.” Abby tried to sound playful. She’d called him dude when he was a kid, and it always used to make him smile.

“But don’t you think—”

“All right, Ethan, it shouldn’t be much longer.” The principal’s voice boomed above them. “Abby Zimet! So good to see you.”

“Hi, Mr. Geis.” Abby stood up. Mr. Geis had been the assistant principal when she was in middle school. “How are you?”

“Very well, Abby. You must be a senior? I’m sorry, you’re probably missing a meeting or practice this afternoon, aren’t you?”

“I just got back from the health care protest at the White House.”

“Of course you did.” Mr. Geis smiled at her, but from the way his eyes kept darting down, she could tell he wanted to focus on Ethan. “You always were passionate about the causes you believed in. Are you taking Contemporary Politics this semester?”

“No, I’m doing the Women’s and Gender Studies seminar instead.” Come to think of it, didn’t she have a paper due for WGS sometime this week? On that campaign down in Virginia—the transgender candidate who was running against the homophobe?

Abby remembered talking to Vanessa about it, but she couldn’t remember when she was supposed to turn it in. It couldn’t have been due today, could it?

Shit...

“Well, don’t let us keep you, Abby.” Mr. Geis was still smiling at her brightly. “It was good seeing you. Now, young man, come into my office, please.”

Abby watched her brother climb to his feet without lifting his head and follow the no-longer-smiling Mr. Geis into the inner office. He didn’t look back.

“Your dad should be here any minute,” Mr. Geis was telling him as Abby turned to leave.

“What about my mom?” she heard Ethan say.

Mr. Geis paused. “Your father said she was out of town.”

“She isn’t coming?” Suddenly, Ethan sounded frantic. He couldn’t actually be surprised Mom wasn’t coming all the way from Pittsburgh to pick him up from school, could he?

“I’m sure you’ll talk to her when she’s back home.” Mr. Geis had barely gotten the words out before Ethan started moaning. Footsteps squeaked in the hall outside. “Is something wrong, Ethan?”

“I don’t feel good,” Ethan croaked, in the fakest voice imaginable.

“What’s going on?” It was Dad, frowning in the doorway. Of course he’d show up right as Ethan was laying on the drama. “Abby? What are you doing here?”

His suit jacket was rumpled. He’d probably been wearing it since he got up that morning in New York. He would’ve worn it the entire train ride back to Union Station, and the cab ride to his office after that, and then through all his meetings or lunches or whatever it was he did all day. Neither of their parents ever went home until it was absolutely unavoidable.

Behind them, Ethan moaned again.

“Is Ethan sick?” Dad’s face shifted from confusion to worry. For a second, Abby was jealous she’d never thought to try fake moaning. “I thought they said he got in trouble with his teacher.”

“You can go on in, Mr. Zimet,” Ms. Jackson said, emerging from the back room. She didn’t seem particularly worried. She’d probably heard plenty of fake moans in her time. “Your son’s in with Mr. Geis. He was feeling fine before.”

“All right.” Dad turned back to Abby, as though waiting for her to solve this puzzle for him.

“He wants Mom,” she whispered, as patiently as she could manage. “He thinks if he’s sick you’ll both come, the way you did when he had that appendix thing. You should probably get Mom on the phone. If he hears both your voices he might calm down.”

“Abby, it isn’t as simple as...” Dad glanced toward the office. “Wait for us out here and we’ll all go home together, all right?”

“Oh, um...” Her eyes darted up, down, anywhere but at him. As much as she wanted her parents to act like parents again, the thought of actually being alone with her dad and her brother for any amount of time was excruciating. “I’ve gotta go. I have a big project for, uh, French...”

But Abby couldn’t think of anything more to say about her fictional French project, so she darted under Dad’s arm and out of the office.

She was halfway down the hall before she realized she was running. Dad wouldn’t come after her, though, not with Ethan and Mr. Geis waiting.

She swung around a corner into the huge, vacant main stairwell, listening out for footsteps in the hall behind her. Nothing came.

Abby climbed up one floor, and then another. The third floor looked empty. Surely Dad wouldn’t think to look for her up here. When they got out of their meeting he’d assume she’d already gone home, and he’d take Ethan somewhere to give him a talking-to.

She opened her laptop with shaky hands, though she wasn’t sure why—it wasn’t as if she could focus enough to do homework right now.

That was when Abby noticed the ebook sitting on her desktop, staring at her. Women of the Twilight Realm. Without pausing to think, she clicked it open. She was still on the third chapter, and the point of view had switched from Elaine to another character.

The new girl was magnificent.

She was young, certainly—no more than twenty or so. Her hand-stitched clothes marked her as a stranger to New York. She was a stranger to bars like Mitch’s Corner, too, Paula was sure of it. She’d seen enough first-timers to know the mix of apprehension and anticipation they always carried, even when they were doing their best to look tough. Before tonight, the pretty, little blond girl hovering by the jukebox with an unlit cigarette clamped between her fingers had never set foot in a queer bar.

She’d thought about it, though—Paula was certain of that much, too. There was something about the steely set of the new girl’s hips, and the way every so often she cast her eyes from side to side, watching the bar’s patrons as they danced and drank and talked. Yes, the girl might be new, but she wasn’t a total innocent.

Paula ordered a beer and a martini, and then, holding the drinks tight, sauntered over beside the new girl to peer down at the jukebox. The blond didn’t look up.

“The songs in that thing are no good,” Paula said, lifting the martini glass. “Old Max is so stingy he probably hasn’t bought a new record since the Hoover years.”

The blond met Paula’s eyes for a moment, then shifted her gaze back to her own white schoolgirl blouse.

Paula smiled. The new girl’s nerves only made her look prettier.

“I suppose I wasn’t really looking for a good song.” The girl took the offered martini and drained half of it in one gulp. “I only hoped that if I waited long enough, someone interesting might come over and talk to me.”

Paula didn’t bother trying to conceal her reaction. She laughed, long and loud, and let herself relax a little. “I hope I fit the bill.”

The girl appraised Paula, taking in her height, her faded brown slacks, the full glass of beer sweating in her hand.

“Interesting, yes.” The girl nodded. “So far. But if I’m going to make a full assessment, I think we’ll need to dance.”

Paula smiled. If she was going to keep up with this one, she’d need to be quick. She took both drinks and set them on the little table next to the jukebox, then looped her arm around the girl’s back and steered her toward the dance floor.

“You got a name, new girl?” she asked, teasing, as they started to dance.

“Elaine.”

“It’s a pleasure, Elaine. I’m Paula.”

“Well, Paula, what do the girls do for fun in this city when they’re not sipping martinis and dancing to old records here in Mitch’s Corner?”

Paula smiled again, winding her arm around Elaine’s back to pull her in close. “I can only speak for myself, Elaine, but I like to hit the movies.”

“Alone?”

“If I have to. But I’ve found everything looks better when there’s a pretty girl by your side.”

Abby tilted her chin to the ceiling. In spite of herself, a grin crept onto her face.

Meet-cutes were overdone, but Abby had always loved those old-fashioned romance novels the library had on spinner racks. The formulaic romantic comedies you could get on Netflix, too. They were all so predictable. Maybe that was why it was so delightful to lose herself in them.

She could recite the plot template by heart. A woman and (usually) a man met, traded witty banter and fell in love. There was always some stupid obstacle to them living happily ever after—one of them was a cattle rancher and the other one was a vegetarian, or one was a workaholic and the other was a manic pixie dream girl, or whatever—but they figured out how to overcome it and learned important lessons along the way. Then they did live happily ever after, without ever encountering a single problem for the rest of their lives.

It was all ridiculous and silly and unrealistic. Abby knew that. She’d only ever been in love with one person, but she still knew fantasy when she saw it.

Love didn’t conquer all. Whatever else was going on in the lives of Paula and Elaine outside that smoky bar in 1956 wasn’t going to stop just because the two of them had danced and bantered.

But God, it would be fucking wonderful if it did.

Abby settled down with her back against the wall and clicked through to the next page. She put in her headphones so she wouldn’t hear anything from downstairs and focused on the screen in front of her.

It wouldn’t be so bad to lose herself again.

Chapter 4
Tuesday, June 28, 1955

“Welcome to the Soda Shoppe, your top spot for a refreshing drink and a bite to eat. I’ll be your carhop this afternoon.”

“Hi there, honey. Could I get a cheese sandwich and a Summer Freeze?”

“Righty-o.” Janet suppressed a yawn as she scribbled down the order from the bald man in the station wagon.

Someone whispered loudly over her shoulder. “Janet? Janet! Over here!”

Janet didn’t let her smile slip as she delivered the next line in her script—“Back in a jiff!”—and trotted away from the station wagon to see Shirley, one of her fellow carhops, looking anxious.

“Could you cover car nine for me?” Shirley shifted from one foot to the other. “I haven’t had my break yet and I’m about to burst.”

Janet glanced over her shoulder. “Sure. You’d better hurry or Mr. Pritchard will see.”

“Thanks, Janet. You’re a star.”

Janet waved her on and trotted to space nine. Carhops were permitted to trot across the parking lot, but never to run. Mr. Pritchard, who watched over the staff with an unyielding expression and a blue vinyl apron tied snugly around his middle, was even stricter about running on shift than he was about break schedules.

Janet took down car nine’s order and trotted inside to the food counter. The Soda Shoppe had started out as a regular restaurant, with tables inside and waitresses to serve them, before Mr. Pritchard realized he could make a lot more money sending high school girls out to the parking lot while the customers sat in their Oldsmobiles and Chevrolets. Now the shiny lunch counter inside sat empty while Janet, Shirley and the other girls wore out their saddle shoes trotting from car to car in their too-hot-for-summer-in-Washington cotton uniforms.

As she lifted her tray, Janet gazed at the empty phone booth that sat at the edge of the parking lot, the cars on M Street whizzing past.

Soon. Janet’s shift would end soon, and then she could call her. That prospect was the only thing getting her through the afternoon’s endless script recitations and grease drips.

So an hour later, when the last car of her long lunch shift finally pulled away, Janet rushed to finish her side work, folding napkins and marrying ketchup bottles faster than she ever had before. She tapped her fingers on her apron while Mr. Pritchard inspected her station, and when he finally cleared her to go Janet trotted as fast as she could to the phone booth and shoved a dime into the slot.

She picked up on the second ring.

“I’d hoped it was you.” The smile was clear in Marie’s voice before Janet had even finished saying hello.

Janet wound the phone cord around her fingers and turned her back on the still-busy restaurant. She was smiling, too, even though Marie couldn’t see her.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about last night.” Marie’s voice was a low, warm whisper.

“Neither have I.” Janet closed her eyes. If she tried hard enough, perhaps she could pretend they were still on that dark street outside Meaker’s.

“I want to see you again, soon, but I start work tomorrow. I’ll probably be busy for the next few days.”

“I understand,” Janet replied, though her stomach sank. “Maybe we could meet this weekend.”

“I’d like that. I should be free Saturday.”

“Saturday it is, then.”

They fell silent. Janet traced the tips of her fingers along the curve of the phone cord, wishing she were tracing the delicate skin of Marie’s shoulder instead.

“Could you wait a moment, please?” Marie’s tone suddenly grew a tad too polite. This must’ve been how they taught girls to talk on the phone in secretarial school.

“Certainly.” Janet giggled and waited, wondering what Marie’s teachers would’ve thought of the moment she and Marie had shared the night before.

“There, that’s better.” Marie’s voice came muffled after a pause. “I’ve brought the phone into the pantry. The cord may be about to snap, but at least we can talk in private. Though I’m supposed to be helping my mother with the ironing.”

“Oh.” Janet opened her eyes. “Well, if you have to...”

“But I don’t want to help her. I’d rather talk to you.” Marie paused, drawing in a sharp breath. “I’d rather talk to you always.”

“Oh.” Janet’s knees felt unsteady. “Oh, Marie—it’s the same for me.”

“Where are you? I can hear cars going by.”

Janet smiled again. “I’m in the phone booth at the Soda Shoppe. I keep worrying Mr. Pritchard will come yell at me for forgetting to fold a set of napkins.”

“Tell him you have more important things to do. Like talk to me.”

Janet’s smile stretched from one end of the phone booth to the other. Marie sounded exactly like Sam in A Love So Strange when she and Betty first fell in love.

Was that what was happening to Janet and Marie, too?

“Marie?” Mrs. Eastwood’s voice was unmistakable, even through the pantry door. “What are you doing in there? I need your help. Besides, you shouldn’t stretch out the phone cord.”

Marie sighed into the phone. Janet sighed, too. “I suppose I’ll see you Saturday. Good luck at the new job.”

“Thank you.” Marie’s smooth phone manners were back, probably for her mother’s benefit. “Please give your family my best.”

Janet smoothed out her uniform before she left the phone booth, but her smile stayed wide.

The walk home was no more than fifteen minutes along M Street and up Wisconsin. Nothing in Georgetown was terribly far from anything else. Janet’s and Marie’s houses were close enough that their parents had often driven them to school together when they were still too young to ride the streetcar unaccompanied. Marie’s job, though, would be in the next neighborhood over. The State Department had been in Foggy Bottom since the war.

It was hot out, and Janet, already warm from her shift, grew sweaty as she walked under the hot sun in her silly blue cap, smiling at the shoppers who nodded as they passed. Everyone recognized her Soda Shoppe uniform. Employees were never allowed to be in “partial uniform,” even when their shifts were over.

Janet wished she had a proper job like Marie. Neither of the girls in A Love So Strange had to trot around with steaming piles of cheeseburgers for hours each day. They worked in sensible offices with spiteful coworkers.

Janet had reread half the book after she’d gotten home from Meaker’s the night before, and she’d reread the other half that morning before her shift. She couldn’t stop thinking about the moment when Betty first told Sam she was falling in love with her. Sam had replied that she’d known she loved Betty since the first time they danced.

Were there truly girls—other girls, girls Janet had never even met—who thought things like that? Who said things like that?

Janet and Marie didn’t much resemble the girls on the cover of A Love So Strange. Janet was blond and Marie was brown-haired, so they matched on that count, but neither of them wore as much makeup as those girls, and Janet certainly didn’t own any clothes that tight.

She supposed the girls’ looks weren’t what mattered in the end. What mattered was that, like Janet, the girls in Dolores Wood’s book didn’t seem to have much interest in men.

Until the book’s odd ending. In the final chapter, Betty had suddenly become interested in a fellow she worked with, and Sam was fired from her job and threw herself in front of a speeding taxi.

Janet always skipped that chapter now. It felt as if it had been glued on to the real book by mistake. A Love So Strange was meant to be about two girls living in New York, going out in Greenwich Village, kissing and dancing and drinking with other girls like them. That was the book that mattered.

It still seemed impossible that such lives, such places, could be real—and yet they had to be. Why would Dolores Wood write about them otherwise?

In A Love So Strange, Sam never spoke to her parents. She’d been forced to leave the family because of how she was. Betty was on good terms with her parents, but only because she kept up the pretense that she was normal. When Betty’s parents came to visit, Sam slept in the small bed in their spare room as though she were no more than a roommate, and the two girls were careful to make sure that room looked truly lived in, too, hanging pictures on the walls and storing knickknacks on the shelves. They intended to look innocent, even if someone were to report them to the police.

What would happen to Janet if her family discovered she’d kissed Marie? Or, for that matter, if they found the book tucked under her mattress?

Her parents would be devastated. Grandma, too.

Janet would never be able to live a regular life. She’d never get married. Unless she were to move far away, leaving behind everything she’d known, and somehow found a husband for herself in a strange new city.

Janet wasn’t entirely sure she wanted a husband anymore, though.

She’d never thought much about that particular question before. It had never seemed a question in the first place. Everyone got married. It was either that, or become a nun like the sisters at St. Paul’s.

Well, at least there was no need to worry about her family calling the police. Her father’s career was on shaky ground as it was, now that the Democrats had retaken Congress. If they found out about Janet, it would mean disaster for him. Besides, nowadays everyone knew these things were for doctors to handle. If Janet’s parents found out, they’d want her cured and quickly.

Perhaps they’d send her to St. Elizabeths. That was the new name for the local asylum, though some still called it the Government Hospital for the Insane. What if news of Janet’s admission got into the papers, though? The man who wrote the Washington Watch column was all too eager to write about the wrongdoings of Republicans, and a Senate committee attorney’s daughter entering an asylum would be news for at least a day or two, even if her specific illness wasn’t revealed. That day or two of news could be enough to ruin her father’s prospects forever.

No—most likely, her parents would confine her to the house. They might find a discreet doctor to make house calls until she was properly cured.

Janet wondered what such a cure entailed. All she knew about psychiatry was that the patients lay on couches and closed their eyes. That didn’t seem so terrible—but could it really change the way she felt about Marie?

Though the real problem was, Janet didn’t want to stop feeling the way she did.

Perhaps resistance to treatment was part of the sickness. Yet she didn’t feel sick. She felt healthier than she ever had before.

As Janet’s squat two-story row house came into view, she squared her shoulders and pulled off her cap. She ought to simply put all these worries aside for the time being. It was going to be a very busy summer.

The house was quiet as she approached. Her parents had gone to dinner at the club again, leaving Janet and Grandma to an evening on their own. On nights like this one, Janet usually warmed up a casserole and chatted with Grandma while they ate. After dinner they might listen to the radio awhile, then read in comfortable silence until bedtime.

The heat indoors was nearly unbearable on summer nights, so Mom and Dad usually slept on the screened porch at the back of the first floor, with Janet and Grandma on the separate porch just above. It had been their pattern ever since Grandma moved in. She’d declared as soon as she’d unpacked that, although she’d consented to live with them, she would not be forced to tolerate Janet’s father’s snores. It had been bad enough when he was a boy, she’d said, but now that he was grown she was no longer obliged to suffer.

Janet climbed the steps to the front porch, taking care to avoid the rickety old railing, and unlocked the front door, slipping off her shoes in the foyer in case Grandma was resting. In the evenings, every sound in the house was magnified.

A bright shape on the entry table caught Janet’s eye as she shrugged off her uniform jacket. A white envelope, solitary and stark against the shining black wood.

Janet snatched up the letter, her jacket falling to the floor. Panic rose in her throat at the sight of the typed letters across the front, spelling out her name in neat black ink. As her eyes flicked to the return address, she half prayed it was merely another letter from Holy Divinity.

Not this time. Bannon Press, the envelope proclaimed, followed by an address in New York City.

It had come.

Janet hugged the letter to her chest, her shoulders trembling under her thin white blouse. The envelope felt warm against her skin.

The seal was still in place. This letter was hers and hers alone.

Janet would take it straight to her room. She wanted to read the letter over and over, the way she’d done with A Love So Strange. She ran up the steps, her heart pounding, and didn’t slow when she reached the second-floor landing. Her hand was on the door to her bedroom when the voice came behind her.

“Why are you in such a hurry there, girl?”

“Grandma.” Janet tried in vain to steady herself before she turned. Her grandmother stood in the bathroom doorway, a fresh smile on her wrinkled face. Janet lowered her hand, wishing she were wearing a skirt so she could hide the letter in its folds. “Did you have a nice day?”

“Oh, your father came home for lunch and it was wretched, as always.” Grandma tsked. “When you’re not here to make it interesting, that is. I don’t know why they need you at that restaurant so much of the time.”

“Oh?” Janet racked her brain for a way to slip into her room without her grandmother following.

“Yes, yes. You know your father, always on about something.” Grandma folded her arms, and Janet steeled herself for a rant. “These days he’ll talk about nothing but that new bill. This ridiculous measure by the people who want to blaspheme the Lord’s holy name.”

“The In God We Trust bill?”

“That’s the one. The fools think if we put that on all our money, it’ll keep the Communists from blowing us into the sky. As if any one of those men down in Congress truly understands the first thing about Scripture. Or about Communists, for that matter.”

“Oh, Grandma.” Janet bent down to turn on the fan so it would cover the sound of their voices. The houses on either side of them were separated by no more than a narrow wall of bricks, and conversations carried so easily Janet sometimes felt she knew the neighbors’ problems as well as her own. Dad never liked it when Grandma talked about Communists, but he especially didn’t like it when the neighbors might hear.

Grandma had been a Socialist as a girl. She’d even been arrested once, for demonstrating against the draft during the first World War. She’d wanted to go on living in New York after Grandpa died, but Dad insisted she move in with them, telling the neighbors he wanted to look after her health. When they were alone, though, he said he’d made her leave because Grandma couldn’t be trusted not to walk into the United Nations one morning and tell Churchill himself to go fly a kite.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me, girl.” Grandma laughed as Janet switched on the fan. “Your father may act as though he’s in charge of what I do and don’t say, but trust me, he knows better! Now, enough political talk. You be a helpful child and tell me a happy story about your day.”

Janet tried to think, but her whole focus was on the letter tucked against her leg.

She hated having secrets from her grandmother. When she was younger, Janet had always gone to Grandma with her problems first. She’d poured her heart out to her time and again, sharing all the worries about school and friends that Mom and Dad never seemed to understand. Janet’s parents believed all problems stemmed from rule breaking, and so any troubles she encountered were of her own creation, but Grandma didn’t hold with that philosophy. She always knew exactly what to say to make Janet feel all right again.

This new problem was altogether different from the sort Janet used to bring her, though.

“My friend Marie starts her new job tomorrow,” Janet finally said. “She’ll be a typist at the State Department. A much better job than delivering cheeseburgers, if you ask me.”

Grandma laughed. “One of these days I need to borrow your father’s car and you can bring me one of those burgers. I’m a good tipper.”

Janet laughed. “You don’t have to tip me, Grandma.”

“Well, what if I want to? I’m sure I have a nickel somewhere in these pockets.” Grandma pretended to search her housedress.

Janet laughed again. “Shall I go ahead and heat up the casserole?”

“No, don’t you worry about that on my account. Don’t tell your mother, but I ate while I was out shopping this afternoon. I couldn’t take another night of casserole.”

“I won’t tell her if you promise not to tell her I ate at work, too. She’s always after me not to eat the Soda Shoppe food. She says it’ll make my skin greasy.”

“She doesn’t need to worry about that.” Grandma patted Janet’s cheek. “No girl for miles around has a complexion as fresh as yours.”

“Thanks, Grandma.” Janet smiled and reached for her doorknob. “I hope you have a good night, then.”

“A good night?” Grandma tilted her head to one side, her shrewd eyes drifting down to the letter in Janet’s hand. “Aren’t you coming downstairs to listen to Dr. Sixgun with me? Don’t make your poor grandma listen to those cowboys shoot up that desert all by my lonesome.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come.” Janet was getting desperate. “I just need to change out of my uniform first. I’m awfully sweaty.”

“All right, well. You do it quickly.”

Janet nodded, trying to look demure, the way Marie always did around adults. Grandma only laughed and waved before padding off in her slippers.

Janet waited until she was certain her grandmother was downstairs. Then, nearly tripping in her haste, she rushed into her own room, ignoring the swell of heat that smacked her in the face, and shut the door behind her. She threw herself down on the bed and ripped open the envelope. She made the sign of the cross, praying she wouldn’t be interrupted again before she’d read what the envelope contained.

Her hands were shaking so hard it took her a moment to realize four pieces of paper had fluttered out onto the pink bedspread. One was covered in neat black handwriting. Janet scooped up that one first.

It was a letter from Dolores Wood.

Dear Miss Jones,

(First, allow me to congratulate you on selecting such a cleverly simple pseudonym! “Janet Jones.” Much more appropriate than something long and strange, like “Dolores Woo d.” )

Miss Jones, as you can imagine, I receive a great many letters from readers. I wish I had time to reply to them all, but it wouldn’t be possible or I’d never have time left to write books. However, your letter stood out to me when I received it from my publisher, as you sound not unlike myself when I was a younger girl. In fact, I will admit that your letter affected me a great deal. At such a young age, to have the nerves required to obtain a book like mine must have taken a great deal of fortitude. Your courage bodes well for your future.

You requested my advice on how to become a writer yourself. My advice is simple: the only way to become a writer is to write. Every young writer has a story inside, usually countless stories. You must put yours onto paper.

Your letter didn’t specify what kind of writing you mean to undertake, but should you have an interest in paperback fiction, I’ve taken the liberty of asking my editor to include his specifications alongside my letter.

Should you wish, I would also be happy to read your writing and offer my thoughts on it. When I first began to write, the perspective of older writers on my work was invaluable to me.

Finally, because I remember, too, being young, and having no money to call my own, I’ve enclosed bus tickets so that you may visit when your manuscript is ready. You can find me most evenings at the Sheldon Lounge on West Fourth and Charles Streets.

Wishing you well,

Dolores Wood

Janet had to read the letter twice, then three times, before she was certain she understood its contents.

Dolores Wood had written to her.

Dolores Wood wanted Janet to visit her in New York. At a place called the Sheldon Lounge.

Was the Sheldon Lounge like the places she’d written about in A Love So Strange? Was it a—a lesbian bar?

Janet couldn’t wait to show this letter to Marie. She’d be astonished.

She reached for the other slips of paper. Sure enough, two of them were bus tickets, from Washington to New York and back again.

Janet had never taken a bus by herself. She and a few friends had traveled to Ocean City after graduation, but that had simply been for a day at the beach, and with one of the girls’ older sisters as a chaperone. Janet’s parents would never allow her to travel so far as New York on her own.

She tucked the tickets away in the drawer of her dressing table. The fourth piece of paper in the envelope was typewritten, from the Bannon Press office.

Dear Miss Jones,

Per the suggestion of Miss Wood, you are hereby invited to submit a manuscript for consideration by Nathan Levy, editor of Bannon Press. We have found success in publishing the novels of Miss Wood and similar works of Lesbiana by other authors, as interest in this topic has recently increased among paperback readers.

Our books, both fiction and otherwise, must speak honestly and candidly about the true nature of this topic, revealing its dangers and immoral associations (such as with other forms of criminality, witchcraft, et cetera). Our stories must end with appropriate resolutions for characters who engage in these practices. All manuscripts must be typewritten with one–inch margins.

Please send a whole or partial (100 pages or more) manuscript to the address below for review. Be sure to preserve a carbon copy of your original manuscript. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, you would be granted an advance payment of $2,000. Bannon Press maintains all control regarding book titles, covers, advertising and the like.

Yours truly,

Sally Johnson,

assistant to Nathan Levy, editor–in–chief

Bannon Press

54 W 23rd St., 17th floor

New York, NY 10011

This letter was even harder for Janet to understand than Dolores Wood’s. Her eyes kept skipping from word to word.

Lesbiana.

$2,000.

Witchcraft.

Witchcraft? Did it really say witchcraft?

Janet checked again. It did.

Her eyes drifted back to Dolores Wood’s letter, and the drawer that held her bus tickets. Miss Wood must have thought Janet was older than she was. Eighteen-year-old girls didn’t accept bus tickets from people they’d never met, or venture off by themselves to faraway cities.

Besides, it was beyond her wildest imaginings that she might actually go to New York and meet Dolores Wood herself. That she might enter a bar and see other girls like Janet and Marie. Girls who “engaged” in “practices” like the ones the Bannon Press letter had mentioned.

Janet’s mind spun. She closed her eyes, and all at once she saw a story unfolding.

A nondescript bar with no windows on a quiet Greenwich Village street. The type of place workingmen hurried past without looking up. Those men wouldn’t notice the girls who walked in and out of the bar with their eyes trained down, their hands tucked discreetly into their coat pockets.

Janet could see it all perfectly. As though she’d visited this bar already, where girls danced with other girls, as though that were a perfectly normal thing to do.

Behind her closed eyelids, Janet pictured two girls sitting at a small, grimy table, slightly removed from the other patrons. One of the girls had dark, curly hair and glasses. The other had blond hair and reminded Janet of a girl she’d once seen on television—the daughter of a contestant on some quiz show. The girl on the program had worn bright lipstick and a lovely dress, and as she’d smiled and twirled before the cheering audience her skirt had billowed out, offering the briefest glimpse of her knees.

Something about that girl had captivated Janet in a way she hadn’t quite understood, but now she saw that she was exactly right for the story forming in her mind.

The blond girl in the bar had met the brunette that very night, Janet decided. It was the first time either of them had dared to enter the place. Which was called... Penny’s Corner. And the two girls were... Paula. And Elaine.

Their story was only just beginning.

Janet opened her desk and reached in blindly, grabbing her old home economics notebook and a pencil. She turned to an empty page. A strange, tingling feeling flowed into her fingers as she wrote the first words.

I’d never come to an establishment like this one before. At first, I was so nervous I could barely see straight, but when I spotted the blond sitting in the back, looking lost and lovely at the same time, I knew I’d made the right choice.

As Janet’s pencil scratched across the paper, the tingling sensation crawled up to her chest. It was just like the night before, when she’d climbed onto that streetcar with Marie.

Janet lowered the notebook, gazing down at the pencil marks on the page. She’d just written the first sentences of her first novel. From here, the story could only grow.

A new set of lines began to take form in her mind. They were for later in the story, so Janet skipped her pencil down the page.

“There’s something I have to tell you, Elaine. Something I’ve longed to tell you.”

I was so breathless I could barely speak. “What is it, Paula?”

“I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you.”

I closed my eyes and tasted each word.

Elaine and Paula would fall in love. Janet could see it as clearly as she saw her own reflection in the mirror. The tenderness the two girls shared would be deep, true and undeniable. Until, tragically, society came between them, as it always must.

A title drifted into her mind, too. Alone No Longer. Janet wrote it across the top of the page.

She kept writing, the words coming to mind faster than she could scrawl them out. She jotted down notes for later, too. Scenes she would write soon, about love and loss and heartbreak.

Sometime later, her grandmother knocked on the door, but Janet claimed a headache and wrote on. She wrote all through the evening and the night that followed, until her eyes refused to stay open and the pencil fell from her limp fingers. Yet even as she finally felt herself passing into sleep, that tingling sensation never went away.

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