His first words to me were “If you’re not a [not nice word for lesbian], you sure as hell dress like one.”

I must’ve immediately looked miffed, because he quickly added, “Hey, to me [not nice word for lesbian] is an affectionate term. After all, I’m a big ol’ [rather sexually explicit word for g*y man].”

I wasn’t ready for terms, affectionate or otherwise, from him. I was still coming to terms with myself, dealing with the anxiety and disappointment and exhilaration of being into girls. I tried avoiding him for months. It didn’t work.

“You got it bad, and that ain’t good,” he said to me now.

“She called me Miss Lucy,” I told him.

This made Heron, also at our table, perk up. She’d been reading. She was always reading. She was the only person I knew who’d gotten carpal tunnel syndrome from holding books for too long.

“Miss Lucy is our thing,” she said. She wasn’t saying it out of jealousy or possessiveness. It was like she wanted to remind herself.

“Where is she?” I asked Teddy. “Use your g*ydar.”

“You know g*ydar isn’t like air-traffic control,” he tsked. “The person actually has to be in the room.”

“Well, she’s not here,” I said. “So I’m going to find her.”

“That’s ballsy,” Teddy said.

I looked to Heron for some help.

“Why not?” she said. That was her version of advice.

As I left the cafeteria, it became a test: If I found her, surely that was a sign that things were meant to be. Granted, the sign wouldn’t really spell out what those things were—it would be like a street sign that said STUFF AHEAD. But that was good enough for me.

I found her in the parking lot, leaning on a blue car, eating French fries.

“I had to reward myself for surviving the morning,” she explained, offering me some.

“That bad?” I asked, taking a few.

“Yeah, but not without its prospects.”

I was so used to being the brazen one that I just about flipped to have someone be brazen in my direction.

“Prospects, eh?” I said, fishing for confirmation.

“Yes, Miss Lucy,” she replied, stretching away from the car, toward me. “And I believe the afternoon’s already getting better.”

You should never kiss someone in the first ten minutes. I know that now, but back then it just seemed like nine minutes too long to wait.

“So, are you girlfriends or what?” Teddy asked me, three weeks after Ashley and I started our thing.

The only place I called her girlfriend was in my head. Sometimes I’d say it about a million dozen times in a row, staring at her in class. I wasn’t secret about it or anything. Hunger is something you can’t hide.

“I dunno,” I told him. “I think I’m her girlfriend, and I guess she’s mine. We don’t talk about it.”

“If you’re not girlfriends, then what are you?” he pestered.

I didn’t tell him the answer, because I was too proud of it and also a little embarrassed by my pride.

Even if I wasn’t her girlfriend, I was definitely her Miss Lucy.

“Come over here, Miss Lucy, and give me a hand,” she’d say, and I’d be over in a flash, whether it was to sort out her locker, fill in her homework, or unhook her bra.

“I like you, Miss Lucy,” she’d tell me, and I’d have to do everything I could not to lob a love back at her.

But she could tell. Oh, she could tell.

Lily White could also tell. She could try to hide herself in the cheer squad at lunch or look away when she got near my locker, but damned if the news didn’t spread to her ears anyway. I made sure to smile extra wide whenever I saw her. One time, Ashley gave me a big ol’ love bite, right under the collar. That day, when I was passing Lily White in the hall, I couldn’t help myself. Right when she was looking at me, I pulled the collar down a little to show her.

“That’s gross,” she said.

“Didn’t happen,” I told her.

Nobody’d ever bothered to tell me that if you get too caught up in running away from the wolf, you end up in the arms of the bear.

As for Lily White, a few days later she started dating Pete, who was much much nicer than me. But I doubted he was as good a kisser.

“You’re a great kisser,” Ashley would say.

“Miss Lucy, I’d be lost in this town without you,” she’d tell me.

“You’re so pretty,” she’d swear.

The things she’d do to me, I’d never even had the imagination to imagine.

“When’s she going to hang out with us?” Teddy would ask. “Why do the two of you always have to be alone?”

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you—” I started.

“How could she? She’s never really met us.”

“She just wants to spend her time with me. Is that so wrong?”

“Yes,” Teddy said. “Like this, it is.”

Heron didn’t say a word.

“I’m through with you,” I said. “Can’t you think about me for once?”

“You’re doing enough of that for all of us,” Teddy shot back.

“Forget it. Forget all of it,” I said, grabbing my backpack and storming out to the parking lot. I thought I’d find her there, but her car was gone.

“Where are you?” I asked, then felt stupid for doing it.

I didn’t go back to the cafeteria. I found my own space, sitting on the floor around the corner from the gym.

I told myself the emptiness I felt was the space I’d hollowed out from missing her. A negative space that was positive. The loss that meant I had something to lose.

I desperately wanted to have something to lose.

Mostly we stayed in places that were public or possibly public—we’d move items from aisle to aisle in Target, trying to come up with the sickest combinations possible, like putting condoms next to the Barbie dolls or hemorrhoid cream with the toothpaste. We’d sneak into crap movies and try to finish the characters’ crap lines for them. Then we’d make out in her car and hope nobody came by. We steamed up the windows so much that I could trace hearts in them afterward. Her initials looked good with mine.

My mother couldn’t stand it. She needed me to drive her around and listen to her carry on about the sorry state of the world (which stretched about as far as the mall). All I’d told her was that I had a new friend. She said she wanted to meet this new friend. I told her the new friend wasn’t a boy, and she got less excited. She had no real advice to give about friendship because she’d never managed to keep a friend in her life. Not that she saw it that way. She felt she had plenty of friends. She just didn’t spend any time with them.

I had no intention of introducing her to Ashley, or even of having Ashley in the house. But finally the time came when I wanted us to use a bed. Call me old-fashioned, but I was getting tired of having to do the pleasure thing with a seat belt pressing against my back. Ashley flat-out refused to bring me to her house, so I told her, fine, we’d go to mine. My mother’s one great indulgence was getting her hair done, so one afternoon after I dropped her off at the beauty parlor, I sped through a few lights and picked Ashley up to take her home.

“This is such a Miss Lucy bedroom,” she said when she saw it.

“What does that mean?” I asked her. For some reason, I didn’t think Miss Lucy would have black-painted walls.

“You try so hard not to be frilly,” she replied, like she was the queen of frill.

I must’ve looked a little put out, because she said, “Now, don’t be hurt. You can’t be hurt, ’cuz I wasn’t meaning to hurt you.”

She came over and started to cuddle me into her, and it was like my mind stopped having any other thoughts about her besides now now now.

I was thirty minutes late picking my mother up.

She took one look at me and said, “What happened to you?”

Ashley, I wanted to tell her. Ashley’s happening to me.

But instead I told her I’d gotten a flat.

This was a stupid lie.

“Where’s the old tire?” she asked when we got home.

“The triple-A guy took it,” I told her.

“You’re a very bad liar,” she said.

“Your hair looks like a camel peed in it,” I said back, then stormed to my room and called Ashley to tell her all about it.

“A camel peed in it?” Ashley said, laughing.

Suddenly it didn’t seem as serious.

“Well, that’s what it looked like,” I said.

Already the edge was gone. My life could be curvy again, and all it took was a laugh on her end of the phone.

More weeks passed.

I wanted something from her.

I wanted the l-word.

I wanted her to call me her girlfriend.

I wanted to make her cry.

I wanted to know I had the same effect on her that she had on me.

I got careless.

I tried holding her hand in school.

“Slow down, Miss Lucy,” she said. “Slow down.”

I said I wanted to see her house.

Her room.

Her bed.

She told me they weren’t worth seeing.

I asked her if there’d been other girls before me.

She laughed and said yes.

I asked: “Am I the second? The seventh? The thirtieth?”

But she didn’t tell me any more than that.

I had told her about Lily White, and now whenever I didn’t want to do something she wanted me to do, she’d tease me about getting back together with Lily White, about how we’d be perfect together.

“Lucy likes to lick Lily,” she’d tease.

“Don’t be mean to me,” I’d say.

“I’m not,” she said. “It’s a joke.”

Later, we’d be with each other and it would seem right—the perfect rhythm, the desire clouding us. Afterward, she’d hold me close—the perfect daze—and she’d say, “Miss Lucy, you and I are a pair, aren’t we?”

But then she’d tell me not to be so attached.

The more this happened, the deeper I fell in love with her.

The more she made me want it, the more I wanted it.

“Open your eyes,” Teddy told me, one of the few times I talked to him.

But that wasn’t the problem.

My eyes were wide open.

Seeing her.

All the conversations in our relationship started to be about our relationship.

I was always the one who brought it up.

“What am I to you?” I would ask.

“Oh Lord,” she’d groan. “Not again.”

“Are we girlfriends? Lovers? Nothing at all? What?”

“I’m Ashley and you’re Miss Lucy. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not enough!” I’d protest, not even sure what I was defending.

“I don’t need this, Miss Lucy. Really.”

Miss Lucy had a steamboat

The steamboat had a bell

Miss Lucy went to heaven

and the steamboat went to

“What are you mumbling?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon.”

“I love you.”

“No.”

“I do.”

Hello, operator

Please give me number nine

And if you disconnect me

I’ll chop off your

The kissing was supposed to be the escape. The kissing was supposed to be the moment when nothing in the world mattered but us. The kissing was supposed to take me away from all the problems. All the thoughts. All the doubts.

But now when I kissed her, I was always measuring how much of her was there. And I was wondering how much of me was left.