Robin Talley - Our Own Private Universe

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

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

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

Lori nudged me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aki.”

“That’s pretty.”

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

“It’s short for Akina,” I explained.

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

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

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

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

Did I want her to?

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

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

“Yeah?”

Oh.

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

Of course she did.

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

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

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

“I. Um.” I didn’t know what to say.

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

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

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

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

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

Okay. So that wasn’t totally true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I laughed and reluctantly stepped back from her phone.

“Do you go to King?” I asked her.

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

Christa nodded. “I do.”

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

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

But she didn’t look bored.

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

She laughed. I did, too.

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

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

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

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