Robin Talley - Our Own Private Universe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I was definitely doing something.

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

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

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

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

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

I swallowed and dropped my gaze down to my feet.

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

“I make jewelry,” Lori offered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I guess.”

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

I shifted again. “I guess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was only one thing I knew for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 2

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

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

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

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

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

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