Robin Talley - Pulp

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.

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.”