Saundra Mitchell - All Out - The No-Longer-Secret Stories Of Queer Teens Throughout The Ages

Lori and MaryAnn reached her at the far end of the rink. “Where’s Rodge?” Dee asked, perhaps a little too quickly. She tried to look nonchalant, but Lori had already detected the small note of panic in her voice.

“Some of the guys showed up,” said Lori, and made eyes at the lockers. They could plainly see Roger at the center of a group of boys, laughing and elbowing each other. Vince was still not present. “Girl, you should just move on,” Lori continued. “Look, there’s Tony. He’s so tall and fine. Go see if he wants to skate with you.”

“I don’t want to skate with anybody,” said Dee with a bright, overly sweet smile. “I got you guys.”

MaryAnn laughed. “Uh-huh! That’s not what you were saying a month ago. It was just Dee and Vince.” She said it in a melodic, drawn-out way, brushing Dee’s shoulder with her own, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Vince and Dee,” Lori added from Dee’s other side, mirroring MaryAnn and ignoring Dee’s scoff. “I’m surprised you remember our names.”

“I still don’t get why you’re mad at Vince,” said MaryAnn. “What he do?”

Dee sighed, because she didn’t know how to answer that. Because Vince hadn’t done anything. And because MaryAnn was always one step behind, a little out of sync. She didn’t have to explain these things to Lori. Somehow, Lori always just knew what the problem was without Dee having to tell her.

“It’s not about what Vince did,” said Lori. Dee could feel the playful smirk on her face. “It’s about what Dee did.”

MaryAnn leaned in. “What’d you do, Dee?”

“You didn’t see them holding hands during the couples’ skate?” said Lori. “They were skating all close and slow, the lights were dark and we were just watching, and then outta nowhere Dee just let go and took off in the middle of the song. You didn’t see all that?”

“Nooo!” gasped MaryAnn. “You did that, Dee?”

“Man, shut up, Lori,” said Dee, and she shot ahead of them. She could hear Lori and MaryAnn calling after her, but she rounded the next bend, zigzagged smoothly between other skaters and didn’t look their way.

It reminded her of last time. She and Vince were in their own world, but she’d come out of it when she heard Lori and Roger’s boys snickering behind them.

And yet, even now, she wondered why she had let go of Vince’s hand. Was she embarrassed? Was she not ready for what their friends would say about them? What they would expect? Was there even a way to prepare for any of that?

Dee met Vince Ramirez almost a year ago, when he showed up in her biology class at the beginning of the spring semester. Dee and her classmates had been curious about the Filipino kid starting classes in the middle of the year. But he’d found his stride and fit in seamlessly, and soon he became background like most of the boys in Dee’s class.

A few weeks later, Vince showed up at Saturday Fun Night at the local rink. The DJ played hits by Donna Summer, James Brown, and Ecstasy, Passion & Pain, sodas were free with a slice of pizza, and Dee and her friends went practically every week. Roger invited him. They had become friends, because Roger was friends with everyone and it was only a matter of time.

“Hey, Dee, you met Vince?” said Roger. “He likes Soul Train, too!”

“So?” Dee laughed. “Everybody likes Soul Train.”

But they talked. About the Bee Gees, Archie Bell & the Drells, and Chaka Khan. About Soul Train and American Bandstand. And that Monday, in biology, they kept talking. The following summer was a blur of poring over vinyls in the record store, riding their bikes to the library, the newsstand and the snowball stand next door. They chewed candy and popcorn while Dee told Vince about the novel she’d read that week and Vince showed off his stack of comics. And every Saturday night, there was skating.

Until three weeks ago, at least, when she’d let go of Vince’s hand and left him on the rink floor like a jilted lover, which was ridiculous because they were only friends. But there had been laughter and whoops from several mouths as Dee skidded off the rink floor.

The sounds followed her like the bays of disgruntled spectators from the box seats, robbed of a show. An older, smarter girl would have been more inconspicuous, and then perhaps everything would be all right now. Dee could only wish to have that level of charm and sophistication.

She wished she could be like Elizabeth Bennet. Her English class read Pride and Prejudice last semester. She’d loved the book so much she’d bought her own secondhand copy that she’d found in the Salvation Army store. She told Vince all about it, about how headstrong and clever Lizzie Bennet was, but Vince didn’t really care about old-timey English literature. Dee liked how independent and gracious Lizzie was. She liked the reserved and distinguished Mr. Darcy. She liked that their romance was driven by intellect, conversation and art.

She liked that there was no kissing.

She had never seen the appeal of kissing, not after MaryAnn had kissed her first boyfriend at the end of sixth grade and told half the block about it, not when Dee had had her first kiss freshman year, at one of Nadia Boone’s weekend basement parties full of beer and disco.

That had been a whole year before Vince moved to town. Kevin Campbell was sweet, but the kiss had been messy and wet and Dee had been very miserably aware of every second of it. It had gone on forever, and not in a good way.

Dee had giggled with Lori much too loudly about it not ten minutes later. She’d locked eyes with Kevin standing just a few feet away, realized he’d heard every word and she didn’t even feel bad about it.

Boys had tried to kiss her after that. When they stopped her to chat in the halls, or leaned into her at parties, she always found some excuse to slide away and go hide between her girlfriends. None of them seemed to care that she’d laughed about kissing Kevin right in his face—not even Kevin. He’d even invited her to go to the carnival with him a few months later. They went together with their friends, watched other couples laughing hand in hand, arm in arm, and Dee had never felt so outside of her own skin.

Lori and MaryAnn were into trashy romance novels. They devoured them like penny candy. They’d loaned a couple to Dee but Dee always cringed when it got to the steamy parts—or worse, she laughed. Those moments always took her right out of the story—and considering they were the story, she got taken out pretty quick.

Was this what romance was supposed to be? Was this all there was? And if that was the case, why didn’t Dee want the same kind of romance as Lori and MaryAnn—and pretty much every other girl she knew? They were seventeen and already MaryAnn and Lori seemed to know so much more about sex than she did.

One time MaryAnn had shown her and Lori a porno. They’d watched it at MaryAnn’s house late one night while her mother was working at the hospital and her dad was passed out in the living room with a couple of beers and the news still playing. They’d watched it in MaryAnn’s room with the volume turned low.

Lori and MaryAnn had giggled and laughed and gasped, while Dee squirmed. Halfway through she’d got up to go to the bathroom. Instead she’d sat down with MaryAnn’s dad and watched NBC’s Saturday Night.

She wondered if Lizzie Bennet would suffer through a porno. She couldn’t imagine it. She also couldn’t imagine Lizzie laughing about kissing Kevin Campbell (well, maybe she would) or leaving Vince Ramirez alone in the middle of the rink.

Lori had suggested that maybe Dee wasn’t into guys. Lori wasn’t, and sometimes she linked fingers with other girls at the rink. Dee didn’t think it was about boys and girls. She didn’t know how to explain that she preferred to have no preference at all, and so she said nothing.