Page 28 of September Lessons
Leigh-Ann truly was blushing like a fiend. Did she have a fever? Or was she consumed by the shock of Carrie figuring her out?I’ve never told anyone about that. How could she figure it out so quickly?It wasn’t fair! Leigh-Ann couldn’t control the narrative if an outsider like Carrie was figuring her out before anyone else did! Before Leigh-Ann had the chance to tellherside of things! The way she wanted…
Feh. She was found out. What was more embarrassing than refusing to own up to it?
“You’re right,” she whispered, burying her forehead between her legs. “Christina and I were best friends since we were kids. We used to do everything together. Didn’t matter that her mom was the mayor and I lived in the trailer park.” In a place like Paradise Valley, worrying about those things was moot. Everyone knew everyone. That included Mayor Rath personally knowing the Hardys long before their daughters started hanging out at school. “We stayed friends when we went into high school. She was always way prettier than me, you know, and new, more popular girls moved here, but she always chose to hang out with me first. She’s the reason I got invited to parties. People invited her, so she invited me, too.”
Carrie slowly reached for the empty chip bags. Was she making fun of Leigh-Ann? Acting like she’d find some popcorn to enjoy the story with, as if that were the point?
“Go on,” Carrie said. “Tell me about the day you said you liked her and she rejected you. I mean…” She shrugged, her sniff of indifference not inspiring Leigh-Ann’s confidence. “If you want to. I ain’t gonna hold a gun to your head.”
Like Leigh-Ann really had a choice now!
“It was at a party,” Leigh-Ann muttered. “Her brother’s party, at the mayor’s house. I guess their mom was out of town, and she said they could have a few people over…”
“Which, naturally, turned into a bona fide high-school party.”
“If you can call it that. Christina and her brother go through bouts of being huge potheads, and that night wasn’t really different. That’s whenhewas a senior, too, so it was mostly his friends from school and out of town. Christina and I were some of the only sophomores there, since our other friends got intimidated by the seniors and went somewhere else to hang out once the pot was out.”
“You smoke, huh?”
This time, Leigh-Ann’s snort was one of mild merriment. “I asked you to come smoke with me on the hill, didn’t I?”
“You also implied it was where kids went to make-out.”
“Ain’t this a place like that too? You’re the one who brings that up.”
“Yeah, well… I plead the Fifth, hon. Come on. Tell me about Christina breaking your little gay heart.”
My little gay heart…Leigh-Ann didn’t know about that. All she knew was that such a suggestion gave her cotton mouth. “We both smoked that night.” Speaking of cotton mouth… “I don’t know what came over me. One minute we were hanging out in her room, and the next… we were kissin’. Not much else to it than that.”
“Eh heh heh!” That had definitely piqued Carrie’s interest unlike anything else so far.I had a feeling she’d be interested in what it’s like to kiss Christina.Leigh-Ann wished she remembered. The only things dancing at the edge of her memory were the soft lips and the delicate way Christina’s soft hair brushed against Leigh-Ann’s cheek while they kissed. “You get to second base?”
“What? No way. It was just some kissing.” Second base! Leigh-Ann couldn’t fathom sticking her hand up a girl’s shirt! She got embarrassed thinking about doing it to a boy, and boys didn’t have boobs!
“So then what happened? She realized she was kissing a girl and kicked you out?”
“Not quite like that.” Leigh-Ann cleared her throat. “Nothing else happened that night, but a few days later, I had gotten to school and she comes up to my locker to tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore.”
“Whoa. You just took that? Your best friend!”
“Yeah. My best friend.” In truth, Leigh-Ann had been too embarrassed to say anything back then, outside of“What, why?”and“You’re kidding, right?”No, Christina hadn’t been kidding. “I don’t really wanna get into it past that. It was two years ago. We’ve moved on.”
“I’m… come on, Leigh. You’re telling me that your best friend since you were kids gives you a nice kiss and then blows you off for the rest of high school? Even if she were straight and regretted kissing you, you could’ve moved on as friends or…”
“It ain’t like that, sometimes.” Leigh-Ann picked up some of the dry straw and crinkled it between her fingers. “Sometimes it’s as simple as you two going your separate ways.”
“That’s bull, and you know it.”
The silence settling in over the barn teased Leigh-Ann to say something. Defend herself. To Carrie, that was. Her chance to defend herself to Christina had already passed.Two years ago.Thinking about it gave Leigh-Ann a headache. “I don’t smoke a lot of pot now,” she muttered. She had been reminded of headaches, after all.
“You afraid you make stupid decisions when you get high?”
“Don’t know about that,” Leigh-Ann continued to mutter. “All I know is that apparently you and I both have had crushes on the same girl.”
“You never told me you were a bit queer,” Carrie said so nonchalantly that Leigh-Ann had to doubletake. “I mean, I kinda got that feeling from you, but you also told me you were straight, so…”
“What does it matter?” Leigh-Ann’s terse words made Carrie snap her head around. “Being gay, straight, bi… I don’t know. Don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, though, that experimentation failed. I’ve had at least one boyfriend since then, you know.”
Yes, she knew how desperate and sad that sounded, as if she had anything to hide from the only friend she had made since Christina dumped her by the lockers. So she wasn’t surprised when Carrie said, “So you care?”
