epiphany
(Margo)
I haven’t lost a game of dice since I was twelve years old.
If people would pay attention, set them with a little science—the perfect grip, the precise moment of release, the meticulously calculated momentum—no one should ever lose.
I’ve since traded dice games with my parents for rigged games of chance on attic floors, but the principles are the same. So I don’t know how the hell, for the first time in five years, I spin this bottle aiming for my boyfriend and it lands on Viv Carter. But it does, and my throat completely knots. Not because she’s not, like, pretty. Not because she’s not gorgeous, even; I’ve always kind of wanted to be her. She’s my Student Council VP and has the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen outside a shampoo commercial and this sparkling smile that you can’t look away from when she turns it on you. I’ve also always totally wanted her boobs, let’s be real.
But like. What girl hasn’t?
It’s just that it’s awkward. I’ll see her on Monday post-tongue down her throat and we’ll have to do this Haha remember what my mouth tastes like? Parties, am I right? dance and it will be weird for everyone.
Plus, Chad is right here. His knee is touching my thigh, which is fine. He’s in the shirt I got him for his birthday, and we made out in the car about a half hour ago. Which was also...fine. Chad is aggressively fine at making out, but surprise, surprise, I’ve never kissed a dude who didn’t use way too much tongue. Like. Do their tongues actually expand? TARDIS style? Do they get bigger on the inside of a girl’s mouth? Christ.
Maybe the finesse comes later. And that’s when it’s all sparks and fireworks and not practically being waterboarded by saliva.
In college, oh, wow, the kissing will be...fine-plus, at the very least.
Anyway. All that is to say, I can’t just...make out with a girl in front of my boyfriend. Even if...
“Chad,” I say. “I swear to god, are you videoing this?”
His smile is wide and a little dickish, a little eyebrow-waggly. A couple of his freckles disappear into his dimples. “It’s the rules, babe. I don’t make the rules.” He bumps his shoulder into mine and I wiggle away.
“The rules don’t say you have to do it on camera.”
Across the circle, Robbie says, “Wait, who’s doing it?”
I roll my eyes and glance at Viv. Her skin is just straight up sparkling. Of course it is. No one can do contours and highlighter like this girl; I’ve made notes to ask her about it ten thousand times.
And I definitely won’t now because Viv is crawling across the circle, one perfect eyebrow in a perfect arch and I just laugh because suddenly my heart is pounding so hard I think my pulse will tear through my veins like they’re tissue paper. I can’t... Holy shit, I can’t breathe. I try, I make an absolutely valiant effort at an inhale, and what happens is I wind up breathing in Viv.
Oh my god, her mouth.
Oh my god, her hair brushing over my neck, tickling my collarbone.
Oh my god, the softness of her arms pressing into mine, her bare knees slipping against the hem of my shorts. I’m going to die. Right here at seventeen years old in Robbie Kendrick’s basement.
Oh my god, Viv is like, really into this. Is she gay?
Oh my god.
Oh my god, I’m gay.
Chapter 1
Margo
Three months later
Query: how to be gay.
Query: gay tips.
Query: queer culture?
Did you mean “queen culture”?
I blink at my screen. I slam my face on my keyboard.
At that exact moment, the door to the FROG (the adorable nickname for the Finished Room Over the Garage) opens and closes and my brother, Mendel, and four of his friends descend the stairs. My mistake, thinking 2:00 a.m. meant that the living room would be clear.
I should have known. Mendel spends a third of his time fighting fires, a third hanging out with the family or in his room—a fireman’s salary does not pay an apartment’s rent—and a third practicing communism in the FROG.
He doesn’t even say anything by way of explanation, he just walks his comrades to the door and whirls back around, slamming a Gatorade. “My goodness, little sister. It’s two in the morning.”
“Yes,” I say.
“What are we googling? School shit?”
I roll my eyes. “Mendel, I’ll have you know that I do a lot more with my computer than googling academics.”
He arches a dark eyebrow. “At two a.m.?”
I want to protest, but frankly, he’s got me there. I just say, “Well. Not tonight.”
He waits.
I consider saying nothing, just leaving myself to my own devices and muddling my way through the first four hundred pages of search results like I’ve been doing for the last two hours. But then I think, Why? What’s the point of being gay and having an older sibling who’s queer in like nineteen different ways if you can’t use them as a resource? I blow out a breath and close my laptop. “So, okay. Remember what I...what I told you a little while back?”
He cocks his head.
I lower my voice. “About being gay.”
“What?” he fake yells. “You’re gay?”
“Mendel, god. Yes. That. So I just... Here’s the thing. I know I like girls. I know about rainbow flags and stuff and marriage equality and that kissing Viv Carter was a revelation, because—uh. Anyway. I guess I’m just...looking into the rest of it.”
“The rest of what?” he says.
I shrug. I don’t even know how to explain what I’m looking for. “Just...you know. The whole culture. The lifestyle. How do you like...become a part of that?”
Mendel scratches his head. “Is this one of those autistic things where you’re like, I need to know everything about this before I participate? I’m not going to homo until I can homo right?”
I roll my eyes. “No.” Then, “Yes, probably. Just—I don’t know, how do you do this? How do you even signal that you’re gay?”
“Ohhhhh,” he says. His smile widens until it’s bigger than his face. “Like wearing pastel shorts, especially when shorts aren’t appropriate. Or asking if anyone in the room knows my good friend Sean Cody.”
I blink and make mental notes. “Y-yes.”
He thinks for a second. Then he says, “Honestly, Margo, you’re fine. You’re going to figure this out. It’s a lot at first. But the more you, I don’t know, live in it? The more you get it.”
“Okay,” I say. I was afraid that was going to be the answer.
“When I’m not half asleep, I’m down to talk about anything you want, though. You know that, yeah?”
I do. I smile at him and say, “Thanks, big brother.”
He tips his chin at me and heads to bed.
I think about what he said, about living it. Letting it sink into my skin. Just allowing myself to become.
I open my laptop again.
On Thursday, I roll up to teen night at the gayest club in Ocala—Willow—wearing the ga
yest ensemble I could put together. I’m in a white Lacoste tank top and baby pink short shorts and boat shoes, a little leather necklace looped around my throat. I look extremely, perfectly homosexual.
I exit my Lyft and stand outside the club.
All right, Zimmerman, you can do this. You’re here to make Human Connections. Shove all that autism behind your Neurotypical Mask. You can look people in the eye and make small talk. Get in there.
I bounce on my toes for a few seconds, trying to get the jitters out.
Let’s go.
Willow is a sea of backward ball caps and plaid. There are so many gorgeous girls here—gorgeous girls who actually like girls—that for a second, I have trouble catching my breath.
I mean, okay. No one is signaling that particularly well with their clothing; I’m the only one here dressed like this. But god, whatever. This is Florida. We’re like a full generation behind everywhere else. I sigh. This would not be happening in Portland.
I sidle up to the bar and order a Cherry Coke, and a girl with long multicolored hair bumps into me.
“Oh,” she says, “hey.”
“Hey,” I say. She is...beautiful. In this extremely unique way, like her face was put together by a modern artist. She smiles.
“I’m Quinn. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before?”
“No,” I say, “probably not.” But I don’t want to sound like a complete noob. “The club isn’t usually my scene.”
“No?” She slides a little closer to me, and I can see the sweat glistening on her collarbone, lights of the club making it sparkle. “What is your scene?”
Showtime.
“Well,” I say, “I just got here from...the gym.” I lean against the bar in a way that I know shows off my swimmer’s shoulders.
“Oh,” she says. “Well. Cool.”
“I was there with my workout partner. Sean Cody.”
She furrows her brow and glances over her shoulder for a half second.
“Do you know Sean Cody?”
Her face is completely blank. “I, uh...no?”
Crap.
I am going to kill Mendel.
I panic and try to recover. “Anyway, I’m Margo. And I’m a Virgo.”
Quinn kind of half laughs and says, “Cool, well, I need to go meet my friends, so...”
Heat springs to my face. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to push you or something! Are you like...” I take a second to drum up the term. “Masc4masc?”
She blinks.
I hear someone do a spit take behind me, and droplets spray across my shoulders.
I whirl around to find the source and see Abbie Sokoloff, resident Queer Girl™ at S.W. Moody High and fellow swimmer. Add to that: confoundingly hot.
She’s raising an eyebrow at me. “I, uh, think you scared her off.”
I look behind me and see she’s right. Quinn is gone. Go figure.
Good lord, this is already a nightmare.
Abbie says, “Do you even know what you just asked her?”
“...yes? Of course.”
Her eyebrows climb to her hairline. “Okay, Zimmerman. Let me ask you this: do you know what Willow is?”
I sputter. “Uh. Yes. Obviously. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Margo. Do you know. What WILLOW IS.”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I go to take a drink from my Cherry Coke, but my mouth misses the straw completely and it stabs into my cheek. I recover, because maybe she didn’t notice, and get it right the second time. Except my drink is empty and I sound like a nine-year-old trying to get the last of the chocolate milk from the glass.
“This is a gay club. A gay club. For gay girls. Where we can be gay. Gayly.”
“Well,” I say. “This is just. It is simply.” I close my mouth around the straw. Then I remove it from my mouth and slam the cup on the bar. “It’s Teen Night and I’m here, and—”
Oh my god, my throat is closing up.
I’m sweating.
Am I dying?
I...
I don’t even finish my sentence.
I turn around and leave.
I go the gay hell home.
When I walk through the front door, I am drenched in sweat and covered in glitter for some reason and Mendel is sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee despite the hour, and I just throw my hands in the air.
“Margo,” he says. “I—”
That’s where he stops.
I don’t say shit.
I just stare at him.
“... Why are you covered in glitter?”
“WELL,” I say, not able to control my volume, which I absolutely should because my parents are probably asleep. “WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME?”
That doesn’t even make any sense, but I’m furious, and I can’t call Google and scream at them so I have chosen Mendel instead.
Mendel looks me up and down, from the crown of my head to the tips of my boat shoes. And he says, “Because you’re a...gay man?”
I do a double take. “I’m sorry, what?”
He throws his arms up in an exaggerated shrug and says, “You’re wearing short pastel shorts and a leather necklace and fucking Sperrys, Margo. You’re clearly a youthful male homosexual.”
“Ha. Ha ha ha hahahaha, that is hilarious, Mendel. I just went to the lesbian bar and you know what? You know what, Mendel?”
He stares at me and sips his coffee.
“I was the only person dressed like this. And no one knew who Sean Cody was.”
He chokes on his drink.
He coughs for a literal 45 seconds.
“Did you... Did you ask the lesbians about Sean Cody?”
“Yes! Like you told me!”
Mendel almost falls out of his chair laughing. “I absolutely did not. This—Margo, Sean Cody is... There’s a reason girls don’t know about that. It’s a website that’s... Well. It’s not for girls, dude. Definitely not gay ones.”
I blink. I mumble, my voice small, “But my boat shoes.”
He says, “Are great. On a boat.”
The kitchen is suddenly very intensely quiet.
He clears his throat. “You can’t just learn gay culture off a few websites that, honestly, all cater to cis, gay dudes. That’s... I think that’s what happened here.”
I deflate.
I’m humiliated. This was such a failure.
Mendel sees me crumple and says, “Hey, this isn’t a total disaster—”
But I don’t stay for anything else. I just go to my room, to be by myself.
I am terrible at this. I’m so fucking embarrassed. I strip out of my shoes and my shorts and my stupid Lacoste and I can’t even look at my computer.
I just—I hate this. This is never me. I am Margo Zimmerman, the girl who knows what she wants and exactly how to get it. I wanted to get into student government, so I planned a campaign for an entire semester. I ran. I got it. I want to be a large animal vet, so I did everything I could to get accepted into one of the top pre-veterinary programs in the state. I want to have a wife with long flowing hair and a maxi skirt and a golden retriever, hanging up herbs to dry in the kitchen or whatever it is that cottagecore lesbians do, so I researched how to do it.
And I failed.
I failed. So. Hard.
I curl up in my bed, and when I shut my eyes, I see Abbie Sokoloff’s face. I hear her saying, Do you know what Willow is?
I see her looking perfectly, comfortably, gorgeously gay, like she belongs. Like she’s gay and it’s real, and no one would question her presence at a lesbian bar.
Not like me. I need help.
And...
And I have an idea.
Chapter 2
Abbie
She’s waiting for me when I climb the aluminum ladder out of the pool. Margo Zimmerman, student body president, best butterfly and backstroke and freestyle on the team, Chad Wilson the quarterback’s girlfriend, and archetypal Hot Girl is waiting for me when I get out of the water.
I’m immediately suspicious. We might swim together, but I can count on one hand the number of interactions we’ve had—including last Thursday at Willow. If I were into girls like her, I’d say she was way out of my league. And that’s exactly what she’d say, too. We’re not friends, but not just because I’m not cool or pretty or popular enough. We’re not friends because we have nothing in common.
She’s standing there, clearly waiting for me, hands on her hips (like I need anything to direct my attention to her hips, Jesus), her auburn hair pulled back into a tight French braid, her tiny olive green bikini damp but not dripping. Her time out in the sun has made the spray of freckles across her nose stand out even more.
She is just absolutely beautiful.
She says, “Hey. You’re gay.”
I choke.
She waits. She’s not wrong.
I say, “You’re Margo.”
“I need a favor,” she says. “Can we talk?”
“Uh. Sure. Let me get my towel.” I wind my hair into a rope over my shoulder and wring it out. Her eyes flicker, and I swear she looked at my chest, or my hands. Or my hair.
Or she was distracted by the movement. That seems most likely.
She follows me to the chair where I’ve left my bag of stuff and looks anywhere else while I shake my towel out and squeeze the worst of the water from my swimsuit top. And who can blame her? If I were straight, I wouldn’t want to watch a girl squeeze her own boobs.
I wrap the towel around me and say, “So what’s up? You got a friend who needs a date to Homecoming or something?”
She finally looks back at me, her brown eyes serious. “No.” She closes her eyes, and takes a deep yoga breath, hands and all. Then clears her throat. Jesus, a speech is coming. I know the I’ve been practicing this look. “I’m gay.”
Everything I saw at Willow that night, that weird night Margo showed up there, finally sort of clicks into place. But not like, easily. It doesn’t make sense. This has to be some kind of elaborate prank. I look around for one of her douchenozzle friends holding up a phone and snickering. I don’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone.
So I just say, “Oh, come on.”
She blinks. “Excuse me?”
“This is a joke, right? You’re Margo. Margo’s—you’re gay?”
“I am Margo and I am gay.”
“Boy.” I’m looking at her face, and it’s reading as. Well. Completely sincere. Does Margo Zimmerman even know how to lie? “Boy,” I say again, because, boy. And then it clicks. “Oh, so that’s why you and Chad broke up. ...
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