Our Own Private Universe. Robin Talley

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.

      Not that it mattered, given that our agenda for the day consisted of manual labor in an un-air-conditioned cement building. We were painting the town’s new Holy Life church. When it was done, this one would replace the old building where we were camping out.

      “Is this how we’re supposed to do it?” I lowered my brush and frowned. The church walls were tall, probably twenty feet high, so we were only painting what we could reach. Our little patch of white primer looked kind of pathetic.

      “Who knows?” Lori dabbed her brush in the paint tray. “Just keep going.”

      I’d tried to pay attention during that morning’s painting lesson, but I’d been standing toward the back of the group, and Christa was at the front. I kept craning my neck to get a better look at her.

      I hadn’t seen her after the party. By the time we got back to the old church someone had hung up a tarp to separate the boys’ half of the floor from the girls’, but the single lightbulb that lit the whole room was on the boys’ side. Our side was a strange dark cave, quiet except for a few people whispering and swarms of mosquitoes buzzing past the windows. There was no way to spot Christa in the dark. Plus, every time I saw a shadow move I was positive it was a snake. (I had a thing about snakes.)

      “So, question.” Lori painted another slow, uneven line. “Regarding your new paramour.”

      “She’s not my paramour.” I smiled.

      “Only a matter of time, babe.” Lori glanced at me with her eyebrows raised. “But what’s your dad going to say about you being gay? I mean, bi?”

      I’d carefully avoided thinking about that. I returned my focus to my paintbrush. “I don’t know.”

      “What about your mom? And your brother?”

      “Come on, they don’t all have to know everything. Mom isn’t even here.”

      “Ooh, so you and that chick are going to sneak around Mexico having secret liaisons under preacher daddy’s nose? Gnarly.”

      “Liaisons?” I laughed. “Gnarly? What is this, 1980?”

      Lori laughed, too. “For real, though. If you’re not having secret liaisons, what are you going to do, lesbian it up right in front of everyone?”

      I shifted again. “I met this girl five seconds ago. Nobody’s lesbianing anything yet. Besides, I still like guys.”

      Lori tried to arch one eyebrow, but she couldn’t do that very well, so her face just wound up amusingly strange and contorted.

      “You know what I really want to do this summer?” she said. “Have a fling.”

      I laughed. “What kind of fling?”

      “You know, where you have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend or whatever, but only for the summer. You hang out, you hook up, and at the end of the summer you go back to your regular life. Short, meaningless, but fun.”

      “What’s the point of that?” I said. “Don’t you want a regular boyfriend?”

      “Yeah, sure. But this summer is our perfect fling opportunity. Most of the guys here go to other schools, so we’ll basically never see them again. The girls, too.”

      Hmm. “I sort of see what you mean.”

      “I