Our Own Private Universe. Robin Talley

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 know what we should do.” Lori put down her paintbrush and grinned at me. “We should both have a fling. Let’s make a pact.”

      I laughed again. Lori and I used to be really into pacts. When we were younger we’d make pacts to eat the exact same number of conversation hearts at the Valentine’s Day party, or to include the word hickey somewhere in our fifth-grade Life Science reports. In middle school, Lori was obsessed with having her first kiss, and she got me to make a pact that we’d each kiss someone before the end of the school year. But when I kissed Tim Mayhew at the school Chrismukkah party that December, she’d been furious. I’d actually forgotten about the pact by that point—I only kissed Tim because he came up to me at the party wearing one of those mistletoe headbands all the guys had that year and I liked the way his green eyes locked on mine when he smiled—but Lori remembered everything. She said I’d violated the pact because we were supposed to have our first kiss at the same time, even though I didn’t remember agreeing to that part at all. It turned out to be fine because Lori kissed Barry Tuckerton at his New Year’s Eve party the next week, but I still felt kind of bad. Barry Tuckerton’s breath smelled like cheese.

      “We should do it,” she said. “For real. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

      I thought about Christa’s face again. Her voice. I especially have a thing for preacher’s daughters...

      “Yeah. Let’s do it.” I was getting excited now. “Okay, rules. We’ll each hook up with someone—um, how about three times? Three’s a good number.”

      “Okay,” Lori said. “And it doesn’t have to be that girl and Paul—it can be anyone. Also—wait, how are we defining hookup, exactly? Is kissing enough, or does it have to be more?”

      I acted surprised, even though I’d been wondering the same thing. “Wow, that’s—um. Do you really think—”

      She started laughing. “Kidding. Of course kissing counts. I mean, that’s all either of us has done before, right? But whatever we wind up doing, we have to tell each other every last, sweaty detail, the way we always do. So, are we both in?”

      She held out her hand, her little finger curved up, for our standard pact-agreement pinkie swear.

      I glanced around the cavernous space of the church. I didn’t see any sign of Christa now, but I remembered how she’d smiled at me in the dusty shadows the night before.

      I’d have given anything just to have her smile at me that way again.

      I grinned and linked my finger with Lori’s. “I’m definitely in.”

      “Hate to interrupt your girl talk, ladies, but you have too much paint on your brushes, there.” Lori and I turned slowly. Dad’s voice had come from far enough behind us that I was pretty sure he hadn’t heard anything, but still, when a parent sneaks up on you, it’s almost never a good thing. Especially when you’ve just finished making a pact that involves kissing other girls. “When you load paint onto your brush, you need to tap off the excess on the edge of the pan, this way.”

      Dad took Lori’s brush and demonstrated. Globs of paint dripped off the brush. I could tell he was right, but I rolled my eyes anyway. Dad loved nothing more than telling me I was doing something wrong.

      “Thanks, Benny.” Lori smiled as he handed her back the brush. She never understood when I complained about my dad. Her own dad had moved out when she was in elementary school, and she hardly ever saw him. She was supposed to spend a few weeks with him every summer, but her summers were always so packed with activities that it usually only wound up being a weekend trip. Maybe she didn’t realize how annoying dads could really be.

      “You ought to be using rollers, though.” Dad stroked his chin. “I’ll see if I can pick some up in town. By the way, Aki, want to come talk to me for a sec?”

      I groaned under my breath and followed Dad outside. The sun charged straight into my eyes, so I pulled on my baseball cap. My brother, Drew, and bunch of people were digging a ditch for the new fence, and they all had giant sweat stains under their armpits. I was glad I’d gotten an indoor job. Our whole family sweated a lot, me included, but Dad and Drew got it the worst.

      “How are you liking Mexico so far?” Dad asked me, wiping the back of his neck.

      “It’s okay. You didn’t tell me we’d be sleeping on a cement floor.”

      Dad chuckled. “Why did you think we told you to bring sleeping bags?”

      “I thought we’d go on a special camping trip or something. For, like, one night.”

      “Well, don’t worry. Sleeping on the floor will build character.” Dad chuckled again.

      “Whatever.” Mom and Dad both loved to say anything Drew and I complained about would “build character.”

      “Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” Dad said. “You remember that our first Holy Life national conference is coming up?”

      I nodded. Jake, the guy from Harpers Ferry, had said something about that at the party last night.

      Some of my friends at school thought our church was weird, but it wasn’t, really. Holy Life started out in Maryland after a couple of nondenominational churches decided to start doing some activities together. Then some churches in other states joined in and even a few in other countries, like this one here in Mexico. Holy Life churches aren’t the kind where preachers talk constantly about how abortion is evil and how we should all vote Republican or anything, though. I mean, some people at my church probably do vote Republican, but mostly we don’t talk about that stuff. Instead we get together for picnics and ice-cream socials, and on Sunday mornings we sing hymns and listen to sermons about whatever Jesus did that week.

      But now the different churches were trying to get more officially organized. Everyone had been talking about the conference since Christmas, but I’d sort of tuned it out. Usually, if I paid attention to church stuff, it was because I’d done something wrong that week and knew I should pray about it so I wouldn’t feel guilty.

      “Well, the delegates who’ll be at the conference are very interested in this trip,” Dad said. “It’s the first time we’ve brought multiple