They kissed so long they forgot what they’d been thinking. They kissed so long they forgot how to think altogether. Every word they’d spoken vanished into the steam from the shower. Nothing mattered but this feeling.

Maria loved kissing Lily more than anything. More even than the feeling of winning.

Sometimes Maria would find herself sitting in Advanced Calc at ten in the morning thinking about this feeling. About the way their bodies fit together. The sensation of Lily’s skin against her own. The way it felt when it was dark, and they were alone, and all the layers that separated them in the light—the rules and the lying and the loneliness—were gone. When it was just the two of them, connected in a way Maria had never known was possible before.

She pressed her lips into the curve of Lily’s neck, the soft place just above her collarbone, and Lily giggled, a soft giggle reserved just for moments like this. Usually, Maria was anxious to tell the world about what she had with Lily, but sometimes she was glad to have these moments all to herself.

Maria slid her arm around Lily’s waist, under her shirt, and had her bra unhooked before either of them remembered half the senior class was just on the other side of the door. Then, for a frantic minute, even though they remembered, they didn’t care.

Things might have gone further if something hadn’t slammed into the wood behind them. Both girls leaped up, remembering the knocking from last night. Lily was scrambling to fix her shirt when Ryan whispered loudly through the door, “Hey, Princess, you done hurling yet? Or can you take a break while I piss?”

Maria turned off the faucets. “You asswipe,” she hissed back. Laughter echoed from the other room.

Without the rush of water, the room seemed empty. Whatever feeling she’d had before, of something in the room with them, it was gone now.

But Maria remembered.

She remembered everything. What they’d said. What she’d agreed to do.

First, though, she had to go back out there and smile at everyone. Fake her way through the rest of the night and another three days. Pretend to still be normal.

When she was pretty sure she never had been.

ACT 2

in lightning

5

CAN THE DEVIL SPEAK TRUE?

“Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,

And thrice again to make up nine.”