Unlike Kelly, who’d been counting kisses every chance she got since we were eleven, I’d only started to really feel desire when I turned fourteen. Even then, it was a personal thing, a walled garden of rare plants I liked to visit sometimes. Then, this summer, real desire rose in my skin like yellow dandelions bursting from cracked pavement. Every beautiful person I saw was gilded with possibility. Finally, I had my first kiss, the last night of camp. The tall dark-haired boy and I had been eyeing each other all week, and the moments under the stars with him make my body sing even now when I think of them.

But Lourdes makes me feel that way too. There is no denying it. I don’t know anyone in Edenrock who’s gay or bi except the choir teacher, and while he’s known as beloved, behind his back people aren’t as kind. Even my mom sometimes makes jokes about a guy being swishy or a girl being butch. The jokes aren’t mean, exactly. Not hateful. But they lodge in my belly every time I hear them, like rocks I’ve been made to swallow with milk and can never digest.

Now, with the air between Lourdes and me fizzing like fancy water, I lean in closer, brave in my bird’s-wing eyeliner and dark lipstick. Lourdes closes her eyes and we kiss, my wine-deep Shiv red on her brighter Ruby Slippers. My skin rings with sensation like the singing bowl my mom uses to begin her daily meditations. I pull Lourdes closer, kiss her harder.

There is a light knock at the door and then it flies open, but we only have to pull an inch apart to have our alibi, since Lourdes still has the mascara wand in her hand.

“What?” Lourdes says like a sitcom star, her tone perfectly bratty teen.

“Who’s your friend?” The woman in the doorway looks like someone from TV too, a polished soap opera lady lawyer. She’s light-skinned like me but clearly Latina, in a red suit and black pumps, her shoulder-length hair a stiff cloud of perfect waves.

“Tam,” she says, “this is my mom, Pilar.”

“Hola, Tam,” she says. “Vas a la escuela con Lourdes?”

I feel myself going pale, my backward version of blushing. “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to smile. “I don’t speak Spanish.” I kick myself for taking French with Kelly instead.

“Pero eres Mexicana?” she says. “You’re Mexican, aren’t you? I see that.”

“Not everyone who’s Mexican speaks Spanish, Mom.” I realize that the Las Pochas shirt is still sitting next to me. I shift my leg to hide it.

“Of course!” she says. “Are you going somewhere tonight? Is there a dance?”

“Just the movies,” Lourdes says, her voice suddenly younger. “Tony said he’d drive us.”