“What do you mean?”

“I mean … this … you … I’m …” She shakes her head.

“Confused?” I remember when I felt like that too. I was confused because I couldn’t see the appeal of all the men that everybody else considered attractive. I could see it in an abstract, distant way I guess. But they never made my heart race the way that girls did. That girls do.

I guess I was less confused about what I felt than I was about what other people expected me to feel.

But how can Flávia be confused after she just kissed me like that a moment ago?

“Scared,” she admits finally. In a small voice. “Of telling people. Chyna.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I know what it’s like. Telling people. My parents … didn’t take it too well.”

“I told my mom.”

“You did?”

She nods. “A while ago. Last year … when … I mean. There was this girl …”

Something flares inside me that feels oddly like anger. Jealousy? I push it down as deep as I can, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible as I say, “Oh?”

“I mean, it was … different. From this, from you. Nothing happened. But I was confused and … I trust my mom, you know? We’re close. So I told her that … I don’t know. I said that I thought I might be bisexual.”

“And …?”

She smiles. “She was … I mean, I don’t think she was expecting it. And it took her a while to wrap her head around it. But I think she’s okay with it. She’s never made a big fuss or anything.”

“Oh, that’s … that’s good. I’m glad.” I am glad, but that feeling, something like jealousy, rears its head inside of me again, crawling through my skin and clawing at my heart. This time it’s not about some girl but about the way that Flávia seems so nonchalant about her mom not making a big fuss. I’m jealous that it’s come so easy to her, this revelation. When it has cost me my family.

Flávia tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and her fingers brushing against me sends heat scalding down my skin. We’re still so close to each other that we could touch at a moment’s notice. I have to get my thoughts back on track. Just the sight of her, the thought of her, sends me into a jumble.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“If you knew you were bisexual … why were you so weird after the Junior Cert party?”

She looks down at her stained orange palms like they will have the answer to my question. “Do you know any Brazilians, Nishat?”

“I know you.”

“Other than me?” She smiles.

There are a lot of Brazilians in Ireland, but in our school, Flávia is the only Brazilian girl I know of. So I shake my head slowly.