Our Own Private Universe

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, trying to be clever and praying it was working. “I have lots of friends who are straight, privileged white guys, and I’m totally okay with them. I think they should have equal rights, just like the rest of us.”

Christa laughed again. Her eyes crinkled up, as though she actually thought I was funny. “As long as they don’t flaunt it, right?”

I laughed again. Christa slid her shoulder up against the wall right next to me and leaned forward until her face was only inches from mine.

My heart thudded in my chest. I was too nervous to look back at her.

I did it anyway.

Maybe this qualified as doing something.

I could barely remember what we’d been talking about, so I was halfway relieved when a smiling black guy I didn’t know came up to us. “Christa, are you bothering this nice young girl?”

I wished he hadn’t called me young. Or nice. Those two words added up to the opposite of sexy.

“I don’t know.” Christa turned toward the guy, then looked back at me. Her light brown eyes glimmered in the dim light. “Am I bothering you, Aki?”

“No,” I breathed.

The guy and Christa both laughed, and she introduced us. His name was Rodney. He went to the same church as Christa, and they were both going into their junior year at King. I was surprised Christa was only one year older than me.

The three of us sat down on the tile patio and Rodney grabbed a pile of chips for us to share. I took an inventory of the courtyard while Rodney and Christa talked about their friends from school. I counted only five black people, including Rodney, my brother, Drew, and me.

I wondered if that was why Rodney had come over to talk to us. There were plenty of black people in our part of Maryland, but most of them went to all-black churches. Only a handful of black and Hispanic families went to our church, and I figured the same was probably true at Christa and Rodney’s, too. The other church who’d sent their youth group on this trip was in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I didn’t know much about West Virginia, but from what I did know, I had a feeling that church was all white, all the time.

Rodney wasn’t bad-looking. I probably should’ve been excited that he wanted to talk to me. But all I wanted was to be alone with Christa again.

Other people came over to sit with us. Christa kept saying stuff that made everyone laugh, me especially. Then the group got so big that a bunch of different conversations were going on at once.

A short white guy came over and sat down next to me.

“Hi.” He waved awkwardly. “I’m Jake. I go to Holy Life of Harpers Ferry.”

“Hey, Jake.”

Jake, it turned out, was really, really chatty. He kept trying to ask me questions about the people who went to my church and about the national conference that was coming up at the end of the summer for all the Holy Life churches. I knew absolutely nothing about the conference, so I mostly nodded while Jake talked.

It actually turned out to be kind of cool hanging out with new people—people who didn’t automatically see me as a music-dork preacher’s kid—but even so, I couldn’t focus. I wanted to talk to Christa again. She was funny. And I liked how her eyes caught the light.

Lori came over and motioned to me, so I apologized to Jake and got up. It was good to have an excuse to get away. It was hard to think clearly with so much happening around me.

I followed Lori through the courtyard’s tall, swinging wooden door. A patch of gravel ran behind the row of houses and faded into dirt as the hills rose up behind the edge of town. Lori and I walked out a few yards past the gravel into the pitch-black night so we could talk without anyone hearing us. It took all my energy to focus on Lori instead of those stars again.

She wanted to tell me about the blond guy she’d spotted earlier. She’d found an excuse to talk to him. It turned out his name was Paul, and he went to Christa’s church in Rockville.

“He’s going to be a senior at King,” Lori said. “He has a car and everything. A Toyota.”

“Do you like him?”

“Uh-huh. He’s really cute and funny. Plus, older guys are more mature, you know?”

“Do you mean mature, like, emotionally, or mature, like, he’s done it?”

“Oh, shut it.” Lori giggled. I did, too. “I took a picture of us goofing around. Want to see?”

Lori took out her phone and showed me a poorly framed photo of her and Paul sticking their tongues out at the camera. It made me think of Christa and her gorgeous photography. I flushed, glad it was dark so Lori couldn’t see.

“Do you think you’ll ask him out or something?” I said.

“I don’t know. What is there to even do around here? Maybe we’ll just hang out at the volunteer site. And find someplace to sneak off to when the time is right.”

We both laughed again.

We were supposed to start work tomorrow. None of us were sure exactly what that meant. We’d come here to do construction on a church that the local congregation had already started building. None of us knew the first thing about construction, but my dad and the other chaperones said they’d teach us. I only hoped they didn’t make me climb ladders. I was afraid of heights.

My back felt stiff from sitting on the ground, so I stood on my tiptoes and stretched my arms over my head, arching my spine so my braids hung straight down. This time, I couldn’t resist gazing up at the stars. They were closer out here than they were within the stone courtyard walls.

In that moment, it felt like we were the entire world. Just me and those gorgeous stars.

It was colder out here, too, away from the lights of the houses. We weren’t really in the desert, even though that was what I’d expected when I signed up to come to Mexico. Here there were trees and stuff, and it had been hot during the day but not that hot. Now that it was dark, it was only sixty-something degrees.

I lowered myself back down from my toes and rubbed my bare arms, wishing I’d worn more than my T-shirt and jeans. Then I remembered my missing suitcase. I didn’t have anything else to wear.

“We’re going into town on Saturdays, right?” I asked Lori. “Maybe you and Paul could do something while we’re there.”

“Or maybe you and that girl could.” Lori smirked.

“Oh, whatever.” But I couldn’t help smiling.

I wasn’t sure if lesbians even went on dates. Did anyone, really? I’d been on one official date in my entire life, to a dance at a school I didn’t go to with a blue-haired guy who threw up because he drank a beer.

I’d wondered what it would be like to have a real boyfriend. Maybe a girlfriend, too. Someday.

Just the idea of a girlfriend seemed like it was from a whole different life. I mean, even if Christa had been flirting with me back in the courtyard, that didn’t mean she actually wanted to go out with me. She must’ve been able to tell I didn’t know anything about being gay.

Heck, she probably thought I was straight. I might as well have been, for all I’d done so far.

Was Christa bi, too? Maybe she was into Rodney. Or someone else. Maybe she hadn’t really been flirting with me at all.

“So do you like her?” Lori asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe?”

“I knew it!” Lori pumped her fist. “I could so tell when you were looking at her before.”

“It doesn’t matter. She isn’t interested.”

“How do you know?”