First Time for Everything (19 page)

I shrug. “I don’t really like it that much.”

“I didn’t like it at first either,” Ellie says, wiping her hands on a towel. She comes back over to the table and sits down on a rickety chair.

“You do now?”

“I discovered Cruisers. They’re like drinking cordial, except they give you a buzz.”

“I’ve never tried them,” I say. “I’ve only tried scotch before, and I didn’t like it that much.”

“You can have one of my Cruisers later, if you like,” Ellie offers.

Before I can answer, Ben appears in the doorway. “We’re all heading off to get some wood for the bonfire. You want to come and help?”

“Sure.” I stand up and look at Ellie. “Do you want to come?”

She says, “I should stay and get the food and drinks organized.”

I say, “I guess I’ll see you later.”

T
HE
BONFIRE
is bigger than the last one I went to, fueled mostly by textbooks no one will ever use again. I threw my maths and English books in, but held on to my science ones. I figure they might come in handy when I go to uni. Someone brought a stereo, and the music’s blaring, making it hard to hear much of anything. There are a few people wasted enough to dance, but I’m not one of them.

Ben drops down beside me on the sand, sloshing his drink over the side of his cup. “Three guesses what I just did,” he says.

“You punched Zac in the mouth.”

Ben laughs. “No.”

“I’d love you forever if you did.”

“You love me forever anyway. Try again.”

Someone turns the music up, and I have to raise my voice for Ben to hear me.

“You ran to the lighthouse and back.”

“Nope, but I could totally do that.”

“You… won the beer-drinking comp.”

“I totally did, but that’s not it.”

“Wait, I was joking. When did this happen?”

“When you were off helping with the food. Come on, Jess, you’re not even trying. I’ll give you one last guess.”

“Okay. Oh, I know, you asked Jules to the formal.”

Ben slaps his thigh. “Yes! Yes, I did.”

“Wow, Ben. What did she say?” I honestly didn’t think he’d do it. It’s amazing what getting wasted can make you do.

“She said she didn’t want to go with anyone, but she’d see me there.”

“Oh, well, that sucks.”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning at me like an idiot. He’s a bit too happy for just being rejected. Maybe it’s all the beer he’s had. He says, “You know what that means, though, right?”

“We get to go to the formal together now?”

“Yes, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

I shrug.

“Come on, Jess. You remember our deal.”

I do now. “No. No way, Ben, that’s not fair.”

“Why isn’t it fair? I asked Jules, now you have to tell—”

“No, Ben. I don’t.” I stand up and brush the sand off my shorts.

Ben stands up and says, “Come on, Jess. Look around. Everyone’s plastered. I’ll go and get Ellie and you can talk to her alone.”

I never thought he’d ask Jules to the formal, and I never want to tell Ellie how I feel about her. It’s the stupidest idea ever. “You don’t understand,” I say. “It’s easy for you.”

“What? Risking rejection?”

“You’re a boy asking a girl. I’m a girl telling a girl. It’s not the same.”

“It can be. Look, I’ll go and get Ellie….”

He turns to go, and I grab him by the arm. “No, Ben, I’m not telling Ellie I like her.” Just as the words leave my mouth, the music stops. Everyone turns to look at me and Ben. Someone says, “Holy shit.” I don’t wait around for the reaction. I turn and run up the beach. I can hear Ben calling after me, but I keep running. I have never been more embarrassed in my life.

I
FIND
a spot on the dunes, just down from where Ben and I are camped. It’s close enough to still see the bonfire but hopefully far enough away that in the dark no one can see me.

Stupid Ben and his bet. I didn’t even agree to it. What makes him think I could even think of telling Ellie how I feel? God, Zac must be having the time of his life down there now. Yes, I’m kind of out at school, and I have been since ninth grade, but Zac still takes every opportunity to tease me about it. This will just make things worse for me. There’s no way I can go to the formal now. How am I going to even do my exams? There’s no way I can show my face at school after this.

I look back toward the bonfire, where the party seems to have started back up again. Someone’s walking up the beach, looking toward the dunes. As the figure gets closer, I realize it’s Ellie. She stops, looks around, and calls out. “Jess? Are you up there?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I slump down, trying to hide myself behind the tufts of grass.

“Jess? I want to talk to you.”

I consider whether I should answer her or not. Ellie walks farther along the beach and calls, “Come on, Jess.” She stops in front of the dune I’m hiding on. I have no idea what I’d even say to her. She turns and starts to walk back toward the bonfire.

Before I know it, I’m standing up and calling out to her. “I’m up here.”

She spins around and replies, “Where? I can’t see you.”

I move down from the dune a bit and wave to her. She says, “Can I come up?”

“Yeah. I guess.” I sit back down to wait for her. My mind starts churning and so does my stomach. Should I tell her it was a joke between me and Ben? Should I just tell her the truth and risk losing her friendship? What little we have, anyway.

Ellie scoots up the dune and says, “Can we talk?”

“I guess.”

She stands awkwardly and then says, “Can I sit down?”

“Sure.”

She pulls her skirt underneath her and sits close enough for me to smell just a hint of the Cruisers she was talking about earlier. She doesn’t seem to be drunk, but I can’t really tell.

“I heard—”

“Who didn’t?” I interrupt her.

She lets out a sigh. “Sorry.”

Silence.

“So, I brought you a Cruiser,” Ellie says. “Do you want to try it? I didn’t know what you’d like so I brought raspberry. I figure everyone likes raspberry. If you don’t like it, I can drink it.”

She holds the bottle out to me, and I take it. “I like raspberry,” I say. “How do I…?”

“Oh, sorry.” Ellie takes the bottle back and expertly twists off the lid. She hands it back to me and smiles.

I can feel Ellie watching me as I take my first sip.

“So?” she says.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“I knew you’d like raspberry,” she says. “I like the pineapple ones. And I like the berry ones.”

I hand her the bottle. She looks at me, and I say, “We can share.” She takes it and has a much bigger drink than I would have and hands it back.

“So, is it true?” she asks. “What you said down there?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I have a longer drink from the bottle this time, and I feel it warm my throat all the way to my stomach. Ellie takes the bottle back, has a drink, and then burps. She giggles.

“Have you had much to drink?” I ask.

“Just enough to make me feel warm and fuzzy,” Ellie replies. “You?”

“Not as much as some people.”

Silence again.

Ellie looks out over the beach and says, “I love it here.” She draws her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs, and rests her chin on her knees. “It’s so quiet. Apart from tonight, of course.”

“Do you come out here a lot?”

“Not as much as I’d like to. At least,” she says, “not with the people I’d like to.”

I’m not entirely sure what she means by that, and before I can ask her, Ellie asks, “Are you ready for the formal?”

“I’m not sure I’ll go.”

“Jess—”

“Just, after tonight—”

“So what about tonight?”

I really don’t want to talk about it, so I ask, “Are you ready for the formal?”

“Yeah. It’s such a hassle, though. Zac just has to turn up in a suit. I have to get my hair and makeup done, and my dress still isn’t finished yet. Plus, Zac was supposed to hire the car, but he forgot, so we’re left with my dad’s old Holden.”

“I think we’re just taking Ben’s ute. We didn’t want anything fancy. That’s if I even go.”

Ellie ignores my last comment and asks, “What about your dress?”

“I’m actually wearing a suit,” I say. I’m unsure what Ellie will say to that, and I’m also not entirely sure how everyone else will react when they see me arrive in a suit.

“Wow, really?” Ellie says. “That’s so cool. Actually, I could see you in a suit.” She turns and looks at me. “Bow tie or normal tie?”

“Bow tie,” I say.

“That is so cool. I’m not surprised, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve known each other since grade three….”

“Two,” I correct her.

Ellie smiles. “Since grade two, then. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress.” She thinks on that for a moment and then says, “Nope. No dresses that I can remember.”

“I did wear one once,” I say.

“Really?” Ellie asks. She turns to me then and says, “When was that?”

“Grade one.” I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. “Jasmine Buckley came up to me one day and said, in front of everyone, ‘Boys wear shorts, not girls. Are you a girl or a boy?’ I looked over to you, and all the girls you were playing with wore dresses. So, the next day, I wore a dress.”

“You wore one to impress me?”

“I wanted to play with you, and it looked like you would only play with girls who wore dresses.”

“I don’t remember,” Ellie says, shaking her head. “What did I do?”

“You were sick the next day so you never even knew.”

Ellie laughs and says, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for your big reveal.”

I shrug. “It’s okay.”

“So what happened?”

“Jasmine made fun of me for wearing shorts under my dress.”

“Really? I never liked her, you know.”

I laugh.

“What did you do?” Ellie asks.

“I took off the dress and threw it on the ground. Mr. Henry had to get me a shirt from the spare ones in the tuckshop.”

“Wait. You wore shorts under the dress but no shirt?”

I nod.

“And you went topless?”

“Yeah, but we were six. It wasn’t that bad back then.”

“Wow, I can see why you were scarred for life.”

“I still get nightmares about it.”

Ellie laughs. “I think a suit is a good choice for you, then,” she says. “You’ll look great. And, you get out of it cheaper, just like the other guys.”

“Hardly,” I say. “I actually have to get mine made especially, so it’s probably costing me as much as it is for your dress.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Anyway, why do you need to spend three hundred on a dress that you’re only going to wear once? You’ve got plenty of dresses you could wear that you look good in.”

Ellie smiles at me. It’s a crooked grin, and I think I detect a hint of mischief in her eyes. “I probably do,” she replies, “but the formal is special. I can’t just wear any old dress.”

I want to say that yes, she could just wear any old dress, but I don’t. Instead I say, “I’m sure whatever you wear, you’ll look great too.”

“God, it feels like it’s been so long since we’ve talked, Jess.”

“I know.”

We both look at each other for a moment, and then Ellie looks back out over the beach. She’s picking up handfuls of sand and letting it run through her fingers over her toes, burying them under little sand dunes. “Can I ask you something?” she asks. “Something personal?”

I figure I know what’s coming, so I say, “Sure.”

“When did you realize that you’re, you know…?”

“A superhero?”

Ellie laughs. It’s a response I got from an online forum for lesbian and gay teens. Telling myself I’m a superhero every time I feel less than because of being a lesbian has picked me up more times than I can count. “Remember earlier I said I’d only tried scotch and didn’t like it?”

Ellie nods.

I take a deep breath. “Ben and I got wasted on scotch at his parents’ house when we were fifteen.”

“Is that it?” Ellie asks. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“We were so out of it,” I said, and grimace at the memory. “I puked in Ben’s parents’ bed.”

Ellie covers her mouth and stifles a laugh. “Wow. You weren’t, you know?”

“What? No!” I say and laugh. “It took me a quarter of that bottle of scotch to tell Ben I’m a lesbian. It was a huge thing for me, and Ben was so disappointed, and we both got really drunk. Anyway, I don’t remember why we ended up in his parents’ room, but there we were, laying on their bed, side by side, crying and solving the world’s problems. Well, mine at least, I suppose. I can’t remember too much apart from having to clean up the room the next day with a really bad hangover.”

“Wow,” Ellie says.

“Bad things happen when you drink.”

“Not always,” Ellie says. She smiles at me then, and I feel like the world has stopped, just for a second. Ellie breaks the spell by asking, “Are you sure you’re a lesbian?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, have you, um, tested it out?” Ellie cocks her head to the side, and when I catch her gaze, she looks down at the ground.

“What is there to test out?”

“Well, I guess, I mean, have you actually kissed a girl?”

I laugh. It’s making me a little nervous, and also a little excited, to be talking about this stuff with Ellie. If I were an optimist, I’d be thinking she’s asking me because she’s the curious one. I think it’s the Cruiser playing with my mind. I think it’s gone to my head.

“So?” she asks, poking me in the leg with a stick. “Have you?”

“I’m not going to tell you that,” I reply, poking her back. I don’t want to admit to Ellie that I haven’t kissed a girl yet. I’ve already had people, family mainly, telling me it’s just a phase, and I don’t want Ellie to think the same thing.

“Why not?” Ellie asks.

“Because I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Is that right?”

I nod. “Lesbian code,” I say, and Ellie laughs.

She stops all of a sudden and asks, “Is there one?”

“I have no idea. I’m just new at it,” I reply.

A squeal interrupts the night, and we both look down to the bonfire to see one of the boys carrying one of the girls down to the water.