“Oh,” I said again. And for good measure: “Wow.”
“I know kissing you shouldn’t have thrown me as muchas it did, and that’s not even the right word for it, really, it just sort of... it sort of made everything real. Like a confirmation of everything I thought I was feeling.” She was pulling on her fingers, bending them back. “And then with everything that happened... I just haven’t been getting that much sleep.”
“You’re not alone.”
“So I was avoiding you, yes. Not because I thought your sister killed Annabella, God. No, I was avoiding you because it was easier than having to process what it means to have kissed a girl. And I’m sorry, I just couldn’t... I didn’t know what to do. After that night... I mean, we kissed, it was this huge moment for me, and then my brother totally interrupted it, and then the next morning...”
“Kind of killed the vibe,” I said.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been... a lot.”
“Well, we don’t have to... I mean, that could be it. We could just forget it ever happened.”
“I don’t want to do that either,” Prue said, so quietly that her words were almost blown away. I had to catch them in my hands, bring them to my ears, strain to decipher what exactly it was that she meant.
“Me neither,” I said.
“I like you. Like, Ireallylike you. I’m sorry this is so hard for me.”
“Whatever you need,” I said. “However slow or fast or whatever. Anything is fine with me.”
And I meant it.
It had been easy for me; I’d been born into a long family of women who didn’t give a single hoot about who you chose to love. I’d known I was gay since I was six years old, when I’d fallen in complete and all-encompassing love with my kindergarten teacher, Miss Farid. I was twelve when I told my mother I was gay, and it had been like asking her to pass the coffeepot. She’d only been so happy to lend her blessing. Mary had been equally easy; she’d rolled her eyes, said “Duh,” and remarked that it was a relief she didn’t have to compete with me for guys, even though, she was quick to point out, I wouldn’t have been much competition.
Vira was the easiest of all. I told her I liked girls. She told me she didn’t like anyone, at least not in a sexual way. We breathed huge sighs of relief and that was that.
So I had absolutely no idea what it might be like to contemplate your sexuality under anything less than ideal conditions. I had no idea what things were like for Prue at home, what the rest of her family and friends were like. Did her friends know? What was it like to be Prue at that moment, quiet and thoughtful, her fingers tapping out some foreign rhythm on the bed. I wanted to hold her hand, to quiet the impulses that made it impossible for her to sit still, but I didn’t want to disrespect whatever music she heard.
I couldn’t remember whose turn it was to speak, so Ifinally said, “How long have you known?”
“That I like girls too? About a year.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Prue blushed a little. “I was at a coffee shop with my friend. There was this piano player, a woman...” She paused. “There have been a few others since then. And you, of course. You sort of confirmed things.”
I was very close to getting up the nerve to close the space between us and possibly kiss her again when the door to the room flew open and Harrison raced inside. He was soaking wet, and he started talking to me like it didn’t surprise him in the least that I was there, that he’d maybe even been expecting me.
“You have to come with me. Right away. No time to waste. Put some shoes on. Quick as you can.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Your sister has climbed a very big tree, and she’s threatening to jump.”
I was torn.
On the one hand, Mary wasn’t in any real danger. She’d jumped and/or fallen out of plenty of trees before (the ability to float didn’t necessarily go hand in hand with the ability to keep one’s balance) and she just drifted lazily down to the ground, landing on the grass with a gentle bump that didn’t so much as bruise her skin.
On the other hand, Harrison and Prue didn’t knowabout Mary’s gift. I guess Ihadtold Harrison, more or less, that we had magic, but he didn’t know what kind, and as far as I knew, Prue was still out of the loop. And while my mother had never sat me down to explicitly forbid me from spilling the beans, it was also sort of just known.
People knew we had magic.
It wasn’t spoken of.
But this felt like a new By-the-Sea—one untethered from the rules of time and space, one floating higgledy-piggledy on an ocean that kept tossing it this way and that—and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out my best course of action. And I hadn’t even yet taken into accountwhymy sister might have climbed the tallest tree on the island and was now threatening to jump off it. That was a mystery all on its own.
“And you’re absolutely sure no one else saw her?” I asked Harrison, for the eighth or ninth or twentieth time.
