a really good energy here,” she continued.
“In my room?”
“The whole house,” she said. “I like it.”
We looked at each other then, our faces just inches apart. Whatever she saw, I wanted to see it, to be it. She didn’t yet know I wasn’t as impressive as all my trophies made me seem. She didn’t yet know how lonely this house could feel with my mom and me both in it. I wanted to be her version of me. I wanted to shrink myself down and curl up in her body. I wanted her mouth on mine. I wanted—everything.
“Kiss me already,” she said, so I did.
* * *
—
Sometime later—twenty minutes or two hours or three days, I would have believed anything—we lay upside down in bed, our feet resting on my pillow, our hands clasped and flopping back and forth in some made-up game only we knew how to play. We looked up at Justin and laughed.
“Look at that smile,” said Ruby. “Perv.”
“He’s seen a lot,” I said. Ruby raised an eyebrow teasingly. “Okay, not that much.”
She laughed. “It’s okay if he has. I don’t mind.”
It wasn’t that I wanted her to be jealous, exactly, but her apparent ambivalence deflated me just slightly. Obviously she knew about Jamie. But did she think I’d hooked up with other girls here too? She was only the second. I wondered what I was to her. Then I immediately felt bad for wondering. It didn’t matter, of course. Intellectually, I knew that. It was just that my brain was unavailable to me at the moment.
“What about…your room?” I said. I pictured waking up there, in my sleeping bag, astonished to be where I was.
“You’ve seen it.” She grinned. “My mom is always just…around, like unnecessarily changing a light bulb in the hallway outside my room or something. Anytime Mikey came over to hang out she made me leave the door open,” she said. “Other people’s houses are better.” I sent a silent thank-you to my mother, and to divorce, for making my modest love life possible.
“Well, you are welcome anytime,” I said. “I only wish this bed was bigger.” I was pressed against the wall so Ruby wouldn’t fall off the edge of my twin, and my free arm was underneath me and starting to go numb.
“Here, follow me,” said Ruby, and rolled onto the floor. I laughed and I followed, letting myself fall right on top of her. That led to some more making out, and I had the thought that if it weren’t for food, or having to go to the bathroom, I could have lived there, on the floor, with Ruby forever. When we came up for air Ruby scanned the vast collection of crap stored under my bed, made plainly visible by the blankets we’d pushed aside.
“I wanna see little Quinn pictures,” she said.
I laughed and reached over her, pointing to the plastic Disneyland album where I kept some, and she slid across the floor so she could reach it. I listened to her rooting around, pushing things out of the way—old cleats, a board game. Incredibly, it never occurred to me she might grab something I didn’t want her to see. The shoebox literally and idiotically labeled BABY PICTURES did not cross my mind. My brain was still sex-fried and hazy and totally useless. I just lay there, waiting, flat on my back, comfortably sleepy and pleased with myself.
“What’s this?” said Ruby, and my heart stopped cold. It was her voice: not teasing, not cooing, but confused. Smiling, but not laughing. I remembered. I sat up.
My album of photos, safe and cute, remained under the bed. Next to Ruby’s legs, the shoebox. In her hand, a worn sheet of loose-leaf. I didn’t have to see the front to know which one.
“?‘Straight Girls We Wish Weren’t,’?” Ruby read. “?‘Number one: Ruby Ocampo.’?”
Slowly, I lifted my eyes to meet hers, and I was surprised and relieved to see that she was smirking, amused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Jamie and I—we made that list ages ago. It has nothing