She looked into my eyes like that, and I felt my stomach flip. My eyes closed. I was so ready for her. I was so ready for our fight to be over. I thought, Finally, she’s going to see my side. As soon as she kisses me, it’ll all be done.
She was so close to me I felt the warmth of her breath on my face when she spoke. She did not kiss me. Instead she said very quietly, Do you even have a conscience, Emily? Do you even have a heart?
It was the first time I ever heard her say my name.
I opened my eyes but I didn’t recognize her. She was four inches away from me—so close—and she looked like a total stranger. The features of her face were off-kilter and odd. Her face didn’t even look like a human face to me.
I felt super scared. I felt super alone.
I realized then that I was going to cry. It was so sudden and so incredible to me. I didn’t plan it. I just, like, felt the tears move up into position, felt that wavery feeling take over inside my chest, and then I was crying and crying and crying. It seemed like I was crying a year’s worth of tears. Once I started, I felt like I was never going to be able to stop. I felt like I was melting inside. I felt like I was falling down, down, down, and no one was ever going to be able to catch me. I covered my face with my hands and cried.
Then I felt Jesse put her arms around me.
Not looking at her, just feeling her hold me, I recognized her again. This was the Jesse I knew, the holding Jesse, the strong and quiet Jesse, the sweet-smelling Jesse who knows me so well, who makes me feel better in that one particular way than anyone else in the entire world.
After the crying wound down and I got myself together again I went back to the conversation I had planned to have. I told her, point-blank, to please please please choose something else to protest. I told her that I know she always needs to have a cause or whatever, but couldn’t she please go save baby seals or help illegal immigrants become citizens or something? Anything, anything other than this? I kept my arms around her while I said it, so she couldn’t break free from me and start ranting again. And I tried to reassure her that NorthStar is actually a really good company with strong values and an incredible mission. I told her that she’s seriously overreacting when she talks about them trying to take over the world.
I could feel her trying to figure out what to do. She was looking up at the ceiling and down at the floor and out the little frosted window above the sink but not at me, not at me. So I kissed her. I put my hands on her head like she always puts her hands on mine, and I turned her face to me and I kissed her. Thank God she kissed me back. It felt incredible. It was such a relief, like taking a first deep breath of air after being underwater for too long.
We had a sort of scary-intense time after that. She was so… I don’t know, she was so hungry and bold. Somehow, at some point, she got my shirt all the way off. I let my shirt go, and then I let myself go. I gave in to her completely.
Something amazing happened between us then—something deeper, and different from everything that came before. She didn’t say it to me out loud, but I know she’s going to drop the NorthStar protest. She has to. We’ve both made sacrifices for each other now, and I feel more bonded to her than ever.
But I also feel like I have to be more careful from now on about how I interact with her, and how often. When I was walking home, more than an hour late to help my mom, I started to think that maybe we should take a little break from seeing each other, just for a while, just until we both cool down a little. When she was kissing me this time… I don’t know how to explain it. She was so aggressive. She bit me all over a little, hard and sharp. Like she was trying to leave marks.
14
Jesse
First period on Monday morning, and Jesse is clutching the smooth wooden bathroom pass in her right hand. She hovers in the drinking-fountain alcove by the sophomore hall girls’ room, waiting for a pair of girls to clear out of there so she can go in and sweep the room for the last traces of the anti-StarMart campaign. Most of the yellow posters have already been taken down by teachers and custodians, the ones in the high-traffic areas: bulletin boards and fire doors and hallways. And of course, the campaign has already done what it was supposed to do: people can’t un-see what they’ve seen, un-talk-about what they’ve talked about. But for Emily’s sake, Jesse has decided to eradicate every last remnant of the poster campaign, the ones she knows are still up in nooks and crannies around the school: girls’ rooms, mostly, and out-of-the-way, high-up places where even custodians don’t think—or don’t bother—to look. The pockets of her cargo pants and the front pouch of her backpack are already full of crumpled goldenrod-yellow paper.