Who I Was with Her

by Nita Tyndall

I want them to care. I want them to care because I do, because this is shattering me slowly from the inside and if they cared maybe it wouldn’t be so goddamn lonely.

There are a few hushed whispers in the hallway, more in awe over the fact someone close to our age died than anything. We think we’re invincible until we’re not, and at the same time, there’s relief in the air, an awful kind of relief.

My dead girlfriend’s ex is driving me to her funeral. This is so fucked up.

No one looks at the Baileys when they walk in, like their grief is contagious, like the people we love will die if we look at them or touch them.

Maggie believed in all this. Maggie believed in God, she prayed before meals and did youth group on Sundays, and I wanted to ask her—how? How could she hold on to that faith when so many other people in her church would have shunned her if they’d known about us? How could she believe in a God so many other people weaponized against her?

She kissed me. She kissed me. She kissed me. And I kissed her back. And all I can think on the drive home, is how much I want to kiss her again.

“I think I’m bi.” I say it again. “I think I’m bisexual.” Take a breath. Look in the mirror. Say it again. “I’m bisexual.” I burst into tears.

Small towns with secrets are the backbone of this country.

Tonight we are not Corinne or Haley or Julia, tonight we are long-hair, shiny matching ponytails. We are gossip and chipping fingernail polish and sleepless nights spent worrying over boys.

We cheer, loud, as the boys break through the butcher’s paper. We’ve painted our faces blue and yellow and our class rings glint in the stadium light. There’s nothing individual, not here, not tonight. We’re all out on that field with the boys, and we’re all responsible if they win or lose. This is it for these boys, and they know it. We all know it. Only a few of them will play football in college; and we’re all never more acutely aware of that fact than tonight. If they’re good enough, if any coach sees them as an underdog story they’ll be lucky. But some of them will work at the gas station up the road and at least one of them will die drunk driving home from prom, and you wish these things wouldn’t happen, but they do.

am kissing a girl. Or are they a boy? I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m pretty tipsy at this point, and the only things I do care about are my hands in their short hair and their lips on my neck and then their tongue in my mouth and the pleasant buzz from the alcohol that’s helping me forget their name, my name, Elissa’s name, Maggie’s name, everyone’s name. All I want to focus on is kissing and how nice it feels to kiss someone I have absolutely no ties to, kiss someone where feelings aren’t involved.

Coach Reynolds’s face is weathered and sun-beaten, white skin slightly wrinkled and tan from spending time outside. She has laugh lines around her eyes. I want to look like that when I get older. I want to laugh enough to have permanent marks on my face from it.

Dylan drives up to this remote area, puts his car in park, and for a second I’m worried something’s going to happen, even though it’s Dylan, because that’s what we do, we girls—a boy drives you somewhere alone and it doesn’t matter how much you trust or know him because you can never tell.

I think back to all the stories my dad told me, that I’ve seen from everyone else, the girls who sell Avon, Dad’s brother who lives an hour away and farms, and I want to know—why are these bad things? What if I don’t know what I want right now? What if I don’t have big dreams for myself, big dreams for what I want, at least not right now? What if all I want right now is to graduate high school and stay at home and figure it out from there? Why is that any less valid than Julia’s dreams of Division I colleges, of Chris’s dreams of NFL football, of Trent and Haley’s dreams of leaving here?

“My possible girlfriend,” I say, and it only takes her a moment before she grins at me. This is my coming out. One person at a time. No big statement, no grand gesture. Only people I want to tell. Why should I come out the way everyone else wants me to?

Here is what I know: My name is Corinne Parker. I loved a boy named Trent, a girl named Maggie. I loved them differently and equally but I loved them and they were real, they mattered. My parents are divorced. My mother is an alcoholic. She’s in recovery and she’s trying. My father doesn’t see me sometimes, but we talk when it matters. I am not a disappointment. Here is what I don’t know: Where I’m going to end up in the future. Who I’m going to end up with, if I end up with anyone. What the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life. But maybe I don’t have to figure it all out right now.