Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

(Standing against the wall of the club, plucking the fabric of her blouse away from the sweat on her back, the air thick with the exhalations of all those women.)

She barely knew Kath then, and only as one of the few girls in her math class. She hadn’t yet secretly skimmed that book in the back of Thrifty Drugs. She hadn’t yet gone to the Telegraph Club or Lana and Tommy’s apartment—or stopped on the way home in a dark alley and kissed a girl. (The way her body had fit against Kath’s; the exquisite ache it had caused.)