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“We really have to send off our youth to Don’t Stop Believin’? Just hold me back at this point.”
Midas Touch bushes were her favorite and they’ve drastically blossomed since.
They’re like little magical breaded balls of mashed potatoes and beef.” The closest you’ll ever get to tasting heaven, Dad used to say. Julio is still a cutie, but papas rellenas are my main reason for coming here now.
People love to hate them and hate that they secretly love them. I respect them for that. Takes guts.”
We become open books with each other, but right now he’s slammed completely shut.
“Thanks for being my favorite ear.” “You’re stuck with me.”
“And then, of course, Lindsay and I have our tragically slow-burn, but still budding, romance.” He gives me a quick, satisfied smile. “Get it? Budding?” He leans over a little, eyes still on the road, and lowers his voice. “Because you like flowers.”
My parents love me; I know this for sure. But I also know they love weddings and grandchildren and the expectations they have for me. They love the daughter they know, but what if I stop being that daughter? My sweet, boy-crazy Ophelia.
Though I’m still getting over the embarrassment of calling it chai tea until I was thirteen and one of Sammie’s younger sisters, Hana, called me out, telling me I was basically saying tea-tea. Mrs. Nasar never had the heart to say anything, and Sammie thought it was too funny to put an end to.
“No way!” He gasps in that classic I’m An Adult And Cannot Process You Aging At The Same Rate As Me For Some Reason way and turns to Mom. “Stella, you didn’t tell me she was getting so big.”
“I get it,” she reassures me. “Even if you’re close, going from friends to dating is so scary. Just admitting how you feel is such a gamble. But it’s nice when you find people you don’t have to worry about that with.”
“Yeah, it is nice.” I pause, collect myself, and maneuver around my thoughts. “But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don’t just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming.”
her but also that I hate Dani even more. I want to ask what it felt like to realize a girl’s lips could be just as nice as a boy’s, that for some people maybe they all taste the same when your eyes are closed, and to know if it was scary or exciting or felt like scratching a bug bite after everyone told you not to. Mostly, I want to ask if it was worth it. If that small moment between her and a girl who she shared beds and rings and nightmares with was worth losing the version of herself that her family had in mind from the time she was young, to let who she really was breathe for a minute or
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“God, I do sound like a slut.” “You sound like a girl who wants to enjoy her life on her terms,”
What happens when you tell the girls who trust and love you that you realized you sometimes look at them the way they expect boys to? Does everything—every borrowed lipstick and shared dressing room and innocent cheek kiss—become suspect, corrupted by some illusion of straightness?
He shrugs, like he isn’t breaking my heart with every passing second. My best friend, the person I thought knew me better than anyone except possibly my parents, really can’t wrap his head around me being upset about anything but a boy. “My feelings don’t exist to simplify things for you.”
“Not necessarily. It’s not that we like the pain of not having something; it’s more that the act of wanting gives us more satisfaction than the actual thing ever will. Less masochistic and more like we’re all Goldilocks, getting off on constantly searching for the perfect whatever. But we’ll never find it.”
We scream at the top of our lungs to the electro pop music Talia starts blaring through the radio. As we zoom past the streets I’ve known my entire life, I wonder if I’ll ever feel better than I do in this moment. I’ve never felt so alive, never felt so free.
I’m not the girl who likes girls. But in this moment, that girl that I am doesn’t matter. Because right now I am this girl. And I lean over and kiss Talia.
“They know me,” I say without thinking. “My parents and Sammie and Agatha and Lindsay. I garden, I wear floral prints and eat papas rellenas and like boys. I like boys—all the time, obsessively. That’s who I am; that’s who they know me to be. “So what happens when I can’t tend to my garden in the fall when I’m away at school? I’ll be studying botany, but I won’t be out there every Sunday morning, fertilizing and pruning and watering. What happens when I find a cute dress or skirt or top that doesn’t have a trace of flowers? Or what about if I find a new favorite food? My friends will be
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Waiting for someone to love you back seems beautiful in a miserable way when you’re young. No offense.” She smiles. “But a life spent waiting is not a life spent loving. It’s a life spent wasting away on the promise of something you’re not guaranteed.”
“Liking one girl and countless boys doesn’t make you less queer than if it were half and half. Or if you liked countless girls and a couple of nonbinary people, or people of all kinds of genders in any assortment of percentages,” Wesley says. He leans toward me and takes my hands, the sincerity in his eyes so intense I don’t worry about how clammy my palms are or whether or not it means anything that a cute boy is holding my hands in a dark room, alone. Because yes, he’s a boy, and yes, he’s here and kind and cute and wonderful, but I don’t like him. It shouldn’t mean the world to me to
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“People confuse acceptance with erasure,”
“I don’t want to risk everything if this isn’t real,” I whisper. “But I also don’t want to pretend like this doesn’t change things for me. Because it does.” “I know,” he says. “Your sexuality doesn’t define you, but it is a part of you.” His words are tight, voice breaking ever so slightly. I squeeze his hand gently, an understanding passing between us. “But questioning who you are? It’s a risk we all take. It’s your risk to take if you want to. No one else gets to decide this for you; it’s your life.”
“Great legacies you left me.” “But that’s not who those girls were,” she corrects firmly. “Romeo was just as much a hopeless romantic as Juliet, and they gave their lives to show the world that true love mattered more than senseless hatred. Juliet cared enough about her family to die so they could live brighter, wiser lives. I respected her as a character for being more mature than most give her credit for.”
“Ophelia was all those things too. But she also wore her heart on her sleeve. She wasn’t ‘mad’ in her final scene; she was grieving without shame. She was begging for someone to hear her desperation beneath the offered flowers.”
And I never wanted to be like Juliet’s or Ophelia’s parents and get in the way of your happiness, so I tried to encourage your crushes and romantic tendencies. I never meant for you to follow in Ophelia’s footsteps by struggling so much with love you felt you had to hide. I didn’t mean for her suffering to become your legacy too.”
Because I love you whether you love Romeos or Juliets or both or neither or live out the rest of your days with Dad and me and your garden. No matter what changes or who you do or don’t love, I will always love you. That is the legacy I want for you, not to be the girl who loves too much, but to be the girl who is loved more than enough.”
don’t know.” I shrug, honest. “Maybe I’m bisexual or pansexual. Maybe I’m queer.” The word still feels a bit sour on my tongue, but there’s something thrilling about it too. Like it’s a dare just to say it this way, adoptive instead of vicious. I hope Jeremiah is spilling punch on himself somewhere. “All I know,” I start, taking a deep breath, “is that I’m probably—no, definitely—not straight.”
I’ll never stop coming out.
but I also never thought of myself as a fan of kissing girls. Things change. I curl around the realization that I’ve now come out to my dad, mom, and two best friends, all in one day. I know I’ve got a lifetime of these moments to go, but somehow, crushed between Agatha and Sammie, I’m not as scared as I was, even just yesterday. Because if I could make it through these ones, I can make it through them all.
“Did you two … did you two just hijack my coming out? Both of you?” I look back and forth between the two of them, my mouth gaping and smiling at the same time. “Not our fault you opened up the dialogue,” Sammie says, picking a scab on his knuckle. “Heh, I might actually have a decent time with the whole therapy thing.” “We didn’t hijack it; we’re meeting you halfway,” Ags says, then adds, “You’re not the only one still figuring it all out, babe. We’re at the start of our lives, not the end.” “I love you guys,” I say, and collapse back into their arms.
Or, maybe I do know. I’ve spent most of my life telling myself I know who I am—a lifeboat of identity in the turbulent waves of growing up. A hopeless romantic, a rose gardener, a chismosa, a girl who falls for every boy who looks her way. I forgot that there are parts of me I’ve yet to discover, versions of me I’ve yet to become.
I am not Ophelia: daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, lover of Hamlet. I am Ophelia Rojas: daughter of Miguel and Stella, best friend of Sammie and Agatha, aspirational lover to many, many boys and one girl. And I am so much more, just waiting to be discovered. For now though, I’m just a girl who needs to get ready for prom.
“The perks of being queer,” I reply, a sense of freedom blooming in my chest. My puddle-heart solidifies just a nudge. “The perks of being queer,” she repeats, looking freer and more solid herself.
One day I’ll be loved the way Mom loves Dad and Wes loves Linds and Talia probably loves Zaq. But I’m loved already, right here, right now. Loved even if I change, even if I’m not the same Ophelia I’ve always been. Loved by people who are willing to try memorizing a song from a Shakespearean play the night before their senior prom in the simple hope that it’ll make me smile, make my not-so-foolish dreams come true. It’s more than enough, and here, right in front of my watering eyes, is undeniable evidence that I am too.
“Ophelia, I swear if you make me start crying I will take these Dollar Mart flowers back to the store immediately.”
She envelops me in an embrace, my chin sitting on her shoulder despite our near-identical height. “My sweet, loving Ophelia.” Loving, not boy-crazy. I’ll take it.
Running from these feelings did me no good. I don’t cling to the idea that I have a romantic future with Talia anymore, a future I’m still mourning the loss of, but I shouldn’t have to pretend I never wanted one.
