I carefully took the flower from her fingertips. I studied the interior of the bloom, the butter-yellow petals soft and pliant, the tiny white-tipped stigma at its deep gold core.

  “I don’t see it either,” I said. When I looked up, she was looking at me, and even though I was shielded by my sunglasses I felt a flush come over my face.

  Analemma tugged on the leash, and I let her pull me onward. When Steph wasn’t looking, I slipped the flower into my pocket. It was only a little yellow monkey flower, but I felt as if she had given me something much more significant.

  * * *

  —

  The trail wound up through groves of trees—Douglas fir, Steph said, like the kind you buy at Christmas, and California bay laurel—and then through grasslands that smelled like hay. Some of the trail was quite steep and rocky, and although Analemma had no trouble, Steph and I had to pay attention. As we climbed, it felt as if time had stopped and we were in a little bubble of forest and hillside.

  “Can I ask you something else?” I said. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

  “Sure,” she said from behind me.

  “When . . . when did you know you’re . . . queer?” The word queer sounded strange to me, like a slur, but Steph had used it so I thought I should, too.

  “I’m not sure if there was a light bulb moment,” she said. “In retrospect, it should’ve been obvious. I used to have these really intense friendships with girls. I’d save up all my money to buy them stuffed animals and unicorn stickers in elementary school.”

  “Unicorn stickers?” I said, laughing.

  “Hey, they loved them. I was really popular.”

  “So you’ve always known?”

  “No, I mean . . . I knew I didn’t like boys the way the other girls did. But I didn’t know it was possible to like girls. This is kind of embarrassing, but I don’t think I really knew until The L Word.”

  “Really? When was that?”

  “I was thirteen. It came out the year after my dad died. I used to go online in the middle of the night and torrent the show.”

  “I’ve never seen it. It’s not on anymore, is it?”

  “No, it ended a few years ago. It wasn’t that great—some of it was offensive—but it . . .” She laughed. “It explained a lot.”

  The trail emerged onto the fire road, which ran along the ridge, and we stopped to catch our breath. There were a couple of huge coast live oak trees up here, with twisting branches and spiny-edged leaves that rattled like tambourines in the wind. It was a clear day, and the view was spectacular—360 degrees of golden-brown hills dotted with dark green trees and brush, the blue sky above, and the shine of water to the southwest. Joan had told me it was Kent Lake, and I pointed it out to Steph.

  “You can see how dry everything is,” she said. “The only time it would be green is right after the rainy season, and we’ve been in a drought for years.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. It’s global warming. Sorry to be a downer.”

  “No, I get it. Would you ever leave California? Isn’t it supposed to fall into the ocean?”

  Steph shook her head. “This is my home. If it falls into the ocean, I’ll probably fall with it.”

  Analemma tugged on the leash, and we continued on, heading for the other fire road that would circle back down to Joan’s house. After a while I said, “I don’t think I’ve seen any TV with queer people in them. There’s Ellen, but that’s just her. I don’t think it counts.”

  “Not even Glee?”

  “I’ve never been into that.”

  “Grey’s Anatomy?”

  “Not really my thing either.”

  “What is your thing?”

  “The Walking Dead? Alien? I guess I like monsters.”

  “Horror is very queer.”

  “Is it?”

  “Hello, vampires.”

  “Oh! I remember now I used to watch Buffy reruns when I was a kid. I was probably too young for it. Willow was queer, wasn’t she?”

  “Definitely. I used to torrent those, too. I’m surprised my parents never caught me and figured out I was queer.”

  “They don’t know?”

  “No, they know. I mean I used to watch so much gay TV on the desktop computer in the den in the middle of the night, but they never noticed. I did wipe the history, but still.”

  A mountain biker came toward us, his tires kicking up dust, and I pulled Analemma to the side while he passed.

  “When did you come out to your parents?” I asked.

  “It was kind of an accident. When I was fifteen I started dating this girl at school, and my mom saw us kissing outside the 7-Eleven. She didn’t take it well.”

  “I’m sorry.” But all I could think about was Steph kissing a nameless girl outside a convenience store. A Slurpee staining her lips red.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  I wondered who the girl had been and what had happened to her. “Is your mom okay with it now?”

  “Not really.”

  I hadn’t expected that answer. “Are you okay with that?”

  Steph shrugged. “My stepdad is religious and a straight-up asshole, so as long as she’s married to him I don’t think she can change her mind. They kicked me out when I was seventeen.”

  “That’s awful,” I said inadequately.

  “I wanted to leave anyway.”

  She acted as if it hadn’t been a big deal, but it must have been huge. I couldn’t even imagine my parents doing that to me, and the vast difference between my childhood and what Steph had dealt with seemed to yawn between us. I felt as if I owed her some kind of revelation of my own at the very least, but she didn’t ask me any questions.

  Analemma was sniffing around a bush where tiny white flowers were in bloom, and Steph said, “That’s toyon. The flowers will turn into red berries in the fall, like holly berries.”

  I went along with the change of subject. “What’s that one?” I asked, pointing at another bush nearby with red limbs and flat oval leaves.

  “Manzanita,” she said.

  We continued along the ridge while she named the other plants she knew: yerba santa, buckbrush, sagebrush. When we came to the fire road that descended down into Woodacre, I turned onto it. Analemma caught sight of a lizard on a rock and sprinted, snapping the leash out of my hand. “Analemma!” I shouted, running after her. She disappeared down the road and into a grove of trees, finally stopping at a fallen log in the shade, her tongue lolling out while she panted. I picked up the leash from where it trailed onto the ground, about to scold her, but she gave me her big brown eyes and sloppy grin and I couldn’t be mad.

  The trees around us had reddish bark that was peeling away in long, paperlike strips from a green trunk beneath. I heard Steph crunching down the trail and then into the grove behind us. I turned to her and asked, “What are these trees called? They’re so weird looking.”

  “Madrones. It’s like you can see inside them, right?” She went over to one of the trees and rubbed her fingers against the green interior.

  And then I knew what I wanted to tell her, and before I could lose my nerve I said, “I don’t think I’m straight.”

  I have a crush on you, I thought, as if I were a twelve-year-old, and I blushed even though I didn’t say the words out loud.

  Steph turned away from the tree and toward me. She gave me a sympathetic look, and I felt that flutter in my belly that I was beginning to recognize as belonging to her: that warm purr, that fizzing lift.

  “How long have you known?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Since I met you.

  She nodded gravely, as if that were normal.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t remember what we talked about after that. My head was full of what I’d said to her and what it meant for me. I wondered if I should download some episodes of The L Word just to make sure, or maybe I could find those Willow episodes of Buffy and compare myself with her.

  And then there was Analemma to manage; we encountered another dog on the road as we returned to civilization, and Analemma didn’t like a lot of other dogs. By the time we got back to the house and I checked my phone, we’d been gone for over an hour. Joan’s car still wasn’t back.

  I thought about inviting Steph inside, but she said she should go home; she was meeting Lisa for dinner, and it was already after five. So I let Analemma in through the gate and then walked Steph to her truck.

  “Are you working tomorrow?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Every day this week.”

  “When do you come back to do the yard?”

  “Not till next Friday. I’m here every other week. We should do that lunch, though. How about next Wednesday? I have the day off.”

  “I’m sure that’ll be fine.” I was a little disappointed, though; next Wednesday was a whole week away.

  “You should come to movie night on Sunday again.”

  A surge of excitement. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, of course. And keep in touch if you want to talk or anything.”

  She came toward me with her arms open to hug me goodbye, and I knew it was a completely normal thing to do, but it was also the first time we hugged. Did she realize that? Her arms went around me, and she smelled slightly metallic, like sweat. I felt her hands on my back through my T-shirt, her palms and fingers splayed out across my spine. I felt the press of her breasts and hip bones against me, her warm body, and I had to fight the urge to pull her closer.

  Then she stepped back and opened the door of her truck, and I waved goodbye as if I didn’t want to climb in right after her. I forced myself to go back through the gate and not stand there watching her drive off, but I listened until the sound of the engine faded into nothing. As I walked slowly up the path to the front door, I slipped my hand into my pocket for the keys and felt something soft inside. It was the yellow monkey flower, only slightly squashed from its journey.

  7:43 PM

  Steph: Checking in. You ok? That was a big thing you did

  7:44 PM

  Me: I’m ok. Thanks for asking!

  7:52 PM

  Steph: Of course. Been there

  Friday morning, I cut off a big piece of roofing paper and tacked it to the bare wall inside the studio. It was uneven, not quite a rectangle, and as I stood there looking at it, the blackness seemed to become a doorway to somewhere else. I saw a diver descending into the deep, and I wondered what she hoped to find.

  My phone dinged from the counter, making me jump.

  But it was a message from Haley. I hadn’t heard from her in so long I almost didn’t believe it was really her. She’d sent a mirror selfie as if it were proof of life. She wore a black strapless minidress with a satin corset-like top, and she was in her parents’ house on Martha’s Vineyard. She wrote: Do you like this dress on me? I can’t decide if it’s too goth.

  Another photo followed; this one showed her from the back. She had pinned her blond hair up, which revealed a string of star tattoos on her left shoulder blade that she’d gotten right before we graduated. They seemed to burst out of the dress in a mini-fireworks display, shading from dark red to gold to yellow.

  Almost automatically, I responded: What’s it for?

  She texted back instantly: NYC. I’m going for the weekend, planning to check out my new neighborhood by NYU!!

  I wrote back: Looks good on you. Not too goth but definitely edgy.

  Thanks!! she wrote, and that was all.

  I put the phone down, feeling irritated, and returned to the black paper. But now I couldn’t concentrate. Haley and I hadn’t been in touch since graduation. Was everything back to normal now? I didn’t know if I wanted that.

  My phone dinged again, and I flinched. I stared at the black paper for a minute longer, before my curiosity over what Haley was sending now drove me to pick it up. But this time it was Steph.

  In n out?

  * * *

  —

  When we were sitting in her truck looking out at the water, eating our burgers, I told her about Haley and Tasha, which somehow led me to show her the video from the Fourth of July. And then I told her how I was supposed to be spending the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, but I had been uninvited because of the Tumblr photos. She didn’t look shocked and she didn’t interrupt, and I realized I hadn’t told anyone about this before. I had been embarrassed and angry, but now the embarrassment had faded and my anger had dissipated. The photos were probably still on Tumblr since you could never entirely delete something from the internet, but with every passing day they got buried under more posts. It wasn’t a funny story—not yet, and maybe it never would be—but it didn’t hurt anymore.

  When I finished, Steph said, “Now I understand why you seemed so down when you first got here.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  She reached over and put her hand on my knee. She squeezed it very lightly, as if to comfort me, and then she moved it away and picked up her Diet Coke. It happened so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it, but I felt her fingerprints on me, as if they’d been tattooed on my skin.

  * * *

  —

  Steph texted me a photo of the poster for the Golden Gate Queer Music Festival. A bunch of bands were listed in the lineup, and right there second from the bottom was Madchen. She wrote: 8/3 in SF. You coming?

  I replied: Wouldn’t miss it.

  * * *

  —

  I started to cover the roofing paper with blue acrylic paint. It had a rough surface, and the paint clumped on it, but I liked the effect. It was too blue, so I mixed in red to make purple, and then black at the bottom. I took a photo of it and sent it to Steph, writing, I don’t know what I’m doing.

  She wrote back: I like it.

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday night, I went to Steph and Lisa’s apartment for movie night. I brought a pint of salted caramel ice cream from the Scoop in Fairfax, and Mel said it was her favorite flavor. Steph sat on the opposite end of the sofa from me, with Lisa snuggled against her. She didn’t mention that we’d met up a few times that week already, so I didn’t bring it up either. I told myself it didn’t mean anything; there simply wasn’t an opportunity or a reason to mention it. But it felt like a secret, and I liked having a secret with Steph.

  Lisa had chosen the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers to watch. In the movie, humans were replaced by aliens who took on their exact physical appearance, hatching out of gooey pods that reminded me of the eggs in Alien. The aliens in Invasion looked just like their human counterparts, but were devoid of emotion.

  “They’re zombies,” Steph said.

  “No, they’re Communists,” Lisa said. “They represent the fear that Communists could be anywhere—they could be your neighbor!” She made a face and pretended to be freaked out.

  “People are still scared of Communists,” Mel said. “It’s capitalist propaganda. We should all be communists—hello, national health care.”

  “But Communism in the fifties wasn’t good,” I said. They all looked at me, startled, and I said, “China—Communist China—that was bad.” I didn’t know much about Communist China, but I knew that my mom had left it for a reason.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Mel said.

  “Well, what are you saying?” I asked.

  “Capitalism institutionalizes inequality,” Mel said. “We need nationalized health care, better labor practices—fuck, the restaurant industry is insane.”

  “Yeah, I agree with you,” I said, “but that’s not what this movie’s about. They’re afraid of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.”

  “You think their fears were justified?” Mel asked, surprised.

  “Hang on,” Lisa said, pausing the movie. “It’s more complicated than what either of you are saying. They’re not afraid of the Soviet Union and China—or maybe they are, but that’s not what the fear of Communism in this film is about. It was the Cold War, right? Anticommunism was also about expanding American democracy.” She put finger quotes around democracy. “In other words, American imperial power. And if the Commies are bad, then we’re good.”

  “Well, that’s a lie,” Mel said.

  “It is propaganda, in a way,” Lisa said. “But Aria has a point, too. People in China and the Soviet Union totally suffered under their Communist governments, but we didn’t really know what was going on. It’s not like the internet existed back then. So we could make up shit about them—the idea that they’re all faceless masses obeying their leaders, like these emotionless pod people.” She gestured to the movie, where a crowd of pod people were chasing the lead characters down a road.

  “So, it’s bad propaganda,” Steph said.

  “It’s uninformed propaganda,” I said.

  “Or maybe it’s art,” Lisa said, and started the movie again.

  Afterward, as I was getting ready to leave, I asked Lisa, “How did you know all that stuff about Communism?”

  “I took a film class about classic science-fiction movies and the Red Scare,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, Steph said you were almost a film major. How come you decided not to be?”

  “I didn’t really decide not to be,” Lisa said, sounding disgruntled. “I just didn’t finish college. Not worth the money.”