Their conversation frequently centered around their lunchtime reading materials, since the girls shared a love for teen-targeted magazine quizzes and articles. One day, in attempt to spice things up, June started sneaking romance novels to school in her Jansport. They were her sister’s, she said, from a collection she kept hidden behind textbooks on a bookshelf in her bedroom. June would read aloud pages that she’d written on her hand to remember, the funniest parts about throbbing members and cocks. It was all funny, though Clara and Melanie ‘ew’ed and rolled their eyes at it respectively. Itara and June leaned into each other’s shoulders while running their eyes across words they’d never think to use in place of “penis.” They laughed at the covers, all the long-haired, interchangeable men.

In the locker room, June looked both ways and made her voice quiet. “I have a book I wanna show you,” she said. “I don’t want Clara and Melanie to see it.”

“Why not?” Itara asked. She considered that maybe it was a book about how to deal with uncool friends.

“It’s too extreme.” June looked serious and looked around again. “Do you want to come to my house? It’s dirty and weird, but nobody’s usually home after school.”

Itara hadn’t been invited to any friends’ houses from Roosevelt. And if she had, it would have been difficult to coordinate. Since the school in her hometown was too rough (and her mother was convinced that all it took were the right words from a pretty boy and next thing you knew, you were legs up and spread in a stairwell and nine months later you’re pushing out a baby with no father to hold your hand), they forged some mail to her aunt’s address and lied to get Itara into Roosevelt. Roosevelt had boys and stairs too, but at least it didn’t have metal detectors. Every morning, Itara’s dad and his girlfriend Monica picked Itara up from her mom’s and dropped her at her aunt’s where she then waited for the school bus, and after school, they’d pick her up again and drop her back at her mom’s. The logistics made after school hangouts seem laborious, but she told her dad that she had to do a science project at June’s. She probably didn’t have to lie; he probably would’ve encouraged friendship. He agreed to pick her up from her aunt’s at five instead of three that day.

She hadn’t mentioned her double-house situation to June. She didn’t know how to say it exactly, and she was afraid of what the school would do if they found out, and afraid of cops, and afraid of being embarrassed.

So after school, June showed Itara through the metal fence that wrapped around her shack-house. It looked peculiar on its street, between a set of two-story brick middle class homes. June’s was yellow and longer than it was wide, narrow enough in the front that you might think there was only one bedroom inside. On the short lawn sat a white picnic table, and a mailbox garnished with a small American flag. On the left of the house sat a large metal birdcage filled with sparrows. The same kinds of birds that crowded the neighborhood streets and flew low in the skies. June noticed Itara looking at the brown birds, flapping around in their limited space.

“My dad caught those,” she said, and held the house door open so Itara could go inside and away from the cage.

“Isn’t that, like, illegal?” Itara asked. She regretted it, realizing that she probably sounded judgmental or prudish. She wanted to tell June that her father used to steal cable.

“My dad’s done worse,” June said.

Inside, the house did smell like woodchips, and like fur, and like the cats who rubbed against the girls’ legs when they came in.

“They’re marking their territory,” June said. “They’re trying to leave their scent on you.” She bent down to grab a striped yellow one. She lifted him in the air with a squeal, and while the cat struggled to break free, she kissed his mouth. “That’s how I mark my territory.” The cat writhed. “Alright alright,” she said, and put him on the floor amongst the others.

They began their walk down the narrow hallway, and Itara paused in front of a woman’s photo that hung framed on the wall between one of June and one of Rose. The woman had June’s same crowded teeth and the dead-eye smile she used in response to bullies.

“That’s my mom,” June said. June never talked about a mother. It was usually a sister being a bitch story, or a dad being a jerk story. Never a mom.

“She’s pretty,” Itara said.

“She was pretty. She’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Itara said, though she wasn’t sure if that was the appropriate response. If the woman had been dead for more than four years, Itara thought condolences were stupid. She based this on her feelings about her own parents’ divorce when she was two, and the idea that anyone would apologize to her for it felt like an insult. Most relationships didn’t work out, she knew, and it was probably better that her parents interact as little as possible rather than live together fighting or whatever they did before they learned better of it. Divorce and death were different, of course, but still.

“Don’t be sorry,” June reassured. “Some people are better off dead.” She ran her index finger down her mother’s cheek. “And she’s still here. If you’re really quiet and you really pay attention you can probably hear her.” Itara believed it. Felt a chill, even. “Shhhhh. Do you hear her?” Itara didn’t hear anything, though.

June laughed loud. “I’m kidding. I mean, she’s really dead, but she’s not haunting us. I’m sure her spirit is as far away from here as it can float.”

They passed more pictures and entered June’s bedroom where a large cage in the corner took up a fourth of the wall. It was covered in tiny pellets of shit and scattered, wilted, green vegetables. Itara couldn’t tell how many guinea pigs were inside. There were three in eyeshot, but then another one poked his head out of a cardboard box.

June squatted down to the cage’s eye level. “These are my babies,” she said. “They’re all mine. No one else’s.” She reached into the cage to try to grab one of the pigs, and they all scurried into their makeshift shoebox homes. She lifted a box and two pigs ran toward the edge of the cage and huddled in the corner. “They’re prey animals,” she said. “They run when they feel threatened. It’s not because of me.” She caught one by its back and when she lifted it, its tiny legs squirmed. “It’s okay.” She used the same voice she used on the cats. A high pitched nasal tone that Itara would personally never make in public. In fact, the nasal part reminded her of her dad’s girlfriend, and no way would she want to be associated with her. “They don’t want to look weak in front of their predators, so they hide their pain until the very last minute.” She brought the guinea pig’s mouth to hers and gave a loud peck. “These are my spirit animals.”

“Can I hold one?” Itara asked. She had a cat at her dad’s house, but that was it. He’d also bought her a parakeet one birthday long ago, and they kept it in a birdcage that hung from the ceiling. Itara couldn’t reach the cage, and therefore didn’t feed the bird, and her father’s girlfriend Monica always asked accusatorily if Itara was feeding it, and if she was, why was it squawking all the damn time, and Itara’d say yes to shut her up and avoid getting in trouble. She should have just told the truth to begin with. She couldn’t remember why she hadn’t, but she couldn’t fess up to having lied the whole time, even if it meant saving little Polly’s life. So eventually the bird died, and the truth was out in the open, and they buried her under a small patch of grass on the side of their brick apartment building.

June placed the black rodent on Itara’s shoulder, atop her black bubble jacket. Itara ran her palm down its back. “He’s sweet,” she said. The pet grinded its teeth by her ear.

June took off her coat and hung it on the hook on her bedroom door. The desk, a fold-out table, was covered in unattempted worksheets that Itara recognized from Biology weeks ago. “You can sit there,” June said pointing to the foldout chair. “I’ll move the papers.”

Itara shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

June shrugged back. “Whatever.” She sat on her bed and Itara took the chair, the guinea pig still stuck to her shoulder like a suction cup. “I told you my house was weird,” she said. “And dirty.”

“My house is dirty, too.” Her aunt’s house, the one she fake-lived at, was immaculately organized, with stacks of photo albums and scrapbooks everywhere, but it hadn’t been cleaned or dusted in the seven years since Itara’s uncle moved away. Now, a thin layer of dirt covered the surfaces. Once Itara’s uncle left, everything seemed a little less important to Itara’s aunt. Including Sunday worship, Tuesday bingo, road trips down to Virginia Beach, and most unfortunately, her commitment to sobriety.

“Rob was totally two o’clock on you at lunch,” June said. The girls had just read an article in Twist on body language, which said that if a boy sat with his feet pointed toward you, that meant that he liked you. So the girls used a standard clock system to measure how their crushes felt about them in a given moment. Itara even started to notice what she wore on days when it seemed like there were more boys with their feet angled, and she remembered to wear that again, but not too soon after lest they, too, were keeping track.

But she hardly looked at any boys besides Rob, the quiet one who had somehow merged being smart with being cool. He and Itara (and Clara and Melanie) were in all of the same honors classes, and he sat in the front row of most of them, so Itara studied the collar of his t-shirt and how it rubbed against the bone that came out of the back of his neck. How his head hairs lay flat on his head and how bad she wanted to reach out and touch. More than once, she’d turned around to realize that one of his friends was watching her watching him. Probably thinking yeah right.

Itara was no troll; she had a nice smile and a body that was developing on time and proportionally. But she did wear glasses, and she did tend to push them up by scrunching her nose in a way that made her look nerdier than she realized. It was the kind of facial tic that could one day be cute, once she learned how to best wear her hair and to make-up the rest of her face, but as of now, it was just nerdy. And she ate lunch with June (and Cara and Melanie), which didn’t help her case in the slightest.

“I still don’t think he likes me,” Itara said, despite her fantasies of them two in the courtyard, in a pool, in a stairwell. “But there was that time in History when he was pointed right at me,” she said. June nodded. She wasn’t in the class, but Itara had told the story several times before. Itara felt her face get warm, so she wanted to change the subject. “Do you still like Carl?” she asked.

“I guess. I don’t know.” June shrugged. “I like everybody.”

“Everybody?” Itara repeated.

June nodded, and started to smile in a way that bordered shame. “It’s weird,” she said. “I just look at people and I start to get this weird feeling. Like I immediately imagine myself kissing them and stuff.” Itara wondered what stuff. She thought about stuff too, but she’d never admit it. Not even to her diary, in case anyone was curious enough to read it. She could imagine Monica with her long fake nails turning the pages and laughing at Itara’s fantasies. Telling Itara’s dad that his daughter’s got a nasty mind.

June’s face got a small grin. She tilted her head down to match her mouth, mysterious. In a low voice, she said, “So you wanna see this book?

She did. June took the guinea pig from Itara’s shoulder and put him back into his pile of peers and feces. She led Itara back through the messy kitchen littered with silver Coors cans and into her sister’s bedroom. The bedroom was much messier than June’s, though in front of the short bookshelf, there was enough space for them both to sit cross-legged on the floor, which they did. June moved a grip’s worth of textbooks from the shelf to the carpet. Behind it was another row whose spines Itara recognized from lunchtime.

June handed her a book called Other Girls. The cover had the illustrated face of a girl with a thin neck and a short haircut. Itara brought the book up to her nose and sniffed it while she ran her thumb across the edges of the pages like a flipbook. She passed it back to June who flipped right to a page near the middle. “It’s weird,” she said, looking up at Itara. “Don’t judge me.” She looked earnest and scared. Itara found her pretty like that.

June read a few paragraphs about some vampire and her professor at a woman’s college kissing and touching each other. Itara got lost in the words, hot and nervous and scared.

“Is your sister a lesbian?” Itara asked when it was over. She didn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t know,” June said, almost a whisper. Itara feared that there was someone else in the house somewhere listening. Maybe a ghost. “This is the only book she has that’s like this. At least of all the ones I saw.”

“Weird,” Itara said. She wanted to take it back.

“It’s weird, yeah,” June said. “I kind of like this one. It’s stupid, but I think it’s better.”

Itara’s words got caught in her throat. She, too, thought it was better, but she wanted to attribute it to the writing, or the intimacy of June’s sister’s bedroom. How things are better when you’re alone and not worried about who can see what’s in your hands.

“It’s nice,” she said.

June smiled widely, and looked Itara in the face. “Yeah,” she said. Then, she said, “I think lesbians are better.”

“Maybe,” Itara said. She shrugged.

“I might be a lesbian,” June said. “But I like boys too.” She looked scared suddenly. “I told you, I like everyone. Is that okay?”

Itara shrugged. “I think so?” She only knew one gay person in real life. A friend of her mother’s, Brian, who played bass guitar in a cover band called ReDu. Itara’s mother brought her to shows sometimes when the band performed at Sal’s Tavern on the Water, and Itara watched her mother hold the stem of her martini glass dangerously at the V of her ring and middle fingers, leaning over a railing that separated them from the Long Island Sound and kissing Brian on the mouth. Itara watched their lips and tongues and watched the water behind them. When her mother returned to the table, Itara asked if he was her boyfriend. Her mother laughed. Said kissing someone doesn’t make them your boyfriend, like Itara was an idiot. Then she pointed to a man sitting at the table next to them and said, “He’s got a better shot than I do.”

“Is Brian gay?” Itara asked. She was embarrassed by how quickly she said it. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so forthright. There might be questions about what she even knew about gay people at eight, and she wasn’t prepared to answer those.

But her mother, drunk, snickered. “Listen, Tara.” She always called her that. “If it walks like a duck…” she said. Itara looked over to Brian, who was on his way to their table. If it walks like a duck, then what? Like a waddle? His walk reminded her more of a swan, if anything. Something beautiful, magical. She could see him gliding atop a lake from one end to the next and opening his arms to make himself beautiful. And at the other end of the water was her mother, lips puckered and arms wide, as well, for him.

She thought about arguing Brian’s elegance, but her mother’d had too much to drink to accept any lip from Itara. And besides, what if it drew attention to her own walk? Did she walk like a duck? She made a silent vow to always keep her back straight. To let the world see her as swan-like as possible.

When Brian got to their table, he put a hand on Itara’s shoulder and shook it a little.

“What’d you think?” he asked her. “You think I can make it on VH1?”

She giggled. Her mother pulled a loose cigarette from Brian’s breast pocket. “Light me,” she said. He put an arm around her mother’s waist, which was 27 inches last time Itara had held a tape measurer around it.

“You gonna have to stand up straight if you want me to do that, love,” he said. He always called her love, and it made Itara smile. Her mom didn’t quite smile, but she looked into Brian’s face.

“Tara asked if you were my boyfriend,” she said. It came out jumbled, barely decipherable. The cigarette stuck to the red on her lips.

Brian made a noise that sounded more bark than laugh. “Honey,” he said to Itara, “I’ve pledged my soul to Denzel.”

“He just kisses me because he misses me,” Itara’s mom slurred. Brian took a Bic from his pocket and held the flame up to Itara’s mom’s mouth.

Itara wanted to ask her mom more details, but on the drive home, when it was just the two of them, she was far too preoccupied with the radio and keeping the car within the lane on the Saw Mill Parkway. In the near-white-noise of the tires and the music, Itara thought of swans and other low flying birds, and wondered if they loved each other or if they just kissed whomever was closest, whomever was around to keep them from really flying.

Where was Brian now? Who was he kissing? Itara straightened her back, remembered posture. Kissing someone doesn’t make them your boyfriend. She brought a fingernail to her mouth and chewed at it.

“In this book, everybody’s a lesbian,” June said. “Like, they assume it.”

“Weird,” Itara said, though she knew there had to be a better word.

“Yeah.” June ran her fingers slowly on the page, looking into it. “Sometimes they don’t know they’re lesbians until they kiss a girl. I’ve never kissed a girl, so maybe I’m one.” As far as Itara knew, June’d never kissed a boy either. Neither of them had.

And it felt so innocent, so thoughtless, Itara leaning in without asking and putting her lips on June’s. She held her mouth there for a few seconds, moist and still, and pulled away.

“What do you think?” she asked. June shrugged. Itara couldn’t tell if she was alone in the heart racing, and the liking it, and the wanting more, for longer, for a while. But June leaned back in for another few seconds and pulled away. Itara struggled to open her eyes.

“I don’t know,” June said lifting up Other Girls like it was a manual. “I think there’s more to it.” Itara didn’t need anything more – just moist, still lips and a strange bedroom. June flipped the book’s pages slower this time, her eyebrows furrowed at the words, looking for evidence.

“Caught ya!” June’s sister said from the doorway, and June dropped the book and picked it back up, tried to hide it in the empty groove on the shelf. “You’re caught. What did I say about snooping in my shit?” The sister, Rose: long-legged and adult-ish with dark, sloppy eyeliner and a headful of scraggly hair. Itara had only ever seen her off in the distance in the hallways. Now her sister squatted and eventually teetered into a sit among her mess. Itara recognized the smell of drink, like that which seeped out of her aunt’s bedroom. “Life is about consequences,” she whispered, leaning closer to the girls. “So what are you reading?”

“Sorry,” June said, and started to stand. “Come on,” she said to Itara.

“You can tell me. I won’t tell.” Rose said it to June, but Itara felt like she was talking to her. She didn’t try to move. It worked on June, too, because she came back down from her haunches. The sister looked at the shelf and pulled out Other Girls. “Was it this?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” June said, and the sister lightly grabbed a piece of June’s curls with her fingers and tugged her face close. “Yes,” June said. “Let go of me.” The sister let the hair go.

“Oh? Did you like what you read? Did it turn you on?” Itara cringed and the sister caught it. She looked at Itara and said, “I’m sorry. Am I making you uncomfortable?” Itara shook her head. “Do you think it’s comfortable to come home to find two little girls in your bedroom? Snooping in your shit?” Itara didn’t say anything and raised up her shoulders slowly. “Answer me.”

“No,” she said, her voice shaking. The sister’s voice was calm, measured. Gentle, even.

“Are you uncomfortable now?” she asked, and grabbed June’s hair again, but harder this time. June made a fist, and she punched her sister’s arm. Her sister let go of the hair and rubbed the spot where she’d been hit. “Ow,” she said, laughing. “You little bitch.”

“Just leave us alone,” June said, not laughing. “We’ll leave.” Itara started to raise up, but June didn’t. She didn’t know why they didn’t just leave. Maybe June knew she’d chase them, or that it’d all be worse if they tried to resist. Itara felt her say with some newfound telepathy that it’d be best to sit there and let it happen.

“Leave you alone so you can make out with each other?” she asked. Itara’s face got hot. How long had she been in the doorway? “Answer my question,” the sister said. “Did it turn you on?”

“You’re drunk,” June said.

“Answer my fucking question,” she said through gritted teeth. Itara vowed silently that if she survived, she’d never drink a day in her life. She never wanted to think it was okay to be this scary.

“I don’t know,” June said.

“Answer me! You fucking know!” she yelled, and grabbed June’s arm.

“No!” she yelled. “It didn’t!”

“Prove it,” she said.

June gave her sister a pleading look. “Just leave us alone,” she said.

“Stop showing off in front of your friend and prove it, goddammit.” She wobbled a little and her eyes looked off, otherworldly. She turned towards Itara and said, “She’s showing off cuz you’re here.” Itara couldn’t imagine that there was any soul inside of Rose. “If it was just the two of us, she wouldn’t be so hesitant.” The sister looked back to June. “Come on. Your little friend will probably love this.”

June began to unbuckle her jeans, breathing heavily through her nose. Itara wondered if she was supposed to follow suit, but chose, as much as it was a choice, to sit paralyzed. The rest happened hyper-speed. June got down to her underwear, and her sister’s laugh was something like comedy, but sinister. Itara tried to look away, but the sister insisted that Itara touch June. She explained through slurred speech that if June truly wasn’t turned on, she would feel dry. If she was lying, then, well, she wouldn’t. Itara said no at first and felt her eyes moisten. June’s sister grabbed Itara by the wrist and pressed a palm on top of June’s underwear. Itara didn’t look, and as soon as the sister let go of the wrist, she pulled away.

“Get out of here you lesbos,” she said. “And leave my shit alone.”

June scrambled to grab her clothes and walked out of Rose’s room. Itara followed her to her bedroom with trembling legs, and sat silently on her bed looking out the window. She only nodded when Itara asked if she wanted her to leave. Itara walked to her aunt’s house with her legs still shaking, afraid for June, and wondered if she was a lesbo.

Her aunt was holed up with that boozy scent coming through the cracks by the time Itara got to the house, so there was nothing to stop her from going straight to the den, and shutting and locking the door. A small part of her wished that her aunt was awake and around enough to see that something in Itara’s face had changed somehow, and in that alternate life where her aunt was sober, she’d ask Itara about it and they’d talk. But in reality, the conversation would likely drift to sin, and The Bible, and whatever parts of what happened that could be blamed on something Itara did.

She considered telling her dad about it when he picked her up, but an abridged version where June’s sister is a drunk and nobody strips down to her underwear. But if Monica was in the car? Some things weren’t for her to know.

The aunt kept her computer in the den, and Itara took a seat in the swivel chair in front of it. Her face looked the same in the monitor’s reflection, until she made a frown. Then she smiled, and that looked a little different. She turned the computer on.

She typed “lesbian” in the search bar which returned no results. She tried “girls kissing,” and nothing still. She tried “Other Girls book” in quotes, and a link to another site advertising “litereotica” came up, and she followed it.

Poorly written passages about schoolgirls in locker rooms, and teacher-student detentions gone sexy, lady cops and lady robbers, best friends who got confused one night. She longed for the stories of friends’ violent older sisters, and the dark sexiness that terror birthed. She checked to see if she was dry with Rose’s instructional voice in her head and put pressure when her body called for it.

She wondered, then, about across town and June. Did she even have a computer? And what would happen in bio, and gym, and lunch, with their lips having been together? Would they still mark the time of boys’ feet? If she had her own home, she’d move June and all of her animals in. Itara remembered her hand and where it had been, and on herself, imagined her own hand was June’s. That someone grabbed June’s wrist and forced her to hold it there forever. She closed her eyes and drifted.

She realized what she was doing, and closed all the windows on the browser, cleared the history, shut the computer down. There were still about thirty minutes before her dad would arrive. She pushed back in the swivel chair and walked to the couch by a stack of photo albums. She picked up the top one and flipped through the glossy pages. She found a picture of her mother at around nineteen, with her crew of girls back then. The one next to her, a woman who was still around, looked different back then, a toned belly that she showed in a crop top and matching high waisted skirt. Her eyes were bright and smiling along with her mouth. Her mother frowned, or pouted—it was hard to tell. Itara put the pressure back.

Her dad picked her up at five from her aunt’s house. When he was minutes from arriving, Itara stood in the living room and watched out the window for the Jeep to pull up, and she ran outside in the time it took him to turn around in the neighbor’s driveway. Her aunt’s street was a dead-end.

Monica sat in the passenger seat, her voice perpetually full of snot. Itara climbed into the back seat and pushed aside the junk that occupied most of the space.

“No hello?” her dad said after a few seconds. “What did I do?”

“Martin, she’s in seventh grade. That’s when they get bitchy.” She turned around to face Itara. “I get it. You don’t have to say hi to him.”

“My daughter will be no bitch,” her father proclaimed. Jokingly, he slammed his hand on the dashboard, and Monica grabbed his wrist lightly.

“She can’t help it. It’s not her, it’s her hormones.” Monica looked back at Itara and gave a quick wink and a smile. There was something different in her face, too. Itara smiled back in the way that she found herself to be different, but turned back to the window, watching the streets disappear as they merged onto the highway toward home.