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The last day was always better than the first.
Ocean’s eighth grade, and entire middle school at that, experience mostly consisted of studying her brains out and running around after school for mathletes and choir. Every teacher adored her, every custodial staff waved at her, every parent used her as an example for ‘a successful young lady with a bright future.’ to reprimand their children for not being exactly like her. Just once, she would’ve loved to hear a ‘good job’ from her parents, though. She brought a shiny, perfect report card home every semester and got a sleepy grunt for a response. She spent so much time trying to please her parents, keep up her pristine grades, practicing her vocals, that she never learned to have fun. Everyday was a simple routine, get up, go to school and take notes in class, study with Constance during lunch, either have mathlete or choir practice, do homework and more even studying, sleep. Never bothered to take a break and go to the park, visit the sad Uranium City culture museum, play Mario Kart with the other choir members.
Until one day, Noel gave out flyers for a party at his house during the last choir practice in middle school. It was the last day of school, sometime in early June, and he wanted to have a gathering to celebrate the previous three years. He begrudgingly gave the brochure to Ocean as she studied her script on a break. And her first thought that crossed her mind was, Why not? Maybe gay men threw better parties. How would she know?
She believed it would only be like a birthday party, pizza and cheap lemonade, cute party games, maybe they’d watch a movie. But no, not only was there twice the amount of people she thought would show, but a boy with a five o’clock shadow offering her a ‘puff’ of a joint the moment she walked through the door, uniform clinging to her body and pea snaps in hand. The lights were turned off, the only reason her vision even could pick up anything because of multi-colored flashing lights projecting in the side room. Loud opera-like screaming hummed over some speakers then reached a crescendo of French lyrics, and over the distant chatter she could only pick up a few words that she knew from French class. She didn’t recognize many people there, but some bodies looked too tall to be recently-graduated middle schoolers.
What the duck? Ocean believed profanity was disgraceful, no matter what, so she didn’t even curse in her own mind.
She weaved through the crowd easily, muttering ‘excuse me’ over and over again as the uncooperative bodies denied getting out of her way. Pot, the thing she smelled on a daily basis due to her druggie parents, stunk in the air, mingling with the undeodorantized middle schooler’s stench. C’mon! We’re not even freshmen yet and people are already doing drugs? Does anyone listen to D.A.R.E anymore? The odor brought frustration, despite it being so annoyingly familiar to her, but it was the fact kids were doing them so early. Subjecting their lives so young to such methods of stress relief. Disgraceful, just like cursing was. She didn’t even care about being polite, she just wanted to drop her pea snaps off at the snack table, if they were eating anything other than marijuana or other party drugs, and leave. Gay men can’t throw parties. Heavenly father, dear christ, when she sees Noel she’s going to-
Something stopped her right in her path. Like a concrete block inbetween roads that Ocean once ran her father’s van straight into. But it wasn’t a wall, no, but a person. A warm body, a bit sweaty, even. About her height, if not taller, chunky, awkward posture. It was no one other than her best friend, Constance. Ocean’s body wasn’t deflected by hers, no, it was like a magnet. They were close, very close, mere inches away from each other’s faces. She barely got a chance to react, or step away, before another person behind her stepped back, and like a pinball machine, she was knocked into Constance.
Right into Constance’s lips.
They were soft, and smooth, and plump, and oh-so-lovely. They made her want more. They made her widen her eyes and stare directly into Constance’s puppy-like eyes. It was an accident, yes, a mere force of physics that brought the two together. Her lips made her wonder if this is what main characters in books were talking about. Ocean was never really into anyone. Never had a crush, never did any move that meant more than platonically. Never had a partner, of any gender. This was an accident, just like many other things in the entire history of the universe, some accidents had better outcomes, or worse. Part of her didn’t want to pull back, just let it be her, and Constance, and Constance’s lips, standing in the middle of a party with drugs circulating the crowd.
While the other part told to pull back. To let her heart race a million miles a second and think about what could’ve happened. Constance’s eyes were wide with surprise and…panic, so black you couldn’t see her pupils, so pure and inexperienced and kind of dumb, but the kind of dumb that Ocean wanted to tutor into greatness. She thought that Constance was dumb, honestly, but it was fun to teach her things, help her understand Canadian history specifically in the 1800’s, and she always tilted her head to the right when the gears must’ve began to turn in her head. She was funny, and kind, and maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she had personality! Not like Ocean! Ocean’s personality was to be doting on her grades, screech about staying in school and not doing drugs, and being dubbed ‘the best soprano in the choir’ by Father P. Marcus. Constance had…grit! She had humor, a goddamn sweet giggle, and was always there for Ocean. How had she never even realized that about her? She had a lot to think about when she got home-
“I-, sorry, Ocean!!” Constance yelped as Ocean jerked her head back. Her cheeks had a deep blush that could either be real or makeup. She rarely wore makeup, but they were at a party, aka, a special occasion.
Ocean shook her head rapidly, ginger hair flying, and tried not pinch herself. “Um, you should be sorry, Constance!” Constance should not be sorry, it was not her fault, it was not Ocean’s fault. It was an accident.
“Sorry!”
Now that they had kissed, while accidentally, Ocean saw Constance differently now. She wasn’t her best friend that she hung around to make herself feel smarter and prettier. She was all of the above still, but with the added layer that she knew how her lips felt. And somehow that changed things. Now her lips were no longer a virgin, and neither were Constance’s. For some reason, she now couldn’t see her best friend, that she had known since…diapers, as someone a bit more than that. Was it yearning? Was she yearning to be Constance’s…girlfriend? A friend with benefits? Noel’s catchphrase, the one he write on his locker and choir scripts and literally everywhere, the one he liked to say in passing, flashed in her mind as they just stared at eachother.
Being the only gay man in a small rural high school is kind of like having a laptop in the stone age. I mean, sure, you can have one, but there's nowhere to plug it in!
Was…Constance her outlet? At a sleepover, once, she came out to Ocean. Saying she was the only person who would know and she wanted to keep it that way. She explained how she liked everyone, everyone was pretty to her, and Ocean tried to be as supportive as she could.
Ocean liked to maintain her ‘innocent, straight-a-earning girl, only focused on her education and not on boys’ reputation, but in reality, after a vigorous rounds of studying, she would watch her “But I’m A Cheerleader” VHS that she got from a garage sale, mistaking it for a nature documentary after it was wrongly labeled, that her parents didn’t know about, not that they even cared. She found herself relating to Megan, in the regard that she’d rather look at the pretty cheerleaders during school assemblies rather than the football players they were cheering for. She would stare a bit too long at half-naked girls in the locker rooms, then reprimand herself later. She would cry very openly, the reasons varying from stressed out of her mind or nothing at all, hormones probably the culprit, in her room while Paul McCartney blasted on her iPod. She had recurring daydreams about a girl, just in general, doing things like curling up on her chest, or sleeping in her arms, or touching her…anywhere…
Point and case, Ocean was what Constance defined as a ‘sapphic’. A lesbian. Ocean liked girls, feminine presenting people, and them only. Her three religions didn’t conflict it, in the eyes of the Gods she believed in, she could like whoever she wanted, and while it took the entirety of seventh and eighth grade to accept it mentally, this moment, kissing a girl for the first time, might be the first time her sexuality was enabled outwardly. She could never express this to anyone else, because of lesbianism not being widely accepted, not to anyone other than Constance. Just continue being pristine, appearing uninterested in romance, until she dies. Become the next prime minister, be rich, discover another periodic element, be more memorable rather than this sad small town. Keep her sexuality for behind closed doors.
Well, until now. Little thirteen-year-old Ocean, having her first kiss with her best friend accidentally at a druggie party.
“Does..it, um, smell like a school gym in here? Sweaty, and like the kind of place you’d kiss someone under the bleachers and sob about it later?” Constance anxiously asked.