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Laura Lee politely excuses herself from the circle when someone suggests spin the bottle. It’s not that she thinks kissing is a sin, exactly, though kissing someone you’re not at least dating feels like something, and besides, the whole “random” thing means the bottle could instigate a same-sex situation, too. Which—again, Laura Lee hesitates to call that a sin, especially because most of the stuff about homosexuality in the Bible is in the Old Testament, and Jesus represents a new covenant that overtakes the old. So she shouldn’t feel weird about it. But she’s never even seen two girls or two boys kissing, not in real life and only once in a movie at a friend’s house that she realized too late was rated R. (This was in ninth grade and Laura Lee had only recently been allowed to graduate to PG-13 movies, so the whole experience was a bit shocking.)
Laura Lee also doesn’t want to be a party pooper, though, so she doesn’t leave the room or anything, just quietly excuses herself from the activity. It seems like the non-Christians that she knows appreciate how she does that—no judgment, no finger-wagging, just making her own choices. This is presumably why she keeps getting invited to parties, even non-soccer ones, even though she doesn’t drink or do drugs or hook up.
She does worry that she should be trying harder sometimes. To save her friends’ souls, or something. Because she does worry about it, not just about her own obligations but about the fate of the souls of these people that she loves. The Bible doesn’t say that Hell is a lake of fire, but Laura Lee can’t stop herself from picturing it that way, with her friends burning and burning for eternity.
She wonders, as she often does, how Heaven can be perfect if the whole time you’re there you know that your friends are in Hell.
But she can’t dwell on that. The soccer girls already indulge her enough by letting her pray before games, and there’s no use in trying to save someone if it’ll just make them push you away. She’ll just have to wait for the right time, if the right time ever arrives.
The first few spins of the bottle result in what Laura Lee would call, well, “normal” kisses. Boy-girl, just a quick smooch. Shauna kisses a guy from the baseball team (not Jackie’s boyfriend, someone else, a guy who’s in Laura Lee’s Chemistry class and wears glasses with thick square frames). Van kisses a guy Laura Lee doesn’t recognize and hams it up, then chortles when she pulls away. The guy looks kind of embarrassed.
Laura Lee has wondered for a while if Van is…well…you know. Gay. And not just because of her habit of wearing boys’ cargo shorts, though that certainly doesn’t help her case.
It’s tricky. The Bible obviously doesn’t have much to say about girls in cargo shorts, or even girls who kiss other girls beyond a few vague snippets, but Laura Lee knows that a lot of people at her church would judge Van by her appearance, whether she kisses girls or not. A lot of them also call being gay a “lifestyle choice,” which she guesses might be technically true, in a way, but also she’s known Van since kindergarten, and even at five years old Van was dressing like a boy and chasing girls around the playground. And surely a five-year-old isn’t making a lifestyle choice. She’s just being herself. (This all has to do, apparently, with the law and marriage and stuff, but Laura Lee isn’t sure if she understands what the Bible has to do with American laws. Even if the Bible were perfectly clear on this—which she doesn’t really think it is—the Founding Fathers were very clear on the whole “separation of church and state” thing. Even if they used Biblical principles to guide them.)
The bottle indicates that two of the boys should kiss, Randy and someone Laura Lee doesn’t recognize. The room erupts into laughter and jeers, and the boys chicken out. The circle boos loudly, but moves on.
Lottie is next up, Lottie whose house this is and Lottie who has been the tallest girl in class since fifth grade. Lottie with the long shiny wavy dark hair tied back with pink ribbons. She expertly spins the bottle on the floor, and it ultimately lands on…Nat, of the bleach-blonde hair and the perpetual faint cigarette smell. Nat rolls her eyes and smirks, raising her eyebrows at Lottie in what looks like a challenge. Lottie shakes her hair back off of her shoulders and edges forward on her knees, and Nat follows suit until they meet in the middle.
Nat holds the back of Lottie’s head as they kiss, which makes Laura Lee wonder if Nat has done this before, or if she was just born knowing how to kiss girls.
They sway together for a moment, lips locked, but it doesn’t take long for one of the boys to start wolf-whistling, and then they break apart. Lottie looks flushed, embarrassed. Nat crosses her arms over her chest and scowls. And Laura Lee has some kind of stomachache suddenly, a hint of nausea even, watching Lottie reapply her lip gloss and Nat wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. She quickly slips out of the room and goes to find some ginger ale, heart pounding.