Harmonious Hearts 2017 Read online

  “Then why didn’t you say yes?” Derek interrupted, helplessness and anger mixing.

  “Because I’m a liar! And when you find out, you’ll hate me,” Thomas sobbed. He rubbed at his eyes, red rimming the brown. “I switched schools because I never finished junior year. I tried to kill myself, and if my sister hadn’t gone to the bathroom at 1:00 a.m., I would have. I had no friends and my family was ashamed of me, and I thought I would be better off dead. Sometimes I still think that. But you’re my best friend and without you, I’d be all alone, and I can’t do that again, Derek, I can’t.”

  Derek didn’t know what to say, so he just let the first thing he could think of come out of his mouth. “There’s nothing that could make me hate you.” He swallowed and stepped forward. “God, Thomas, we all—”

  “You don’t understand!” Thomas looked like he was going to back away, but instead he stumbled closer until Derek was holding him tight. Derek clutched Thomas’s sleeves. Up close, Thomas should have been disgusting. Snot and tears marred his face and his eyes were bloodshot. Instead, Derek wanted to protect Thomas from everyone who had driven him to try to commit suicide.

  “You’ll never understand,” Thomas whispered.

  “Let me try,” Derek begged. Thomas buried his face in Derek’s vest, arms wrapping around Derek’s torso. It took Derek a moment to realize the shuddering was Thomas trying to stop himself from crying. In a moment of weakness, Derek ran his fingers through Thomas’s hair before pulling back and settling to just rub circles on Thomas’s back. After a moment, Thomas mumbled something. “I didn’t catch that.”

  Thomas pulled away, sliding back so they weren’t touching. “I… I’m… I wasn’t born Thomas.” He took a shaky breath. “I was born a girl. I came out two years ago, and it almost killed me.” Tears were welling up in Thomas’s eyes. “You don’t like girls and I’m not a girl but I—I’m not a real man.” Thomas stood and took a step back, wobbling. “Please don’t tell the others. I…. You don’t have to stay friends with me. Just please don’t tell anyone.”

  Derek had no words. His stomach was a whirlpool, mind jumping from one thought to the next. Thomas’s fear was palpable, and Derek cursed all his careless comments, talking about what made a man and who he’d date. No wonder he’s terrified, Derek thought.

  “Please—say something.” Derek realized he was staring. He walked forward, and Thomas flinched.

  “Can I kiss you?”

  “Don’t pity me,” Thomas hissed.

  “I don’t.” Silence. “I… I love you.”

  Thomas blinked past tears. Then he reached up, put his hands on Derek’s jaw, and leaned forward.

  Three things came to mind as their lips touched.

  One, Thomas needed ChapStick, but his hands were soft and gentle. Derek wanted to feel them everywhere, wanted to return every caress with his own. Any pain or sorrow would be chased away with gentle touches, reassurance that Thomas was safe. He was loved. He was just as real a man as any other.

  Two, this felt right. Being pressed close to one another, Thomas’s tears mixing with Derek’s sweat. It was natural to put his hands on Thomas’s back, keeping him near but not trapping him. Derek never wanted to let go.

  Three, Derek didn’t know if Thomas would date him now. He didn’t know if Thomas’s depression could be cured, if Derek could ever apologize enough for putting Thomas through so much, if they’d even be in the same state for college. Derek didn’t know if Thomas would get sick of him and dump him after four months. He didn’t know if he’d even be a good boyfriend.

  But Derek was sure as hell going to try. Thomas deserved nothing less.

  ELLIOT JOYCE is a social-media obsessed, selfie-taking millennial and he’s proud of it. He can usually be found in his room playing D&D or in a theater lurking on the catwalks. Sometimes he even writes. Other notable facts include the fact that he’s bisexual, he cannot juggle, and he regularly trips over thin air. Catch him on tumblr or really any social media; he spends enough time on it.

  Tumblr: theonewiththewords.tumblr.com

  Twitter: @eleldelmots

  From the Red Field

  By Frisk Gillespie

  High school junior Radley isn’t sure what she wants from life or where she fits into the world—only that Ginger is part of it. Over the summer, they grow closer and find they complement each other. Will friendship with the new girl in town, Leila, confuse their relationship… or clarify it?

  HER LAST name was Rogers, and one summer during drama camp, she spilled an entire bucket of red paint meant for the set over her head. From then on, Kylie was known as Ginger Rogers.

  Nicknames could be a funny thing, especially when you had the same one growing up. In third grade she used to tease me because my name was Radley and that was supposed to be a boy’s name. She called me Boo, and I didn’t understand it at the time, but I knew I didn’t appreciate it. She only stopped when she got her own nickname. She got a nice one. Pretty. I always thought it fit her, even at nine with her too-chubby cheeks and hair the color of dry straw. I didn’t even know who Ginger Rogers, the famous movie actress, was at the time, and I don’t think she knew right away either.

  Ginger was one of those kids who would tease you to test your limits, a game she played often, but it always ended when you cried or shoved her away or screamed at her to stop. Once that happened, she would pretend nothing was ever wrong and act like your new best friend. She decided she was my best friend for about two weeks before she got bored and moved on to another poor kid.

  Don’t get me wrong—Ginger isn’t a bad person. She’s learned how to behave by now, and even if she hadn’t, eleventh graders are much less likely to put up with her old antics for even a second.

  I would never call her my friend. At least, I never had before. Even when she trailed me for those two weeks in third grade, back when she was still Kylie, I ignored her. She never bothered me again aside from when we were paired together for a project in chemistry.

  I didn’t know I was a lesbian at age eight. If I had, I might have fallen in love with her sooner.

  ONE AFTERNOON after school, a day when the humidity was hovering below fifty and the temperature twice that, she wordlessly approached me in the parking lot and held out her hand. I stared at it for a long moment, puzzled and unsure, and she gave me a soft smile that was usually reserved for her characters on stage. With curiosity and teenage fervor abuzz in my head, I took her hand and let her whisk me away.

  We ran across the parking lot to where a fence blocked off our school from the neighboring property next door. She pulled me along the fence until we reached a spot where a board had come loose to create an opening just wide enough for a body to slip through. On the other side was a field of wheat that swayed in the slight breeze, and we stole through the fence with childish giggles at our trespassing. Careful not to disturb too much of the crop, we stepped through the field until she pulled me down to lie in a patch of clear dirt.

  On our backs with the sun beating down unrelentingly on our faces and bare arms, we listened to the sound of our classmates heading back to their homes and the distant cries of a crow as it took flight.

  “I’m gonna get such a bad sunburn,” Ginger whined with a dramatic pout.

  “White people problems,” I murmured just loud enough for her to hear. She smirked and slapped me lightly on the arm before dropping her own to the ground between us. Where it landed, her hand was overlapping mine. Neither of us made an effort to change that, nor did we comment on it. We simply lay in the field, content in each other’s company.

  THE NEXT time I went horseback riding, I met a cute girl named Leila who worked in the stables. She had an accent that was vaguely Southern, which I later learned was a mix of her childhood in Austin and her teen years in Vietnam. She laughed at everything I said, and she offered to stay late to close up so I could have an extra half hour with my horse. A week later she kissed me while pressing me back against the stable door, her bo
dy against mine and her hands wandering and teasing. I took everything she offered, and she was the best first girlfriend I could have asked for.

  When Ginger found out, she turned red and shuffled her feet awkwardly in a not very Ginger-like way and didn’t even say she was happy for me. She ditched me after school when we were supposed to sneak back over to the field, and I knew I had broken her heart.

  “GINGER LIKES you.” Leila said it so casually and not at all like she was bothered by the fact. “She wants you.”

  “I know.” I pulled her up to kiss me, our lipstick smearing together and neither of us caring the slightest bit.

  Leila was tall and slim and had the most lesbian haircut I had ever seen. Ginger was all round around the edges and barely above five feet and the femme to end all femmes. Evidently I did not have a type.

  “Does she know?”

  “Probably.” I let Leila go down to assault my neck with kisses as I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom. “She got all weird when she heard about you.”

  “You sure she’s not just homophobic?” she mumbled in a way that tickled against my skin. “This is Texas, after all.”

  “Half of her precious drama club is gay. I think she’d implode if she had a problem.”

  “All right.” Leila’s teeth marked my skin, and it was hard to tell whether I felt bad for Ginger or for Leila in that moment. My girlfriend was showering me with attention, and I was thinking about the adorable blonde girl from my childhood who might or might not know she was in love with me. There was a real question there of which I would prefer, and I shoved it down somewhere I hoped it would never be able to float back up into my consciousness.

  JUNE ROLLED around, and a summer fair cropped up just outside of town. With Leila swamped at the stables—tourism in our tiny southern town, who knew—I ended up giving Ginger a call to go with me. I really didn’t have any friends other than the two of them. Everyone always needed to talk too much about unimportant things, and that was likely why I could only stand two people and my mother.

  Her usual energy was back, and she kept drifting closer to me as we made our way lazily through the fairgrounds. There was a strange air about her, a confidence I wasn’t unfamiliar with tinged with the determined glances she kept shooting me when she thought I wasn’t looking. She waved to all the classmates she passed, her smile rivaling the flaming ball in the sky above us. When midafternoon hit, she stole the sunglasses off my face and smirked like that day in the field when I protested.

  “When do I meet Leila?” she asked nonchalantly after an hour of talking about everything and nothing.

  “I didn’t know you were my sister.” I didn’t mean for it to come out mean, but I didn’t miss the wince she gave, a momentary lapse in her demeanor.

  “She’s from out of town, right? Really out of town?” she asked haughtily. Jealousy was an unfairly attractive color on her.

  “Austin, then Vietnam.”

  “Why Vietnam?”

  “Parents met there.”

  “And she’s cute?”

  I had never seen Ginger more envious than I saw her that day. I tried to take her seriously, I truly did, but the way she clenched her fists and pouted took me back to third grade, when she couldn’t keep her eyes off me and I still believed what the local preacher said about heaven and homosexuals.

  “Radley, do you love her?” Her voice was full of fear and maybe admiration.

  “I hardly know her.” I would be the first to admit Leila and I had taken things fast, but when you were two love-starved lesbian teenagers in the middle of Texas, and the only out kids for miles were the gay boys finding a haven in drama club, fast was subjective.

  “Come horseback riding with us,” I suggested. Before she could stop me, I grabbed my sunglasses back and returned them to my own face. It was easier to stare at her when she couldn’t see my eyes.

  Ginger Rogers frowned and screwed up her eyes at the sudden brightness, and she looked like she was trying very hard to remain mad at me when it wasn’t really in her.

  THERE WAS no one defining moment, not a single point in time I can trace all the lines back to, but if I had to pick one, I would say the day we parked my mom’s old pickup at the edge of town with Fleetwood Mac blaring on the stereo and bare feet hanging over the hood of the truck, was the day I decided I wanted Ginger to be in my life forever.

  It was the first day after school let out for the summer, and the two of us couldn’t have been more relieved to be finished with studies for a few months and finally have time to do what we wanted. Until August, we were free.

  That day was my idea. I called her at the break of dawn and got to listen to her croak out a reply on the other end. She had clearly just woken up, unlike me who had been up since five. She whined and groaned and generally made a fuss about me asking her to hang out, but nonetheless she was ready when I arrived at her house twenty minutes later. I had to borrow my mom’s truck because we couldn’t afford two cars. Ginger hopped in the front with me and scattered half a dozen CD cases on the dashboard.

  “Do you like Stevie Nicks?” she asked while sorting through the mess. “If you don’t, we may have a problem.”

  “Of course I like Stevie Nicks.” Who didn’t like Stevie Nicks?

  Ginger only smirked and threw in Rumours while I revved the engine and headed for the main road to take us out of town. I hadn’t told her where we were going, and though she didn’t push it, I could tell she was anxious to find out.

  She sang along to the album, and I watched her when I should have been watching the road. Her hair was curled like she had slept in a braid, and it was partially covered by a floppy white hat. She wore a sundress, light and the color of marigolds, and I swear I almost crashed the car twice.

  When I pulled up on the ridge that overlooked the land to the south, broken by the highway and dotted with gas stations, she grinned and raced out to stand on the edge. I followed, slow and reserved, as if she were a wild animal I didn’t want to scare off.

  This would be the time I said we confessed our love for one another and kissed under the shade of a lone tree, but what really happened was much simpler. We sat, we talked, we listened to music and laughed to shared stories of the last year of high school, and at one point she grabbed my hand and pulled me up, against my will, to dance.

  Ginger wasn’t the same girl who pestered me in elementary school. Or if she was, she had since grown into a bigger part of herself, one that allowed her to look at the world in a less cynical light. I always knew I was nothing and no one special. I sat on my own a lot, and it was hard to get words out of me sometimes. I was told I could be funny, but I had a normal sort of face that was stuck in a mystery novel too often.

  In spite of all that, or because of that, Ginger chose me to be around. She had friends, believe me. Everyone loved the president of the drama club and principal choir soloist and the quirky nickname she had never been able to shake. And she liked being around me.

  Maybe it was the same then. She didn’t know she was a lesbian in third grade and thought she had to bother me to get my attention. Maybe it was something we both grew into.

  SHE WENT away for two weeks with her family, right after the Fourth of July, and I told myself I should break up with Leila rather than drag it out any longer.

  If I didn’t care about Leila, I would have broken up with her. I wouldn’t have been leading her on or keeping quiet about my feelings for Ginger. But I did care about Leila. We had fun. Was I deeply and madly in love with her like I had never loved before? No, that would be pushing it.

  So the next best solution that came to mind was to be honest with her.

  I ended up explaining it to her one day after riding when I was cleaning up and brushing my horse. I chose that time because it was just public enough that she couldn’t scream at me without drawing attention. If that was selfish of me, I didn’t care at the time.

  “So you’re in love with her.” Leila said it devoid of any e
motion.

  “I am,” I said.

  “And you want to tell her that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you want to break up with me?”

  “No.”

  She seemed surprised but not at all bothered by my admission of wanting to be with both of them. Although that wasn’t how I was thinking at the time. All I knew was I liked Leila and I loved Ginger and being around both of them felt good.

  “All right, so you’re poly, then?” she suggested with a shrug. She turned away and went back to fixing a broken buckle on a saddle. “You want to date both of us, officially or whatever, but you don’t want to cheat. I can live with that.”

  The way she said it, so straightforward and uncomplicated, put me much more at ease than anything else would have.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” I asked. Leila had never been one to conceal her feelings or run around the facts, but it did throw me a bit that she didn’t care at all.

  “Nah, I’m happier you’re talking to me more than anything,” she replied and shot me a smile. “Radley, I don’t hold any grand delusions about being your one true love or soul mate or whatever you want to call it. You want to be with Ginger? Go for it. If she turns you down, you still have me.”

  It almost felt like I was treating Leila as my backup, as less important than Ginger, and it didn’t even faze her. Truth be told, it didn’t faze me either. I had the approval of my girlfriend, and when Ginger got back, I was going to tell her how I felt.

  And pray she was brave enough to admit she felt the same.

  WHEN WE were eleven, Ginger had come up to me one day and asked why I never wanted to be her friend.