Sam's Friend

A short story

Thursday, 2nd April, 1998...

Sam sat in homeroom, fingering the slip of paper she'd found shoved through the slots in her locker door and waiting for a chance to read it as Mrs Frye took attendance.

"Key, Samantha."

"Here," Sam said.

She suddenly realized that now she was legally allowed to change her name and drop the "antha" forever, and the pleasant thought kept her warm for the rest of homeroom. When the bell finally deigned to ring, she headed straight for the bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and opened the note.

Sam grinned and kept rereading it until she realized she'd be late for calculus. For Katie's sake, she tore the note up into pieces and flushed it away before picking up her bag and heading to calc at a brisk trot.

Katie was waiting outside for her that afternoon, and without a word, the two began walking down First Street together. They sat in the shade of an old oak tree and, after a pause, Katie finally spoke.

"I still can't believe you're eighteen now."

"Don't worry, sixteen is legal in Indiana. I looked it up."

"You would," she said.

"So how long is your father away?"

"He's in Chicago until Monday." Katie grinned. "I have the whole house to myself—and whoever I choose to invite over."

"And what would one have to do to secure an invitation?" Sam asked.

"The invitation policy is very strict," Katie replied. "You must be you to qualify."

"I like that policy."

"Me too," Katie said. "Can you square it with your parents?"

"Dad won't care, but Mom might be suspicious," Sam said. "I'll tell her Bek and Anne will be there too, so she doesn't think we're dyking it up."

Katie winced. "I hate that word, Sam."

"Sorry," Sam said. "I forgot."

"It's okay. What if she wants to talk to my dad, though?"

"She won't," Sam said. "I'm her good kid, remember?"

"And now you're legally an adult."

"Well, that won't change much, trust me," Sam said. "Listen, I better get back soon."

"Sure," Katie said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"So how was your birthday?" Katie asked the next afternoon as they walked up Michigan to Poplar.

"It was nice," Sam said.

"Any nice gifts?"

"Oh, the usual. Robert gave me Newton's Principia Mathematica. Kevin gave me Girls-on-Girls Volume Eight. Like I say, the usual."

"Ew, your own brother gave you a porno?"

"Well, Newton's pretty hot, but I wouldn't call it porno per se... or were you talking about Kevin?"

Katie laughed. "I've never watched anything like that before," she said. "What's it like?"

"I haven't watched anything like it either," Sam said. "It'll be a learning experience. Kevin claimed that Volume Eight was the apex of the Girls-on-Girls franchise, though, so I have high hopes. The man knows whereof he speaks."

"I still can't believe he actually gave you that. So, math and porn, huh? Must have been your best birthday ever."

"The best gift is getting to spend the entire weekend with you," Sam said.

"Aw, shucks." Katie smiled. "I just wish we could do it more often."

Sam almost reached out and took her girlfriend's hand, but at the last moment changed her mind.

The distance they had been carefully maintaining vanished the moment the front door closed behind them, and their bags dropped to the floor as they kissed. They somehow made it up the stairs and to Katie's twin bed with its down-filled dyne that had been tucked neatly over the lacy pillows until their hasty arrival. They made love with a quick sweet fervor, erring perhaps on the side of overenthusiasm, until they found themselves lying sleepily naked together under a thin cool cotton sheet made cooler still by their sweat.

"Happy birthday," Katie said.

Sam recognized the song coming in through the window along with the cool northern light as that of an early warbler, a migrant enjoying the Indiana spring, and smiled. She had woken up with Katie's elbow lodged in her ribs; an unpleasant sensation made almost sublime by the context. She had never spent the night with Katie before, or indeed with anyone else. She contemplated the fact that just under the sheet was her young lover's naked body. She knew that it wasn't, perhaps, a perfect body, marred by rebellious skin and just a bit more weight than its frame really called for, but it was Katie's body, and therefore it was Sam's body for the weekend. She ran two fingers down Katie's side, eliciting a soft and sleepy sigh as she traced the girl's curves. Sam felt both older and younger than eighteen as she slipped out of bed, leaving Katie to sleep as she wrapped her girlfriend's robe around her and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She made breakfast—bacon, eggs, and whole milk, all fresh from the farmer's market—and brought it back upstairs. She set the tray down on the dresser and woke Katie with a kiss.

The morning was idyllic and easy, like high school love is supposed to be, but a poorly-chosen word spoken that afternoon brought their relationship's fundamental problem to the fore.

"So... about prom," Katie said.

Sam's eyes lit up. "You mean you'll go?"

"Well, yes and no," Katie said. "Look, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but..."

"But what?"

"But Joe Keefe asked me, and I said yes."

Sam blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"I knew you wouldn't understand."

"No, I understand just fine," Sam said coldly. "You're ashamed to be my date."

"It's different for you!" Katie said. "You're braver than me. Besides, your family understands."

"My brothers understand, sort of," Sam replied. "You think my mother does? What's so different about us that you can't tell people the truth?"

"You don't belong here," Katie said helplessly. "You're one of those people who should live in Boston or Washington or New York. I'm just an Indiana girl."

"You can be whatever you want to be," Sam said. "All you have to do is tell the world that's who you are. If they can't deal with it, that's their problem."

"There are already rumors about us. People whisper behind my back as it is. If I went to prom with you..."

"Then they'd stop! If you tell the truth, and you're proud of who you are, people won't have a reason to spread rumors."

"I can't," Katie said. "I'm not strong like you."

"Fine then," Sam said. "If I'm going stag, I'm going in a tux."

Katie went pale. "You wouldn't!"

"Why not? I hate dresses. A tux is cheaper anyway."

"But you'd look so pretty!"

"So I won't look pretty in a tuxedo?"

"No! You'll just look... gay!"

"News flash, Katie Ball!" Sam said. "I am gay! And you know what? So are you!"

"Oh, here we go." Katie was crying now. "Why did you have to go and ruin our weekend together?"

"Me?" Sam said. "I'm not the one who told her girlfriend she was going to prom with someone else!"

"It's not like he's going to expect anything—Joe's a bigger closet case than me, you know that."

"How, exactly, does it make things better if both of you are lying to yourselves?"

"Look, I'm only going with Joe because otherwise I wouldn't be able to go at all!" Katie protested.

"You could have gone with me!"

"They probably wouldn't even have let us," Katie said. "You live in a fantasy world sometimes, Sam. This isn't Castro Street High we're talking about."

"They can't stop us," Sam said. "That's illegal."

"Look, I'll still dance with you and all," Katie said.

"But you'll dance with Joe, too," Sam said.

"Well, sure, I guess," she said. "He's a good dancer."

"And you'll dance with Bek and Anne too, so that people don't notice you dancing with me. And I won't be able to so much as hold your hand the entire night."

"Of course you will!" Katie protested. "We'll find somewhere private, out of the way..."

"Somehow I suspect you're missing the point," Sam said. "The point is you're ashamed of who you are, and because of that you're ashamed of me."

"I'm not ashamed of who I am!"

"Then say it! Tell the world you're a flaming-gay-dyke-queer-lesbian and they'll have nothing left to whisper about!"

"I'm sixteen, Sam. I'm not going to ruin my whole life by 'coming out' just because we have a good time together."

"Is that all it is? A good time?"

"We're a couple of high schoolers fooling around! Neither of us is old enough to go assigning any deeper meaning to that."

"Katie, I love you," Sam protested.

"Someday you'll look back at that and realize you didn't even know what the word means."

"Nobody knows what it means, Katie. I just know what I feel. I thought you felt the same."

"Look, Sam, I really care about you," Katie admitted. "But I'm not ready to ruin my life over what might just be a passing phase, you know?"

"A phase?" Sam said. "In the sixteen years you've been alive, have you ever felt the way you do about me for someone with a Y chromosome?"

"I don't even know what that means, Sam."

"Forget it," Sam said. "Go to my prom with a flaming faggot because you're too embarassed to walk in with me. See if I care."

"Sam, where are you going?"

"Home," she said, though she regretted it instantly. "I'll see you Monday."

The next Monday, she found another note in her locker.

They made up, as they had before, as they both knew they would again. Sam's letters came in that spring, mostly rather light in weight. She had known they would be, but the letter from MIT was still enough to bring her to tears. There was one thick envelope in the stack, however, that they opened together.

"They've got a good reputation," Sam said. "For a public school, anyway."

"It seems like a nice place," Katie said, looking through the orientation packet. "Apparently they've got peacocks."

"Three of them: Waffle, Pancake, and John Quincy Adams. I hear they wander around campus screaming horribly in the middle of the night."

"Fun. Is it a nice campus?" Katie asked. "The pictures look pretty, but all colleges look the same in pictures."

"I've never been there," Sam said.

"You applied to a school you hadn't visited?"

"I applied to a lot of schools. I guess it's a good thing I did."

"Fucking Yakovich," Katie said. "It's all his fault."

"It's my fault for letting him get to me," Sam said. "He's not the one that didn't do the homework. Anyway, it wasn't just him."

Katie gave Sam a hug. "Don't worry. I'm sure St Christopher's will be a great school for you. You'll learn a lot, and you'll meet a lot of interesting people, and you'll be a thousand miles away from this stupid no-horse town."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Yeah, I will."

In the limo, Katie sat between Joe and Sam. Katie's lemon yellow dress matched Sam's bow tie, but the corsage Joe had given her clashed with Sam's boutenneire. Anne and Bek sat across from them, squeezed in next to their dates, chatting excitedly as they were wont to do. Sam didn't have the energy for them, not tonight.

Mrs Frye tried to take issue with Sam's attire, but Sam had checked the rules thoroughly, and in the end her teacher couldn't find anything specifically forbidding girls from wearing tuxedos. She got a mix of stares and compliments as she walked in, leaning more heavily on the stare side, and Katie, she had noticed, was consciously avoiding standing near her for fear of cross-contagion.

She watched Joe Keefe dance coquettishly with her girlfriend for a while until she couldn't stand seeing Katie trod on his feet any more and went up to get a drink. Mr Yakovich, of all people, was standing guard over the punch bowl.

"That's quite an... outfit, Miss Key," he said, in a voice that almost demanded she throw some sort of punch in his smug face.

"Thanks," she said.

"So have you heard from any colleges yet?"

"I'm going to St Christopher's College of Maryland." She tried to pronounce the name the same way she would have pronounced "the Massachussetts Institute of Technology".

"Maryland, eh? Long way away." Apparently, he was equally proficient in calculus and geography.

"Yup. Goodbye, Mr Yakovich."

She danced half-heartedly with Anne, she danced even more half-heartedly with Bek, until, finally, the opening strains of the song she had requested, Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing", came over the gym's aging speakers and, with a smile, she walked over to Katie, who was sitting in the bleachers.

"May I have this dance, Miss Ball?"

Katie smiled and took her hand, and the two headed our for the dance floor. Joe had at least tamed her somewhat: she was content to be led, and Sam was more than happy to lead. Sam couldn't dance to save her life, and knew it, but she could feign a passable swing, and Katie wasn't bad at being swung. They wouldn't win any dance contests, but they were enjoying it, and for one song both of them forgot that they were in Argos, Indiana, where gay was the worst word anyone knew. As Benny's clarinet reached a frenzy, Sam gave her partner a final spin and pulled her into a sweetheart.

And then, in the silence between songs, Sam found herself holding Katie in her arms, their eyes locked, desperate to do what the moment demanded. But in that interminable hiatus, Katie's eyes pleaded two contrary things, and as the next bit of pop music fluff started up, Sam released her and walked back to the bleachers feeling distinctly toroidal.

"You two make a cute couple."

Sam looked up and saw her biology teacher, the paradoxically named Miss English, and forced a smile.

"Thanks," she said, "but we're just friends."

Characters:

• Sam Key
• Katie Ball