It's a little secret thing they did, only once, between the happenings in their lives. Lydia told her it was what intellectuals did, when there was something missing from their thoughts, when all the lines that intersected in their lives failed to create a pattern. Allison thought better than to question where she got the four or five hallucinogenic mushrooms from, and took one of the thin unassuming fungi from Lydia's ziplock bag and ate it quick, taking a swig of her cherry coke to mask the flavor. The red head smiled in that roguish way she always did, and took one for herself, chewing it as if she liked the taste, and swallowing it with a Cheshire grin.
"Now what do we do." Allison asked, scooting up on the warm hood of Lydia's even newer car.
"Now," Lydia drawled, "we wait."
Allison had shot arrows at men who could easily rip her to shreds, drew blood as easily as Lydia drew idly in her notebooks, but this unknown territory scared her. She reached out and took the smaller girl's hand, and shyly threaded their fingers together as they stared up at the twinkling stars.
"Don't be afraid." Lydia cooed. "Every young inquisitive mind explores the realms of the universe with shrooms." Allison nodded dumbly, starting to feel suddenly sideways-hyper aware of their entwined hands and how it made her pulse quicken and her throat go dry.
It could have been five minutes or five years then; Allison was not very sure. She felt the sideways feeling intensify, and without any warning, let herself slide off the car hood, and onto the soft grass of the field.
"Allison?" She heard a voice above her. It sounded like her mother.
"I'm here." She called up to the voice. Her vision swam, the stars began to swirl in the sky, began to dance before her. She heard two feet stomp toward her, saw Lydia looming above her. She looked so beautiful, so large and clear in the headlights of her sedan. Allison reached out to touch Lydia's face, ran her fingers over the rosy cheek. Felt the wetness of a tear on her finger tips.
"I thought you were gone." Lydia whimpered, and Alison-though she wasn't sure whether she was upside down or not-sat up and held the other girls face gently between her hands.
"No no no..." She whispered, and Lydia blinked at her with squinting blue eyes, blinded by the halogen lights in her face. Lydia stood unsteadily, taking Allison's hands and pulling her up, walking them to the side of the car.
"Are we high?" Allison asked, and Lydia laughed a tinkering laugh in reply. Allison wondered then why her thoughts felt so fragmented, why she felt she was not just here but everywhere. She looked over the shorter girl's shoulder and thought she saw her Mother, though she wasn't so sure. In any other moment she would have felt sad, even scared, but she just blinked, and looked at Lydia. The girl looked preoccupied, maybe seeing the numbers and words that always exist in the other girl's mind, and suddenly, like she'd been dumped in a bucket of ice, she realized that she felt love for this girl. A sexual, deep, soulful love for someone she'd been friends with for almost two years now. Then, as if Lydia heard the racing thoughts in Allison's mind, she hummed to herself and took Allison's hand again. Allison opened the door to Lydia's car and sat inside. She buckled the seat belt out of habit and Lydia saw this and laughed.
"Where are you going?" She said to her, her voice melodic and teasing. Allison unbuckled her seatbelt, embarrassed. She squeaked in surprise when Lydia suddenly sat in her lap.
"I love you." Allison thought to herself. Lydia looked back at her as if she'd heard. Then after a few seconds Allison realized she was looking at her because she actually said that out loud. Her mouth opened and closed in shock. Her skin was now vibrating, and she wondered if the car was doing that, or if embarrassment was a physical sensation.
Then she felt soft lips on hers, and just as automatically as she had belted herself into that car, she responded to the kiss. The thought occurred to her as their tongues met and Lydia's teeth nipped at her lower lip that shrooms was not at all what she expected, and that while she wasn't entirely sure whether she was alive, or if she was still in that field, there were no purple elephants-just Lydia, and Lydia's hot breath on her cheek. Her hands ran up the sides of the smaller girl's goose pimpled thighs, and tugged at lacy panties underneath a really impractical skirt. Her fingers dipped into silky wet folds and pressed against familiar territory, and it occurred to her how when she did this to herself sometimes, the thoughts of Scott would occasionally cross into thoughts of Lydia, and if she was terribly honest with herself (as she was at that moment), she would admit that what brought her over the edge was not the thought of hard unwieldily muscles, but soft pale flesh that bruised like a peach.
When they locked eyes, and Allison noticed in the dim overhead light that Lydia's eyes were all pupil, there was a silent promise that neither of them would ever talk about this again. They made a pact, as Lydia keened and squirmed under Allison's hurried wet fingers, that love like Allison's was too unrealistic to honor with commitment, and that when this was through they'd go back to their respective lives with ease, knowing this was where the road ended. It ended in that field, where a forgotten ziplock bag full of mushrooms would be found that weekend by a lucky bicyclist, who would pick it up and shove it in the zipper of his riding bag. It was done when Lydia drove home a flustered and very sober Allison home three hours later, and when Allison brushed her teeth to forget the taste of her very best friend, and stared at herself in the mirror willing herself not to cry, she would remember that tomorrow she would Allison Argent, a newly minted young intellectual, in love with someone who logically couldn't love her back.