One: New Frontier

Amy's biggest mistake had been failing to take advantage of the progressiveness of her high school.

There was probably no safer school Amy could have attended - if she had realized she was gay on her own time everyone would have accepted her when she came out. People would still have smiled at her in the halls. They would have been sympathetic and friendly, and maybe she would even have gotten a real girlfriend. Life would have been easy.

But she blew her chance by pretending to be gay.

When everyone found out Amy and Karma had been faking, all trust broke down. Everyone thought they were both straight, they were both liars. They didn't know about the whirlpool in Amy's head, the fact that she was actually gay and actually in love with Karma. They had no sympathy, just glares and rumors and insults. People didn't care that she could hear when they called her a bitch, a whore, a piece of trash.

For a school that prided itself on being friendly to everyone, they sure knew how to be nasty.

College was a fresh start, and the northeast felt like home.

When Amy first walked onto the campus of Tufts University, the rainbow flags that hung in the windows of the dorm and academic buildings smiled at her, telling her things would be okay now. It would be good and she would be happy.

A rainbow poster with slogans of acceptance on the side of the student center in November sent her the same message: "Everyone welcome!"

In passing she couldn't help but wonder if that included her. Her so-called all-inclusive high school had expertly excluded her.

But chiding herself and pushing aside apprehensions, she went to the first meeting. She found the house that served as the LGBT center easily, but she spent thirty seconds standing outside, staring at it.

She was stuck in this push-and-pull of what she wanted and what she was afraid of.

Of course it will be different. Of course it won't.

Now I know who I am and what I want. Do you though?

She could tell herself as much as she wanted that things would be better, but she needed to see it to believe it. She kept hearing voices in her head, people from high school calling her a liar and a fake. They said she was superficial and worthless, and it's funny how those words linger in the mind. No amount of hope erases all demons.

A girl drew up beside her.

"You know doors open, right? You can walk through them?"

Amy blinked, drawn back from her fears into the world. She looked at the girl beside her, who was studying the door with mock intensity. It looked especially comical because her light smattering of freckles and the clear blue of her eyes made her look innocent, genuinely perplexed.

"I'm just going on past experience, here," the girl said, "but this door was fine last week."

"I'm sure the door is fine, but I don't know about me," Amy replied.

The girl smiled understandingly. "You're a newbie?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Well hello newbie, I'm Betty." She stuck out her hand, and Amy shook it. "Tonight's just Rent sing along night so there's nothing to fear, promise."

Fears slightly assuaged, but not entirely sure what Rent was, Amy smiled hesitantly and followed Betty through the door.

Betty greeted everyone who was already there and introduced them one by one to Amy, who waved sheepishly. They were all so enthusiastic about her presence that it reminded her of her high school, how weird it had been to have everyone cheer for her and Karma as homecoming queens. The difference was, there was no Lauren here, and now she was being entirely honest. She wasn't pretending to be gay; she was gay.

"Movie night" turned out to be a loose term. It seemed to entail gossip and pillow fights as much as it did actually watching the movie. It felt almost like a middle school sleepover, but Amy was comforted by it. It was easy here, and there was no pressure. Even though the other kids mostly already knew each other, they made her feel welcome. She appreciated the fact that they didn't smother her in special attention or treatment.

The feeling of comfort was compounded by Betty in particular, who was almost personally offended by the fact that Amy had never seen Rent before. She took it upon herself to explain the parts of the plot Amy hadn't understood over the laughter and chatter of the others.

After the movie, Betty looked at Amy and deadpanned. "Rent was your official induction to homosexuality. To let you in on a little secret, 'the gay agenda' people talk about is actually our plan to show this movie to the entire planet. Especially Russia."

Amy laughed. "Putin won't know what hit him."

Betty grinned in return. "Nope. So you said you're a freshman? Or you're just new to this club?"

"No, I am a freshman. What about you?"

"Sophomore."

"What are you studying?"

"Journalism major, gender studies minor. I wanna be the literary version of fucking Riot Grrrl, you know?" Her eyes shined excitedly, but Amy stared blankly at her.

"It's a feminist thing," Betty explained, chuckling. "Where are you from, anyway?"

"Texas." The word left a bad taste.

"Oh, Texas," Betty repeated. She nodded as if it explained all of Amy's ignorance.

It was funny how Betty's exterior clashed with her interior.

The girl was shorter than Amy and delicately featured, but from the roughness and straightforwardness of her language and topics of discussion Amy got a punk vibe from her. She was someone who cared about the world and its issues, someone committed to doing something that mattered. Not at all the naive doe she initially appeared to be.

"So, as a sophomore," Betty said, "I'm not that much more familiar with things around here but I know a great coffee shop a little off campus. Would you want to check it out with me sometime?"

Amy raised her eyebrows. Was this girl asking her out on… a date?

Dating had never been her strong suit – all she had to her name was a fake relationship with Karma and a handful of flings with others guys and girls she never really cared about.

Still, Betty was welcoming, inviting. The thought of being alone with her wasn't scary.

"Sure," Amy heard herself say, "I would love to."

Betty offered her iPhone to Amy, who put her number in as a contact.

"Gotta go get some work done, but I'll call you," Betty said with a wink. She stood and headed out, throwing a smile at Amy over her shoulder.

Amy couldn't help the grin that spread across her face in response. She left the center soon after and starting heading back to her dorm. The sky was dark and few people were around, letting her reflect in peace.

Somehow, things really were okay. The northeast was fulfilling its promise of normalcy, which was all she had ever wanted. People like Karma wanted greatness, but Amy mostly just wanted to have people in her life who saw through her lies and loved her for who she actually was, not for being half of a lesbian homecoming couple.

No, she wanted to move past the label of "lesbian." She wanted that to be part of her identity but by no means all of it. She wanted to pursue her passions, travel, learn, live.

Maybe Betty was the key to that. Betty wasn't like Karma because she didn't need a spotlight, so maybe having a girlfriend like her would give Amy someone to care about while helping her get out of her shell into the world. Betty seemed like she would be good for Amy.

But it was too soon for the word "girlfriend."

Amy shook her head and, finding herself at her dorm, let herself in. She climbed the flight of stairs to her floor and went down the hall to her room, where she found her roommate sitting on her bed with two open textbooks and more papers than Amy thought it was possible to collect in the time they had been in school.

"What's all that?"

"Biology." The girl, Mary, didn't even look up.

"Aren't you in, like, Bio 101?"

"That doesn't mean I can slack."

Amy rolled her eyes. Mary was pre-med, intensely focused on only things that related to science and her future at Harvard Medical School.

"How was your gay meeting?" Mary asked after a few furious seconds of filling in a worksheet. She finally bothered to look up.

"It was good," Amy nodded. "Really love the community here."

"Yeah, it's nice. There's a lot of intelligence, especially in the engineering kids. They know what they're doing," Mary said with admiration in her voice.

Amy nodded vacantly, knowing their ideas of passion were pretty different.

"Do you mind if I turn off my light? You can leave yours on," Amy asked after changing into her pajamas.

"Right, you have your 8:35 class tomorrow. That's fine. Night." Mary went back to biology, frowning at apparent discontinuities between the two books she had.

When Amy turned off the lamp by her bed and got under the covers, she didn't even notice that she was absently wondering what Karma was doing right now. She didn't even notice that when she closed her eyes she still saw Karma on the insides of her eyelids.

Nor did she have any way of knowing that at that same moment, in North Carolina, Karma was sitting with her head in her hands thinking about Amy, too.

A/N: I know it's a little choppy, but it's a lot of background/intro stuff. It'll flow if ya stick around. xo