Chapter Fifty Seven: The Accident
-Flashback-
I've felt… weird lately. It's small things, a fluttering in my stomach, a sudden heat in my cheeks, so I don't tell anyone. Even weirder, it only happens around Meili. I think it might have something to do with Meili being a girl. I mean, I don't feel like this around Mushu, and Meili's the only girl I talk to, really, so it's probably just a natural reaction or something. Yeah, that's it. It's because she's a girl and all girls feel this way when they're around their girl best friend. Problem solved. I'll never think of it again.
I am proud of myself for figuring this out and mentally congratulate myself as I walk to our hangout spot down by the stream. Mushu and Meili are already there when I arrive, sitting on a rock next to the stream, their bare feet dipped into the cool water on this hot summer day. I take off my shoes and socks and join them. Mushu starts telling this story about something that happened when he was at school the other day, but I find it hard to concentrate. My attention keeps wandering to Meili, and after fighting it for a little, I allow myself to give in and simply stare at her. She laughs at something Mushu has said, and her head tilts back. The sound escaping her lips is intoxicating almost. I wish I could bottle it up and listen to it whenever I wanted.
Wait, what?
Why the heck would I think something like that? I've never thought of Mushu's laugh like that, have I?
The realization hits me like a ton of bricks. I like her. I like like her. I think. But, that's not possible. Girls don't like other girls like that. Which means that, for whatever reason, I'm having thoughts that no other girl should ever feel, especially about their best friend. Oh, this is bad. Very bad.
I jump up suddenly, pulling my shoes and socks on over my wet feet.
"Hey, where are you going?" Mushu asks.
"I… I've got chores."
Meili looks at the sun. "It's way before noon. You have time before you have to go home to do your afternoon chores."
"Well, I've got extra chores today, so I have to go home early." I've already started to walk away.
By the looks on their faces, they don't believe me, but let it go anyway.
"Alright. See you later?" Meili asks, hopeful.
Absolutely not. "Probably not. Super busy, you know?"
"Sure," she states, her smile fading.
I run home before her sadness at seeing me go inspires me to stay. Once I get there, I go to the temple, light the incense, and kneel down into a deep bow, my forehead on the ground.
"Ancestors, help me," I whisper. "Cleanse my thoughts. Please forgive me for thinking such dishonorable things." I think about what would happen if Father knew I was thinking such unclean things. He would think that there was something wrong with me, though he has already proven that months ago when my arm broke. This would be different: This would be proof. He would hate me, I'm sure of it. So, I repeat my short prayer over and over again until the sun is high in the sky. As I leave the temple to complete my afternoon chores, I decide that it is best to avoid Meili until these confused feelings go away. Hopefully, it will be soon.
-End Flashback-
They didn't. Of course, I couldn't avoid Meili forever, and I really didn't want to. So, after not seeing her for a week, I finally decided that I would simply ignore the feelings and go on with my life. Eventually, I told myself, they would dwindle and disappear, and my mind would straighten itself out without anyone ever knowing that I had thought of such things. But, I was wrong, and seeing Meili only caused the feelings to grow. I refused to acknowledge them as love of any sort, and I refused to think of Meili as anything other than my friend. Anything else would be absurd. For a few weeks, I held everything together in front of Meili, I prayed to the ancestors to be cleansed for at least an hour every day, and I spent every waking moment invalidating my feelings. As I've learned though, one can only hide something for so long, and just like Tung-Shao was the setting for the revelation of my gender, the barn was the setting for the revelation of my secret feelings.
-Flashback-
It is a beautiful summer day, and Mushu and Meili's family is coming over to spend the day. We often do things like this in the summer, our parents enjoying each other's company and us kids acting like… well, kids. Unfortunately, before we have a chance to run off, we are forced into some polite conversation - the worst, most boring, most useless sort of conversation - in the living room. Father and Mushu's father are talking about the weather and how they think the crops will turn out this year. Eventually, they decide to go outside to look at our fields behind the house, and just when we think we might be able to sneak off and have some fun, Mushu's father tells his son to come along with him. Poor Mushu. His dad has been dead set lately at making a man out of him, I guess he thinks talking about crops will help. Meili and I send him pitying glances as he grudgingly exits the house with his father and mine.
After that, our mothers and Grandma go into the kitchen to make lunch. As soon as they are gone, Meili and I make our escape. We run outside and decide to go into the barn, as Meili is especially fond of Khan, and Khan of her.
"Who's a handsome horsy?" Meili asks Khan, stroking his neck lovingly. Khan seems to stand a little taller, prouder, as if saying "I am."
I laugh at them. "He's handsome and stubborn," I say. Khan snorts.
"Aw, she's just jealous, Khan," Meili reassures him before coming over to me. "You're pretty too, Mulan. Don't worry." She smiles jokingly at me, but part of me wonders if she isn't joking. I try to repress the blush I feel in my cheeks. I decide to avoid these feelings the same way I avoid anything I don't want to feel: By making a joke about it. I grab a handful of hay from a nearby bale and chuck it at Meili.
"Beautiful," I cry as the hay gets stuck in her hair and parts of her clothes. She laughs and picks up a handful herself. "Oh, you are on."
So begins the best hay-fight to ever have happened, and we chase each other all around the small barn, hurling the golden hay at each other. Khan seems unamused by our childness but happily begins to munch on the discarded pieces. After a little, I collapse on a pile of hay bales in one corner of the barn, and Meili plops down to join me. We both lay there for a few moments, breathing hard. We turn our heads to face each other. She is so close, her face maybe only four inches away from mine. She giggles. I feel something pass between us, and it's almost like how the air before a lightning storm feels prickly. Before I really know what is happening, I am beginning to close the distance between us, and when she sees this, she leans in.
As her soft lips meet mine, I feel every emotion I have tried to suppress rise to the surface. Love. Yes, that is what it is. I'm in love! I never want this kiss to end.
Gasps from the other end of the barn shock us both out of our bliss, and we pull away so quickly from each other we almost fall off of the bale of hay we are sitting on. To my absolute horror, Father, Mushu, and Meili's father stand in the open doorway of the barn. For a moment, everyone is completely still, and then, her father is rushing towards us, grabbing me by my upper arm and ripping me away from Meili. She sits completely still, and I see fear in her eyes. Meili's father whips me around, forcing me to look at him.
"What is wrong with you?" he roars. I'm too scared to answer.
I look to my father and see his eyes narrow. "Mulan, here, now." His voice is no-nonsense, demanding. I glance back at Meili, who still hasn't moved, before walking over to my father.
"What do you call that?" Meili's father demands of her, his voice low. She seems unable to answer, so I do it for her.
"An accident!" I blurt out. Meili looks at me, and while she looks a little relieved that I saved her from answering, she mostly looks… hurt. Like I betrayed her by calling the kiss just what it is: a mistake, an accident. It wasn't meant to happen. I don't feel anything for her. No, nothing. She's a friend, that's it. I hold firmly to those thoughts, blocking out all emotion that tells me otherwise. Those emotions and feelings are wrong.
"Mushu, go home. Take your sister with you." Their father pulls Meili up from the hay bail, gentler than he pulled me, and pushes her towards Mushu.
"Go to your room, Mulan," Father tells me, looking statically ahead.
"It was an accident," I say again, weaker this time. "It's not going to happen again. Right, Meili?"
She nods and mumbles an agreement, but there it is again: the betrayal in her eyes.
"Yes, it won't," Father states, and something about the way he says it scares me. "Your room, Mulan."
I don't try to protest again. Giving Mushu and Meili a sad look, I run from the barn, into the house, and into my room, closing the door hard behind me. The second it's closed, I collapse, crying, onto the bed.
I'm not sure how long I lay, tears soaking my pillow, but eventually, there is a quiet knock on the door. I sit up just as Father opens it. He looks exasperated, but traces of anger still linger on his face.
"Come out, Mulan. We need to talk." He turns without checking to see if I am following him.
He leads me into the dining room, where I am instructed to take my place at the table. Mushu and Meili's family is gone now, home I suspect. Grandma mills awkwardly around the edge of the dining room, giving me a sympathetic look. Mother looks simply appalled when her eyes meet mine. I stare at my lap and listen as Father takes his place at the head of the table.
"What happened, Mulan?" he asks me.
"I don't know," I whisper, staring at my fidgeting fingers in my lap.
"You kissed Meili."
"I didn't mean to."
"What did you mean to do, then?"
I have no answer, so simply remain silent. Father sighs.
"You understand that two girls… together… can never work, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you have… feelings… for Meili?"
"I don't know." My eyes are wet, but I refuse to start crying again.
"Feelings like that can't be acted on, Mulan. They are wrong… unnatural even." As he says the words, I feel myself break a little. The tears roll down my cheeks.
"I know. I'm sorry. It was an accident. I kept praying for the ancestors to make me better but it didn't work-" I cut myself, of, unable to speak anymore as the shame I have brought upon my family overwhelms me. Every bad thing people have ever said about me is true. I'm a freak. There's something wrong with my head. I bring shame and dishonor wherever I go.
"Go up to the temple, Mulan. Ask for the ancestors' guidance."
As if I haven't tried that before. I get up and go anyway, anything to get away from them, the people I have disappointed beyond belief.
I have been grounded for two weeks, and today, my first day of freedom, I walk down to the stream only to find Mushu already there. His back is to me, and I am too much of a coward to face him, so I try to walk away while I am still unseen. I take a step back and cringe as a twig snaps beneath my foot. Mushu turns to look at me. I cut him off before he can speak.
"It's okay if you hate me. I'll leave now, and you never have to see me again, I promise. I'm so sorry-"
Mushu wraps his arms around me, cutting me off.
"I don't hate you," he tells me quietly. "And neither does Meili. We could never hate you, Mulan."
"You should," I state, too upset to be embarrassed by the tears rolling down my cheeks.
Mushu pulls away, shaking his head. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"But I-"
"You didn't do anything wrong," he tells me again, and I don't try to correct him again.
It confuses me why Mushu doesn't hate me, though. I kissed his sister. I wonder now, though: Would I hate Mushu if I caught him kissing a boy? Most likely, I would make a joke about him giving up on girls, but that would be all in good fun, and just to ease the strain of a sure-to-be awkward situation. I wouldn't hate him, though. I couldn't hate him for simply loving someone.
'Then why,' I wonder, 'Has simply loving someone upended my whole life?'
"We're leaving, Mulan," Mushu states, seemingly out of nowhere.
"What?"
"We're leaving," he tells me again, looking at the ground. "We're moving away. Our parents think it's better if we stay away from each other."
"Our parents?"
"Yeah," he whispers. "Yours agreed on the idea."
I feel like someone has punched me in the gut. All of the air leaves my lungs. This feels like betrayal worse than no other. My parents, forcing me away from who they know to be my only friends in this life.
So this is it, then. I've destroyed my entire life with a single, stupid, meaningless kiss. It's so ridiculous I could scream… and then cry. I refuse to even think of that kiss as being anything. It shouldn't have happened. It is hard enough to lose my best friends, but to lose a love? No, that's too much. That day, it was all just a horrible accident. There were no feelings, no emotions, no mutual love between Meili and me. It was just two stupid thirteen-year-old girls who acted on something that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
That is what I will think of it as.
Not love.
Not a kiss.
An accident, and nothing more.
-End Flashback-
My friends have been silent this whole time as I wade through these memories and flashbacks and feelings I have hidden from everyone, myself included, for years. Finally, when I have my thoughts somewhat settled, I begin to talk once again.
"When I was thirteen, there was this… accident," I state again. "Meili and I did something we shouldn't have done, and we got caught."
"What was it?" Chien-Po asks quietly, using that voice that I'm sure he uses on everyone who comes to see him for counseling. The voice that makes you want to spill everything.
"We were alone in the barn, and for reasons I'm still not quite sure of, I kissed her."
"Wait, girls can kiss girls?" Ling exclaims, perplexed. Yao smacks him.
"Shut up you idiot!"
"It can happen," Shang comments quietly. Really, he's that last person I would have expected to hear something like that from. When he notices that we are looking at him, he continues. "I guess it's more common in the cities. Girls and girls, guys and guys. It's not really something made official or public, but I've heard of it."
"True," Chien-Po adds. He places a hand on my shoulder. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, Mulan. Liking women, I mean."
I sigh. "That's not exactly what our parents said when they caught us." I go on to explain how Meili and Mushu's family ended up moving away in an effort to keep us away from each other.
"Well, that's totally unfair!" Ling states after I've finished. I have to chuckle at his childlike response.
"You don't gotta worry 'bout us thinkin' any different 'bout you," Yao reassures me. "Besides, who can blame ya for fallin' for Meili? She's-"
"Still my sister," Mushu interrupts, his glare daring Yao to say anything.
Yao puts his hands up in mock surrender. "I was just gonna say pretty. Jeez!"
We all laugh a little. The tension in the air eases as I realize that none of these guys are going to push me away for this bit of my past. What I really wonder, though, is if Meili is just that: a piece of my past. With the support of my friends making me feel near-invincible, I wonder if perhaps she can come back into my life and be maybe just a little more.
Author's Note: So, there it is. Did I disappoint anyone? I hope not. Feel free to let me know what you think an a review! I love getting feedback from you guys! Sorry if this wasn't as exciting as you hoped for.