Hi. Sorry this took so long. I'm on summer break now, so I churned this chapter out in like a day and a half. My updating pace should be a lot faster now. Also, this chapter is a little shorter than what I normally publish, but the chapter break is logical. Thanks for reading.

Thursday, July 1st, 1999

The summer heat melted all of the days into one. The days, now indistinguishable from one another, whipped by faster than ever before, and though I struggled to keep up, Brittany was the opposite; she ran with them, always moving, or driving, always asking me to take her places. Nothing was stagnant with Brittany, and so my summer was far more active than any I could remember. We went on morning jogs that left my face sun-baked and Brittany's shoulders an angry pink. Mixed with lavender now was the smell of the aloe that Mrs. Pierce forced her to put on the burns; I never understood why Brittany wouldn't just wear sunscreen, but she never complained about the sunburn.

Her appointment to sit for her driver's test had been made for July 6th, and marked on the Pierce calendar, which hung on the wall between the mudroom and the kitchen. It was circled in purple, Mrs. Pierce's favorite color. In the box was Barbie car sticker that Brittany said Emily stuck there, but I was 95% certain that Brittany was responsible for it. She was excited about having her license. I think she was tired of me controlling where we went and what we did, even though I always drove her where she asked to go. Our car use had been restricted, however, since Brittany had gotten grounded after our little trip to the mountains.

Brittany was hoping to get a car for her birthday, which was in late July. She said they were thinking of going to the lake for those weeks. I still hadn't asked my mom if I could go; I knew she'd say yes, but I dreaded the conversation. I didn't want to leave her alone for two weeks.

Since Brittany became un-grounded, I spent most days at the Pierce's, usually staying for dinner on Wednesdays and Thursdays, because those were the nights my mom worked a double shift. I wasn't surprised when she told me she had to work more. It was nice, actually, because then I didn't have to worry about leaving my mom alone for too long. It wasn't like we talked when we were together, anyway.

Some days Brittany and I talked a lot—about school, about people, about our parents, what our futures would be like. We never talked about "us." Not a unit, or a thing, or whatever people called it. I didn't even know what to call it. On the quieter days, we made up for the lack of conversation with touching. She would hug me after I walked over in the morning, her hair wet from a recent shower, and her fingers would brush the back of my hand, and we'd spend the day watching movies, curled up together on Brittany's couch. We hadn't kissed for real in a long time, and I worried that we never would.

We were engaged in this complicated dance, Brittany and I. We danced around the questions about what we were and what we were going to do when school started. I think that both of us hoped that everything would resolve itself. So we waited.

I looked at private schools online the next time I went to the library.

One Thursday evening, after a dinner of pulled pork sandwiches and macaroni and cheese (which Brittany insisted was not as good as mine; I looked away to hide the color on my cheeks), we lounged on Brittany's bed as the day faded to dusk. She lay across the bed, her blonde hair spilling over the edge like a waterfall, her ocean eyes gazing contently at the ceiling. I leaned against her knees, flipping disinterestedly through a book Brittany had left on her bedside table.

"Can I braid your hair?" she asked, out of the blue, sitting up and causing me to lose my balance and fall backwards onto the mattress. She sat up and smiled down at me, her blonde hair now hanging in my face. It was warm where the soft ends tickled my cheeks.

I wrinkled my nose as the ends of her hair tickled my face. "Sure."

"Sit up," she instructed, getting onto her knees behind me.

Her cool fingers brushed against my neck where she gathered my hair into three strands, and I leaned into her touch. She began to braid the strands together, unbelievably careful, just like the time she painted my nails. Every slight tug to my scalp prompted a concerned "Are you okay?" from her, to which I replied with a smile and a small nod. She worked slowly. When the braid had reached the nape of my neck, her hands stilled for a moment as she adjusted herself behind me, moving from her knees to a sitting position. She crossed her legs as she worked.

Just a few seconds later, she huffed in frustration, and I smiled as the puff of cool air breezed across the back of my neck. Goosebumps rose on my bare arms. The bed squeaked as she shifted her weight, finally positioning herself so that her legs rested on either side of me. Her stomach was less than an inch away from my back, and I could feel the heat radiating from her sunburnt skin. I stiffened as Brittany arranged her legs around me.

She noticed. She always noticed. I remembered my dream, and her hands, and I shuddered.

"Are you okay?" she asked again. Her hands stopped moving, for the third time, and I heard her smile turn into a small frown. She knew that my reaction wasn't from her pulling my hair. I didn't have to be looking at her to know that her brow was furrowed.

I shook it off.

"Yeah," I said, smiling uneasily. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Brittany's long fingers returned to braiding my hair. "No reason, just checking."

I chewed on my lower lip as she continued to braid my hair. It was soothing to feel her fingers brush against my neck every so often, and I forced myself to ignore the positioning of her legs. Her toes, which wiggled every so often in her pink socks, brushed against my calves. I dug my nails into my palms.

"Do you want to go to the fair with me?" Brittany asked, breaking my focus.

"What?" I wasn't sure if I'd heard her correctly.

"The Jefferson County Fair," she repeated, laughing. "It's in town this weekend."

"Um, sure," I said, a little uncertainly. Brittany's hands smoothed over my braid.

"Hair tie?" she asked.

I pulled the elastic off of my wrist and handed it to her.

"You don't sound very excited," she laughed, snapping the elastic into place. She didn't move from her position around me, but I felt her lean her weight back onto her elbows. Without Brittany behind me, my back was exposed to the cool air of her room.

"I don't know," I said, shrugging. "I haven't been to the fair in a really long time." I crossed my arms. What I wanted to say was "Everyone from school is going to be there and Quinn will be there and she'll smirk at us and everyone is going to know that I'm in love with you."

Brittany's fingers smoothed over the braid. "I want to take you."

I frowned, knowing she couldn't see my face. "Alright."

Friday, July 2nd, 1999, 6:00 p.m.

I didn't know what to wear to a circus, and I forgot to ask Brittany what she was wearing, so I stood in front of my closet in my underwear for approximately forty-five minutes debating and listening to a Fleetwood Mac record.

The Pierce's Buick pulled up as I was pulling on a nondescript blouse, and I panicked as I shoved my legs into a pair of shorts and did the one-legged hop at the front door to put on my flip-flops. My mom cut carrots in the kitchen, her knife chopping a rhythm against the cutting board.

"They're not going to leave without you, you know," she said to me over the carrots.

I rolled my eyes and stole a twenty from my mom's purse before slipping out into the evening heat. As I crossed the front lawn, I noticed that the front seat was empty except for the driver. I squinted, trying to see if it was Mrs. Pierce coming to pick me up. I opened the passenger-side door and slid onto the leather seat, my skin sticking to it almost immediately.

Brittany was driving the car.

"You look cute," she commented, glancing at me and putting the car in drive. It smelled like sunscreen.

I blushed and looked out the window, glad to have her approval, though I had a suspicion she would call me cute even if I'd worn tin foil. "Thanks. You're driving?"

"Yep. My dad insisted that I get some practice behind the wheel by myself to practice for my test, even though it's basically illegal." She turned onto the main road.

"Huh," I said. "Basically illegal. That's too bad."

She smiled, never taking her eyes off of the road. We pulled up to a dusty lot a few miles down the road from Brittany's house, one that sat vacant for most of the year. A small fair, with a towering Ferris wheel and an array of striped tents, had replaced the normally empty lot, and it had become nearly unrecognizable. A makeshift parking lot twice the size of the fair itself sat to its left, and Brittany pulled into the lot, following the waving hand of an orange-clad traffic cop into an empty space. My hands were sweating.

We climbed out of the car, and Brittany squinted at the sun. "I'm so glad we came at night instead of in the afternoon, can you imagine how hot it'd be at like noon?"

"Yeah, I would not want to be out in that heat," I agreed.

We weaved through crowds of people leaving the fair, mostly people with young children. More adults and high school students entered the park with us. I let Brittany lead me towards the ticket tent, and I stood to her right as she bought wristbands for us. The Ferris wheel loomed in front of me. I recognized a few people from school loitering near the ticket window, exchanging coins and dollar bills. I was pretty sure they were all on the debate team.

"Come on," Brittany said, and I felt her fingers on my wrist as she led me away from the ticket window. She held a blue bracelet in her mouth as she motioned for me to hold out my wrist. She squinted her eyes against the sun as she carefully lined up the two ends of the bracelet and stuck them together.

"How much was it?" I asked her, examining the bracelet.

"Doesn't matter," Brittany said.

"Brittany," I warned. "Come on."

My heart leapt in my chest. I'd read enough cheesy relationship books to know what was going down. Or at least, I hoped I knew what was going down.

"Buy me cotton candy later, okay?" she suggested. She winked at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Fine."

"Have you eaten yet?" she asked. "I've heard this place has the finest fried food in the nation."

"Sounds exquisite. I don't want to miss out on that experience."

"Let's do it."

We sat down at a stained picnic table with our corn dogs ten minutes later (I bought mine myself). Brittany squirted copious amounts of yellow mustard onto hers and held it up to her mouth like it was a chicken wing or corn on the cob.

"What the hell are you doing to that corn dog?" I asked, holding my own loosely in my hand as I watched her eat.

"This is the proper way to eat a corn dog," she said. "Didn't your mother teach you any manners?"

I batted my eyelashes. "Would you kindly teach me how to eat a corn dog the proper way?"

Brittany narrowed her eyes. "What do I get in return?"

I'll kiss the mustard off of your cheek?

"How about funnel cake?"

"Funnel cake and cotton candy? I'm down." She replaced her corn dog in the red and white-striped boat, smearing mustard all over it. "Okay. Set down your corn dog."

I dropped it into the container.

"I said set down your corn dog. Let's try that again."

I sighed and rolled my eyes, but I'm pretty sure my smile gave me away. I picked the fried dog pack up in my fist, and gently placed it into the container.

"Excellent," Brittany said, licking the mustard off of the corners of her mouth. "Now, place four of your fingers, excluding the pinky, on one end of the corn dog, and three fingers around the stick. I did as she asked. "Swell, you're almost there. You could be a pro with practice." I grinned. "Now, bring it up to your mouth," she demonstrated with her own corn dog, "and rotate it accordingly to eat each section, but make sure you don't eat one side all at once, because then the other side falls off." She took a bite of her corn dog.

"Wouldn't it be easier if you just—"

"This is the only way," she spoke through a mouthful of yellowy corn dog mush.

"Are you—"

"Yes."

It's hard to laugh when your mouth is full of corn dog, but I managed.

When the corn dogs were gone, Brittany wanted to go on the Ferris wheel. The thing was easily the biggest structure at the fair, and the line was about as long as the wheel was tall.

"Please?" she asked.

I eyed it carefully, trying to spot any loose nuts or bolts that could result in the Ferris wheel rolling out of the fair and onto the highway. I survived a massacre, and I sure as hell didn't want to die on some shady carnival Ferris wheel.

"Of course, why not?"

We played rock paper scissors for the next twenty minutes, changing the three elements to things like whale, corn dog, nipple, pencil, and hydrangea. We had both forgotten if orange juice beat popsicle or if it was the other way around when we got to the front of the line. I kind of didn't want to get on the Ferris wheel at that point; I was having enough fun in line.

"We'll be in line for the Zipper for a long time anyway, we'll play more later," Brittany said, winking as the pimply attendant ushered us into a passenger car. She knew me so well.

I looked out at the fairgrounds with apprehension as the car slowly rose off of the ground; we stopped to let on more people, and again, and again, and eventually we were about a quarter of the way around the circle (pi over two, if we're talking about the unit circle), and Brittany had this peaceful smile on her face, and the wisps of blonde hair that had come loose from her braid whipped around in the wind. The view from where we sat wasn't all that spectacular; the other cars obstructed our vision, so only a few tents and most of the parking lot were visible. Brittany sat low on the bench across from me and looked out across the parking lot, towards the pine trees at the edge of the grass.

"Just wait until we get to the top," she half-whispered. "You'll love it, it's just like that spot in the mountains."

I smiled, remembering our forbidden escape to the mountains. The wheel began to move again. Brittany sat up, looking out at the landscape with bright eyes. I began to worry my hands together. They were sweating again. Predictable.

I had no memory of being on a Ferris wheel before, but I imagine that I must've been on one at some point. However, no amount of great height ever makes the sensation of rising off of the ground familiar or even pleasurable. For me, at least. Brittany seemed to think differently.

Nervous as anything, I peeked over the edge of the cart, looking down at the little people looking up at the wheel, hands over their eyes to shield them from the sun.

"Are you scared?" Brittany asked, breaking the silence. She smiled at me, and I think it was supposed to be reassuring.

"Nope," I insisted, tearing my gaze away from the ground, which was rushing away from us.

Her blue gaze was steely. "It'd be okay if you were," she said. "Plenty of people are scared of heights."

I looked at my feet. "Okay, I'm a little scared."

Brittany laughed and stood up, making the car rock back and forth. "Oh my god, what are you doing?" I exclaimed, grabbing the sides of the car. We swung over the crowds of people. The wheel had stopped. "Oh my god." I closed my eyes.

I felt her weight on the bench as she sat down next to me. I opened my eyes and found her face close to mine, and I couldn't help it—I looked down. At her lips. It's impossible to be so close to her and to not think about all of the times she's kissed me. I was quick to force my gaze back up to her eyes, instead of staring like I normally would. But we weren't on the couch in her basement, and I couldn't do that.

"Aren't we supposed to keep the weight evenly d-distributed?" I stuttered, pointing behind me to the small square sign.

"Neither of us are morbidly obese, so I think we're okay. Though I think I packed on a few after that corn dog." She puffed out her cheeks and I laughed. She blew the air out of them and smiled back at me. "I won't let you fall," she said. "I promise."

She leaned forward, closing her eyes. I shot a panicked glance above us, below us, to the cars across the wheel. Someone could see if they just looked around the spokes in the center—

"Popsicle definitely beats orange juice," I blurted out.

Her eyes popped open, and too many emotions rushed through them for me to isolate any of them. It was like the mechanical reels of a slot machine. Hers stopped on calm.

"You're totally right," she sighed, leaning back against the bench, any other emotion undetectable.

We sat in silence for a little while, our thighs touching, and I wished I could read her mind.

"Look to your right," she whispered.

I forced my neck to move, and I was awestruck by the view; we were at the very top, and I could see the Rockies standing bravely in the heat, miles and miles away. They still had white at the very peaks. Patches of yellow flowers dotted their sides, and I felt Brittany's hand creep into mine, the one with the wristband on it that she had paid for. She probably didn't mind that my palm was sweaty. I held my breath.

She let go of my hand at seven pi over six, just soon enough that no one would see us. I was equal parts relieved and hurt, which is a strange cocktail of feelings. She smiled at me, saying It's okay without actually saying it, and I felt a little bit better.

One of the things I did not know—but should have expected—is that Brittany Pierce is ridiculously good at carnival games.

And when I say ridiculously good, I mean she wins all of them.

It was kind of magical, in a way, and I held a giant stuffed duck (for Emily, she said) as I watched her shoot three basketballs into a basketball hoop (one that I was certain was not regulation-sized). She shot one through her legs, one left-handed, and she threw one like a baseball, and all three went straight through the hoop. The attendant was not amused, but Brittany found the whole thing hysterical. She handed me her prize, a stuffed hippo, which I named Winston (short for Winston Churchill). Brittany thought that was even funnier than her success at basketball.

"I think you're the next Michael Jordan," I told her, hugging Winston the hippo to my chest.

"I think I need victory cotton candy," she replied.

"Come on come on come on," Brittany whispered, pressing the trigger of her water gun until her knuckles turned white. She was at the counter with at least five other people, and she had started off with a lead, but a balding overweight guy (he'd probably had a few too many corn dogs) was slowly gaining on her. I sat to her left on a stool, but I hadn't wanted to participate, convinced that Brittany's unbelievable success rate would ensure us another stuffed animal, and my participation would be a waste of money. I was in charge of holding the cotton candy.

The targets moved across the board on the wall, and Brittany had stood up from the stool, dug her toes into the dust behind us, and was putting all of her weight on the tiny metal gun. The bald guy was sweating, and Brittany was doing That Thing with her tongue. I was so distracted I didn't even notice when she won.

"NIPPLE BEATS WHALE," she shouted, slamming her hand down on the countertop. I fell off of my chair.

There was a Weezer song playing as we approached the Zipper at about 9, and we hadn't really stopped laughing since Brittany's triumph at the water gun tent.

"Who ever thought this would be a good idea?" I asked, giggling, looking over my stuffed animals to the top of the structure, which was not quite as tall as the Ferris wheel, but far more menacing.

It had so many rotating parts; all of the cars, which looked a little like apostrophes, or the teeth of a zipper, I guess, rotated on a larger oblong shape, which was also rotating. It looked absolutely terrifying.

"A genius," Brittany answered into my ear, her breath sugary and hot.

"Ew," I said, ignoring the goosebumps on the back of my neck. "Give me some of that cotton candy."

She handed it to me.

"Are we going on that thing?" I asked through a mouthful of sugar.

"Are you game?" Brittany asked.

"Will I vomit?" I asked. I'd vomited one too many times in front of Brittany (and more times in the last two months than I'd ever wanted to).

Brittany looked up at it. "Nah," she said." Let's go."

She pulled me towards it, and I was too happy to say no.

We spent only about ten minutes in line (most sane people weren't in line for the Zipper, I assumed), and we came up with a new game where you try to guess which people on the Zipper were a couple. The cars only fit two people, and they were ridiculously small. I would never say it out loud, but I was kind of looking forward to that part of the ride.

And, I noticed, you couldn't see into the cages, especially with the sun almost gone behind the trees.

So it was a pretty entertaining game.

Two guys stumbled out of one of the cars, the one running for the nearest trash can, the other yelling "Wait!" as he sprinted after him. Everyone in line swiveled to watch him lose his lunch.

Brittany eyeballed them, and looked back at me. "Couple."

I laughed. "No way."

"Totally! Look at non-barf guy, he totally wants to rub the other guy's back."

Non-barf, as Brittany had dubbed him, was standing awkwardly next to the trash can, whispering to his buddy/boyfriend.

"No way," I said again.

"Well, I actually have proof this time."

"What?" I asked.

She nodded towards non-barf. "Remember Kurt Hummel?"

I did a double-take. "No way," I said for the third time.

"Yes way."

"Where does he go to school now? Didn't he move?"

"Saint Mary's, I think. Or maybe he graduated?"

"Holy shit," I whispered.

"I know, right? I totally didn't expect to see him again. I thought he moved to Denver or something, but he must've just moved schools." She took another bite of the cotton candy.

"So they're potentially a couple," I said. I watched as Kurt glanced around at the other crowds before whispering something to his friend. I was fascinated. I examined his clothes, and the way he stood, trying to find the cause of the merciless teasing he'd endured in middle school.

"Come on, it's our turn," Brittany said, tugging me towards the waiting apostrophe car. We tossed our stuffed animals against a wall of bins, and Brittany left her cell phone in one of the open containers designated for "Loose Belongings." The attendant shut us in the car, and the mesh of the cage distorted the minimal light, and hundreds of triangles appeared on Brittany and me.

Brittany grabbed my hand immediately, which surprised me.

"Scared?" I asked her, smirking.

"Not one bit," she said, and her smile reflected more of the triangles.

We began to spin, and there was no waiting like there had been on the Ferris wheel; we were some of the last people to board the ride. As the car tipped forward and Brittany squeezed my hand like she squeezed the trigger of the water gun, I completely forgot about Kurt Hummel and his barfing boyfriend.

Despite all of the scream-worthy situations I'd endured with Brittany, I'd never heard her shriek like she had on the Zipper. The sound rang in my ears as we rattled around in the cage, our heads slamming against the padded backing. Her hand never slipped out of mine, but our other limbs knocked together as we rotated—or zipped, I guess—and the centrifugal force pressed us together.

My stomach rolled, but it wasn't unpleasant, because the rest of me was rolling with it. I could barely see anything because of all of the speed and motion, but the feeling of Brittany's legs and shoulder on my right was constant and comforting.

Even though we were being jerked around in a metal container, I felt suspended, frozen, if you will, with her. She stopped shrieking and looked over at me, smiling in slow motion, the triangles blurs instead of shapes (though blurs are shapes, I guess).

I did the thing where my eyes pinball between her lips and her eyes, unashamed, because it was just like being on the couch in her basement (except it wasn't). She grabbed a fistful of my shirt (now my stomach was rolling) and she crashed her lips to mine. It was unexpected and awkward and fumbling and I started gasping through my nose right away, grabbing for something to hold onto as we rattled around in the Zipper. Her tongue was warm and covered in sugar from the cotton candy, and I let the ride throw us even closer together, with our legs overlapping and our noses bumping together and my entire body burning like we had showed up to the fair at midday instead of early evening.

She didn't let go of my shirt, and I squeezed my eyes shut and kissed her back, ignoring the mechanical whir the Zipper and the sudden desperation I felt to touch her everywhere. It was utterly overwhelming, but the good kind of overwhelming, which I hadn't known existed until Brittany.

When her lips detached from mine with a pop and the ride began to slow down, her pink lips were red, and the triangles looked like triangles again, and I wanted to take my pants off for a few reasons. She looked at me with the same desperation in her eyes that I felt in my hands and my stomach, and I figured it out.

It was a date.

The whole fair thing. It was a date.

She had tried to kiss me on the Ferris wheel because it was a date, and she bought my wristband because it was a date, and she bought me stuffed animals because it was a date, and butterflies surged to my ribcage while my heart vomited because it was a date.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "Oh my god."

The emotions reeled through her eyes again, and she reached for my other hand, the one she wasn't already holding. "Was that okay?" she asked me, and I couldn't even reply. My chest felt tight and my head was spinning. "Oh god, San, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"Yeah. Yes. Yes, it was okay," I blurted out, not giving myself the time I usually would to think about it. "Really, really, definitely okay, like, I'd love to do it again-okay."

Brittany looked relieved. "You would?" I nodded. "Oh, thank god."

She released my hand soon enough, just like she had on the Ferris wheel, and we stared at each other as the car descended to the ground. I looked away first. When we got out, my face felt like it was on fire. I couldn't shake the feeling that everyone had seen Brittany and me, and they were all staring, now, just like they had stared at Kurt Hummel. Even though that wasn't possible, I looked back up at the cages, which were moving again, and was comforted to see that the people inside of them were merely blobs.

I sighed and picked up half of our collection of stuffed animals. Brittany's sheepish smile and too-pink lips made my entire body flush, and I felt positively giddy—high on adrenaline and endorphins and teenage hormones. It was awesome.

The activity at the fair decreased as the night progressed, and my contacts grew dry in my eyes, probably from staring at Brittany too much. She kept walking at an angle next to me and we ran into each other every thirty steps or so. She claimed it was because the stuffed duck was making it hard for her to see where she was going, but I knew she was bullshitting me. Except I didn't call her out on it, I just laughed every time our shoulders knocked together.

I bought her a funnel cake and we shared it at a picnic table and watched the moths dive-bomb into the lights hanging from the tents. It was pretty quiet, save for the grinding of the Ferris wheel and the screams of people rolling around on the Zipper. It probably wasn't quiet at all, now that I think of it; I was probably just distracted.

We didn't run into trouble until about 9:30, an hour before the fair was scheduled to close; Brittany and I had a curfew of 10:15. We were walking along the side of the fair with the games, and it went unspoken that we had nothing left to do, but we didn't want to leave, because that would mean being without each other.

Brittany was telling me about her first memory of eating spaghetti. "Remind me to show you pictures," she said, and I told her of course.

It was then, as we circled back past the food tents, that I recognized people from school. I hadn't seen anyone from school since May.

"We know them, right?" I asked Brittany. She nodded in response.

It was all boys, a pack of them, and they were stumbling through the fairgrounds, pushing each other and whistling at girls. They were getting glares from all directions, and I glanced at Brittany, hoping she would suggest we turn around. She didn't.

"Hey Britt," one guy said. I recognized him—he was on the baseball team. They got closer.

"Who's your friend?" another guy asked, looking at me. I looked at Brittany again, hoping to convey my discomfort, but she was looking straight ahead. I didn't like that the baseball player had called her Britt.

She smiled tightly, but didn't acknowledge them otherwise.

They turned around and began to follow us, and Brittany's pace picked up a little; after a minute or two of walking I realized we were headed towards the parking lot. They called after us for a little while, but soon grew bored and staggered off. I was glad to get rid of them, but disappointed to be leaving.

"God, people are retarded when they're drunk," Brittany said, but her voice shook a little. They'd made her nervous.

"They were drunk?" I asked, clueless. Drinking and going to a fair seemed like a terrible idea to me.

"Yeah, wasted," Brittany confirmed. There was a pause, and she opened the car door. I got in on the passenger side.

"You been drunk before?" she asked, sticking her key into the ignition.

"Not really," I said, my ears pinking a little with the lie. Luckily, she was looking ahead to the bright lights of the Ferris wheel, and not at me. "How about you?"

I didn't really want to know her answer, but I wanted the conversation to move away from me.

"A couple of times," she said casually. "Just at some parties. Not something I do on a regular basis." She sounded a little defensive.

"That's cool," I said.

"It's unnecessary," she corrected. "Don't do it."

"Alright," I agreed, not enjoying the weight of the conversation.

Brittany looked at the glowing clock on the dashboard. "We still have fifteen minutes to curfew. Want to drive somewhere?"

A devilish grin spread across her face. My spine tingled in anticipation.

"Where?"

"How about you just let me drive?" she suggested. I shrugged, and she turned onto the main road.

We pulled into the parking lot of a kids' park not far from Louis' Diner. The empty playground looked like a skeleton.

"Is this the part where you kill me?" I joked.

"Yes. The fair was to fatten you up. Now I eat you."

"Yum," I said, and the lights in the car went out as we looked at the skeleton-park, leaving us to bathe in the pale light of a streetlamp opposite us, across the park. My heart thudded. The trees looked black-and-white, but the pale reds and yellows of the playground were bright.

"The colors are coming back," she said after a few minutes of silence.

"What do you mean?" I was used to her saying weird things, but I found that sometimes I got a headache if I tried to decipher them myself. She was always happy to explain.

"In April everything was gray, you know? And now it feels like stuff is going back to the way it was before. Like the colors of things. But not all things are the same as before," she said, looking at me.

"Yeah," I breathed, finding her hand on the center console. I threaded our fingers together. "You're right."

This time, I got enough air before I kissed her. I splayed my fingers, the ones not tangled with hers, against the soft skin of her cheek. It was even more awkward than the kiss in the Zipper—with the center console between us, we had no bodily contact other than our lips, and that just wouldn't do.

She got the idea to take it to the backseat, and my thoughts were foggy with nervous excitement. Our lips detached momentarily as she dragged me into the backseat, and I knelt on the leather while she laid beneath me and I kissed her hard. Her hair looked white, like the moon. Her hands found my shoulders and she pulled me to her chest. Her lips found my neck, and I had no idea that having your neck kissed could feel like this, like every nerve ending in my body was exploding. She kissed the bottom of my jaw and then moved her mouth behind my ear, blowing hot breaths against the thin cartilage of its shell.

I was frozen, again, rendered speechless and incompetent by the pattern she was tracing on my jugular with her tongue.

"Oh my god," I choked out, and her mouth curved into a smile against the flesh at the base of my neck. I panted into her hair, and every time I breathed in all I could smell was that fucking lavender, always lavender.

I eventually decided that I wanted Brittany's lips on my mouth and my neck, and because I couldn't have both, I would alternate between the two, and so I repositioned myself to join our mouths again. Her lips tasted salty. I bit down gently on her lower lip, pulling it towards me before releasing it. She liked that—I could tell by the way her hips moved.

Brittany's hips were a new thing. I'd never had to pay much attention to them until now, because now they revealed just about everything she was feeling. When I bit her lower lip, they pressed into me just slightly, and I had to force my own hips into hers to pin her to the backseat.

She would make a noise when I did that—a whine, but not really an audible whine, just one that I could feel vibrate against my lips. She struggled against my weight, desperately searching for something. I had never had so much control and I was delirious with it.

I wanted to make her feel the way she made me feel, so I moved my lips to the corner of hers, and she tried to follow, but I used the hand on her cheek to keep her head steady as I kissed a line down to her jaw, and down to her neck.

She moaned. Out load. Her hips jerked up again, and my body temperature soared. How long had she wanted this? How long had I wanted this?

Her hands fumbled around my waist, and I grew nervous that she wanted more than I had to offer, and I had a flashback to the night in her bedroom, and to my dream.

But she didn't do anything I was uncomfortable with. She threaded a few fingers through my belt loops and she pulled forward, towards her own hips, and when they met, on purpose, not because of Brittany's reaction movements, I thought I was going to die because nothing had ever felt so good.

I kissed her neck, and it tasted like salt, like sweat, and I knew why Brittany's mouth had tasted that way. I sucked under her ear and over her jugular, and, feeling bold, I traced the bottom of her jaw with my tongue.

"Careful," she warned, squeezing her eyes shut, like it pained her to utter that single word.

"Why?" I whispered into her ear, challenging her. My voice sounded hoarse. I sucked harder on her jugular, and she bit her lip and made the whining noise again. She pulled down on my belt loops.

"You," she gasped, pulling me into her again, "You know why."

"I do?" I asked her clavicle, sucking on the dip in the center.

"Santana," Brittany groaned, scolding, but her expression was one of complete bliss. "Come on."

"Seriously, what?" I asked as I removed my lips from her neck and propped myself up on my elbows. "What'd I do?"

She pulled my hips down again, and my lower body was on fire. "You know…" she trailed off, rocking up into me. I resisted the urge to push back down, which is clearly what she wanted me to do. I traced the lines of her jaw with my fingers.

She yanked me back down with a fistful of my shirt, and we were kissing again.

"Hickeys, dumbass," she whispered into my mouth, and her hips rocked up into me again. "I want," she paused, kissing me hard, "nothing more," she gasped into my mouth as our hips met again, "than for you to give me," another kiss, "a hickey."

I had never heard Brittany talk like this, and I was pretty certain that I would pass out if she did it again.

"Except," she kissed the column of my throat, "I can't go home," another kiss to the shell of my ear, "with a bunch," she bit my jaw, with her teeth, and I nearly lost it, "of hickeys."

I swallowed hard. "How about you don't go home at all?"

"Santana Lopez, are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?" she said, pulling my body even closer to her, like we couldn't possibly get close enough.

What the hell did I just suggest?

"I—" I stammered, sitting up on top of her. I ran my thumbs along the lines of her ribcage.

A white square lit up on the floor, and Brittany's ringtone blasted through the car.

"Fuck!" she said, placing one hand on my thigh as she groped around on the floor for her cell phone. She looked at the screen, and it lit up her face. Her lips were raw and her pupils shrank rapidly at the new light source. She squinted and then looked at me in horror. "It's 10:30!"

"Oh god," I said, except I was still numb from kissing Brittany, and the panic that I should have felt didn't really register. I climbed off of Brittany and back into the front seat, and Brittany followed, adjusting her shorts and fumbling to answer her phone.

"Yeah, I'm so sorry, I didn't see the time. Yeah, I know, I know." Silence. "I know mom, I didn't mean to. I'll be home in ten minutes. Yeah. Sorry. Love you too. Bye."

She threw the phone into a cup holder. "God, I'm so fucked," she whispered, turning the key in the ignition.

"You wish," I teased.

"God, you're awful," she responded. "I totally was not expecting this side of you."

I shrugged and flashed her a smug smile.

She dropped me off at my house twenty minutes past curfew.

11:57 p.m.

My mom didn't waste too much time yelling at me. I was up in my room and showered by 11:30, and Winston was sitting on top of my dresser. I was still trembling from making out with Brittany.

Making out with Brittany. What a weird thought.

I spent a weirdly long time picking out pajamas, and I wouldn't let myself think of what was going to happen when Brittany inevitably showed up. Did I want to kiss her in my bed? Would my mother be able to hear us?

There's no way we could do what we did in her back seat in my bed. It'd be far too loud. Beds are where people have sex. And I totally wasn't suggesting that in the car, but I didn't know how Brittany interpreted it. Everything was happening so fast. She showed up, like clockwork, at midnight, and I was waiting for her on the couch watching reruns of Friends with the volume turned all the way down. She looked nervous when I opened the door, but her eyes were shining.

"Hey," she said softly, stepping over the threshold.

"Hi," I replied. I closed the door behind her.

She reached for my hips, and I felt the burning feeling from early surge through my body as she tilted my chin up and kissed me. It wasn't like either of the kisses we'd shared that day—this one wasn't as desperate or as aggressive. It just said "Hi. I'm here. And I also like you a lot." I sighed into her mouth. She tasted like toothpaste.

I pulled away first, but I pecked her on the lips again before I pulled back completely. She smiled.

"Want to go up?" I asked.

I held her hand and took her upstairs, and my heart was pounding, even though the kiss at the door shouldn't have made me feel that way. We crawled into bed, and she immediately wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me close to her. She rested her head on top of mine, and her wet hair smelled sweet like coconuts, but mostly like lavender.

"I had fun today," she whispered into my hair. "Like, a lot of fun."

I smiled into the collar of her t-shirt. My t-shirt, actually. Not my Alanis Morissette one (maybe it was finally getting washed, thank god) but a white one with the UC Hospital logo insignia printed on the left breast.

"Same," I breathed. I wanted to tell her how I felt, how kissing her felt, how badly I had it for her. But I kept my mouth shut.

"I'm tired," she said, and she moved so she was eye level with me. My toes brushed against her shins under the blanket.

"Yeah?" I asked, studying her face. "Did those carnival games take a lot out of you?"

She laughed. "Shut up."

"You should go to sleep if you're tired," I told her. She yawned in response.

"Can I kiss you first?" she asked. My face flushed at her audacity, and I made the first move in response, pressing our lips together in another kiss, bringing the day's total to four (or three, if you don't count the fourth because it happened after midnight). I liked kissing her so much, I worried that I'd never be able to stop.

We fell asleep with our lips less than an inch apart and her arms around my waist.

Saturday, July 3rd, 1999

Brittany left early in the morning to help clean the house. Her grandparents were visiting from Carbondale to celebrate the Fourth of July. Brittany said they came over to celebrate "basically all of the holidays. Like, even Jewish ones. And we're not even Jewish!" She gave me a kiss on the cheek when she left, promising to call me the next day. I didn't know if I could wait a whole day to see her again.

"Oh, and by the way," she said before she left, "my mom told me to tell you that the lake trip will be July eighteenth through the thirty-first."

"And your birthday is the twenty-seventh?"

"You remembered," she laughed, and kissed me on the cheek again before she ran across the front lawn in her flip-flops and my t-shirt.

I went to the library around eleven. I brought my list of summer reading books and the post-it Ms. Pillsbury had given me, but I still found myself in the "W" section of fiction.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was still on the shelf, still dog-eared where I'd left off the last time.

Fuck it, I thought. I'm checking it out.

I grabbed a few summer reading books and handed the college student behind the counter my library card. He swiped it and handed me my pile of books, and I left the library with a smile on my face.

Sunday, July 4th, 1999

My mom and I celebrated Independence Day alone, and I helped her grill chicken and corn on the cob and we cut up a watermelon. Fireworks exploded in the sky above the country club, and we watched them from the living room and talked about college and my mom's job and the fair and the baseball players at the fair and the new library at Columbine. It was a good night.

Brittany called at seven, and I knew it was her before I picked up the phone. I jumped off of the couch and answered the call, saying a breathless "Hello?" into the receiver.

"Hey you," Brittany said. I grinned. "Happy Fourth of July."

"Happy Fourth of July to you, too."

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Hm," I paused. "That depends. Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering," she started, "if you wanted to come over tomorrow night for leftovers. We're having like chicken and corn and stuff."

"Yeah, I think I'm busy."

"Asshole."

I laughed, twirling the phone cord around my fingers. "What time?"

"How's five sound?"

"Perfect."

I could hear her smile. "Excellent. And by the way, I'm in a horror movie mood."

"You are?" I asked.

"Yes. Be prepared to scream very loudly."

Goosebumps rose on my arms and on the back of my neck. "I'll see you at five, then."

"See you later."

She hung up. We both knew later meant midnight. And kissing in my bed.

Monday, July 5th, 1999, 5:30 p.m.

"Are you ready for your driver's test?" Mr. Pierce asked Brittany as she shoveled a forkful of creamed corn (Mrs. Pierce had insisted on repurposing the corn) into her mouth.

She shrugged. "Hopefully I don't screw up the parallel parking, but I'm not too worried about that."

"And if you fail, you can always take it again," Mrs. Pierce added. I took a bite of a chicken wing.

"I'm not going to fail," Brittany insisted. "Seriously. I got this."

"You got this," I agreed, bumping her arm with my elbow. She smiled.

"So I rented Scream from Blockbuster. The guy there said it's the best horror movie of the nineties," Brittany told me as I flopped onto the couch in her basement.

I was thinking about kissing her. I thought about that a lot.

"Works for me," I said. She inserted the tape into the VCR, and I watched her bend over at the hips to do so. I was thinking about her hips now, too.

She came and sat next to me, and there was none of the "let's start six inches apart and slowly scoot closer to each other" bullshit, she just sat right there and let our thighs touch again like they had on the Zipper.

Progress, is what I thought. Towards what, I have no idea, but it was progress.

If I'm going to be quite honest, I have no idea what happened in Scream past the forty-five minute mark. The guy showed up—white mask, black robes, whatever—asked some trivia questions, stabbed some people, and I screamed, and hid my head in Brittany's neck.

And then I thought, Hey, Brittany's neck. Look at that.

So I kissed it. And her arm, which had found its way around me at some point, tensed, and her fingers dug into my sides. I kissed her harder, and she tilted her head to the side to give me easier access.

I was more careful this time.

It was easy to push her back against the couch cushions and straddle her lap; she was pretty much incapacitated. I knew the feeling, but it was totally different to be the one causing the incapacitation.

Ten minutes went by. Twenty. The sun started to set outside, and more people got murdered, and Brittany and I were lying down now, pressing our bodies together and shamelessly kissing each other hard enough to bruise. Unfortunately, I wasn't careful enough to notice Emily run down the stairs into the basement. She was quiet, I think. Or maybe I was just distracted. Again.

She was probably fifteen feet from the couch when she said "Brittany!" and Brittany threw me—actually threw me—onto the floor. Like a WWF wrestler. I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and Emily ran around the couch and stopped to stare at me.

"What are you doing, Santana?" she asked.

I faked a yawn. "I was taking a nap, until you came down here, monkey." I slid on my stomach over to her and grabbed her legs with my arms, dragging her down to the floor with me. She shrieked and I made eye contact with Brittany over her shoulder.

Brittany's mouth was curved into a smile, but her eyes were scared shitless. We'd fucked up.

Tuesday, July 6th, 1999, 1:00 p.m.

I spent the morning reading and shuffling through brochures for private schools my mom had picked up. Brittany had her driver's test at noon, and she was extremely nervous when she left my house at eight. I'd kissed her cheek, saying, "You'll be fine, you'll be fine" over and over again until she calmed down.

We ignored the Emily Issue—we came to a silent agreement that she hadn't seen us, and that we couldn't do stupid shit like that in Brittany's basement. I had a bruise on my shoulder from where it hit the coffee table, and Brittany kissed it for me before we fell asleep the night before.

She called at one, and I was waiting by the phone.

"Hey," I said when I picked up.

"I passed!" she shouted into the phone. I winced and covered my ear.

"Yay! We have to celebrate."

"I'll pick you up in ten?"

"See you then."

"Yo," Brittany greeted when I got in the car. She had a huge smile on her face, and her eyes were smiling too, so I knew it was genuine. All of the panic from the night before had subsided.

"Congrats," I told her.

Brittany thanked me and pulled out of my street, turning left. "Where are we going?"

"You ask too many questions," she laughed. "Guess."

"Hell."

"Probably. But not right now."

"Your house."

"No."

I drummed my fingers on the dashboard. "The movies."

"Good idea, but it's like 80 degrees and sunny, so no."

"Canada."

"I wish."

I sighed. "God, would you just tell me?"

"I thought we could go have a picnic," she said, and then I knew where we were going. "At that spot in the mountains. It's a weekday, so it shouldn't be crowded."

"Sounds perfect."

Sounds like a date.

"Peanut butter and jelly, made by yours truly," Brittany said, pulling a sandwich out of a picnic basket—an actual picnic basket—and setting it on the Columbine cheerleading blanket under us. She then pulled out two bottles of coke and handed one to me.

"Looks delicious."

"So I wanted to talk to you about something," Brittany said, focusing on unwrapping her sandwich. My heart fluttered. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear.

"What's up?" I asked her. I watched a bird peck at the ground over Brittany's shoulder. Behind the bird, the mountains loomed.

She paused and discarded the plastic wrap in the basket. "You know how you went to church the other day, and left me at your house?"

I froze and swallowed the piece of sandwich I'd been chewing. It felt exceptionally dry as it went down my throat. "Yeah?"

"Well, I found a notebook, on your floor."

Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. My heart sank, and my skin flushed with embarrassment and fear. I thought I was going to vomit. The bird behind Brittany flew away.

"And it was open to a page, with a t-chart on it." She made a t-shape with her fingers and looked up at me. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

I nodded, humiliated. I wished I could be the bird.

"So, I decided I wanted to take you on a date," Brittany said.

A date. That was unexpected.

"A date?" I asked uncertainly. "After finding that, you wanted to take me on a date?"

Brittany looked sheepish. "Yeah. I thought it was cute."

I was pretty sure my face was the color of a tomato.

"And I also think there's some stuff on there we should talk about. But maybe not now."

"I think that's a good idea," I said.

I took another bite of my sandwich. It wasn't half bad. Maybe it was a good thing that she found the notebook, because now she knew all of the things I wanted to say, but couldn't.

"You've been keeping this a secret for a week?" I asked.

She nodded.

"So, at the fair?..." I trailed off.

"Yeah," Brittany blushed.

I should be the embarrassed one here, not her.

"I'm glad you kissed me," I said. "At the fair." It was weird to say it out loud, but she looked happy to hear it. "Was that a date?"

"It was kind of like a practice date."

"Works for me."

We ate our sandwiches. Questions bounced around in my brain, and my heart bounced around in my chest.

"Is this a date?"

Brittany gave me a half-smile. "If you want it to be."

I picked up the bottle of coke on the blanket and bumped it against hers. "To our first date, then."

6:00 p.m.

I was on cloud nine when I got home. I took a shower and came back downstairs for dinner. My mom was examining my reading list on the fridge and stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce. She had a book in her hand.

She set it down to take two plates out of the cabinet above the sink. She picked up the book again. From the living room, I was too far away to see the title.

"What are you doing?" I asked her. My mother didn't typically read and cook at the same time.

"Just looking at this book." I knew what it was.

"It's summer reading." I said quickly.

"It's not on the list on the fridge"

I was caught. I froze.

"There are a lot of sins in this book, Santana."

I wanted to cry. How could this be happening now? After my day with Brittany, why now? "Why were you in my room?" I asked her.

She answered my question with a question. "Have you read it?"

"No," I lied.

"Is this Brittany's book?"

I scowled, but I felt bile rising in my throat. She was suspicious. First Emily, now my mother. "No."

"I want you to return it."

"Fine." I took the book out of her hands.

I skipped dinner to drive back to the library.

"Back already?" the guy behind the counter asked. I was surprised to see him working again.

I nodded and slid the book into the slot marked "RETURNS." He took it out of the bin right away and began to process the return in the computer system.

"And by the way," he said, looking at his screen. "You're Santana Lopez, right?"

I nodded again. "Where the Wild Things Are is overdue, just so you know. So if you could get that back soon that'd be great."

"Of course," I sighed. "Have a good night."