Archive of Our Own

“Big ‘G’ Little 'O'!”

“GO, GO, GO!” Brittnay finishes, out of breath. She just did three cartwheels in a row for the first time, and her hands burn from where the dead wheat of the field dug into her palms, and the Kansas sun is as ruthless as Mackenzie’s cheer try-out routine. She has never felt so alive.

“That was great, Britt,” Mackenzie says. She’s got this look on her face that Brittnay can’t really put a name to, but it’s luminous. The wind has teeth today but Brittnay feels warm.

“Again?” Brittnay asks. She’s got this itch in her feet like they’ll fall off if she doesn’t keep moving. A reckless restlessness of the body that only comes with being 12 years old and bursting with excitement.

Mackenzie smiles, all teeth in a way that she will stop doing by the time 8th Grade comes and Chelsea Davidson tells her it makes her look like a horse. Brittnay doesn’t think Mackenzie’s smile makes her look like a horse. “One more time,” Mackenzie says.

“One more time,” Brittnay murmurs to herself that night in bed. She closes her eyes and all she can see is Mackenzie in the field behind her house, hands on her hips, dark ponytail flying in the wind, her mouth drawn in the widest smile anyone has ever had.

SIX YEARS LATER

“You look super fucking chipper this morning,” Mackenzie says.

Brittnay groans and leans her head against the locker next to Mackenzie’s. “I’m fucking dying Mackenzie, you could have some sympathy,” even her own voice is grating on her ears.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Mackenzie says, a small smile on her face as she slams her locker shut. Mackenzie loved to walk the thin line between bantering friend and total bitch. Brittnay doesn’t really appreciate this fact about her best friend on this particular morning. “It’s your fault for getting blackout drunk on a school night Britt,” Mackenzie says.

“Leave it to Mackenzie Zales to lecture me about fucking drinking responsibly. Get a grip,” she says as staggers away from the locker and follows Mackenzie down the hallway.

“I didn’t even get tipsy last night,” Mackenzie says, all high and mighty like she was the Virgin fucking Mary for saying no to mystery liquor in a red solo cup. Brittnay rolls her eyes, which makes her headache exponentially worse, so she says nothing else. She thinks vaguely that they’ve passed Mackenzie’s first period class, so they’re probably skipping.

She wonders if they’ll be in the bathroom or if they’re going to smoke outside. She kind of hopes it’s the latter, the fresh air might do her hangover some good. She doesn’t see Trisha anywhere though, and she’s pretty much their supplier. Mackenzie never carries her shit on her.

They’re turning into the bathroom. Great, another class period listening to Deandra shit and Mackenzie talk shit about Shay Van Buren or whatever shit was going on with the cheer squad. Brittnay vaguely recalls that another girl dropped from the team, but it’s hard to focus on that when the tiles she’s staring at are moving.

“Get a grip,” Mackenzie mocks her. Brittnay considers strangling her. She thinks she could do some real damage to her desktop computer, or the new iphone her mom just bought her. Brittnay’s mom never bought her the new iphone. Fucking hell, get a grip Matthews.

“Trying my goddamn fucking best over here,” she grits out. She manages to hoist herself onto a sink, and sitting down is so much better than standing. Everyone should sit always, why does everyone want to stand all the time? That shit sucks ass.

Mackenzie has already locked the door. They don’t have anyone to watch the door anymore, but no one tattles on Mackenzie Zales, the head cheerleader who blew up Brittnay fucking Matthews’ car and lived to tell the tale.

Mackenzie walks over to the small window panel to the left of the sinks and slides it open. It opens to the back of the school and no one is there to bust them this morning. Mackenzie is offering Brittnay a cigarette, which she gladly accepts. She doesn’t know why Mackenzie continues to allow her to bum. She has since they were 14, stealing Newports from her mom and coughing until they laughed hysterically, sitting on a bench in the park by Brittnay’s house in the middle of the night. Back then they did it because Jenna Darabond told them it made you lose your appetite, and Jenna Darabond was the skinniest girl on the middle school cheer team. Total horseshit, by the way. Brittnay leans her head against the mirror and closes her eyes.

“So Jenna fucking Delia quit the squad,” Mackenzie starts, and Brittnay resists the urge to groan.

“I thought Jenna Delia was in prison,” she says, opening her eyes to squint at Mackenzie.

“That’s Jenna Dapananian Brittnay. Jenna Delia just moved here from Kentucky,” she huffs impatiently.

“Well good. We don’t need cheerleaders from a shithole like Kentucky anyway,” Brittnay says, taking a drag and blowing it out the window pointedly. She ashes her cigarette in the sink next to her.

“Brittnay! Jenna Delia joined the squad 2 weeks ago! Is it not logical of me to be concerned that the only member besides you, me, and Trisha quit within 2 fucking weeks?” Her voice is starting to take on that recognizable Mackenzie Zales passion. Brittnay doesn’t really want to get into it with Mackenzie this morning, but she also doesn’t want to sit here and listen to her complain about the fucking cheer squad for an hour. She wants to enjoy her goddamn peace and quiet in this goddamn bathroom, is that too much to fucking ask?

Brittnay rolls her eyes. “Call up Trisha 2 and get her ass back over to the States,” she says. Mackenzie is stupid for not thinking of that.

Mackenzie snorts in laughter.

“What’s so goddamn funny about that?” Brittnay asks, genuinely angry.

“Newsflash dumbass. Trisha 2 is back in the states already. You talked to her last night, you goddamn alcoholic! She told you she was dating Matthew and Trisha now and you said that was just sooo cool and fashionable.” Mackenzie is chortling now.

Brittnay is at a loss for words.

“Yeah, guess the modeling career didn’t really take off for her. Cameron Van Buren’s back too, that bitch. Maybe rich old married men are more faithful in France,” Mackenzie jokes. Brittnay’s brain is still trying to catch up.

“Trisha 2 is dating Matthew and Trisha?”

Mackenzie furrows her brow. “Yeah that’s what I fucking said isn’t it? They fucking told you about it last night too.”

Brittnay rubs her forehead with her ring and pinky fingers, cigarette still sitting between the other two. “I don’t remember that,” she says quietly.

Mackenzie rolls her eyes. Again. “Well no shit bitch we’ve established that. You don’t remember a lot of things from last night, apparently.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re not going to be weird about this right? It’s 2022 Brittnay,” she flicks her cigarette out of the window. Brittnay’s is going to start burning her fingers soon. “I mean what if I was gay? Would you stop being my friend or something?” Mackenzie sounds genuinely offended by this fake prospect.

“I’m not being fucking weird,” she defends herself. She slips off the sink to throw her cig out the window as well. “If anything you’re being fucking weird. I support Trisha, whatever she chooses to do. That bitch should be my best friend, but instead I’m stuck with your whining, balding, repressed ass. Like Jesus H. Christ Zales, talk about this with your therapist,” Mackenzie is laughing, so Brittnay knows she’s found the sweet spot of nastiness. She feels better now.

Mackenzie is fixing her makeup in the mirror now. Brittnay should be doing the same, probably, but she’s still a bit unsteady and it’s much more pleasant to lean against the wall and watch Mackenzie apply lip-gloss. There’s really no hope for that girl’s hair until she takes it out of that god awful low ponytail. It looks good down, and Brittnay knows, because she’s seen it at sleepovers when Mackenzie is just out of the shower or she’s taken it down in the morning to brush it out. Brittnay’s given up on trying to convince Mackenzie to leave it down.

“What are you staring at homo,” Mackenzie asks her through the mirror.

“Now who’s homophobic? Can you be homophobic if you’re gay? Maybe I’ll ask your girlfriend Shay.”

Mackenzie makes a face. “Don’t even joke about that for real.” She puts her makeup in her bag and zips it up. She slings it over her shoulder and turns around to look at Brittnay. “Come on bitch, we’re meeting Trisha at my house.” She holds out her hand, wriggling her fingers as well as her eyebrows.

Brittnay groans theatrically, but she takes Mackenzie’s hand anyway. She always takes her hand.

***
Brittnay wonders if they’ll get high later. It would be the only good payout to this day, besides the shit she bought. They didn’t end up staying at Trisha’s house for long. They met Trisha 2 at the mall and Brittnay spent hundreds of her mothers dollars and felt better. Now, they’re sitting in the food court and she’s possibly never been more bored with a conversation in her life, so she’s mostly checked out. She’s halfway through American Psycho and she wonders if she can discreetly pull up the ebook on her phone. She thinks they’re talking about music. Brittnay hates all of their music tastes. The table they’re sitting at has kind of a weird carved pattern. She wonders how whoever made this table did that, and whether they knew it was for a shitty food court in a shitty mall in a shitty town in fucking Kansas.

She’s brought out of her dissociative musings about tables by an ugly and loud laugh that’s quickly smothered. Mackenzie’s real laugh. Brittnay is sure neither of the Trisha’s has ever been that funny, but evidently they’ve become a comedy duo since Brittnay last saw them both together, since they’ve been making Mackenzie laugh all day. Mackenzie is sitting with her hands clasped over mouth. She’s barely touched her sandwich, which makes Brittnay frown. She’ll have to convince Mackenzie to go through a drive-through after this and trick her into eating an order of fries.

“What the hell is so funny,” Brittnay grouses.

The Trisha’s look at each other and break out into giggles. Brittnay’s scowl deepens. She hates when people laugh without letting her in on the joke. It reminds her of being a kid, with no friends and too much anger. Other kids used to snicker behind their hands when she passed by, like they knew something about her that she didn’t. Hearing laughter still makes her whole body tense up in paranoia.

Mackenzie looks at her with sympathy and drops her hands from her mouth, which just makes Brittnay want to punch something.

“We were talking about Heartstopper, it's a Netflix show,” Mackenzie explains. Brittnay doesn’t watch much TV, and she doesn’t mind not understanding pop culture references, so she takes a sip of her coke and lets this one go. The Trisha’s start talking again, presumably about this Heartstopper show (the title sounds morbid, so Brittnay is reluctantly intrigued), but Brittnay is distracted because Mackenzie is taking down her hair. Holy shit Mackenzie is taking down her hair.

Brittnay is entranced.

Dark hair spills over pale shoulders and falls to frame Mackenzie’s face. Her makeup is nearly flawless after hours of shopping but she pauses to look at it with her pink hairbrush and mirror compact. She touches up her lipstick and Brittnay thinks maybe she’s feeling the hangover again.

“Ugh, why do my brows never stay the right shape?” Mackenzie groans. Trisha 2 hums like she understands Mackenzie’s pain, but she’s too busy devouring a jumbo slice of pizza now to be a good conversation partner.

“You should get brow gel,” Trisha says, and the two launch into a conversation about products and application and prices. Mackenzie starts to put her hair back up and she thinks surely everyone in this mall is seeing this shit? Is anyone else seeing this shit? Mackenzie glances at her with furrowed brows and then takes out her phone to google more makeup products. Brittnay thinks they’re talking about cream blush now, but there's a roaring in her ears and she feels a bit nauseous.

Brittnay excuses herself to the bathroom as inconspicuously as she can, but both Trisha’s give her a strange look at her politeness. Brittnay can feel Mackenzie’s stare all the way to the women’s room and it makes her hands shake.

If there's one thing Brittnay is good at, it’s repression. She will grind the pieces of herself down until there is nothing left but shame and despair and then she will spit on the grave of her feelings. She tries to do this now, sitting on the toilet. But then she starts thinking.

She considers why she does this, possibly for the first time ever. She remembers in middle school thinking that other people could hear her thoughts. That they knew what she thought about when she went home at night, everything she pushed down at school and cheer practice, saving it all for ripping up her homework and yelling at her mom and punching trees out back until her knuckles were red and raw and almost bleeding. She wanted everyone to see her hurt, wanted to carve her name and her pain into the eyes of classmates and teachers and her mom.

She remembers her mom at the dinner table talking about her cousin Jake and what a shame it was and how his future was wasted and poor Aunt Shelby and and and.

She’s never liked boys. When she was younger she never even thought about them, except when they did something particularly disgusting with their food at lunch or hurt one of her friends. Then she beat them up.

She remembers the first sleepover she went to that wasn’t just her and Mackenzie. In 6th grade she was invited to the middle school cheer captain’s house, along with the rest of the team. She remembers all the girls gathered around on mattresses in the living room floor, closer to morning than night time, hushed whispers and loud giggles. Truth or dare, and Brittnay always picks dare.

“Tell us who you have a crush on,” Chelsea Davidson dares, looking quite pleased with herself for having expertly circumvented Brittnay’s foolproof method to dodge questions.

Brittnay shrugs, “no one,” she says. Which is the truth. There’s a chorus of boos and laughs. Chelsea rolls her eyes. Brittnay feels her face go hot. There’s a telltale restlessness in her body; she wants to get up and hit something. Anger is Brittnay’s oldest friend.

“Ugh, just tell us Brittnay, don’t be lame,” Chelsea says. And if the second eye roll she gives Brittnay makes her see red, well. Nobody calls Brittnay Matthews a liar and gets away with it.

But then Mackenzie is nudging her and she looks over at her best friend. Mackenzie shrugs, the two french braids Amanda Puller braided in her hair moving up and then back down. “Just tell them Britt,” she says. There’s a look in her eyes, and she’s twisting her hands weirdly, and Brittnay gets the game now.

Brittnay mumbles out Blaine McClaine’s name and all the girls ‘oooh’ and the game moves on. Brittnay feels listless, a bit burned out, but then Mackenzie takes her hand and squeezes and smiles at her. She burns bright, the flame flickering somewhere in her stomach, in her chest.

So that was how Brittnay learned to lie.

She wads up toilet paper and uselessly dabs at her eyes. It's doing nothing to stop the mascara dripping down her face. She tried for so long, so many years, to block those memories out. What a fucking day it’s been. This is so totally not what she thought she’d be doing on a random Tuesday in April of her senior year of high school. And all because Mackenzie Zales took her hair down in a food court.

She kind of needs to leave the bathroom soon if she doesn’t want her friends to come looking for her. She grabs more toilet paper and pretends she is the kind of girl who doesn’t cry about her sexuality in food court bathrooms. She leaves the stall and she wets the toilet paper in the sink and wipes off her face until she looks mildly presentable, and she thinks no one will ask questions.

She’s getting so tired of lying.

***
She's avoiding Mackenzie. Has been since she panicked at the mall and came back to the table babbling about her mom needing her at home and walked there with all her shopping bags. It’s going to bite her in the ass at some point, but Brittnay’s always been impulsive. Prefers assuring her short-term well-being over carefully planning her long-term goals.

She stays home the rest of the week and texts her friends increasingly evasive platitudes and excuses. She just doesn’t want to see anyone. She needs time to think. Her mom doesn’t even ask her why she’s not going to school. Probably thinks she’s finally dropped out. She tries consulting the internet, but there’s only so many times she can visit the same Buzzfeed page before she has to accept that maybe straight people don’t take the same “Am I Gay?” quizzes over and over again.

The dam breaks on Thursday. Brittnay is laying in bed watching American Psycho, feeling very sorry for herself, when she hears the doorbell. Her mom is at work, so she groans and drags herself out of bed and down the stairs. She hopes it isn’t anyone she knows.

Of course, it’s someone she knows. And not just anyone, but Trisha fucking Cappelletti.

“Oh, great,” Brittnay sighs. “Look, I don't need a lecture or a pep talk or whatever you’re here to deliver. I’m sick, and also what I do is none of your business.”

Trisha rolls her eyes. “If you and Mackenzie are enemies again it is my business!”

Brittnay blinks. “Me and Mackenzie are fine you nutcase. Go home,” she goes to close the door but Trisha blocks her with her hand. Brittnay glares.

“I could cut off that hand,” Brittnay says.

“You won’t,” Trisha says. Which yeah, she won’t. But Trisha shouldn’t know that.

Trisha continues on, “well I’m glad you and Mackenzie are fine, but there’s still something bothering you. And I’m your friend Brittnay. I want to help you.”

And Trisha was just so goddamn sincere Brittnay hated it. She could punch her in the face she’s so mad at how fucking nice she is. Fuck when did she start crying?

Trisha sighs and invites herself into the Matthews residence, shutting the door behind her. She takes Brittnay’s hand and leads her over to the couch.

“Tell Trisha your troubles,” Trisha says in that level, calm voice that always steadied Brittnay.

“I think I’m gay,” she says, which isn’t what she meant to say at all. She’s still softly crying too, and the whole thing is just so embarrassing that if it was anyone but Trisha, Brittnay would currently be sprinting to the nearest balcony to throw herself off of.

Brittnay expects shock, or questions, at the very least.

“Mm. Yeah. I think you are too,” Trisha says.

“Wait, what the fuck do you mean by that?” She’s not even angry, mostly just embarrassed. And scared. Because if Trisha knows, then who else knows? Oh my god, what if the whole fucking school thinks I’m a goddamn lesbian and they all talk about it and laugh and–

“Uh, hellooo Brittnay? I’m bisexual. I have gaydar,” Trisha is making a ‘duh’ face.

“Oh,” Brittnay says, and her panic deflates. There’s something like acceptance, then. Like she just needed someone else to confirm what she already knew about herself.

But then the paniccomes back in full force and she starts to tear up again and asks, “Trisha, what do I do?”

“Be gay, do crime? I don’t know Brittnay, whatever you want. I know it seems really big and scary right now, but you know the people that matter don’t mind. Dr. Seuss said that I think,” Trisha scratches her nose, deep in thought about Dr. Seuss.

Brittnay surprises herself when she flings her arms around Trisha and hugs her tight. “Thank you,” she murmurs. Trisha hugs her back just as tight. Brittnay thinks for the first time in a long time that she’s going to be okay.

The rest of the day passes in a hazy slow motion for Brittnay. It feels so wrong, so unfair, that the world is still regular when Brittnay has just accepted what’s been haunting her for most of her stilted adolescence. She spends it scrolling Twitter and looking up “lesbian memes” because she needs some kind of happiness goddammit.

She goes to bed early but she does not sleep. Brittnay lays there for hours until she has to pee. She gets up with a muttered “shit, shit, shit” and turns on the light in her ensuite. She looks at the time on her phone and it's 4 in the morning. She feels so alive it might kill her. It is then that she remembers the joint Trisha rolled for her earlier that day before she left her house. She exits her bathroom and digs around in her desk drawer until she finds it. And then she gets a really stupid idea.

Brittnay goes back into the bathroom to pee. Before she leaves, she looks at herself in the mirror for a moment. Brittnay Matthews. Lesbian cheerleader. She nods and leaves the bathroom, flicking off the light.

***
Mackenzie isn’t going to stand for Brittnay’s shit in this, and as she is staring at the sky Brittnay wonders if she’s going to have to come out to Mackenzie, maybe in the next week. She doesn’t have to say anything about how she feels about Mackenzie, she thinks. Telling her she’s had this revelation should be enough to explain her weird behavior.

It's cold on the football field and Brittnay is sitting on her jacket to avoid grass stains on her shorts. She hopes no one patrols the Overland Park High football field at 2 in the morning, not just because she’s smoking a joint. She has on no makeup, plaid pajama shorts, one of Blaine’s t-shirts that she never gave back, and flip-flops. Her hair is a mess, air-dried from her shower earlier and un-brushed.

But she looks at the stars and she feels a little better. It's comforting to know how small she is. She feels too big for this world sometimes, like everything she is is too much for everyone else.

She just wants some goddamn peace, but she can’t let herself have it, and she’s not sure why she sabotages herself. She puts out her joint in the grass. She should walk back home but she doesn’t want to yet. She closes her eyes and lays down.

“Brittnay Matthews? What the fuck?”

Brittnay’s eyes snap open. She would recognize that frog croaking hag of a voice anywhere.

“Hold it right there Shay Van Buren. Don’t move your Robitussin drinking ass any closer.”

“That was one time,” Shay says as she folds her arms across her chest. She’s at least wearing leggings and a halter top.

“What are you doing here Shay? You here to meet up with Rachel Tice and have a romantic tryst? Or is Deandra here? I always wondered about her.”

Shay looks completely mystified. She opens her mouth and closes it. Brittnay groans and covers her face with her hands, too embarrassed by whatever the hell that was to look at Shay. Jesus christ can she not be fucking normal? She’s got gay on the brain.

“Oookay. Well, I can smell the angst from here and honey, it smells like fish. What the hell is going on Matthews?”

Brittnay’s muffled laugh sounds unhinged to her own ears. “What’s going on? You’re asking me what’s going on? My life is falling apart around me, Shay! I’m a fucking episode of Will and Grace. I started watching The L Word. I am this close to fucking off to England and finding a nice girl with a sexy accent to live out a picturesque cottage-core lesbian life. And you’re asking me what’s going on?” Her voice gets higher-pitched the longer she goes on and she’s out of breath by the time she gets to the end of her rant. And maybe she shouldn’t have said all of that, but it’s Shay Van Buren and Brittnay may have been repressed but that doesn’t mean her gaydar doesn’t work.

Shay sits down next to her. Brittnay doesn’t look up.

“I'm pretty shit at comforting people but it seems like maybe I can be of some help in this regard, unfortunately. So you know, tell me your damage Brittnay. You know I'm in no position to go around gossiping about this,” Shay says.

Brittnay thinks about that for a minute, considers her options, hedges her bets.

“I'm in love with Mackenzie,” she says. She hopes the ground swallows her. She hopes the football stands gain sentience and smash her beneath their cold metal feet. Truly, nothing could be as awful as admitting to Shay Van Buren that she’s in love with her best friend, head cheerleader, head bitch of Overland Park, Mackenzie Zales.

Shay puffs air through her mouth. “That's rough,” she says in the fakest concern voice Brittnay has ever heard and she starts laughing out loud, she can’t stop, she can’t believe she’s talking about this and she doubly can’t believe who with. Shay is laughing too.

“Okay bitch, I told you I was shit at this, no need to laugh,” Shay is still laughing with her though.

Brittnay sobers up and finally looks up at Shay, who’s grinning at her sheepishly.

“You know, I do feel better,” Brittnay says reluctantly.

Shay claps, “great, I'm out of here,” and stands up.

“Wait! What the hell are you doing here Shay? You never answered me,” Brittnay asks.

Shay looks like she just got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She looks around, clearly debating on whether she should say it.

Eventually she leans in to Brittnay and whispers, “I'm setting up a promposal.” Shay puts her finger to her lips and smiles while backing away. Brittnay scoffs and Shay laughs, turning around and walking off the football field toward the school.

Brittnay wasn’t lying. She does feel better. She sighs and gets up, picking up her jacket. She walks home.

***
A few hours later and Brittnay is walking into school, her hair and makeup perfect, her cheer uniform unwrinkled. The hall parts for her like the Red Sea.

Mackenzie isn’t waiting for her by her locker today, so she doesn’t wait for her and starts walking to her first period that she hasn’t been to in weeks. She's halted by a large group of students huddled in the middle of the hallway. She huffs and pushes and pulls kids out of the way.

In the middle of the group stands Shay Van Buren and Deandra.

“Oh my fuck,” Brittnay says, but no one seems to hear her. Shay is holding an open pizza box with the word “PROM?” written on the cardboard inside. She couldn’t even come up with a funny pizza-related pun, Brittnay thinks inanely. There’s a banner with the same question and fucking streamers hanging from the ceiling.

“Deandra um… Deandra,” Shay starts. Brittnay has never felt so much second hand embarrassment in her life. She thinks she might throw up in the hallway, and honestly, she just might just to get the attention off of Shay, that’s how bad she feels.

Brittnay can’t see Deandra, but her arms are crossed and she’s kind of leaning against a set of lockers, nonchalant. She's wearing her football uniform. Brittnay really doesn’t know what Shay sees in her, unless she’s really into watching Deandra nearly kill men twice her size at every home game and then immediately down three hotdogs and a liter of pepsi.

Shay sighs dramatically. “Deandra, will you go to prom with me?” she spits out.

You could hear a pin drop in the hallway. Everyone was waiting with bated breath for the new girl’s answer to one of the most popular girls in school.

Deandra keeps them in suspense for a few seconds. She turns her head to look at everyone gathered around, a cool smirk on her face. Then she faces Shay again.

“Sure,” she says, shrugging.

Not exactly a declaration of love, but Shay breaks out into a big grin anyway. Deandra walks toward her, grabs the pizza box, and promptly drops it on the ground. She grabs Shay’s face and oh. Wow. Brittnay needs to reassess the situation, but she’s panicking a little bit about the gay kiss currently happening in the hallway of Overland Park High School.

There is some whooping and negging, but also… applause? Cheering? It’s not quite the reaction Brittnay was bracing herself for.

Shay and Deandra break the kiss and Brittnay isn’t sure that she’s ever been as happy as Shay looks right now. She feels vaguely ill again, and she turns around and pushes through the crowd, and she keeps walking until she’s pushed open the doors at the end of the hallway and she’s outside in the parking lot again.

She's walking to her car when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She whips around, fist at the ready, but it’s just Mackenzie.

“Woah,” Mackenzie puts her hands up.

Brittnay lowers her fist, “sorry,” she says, adjusting her purse on her shoulder.

Mackenzie pauses, and then says, “that was pretty exciting, in there,” and Brittnay doesn’t know what the hell to do with that. So she doesn’t say anything.

Mackenzie’s eyes are searching her face for something. Brittnay feels bare, like Mackenzie has stripped the skin from her bones and is looking right into her skull, her ribcage.

“What are you doing out here?” Mackenzie asks. She shifts onto one foot and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She’ll probably want to redo the pony soon, she hates having flyaway hairs.

Oh nothing Mackenzie, just going to drive my car off a bridge because I will never be as happy as Shay Van Buren is now. I will never get to kiss my girlfriend in the halls of Overland Park High School, will never take her to prom. Because I spend hours thinking about your hair and your eyes and your smile. Because Shay Van Fucking Buren figured it out and I can’t. Nothing much, though, Brittnay thinks.

She doesn’t say any of that. “Going to smoke in my car,” she says instead, because it’s a pretty lame but also plausible excuse, and Brittnay thinks she might have a headache already. Maybe from the lack of sleep.

“Okay,” Mackenzie says, and starts walking to Brittnay’s parking spot. Brittnay really wishes Mackenzie would go back inside so she can cry in her car in peace, but she can’t exactly tell her that, so she follows behind her.

They get in the car in silence, and once both the doors are closed, Brittnay realizes she has no cigarettes. She stares hard at the steering wheel until Mackenzie takes pity and takes her pack out, handing one to Brittnay along with her lighter. Brittnay lights up and passes the lighter back to Mackenzie. She’s not looking at her. She thinks if she does, she might burst into tears, and she really doesn’t know how she’d explain that.

“Always bumming off me even still, Matthews,” Mackenzie jokes, rolling down her window to blow the smoke out.

“Yeah well, some of us still can’t buy them legally, and John at the corner store won’t take my bribes anymore,” Brittnay grouses. She’s still got a month before she’s 18. Mackenzie giggles, and Brittnay feels unnecessarily warm.

She looks over at Mackenzie and Mackenzie is looking at her so she looks away, out her window.

Matching uniforms, matching hearts, Brittnay thinks. She remembers that Mackenzie said that to her when they both made the middle school cheer squad. It made her feel like she was floating the whole day. She isn’t sure why this memory has come back to her just now.

“Are you okay?” Mackenzie finally cuts through the silence.

No, Brittnay isn’t okay. She feels like fire. She feels like hitting her teachers and fighting her classmates and being yelled at by principals. She feels like she did when her mom would come to pick her up after getting expelled from another elementary school, and she would smile and shake her head slowly, and she would drive them back to their big house with the broken windows and the toys she had set on fire that morning still sitting on the floor of her room charred. She feels charred. She feels big and burning and scared. She feels so scared all the damn time.

Brittnay closes her eyes so tight she thinks her face might be sore the next day. “I'm fine,” she says, but she sounds kind of weird so she knows Mackenzie doesn’t believe her.

“Is it the Shay and Deandra thing?“

Brittnay is stunned into silence. All the blood has rushed to her head. She’s not surprised Mackenzie has guessed what’s bothering her, but she is embarrassed.

Mackenzie blows more smoke out of the window and then says, “do you want to go to prom with me?”

Brittnay whips around to look at her best friend. Mackenzie is looking back at her with the most earnest expression Brittnay has ever seen on her face.

“What?” Brittnay says, because she has no idea what else to say. She’s never been this confused in her life.

Mackenzie frowns, “well if you don’t want to just say no.” She sounds extremely sullen and Brittnay is fucking baffled.

Brittnay opens and closes her mouth a few times and then says, “WHAT?” Before Mackenzie can respond, she elaborates, “just like, explain your thought process to me, please, if you would.”

Mackenzie breathes out harshly through her nose. “I just figured um. We would have a good time? I don’t want to go with anyone else.” She throws her cigarette out of the window.

“Oh,” Brittnay says, because Mackenzie asked her to prom because she couldn’t find a guy she wanted to go with, and she thinks her heart is in a million pieces right now. Mackenzie has stomped all over her and she doesn’t think she will ever heal. How dramatic and heart-wrenching. Brittnay might just write poetry about this moment.

She’s just getting ready for put herself together and say something fake about how they would have a better time going to prom as best friends over some stupid guys when Mackenzie breathes out again, “and I’m kind of in love with you.”

Brittnay doesn’t think before she’s throwing her cigarette out of the window and surging toward Mackenzie. Their lips connect harshly and Mackenzie tastes like tobacco. It’s so perfect she might cry.

Brittnay breaks away to say, “I love you too you fucking idiot,” and then she’s right back to it. Mackenzie’s laughter is bordering on maniacal, which is making it kind of hard for Brittnay to make out with her. She breaks away again and pouts.

Mackenzie gives her one more chaste kiss and asks “is that a yes?” And it takes a few seconds for Brittnay’s brain to catch up. She rolls her eyes and kisses Mackenzie again.

It’s enough.