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“OH, MY GOD. That was a good one.” Tears streamed down Alex’s face, and she wiped them away with her shirtsleeve. “Where do you come up with this shit?”
“I don’t know. It just kinda comes out.” Leo picked up a pebble from the concrete steps they sat on and chucked it at the chain-link fence.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Alex threw a pebble to match. “That dinosaur thing, though.” They burst out laughing, and Leo found tears in her own eyes.
She’d gotten used to the ridiculous things that came out of her mouth when she told these kinds of stories. The game had changed around the beginning of the school year. It was a relief that Alex knew what she could do. She was the one who prompted Leo to do it more, to practice, to stretch out her words and find out what could happen. Then Leo started telling the funny stories, ridiculous things she realized would make her friend die with laughter even with the filmy haze in her eyes and the weird look. Alex’s expression would be a little blank, a little far away, but that laugh never changed a bit. Then they always talked about it because Alex wanted to talk about it. She remembered the things Leo said, and Leo took it as a good sign. Now she did it just for that laugh.
They skipped school almost every day, sometimes half an hour early, sometimes meeting at the park in the morning and never going in the first place. It was a lot easier in high school. Just two dirty-looking girls in baggy t-shirts and scuffed-up Chuck Taylors. A couple of cops found them at the park a few times and tried to make them go back to school. Leo used her words on them too, the image of seriousness. Then they’d walk away, Leo trying so hard to choke back a hiss of laughter until Alex opened her mouth to the sky and let out a cackle of triumph. “Did you see their faces?” she squealed. “You should have seen your face. I think you believed yourself!”
It didn’t take them very long to find a place the cops just didn’t give a fuck about—two streets down from Leo’s house, between what Alex called “the Crack House” and an abandoned building that had given up trying to be a gas station or a fast food joint. No one was there to care that they weren’t where they were supposed to be. No one to bother them.
The street stayed fairly quiet, even on a Saturday. They sat on the steps at the back of the brick building, staring through the fence into a lot of cracked concrete and toppled cinder blocks. Someone had given up on that spot too.
An older black man shuffled by with a cardboard box full of loose feathers that kept escaping and sticking to his clothes. His mismatched pair of shoes—one red, one neon yellow—elicited a sharp bark of laughter from Alex. She clapped a hand over her mouth. The man glanced at them and stopped in surprise. One feather flittered up to land in the hair he hadn’t lost yet. Leo shrugged at him, and they broke into giggles again, faces red with the attempt to contain it. The man hurried off, a trail of feathers flying behind him. Leo had to bury her face in her arm, shaking with laughter, and Alex leaned against her shoulder and hissed giggles through her teeth.
Recovering, Leo wiped the corners of her eyes. Alex sat up again, and for a minute, they just stared at each other. Leo watched those blue eyes, sparkling with sunlight and something else. Then Alex leaned her elbows on her knees and grinned.
“Do another one,” she said.
“What? Come on,” Leo said and smiled at the stairs again. “We’ve been here for like an hour. I’ve done nothing but vomit shit to you.”
“No, come on. I like it.” Alex nudged her with her shoulder. “Do another one.”
Leo looked back up at her and swallowed, feeling the smile leave her face. Her ears burned hot, and then her chest, and she felt the words come up and stopped thinking altogether. “Kiss me,” she said. The world was suddenly quiet. “Because you like me, and you’re the only person that’s ever liked me.”
Alex leaned in, and Leo met her in the middle, putting a hand up to the blonde hair that had grown long over the summer. It lasted only a few seconds, and then Alex pulled away. Leo watched the haziness clear from the blue eyes. She hadn’t expected it to actually work.
A tiny frown, and then Alex stood and walked away, hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. “Fuck,” Leo whispered and stood to follow her. “Wait, Alex. I’m sorry. Hey.” She followed her around the fence and into the narrow alley between two brick buildings. “Alex, come on.”
Alex stopped and turned around. The frown had grown to darken her face, and Leo realized she’d never seen her friend this upset. This angry. “I’m so sorry,” she blurted. She felt like her head was going to explode. The other girl folded her arms against her chest. “That was stupid, and I shouldn’t have done it, and I wasn’t even thinking. We can just forget it ever happened.” Her hands felt like water, and she shoved them into the back pockets of her jeans. She wished her legs would stop shaking. It was all seriously fucked up now because of her stupid words. She couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she didn’t have Alex around anymore. But she couldn’t say that, not after what just happened.
Alex shook her head like she was trying to clear something out of it and closed her eyes. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“What?”
“You don’t have to make me believe things.”
“I know. I know, it was stupid—”
She was cut short when Alex took her face in both hands and kissed her again. Without the words. Without the fog. Leo’s brain scrambled for something to hold onto, and she managed only to pull away a few inches. “Really?” No way was this real. But her heart pounded anyways, and she bit her lip.
Alex laughed, the echo bouncing off the close walls around them, and pulled her in again. Leo’s arms slipped around her waist, fingers inching up the back of her shirt. She felt the curved muscles of Alex’s back in her hands and the sharp sting of the bricks as they pushed up against the wall. The only actual thought she had was that now she could call Alex’s smile her own.