Chapter One

in which sam falls

If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad. —Jane Austen , Northanger Abbey

Dahlia got out of the taxi without a suitcase.

I knew we were on the rocks. I wasn’t that emotionally constipated. But this trip was supposed to fix things. To show Dahl how freeing it could be to hold hands in public, how nice it could be to cuddle as we watched the sun set over the Sagrada Familia, and how romantic it could be to kiss in dark corners of cheap Spanish tapas restos. To give her the chance to get comfortable with being out . More importantly, to being out with me , before she told her mother.

“The fuck?” was all I said, standing outside Toronto Pearson Airport like the victim of a TV prank show. That had to be the reason Dahl only had a purse. Because the alternative was . . .

She wouldn’t , I thought. But it was more like a prayer. To whom, I didn’t know. Virginia Woolf, maybe. Marsha P. Johnson, definitely. Sheela Lambert, of course.

Dahlia wasn’t dressed to travel either. Despite the warm October day, she wore a cute knit dress with leggings, with those strappy shoes I liked. The ones with the impractical heel and the ribbons that crisscrossed over her dusky ankles. The ones I liked to undo with my teeth.

The absolute bitch .

I was dressed for the air-conditioned plane, the most perfect stereotype of a bi girl imaginable—cuffed jeans, wavy bob, button-down collared shirt patterned with oranges and teal feathers, denim jacket with enamel pin–encrusted lapels. I was wearing a soft, purple Basque hat, because Barcelona. I’d bought Dahlia a matcha green one as a surprise.

She’s really doing this to me . Shame prickled hot along my nape.

From her purse, Dahlia withdrew a wrapped gift.

It was book shaped, wrapped in white and pink gingham fabric and held together with a sweet blue ribbon, because Dahlia didn’t believe in single-use papers.

I’d told her I had trouble sleeping on planes. That I usually read. She’d bought me a book. It was terribly thoughtful.

A peace offering. Or a desperate plea to absolve her cowardice.

I wanted neither.

Instead I crossed my arms over my backpack straps and scowled.

“I can’t do it,” she said.

“Clearly. What am I supposed to do about the hotels?”

“I won’t cancel the reservations that are on my card. Just pay me back when you can.”

“Are you kidding me? Dahl, we’re doing this for you .”

She rolled her eyes. “For you , Sam.”

It felt like a punch to the gut. It drove the air out of my body the same way. “I—wha—no . . . Dhal .”

Dahlia’s dark hair billowed in the stinking breeze of car and airplane exhaust, with notes of rotting coffee and melting gum from the sun-warmed Toronto concrete. If I put my nose against it, I knew her hair would smell of strawberry and matcha shampoo.

I wanted to dig my fingers into it, to kiss her, beg her, tell her that it wasn’t too late. She could get back in the cab, go get her suitcase. I could go inside, pay to switch our tickets to a later flight. We could make it work. It had to work. Or what had two years of sneaking around, lying and hiding, been for ?

“I know you’ll be happier if you just—”

“You’ll be happier, you mean!” She stomped her pretty little foot, adorably petulant.

“That’s not fair.”

“ This isn’t fair. This is about you dragging me from the closet whether I’m ready or not.”

“Baby—”

Her dark cheeks flushed an ugly mottled red, nothing at all like the sweet blush she got when I laid her back against my pillows and teased my hand up her frilly skirts. “Just because you’ve known exactly who you were since fourth grade, just because your culture and your family don’t care, doesn’t mean—”

“Dahlia, you know my folks love you, too, you can—”

Like she’d been rehearsing it in the cab the whole way to the airport, Dahlia said, “I’m not going just so you can live your fantasy of playing house.”

“Hey, fuck you,” I sneered.

“And that’s my cue.” She jiggled the book, where it still hung in the air between us. “You’re going to miss your flight.”

“Yeah,” I snapped back. “Wouldn’t want that. How terrible, to miss going to Barcelona with my girlfriend for her dream vacation.”

“Hey, fuck you .” There was no heat in her riposte. “You’re the one who wanted to drink all the wine.”

“Don’t need you to do that.” I laughed flatly, throwing my arms wide. “Don’t need you to do any of it, do I? Maybe I’ll find some girls there to kiss instead of you. Or boys, I’m not picky.”

“Christ, can’t you have one conversation without mentioning how obnoxiously bi you are?”

“Not when there are still people terrified to be out. Oh, wait, hey look.” It was cruel, but I cut a gesture directly at her.

Her face flickered with hurt. The tiniest dart of regret stung me. “Oh, now we’re doing the thing where you have to get the last word. Awesome.”

I clamped my mouth shut, jutting out my chin spitefully.

She waggled the book again.

I did not reach for it.

“Just take the goddamn book, Sam!” It wasn’t the volume at which she yelled but the tears suddenly spilling over her lashes in rivulets of mascara that shocked me into finally reaching for it.

The second it was in my hands Dahlia turned on her heel and marched down the curb to the taxi stand. She was gone before I had the chance to call after her.

My phone pinged.

Fishing it from the inner pocket of my jacket, I thumbed it on. Besides the text messages from my mother admonishing me to remember my passport and my father offering up an amusing fact about the statistical safety of air travel, there was just one from Dahlia: I’m sorry .

~

“No rush,” the counter agent said with the kind of saccharine patience that meant the opposite.

“Sorry.” I bent double to dig through my backpack for the beat-up leather travel folder that was a hand-me-down from my mother.

I could have sworn I put it in last. Or maybe I put it in first, so I wouldn’t forget it?

My headphone wires were tangled with the Velcro strap of my sandals. I didn’t even remember putting my headphones in that pocket. I should have invested in those packing cubes that Dahlia was obsessed with, it would have— stop it . At the very top of the bag was the matcha-green hat I’d picked specifically because it matched Dahl’s favorite scarf.

“A-ha!” I crowed, straightening. “It was at the bottom.”

“What joy,” the agent drawled.

Once my boarding pass was in hand, I made a detour to the nearest trash can. Throwing in the hat would have been far more satisfying if it had made a breaking noise. But leaving the felted wool there to soak up the garbage juice from sad, wet coffee cups felt close enough.

Ten minutes later, my day got even better when I discovered that the metal detector hated the pins on my jacket, that I’d forgotten to take my boarding pass and ID out of the pocket of my coat, and that I somehow ended up leaving my shoes in the scanning tray. I got ten steps away before it occurred to me that I was still in my socks, and I had to dash back for my purple Chucks. I sat sheepishly by security to slip them on, then slumped to my gate. I was already exhausted and I hadn’t done anything yet. My ache for Dahl was like a screaming hamster in my brain, not just because my heart hadn’t caught up with what had happened yet, but because of how organized she always was. How organized she always made me.

Yeah, and how much of that is emotional labor you’ve dumped on her? I thought glumly, pretending the gift jammed into the side pocket of my backpack wasn’t glaring at me.

I didn’t call my parents. If I called my parents, I would start crying in the middle of the airport. I was mortified enough without having strangers staring at me. Or worse, trying to comfort me.

I’d call them from Barcelona.

Then it would be too late to be talked out of going on the trip. I would be in Spain, and there would be nothing to do but have my stupid little adventure without my stupid little girlfriend.

Ex -girlfriend.

Shit.

I yanked my tablet out of my backpack. Dahlia had never moved into my crappy student bachelor, no matter how many times I had invited her, so there wasn’t any furniture to divvy up. Dahl had never even filled the dresser drawer I’d emptied for her. The strawberry-matcha shampoo in my shower was a duplicate of her favorite, which I’d bought. Our lives were already completely separate.

We had talked about getting a place together while we worked a final season at the part-time jobs that had gotten us through school. Me at the cell phone kiosk at the mall, her as an usher at the cinema, figuring out how to twine our lives together as we both searched for the perfect first step into our chosen careers. I hadn’t been planning to job hunt so soon after graduation.

I had no reason to wait now.

My plans for the rest of the autumn—the rest of my life —were shot to hell.

Shot through the heart , my stupid traitorous brain sang.

Shut up, stupid traitorous brain, I told it .

Work in public policy seemed a good place to wriggle my way into some good old-fashioned queer activist organizations down the road, so I distracted myself by filling out tedious, fiddly job application after tedious, fiddly job application. After which I uploaded a résumé with the exact same information. Because welcome to the hellscape that is late-stage capitalism.

When the gate agent called for my row to start boarding, I scrambled to collect all my stuff, which had somehow spread onto the chairs on either side of me.

I gave half a thought to leaving Dahl’s gift behind. While I was hurt and feeling terribly petty, I wasn’t that petty. This book was the last thing Dahlia had ever given me. Sentimental future-me would hate present-me if I purposefully abandoned it.

I waited until I was buckled in and the airplane was taxiing away from the Jetway before opening the gift. The ribbon slid away smoothly and I forced myself not to think about how, just yesterday, I would have braided it into Dahl’s hair. The gingham fluttered open. The book was an emerald-green, cloth-bound hardback with deeply embossed gold lettering—one of those collector’s editions made to look antique.

The Welshman’s Daughters by Margaret Goodenough.

Dahlia’s favorite.

I could damn near recite the television adaptation, because of how often Dahl comfort-watched it and therefore I, as a kind and giving girlfriend, had watched it with her. (How on earth did her mother still think Dahl was straight when she’d spent her teenage years rewatching that kiss?)

I wasn’t sure what Dahl’s message with this gift was supposed to be, but it felt pointed all the same. I balled up the square of fabric and jammed it into my pocket, annoyed at my failure to understand .

The flight crew went through the safety demonstration. We took off. Snacks and wine were delivered. I asked for two glasses. The cabin lights dimmed. I turned on the reading light and flipped open the cover. There was an introduction written by the screenwriter of Dahl’s beloved adaptation.

The kiss heard ’round the world. The kiss that changed the landscape of historical fiction and queer representation. The kiss that, in the way drag queens have adopted Cher for their own, and gay men are friends of Dorothy, created of its authoress the Patron Saint of Lesbians.

In its context upon publication by Pickering it wasn’t dragging me down. Had I already released myself? Didn’t remember. Thankful, anyway. Groped next for the pull cord of my life vest. Gone. Not wearing it.

No!

I flailed. My fingers brushed dry air, but maybe it was my feet. Maybe it was a trick. Which way was up? I hung suspended in the water; ballooned out my cheeks. I used to do this as a kid: front flip into the community swimming pool, crash through the chlorinated glory of summertime relief, topsy-turvy, let myself float near the bottom until the oxygen in my lungs bubbled upward, telling me which way the surface was. A light kick, and I would be in the air.

But it wasn’t working.

Crushing .

I panicked, unable to stay still for fear of wasting precious surface-reaching seconds. I opened my eyes. The salt stung. Shadows loomed around me, and I couldn’t tell in my oxygen-deprived haze if they were pieces of airplane, or fish, or corpses.

I refuse! I thought. Anything but this!

A swirling blot of darkness passed so near my face that I swatted at it. It was a strange and stupid reflex to give into while slowly dying, but the human body is a bizarre machine. The thing was slick and moving fast. My fingers curled into the cord trailing from it.

Jellyfish! I won’t drown, I’ll get stung! How’s that for irony?

But the sharpish tug wasn’t the jolting burn of a sting. It was more painful than that, my whole arm wrenching sideways. My shoulder cracked.

The only thing I could hear was white noise—leftover static from the hissing shriek of tearing metal, or the throbbing call of the bottom of the ocean?

The world blurred. I zipped past the shadows now, up, up to where the water shaded from still black to churning frothy gray, heaving with whitecaps.

The shadow I held on to resolved into something desperately yellow.

Dark shapes blocked out the sun on the surface. Oval, backlit by crackling flashes of bright green, the shadow of lacework rope swaying in whatever wind was blowing up there in the, air, air, air , air —

That can’t be right .

I spluttered as my fingers, then my hand, then my nose, my cheeks, my face, my whole head broke the surface. I sucked, but there was no space in my lungs around the saltwater, and it burned .

That ship is weird , I thought, and then was pushed under the waves again. I thrashed but my legs wouldn’t obey. No, no! Kick, you stupid bitch, kick! Anything but this, c’mon!

I tugged hard on the string of the yellow thing and punched up into the air a second time. I couldn’t breathe but I could scream . The sound was half lost in thunder, the pounding of rain on the surface. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Something beside me, a boat, an oar, a voice: “Overboard! Ahoy!”

A hand on my collar, pulling, and it choked , but my head was above water.

“Back to the ship! Go!”

I was hauled up, still going up, ever up, up, up. My head spun and the horizon slipped sideways to the tune of the clack of a rope ladder against a wooden hull. I came back to the world when my head hit planking.

“Careful, lads!” someone snarled.

I coughed, gagged, coughed. Air! My lungs burned. Cold, fuck , cold. I turned my head and puked; seawater and fear and lousy in-flight wine.

“Here now,” someone said. “Sit up.”

I let out the air so hard-won in another hacking gag and puked again, vile and slimy. I coughed until I tasted only stomach acid and blood, then sucked in great hungry lungfuls in reedy gasps. It was like breathing through a straw.

I was making a high keening sound, which bubbled out of me as surely as any empty life jacket, careening out of the depths. Somebody hadn’t secured their life vest properly, had slipped out the bottom, falling down, down, down, and the vest had gone up, up, up, and me, lucky, stupid me, had grabbed it.

Somebody was dead.

And I was not.

We were under a shelter of some kind; the rain had stopped pounding on my back. Instead, something warm and dry scrubbed at my hair. The friction caused agonizing, delicious warmth against my scalp. Sensations chased each other down my spine but I couldn’t tell if they were pleasure, or pain, or just feeling .

Alive!

I said it out loud, around the blood, the puke, the acid, the salt, the terror: “I’m alive.”

“You most definitely are,” said a voice by my ear.

I turned into it, hot and breathing, and here . Human. A hand down my back. I folded against a warm chest, and sobbed, and shook. So fucking cold .

Then the darkness rose up, crushing and cold as the bottom of the sea, and I fell headfirst again, topsy-turvy, and let fate decide when it was time to bubble back to the surface.