“Oh,” Carly whispers.
I unlock the door to the apartment and hold it open for her.
“It’s funny,” she says. “I wouldn’t have thought… But, you know, he’s a really nice guy.”
“He is,” I say.
I show her where Adam keeps the band-aids and iodine. “Do you need help?” I ask, and she makes that dopey face at me, like I’m being ridiculous. But this time it doesn’t hurt my feelings, because I know we’re on the same side.
I get her a Coke and a hand towel from the linen closet so she can wash her face. And then I pull a pair of my clean pajama pants from a drawer Adam cleared out for me. They’re new. Pink flannel with blue cups of steaming coffee all over, like something you’d see the main character on a sitcom wear. And I’ve been so proud of them since I bought them, but when Carly comes out of the bathroom, I feel silly offering them to her.
“I figured your tights were wet,” I say, handing them over.
She looks young without all the makeup on. She takes the pants from me and pops back in the bathroom. When she comes out again she’s wearing them, and they look ridiculous under her ripped black dress and silver mesh sweater. Her tights are hanging on the radiator to dry, and her boots are on their sides on the floor.
I don’t know how to act or what to say. We plop down on the futon and put our feet on the trunk, taking swigs from our Cokes. I never had girlfriends. Too many people whispered about my dad and his gambling and my mom leaving and the motorhome. If I ever did get invited to some girl’s house to play after school, she was never allowed to come to mine, so eventually she got to be better friends with someone else—someone whose mom made cookies and was there when she got home from school, someone who had birthday parties to invite her to. I had Matty, and Margo was my friend too, but that’s different. It’s not the same as getting to be friends with a girl your own age.
“So, Rosemary,” Carly says, “told me she couldn’t be with anyone who wasn’t out.” She reaches over to pick at the cracked leather on the trunk. “It’s not like I was particularly in, I just wasn’t all the way out, you know?”
I nod, but I don’t know. I’m not sure if she’s talking about a club or a gang or a game that she’s not in or out of. But then she looks at me, and I can tell that the way she feels is the way I felt when I left Matty. That it’s that kind of loss, and I start to think that Rosemary must be her girlfriend.
There aren’t gay people in Little River. I’ve never met one, and I never even thought about women having sex with women until just now. Gary would mouth off about the homos who were ruining America, but he was talking about men who sleep with other men, which I know, because I looked it up at the library. I expected homos to be some kind of robber barons or corrupt politicians or evil wizards and it was kind of a disappointment to learn that they were just men who slept with men. I couldn’t figure out how that was ruining America, but most of what Gary said never made much sense to me anyway.
I want to say something to Carly, but I don’t know what. And as much as I’m not sure how I feel about this girl wearing my pants, crying over a breakup with another girl, I know she hurts and I wish she didn’t.
“I get worried I’m going to lose her,” Carly says, and her voice wobbles. “So I come out. Like completely out. I tell my parents.”
Suddenly she’s crying so hard that I feel like I’m going to cry. She can’t say words and she’s curled up stiff like the sobs are taking everything from her.
“He told me I’m not his daughter,” she says finally. “He told me no way he made a dyke like me.”
I hold her and I tell her I’m sorry and I tell her she’s better than him, because how can I not? And I start to hate Gary. Really hate him, because he’s exactly the kind of person who would say something like that to his daughter if he had one.
“She doesn’t understand,” Carly says. “Rosemary… so easy for her with her New York City parents who practically wanted her to be gay, because it’s like completely and totally in this year. I’m from Allegany. My dad’s a teamster. I knew better.”
“What did your mom say?” I ask, which is bad of me, because I’m always curious about people’s moms and my question is more for me than for her.
“She can’t ever disagree with him, you know?” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “She can’t ever stick up for me. Not for anything, so why did I think she’d tell him off or tell me she’s fine with it, that she loves me, you know?”