Yvette screws her face up like she’s in genuine pain, and it’s then I catch a whiff of something unmistakable. Something musky and sweet and floral. Roses.

“Dia –”

“I’m g*y,” Yvette whisper-interrupts, as though terrified someone will hear in the security of our own room. We stare at each other in stunned silence, and then I smile and punch her shoulder.

“Diana? You lucky piece of shit!”

Yvette’s eyes widen, as if she was expecting something worse. Shouting, anger maybe. Her eyes well up with gratitude, and in typical Yvette fashion she shoves her face into the bed so I won’t see it.

I stand. “C’mon, let’s go get ice cream to celebrate.”

She doesn’t move. I tug on her boot. She groans.

“Get up,” I insist.

“I can’t get up!” Yvette's voice is muffled by her pillows. “I’m g*y!”

“You’re paying if you don’t get up in the next five seconds, Gay.”

Yvette peeks out of the pillow, looking like a scared child.

“I haven’t told my parents.”

“You don’t gotta,” I offer. “Not right away. We’ve still got six months before we drop out. When they ask why you flushed their twenty thousand dollars down the toilet, tell them it’s because you’re g*y. Trust me. They’ll be more mad about the money than your girlfriend.”

Yvette smirks, wiping her nose.

“Or. Or you could just drop the bomb now. Over the phone. Drop all the bombs. Blow up your own house.”

Yvette laughs and punches me weakly on the knee. And then we share a sundae, and for a while I’m not the only one with problems. Yvette’s bravery reminds me of that. I’m not the only one who thinks love and sex is all sorts of weird and hard and scary.

If Yvette could confess to me she’s g*y, if she could overcome that turmoil and life-changing revelation all on her own, then I can overcome what happened to me.

I can’t be as strong as her, but I can try.

I owe it to myself, and everybody who loves me, to at least f**king try.

I visit Mom over the weekend. The drive is long but the love is plenty – she comes out with a smile and wide arms that hug me close, and she’s cooked dinner for once. Pasta. The house is clean. The windows are open and the air inside every room is fresh instead of musty. Mom’s skin looks healthy, her eyes are bright. She can’t stop talking about work, and a new group of lady friends she met at yoga, and I just sit in my chair and eat quietly and absorb it all – all of her happiness, all of her change.

“Are you okay, sweetie? I’m sorry I’ve been blabbering, it’s just –”

“No, I’m fine. Don’t be sorry. I was just really hungry.”

“Are you eating at school well?”

“Three square meals a day. Comprised of doughnuts and regret.”

She laughs, and I smirk into a noodle.

“It’s been awfully quiet without you around,” Mom says. “So I’ve been trying to get out more. Do more things, meet more people.”

I flinch. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not here more, and I’m sorry I didn’t come last weekend, I was –”

“It’s alright. I don’t want to hear excuses. But, it was a promise, Isis. You promised me you’d come every other weekend. I know you’re busy, and it’s college, but I’m your mother. And I want to see you. I need to see you.”

“I’m sorry!” I clutch my fork. “I’m so sorry - ”

Mom gets up, sweeping over to pet my head and hush me in soft whispers.

“No, honey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for needing you so much. You should be free, I have to let you fly away from me sometime. Other kids your age, other parents my age have all learned how to leave and let go but…but it’s harder for me. And that makes it hard on you.”

I swallow hard. Mom looks into my eyes.

“Sometimes I think bad things – dark things. And I go to Dr. Torrand and try not to think them so much. But they keep me up at night. And I don’t sleep. And I start resenting everyone – your father, Leo, even you - and it’s horrible. I’m horrible.”

I hug her back, tight and unending.

“We’re not horrible,” I whisper. “We’re just people.”

***

I watch Charlie do his homework, hair greasy and his face eternally frowning. He’s not the most intelligent agent, and he doesn’t think before he speaks, but he gets objectives done with startling speed and force. Where my style is to write lightly with a ballpoint pen, his is to press hard with a soaked paintbrush. We both get the job done, just in different ways. It’s why Gregory assigned us to each other, probably – two radically differing methods double the chances of success. In theory.

In reality, we get along as well as two wet cats in a stewpot can.

“What’re you staring at?” Charlie grunts, never taking his eyes off his paper.

“I wanted to thank you,” I say finally.

“Fuckin’ doubt that.”

“For sending Isis away at the barbeque. I was reluctant to do it myself.”

“You don’t say,” Charlie rolls his eyes. “You and her got history or somethin’?”

“Something like that.”

“Well keep it out of the mission. I don’t need your f**kbuddies screwing this up for me. A job like this means a damn promotion.”

I glance over at his desk. He doesn’t keep a lot of personal items, but he brought a framed picture of his grandmother, an old Japanese woman with a wrinkled, smiling face, hugging Charlie in front of a tiny noodle shop in what looks like foggy San Francisco. He sends the money he makes back to her – I did some digging into his file and his bank accounts. Orphaned at the age of three due to a racial hate crime, his grandmother took him in and raised him. Now that she’s nearly eighty and unable to work the store, Charlie is the one who keeps it running with the money he makes. He used to be in a Chinatown gang, until Gregory scouted him.

He’s weaker than me, even if he doesn’t act like it.

The people he loves are still alive, after all. And that is a weakness in and of itself. It’s why I will always be a better agent than him. Or, I thought I would be. Until Isis stepped back into the picture.

“She wasn’t a f**kbuddy,” I clarify, tempering the soft fire of anger that flares in my lungs. He didn’t mean it personally - his name-calling is a defense mechanism to keep from getting to know people, and consequently caring about them. It’s similar to Isis’ rampant jokes.

“Whatever she was to you, she was sure as hell jealous of Brittany that night. Kept giving her stink eye. Don’t let her get in the way of pumping Brittany for info, you got me?”

Jealous? Isis? That can’t be right. I’ve hurt her so bad, for so long – how could she feel anything but contempt for me? She’s smart enough to know when she’s chasing after a worthless cause. She would never pursue me. Not after what I’ve done to her.

I grab my coat and walk out.

The campus is quiet, night stars glimmering like discarded diamonds. My confused feet take me around the library, through the parking lot, and to a haughty granite fountain in the shape of a centaur shooting an arrow into the sky. I read the plaque - dedicated to someone’s dead something. I sit on the edge. I’m not the only one there, I notice.