Reading the extended summary before you begin is highly recommended.

+++ denotes a switch in POV

--- denotes the same POV at a later time

Enjoy!

+_+

Xia

They began with a head-on collision.

Horns blared, the world spun on its axis like it might wobble off its orbit and spin free into the great unknown. Metal crashed, crunched. Glass shattered in tinkling musical notes timed to the melody of her gasping as splinters cut her face. She swallowed an airbag. Felt her second right molar crack. Had her skull slammed against the headrest with such force it thunked up a notch.

Click.

Click.

Finally, finally, the earth stopped moving.

Hazard lights flashed.

Xia tasted blood and nylon.

Something burned like gas.

The rear of her car exploded, and Xia began to scream.

---

Xia woke up to an oxygen mask over her face and a steady beeping beside her head.

Her parents stood at the end of her bed, both in tears, and praying. She couldn't figure out which language they were crying in; it all sounded like ringing in her ears.

"Mama..." God, her jaw throbbed when she tried to speak. The inside of her mouth was hot and dry. Her breath tasted of smoke and unleaded gasoline, a trace of coppery blood trapped under her slack tongue.

Drugs, the good kind, had knocked her for a loop and left her eyes crossing when she tried to catch her parents' eyes. They didn't need to cry for her, she was all right; couldn't they see?

It was forty-eight hours before she could speak clearly enough to be understood. Her left wrist was sprained, so writing was out of the question. Probably for that best considering who walked into the room once each day.

Phaedra Barlowe had lumbered into the general ward of Morrissette County Hospital reeking of halomethane ten hours after Xia was admitted. Soot was smeared on her brown cheeks and her infamous leather jacket hung off her shoulders in soaked panels like she'd gotten caught in the blast radius of a pressure hose. Maybe she did, Xia thought. Her dad had told her who pulled her out of the car. Her memory after the collision was a terrifying blank.

"Hey, kid. You okay?"

"I-" Xia hissed and reached for her dose pump. She knew better than to talk, but it was instinct to answer when somebody called. They said she'd be fine once the initial trauma had passed. Bruised, black and blue, but fine. She didn't feel fine.

The sodden greaser girl winced. "Sorry. I didn't know how bad it was. You want I should call the doctor for you? Maybe your mom. I saw her outside."

Xia held up her call button, trying to smile as much as her jaw allowed. Even her teeth were giving her twinges.

Phaedra bit her lip, shifting in her squelching boots. "You got real lucky, girl. If you hadn't got out of there..."

Xia lifted her chin a bit. She'd be as lost for a response with her jaw in working order. She knew she was lucky, that this could be worse-that it could have been her in a morgue instead of an uncomfortable bed with scratchy sheets. She was aware, she was just also in more pain than she'd ever been in.

"Can I bring you anything? I could get your homework for you; I think we have mostly the same classes, and if you don't, I could find out."

Wetting her lips, Xia managed to mouth the word please. She didn't really want to deal with schoolwork yet, but she couldn't muster up the energy for anything else, like thanks so much you saved me or why? So she pulled her swollen lips in her mother's best approximation of a polite grin and let Phaedra go.

And go she did like a woman on a mission. You wouldn't know she'd been caught in a car fire by the way she walked. You'd swear she owned this hospital.

That was how she walked back in two hours later, too. The redressed Wild Girl came bearing peonies in a vase and bright orange smoothies in a carrier. She plopped into the hard chair pulled close to Xia's bedside. Her parents had been and gone. They'd returned home to secure the house, having left as soon as they heard about her wreck. She didn't know when they'd be returning. Morning, she figured.

Phaedra presented her with the flowers.

"A bunch of peonies and citrus fruit smoothies for healing."

Smiling was slightly less agonizing this time. She was getting used to it. I bet she Googled that.

Phaedra's smile was a mockery of innocence. "I might have Googled it. I'm not admitting anything. We just don't know."

Xia found it didn't hurt as much to laugh as she thought it would. Her neck, her chest, her ribs all twanged, but her face was by far the most tender part of her. Her hero didn't seem to mind much that she kept her giggles small and coughed down the largest of them. All she seemed to want was to see Xia laugh instead of wince. Phaedra made it easy.

+++

Phaedra

A week later, Phaedra tucked the tissue-wrapped bouquet of replacement peonies under her arm to check her phone for new messages.

"Still checking on Evel Knievel?"

"Yeah, baby, she's a firework." Phaedra covered her face at once, turned her phone upside down in shame. "Forget I said that. That was terrible."

"Worse than usual, baby Phae," tutted co-captain of the Webber girls' volleyball team and fellow Wild Girl, Tremaine Kilallen. She was one of the few who understood why Phaedra kept visiting the hospital days after the accident that had singed their hands and landed a friend of theirs in the ER for smoke inhalation. "Evel must be keeping you up nights."

"Leave it alone, Tré."

"I'm not trying to start anything, you know I'm not. I just don't want you falling down a straight girl rabbit hole."

Phae grunted, scrolled through texts from her fellow team members for those begging off this afternoon's team practice. So not happening. 'Miss out, get benched. Your choice,' she shot back to each and every one.

"She's an underclassman, not a tripwire. She got banged up pretty bad and I want to make sure there's no permanent damage."

Tré sucked her teeth, doubt written on her sun kissed face in block letters. "If you say so. Didn't know you went to medical school."

"Don't be a dick."

"Finest dick you've ever seen." Blowing a teasing kiss at Phae, Tré grabbed her duffle from the trunk of her car and clomped off to the locker room to change for practice. Phaedra gave her co-captain's car an appreciative onceover, stopping to check that the doors and trunk were secure. If a seventeen-year-old could have a pride and joy, that car was Tré's and with good reason. 1955 fire engine red Chrysler C 300s weren't easy to find. It had a body was built for NASCAR, designed for speed, pushing 350 horsepower, dual Carter WCFB four-barrel carburetors, and a "Hemi" V8 engine. To know the 300 was to love it and Tré loved her well. It was loving anybody else that had her best friend tied up in knots.

Phaedra checked her phone again to see if she'd gotten a text from the hospital.

Nothing.

Guess that makes two of us.

+++

Xia

Xia had been back at school an entire week before somebody that wasn't a teacher spoke to her.

"Hey, Qi. How do you solve for x?" A ruddy-skinned boy she had seen daily for three years yet hadn't spoken to once pushed his notebook under her nose.

Xia pretended to give the problem a long, hard look. She might as well have been trying to read tea leaves in the dark. If that's a thing. Do people do that?

"I don't know."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah." She raised a shoulder in resignation. "I don't really like...math. It's...I don't get it." A dramatic understatement if her last Pre-Cal exam grade was to be believed.

"Oh. I mean, I just thought you would, you know, considering."

She blinked up at him. "Considering what?"

He hesitated to answer and that was answer enough, but she wanted to hear him say it.

"Well?"

"I don't know. I just figured you would."

"Any particular reason? I don't raise my hand in class. I don't share my notes. I don't even talk. Why would you think math was my thing when I never said it was?"

He hunched over and shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to make himself small under her scrutiny. His acne-scarred cheeks were burning hotter by the breath. Petty annoyance kept her from saving him from himself. Xia wanted him to choke on his stereotypes.

"Didn't think so." She folded her homework into the pages of her textbook and began to pack her things. The library was her favorite place because of the solitude it offered; it wasn't much good to her, now.

"That's why nobody likes you. You think you're so much better than everybody else, don't you?"

"Not at math!" she shouted over her shoulder and, ducking under the furious glare of the librarian, made her escape. The bleachers on the sports field would have to do until the presumptuous jerk infestation in the library was resolved.

Let's get one thing straight. Xia might have sucked at math (numbers, how do they work?!), but Xia was brilliant at event planning. She could plan a revolution in the school gym given the chance, but ask her to factor any equation more complex than X^2-1, and you could expect tears.

She could talk to people. They listened when she spoke, because she made her words count; they were never once wasted. She just didn't tend to have anybody to say those words to is all.

Xia chewed a thumb nail and tried once again to understand inverse functions. I can't balance a checkbook, but they want me to get inverse functions. This is a state-sanctioned form of torture. She was looking up the number to Amnesty International as soon as she got home.

"You look down in the dumps. Why the long face?"

Xia perked up at hearing Phaedra's voice. She didn't want the other girl thinking she needed to be saved again. She'll never go out with me if I'm that pathetic. Her brain churned to a stop. Since when do I want Phaedra Barlowe to go out with me? We're barely even friends. Life-saving didn't confer instant friendship, right?

"Uh, it's nothing," Xia stammered, faking a laugh. "I was thinking-about stuff. I was thinking about...stuff." She couldn't think of anything else to say. The truth was out of the question.

Phae threw leg over the cold bleacher seat and gave it a straddle. She was still dressed in her volleyball uniform topped with a nylon sports jacket, an Adidas sponsorship insignia splashed across the dark blue back panel. Her usually gelled hair was plaited in a French braid that curled over her shoulder like a pet snake. In short, she was sweaty and muddy and didn't much seem to care. Perfect, basically.

"You're an even worse liar than you are a driver. Take a class or something, you're making me nervous."

Xia bristled. It didn't matter that she was completely right. "I told you the accident wasn't my fault. The police have investigated and the insurance company-"

Phae absently sucked on the end of her braid and nudged Xia gently in the ribs. "I'm yankin' your chain, kid." She rubbed her shoulder against Xia in a wordless apology for accidentally hitting her where she was sensitive.  "Live a little. Alls I'm saying is you're bad at covering up how you feel. I bet dogs can hear you going around in circles the next county over." She butted her bony knee against Xia's crossed legs. "Come on, what's buzzin' cuzzin'?"

"Nothing." Xia swept her hair up from her neck in a loose knot. It wouldn't hold long since she'd left her hair pins at home, but Xia felt warmer than she had all day now that Phae was near her. Somehow, the girl had the power to raise the temperature of any environment she entered by at least ten degrees. "I'm fine. I told you I was."

"That head of yours giving you the blues?" Phae made an abortive motion towards one of Xia's bruises, a ghastly greenish-yellow smear at the base of her skull. Better, she supposed, than the ugly indigo-grey it had been in the days after her accident.

"School gives me a headache, anyway." She worked her fingers over her orbital arches in search of pressure points that would ease her pain even a little. "If the drill squad practiced outside my skull half as much as they do inside, they might win some of the competitions they compete in."

"Just when I thought you were on the good drugs. That band of squares couldn't win a best squares competition if they were the only ones competing."

Phae swiped a cashew from Xia's lunchbox and tossed it up in the air to catch in her mouth. It was gone in the space of a second, lost to the crunch of a razorblade jaw. That was a greaser girl by definition: a human razorblade. Shined like a diamond; cut like one, too. They put the anger in 'danger', the war in 'beware.' These were the kinds of kids Xia's ma had warned her about. That didn't stop Xia from going hot and cold when Phaedra brushed her hand. She was just about perfect.

Greaser girls could do anything a greaser guy could do except get a girl knocked up. 'Point for the greasers with the faces,' Garvey Shahi would have said. 'Leather jackets and hair gel, jeans and hot rods. That's all you gotta have to be a greaser. You gotta love to ride, love a thrill, and kiss a girl.'

Garvey said a lot for a biker who claimed to be the strong, silent type.

And anyway, Xia wasn't destined to be that girl. She tried not to sigh. Failed.

Xia wasn't used to being this lovesick for anybody, boy or girl or any person in-between. She liked being on her own; she missed liking it.

"Why are you talking to me?" she finally asked Phaedra when they'd been quiet too long. Which, god, sounded assholic in the extreme and was not what Xia meant to say. Fu.... "Not that I don't like you talking to me. Talk to me more-talk to me all the time, if you want. Just...why? Did you need something? I'm bad a math, really bad, so if that's what you're after..."

"I've got math covered. Top of the class, remember."

"Sure." Xia remembered nothing of the kind. Since Wild Girls weren't usually her area, she didn't make it her business to know any more about them than she needed to avoid them en masse.

"That startled lynx look you've got going on is a dead giveaway, you know."

"I don't know what a lynx looks like."

"It's a cold-climate cat. Perky ears. Snub tail. Lots of leg. Sort of stately until you sneak up on it; then, it goes all clumsy."

Xia wavered, almost insulted yet unsure if she should be. "Do you like lynxes?"

"They're all right with me."

"Because you're a leg woman," Xia guessed. Phae winked, giving Xia's stocking thighs a long, considering glance. She doesn't deny it. Xia failed again not to perk up at the thought.

"Because clumsy doesn't mean worthless. Just like being bad at math doesn't mean stupid." Phae plucked Xia's phone off the bench and messed around with the screen. "That's my number. Text me if anybody else goes stupid over you." She handed Xia back her phone as she got up to leave and Xia's pulse quickened when their fingers brushed during the handover. The answering twist of Phae's smile was preordained heartbreak, only Xia didn't mind.

"I guess we won't have much to say to each other, in that case."

Popping the collar on her jacket, Phae quipped, "Don't bet on it, cutie," and swaggered down the bleachers and across the green, aware-because she must have been-of how some of the other students paused to let her pass, others stopped altogether to watch her go. Xia was as guilty of the second as any other student of the first.

---

To: Phae B.

From: Xia Q.

Hey, thanks fo

What was she supposed to say? How did people even text each other? What were the rules?

Did you maybe wanna

-marry me? Xia dropped her head on her desk, a piece of furniture she never used unless times were dire. She had two weeks of homework to make up and a splitting headache besides. An extension was probably in the cards if she asked, but it wasn't like she had much socializing to take up her time; she could do this. It was just, well, greaser girl extraordinaire, Phaedra Barlowe eating her concentration. Now that she had the girl's number, all she could think about was getting in touch-also, talking. Mostly touching. Would somebody please put her out of her misery!

Come over for dinner. My mom wants to say hi

She deleted that text out of pure shame. Using her mom as a tool to get a hot girl to come over? She'd never live down the humiliation. A first grader could see through that ruse.

I feel like a first grader. This was easier when I could just drop a Scooby-Doo V-Day card in a girl's desk anonymously and she'd never know. I did that so many times. Not even the teacher had me figured out.

Xia lifted her head from her Psychology textbook. Oh. Oooh. That's just corny enough to work.

"Right? Right," she assured herself.

Yanking on her hoodie and her Keds, Xia bolted out of her house at top speed in the direction of the nearest bus stop. She'd stopped long enough to tell her mom where she was going, if not why, and run before she could offer use of the family car again. Xia would probably get behind the wheel panic-attack-free one day, but it wasn't today. Today, she had a plan and she intended to see it through without vomiting from fear.

+++

Phaedra

Phaedra was opening her locker to retrieve her Calculus textbook the next morning when something slid out and fell on her boot. She recognized it as one of those kiddie Valentine's Day cards.

She picked it up to read it: "'I like you, Doo you like me, too? Say you Scooby-Dooby-Doo.'" Phaedra leaned away from the card. It was decorated with a famous cartoon dog and his stoner best bro. "Okay, what's happening here?"

Stevie plucked the card from her hand to read it herself, casually filching the attached lollipop before handing the card back. "Dweeb's got a crush on you."

Phae glared at her nosy friend. She'd been planning on saving the candy for class. God knew she needed something to look forward to in the Dungeon of Doom otherwise known as Honors Calculus.

"It's January. Who starts sending cards this early?"

"Dweebs."

"You'd know," Sable quipped, passing by them both on her way to her own locker. Tré rolled her eyes and ignored them both, loping over to slump against the locker next to Phaedra. She swept her dishwater hair aside to keep it from getting stuck into the locker door vents.

"Who's got you in their sights this time?"

She showed the taller girl the card she'd found. "No clue. Somebody with a sense of humor."

"You pulling middle schoolers nowadays, baby Phae? Shame on you."

"That's at least preschool level," Stevie opined around her stolen cherry lollipop.

"You'd know," echoed a passing knit-capped wonder named Alayna Hu. Sable tried not to stare longingly at the class president's back to no success. Stevie glared at the same. They didn't get along. Sable was in love. Alayna was, presumably, straight. Stevie was jealous and doing a lousy job at hiding it. Phaedra wanted no part of that disaster in progress.

She led Tré from the squabble brewing, again, for the third time this week and it was only Tuesday, between Sable and Stevie. This is why you don't date within the crew. Speaking of which...

"Anyway, this is what's going on with me. What's your deal?"

"Lucia, the bookworm queen." Tré, libero of their volleyball team, the tall one, Ms. Abercrombie & Fitch herself, was the actual worst at dating. She was worse than Sable and that one crushed on straight chicks with scary regularity.

"You make me sad, babe."

"I make me sad. She's right there all the time. This shouldn't even be hard." Tré groaned miserably. "I need a smoke."

The late bell sounded and the hall rose into a cacophony of squeaking soles on sneakers as students lunged for their classroom doors.

"Do you need detention?"

"It's good for meditating."

"You mean napping." Admittedly, that was as good a use for the time as anything.

"To-may-to, to-mah-to." Tré hoisted a shoulder, indifferent.

"Whatever. Ask her out already or shut up about it. You know she's going to UCLA. Get into UCLA." Useless advice, but nobody actually expected Phaedra to be good at this. She was a classic love 'em and leave 'em wanting more type, even if she was nice about it.

"I'm not that good," Tré lamented. Irritating as it was to see, Phae felt for her. She knew a little something about being head over heels for somebody who looked right through her.

She bumped Tré's bony arm. Leather-clad as it was, it still poked, blunt as a bamboo stick.

"What you are is lazy. That's the difference. Stop dragging the team around by the lead and maybe the scouts who come to see Garvey'll pay some attention to you."

Tré's depression turned to panic in a blink. "Oh, great, let's talk about the future, I feel a million times better. Thanks, Phae. I need a cigarette, I need a whole pack of cigarettes. Save me a seat."

Tré made for the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall. It led to the back of the gym, prime stoner real estate and not a bad place to snag regular cigs either if you knew who to ask. Until the campus cops make rounds.

That'd be another detention on top of two this month. Tremaine wouldn't be playing v-ball until halfway through the season, at this rate. She jammed a fist into the door of a banged up locker.

"Girls are freakin' complicated and I do not have time for this today."

Phaedra stalked back down the hall to drag Stevie to class by her elbows. Girl didn't have the first idea how to talk to a crush. Sable looked like she was about to bash her face in.

"Come on, idiot. That was the late bell."

Stevie grunted, staring back over her shoulder.

Phaedra was forever cleaning up her friends' messes. This was why she didn't do the love thing. It was just heartbreak. Phaedra didn't need heartbreak; all she needed was cars, bikes, and the game.

+++

Xia

Xia watched Phaedra open her locker from around the corner. She saw the whole thing, the older girl's confusion, Stevie Hicks stealing the candy she'd meant for her crush, and Phaedra leading Tré Kilallen away. She wasn't close enough to hear what they said, but Phaedra hadn't seemed very impressed.

Great. If I tell her it was me, she'll think I'm an emotionally stunted pre-teen. The card had been self-conscious joke. Phaedra was supposed to laugh and instantly recognize the sender as the girl she'd visited in the hospital for two weeks. She said she liked Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Scooby-Doo's not that obscure. She didn't want to listen to the cautionary voice in the back of her head that said Phaedra could have been making that up.

She was just being nice, wasn't she? She doesn't really like me at all.

Xia pressed a stiff hand to her ribs and tried not to miss what she'd never had. She was going to be late for Pre-Cal.

Don't give up, she told herself lest she fall into a hopeless funk. There'll be other ways to get her attention.

PEMDAS might have been a might have been Greek to Xia, but she could plan a romance. She would plan this one. Her hero deserved at least that much.

+++

Phaedra

Phaedra stepped out of gym class and into the most idiotic showdown since a bunch of undercover vice cops mistook the Wild Girls for a drug smuggling ring. Her hair was still damp, she was out of gel, her wallet was home which meant no lunch, and her baby, her 1967 Camaro SS -black finish, white stripes on the hood-was making a funny sound when she took left turns. Suffice it to say, Phae wasn't in the mood for a lot of B.S today, yet here they were.

"We're not doing it," Tré hissed, propped on the trunk of her car.

"Who died and put you in charge?" Hunter challenged through a ring of smoke.

"Nobody-yet. You volunteering?" Tré was giving off sparks and not just from the clover cig tucked between her lips. The campus police had given up raiding her car for the things; they grew in her pockets like fruit.

Hunter snorted at Tré; she never took her seriously as she should. Fearless like she had a death wish, that one. "I'm at UCLA in six months. I can't even bother."

"That's what I thought." Tré still stared at the red-haired girl for another minute until she was sure she'd made her point. Lucia, parked between them, sighed, catching Hunter's attention. The girl backed down at once.

Phae snagged the lit cig from Tré's fingers before her friend burned herself. That was why Tremaine was so gun-shy. Hunter was going to UCLA, too. Hunter 'Strange Days' Matthews was Lucia Prasad's best friend and most people at Webber thought the girls were bound for wedding bells as much as any couple on campus. Nevermind that Hunter didn't look at anybody the way Tré looked at Luce.

"God, it's called being a legal adult, Tré. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it-eventually." Lucia turned another page in her ever-present book. She was the pretty sore thumb that stuck out of their group. She'd come to town from England when her ex-pat legal eagle parents had been invited back to join a firm in the States. She'd come along for the ride, but she'd not for one moment pretended to be happy about it. Not that that stopped Tré from falling head over heels for the posh accent and the deep brown eyes.

Garvey came bearing sodas smuggled in her jacket pockets and sleeves. Thank god, sugar. Calories.

Garvey had news. "Ronnie Jensen's b-ball idiots are giving swirlies to the chess team again."

"Uh oh," Luce muttered, in a rare move, actually lifting her eyes from the words in front of her. Phaedra put down her can unopened, ready to intervene if she could. She was in charge of her players on the field, not here; the Wild Girls and the volleyball team were far from interchangeable.

Mickey Benitez hopped up from the sidewalk to smooth her spiked hair and to pop her knuckles. "I really don't need another citation. I already have community service for punching out the last jockster twit who thought doing a panty check on freshmen girls was going to get her a date."

"Ronnie Jensen is gunning for you," Hunter admitted, because Hunter talked too much.

"He's a jock. That's what jocks do," Phae countered. She wanted to be the voice of reason here. I am never the voice of reason, ever.

"Ronnie Jensen doesn't know who he's playing with. I'll deal with him." Mickey stopped short, pivoting on the heel of her Converse. "Don't tell the colonel." And then she was off, across the green and into the cafeteria, a storm of skinny jeans and hoop earrings.

Phae whistled past her toothpick. This ain't gonna be pretty.

Mickey, a JROTC cadet captain, knew a thing or two about putting dickheads in their place and the resident jocks weren't immune to her right hook. Truth was, they knew it too well and they kinda liked it.

Rabi Chanh, the youngest in the crew, shortest, too, had nodded off on the front row bench seat of her Cyclone Spoiler II , 1969, rose red racer stripes swerving along a body of stainless steel white. They'd all figured out quick that the Spoiler was where Rabi slept best, so they let her sleep. Home wasn't much of an option for rest.

Tré slapped the bubble hood of her 300. "Did that seem helpful to you, Matthews? You couldn't have been a little more useful at cooling her down?"

"I didn't do anything wrong, it's not like I lied."

"You egged her on. If she gets into trouble, it's on you."

"She was going to beat Jensen into the concrete no matter what I said," Hunter contended. "You know what she's like when she gets all mama bear for the freshmen." This wasn't about Mickey, not really; everybody except the smartest girl in the group seemed to pick up on this.

"This isn't helping!" Luce interjected, annoyed.

Phaedra rubbed her temples. "None of this is helping!"

Their collective squawking woke Rabi, luring her blinking over the dashboard. She rubbed her eyes and leaned out the driver's side window. "W'as up?"

Garvey emptied her can of pop and burped. "Your mentor's about to pummel Ronnie Jensen, or get her second strike. Your pick."

Credit where it's due, Rabi only stumbled getting out of the car. For being five-one, she made good time getting to the cafeteria, leapt clear over the bike rack in front of the door. Whether she was going to stop Mickey in her tracks or play backup was a whole other story.

Sable stared at the dust trail the girl had left behind her. "Cadets got that sticking together thing down right."

Phaedra threw down her toothpick, sick of the stench of stupid muddying the air. "Webber Girls, too." She popped her collar and took off for the caf's swinging doors, a roll of quarters jammed in her fist. Looks like nobody's playing this Saturday.

+++

Xia

Xia recruited the Webber Asian Student Association to her cause, with a little deception and candy heart bribes.

"What could be better than a kissing booth for Valentine's Day?"

Hanyeul, the club treasurer, kicked back his heels. "I don't know, a bake sale?"

Qaisra, vice president and resident romantic, piped up, "Cookies can be very sweet, but kisses are better."

Xia blew out a relieved breath. "So you'll help me?"

"Do I get a kiss for it?" Hanyeul joked. Xia pretended to gag. Han was okay, he just wasn't Phaedra Barlowe. There was only one of her-thank god. I would die of lust. Can you die of lust? I'd manage it.

Vishwas threw a candy wrapper at Han's head from the other end of the meeting table. "The only lips you'd better be kissing are mine, Casanova."

Han blew his boyfriend a smooch. "Only you, baby!"

Qaisra grunted, "Idiots," and rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you've obviously got your eye on a long shot. What's a kissing both among friends?"

Xia nodded. She hadn't much thought they were friends. They didn't even speak to each other unless they were organizing a fundraiser or attending volunteer events. Some friends.

It took them a week to wrangle the proper authorizations from the school administrator and then three days more to build the booth. They were engineers in training, some of them, not carpenters. Han's dad chopped plywood into the appropriate shapes, they just had to put them together. Yeah, that's what took three days.

They were into their first afternoon in business-$100 dollars in because Han was hot and Vish kissed like a heathen-when Phaedra showed her face in the ground floor corridor of Webber High. It just so happened to be Xia's shift to man the stand.

Phaedra queued up into the nonexistent line. (Xia wasn't exactly the most sought-after kissing partner.)

"You're doing a kissing booth to raise money for the Valentine's Day dance."

"That's what the sign says." It actually read, 'Keep It Simple Sweetie, no tongue,' but whatever. Point made.

"You know everybody's gonna get mono and there won't be a dance, right? Did you clear this with Student Organizations?"

"The Asian Student Association is in charge of fundraising for the dance."

Phaedra groaned a groan of the thoroughly put-upon. "I'll pay you two hundred dollars to kiss all the volleyball players. I know you don't have mono, you got out of the hospital, like, yesterday."

"I could have been busy," Xia objected.

Phaedra glared. "Who with?"

Xia kept her expression blank; coy never worked for her. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I asked, didn't I? Who's the lucky guy?" Phaedra's dark eyes were positively glacial.

Xia began to backtrack. "You don't know him." She did not wanna be playing jealousy games with a Wild Girl. She would lose so bad.

"I know everybody that goes to this school. What's his name?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm not kissing him again."

The tension in Phae's shoulders eased. "Good!"

"Why 'good'?"

"Uh, because boys are trouble?" Phae waved a hand, evidently unable to come up with a better excuse.

Xia crossed her arms. "And girls aren't?" Like you aren't proof positive that girls are trouble.

Phaedra stuck out her chest. "Girls are heroes. Everybody needs a hero."

Xia tried not to smile. Crap. She did not want to smile. Definitely not. Nothing charming about Phaedra Barlowe being incorrigible at her was worthy of a smile.

"If you say so. So, are you paying me or what? This isn't a therapy booth."

"On one condition."

"What's that?"

Phae tapped her chin. "One kiss on the house."

She's got a lot of nerve.

"Show me the money first."

"I gave you mouth to mouth!"

"This story gets more unbelievable every time you tell it. Did you also grow wings and fly me to Morrissette on your back?" Teasing Phae was fun; watching her get all worked up and knowing she was safe anyway made Xia's chest fill with beelike buzzing, a warmth hot chocolate couldn't give.

"I'm definitely not telling you if you're gonna mock me for it. I could be a delicate mythical creature, for all you know."

"A very charitable, mythical creature, I hope." Xia held out her hand and waited.

Phaedra dug into her pocket for her wallet. She's actually going for it.

"Don't tell me you carry that kind of cash around."

Phae counted out the bills, and yup, it was two hundred.

"You never know when you'll need to post bail."

Xia dropped her hand to scratch her side. Winced, because her cracked ribs still pulled a little. "You're officially the scariest person I know."

"You hang out with the wrong people."

"Sure, my negative three friends are the real problem, here."

"You talk a lot."

"Making up for lost time."

Phaedra tipped her head and hummed. "I like it."

Just then, the Wild Girl troupe marched down the hall toward the auditorium for assembly-or detention. It was anybody's guess. Phae stared after them.

"Here, take your money. This year's dance better not suck. I'm counting on you."

"Nice to know somebody is." Xia sucked her lip, glad she'd invested in really good lip balm this month. "What about...?"

Phae brushed a hand down her arm, leaving a trail of Goosebumps rising under her cardigan, little pinpricks of want she'd never felt quite this strongly before.

"I'll collect later. Keep that kiss warm for me."

"...I can do that."

Phae twiddled her skinny, wrench-callused fingers goodbye and loped off toward a skinny jean-wearing herd of bikers in pompadours and red lipstain. She sliced through the afterschool crowd chin-first. They parted smooth as butter to a hot knife. And wasn't she the hottest there was?

Xia sat down on an ugly plastic chair borrowed from the nearest classroom. It slowly rolled backward under her body weight; she hardly noticed.

Did I just flirt with...? I did. She liked it. I liked it. She-we-oh, okay. Be cool.

She grabbed her water bottle from the back table and took a sip to wet her parched throat.

She just reserved a kiss from me. She wants to kiss me.

Xia smiled so wide her neck started to hurt.

I owe her a kiss and she intends to collect.

She bit her lip and left the front of the booth early to go count money. Her lips were spoken for.

+++

Phaedra

Phae was still thinking about the girl she'd left behind as she approached her group of friends outside the assembly room. An already depressing sight was made worse by the addition of pink, white, and red streamers decking the halls. Hearts galore. Ugh.

And Xia working a kissing booth. Great, really great for all kinds of reasons. Phaedra knew at least five lost causes who were going to kiss somebody for a dare and be out for the rest of the season.

"Any of you dumbasses use the kissing booth, you'd better kiss the quiet one. Otherwise, don't do it. We have a game against the Brewster School in a week. I don't want anybody down with mono."

Sable grunted. "We're smarter than that." Let the Student Council be over the booth, she'd just bet Sable lost her marbles in that case. Phae let her glare speak for itself.

"It happened this time last year. None of us are smarter than that." That was the year Phaedra stopped dating hockey jocks. "The cutie with the hoodie or no dice."

Rabi flicked a sly look at her. "Somebody's got a girlfriend."

"Somebody's about to get stuffed in a locker. Wonder who that could be?"

Rabi scuttled behind Mickey's shoulder to hide.

"Exactly. Now, are we going to assembly or skipping for pie? I'm dying for key lime."

Mickey tossed an arm over her shoulder. "You're speaking my language, mami. Text Tré, she's driving."

+++

Xia

Xia and the rest of the student body-those who hadn't snuck out the back-sat through a protracted assembly on date safety, featuring vague demonstrations on safer sex, advice on choosing designated drivers, and suggestions for avoiding being ruffied. Xia was offended and confused in equal measure. At least they tried? She wasn't sure she wanted to give the guidance counselors who'd arranged this display even that much credit.

The assembly let out with the end of day bell. It was a veritable stampede to the exits. Nobody wanted to be the last one sitting to be singled out for individual attention. Xia was no exception; she braved the shoving horde to find daylight soon as she could.

She shouldered through the afterschool ramblers to get snacks from the tissue paper bedazzled vending machines. Rhinestones and glitter everywhere. The Student Council was a decorating menace that couldn't be stopped. Trail mix and Big Red were Xia's feast of champions for the hour and she consumed them ravenously at an outside picnic table. There was an ASA meeting in thirty minutes, she was killing time till the classrooms emptied out to the buses and the parking lot.

The smell of jasmine and myrrh reached her well before a lean shadow stepped into her light.

"Hey, cutie. You wanna drag?" Phae tucked her hands in her jeans and crossed an ankle behind her leg, looking like she'd stepped out of GQ and Vogue at the same time. Xia wiped her hand on her skirt.

"Like drag racing? I don't really drive much anymore." At all. She didn't touch cars. She didn't want to be a passenger, cargo, unconscious, dead in the trunk; none of it. Xia Qi was over the automotive experience.

"You could. Me and some buddies are gonna get together Friday night. Just some fun. No betting. Come with?"

'Is that legal?' was on the tip of her tongue before she bit it back.

"What time?"

"Eight. I could pick you up."

Xia was positive her mother would know. If not her mother, her grandmother or her aunt. Somebody would figure out that Xia was climbing into the souped-up coupe of a Webber Wild Girl and that would be the end. She wasn't ready for things to end, not when things were starting to go her way.

"Could we maybe meet somewhere? My parents have a thing about meeting my friends. They'd want you to come inside and talk about yourself. It'd be a job interview and a twelve-page background check."

"I'd do it if that's what they want."

"I-wha-you'd...for me?" Xia was squeezing the salt out of her bag of trail mix.

"You're easy peasy, sweet as pie. I'd do anything you ask. Just ask."

Just...okay.

"Meet my parents."

"Okay."

Xia gulped and tried to slow her racing heart. This girl, who Xia had been trying to ask out for a month, had asked her out first. Am I in a coma? Did I die on New Year's? The afterlife was pummeling her expectations into the ground. Her pulse was thudding away in her ears; her head hurt a little. She was happy, it just made her a little dizzy.

"I have no idea what just happened."

Phae hung her hands from her back pockets. She had on her 'I know something you don't know' smile that made Xia want to hide her face before she started to blush.

"I met your mom and dad at the hospital. Your mom keeps sending me cat videos on Facebook. No big thing."

Her jaw dropped.

"You're friends with my mom on Facebook?! I'm not even friends with my mom on Facebook. Well, okay, I am, because she'd murder me if I de-friended, but...you don't have to be her friend."

"I don't have to be yours. Or anybody's for that matter. I like you. I like your mom. She likes me. We should go on a family camping trip and sing Kumbaya around a campfire. Wild Girls do whatever they want, with whomever they want. I want do pretty much anything with you."

Xia clutched at the side of the bench she was sitting on. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Not to be alone, to get to say thank you; being Phaedra Barlowe's girl. That was it, here it was. So why was she shaking so hard?

Because it's one thing to be her girl where her friends can see, but what about everybody else?

Xia didn't have years of trauma behind her. She wasn't picked on much; she was invisible, its own kind of adolescent torture. She was used to not being seen. If Phae treated her like a queen one day and a stranger the next, she was pretty sure that'd would be it for her. All her years of guarded social interaction would go up in flames and it would hurt. Xia didn't want to hurt; broken bones were enough not to want a broken heart.

"I've been trying to think of a way to ask you to the V-Day dance since...since New Year's Eve."

Phaedra hummed in understanding and climbed the bench to sit on the picnic table.

"What closed the deal, the concussion or the exploding gas tank?"

"Probably the part where you kept showing up after you made sure I wasn't dead. The flowers. The apple juice. You bought me a neck pillow for my whiplash. Who does that?" Xia compressed the skin between her forefinger and thumb, fighting back the nausea churning in her stomach. "You know I like you, don't you?"

"You shouldn't lie, you're not good at it." A line of irritation appeared between her plucked brows. She locked her hands together between her knees.

"You act like I like you all the time, I'm just not sure you get what I mean. I'm not...I'm bad at being anything but alone. I'm not sad by myself, I don't miss people. You can't miss friends you didn't have. But..." She inhaled, trembling and hating it. "I got to be your friend and I wanted more of that. I wanted more than that. I wanted you. So I made up excuses to talk to you. They were dumb and obvious-I'm going to be sick if I think about it. Just know that I know I'm bad at lying to your face. I wanted you to like me or just get used to me."

"I've been trying to tell you, I am. I'm fine with it, I'm used to you. Stop trying. Stop."

"If I wasn't like this...like me, would you maybe go out with me?"

"No. No, there's...that's not what I'd want."

Xia sucked in a pained breath. It wasn't a whimper. She wouldn't call it that. It hurt like something else, sharper, a stalagmite to the stomach after a long vertical fall.

"Okay. Sure. Just thought I'd ask."

"I wouldn't like you any other way."

"You don't like me anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter."

"Man, you are bad at being with people. I'm saying, I don't want you to change. There's nothing wrong with you. I didn't save you because you're cute-though, since we're on the topic..." Phaedra looked her over from her dark brown hair to her rainbow Nikes and nodded in approval. "Hair, yes. Face, yes. Everything else, yes, yes, yes. Sorry, cutie, I don't risk life and limb for a pretty face. I did it because I could. I'd have done it even if was somebody else. Mom's an EMT, dad's a firefighter; saving people is literally in my blood."

"Oh." I'm an idiot and...kind of a stalker? High school was a nightmare.

"Don't be embarrassed." Phae looped an arm around Xia's shoulder. "You were covered in glass and blood when we pulled you out. Yeah, I had help, I don't do much on my own. I couldn't have gotten you out without at least three other people to jimmy the door."

"They didn't come to the hospital."

"Because I was going." She shrugged off Xia's surprise. "You'd just lost a fistfight with a Honda, how many people did you really want stuttering in your face?"

"Not that many."

"Exactly. So..." Phaedra scuffed her converse on the pebble sidewalk. "Did you only want to go out with me because of...the me-saving-you thing?"

"That's not it. That's the opposite of why." So not convincing. She sighed, scratched at her still-healing stitches. "You were nice. You came to see me, you kept coming to see me."

"That part, I did because you were cute." Ego saved. Phae crossed her arms, smug, and stupidly hot at the same time.

"Even with the bruises?"

"Mmhmm. Better once the swelling went down," she granted, reluctantly. "I remembered you from school and figured you could do with a little company."

"I don't need company."

"Tough tits, cutie. You're stuck with me." She leaned down and kissed Xia's cheek, soft and lingering, her breath warm on her neck. "Eight o'clock?"

"Eight o'clock."

Xia's eyes followed Phae till she disappeared into the parking lot and her car roared into the street.

---

Phaedra popped out of the driver's seat to help Xia into the car. Her parents were nowhere to be found. They'd changed their tune the instant they found out who Xia was going out with. 'Oh, her? She's fine, trustworthy. She'll take care of you.' Xia hadn't known what to make of that.

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"I can get in on my own."

Phae opened the passenger door anyway.

"I like looking out for you. It's-the last time I saw you in a car, you were scared out of your mind. Let me do this?"

Xia ducked her head and got inside. She wasn't shy, that was the wrong word for how Phaedra made her feel. Being near her was like being at the center of a quiet storm. Intense without words.

Phaedra had on her patterned cigarette pants over a muscle tee and fringe scarf. Her boots were shined instead of their usual scuff, tied in knots up to her skins. Her black leather jacket topped with rainbow-patterned shoulders completed the look. She should have been a walking disaster in that outfit. She made disaster look good.

There was a magenta envelope tapped to the dashboard, her name scribbled on the back. She took it since that's what it seemed to be there for, for her to find.

'Baby, you're a firework. The brightest thing I've ever seen. Be mine, Valentine?'

"That's terrible."

"Tré said exactly the same thing. But still." Phaedra shrugged, her full lips pulling into a grin. "I couldn't help it."

"Uh huh."

Xia kept staring at the girl driving instead of the road. The road was terrifying, all that oncoming traffic just feet away. Phae was safe, funny-sort of funny, anyway.

"Something on my face?"

Xia found herself with nothing to say when she went to reply. She raised her hands, mute.

"You okay? You want me to take you home?"

"So I can do some more homework and fall asleep early? No thanks." She rubbed her knees through her burgundy tights. "It's a little intimidating. You're really pretty and I'm... I never get to be this close to you."

"Except every time we talk, I hang all over you."

"Not that much."

"Come on. We've hugged, like, once."

"Once, when I was getting home from the hospital."

"I don't hug people, so once is the mother lode."

"I didn't know that."

"Having a million girlfriends doesn't make me touchy-feely."

"A million?"

"Not a million. Ju...okay, let's forget that. I'm going to screw this up if I keep talking about girlfriends. I like you. I like being close to you. I'm taking you with me to hang out so I can be close to you more than usual. Are my intentions totally clear? This is a date. You are my date."

They drove to the reservoir past the city limits. The club district they passed through was filled to bursting with college students visiting for the cheap drinks and underage kids sneaking in backdoors to jam at the 21 and overs. There was nothing for anybody to do around here, so they did everything.

Phaedra opened her door and offered her hand. This was a whole new world you couldn't see from the parking lot.

She met no less than seven girls in leather from Webber. Eight from South Hills. Twelve from Claremont. They were all greaser gearheads, though not all girls. There were dozens of boys with their waxed and polished toys talking trash at the starting lane, and plenty of greasers who were neither egging them on. Two races ran at a time in opposite directions. Co-ed always, no rules but to avoid blowing their babies to kingdom come playing chicken.

"Drag, not dumb," Phaedra had said. Xia didn't believe her till she jumped back into her ride to face off with a frat king from USC. A hatchet-faced math whiz in a studded coat held the flags and called the race.

"Ready...steady...GO!" The flags went swinging and away they went!

Frat king's corvette was a firefly-colored eldritch horror on wheels and his foot was made of leaden steel.

Phaedra didn't stand a chance, but she went down flying, the Camaro a blurred streak of black and white-a zebra on the savannah, galloping for its life in the dust and the wind.

Xia screamed with the other girls. The ones who hadn't introduced themselves but hadn't called her a dweeb to her face either. Luckily, she knew them from around school. They screamed, shouted, stubbed cigarettes on hella expensive paint jobs and punched the air like it could make Phaedra any faster.

Phae lost in a swerve of glory, screeching past the spectacled math whiz and his checkered flags. Frat king remained king, but Phaedra was nothing to sneeze at on the finish. The two clasped fists and broke off to their pit teams.

"All right, ladies?"

Mickey B. jumped on Phae's back. "You killed it, babe."

"Did, didn't I? You'd better beat him. Can't have his ego getting any bigger."

Mickey shimmied down Phaedra's spine, playing her shoulder blades like drums.

"Got it. Rab, we gotta talk to Coke Bottles over there." They skipped off to arrange another match up, for Mick versus Frat King, this time.

Tré and Phae just exchanged a low-five. They didn't much need words, those two.

Sable hugged her and patted her on the back. "Not too shabby, slowpoke."

"Shuddup. I don't see you making tracks."

Sable squeezed the taller girl's arm, her dark eyes going flinty in the industrial-strength floodlights illuminating the reservoir. "That a dare, Barlowe?"

"It is now."

"I see how it is." She inclined her head at the sulking blonde in the turtleneck. "Hey, Sad Sally, you in or nah?"

Stevie perked up at being summoned before trying to hide it. She tried to keep her slouch, only a smile gave her away. She spit on the ground and sauntered into the huddle made by Tré, Phaedra, Sable, and Xia. The party raged on around them without a care.

"Yeah, I'm in." With a fist bump to close the deal, Sable and Stevie ambled off, having a stilted chat about who should be on first and who should spot. Tré tailed them without a word, her eyeroll longsuffering in their wake. Xia and Phaedra were left alone.

Phaedra took Xia's hand and pulled her over to sit on the hood of another Wild Girl's car. Something pretty in blue. "What'd you think, cutie?"

Xia pretended to think it over. Drag racing was more terrifying than any movie had shown it to be-and more incredible. Her heart was still speeding down the proverbial fast lane. "I think you have to be crazy to do that. It's nuts. Who does that?"

"But am I hot? That's the question."

"Obviously hot." She gave her girlfriend (???) a long look. Sweaty, dusty, red and flushed as she was, nobody compared for Phae. She was the queen of Xia's stupid heart. "Too, too hot. Get me a drink before I pass out from your hotness." Phaedra sucked her teeth, grinning but playing cool.

"Bossy, you're so bossy. Get your own drink."

"I don't know where the drinks are." Xia fluttered her eyelashes. She might not have been stunning like Phae, but she had cuteness for days.

"You're the worst. That's not going to work on me next time."

"Of course it won't." Xia leaned back against the other girl's car and waited.

Relenting, Phaedra finally wandered off to get her a drink, grumbled about cute girls and how they were totally out to ruin her reputation.

"So, you're Phae's latest baby gay. How cute."

Xia blinked, confused and unsure if she was the one being addressed.

The other girl was about Xia's height, but she seemed bigger. She carried herself like an empress. She had the face for it, plush lips and arresting eyes under bold brows. Her hair was chestnut in a Dutch crown. She wore wool, not leather, had opted for flats.

"You should steer clear of her. She says she knows a good thing when she sees it, but she never sees it. Not once, not in anybody. So if you know what's good for you, you'll get out of the way before she runs you right down."

"Who are you? Do you go to our school?"

"I used to." The strange girl frowned, her eyes glistened and she looked angry about it. "You seem nice. Just get away from her before you regret knowing her. It's worse when you regret it." She shrugged, pulled on her hood and slouched off into the crush of bodies populating the reservoir.

Phae had a reputation for seeing a lot of different girls; she'd as much as confessed to that in the car. It was just...Xia didn't feel like just another girl. She felt like the only girl, and that was what she wanted to be. She didn't want to be notch on Phae's belt. Nobody deserved that; Xia knew she herself didn't.

They don't call her a bad girl because she volunteers on weekends. There were sides to the girl she liked that Xia hadn't seen. Not yet.

Not ever, she decided. She liked the dream. The dream couldn't hurt her by going unfulfilled.

By the time Phaedra returned bearing glass bottles of coke, her mind was made up.

"I want to go home," she told her.

Phaedra stopped in her tracks. "Wait, what?"

"Please. Right now, please."

Phae placed the bottles of coke in her car. "What happened?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm just stupid, I guess."

"That doesn't tell me anything," Phae shot back, but Xia refused to say another word.

They didn't talk again until they were pulling up outside Xia's house. Though the lights were out inside, the glare from the television shone through the sheer curtains.

Xia didn't wait to be let out.

Phaedra beat her palm on the wheel in a nervous tattoo. "Look, if you don't wanna hang out anymore, I'm cool with that, but I wanna know why. We were having fun, and then you just shut down on me. What did I do? What happened?"

Xia huffed, trying to be completely over this whole thing. This was a stupid crush and it was making her, no genius to start with, stupider as a result. She was better off alone.

"I guess I just met your girlfriend." Fit basketball jocks were not Xia's thing. Volleyball players with hair like yarn, yes. Jocks who talked a big game, no.

+++

Phaedra

Phaedra clicked her tongue, killing time. "Okay, so you met an imaginary person?"

"Forget it." Xia cut her eyes across the street at-Phae had no idea who she was glaring at. Could be Slenderman for all she cared. She got out of the car, locked it instinctively behind her.

"No way. You don't get to walk away with my heart, because you're too scared to have a fight."

Xia hissed, "Some of us like not having a criminal record. That must be really hard for you to beat."

"Wow, that's so uncalled for. You act like you're making the big sacrifice here, but you've got nothing to lose. You get me and I get you. That's fair, right? That's so fair."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What's it mean? It means you're insecure and compulsive. You're obsessive. You're way too introverted for most people. You have the worst time just saying what you mean instead of talking around it."

"As if I don't know that! You wanna spend a little longer talking about what you don't like about me. Sure, I'm up for that. Lay it on me."

"This is what I'm talking about. Why would I spend a month hanging around somebody who got on my nerves? Yeah, I'll skip the drumroll-I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that. I'm cutthroat, I'm a roughneck; I keep a roll of pennies in my glove compartment because I'll get jail time if cops catch me with brass knuckles. I'm trouble and I know how to get into some. I know how to stay out of it, too. I know how to make my problems disappear."

"Are you threatening me?"

"God, you're killing me, Xia. I'm dying right now. Look at me, dying, dollface. How can you do me like this?"

"Stop kidding around. Drop the lingo. Talk to me."

"If I wanted you gone, you'd have transferred schools by now. You'd be in Ass End of Nowhere, USA, repeating junior year and crying to your court-appointed therapist. I can do that. I've done stuff like that. I wouldn't do it to you."

Xia sat down heavily on the curb, her legs having turned leaden under her and knees gone weak. It must be something she ate, or didn't. They hadn't made it to dinner.

"Now, she gets it," Phae muttered under her breath. "I like you. You're not a trick or a joke or a bet. This has always been real. I just didn't know if it was something you wanted or if it was just gratitude getting in the way. Catching one-sided feelings hurts."

Xia sniffed and wiped her face. She reddened further when she realized she'd started to cry. Phaedra took off her scarf and offered it to her as a handkerchief. She hesitated.

"Nothing I can't wash off later."

Xia smiled a little and took it. Phaedra thought she should do more of that. Xia's smiles were small, timid things, like she wasn't quite sure she was being laughed at and wanted to be prepared. Did we do that to her? She couldn't remember ever having it out with the secretary of the Asian Student Association, but maybe she'd just forgotten. The other girl took her hand and tangled their fingers together in a warm, slightly sticky mess.

"Do you," Xia started and lost her nerve. She took a deep breath and tried again. "Go out with me-again, I mean. Something I want to do. Let's go do something."

"Like what?"

"There's a dance." Xia had mentioned it earlier; Phaedra had disregarded it at once. Just because she could go, didn't mean she went.

"I don't dance."

"I do. Do it for me. I helped organize it and pay for it-you even gave me two hundred dollars to kiss all the volleyball players for it."

Phaedra cringed. That was another plan gone to hell in an Easter basket.

"Dragging you out of the fire wasn't enough. You want my dignity, too? Give me a second, I think I can giftwrap that for you."

"You'll be the prettiest girl there. Nobody'll notice the boys either. You'll outlook both."

Phaedra had never cared about that.

"Weren't you just shaking in your boots over me? How'd you get so brave?"

"Almost dying changes a lot."

Who was Phae to argue with a statement like that? Why would she want to?

"Okay."

I'm so sprung.

---

Sable was doing a noisy job of gnawing on a block of Nicorette gum. Alayna was running the annual Smoke Cessation Barbecue Fundraiser and Sable wanted a prime seat at the raffle. Maybe, just maybe she'd finally ask the girl out and put the whole gang out of its unified misery.

Not. A. Chance.

Phae had never seen this many useless lesbians and bi chicks in her life. They were all hopeless, save for Lucia. Garvey almost had it together, barring that whole jonesing for the jock anti-Christ Ron Jensen deal. Useless lesbians and bi chicks on motorcycles. It's a traveling circus.

Jensen was a great athlete and terrible human being, just like every other high-functioning sociopath roaming the halls of Ellie Webber High. Phaedra couldn't even work up a good froth about the basketball team captain; he only got away with stuff because people who weren't terrified of him worshipped him. He was possessed with the spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte at five feet, six inches tall. He and his crew'd own the school the minute Phae, Tré, Luce, and Hunter drove into the sunset, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Not that that's my problem. Her problem had dark brown eyes, too much attitude and wanted to go to a stupid dance run by stupid people. Phaedra chewed at a toothpick she'd found in her glove compartment and tried to find a way out.

"Admin doesn't like my choice of date." She didn't have to explain.

"Admin can suck it." Sable was in no mood for administrative ball breaking. She was still stinging from that time a boys' hockey prick had snapped photos of her in the locker room and she'd gotten the fine for driving over his iPhone afterward.

"Let the church say amen. That's what I'm talking about."

Tempest Kennedy, junior and future stand-up comedian, ladies and gents. She's here all week.

Lucia lowered the book she'd been reading from above her head. It had made decent shade while the sun was at high noon, but it wasn't much use as the hours passed. The warmth emanating from the engine of her violet '71 Dodge Challenger made her want to nap instead of read.

She yawned, "The PTA warned that their exclusionary policies wouldn't be tolerated. I'll text Mum." She rolled onto her side to unlock her phone. Lucia's mom was a law professor first, a Wild Girl made good second. Beyond that, she was just a person who couldn't stand injustice.

Sable tapped the rubberized sole of her riding boots triple-time against the painted bumper of her '76 Firebird Trans Am . "Webber's about to make the evening news again. That hasn't happened for a while."

"It's been a month," Mickey reminded her, engrossed as she was in her belated obsession with Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

"Like I said, 'a while'. We're slipping."

Garvey hummed a contemplative note. She was suspended upside down from the hardtop of her moss green 1970 Ford Torino ; back on the hood, butt on the windshield, dingy Converse sneakers crossed over the roof. She could do this because this car was her baby. Anybody else that tried was liable to lose a limb.

"Girls have been bringing girls to the dance since the '80s," she finally remarked. "They can't've thought that was about to fly with us around."

"Old folks want what they want. There's no sussin' 'em out."

"Antebellum houses, polio, and segregation sounds about the size of it," Phaedra sniped, scooting down the windshield of her convertible with more care than anybody but her girls understood.

"When's the new skirt coming around," Sable prompted, more than ready to change the subject. This wasn't the one Phaedra would have picked.

Phae rubbed the back of her neck. "When she feels like it, I guess."

"Girlie's still got you wrapped around her pinkie. I never took you for the damsel-rescuing type. You hate damsels."

"I don't hate damsels, I just have a preference. Anyway, she's...I don't know, she's different than that. Even if she wasn't, I might like her anyway. I don't wanna talk about it." Her tone brooked no argument.

"Somebody's feeling territorial. Wonder what that's like, huh? Maybe I should have a talk with her." Sable off cigarettes was hell on a good mood. She was a prowling dark cloud with eyes to match.

"Don't mess with her," Phaedra warned, bracing her hands on the hood of her ragtop lest she get the urge to teach her friend some respect.

"Tell Stevie to back off Alayna and you've got a deal."

Mickey popped her gum. "Who the hell is Alayna? Are you dating an energy drink or a person?"

Lucia chipped in, "Sable's tall drink of sewage."

Sable jumped down to swing a steel-toed kick at the Challenger's grille. Lucia threw a bic pen at the other girl's face. "Try that again, Gilbert Grape. I dare you."

By the time Stevie finally roared up in her '69 Shelby Mustang, the air was long since thick.

Tempest didn't have the temperament for drawn out conflict. The moment the dirty blonde was out of her car, she explained, "These idiots are fighting over you hating Alayna. Work it out. Some of us have college apps to finish and could really use a hand." Her piece spoken, Tempe went back to buffing her nails, perched on the Tiffany blue tailfin of her '56 Montclair .

Her manicure matched the two-door coupe's high-gloss paintjob. Her golden brown skin made every color she wore come up roses. Phae wasn't nearly so lucky, but she loved every hue of every thread she put on day by day just the same.

Phaedra sat at attention when she spied Xia slouching out of the main building carting an armful of posters for the V-Day dance. Alayna got to her, too. She had to be on decorating and posting duty with that cargo.

Stevie was on her umpteenth rant about the evils of lusting after straight girls to no avail. Sable had tuned her out and hopped onto Luce's ride for a double-selfie. Those two never managed to stay mad at each other for long. Which would only piss Stevie off doubly; she and Sable held mutual grudges for weeks.

"And that's my cue to split. Don't scratch my car while you're murdering each other." Phae bounded out of the parking lot at high speed, determinedly ignoring the shouting match that broke out behind her. She loved all of them, she refused to pick a side.

"Need a hand, hot stuff?"

Xia looked up from the morass of streamers she was caught in outside the cafeteria. Alayna must have dumped extra on her at the Planning Committee meetup after school. She looked like she'd seen god when Phae offered her halve her load.

"Take everything. Burn it. I'll pretend I didn't know."

"Uh huh. What's Hu got you doing?"

"I've been drafted to help advertise for the dance. I didn't sign up for this."

Xia peeled a single three-foot poster from her stack and affixed it to the door of the caf with scotch tape. Phae took the initiative and put up the next one on the opposite door.

"I thought you liked all this V-Day junk."

"I like it 'cause it got me close to you. This is not romantic, this is manual labor. I didn't sign up for that."

Phae propped her chin on Xia's shoulder, wrapped her rangy arms around the other girl's soft middle and inhaled the scent of lemongrass in her hair. It would have been easier with twenty less posters and a fifty less tissue paper streamers, but Phaedra was adaptable. "We could make it romantic."

Xia laughed, leaning into her arms. Almost dropped everything. She gave Phaedra that unfathomable look she always did, as though Phaedra was playing a very long prank Xia was waiting to end. "You're not real. There's no way."

"Real as night and day, cutie." Phae tugged her backward to kiss her cheek. It didn't help that Xia was just about her height when she slouched. She'd have kissed her neck if she could easily reach.

Xia only giggled more. "How do you have any street cred left? You're basically a bunny rabbit."

"I'm no bunny. I can drop an asshole in five seconds flat. You do not want to catch me on the wrong side of the tracks."

"Scary," Xia giggled, sounding anything but afraid.

Phae kissed her ear, nibbled at her earlobe until Xia shuddered from head to toe, her breath stuttering.

"Y'know, you got a big mouth. I used to think you were quiet."

"I never had anybody to talk to."

"I've tickled the sleeping dragon, yeah?"

"Yup. Not so smart for a smart girl."

"It's not smart, anyway." Phae puffed against her denim-covered shoulder. "I'm captain of the team. If I don't make the grades, I don't play. I don't play, I don't get a scholarship. That's it. That's not smart, that's doing what you gotta do."

"Sounds smart to me."

Phae grinned into her jacket. "You're so stuck on me."

Xia crinkled her nose. "You're sticky."

With that parting shot, Xia broke free, skipping down the sidewalk, trailing streamers behind her and leaving Phaedra to carry pretty much everything else. "Come on, we've got a whole campus to paper with these things, and you still owe me a kiss."

"Owe you?! Lady, you owe me a hundred kisses. Two hundred, one for every dollar."

Xia shrugged. "You can't collect if you don't work. Sorry, I don't make the rules."

Phae followed in her wake, shaking her head and catching any horrid, florid decoration the other girl dropped. She was pathetically sprung on this underclassman and it felt good.

That was the moral of the story: when you got it right, romance felt good; and with the right girl, it felt great. Xia Qi was all kinds of right.

+++

Xia

Phaedra stepped out of her car in a black halter dress and heels. Her hair sat high in her signature pompadour, dagger-shaped earrings dangled from her ears, ruby studs dotting the cartilage. She was dressed to kill with tickets to ride. Xia felt her cheeks burn from grinning, and flushing, but she wasn't thinking about that or she'd never keep her balance in these heels. She'll probably try to carry me if I can't walk. Phae's white knight complex was becoming legendary at Webber.

"Going now, Ma. Love you."

Her mom grabbed her before she could protest to give her a monster of a hug. Phae stood on the top step of their porch wearing a self-satisfied look. Like she planned this herself. Xia wouldn't put it past her.

"I'll take good care of her, Mrs. Qi."

"I know," her ma said, sniffing between snapping pictures on her phone, "you already have."

Her mother might be the only person who loved Phae more than Xia. Phae wasn't just Xia's hero, she was her parents' hero, too.

Phaedra stepped forward to take Xia's hand and slipped a corsage on her wrist made of pink and violet peonies. They had a flower, now, and a song. Xia, who had had no one before, had a girlfriend and a best friend. She had people and maybe even love. It felt like magic.

Phae kissed the back of her fingers as she escorted her to the Camaro idling on the curb.

"Be my Valentine, beautiful?"

Xia squeezed her hand with all the happiness she'd never known she was missing.

"All year round."

+_+

If you go to the entry on Wikipedia, you'll get the comprehensive list of muscle cars I used for this story. Go now. Run, don't walk. Feast your eyes on the automotive pretty. It's pr0n for gearheads. All images included are public domain from Wikipedia entries. No copyright infringement is intended.

Thank you so much for reading. I'd love to know what you thought. Comments and votes are love, and you guys are awesome! (I just added the pictures to this story and I'm not sure if they take away from it. I'd love to hear what you think.) I'm considering expanding this into into a novel-length book. If that's something you'd be interested in, drop me a note!

If you want more queer high school shenanigans, check out A Dangerous Beat and Legally Black  on my profile, linked in the comments.