Free Lemon Reef by Robin Silverman Page B

debris thirty feet below the surface.
    The Sand Dollar Motel referred to in the article was the same motel that my parents had owned and run throughout my childhood. Del and I spent the summer before tenth grade going there to sunbathe and swim. Lemon Reef was located a hundred yards from the shore of the Sand Dollar, and we dove on it every day that summer.
    I put the paper down and watched the signs overhead, the veinal interstate and everything around it a wash of gray. The radio station Katie was listening to was called Golden Oldies. The song playing on the radio was “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. I had landed in a circuitry of both familiar and unfamiliar currents, vaguely and aversively recognizable to me. I twisted through them, my vision corrupted by the glare reflecting from the tinted car window. I eyed the flat, dreary landscape and remembered how all I had wanted from the time I was fourteen years old was to leave this place.

    *

    â€œWhere would you go?” Del had asked.
    It was the middle of the night. I was sleeping over, as I often did on weekends. We lay on her bed atop the covers, the rest of the house dark and quiet. The window above us was open, amplifying the sound of a car engine revving and people across the street arguing in Spanish.
    â€œCalifornia,” I said. “San Francisco, probably.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I pulled a pillow over my head to hide.
    She giggled, followed me under. “Why are you embarrassed?” Bringing her face closer to mine, “Tell me,” she said. “I tell you everything .”
    â€œThey do sex-change operations there.”
    Del was surprised. “Why would you want one?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    She just waited, resting her head on the pillow, her lifted brows and slight smile conveying a benign, thoughtful interest. I felt her light breathing on my ear, smelled her toothpaste-tinged breath and freshly shampooed hair. Suddenly risking it was easier than not.
    â€œThen I could marry you.”
    She hesitated, as if not sure she’d heard me correctly. Then she said, “I’m never getting married,” the implications of my confession falling to the wayside.
    I just nodded, eager to have the subject change if she so preferred. A few moments passed during which I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I certainly wasn’t going to repeat myself.
    Then Del got up, walked over to her bedroom door, and locked it. I watched disbelievingly, my heart beating staccato, as Del climbed back onto the bed and straddled my body.
    â€œI kinda thought you felt that way about me,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure.”
    I lay there looking up at her, my hands in surrender position, my stomach getting whiplash. “Is that weird?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Her eyes were set firmly on me, her fingers folded in with mine. “I’m a really good kisser. Do you want to see?”
    It was all I had wanted for months, and at the same time had not for one moment allowed myself to consider a real possibility. I simply couldn’t believe it was happening. It was November of our ninth-grade year. I had just turned fourteen, and I had never been kissed before. My stomach in plummets and halts, I managed to push out of my throat a sound something like uh-huh.
    Del pulled her near-dry hair to one side and pressed her lips against my lips—one soft, dry kiss. Then she waited a moment to check my reaction, seemed pleased by my apparently stunned expression. She kissed me again. This time her tongue skirted mine. I came undone, my hands tightening around hers, my breath quickening, my belly lifting, my panties dampening to soaked. More soft, slow kisses, more of her tongue to mine. Then our lips were tenderly opening and closing, tips to full tongues engaging, disengaging, reengaging. She spread her legs out behind her, pressed her full body against mine, and amped up the intensity.
    We continued this