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“Your family has a reputation to uphold,” her father says when they get to a red light, not looking from the road in front of him. “We can’t tolerate this kind of behavior.”“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Krista tells him. Her mother exhales loudly.“We’ve seen the posters in your room,” she says.“You always enjoyed Sailor Moon too much as a kid,” her father adds.“We think it may be the cheerleading,” her mother continues. She’s sitting straight up, her hands folded on her lap, as though any moment could be a photoshoot. “Being around all those half-naked girls can’t have done any good.”“But I’m not like that,” Krista insists.“Oh dear, she can't even say the word,” her mother sighs.The light turns green, and they drive on.--She doesn’t know what exactly she expected, but this isn’t it. Maybe she imagined a cold prison, or an abandoned mental institute, or something equally morbid. What she finds is completely different: a quaint, pink house with fake flowers planted in the perfectly mowed lawn.“Hello there!” a woman announces, dressed from head to toe in the same shade of pink as the house she’s standing in front of. “My name is Hitch Freudenberg, the founder of this camp. Come on in!”Krista shoots a glance at her parents. They ignore her in favor of following Hitch inside.They’re greeted by a girl around Krista’s age. “Sasha here will show you around,” Hitch explains.“Come on, let’s go to the dorm,” Sasha says. Her voice has a thick twang to it.Krista and Sasha walk together, each of them holding a suitcase, while Krista’s parents stay behind with Hitch. Krista clears her throat. “I shouldn’t be here.”“Oh, don’t say that! I can’t wait to be straight,” Sasha exclaims. She stops walking in front of a building, and Krista stops with her.“But I already am straight.”“The first step to getting over it is admitting you’re a homosexual. You’re the only one who still has to reach that, but to be fair, most of us got here yesterday.” Sasha smiles. “Now, let’s get you set up, all right?”When they go inside, Krista is immediately overwhelmed by the amount of pink. There are five beds, all of them vacant except for the bed in the center, occupied by a girl lying facedown.“A lot of faith is given to us by allowing the girls to share a room, so no inappropriate behavior is allowed,” Sasha says while setting Krista’s suitcase on the bed at the far left.“Meaning no fucking,” the girl says, lifting her head up to shoot a smirk at them.“That’s Ymir, just ignore her,” Sasha tells Krista.Krista stares at Ymir, who is forcing herself into a sitting position. She has dark skin and freckles. She’s wearing pants and a wifebeater and, as far as Krista can tell, no bra. “That hurt,” she says mockingly.Sasha rolls her eyes and grabs Krista’s arm, seemingly unaware of how she was blushing. “Come on, the first group meeting is starting in a minute.”Ymir whistles. “Careful where you touch her, we don’t want you getting kicked out for any ‘inappropriate behavior.’”Sasha drags Krista away without further confrontation.--Hitch claps her hands together once everyone is assembled in the meeting room, sitting in a circle. “Come on, everyone, let’s formally introduce ourselves!”The boy sitting on her left clears his throat. “I’m Reiner, I’m a varsity football player, and I’m a homosexual.”A tall, sweaty boy sitting next to him goes next. “I’m Bertolt, I’m Jewish, and I’m a homosexual.”It goes on the same: Annie, softball player, homosexual; Eren, debate club leader, homosexual; Mikasa, fencer, homosexual; Sasha, farmer, homosexual; Jean, soccer player, homosexual; Connie, mathlete, homosexual.“We’ve met,” Ymir winks and Hitch glares at her. “I’m Ymir. I like girls a lot.”Hitch sighs. “Now it’s your turn, Krista.”“But I’m not a homosexual,” Krista argues weakly. Jean lets out an exaggerated groan and Eren elbows him in the gut.“Your parents and friends all agree that’s not the case,” Hitch says gently. “They said you eat tofu and record every episode of The Ellen Show.”Sasha nods understandingly.“That means nothing, though! I’m a cheerleader,” Krista begs.Ymir whistles. “I wish I came up with that.”“What do you mean?”“Think of the tits bouncing in the air…” Ymir sighs dreamily. Mikasa makes a sound of agreement.Hitch is about to tell her off when Krista blushes. “Those kinds of thoughts are completely normal!”Annie rolls her eyes. “Are you sure about that?”Ymir leans in. “What do you think about when you touch yourself? Football players like Reiner over there, or sticking your head under those short skirts and—”“Ymir, that’s enough!” Hitch demands. Ymir puts her hands up in surrender.“Everyone thinks that way about girls,” Krista whispers.“I beg to differ,” Connie mumbles to Jean.“That’s different, you’re…” she trails off.“Not interested in girls? As in, you are?” Ymir leans in closely, and Krista thinks that her eyes are the same shade of brown as her hair, and if they stayed still long enough she could count the number freckles on her nose, cheeks, shoulders—“Oh my god,” she whispers. “I’m a homosexual.”Hitch leans back in satisfaction while Ymir pats Krista’s shoulder comfortingly. Their faces are still only a foot away from eat other, and when Ymir breathes, Krista swears she can taste coffee on her breath.--After the meeting they eat lunch. Krista sits down with Sasha, who shovels food down her throat as though she’s starved, and Connie, who passes his plate along to Sasha.“I’m on a diet,” he explains. “I need to get used to the heterosexual lifestyle.”Ymir plops down between him and Krista, who’s staring at her food rather than eating it. “And what’s your issue with this gourmet meal?”“There’s meat in here,” Krista says. Her voice sounds stale, very much like the voice of a girl who found out ten minutes ago that the world is an illusion and we’re all going to die eventually.Ymir’s eyes sparkle. “I bet there are other things you’d like to be eating, huh?”Connie groans and Sasha doesn’t bother to acknowledge her. Krista, on the other hand, breaks out of her daze and blushes, whipping around to face Ymir.This only further encourages her. “Chicken breasts aren’t the ones you want to put in your mouth, if you get what I’m saying.”“Oh my god, make her stop.” Connie puts his head in his hands.“Not my fault you like the big sausage,” Ymir cackles.Sasha spits out the piece of salami she was eating. “I’m going to vomit,” she whimpers.Mikasa, sitting the next table over, reaches over Connie to give Sasha her bread. Sasha looks as though she has seen an angel.There’s some strange grace in the way Sasha eats, and Krista finds herself mesmerized by it. Mikasa evidently feels the same, with how she keeps looking over her shoulder to sneak glances at Sasha. There’s something there, Krista thinks; something in the way the seemingly stoic Mikasa has her attention obviously captured.“I’m going back to the room,” Krista says, her voice weak.Ymir stands up. “I’ll come.” Sasha opens her mouth to argue and Mikasa hands her another slice of bread.“They’re going to fuck,” Ymir says conversationally while they walk to the room.“What?” Krista blushes at the other girl’s frankness.Ymir rolls her eyes. “Come on, even you must’ve noticed it. I’ll bet that tonight will end with Mikasa giving Sasha something else to eat.”“Don’t say things like that,” Krista mumbles.“What can I say, I like having four meals in my day.” Ymir smirks at the strained noise Krista makes. “And what about you?”“What do you mean?”“What gets you off?”Krista blinks rapidly, her mouth flopping wordlessly. “I-I don’t do anything like that. My family’s Catholic.”“Obviously, if they send you to this hellhole,” Ymir snarks, but her voice lacks the bite from before.“It’s not that bad. They’re looking out for us,” Krista defends.“If they really cared they’d accept us for how we are.”Krista touches her arm and notices how she flinches at the caress. “They want what’s best.”“And what if what’s best for me is fucking girls?” Ymir leans in like she did earlier. Her breath is softer now, less bitter from the coffee she must’ve had in the morning. “What if I’m the most happy with my head between some chick’s legs?”“That can change,” Krista assures her quietly.Ymir laughs bitterly. “No, it can’t. You just have to learn not to get caught.”They walk in silence for a minute. The entire building is the same shade of pink, and when she blinks, she can feel it burning her retinas.When they get back to the room, Ymir lies facedown on her bed like she did when Krista first saw her. Krista checks the clock. 2 in the afternoon. She lies down on her own bed and stares at the ceiling, letting her thoughts run wild.“Eyes,” she says finally.Ymir groans questioningly into her comforter.“You asked me what…I like in girls,” Krista paraphrases. “I like their eyes. When they’re wearing eyeliner, or mascara, or nothing—it doesn’t matter. I like eye contact, and I like winking.” Again, she pauses. “I like brown eyes.”There’s nothing but silence, yet she knows that if she looked over, Krista would meet Ymir’s gaze.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
True Directions is nothing like home. Krista realizes this when she wakes up in the middle of the night to one of the other girls—the softball player, Annie, who’s intimidating and beautiful and intimidatingly beautiful—rummaging through her bags.
“Um,” Krista starts, then hesitates. Annie doesn’t bother to look up. “What are you doing?”
“I’m out of tampons,” Annie states simply.
Krista blinks. Her mouth opens and closes, flopping as she tries to figure out how to answer.
A groan comes from the other side of the room. “Either be quiet or wait ‘til morning,” Sasha mumbles into her pillow.
“I’ve been with enough girls to know that periods don’t just stop overnight,” Annie shoots back.
“You know, you can’t just start going through someone’s stuff,” Krista interrupts, her face flushing at Annie’s bluntness.
Now Annie looks up. “What, are you hiding a vibrator or something?”
Krista’s blush thickens and she sputters, trying to formulate a sensible response, when someone snorts. “I doubt princess has ever had anything besides her own fingers down there.” The voice is Ymir’s, strong and steady even though she just woke up.
“Can we not discuss this?” Krista asks weakly.
“I mean, you’re the one who thought she liked dick a few hours ago—”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” comes Mikasa’s deadpan voice, cutting through Ymir’s with no remorse.
The room is silent again. Annie finds Krista’s pads and takes them, walking off to the bathroom. Krista wonders if this is what having sisters is like and decides, no, True Directions isn’t like home at all.
--
“Deep down in all of you is a latent heterosexual,” Hitch states at the second group meeting. The sun is shining, the grass is green, and they’re inside; Krista zones out, staring through the window.
Reiner is sitting next to her. He looks like he also would rather be anywhere else, his leg bouncing up and down so fast it shakes the ground, and when his wandering gaze meets Krista’s, he rolls his eyes.
“You need to embrace the certain characteristics programmed into you when God made you the gender you were born in,” Hitch continues, not noticing the distracted teens. “Today, my brother Marlo will be teaching the men how to be manly, while I will show my fellow women how to be ladylike.”
Annie and Mikasa share an exasperated look while Sasha, Bertolt, and Connie rapidly take notes. Marlo, Krista thinks, looks nothing like Hitch. He’s standing ramrod straight and he looks ready to take down an entire army on his own and she’s somehow glad that she’s stuck with Hitch instead.
“This is so exciting,” Sasha whispers to Mikasa as Hitch motions for the girls to follow her out.
“I don’t see how,” Mikasa mumbles back.
“If you like girls enough to be sent here, then what’s hard about learning how to be one?” Ymir forces herself into their conversation.
“I like girls for their vaginas, not for how well they vacuum,” Mikasa adds dryly.
Krista watches as Sasha’s cheeks redden. “You aren’t supposed to like girls that way at all,” she says.
Mikasa stares at her, but Sasha refuses to make eye contact. “Well,” she says finally, “that’s why I’m here.”
Ymir raises an eyebrow at Krista but she, like Sasha, keeps looking forward.
“We’re here!” Hitch announces, breaking through the tension that had developed among the campers.
The room that she lead them to is entirely blue and pink, much like the rest of the building. There are six stations, all of them set up with the same things: a makeup set, a sewing kit, cloth, and a vacuum. Mikasa looks decidedly unamused.
“We’ll be starting with the vacuums,” Hitch decides, setting herself up in the first station. Krista reluctantly follows suit.
She’s already well into it by the time she hears someone humming behind her shoulder. She turns around, confused, to see Ymir, standing over her like a guardian angel.
“You missed a spot,” she says, her tone mocking and definitely unlike that of a guardian angel.
“And why aren’t you vacuuming yourself?” Hitch snaps.
Ymir shrugs. “Who says I can’t hire a maid?”
“You don’t have the money.”
“I’ll get a sugar daddy.”
Hitch makes a strained noise deep in her throat. “No man will want to marry you unless you learn how to be a lady, so I suggest you pick it up while you still can.” She shoves her own vacuum into Ymir’s arms.
Ymir sighs and settles down into Hitch’s former spot, next to Krista. “Good thing I’m not interested in marrying a man, then,” she mutters. Krista vacuums the same spot until there’s not a spec of dust left.
--
After they vacuum, they make a wedding dress.
Krista was chosen as the model—perhaps because she has the most feminine build, perhaps because she was the least reluctant, perhaps because she is the smallest and requires the least amount of fabric. Sasha has a measuring tape around her neck and pins in her mouth while Mikasa holds the dress together alone, since Annie has yet to return from running off to change her pad ten minutes ago, Hitch left to go find her two minutes ago, and Ymir is lying on the ground while Hitch is gone.
“Get up and help,” Mikasa orders.
Ymir rolls her eyes, but pulls herself off the floor because Mikasa is scary and has access to sharp objects.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asks, fitting herself between the other two girls and throwing her arms over their shoulders.
Mikasa raises her eyebrows. “Ask Sasha, she’s the only one here who can sew.”
Ymir’s eyes run over Krista’s body until they rest on her breasts. “I think there needs to be a little more support,” she says, cupping her own chest. Krista turns the same artificial pink as the room.
“Working on it,” Sasha mumbles, shrugging Ymir’s arm off her shoulder and reaching for one of the pins between her lips.
“Careful,” Hitch warns as she returns with an unwilling Annie hanging off her arm.
“I know, I got it,” Sasha says flippantly. She grips the pieces of cloth that Mikasa is holding, their hands touching for a moment before Mikasa takes hers away. Mikasa leans across Ymir to slide the measuring tape off Sasha’s shoulders, watching it weave through her hair, letting it fall to the ground when Hitch coughs pointedly.
“I think we can move on to the next part, now,” Hitch says, sending a disappointed look to her model student.
“Should I get out of this dress?” Krista asks. She winces when a still-distracted Sasha brushes her skin with the sewing needle.
Hitch waves her hand flippantly. “It’s hideous anyway, take it off. We’re doing makeovers.”
Ymir lets out a mouthful of air in some sort of cross between a laugh and a cry of pain. Sasha, forced out of her reverie, makes a noise of indignance at Hitch’s insult, Mikasa looks ready to burn down the building with herself in it, and Annie stands there with a bored expression. Krista just hopes that Sasha doesn’t poke her eye out with a mascara wand.
--
Sasha does not, in fact, poke her eye out with a mascara wand. She stares at it like she has never seen one in her life—which is a distinct possibility—but she refuses to even touch it, as though scared it would possess her.
“Sasha,” Hitch warns impatiently, “a proper lady knows how to put on proper make up.”
“I don’t see why eyeliner doesn’t count,” Ymir says in a bored tone, twirling a used eyeliner stick between her fingers.
“Because only hussies wear eyeliner,” Hitch snaps. She eyes the stick for emphasis.
Ymir bats a perfectly lined eye. “I don’t see your point.”
Krista sighs, applying a pink lip gloss. She looks at Ymir through the mirror they’re crowded around and studies the brown of her eyes. They’re framed, of course, by the aforementioned eyeliner, but it’s not just that. The far corners of them turn up while the close ones turn down, slanted in a way that makes her look like she’s perpetually scheming something. When Krista looks closely enough, she thinks she can see some freckles in the iris—a deep brown, almost the same color, but still there. She’s blushing, probably, and she doesn’t notice she’s staring until the reflection of Ymir’s eyes meets her own.
“Here,” Ymir says, reaching over to grab Krista’s chin. “Stay still. Also, close your eyes.”
“Hm?” Krista hums distractedly while following directions.
She feels a pressure against her eyelids and finches away, but Ymir’s hand keeps her where she is. Ymir makes a disapproving noise and wipes a damp finger against where Krista’s movement had probably smudged her work, and Krista really, really hopes that Ymir isn’t using her saliva as a makeup remover.
“Are you done?” she murmurs after a moment, once the pressure had disappeared.
“Sure,” Ymir says, her voice quieter than usual.
Krista opens her eyes and looks back in the mirror. She doesn’t think she looks much different from before, but somehow, she feels different. She can tell Ymir is staring at her, but she doesn’t make eye contact. Hitch is probably teaching Sasha how to apply mascara, Mikasa is probably watching them like a hawk, and Annie is probably God knows where doing God knows what. Now, Krista relaxes her body against Ymir’s and she breaths.
--
At the end of the day, everyone is gathered around for their third meeting.
“You all need a partner. It doesn’t matter the gender, in this particular exercise,” Hitch says.
Connie quickly finds his place with Sasha, and Mikasa with Eren. Bertolt partners with Reiner, Jean goes with Annie, and when Krista blinks, she and Ymir are the only ones left.
“Howdy, partner,” Ymir says in a forced Southern drawl, and Krista forces herself to hold back a giggle.
“Each group will be given a deck of cards with pictures on them. One of you will show the cards, while the other will explain what’s going on,” Hitch says as she administers the decks.
The partners spread out, with Ymir and Krista going outside. “Do you want to start, or should I?” Krista asks.
Ymir shrugs. “Whatever you want, princess.”
Krista coughs and opens the deck. She shows the first card, a cartoon of a woman making dinner for her husband, and Ymir pretends to scrutinize it carefully.
“The girl sleeps around,” she analyzes.
Krista blinks, turning the card around to face herself again. The picture has not mysteriously changed. “How did you come to that conclusion?” she asks, her voice wary.
“Well,” Ymir starts, encouraged. “You can see a black lace bra peeking out from under her apron. No one wears a black lace bra unless it’s to impress someone else, and hell if she’s trying to impress some dumbass who makes her wear an apron.”
“This is supposed to represent a happy, normal marriage,” Krista argues.
“I don’t see anything happy or normal,” Ymir says.
“Well, in normal relationships, a wife will cook for her husband. And when relationships are normal, people are happy,” Krista deduces.
Ymir rolls her eyes. “You don’t actually believe any of that bullshit, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“You’re such a fucking cheerleader,” Ymir says emotionlessly.
Krista sits up straighter and pretends not to feel a sting in her chest at the words. “Next picture,” she says, and they go on.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There’s no reason for Krista to be gay. She scans her memory as far back as she can remember, but despite her troubles, nothing comes up as particularly queer.
“You can keep thinking of your root while we go around, then,” Hitch suggests.
The person directly to her right, Bertolt, scratches his neck. “All the boys in the synagogue would always, uh, fool around. It stuck.”
“I play softball,” Annie says from next to him. It’s answer enough.
No one else seems to come up with anything: Mikasa mutters something about the phallic undertones of fencing, Reiner suggests the temptation of locker rooms, Sasha mentions her former all-girls school. There’s nothing special about any of the roots that would explain what went wrong in them.
“Great job, everyone! Remember, family therapy is in two days, so you have to figure it out by then” Hitch announces when they go full circle. Krista’s hand clenches around her skirt and she forces a saccharine smile.
--
Ymir’s hands are under her shirt when Krista’ walking into their quarters. She pulls off a bra and throws it across the room, letting out a sigh. “Finally free.”
Sasha groans and picks up the bra, which landed next to her bed. “Get this away from me, it might be contaminated.”
“What, don’t you want to sniff my panties while you touch yourself?” Ymir taunts.
In lieu of a response, Sasha throws the bra back. Mikasa, who had been standing behind Krista, nudges her inside. Krista blushes and mumbles an apology. She keeps watching as Mikasa goes to sit on Sasha’s bed rather than her own, silently accepted in as Sasha moves over to make room for her. Forcing herself to look away, Krista walks to her dresser, grabs a nightgown, and scampers out.
“I’m going to change,” she announces to no one in particular.
The nightgown feels heavy when she puts it on. The bathroom smells like strawberry, or lavender, or whatever those Bath and Bodyworks sprays advertise themselves as. She tries to focus on that and presses her head against the stall door. It’s cold, like a reality check.
There’s a hallway between the bathroom and the sleeping quarters. Instead of going back right away, Krista goes the other direction. She’s not exactly sure what’s down there; the boys’ room is somewhere, she knows, but nothing more.
At the end of the hallway, there’s a room. All the lights are turned off. It must be an office: there’s a desk, a notepad, and what looks to be an old typewriter. She leans against the wall and takes a deep breath. Her day clothes drop to the floor as she presses her hand against her stomach, the other one tugging up the bottom of her pajamas.
She hears a gasp that isn’t her own. Her hand quickly removes itself and she scans the room for the perpetrator. There seems to be a shuffling coming from underneath the desk, so she tiptoes towards it and leans over.
Her initial reaction is to scream.
“Oh my God, shut up,” whispers one of the boys—Jean, she recognizes—as he tries to disentangle his limbs from the other boy. Eren frantically shoves him off.
“Stop fucking screaming!” he yells now, but Krista can’t force her mouth shut.
Hitch comes rushing in, looking as though she was halfway through getting ready for bed. “What’s going on?” she demands, her eyes scanning the room and landing on a hysterical Krista standing over a dishevelled Jean and Eren.
“Look, it’s not what it looks like, alright,” Jean promises while buttoning his shirt up.
“We were fighting. Nothing else.”
“I saw them—they were, his hands were down—” Krista blabbers, her hands shaking as she tried to demonstrate what exactly Eren’s were doing.
The boys makes matching noises of refusal, but Hitch clearly isn’t fooled. “That’s enough!” she says.
Krista backs away, still shaking. Hitch’s attention is solely on Jean and Eren, who look resigned and betrayed, and Krista makes a run for it.
She tells the others what happened, and no one seems particularly surprised. Annie, in fact, looks vaguely smug, while Sasha frowns and gives her a small handful of coins. “Wait a second, you fucking squealed on them?” Ymir asks.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Krista admits. “I was nervous, and what they were doing is against the rules, anyway.”
It’s quiet in the room, besides the cling of coins as Annie goes to put her earnings away.
“So, are we going to eavesdrop or what?” she asks eventually.
--
The initiator of any same-sex activity is required to leave camp, and the receiver has to spend a week in the doghouse: which is, to everyone’s surprise, an actual doghouse, and barely big enough to fit a normally sized teenager. Each of them argued that the other started it, but in the end, Jean is the taller and ganglier one.
He doesn’t get an official leaving ceremony. Krista can’t bring herself to make eye contact when he says goodbye to the others.
“This is why you can’t allow the temptation to take over you,” Hitch lectures somberly during breakfast the next morning.
Ymir casts a quick glance to Krista’s table. She’s sitting alone.
“I can’t believe you actually snitched,” Connie mumbles in what sounds like disgust.
“It was the right thing to do,” Krista defends herself.
To her surprise, it’s Mikasa who whips around in her seat to bring them face to face. “Do you actually think this is going to work?” she asks, her normally monotonous voice trembling. “We are who we are, and no summer camp is going to change that. It isn’t about learning to be straight, it’s about learning not to get caught, and sticking up for people when they’re going through the same hell as you are.”
Sasha rests her hand on Mikasa’s arm. “Mikasa…”
Mikasa jerks away and shoves her plate in Sasha’s direction. “I’m not hungry.” She storms off, with Sasha’s gaze trailing after her all the way out. Sasha doesn’t even look at the food.
Krista turns around to face her table again, folding into herself. The eggs taste bland and powdered. She forces it down her throat anyway.
--
The meeting is awkward. Hitch already lectured them that morning, and she clearly doesn’t want to bring it up again. “Your parents are visiting tomorrow. I would like for you all to have found your roots by then,” she encourages tersely.
No one responds. Hitch scans the crowd, but everyone is looking away from her. She sighs. “Get in your groups from last time.”
“What if my partner isn’t here?” Annie asks, and Hitch tenses up.
“Join Mikasa. Hers is gone, too.”
Annie shrugs and goes to stand with Mikasa, who looks back to her normal self. Ymir rests her hand on Krista’s shoulder and pulls her away, which she almost protests, until she realizes all of the groups are going off.
They go outside. It’s bright and sunny out, so Ymir lies down on the artificially green grass.
Krista clears her throat. Ymir gestures for her to sit down, and tentatively, she does. “Are you angry with me, too?”
The only response is a hum. Krista runs her hands through the grass, gently ripping out a few blades and sprinkling them on her legs. After a minute, Ymir turns to face her. “I think that was stupid as fuck, and you probably lost the trust of everyone here, but Ackerman chewed you out enough for the rest of us.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Krista repeats quietly.
Ymir groans and sits up. “Look, are you going to keep up this woe-is-me, everyone-hates-me routine or are you planning on actually finding your alleged ‘root?’”
“Well, what’s yours?”
“Single mom. Apparently, I’m trying to make up for the lack of father figure. She can barely scrape up enough money for us to eat some nights, yet when it comes to not having a dyke for a daughter, suddenly the cash comes pouring,” Ymir says, a mocking kind of bitterness in her voice that Krista hadn’t expected.
A gust of wind blows the grass off Krista’s legs, leaving them bare. She and Ymir stare together at the loss. “Hitch told me to try writing a cheer to come up with something, but that isn’t working,” she murmurs.
“Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks,” Ymir suggests dryly.
Krista gapes at her, and she falls back down cackling. Hesitantly, Krista lets a giggle slip out, and she looks down to Ymir smiling fondly back up at her.
--
Family therapy is a mess, like just about everyone had anticipated.
“I always spent too much time checking out the other boys in the locker room,” Reiner confesses to his parents.
“Oh, honey,” his mom whispers, patting him on the back. His father dabs at his eyes with a tissue.
Repeatedly, Krista finds her gaze drifting towards Ymir and her mother. The two look almost scarily similar, right down to their postures, though Ymir’s mom keeps nudging her daughter to keep her legs closed.
“My mother’s never really around,” Krista says when it’s her turn. “She has a powerful position in work, and maybe that gave me the wrong idea of the role of men and women in the household.” She feels rather than sees her parents tense at her words, while Hitch claps her hands together in apparent glee.
“Oh, of course! A part of you wants to be domineering like your mother, and you translated that want into one for the submission of other women,” she diagnoses.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘domineering,’” Mrs. Lenz argues.
Rather than allowing Hitch to respond, Ymir’s mother lets out a loud groan. “This is bullshit.”
“Mom,” Ymir pleads, her voice sounding more meek than Krista has ever heard it.
Her mom doesn’t even recognize the interjection. “Your parents’ jobs does nothing to make you a queer. And locker rooms?” she snorts. “We’ve all had to change in them, doesn’t mean we all get fucking hard from it.”
Reiner leans back into his seat, looking as though he’s trying to disappear. “Excuse me, miss,” Hitch starts, her voice steely.
Now, Ymir’s mother whips around to face her. “I’m paying you a few months’ salary for this. I expect to see results, not some feely Freudian shit.” She stands up, ripping her arm away when Ymir grabs onto it. “No daughter of mine is going to be a carpet muncher.” With nothing more, she walks out.
For a moment, no one speaks. Ymir looks beaten and lonely, staring blankly at the floor, with only empty space surrounding her. Finally, Sasha whispers “Did she just say carpet muncher?” and the spell is broken.
Hitch clears her throat. “Well, let’s move on. There’s always one nonbeliever.” She nods to Annie, surrounded by parents who look as steely as her, and they keep going.
When the meeting’s ending, Krista’s parents pull her aside, obviously worried after Ymir’s mother’s outbreak. “We hope you understand that if you can’t get over this, we can’t allow you back,” her father says.
Krista gapes. At her expression, Mrs. Lenz continues. “We just can’t bring ourselves to support such an unhealthy lifestyle. It would be a grave disappointment, and we do love you very much, but asking us to take care of you when you act so self destructively would be impossible.”
There’s no one else in the hallway besides them, and Krista thinks she can hear her heartbeat reverberate. “Yes, I understand,” she says quietly.
Her parents walk away without another word. Krista stands alone, swaying on shaky legs, until the others start filing out. After it seems like everyone left, she walks back in the room. Ymir’s still sitting where she had been. She doesn’t look up.
“Are you alright?” Krista asks, standing in front of her.
“Sit down with me,” Ymir says in place of a response. Cautiously, Krista does as suggested, and Ymir puts her head on her shoulder.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Krista promises. She tangles her fingers through Ymir’s hair and massages carefully, the way her nanny used to when she was a sickly child. Ymir breathes harshly and damply on her neck.
We can’t allow you back rings through her mind, and her hand pauses its ministrations. It picks back up slowly, with the image of Ymir’s nearly identical mother storming off, right after insulting her daughter in front of everyone. Krista removes her hand and presses it against Ymir’s cheek, forcing her face up.
Ymir lifts her own hand and folds their fingers together. “It’s about not getting caught,” she whispers like a mantra.
“Yeah,” Krista agrees, and they lean in.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s different, somehow, without Jean around. Not that Krista ever spoke to him to begin with—her only exposure to the boys is when Sasha brings Connie to their dorm from time to time. They live in different worlds, almost. Krista doesn’t understand how Hitch expects her to learn how to be heterosexual even though she sleeps in a room full of girls every night.
When Eren is let out of the doghouse, he refuses to even look at Krista. Mikasa sends her death glares for an entire three days.
“I think I did the wrong thing,” she tells Ymir.
“Hm?” Ymir asks, her head resting on Krista’s chest. She nuzzles her nose against the curve of Krista’s breast.
It’s cold out. The stars are shaking in the sky, as though they’re trying to warm themselves, too. Krista sits up, knocking Ymir off of her. “I mean, with telling on Jean and Eren.”
“Yeah, well, duh,” Ymir affirms. “That was kind of a dick move.” She moves to sit up, groaning a bit as the muscles in her back stretch. “Fuck, what time is it?”
Late, Krista knows. It’s probably almost curfew, and they should rush inside before Hitch does a spot check, but the wind is rustling her hair and she likes the feeling of Ymir’s breath against her neck. Her fingers trail underneath Ymir’s shirt in lieu of a response.
--
Krista loses her virginity approximately one week and three days after narking on Jean and Eren for doing the same. It’s everything she never allowed herself to hope for, and she finds she can’t look as Ymir’s fingers without blushing.
--
In order to teach them how heterosexuals act in relationships, Hitch shows them movies. “Our next step is to demystify the opposite sex, and what better way to do it than by showing you how normal relationships work? You were all able to rediscover your gender identity in step two, so now you just need to be able to understand how it fits in with the gender of your spouse,” she explains.
“Spouse? So we’re getting married, now?” Annie mumbles. Hitch graciously ignores her.
The movies look like they came from the same package as the cards she had given them in the second step. There are women cooking, men fixing cars, and fake intercourse with forced groans from the man and no sound from the woman. “This is your next step,” Hitch tells them as the man in the video lets out a strangled scream.
All heads in the room swerve to face her. “You mean, we’re having sex?” Sasha asks tentatively, looking horrified.
Hitch gasps at the suggestion. “Of course not! No respectable woman puts out before marriage! You’ll just be simulating the occurrence, so you understand why it is pleasurable.”
“Look, lady, I already know that sex feels good, all right?” Ymir starts, and Krista pointedly looks anywhere else. “But that doesn’t change the fact that vaginas turn me on a hell of a lot more than any penis ever will—”
The man yells that he’s coming, he’s coming, and Hitch clicks the video off before he can finish. “The next time you say anything like that again, you have the same fate as Jean before you,” she warns. Eren’s fists tighten almost imperceptibly.
For once, Ymir doesn’t fight back. She slumps into her seat and stays quiet as Hitch turns the movie back on. Her expression remains stony until the scene ends, the camera cuts to a different man playing football, and Krista touches her hand.
--
Mikasa pulls Krista aside during lunch. “You held hands with Ymir during the movie,” she accuses.
“No, I didn’t,” Krista argues.
“Yes you did. I saw you.”
The nearest doorway would lead them to the cafeteria, and as much as Krista wanted escape, she’d rather have this discussion without the entire rest of the program in hearing distance. “I was just, you know. Comforting her,” she explains.
Of course, Mikasa doesn’t bother to humor her blatant excuse. “Have you two had sex yet?” she asks.
The world is going to end. Mikasa will tell Hitch on her as revenge for what she did to Eren, she’ll get booted out, her parents will never accept her and the world will just collapse around her, a lowly street urchin without so much as a complete high school education. “Of course not,” she insists, but her voice sounds weak even to herself and she knows she gave herself away. Mikasa just waits. She sighs. “Well, once. Yesterday.”
“Where?” Mikasa asks, sounding invested. Krista worries if there are security cameras implanted anywhere.
“In the office,” Krista says. She doesn’t bother saying which office; there’s only one with a precedence.
She had expected Mikasa to be angry, or vengeful, or any of the other things Mikasa could possibly be. She most definitely did not expect Mikasa to look around nervously and ask, “How did it go?”
Maybe the world is ending, after all. “Um, what do you mean by that?”
Despite that glance around the hallway, Mikasa looks the same as she does always. Krista doesn’t know whether that should worry her. “I know that it was your first time. But it was fine? Nothing went wrong? What exactly did you do?”
The wheels in Krista’s head are turning. “Does this have to do with Sasha?” she asks, and she knows she hit the bullseye when Mikasa tenses up completely.
“That isn’t important. Answer my question,” she commands.
Krista feels like her entire body is blushing. She clears her throat and shifts her full weight from foot to foot. “It was, uh, good. Really good, I mean. I liked it?” she starts, then cuts herself off, shoving her face into her hands.
“And?” Mikasa continues.
“And nothing went wrong. It was all incredible. Aren’t you mad?” Krista asks, trying to change the subject.
It doesn’t work. “Yes. But Sasha was in an all-girls school, and I think she has experience. I need to collect data,” Mikasa justifies, and Krista wonders how someone can be so monotone while saying the things that Mikasa is saying.
“So,” she continues, “what did you do? Fingers? Oral? How does that work, anyway? Is it just a lot of licking around?”
Ultimately, Krista decides she would have prefered if Mikasa had gotten angry.
--
“Mikasa figured it out,” Krista tells Ymir after lunch. Everyone is outside, doing what they always do: Sasha and Connie playing two-person tag, Mikasa and Eren brooding together, Annie teaching Reiner and Bertolt how to do some self-defense move that looks not very defensive and possibly worrying.
“What? The sex thing?” Ymir asks, and rolls her eyes when Krista shushes her. “Look, Mikasa has wanted to fuck Sasha since the moment we walked into this place, and absolutely everyone knows that. Even Hitch, probably.”
This is undeniably true, even to Krista. “Still, they don’t have to know that we…” she trains off.
Ymir raises her eyebrows. “That we what?” she challenges.
Krista coughs and straightens her back. “That we made love.”
They stare at each other for a minute, neither one saying anything. Krista feels her heart beating far too quickly to be healthy. Instead of laughing it off, as Krista had feared, Ymir leans close to her ear. “I want to touch you again,” she whispers, and Krista forces herself not to shiver.
“We could get in trouble. Mikasa already knows,” Krista murmurs, but her voice wavers when Ymir presses a kiss on her earlobe.
“Mikasa is also determined to get some by the end of this stupid program. I don’t think we have anything to worry about there,” Ymir reminds her. She pulls away anyway, and Krista’s body starts to follow her movements until she catches herself.
After a quick scan, Krista determines that no one noticed their momentary lapse of strength. She watches as Sasha chases Connie around, only to stop in front of Mikasa and Eren’s spot. Instead of continuing on, she taps her hand on Mikasa’s cheek, and Krista can see her lips form the words You’re It before taking off again. Mikasa sits down and watches after her for a moment, slowly standing up and finally launching herself into a sprint.
--
To be completely honest, Krista isn’t sure what this step is supposed to accomplish. She understands in theory: boys are always saying that girls don’t make sense, and she’s tempted to agree with this mindset. But boys are simple—if anything, she thinks that might be part of her lack of interest in them. They’re straightforward, they’re predictable, they expect everything to go according to their way. Overall, they’re boring. She’s known this much even when she believed that she was interested in them romantically.
So they continue watching movies. Mikasa gives Sasha her popcorn. Ymir touches Krista’s thigh and, when it’s night and they’re alone, somewhere else. Krista has never felt so much love in her life.
They last four days until Hitch finds out. Krista doesn’t know who told her, or if she figured it out herself. She doesn’t bother to ask.
Hitch is undeniably furious, but above that, disappointed. “Ymir, I could have predicted! But you, Krista?” Though it’s phrased as a question, she doesn’t bother waiting for a response. “I thought that you believed in yourself. You understood that this lifestyle is unhealthy, and you need to fix it, but you blew the chance I gave you. And how could you? After everything I did to try and save you?”
This time, Krista doesn’t let her continue. “But you’re wrong.”
Surprised at the interjection, Hitch stops her pacing. She stands directly in front of Krista. “Wrong? Please tell me, in what way am I wrong?”
Anxiety pulses through Krista’s veins, but she forces herself to ignore it. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And it’s nothing that can be changed, at that. It’s love! What’s wrong with love?” she begs Hitch, her voice going up an octave.
Instead of answering her question, Hitch whips to Ymir. “What did you do to her?”
“Sorry, do you want the version with or without the lesbian sex?” Ymir asks, snark biting into her tone as a clear defense mechanism.
The room is suffocating, full of resentment and toxic speak. Krista tries to stop her brain from swimming as Ymir and Hitch argue around her, but it proves fruitless, and she presses her head into her hands to keep it from spinning off.
“Stop,” she whispers into her hands, but no one hears her. She repeats herself louder. “Stop!”
This time, they both follow her words. “Hey, you okay?” Ymir asks, her voice the gentlest that it had been for the whole conversation.
Krista sits there, the room silent, until her dizziness had faded. She looks up. Her gaze moves to Hitch. “I don’t need this,” she says. “My parents won’t be satisfied with me no matter what I do. I don’t need to win their approval by completing some program they think will cure me. I can learn to support myself, and I can be myself, and I won’t let you convince me that there’s anything wrong with me for that.”
Surprisingly, Hitch kneels down in front of her. “Krista, we both know you don’t mean that. Ymir coerced you into this, and as soon as she’s gone, you’ll be perfectly fine again, okay? Don’t worry about it.”
“I never coerced her into anything!” Ymir shouts, her voice livid.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving, not her,” Krista says, never taking her gaze off Hitch. “That’s the policy, right? One of us leaves, the other stays in the doghouse? I volunteer. No issue there.”
Ymir looks surprised and conflicted. “Krista…” she says, but she makes no argument to the contrary.
Still kneeled in front of her, Hitch is the same. Concern dances on her face. Krista half expects her to argue again, but Krista must have a resolve in her eyes, because she allows it without further question.
--
Krista’s alone with Ymir while she gets her stuff. “You’re so stupid,” Ymir whispers. She’s sitting on her own bed and staring at the half-packed suitcase. “So fucking stupid.” Krista doesn’t respond.
When Ymir’s upset, Krista learns, she rambles. “You knew that if you didn’t say anything, she would’ve kicked me out. But you opened your stupid fucking mouth, and now you’re leaving, and I’m stuck here, and—”
“What else could I have done?” Krista finally cuts in, her voice edging on desperation. “It was one of us or the other.”
“Oh, so now it’s a fucking martyr thing, is it?” Ymir announces, throwing her arms in the air.
Tears sting at Krista’s eyes, but she blinks them back in before they can fall. “That isn’t it,” she whispers.
But Ymir’s having none of that. “Yeah, well, I hope you’re happy now. That’s all you wanted, right? Some justification for that constant woe-is-me attitude of yours? A reason to feel sorry for yourself, while knowing that others appreciate you for taking the shit off of their shoulders?”
“I said that isn’t it!” Krista yells, throwing her belongings into the suitcase in a disarray. She looks up at Ymir, with her brown skin and her brown hair and her brown eyes, and she thinks she can see something. “Come with me,” she says.
That clearly startles Ymir, who finally makes eye contact with her. “What do you mean?”
It’s now or never, Krista decides, and she forces herself to keep her gaze steady. “I want you to come with me. We’ll figure this out together. You’re the one who said that the whole pretending thing is bullshit, right?”
“It isn’t that easy,” Ymir mumbles. “Look, your parents might be shit, but my mom is all I have, all right?”
“That doesn’t mean it’s okay that she treats you the way she does, Ymir!” Krista insists. She yanks the zipper on her suitcase closed with more force than necessary. Ymir uses the opportunity to break her gaze away again.
Her voice turns sour as she stares at the painting behind Krista’s head. “You know shit about me. Don’t pretend otherwise, okay? Just because we fucked doesn’t change anything.”
“Is that all it was, then? A fuck?” Krista’s voice cracks.
Ymir’s lip curls down distastefully. “You know that isn’t true,” she says. She tilts her neck down and turns her gaze on a stain in the carpet.
She’s running out of air again. She can’t breathe, and Ymir’s just sitting down, acting defeated. “I love you,” she admits.
For a moment, she thinks Ymir didn’t hear her, until she sees the way she sinks further into herself. The room is a sauna. Her own feelings are suffocating her, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Nothing that Ymir will do about it.
“Do I mean nothing to you?” she whispers, barely audible.
“You know that isn’t true,” Ymir repeats. Her voice sounds croaky and raw, but she’s still sitting there, still hopeless.
“No,” Krista says. “I really don’t.” She picks up her suitcase and leaves.
--
It occurs to her, a few minutes too late, that she has no idea where she will stay. Her parents won’t take her back, obviously; she doesn’t have enough money on her for a hotel. She has all but resigned herself to living on the streets when a car pulls up next to her.
“Hey,” the driver says as she rolls down the window. It’s a pink minivan, something completely outrageous and flashy, and there’s a rainbow charm hanging off the rearview mirror. “You a True Directions reject?”
Despite her better judgement, Krista finds herself nodding. “Yes.”
The driver smiles. “So am I. You need a place to stay?”
“Please,” Krista all but begs, her suitcase heavy in her hands.
“Well then, hop on in,” the driver announces, leaning over to swing open the passenger door. “I’m Zoë Hange, ex-ex-lesbian. Welcome to the club.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hange lives in a modest, one-floor house with more empty bedrooms than anything else. “We get a lot of you,” she explains as she drops Krista’s bags in a sparsely decorated room.
“What do you mean?” Krista asks, running her hand delicately across an empty drawer.
“True Directions drop-outs,” Hange elaborates. “Me and Petra actually graduated, but it meant nothing. We were still as gay as we were in the beginning. Want some tea? Peanut butter and jelly? I can whip up a mean bowl of Cheerios.”
Krista wants to ask about who this Petra is, but Hange already left the room, and she rushes to follow after her. The kitchen is dimly lit and large enough to fit a small tennis court. It’s messy and disorganized, with mail and articles of clothing scattered all across the table—Krista thinks that there might be a dildo half-obscured by a copy of Ellen Degeneres’s autobiography, but she turns away in embarrassment before she can be sure. Her cheeks are still flushed when she notices Hange looking at her expectantly.
“Huh?” she says eloquently.
The older woman gestures to the open fridge in front of her. “What do you want?”
Before Krista can answer her, the sound of a door opening echoes through the hallway. Hange somehow perks up even more and she slams the fridge shut in her haste to get to greet whoever just arrived.
“Babe, we got a new stray!” she announces, and Krista hears something which sounds like a collision of bodies.
A new voice makes a disapproving “ooph!” after the impact. “Hange, I told you not to refer to them like that,” it continues. The voice sounds warm and feminine, even with the steel behind its words.
“Is it someone else from True Directions?” asks another voice, this one familiar. Krista freezes in her spot.
“Sure is!” Hange says cheerfully.
The three walk into the kitchen together, with Hange draped over the girl next to her—she’s short and redheaded, with grocery bags in her arms—but Krista’s eyes are glued to the boy next to them.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he says, a box of cereal falling from his grasp.
Lucky Charms splatter across the floor, and Hange lets out a quiet scream. “Couldn’t you have dropped the Mini Wheats instead!?” she exclaims.
“Oh my God,” Krista whispers in horror.
“Hange, get off the floor,” the other woman reprimands.
Jean isn’t paying attention to them, though. He’s glaring at Krista like she’s a decapitated cockroach, the kind that just won’t die and runs around without a head for months, and Krista worries that he’s going to break out an axe and test if the same goes for humans.
Finally, Krista forces her mouth to form words. “I’m...sorry?” she offers.
Jean snorts derisively. “Yeah, and that sounded convincing.”
Hange looks up from her spot on the floor, where she had been gathering the spilled Lucky Charms into a neat pile, and frowns. “Did I miss something?”
“Jean, would you like to explain this situation to us, please?” the redhead asks, her voice strict and motherly.
“She’s the bitch that got me kicked out!” he yells.
While the name stings, Krista admits to herself that he has every right to be angry. She wonders when her life became a cosmic joke. Was is the very moment she was conceived—to her father and his mistress? The day her father left his wife for a woman that meant nothing to him, because he had a reputation to uphold, and he couldn’t have a child out of wedlock? Unless it was the first time she helped one of the other cheerleaders apply sunscreen, the way her hands lingered across soft skin in a way that she wouldn’t allow herself to acknowledge.
Maybe this has been coming her entire life. She probably should have seen it coming ever since that time in eighth grade when she started her period while at the top of a pyramid.
Unfortunately, Hange doesn’t allow her to wallow in self-misery for long. “Whoa there, everyone cracks under pressure, buddy,” she cautions Jean, sounding more serious than Krista had heard her so far.
Jean shoots her a scowl and angrily places the box of Mini Wheats on the kitchen table. “I’m going to my room.”
“Don’t act like a two year old! We discussed this,” the still unnamed woman calls after him. He storms away in lieu of a response.
After he’s out of vision, the woman turns back towards Krista and shoots her a smile. “Ignore him, gay men are always so melodramatic. I’m Petra.”
That answers two of Krista’s questions at once, so she attempts to shake the hand that Petra is holding out to her, although the grocery bags in her grasp make it a little difficult. “Um, I’m Krista. Thank you for having me! But...Jean is right. It’s my fault. I’m the one who got him kicked out,” she admits, not allowing herself to make eye contact.
There’s a sudden pressure on her shoulder, and she looks up to find Hange’s arm around her. “It doesn’t matter now. The fact is that, even if he had graduated, this would’ve ended up the same for him. For you, too,” she reassures Krista. “I mean, look at me and Petra.”
Krista does, then, look at her and Petra. Hange’s hair is in a high ponytail, even though she looks to be somewhere in her late thirties. She wears prescription glasses with cat eye frames, her outfit is color-coordinated to make a rainbow, and there’s a silver ring on her left hand. There’s a matching one on Petra’s, whose outfit is considerably less flashy. Her hair is dyed a color that it might have naturally been at some point in her life, when she was much younger, and it obscures what Krists thinks might be a tattoo on the back of her neck.
“I understand,” Krista says.
“Great!” Hange says, giving her shoulder one last squeeze before letting go. “So, do you want a ham sandwich? Dirty Lucky Charms?”
She doesn’t want much of anything right now, and she tells Hange that. While she’s leaving the kitchen, she shoots a look over her shoulder, and sees Petra leaning up for a kiss.
--
For the first four days, Jean refuses to talk to her. She doesn’t blame him; sometimes it’s difficult to look in the mirror, despite Hange and Petra’s reassurances. Even more than the guilt, it’s a sense of emptiness that’s eating her up, something that she won’t even pretend to understand. She lived not even knowing that she’s a lesbian for seventeen years of her life. Now, she can’t even go an hour without thinking about Ymir, and it sucks. She hates feeling like she needs someone else to complete her. She hates that she’s a teenage girl with hormones running rampant, that she touches herself too often and it’s always with the same name on her mouth.
On the fourth day, they all eat dinner together, which is new. It’s awkward at first, when Jean asks Petra to pass him the salt instead of Krista, even though Petra has to reach all the way across the table and Krista is right next to the salt shaker. Hange fills the table with meaningless chatter, most of which Krista doesn’t even process.
“So, what step is next?” Hange continues, her mouth half-full. Petra gently swipes at her and whispers about table manners, which Hange responds to by pressing a sloppy kiss on Petra’s cheek.
“What step?” Krista asks. She’s only half paying attention as she draws a face with string beans.
“At True Directions,” Hange explains. “They’re still doing that five-step process, right?”
Krista tenses in her spot. She sees Jean do the same out of the corner of her eye.
“I wouldn’t know,” he says, stiff and passive-aggressive.
The string bean representing a smile looks taunting, and Krista stabs it with her fork. “When I left, they had finished the fourth step. Demystifying the opposite sex.” She remembers how Ymir’s hand felt in hers when they watched that movie, the one with women as housewives and men as labourers. Her eyes start to tear up, so she forces the speared string bean into her mouth as a distraction.
Either Hange doesn’t notice her turmoil, or she graciously ignores it. “Oh, you’re lucky you got out when you did. Next is the one where you have to wear skin-color spandex suits and pretend to have sex,” she reminisces with a shudder. Petra winces from the memory.
Krista’s fork drops from her mouth. She remembers Hitch mentioning it during the movie, but the idea that Ymir would be—that she’d have to simulate— “I’m stuffed,” she says.
“But you still have half a plate left!” Hange announces, looking scandalized.
“Sorry, I’m just not feeling well,” Krista says. She brings her plate to the sink, feeling three pairs of eyes on her, and leaves.
In her room, she doesn’t cry. She thinks that she’s stupid. Ymir means too much to her for someone she’s known—what, a month? A few weeks? There’s no reason why she should be feeling this way. Ymir wouldn’t even leave with her.
She can’t stay here forever. But what can she do, at least for now? It isn’t as though she has money to pay for room and board. She has one more year of high school, and then she’s on her own. Her parents won’t even give her money for a college education because she’s an embarrassment to the family. They want nothing to do with her, and neither does the only person she’s ever truly cared about.
After five minutes of reflecting on where her life went so wrong, Krista hears her door open. She sits up on her bed, ready to feed Hange whatever nonsense it’ll take for her to leave, but her mouth dries up when she realizes who’s at the door.
“You’re lucky I’m such a ray of sunshine,” Jean says, arms folded across his chest. “Otherwise I’d be burning your bras or something.”
Krista doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she doesn’t. After a moment, Jean sighs dramatically, and sits down next to her. The bed sinks under his weight. Krista shifts over a bit, not looking up from the floor.
“Was it Annie?” he asks a minute later. Krista’s eyebrows furrow.
“Was what Annie?”
Jean rolled his eyes—Krista knows this without even looking—and snorts. “The girl you slept with. It was Annie, wasn’t it?”
The mental image of Annie, with her bored scowl and her vicious glare, naked under Krista’s body is enough to make her shudder. Not in a pleasant way. “Why would you think that?” she asks, grateful for Jean’s apparent forgiveness. She can at least humor him with this.
“I don’t know, okay? I mean, Mikasa and Sasha clearly wouldn’t be sleeping with anyone but each other,” he justifies. His eyes narrow. “Unless it was Mikasa?”
Reminded of her very uncomfortable conversation with Mikasa about her own sex life, Krista flushes. “Um, no. You were right the first time. I don’t think she has an interest in anyone except Sasha.”
An epiphany seems to dawn behind Jean’s eyes. “Did you fuck Hitch?” he asks, his voice incredulous.
This time, Krista can’t hold back the surprised laugh that bubbles through her body. She starts to shake her until she’s bent over, her forehead pressed to her thighs, peals of giggles escaping from her mouth and tears squeezing from the corner of her eyes. She can almost feel Jean’s hesitation, his hand hovering over her back until he awkwardly pats it a few times. It feels nice. The room is warm, and she feels cool drops of water falling against her knees, and it’s then that she realizes she’s no longer laughing.
Her breaths come in gasps as she tries to collect herself. After a minute, she sits up straight and wipes at her eyes with closed fists. Jean wordlessly hands her a tissue.
“I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’,” he says tentatively when Krista finishes blowing her nose.
“That’s a definite ‘no’,” she confirms.
Neither one of them speaks. Jean’s arms are crossed again, and he’s frowning at Krista’s unpacked luggage as though it has said something to personally offend him. Krista wishes more than anything else that she could fall in love with him—that this program had worked and she’s cured. She wishes she could get married and have children, live in a white picket fence house in the suburbs, age gracefully and die shortly after her husband.
“Out of everyone I could have lost my virginity to, I chose the only one who wouldn’t care,” she whispers.
“That isn’t true,” Jean assures her.
Krista raises her eyebrows. “How would you know that?”
He shrugs. “I mean, I really don’t think Annie would’ve cared.”
It’s an obvious attempt at a joke, and a bad one at that, but Krista tries to smile. “Annie has a girlfriend back home,” she says.
Jean looks almost scandalized. “Holy shit, for real?”
“For real,” Krista says. “Her name is Mina, apparently. She plays on Annie’s softball team. Annie told me about her once. I don’t think she meant to—it was when we were supposed to be rediscovering our gender identity, and the girls had to make a wedding dress. Annie had disappeared for most of it, doing...whatever it is Annie does, and when Hitch dragged her back, she was sulking. I had been modeling the dress, and it was her job to rip it off of me as a punishment for her disappearance. So the others were gone, getting ready for the next step, and Annie told me about Mina.”
“Huh,” is all Jean says.
Krista smiles. “She cares about her a lot. Even with her monotone, it was obvious.”
“You know, it takes a lot of balls to give up everything,” Jean tells her. “Yeah, my family might be a homophobic bunch of assholes, but it still fucking sucks that I’ll probably never be with them ever again.”
“I’m sorry,” Krista whispers.
“Don’t be!” Jean snaps. “It’s their fault, okay? I realize that now. But at the time, it was a big deal to me that I was breaking the rules, because I knew that my parents wouldn’t accept me if I was gay. I wasn’t just throwing it away for the hell of it. I threw it away because, for some reason that I really don’t understand, Jaeger is important to me, and I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I let my folks keep me from that.”
“I don’t see your point,” Krista says, even though it’s a lie.
Jean has a fiery look in his eyes, and he grabs Krista’s shoulders, whipping her around so they’re sitting face-to-face. “Look, whoever it is that you slept with—”
“Ymir. It was Ymir.”
He allows himself a moment of being caught of guard. “Ymir? Really?”
Krista feels her face flush, and Jean plows on. “Whatever, even if it’s Ymir, she knew what she was risking. And especially since it’s Ymir, isn’t that really fucking important? Because Ymir is a selfish bitch—no offense—and she knew that this was coming, but she went through with it anyway. There’s no fucking way that she doesn’t care.”
“She could have left with me,” Krista whispers.
“Yeah, so what? She’s a coward, and guess what? So are we. We wouldn’t have gone to that shitty program in the first place if we weren’t. Maybe we’ve gotten over it now, and maybe we haven’t. It doesn’t matter.”
The blood in Krista’s veins is rushing at a speed which can’t be healthy, but it doesn’t matter to her. Not now. She doesn’t know where she went wrong in life that she’s listening to an inspirational speech from Jean Kirschtein, gay teenage boy with apparent anger management issues, or when she apparently lost so much of her sense that she actually believes him.
“Eren refused to even look at me after you left,” Krista tells him.
“Yeah, well, he’s a fucking idiot anyway,” Jean says, but his voice is fond.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s a beautiful day out, despite the unspoken rule that everything bad happens during a thunderstorm. Krista lies down on her bed and stares at the ceiling, trying to ignore the sun shining through her window, so she can wallow in self-imposed misery peacefully. She thinks about maybe dying her hair black for the occasion, but she has no money for hair dye. She stares at the broken air conditioner forlornly.Unfortunately, there’s a knock on the door before she can think of other ways to express her current state of misery. “What is it?” she mumbles.“Can I come in?” Petra asks from outside.“No.”A sigh. “Krista…”Her heart throbs at the hopelessness in Petra’s voice, and she almost responds, but she clenches her mouth shut. She tells herself that she needs to feel the pain.All of a sudden, the door slams open. Krista nearly jumps out of her own skin, and she forces her eyes open to find Hange in the doorway, her arm wrapped around a dejected looking Petra. “Stop listening to whiney pop punk music and come with us,” she says.Krista wants to argue that the whiney pop punk music is Jean’s fault, but her brain gets stuck on the second part of Hange’s announcement. “Come where?”“The graduation ceremony,” Petra explains, her maternal smile back in place.She knows what graduation ceremony Petra’s talking about—it’s the reason why this day has been so bad, despite the chirping birds and rays of sunshine. Her lips downturn. “I think I’d rather stay far away.”“Honey, we can’t just let you hole yourself up like this,” Petra says. She leans her head against Hange’s shoulder, and her expression is so genuinely concerned that Krista almost starts to cry.“I can’t watch her be taken away like that,” Krista justifies.“You won’t,” Hange says in unison with another voice. Jean appears behind her, wearing a camo jacket and black stripes of paint underneath his eyes.He walks into the room and shoves a pile of clothes onto Krista’s lap. There’s a matching jacket on the top, along with a white tanktop and a pair of khakis. Krista sorts through the pile to find black lipstick folded inside a camo snapback. It looks ridiculous, just like Jean does standing in front of her, but she finds herself liking the absurdity. “Is this some kind of recon mission?” she asks, only half-joking.“That is exactly what this is,” Hange says from her place in the doorway. Her eyes are sparkling, and Krista puts on her war paint.--“This is a horrible idea,” Krista whispers to Jean as the two of them struggle to hide inside a slightly unstable tree. They’ve been waiting for an hour now, and set-up is just finishing. Hitch is standing at the podium, checking to make sure everything is where it should be, but there are still no students in sight.“You’ve said that at least seven times,” Jean whispers back. “And stop moving, this branch keeps swaying and I’d rather not fall to my death.”“We should never have done this—” Krista begins, repeating what she’s said at least seven times so far, when Jean shoves a hand over her mouth.“They’re here!” he hisses.And he’s telling the truth. She follows his gaze to beyond the rows of chairs, beyond the stage, beyond the DJ playing cheesy graduation songs, and there they are. They’re all filing out of a large van with the words “True Directions” painted onto its side. The boys are shuffling awkwardly in too-tight blue suits, looking miserable and uncomfortable and like they’d rather be anywhere else. Sasha’s avoiding eye contact with Mikasa, who’s staring at her as though she’s trying to see through her skin and to the viscera inside of her, while Annie tugs at her pink dress with a scowl on her face. But Krista isn’t looking at them. Her eyes are glued to the gangly girl with freckles running down her cheeks and her shoulders and a few, just a few, down her breasts—her hair tied in some elaborate updo and her scowl stained a light burgundy, with those small, slightly-freckled breasts shoved together as tightly as they can be without causing breathing issues.“Wow,” Jean whispers, and Krista agrees.Before Krista can rip her own khakis off and run into Ymir’s face, Hitch screeches into the microphone. “Everyone, back into the van! Your parents are already filing in, and we can’t allow them to see you until the ceremony begins!”Someone mumbles something that Krista can’t hear, and Hitch tsks. “We’re running perfectly on time, actually, and we’ll be starting in a half hour, exactly as intended.” She walks from the podium and speaks in hushed tones to the van’s driver—Krista thinks it might be Marlo, but she can’t see for certain—who begins to force the graduates back into the car. Her work done, Hitch walks towards the entrance of the park where the graduation is taking place. True to her words, there do seem to be a few families filing in. Krista’s eyes catch almost immediately on a tall, dark-skinned woman walking alone.“Should we break them out of the van?” Jean whispers.“I don’t see how,” Krista replies.But Jean is adamant. “Look, the timing is perfect. Hitch is chatting up the parents, the DJ looks like he’s already drunk, and I’m pretty sure Marlo’s against this whole thing to begin with. He’ll definitely help us out.”Krista wants to talk him out of it, but he’s already climbing down the tree. The leaves are shuffling loudly and inconspicuously, and Krista buries her head in her hands, refusing to watch as Jean gets caught and their entire plan goes to waste.Nothing happens. Krista peeks through her fingers and Jean is on the ground, buttoning up his camo jacket and straightening his shorts. When he notices her looking down, he waves his hand in a “hurry up” gesture. This is a bad idea, Krista thinks, but she ties her hair into a ponytail and jumps.They have to get through five rows of chairs and a stage. It’s a mostly clear expanse, with no trees or anything that they can hide behind. Luckily, Jean was right about Hitch being too preoccupied and the DJ being too drunk to notice them.“Now what?” Krista whispers when they crouch next to the trunk of the van.“I’ll go talk to Marlo,” Jean replies, and he goes to stand up but Krista grabs his wrist.“Are you sure he’ll listen to us?” she asks.Jean rolls his eyes. “That guy is as straight as cooked spaghetti. He’ll listen.” He walks towards the front of the van and knocks on the window. Krista can’t see very well from her angle, but it seems like the window rolls down, and Jean starts talking. She can’t hear him over the sound of the engine rumbling and her heart beating overdrive, so she focuses on the van she’s leaning against. Ymir is so close to her, just separated from a scrap of metal. She can remember the first time they kissed, and the first time they made love, and she wonders how she’ll be able to make it if—when—this plan doesn’t work.She hears the van’s doors pop open. Her eyes blink once, twice, before she turns around and sees Jean sticking his head inside. The rest of his body the follows, along with crashing noises and angry-sounding screams. The door leaves just a crack open. Krista stands there, frozen in her spot near the trunk, until she spots Hitch walking towards the van. She runs to the other side of the van, which is facing away from the field, and slams her fists repeatedly against it until the door opens, revealing a pissy Ymir. “What the fuck is goin—Krista?”As much as she wants to acknowledge her, she knows that there’s no time to. “Close the door,” she tells Jean, who’s straddling Eren’s lap in a way that looks way too cramped in the compact van to be very comfortable.“What do you mean?” he asks, looking flushed in more ways than one.“I’m going to fucking vomit,” Annie groans from the backseat. Connie, who’s sitting next to her, seems to be watching the scene in rapt attention.Krista ignores both of them and keeps her eyes on Jean. “Hitch is coming to the van. Close that door and sneak through this one, okay?”“Shit,” Jean swears, looking through the open crack to confirm Krista’s words. He slams the door all the way shut and bangs his head on the top of the van while rushing to stand up.“Careful, you idiot,” Eren says, but he’s shoving Jean out of the open door and he’s following him. “How are we supposed to sneak away without her seeing us?” he asks, and Krista can see the surprise and rapture in Jean’s eyes when he uses first-person pronouns.“I’ve got that covered,” Krista says, because she’s always been rather self-sacrificing. “Now run!”It’s her fault that they’re even in this situation. She knows that they’re thinking this as they realize what she’s saying, and that’s why Eren grabs Jean’s hand and tugs him away. Jean plants his feet in the ground, but she can see the uncertainty in his eyes.“Krista…” he whispers, but at the same time, she can hear a voice in the car say the same thing. She turns around and allows herself to make eye-contact with Ymir. Her eyes look glassy, as though she wants to cry but she doesn’t know how to. Krista forces a smile.There’s an empty spot where Eren was sitting, next to Mikasa who’s next to Sasha who’s next to Ymir, who makes no move to get up. It hurts, but it was expected. “I understand,” Krista says. She closes the door.“Go now,” she says to Eren and Jean without turning to face them. She knows that they heard. After a minute, she can finally make her legs move again, and she walks to the front of the van.Hitch, who’s only a meter or two away, pauses in her march to stare at Krista in shock. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she asks.“Rescuing a damsel,” Krista says.“She isn’t going to follow you,” Hitch snaps. “Unlike someone, she was able to expel herself of those sinful urges.”While Krista knows the words are far from true, they still sting. She’s not sure that she was able to fully hide her wince. “You’re right. I asked her to come, and she refused.”Hitch looks almost surprised at the confession. She quickly covers her shock with faux-confidence, puffing out her chest and releasing a proud laugh. “Well, of course! This is True Directions, after all. Do not treat our work so flippantly!”Jean and Eren are probably gone now. Her job is complete: she was able to distract Hitch so that she wouldn’t see them leave. “Can I leave, then?” Krista asks, her voice sounding shaky even to her own ears.But of course Hitch wouldn’t let her go that easy. “You know, your parents called.”“Did they.”“They sure did,” Hitch responds, as though Krista’s deadpan has been an actual question. “It was sad, really, to hear the disappointment in their voices. That’s the hardest part of the job, I’d say. But there are some who refuse to allow themselves to be cured, despite how strong our program is, and I suppose that we just have to let those go. I’m sure you understand. They must not matter much to you, anyway, if you let a fleeting romance get in the way of the only thing they wanted for their beloved daughter.”Her words come crashing down on Krista like the weight of the solar system. Her legs start to shake, and she thinks that the rest of her body does, too; her vision is blurry, and she doesn’t think it’s just from unshed tears. Because this—no matter what other lies Hitch has spread, this is true. She no longer has a family, and why? Because of a girl? A girl who won’t do the same for her, no matter what she tries. And she’s tried everything.“I have to go,” Krista says, and she runs away before Hitch can say anything more--By the time she finds Hange’s minivan, Krista has managed to sweat most of the water from her body, and she doesn’t think she would be able to cry even if she wanted to. She leans against the hood of the car and gasps, trying to replenish the oxygen in her blood. Her ears are ringing, but even so, she can hear the minivan’s doors open and close.“Are you okay?” Petra asks, pressing her hand against Krista’s forehead.“Do you want water? We have water,” Hange adds, and Krista nods until her head feels like it’s going to fall off. Hange reaches back in the car and comes out with an unopened water bottle, which Krista manages to gulp down in under thirty seconds. Petra continues rubbing on her back.“Is everything alright?” she asks once Krista’s able to calm down.Not at all, Krista wants to say. “Where are Jean and Eren?” she asks instead.Hange snorts. “Making out behind that tree over there.” Krista looks where Hange points and, sure enough, Jean and Eren are in the process of swallowing each others’ facial features. “What happened with Ymir?”Krista tenses at the question. She’d hoped that they would’ve avoided the topic, but she should’ve realized that Hange doesn’t have the tact for that. “Nothing happened. She didn’t come.”“Oh, honey…” Petra whispers, wiping a strand of hair from where it clung to Krista’s face and threading it back into her ponytail. “There are lots of other women out there who’d be lucky to have you.”“We can take you to a gay bar,” Hange suggests.“Maybe not until you’re legal,” Petra says, and Hange rolls her eyes.Hitch’s voice travels through the clearing, and the ceremony begins. Krista thinks of what Hitch told her before. She lost her parents because of this; that’s true. But, for whatever reason, Hange and Petra are treating her like one of their own. And maybe Ymir won’t come back for her, but so what? There are other girls. It’s better that she accepts her sexuality and deals with one heartbreak now than if she had rejected such an innate truth to herself and went through her entire life ignoring what she truly wanted. It could be better than this, yes. But it could also be worse.This is what she tells herself when Jean and Eren come back to the minivan, looking dishevelled and more aroused than she would’ve liked to ever see. This is what she continues to tell herself when they drive back in stony silence, excepting the 1980s Greatest Hits radio station. And this is what she tells herself when she falls asleep as soon as she drops down on her bed, in her dirty clothes and all, with shoes still half-on her feet.--Krista wakes up with a knock on her door. She frowns at the noise and checks her clock: it’s been an hour since she fell asleep, and the graduation ceremony is probably wrapping up. “Come in,” she says, forcing down a yawn.Petra pokes her head in. “There’s someone here to see you,” she says. Krista’s brow furrows. She can’t imagine who would possibly want to see her, much less know where she’s staying. An idea occurs to her, but—no. It can’t be.“Okay,” Krista says, and it is. Ymir walks in, with her awkwardly fitted pink dress and her formal updo and her burgundy lips. She’s holding her hands behind her back, as though she doesn’t seem to know what to do with them, and they stand in silence for at least a minute until she seems to remember something.“Um, these are for you,” Ymir says, bringing her hands to the front of her body, and she’s holding a bouquet of small red and white flowers. “Sorry for just barging in. And sorry for taking so long. But I wanted to get you something, as a sorry, and I saw this and it just—it made me think of pom-poms.”Nothing is making sense. Krista’s mind is going into overdrive, and she gapes at the bouquet as though she’s being presented with a human heart. She might as well be. Finally, she reaches out and touches one of the red petals. It feels soft beneath her touch. “Thank you,” she murmurs.Ymir is still holding out the bouquet like a shield, so Krista takes it from her hands. “I’m sorry,” Ymir repeats. “For everything. And I totally understand if you want nothing to do with me ever, but I want you to know that I care about you more than I know how to deal with.”“Did you graduate?” Krista asks, her voice muffled as she presses the flowers to her nose and breathes in.“I left as soon as Hitch called my name,” Ymir admits, and the flowers smell like freedom. Krista pulls them away from her face, and she smiles.She puts the bouquet down gently on her bed, then turns around to face Ymir. She notices, now, how smudged the lipstick is, and how half of her hair has fallen out of place. The dress leaves marks on her skin, next to the freckles. But the imprints will go away.Krista presses her mouth onto Ymir’s, and she breathes.