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When I was fifteen years old, I knew everything.
Everyone does, more or less. It's the curse of adolescence - just as we should be recognizing that we're all fucking morons, humans are infused with a sense of invincibility and foolhardiness that leaves us convinced we are the most knowledgeable people in the room. I was damned sure I knew more than my classmates, at least, if not my parents. Bit difficult being raised by a couple geniuses with superheroes for friends.
Didn't much matter how many patents they had - my parents could not possibly have any insight into my troubles. Those few weeks agonizing over Mark and Jessica were the worst thing I'd ever experienced. There could be no recompense for it. And worse still, trying to figure out why I hated anyone who came near Vicki? What use would have been talking to my parents about that?
Then, we were invaded.
At the least, I was. My life, my last vestiges of serenity, my room.
A slight, nervous and painfully shy and awkward alien girl landed square in my life and in my bed.
Looking back on it now, I can see so much of the hintings of what would be in our early interactions. I hated her as soon as I saw her. I couldn't help it, the swell of emotion in my chest and immediate focus of every bit of my being on her could only have meant that, when I was fifteen.
When I was fifteen years old, I was straight.
Everyone was, then. We were barely a year out from Ellen's coming out, the idea had started to spread through the country, but it had yet to truly land in Midvale. Sure, we all knew about the farm with the best berries in the state, and how it was run by that small group of women that mostly kept to themselves but were always friendly and welcoming.
That was where I saw my first mullet.
The month before one of our fields was scarred by the landing of an alien girl, we'd gone to pick up some berries. I'm not sure what it was about that trip specifically, but I noticed one of the women at the farm. She wasn't dressed much differently than my father, in jeans and an old, well worn flannel with the sleeves rolled up over her forearms. She didn't wait on us, too busy hauling heavily laden berry trays to and fro around the open store front they used for selling their berries, but for some reason, I couldn't stop staring. A ring of keys hung from her belt and I stared, a small pendant catching the light every once in a while and the small rainbow logo glittering beneath the warm sun. She fascinated me and I stared outright until my mother turned to catch my eye. Shame suffused me and I studiously avoided looking back at the woman at all, or even looking at anyone else directly. I kept my eyes on the berries and my feet.
I'm not sure what it was about those few moments that still stick in my memory. I don't remember what berries we even picked up that day, not that it matters. But I remember still how her short haircut curled at the back of her neck and around her ears, how it shifted as she ran a hand through it, how the brightly patterned handkerchief she pulled from her back pocket obscured her face as she wiped away the sweat of hard work.
When we were invaded by our own alien girl, it was beyond awkward. My mother insisted on us being sisters, using the word and reminder of the forced association as much as she possibly could. She couldn't be my sister. We weren't even from the same planet, how could we be sisters?
I know better now.
The siblings of my heart that I have acquired over the years have taught me what my mother could not force upon me.
With Kara, it was never that.
There was too much, at first. I was grateful, later, for how easily she was overwhelmed at the start. The flood of sensation prevented her from noticing how much I snuck glances at her, how I couldn't keep myself from tracking her every movement and breath.
I lashed out.
I railed.
I couldn't accept that this slight girl who had suddenly been thrust upon me would be anything but an annoyance in my life. It is mildly amusing now to look back on how limited my thinking was.
I can admit freely now how much I was hiding from myself that summer. How much I was, for a lack of a better phrase, willfully blind. It's almost amusing to look back on it now and contrast it against what my life has become.
I can't help but to hope my father would be proud.
Kara broke a lot those first weeks. The couch, when she flung herself down on it in imitation of a moment of frustration I'd experienced the day previous. My fourth and fifth ribs and a tear of the intercostal muscles when she got overly excited and hugged me. Countless pieces of silverware and glassware. Plates. The front door. My father's arm.
Every time, the reaction was the same. Pure, abject terror and horrified realization of her action. It tore at me, swirling within me like a ravening beast, demanding that succor be offered.
It was why, directly after she broke my ribs and I caught my breath, I slowly, achingly wrapped my good arm around her and pulled her in for another hug, immediately, ignoring her tears in order to tuck her head against my neck.
I hate to say that was the start of it, but it was. I couldn't not help the lost and scared girl that had been dropped in my lap. I had to be there and I had to help her. Even if I truly hated her, I couldn't resist.
It probably should have clued me in to something further that I stared at the inside of my tightly shut eyelids that night, trying desperately to forget the feel of her breasts pressed against my side.
That first summer passed by in idyllically lazy days and quiet secrets shared at night. Kara's bed was across the room from my own, but it quickly became a dumping ground of our clothes and various things we'd gathered. My life that summer quickly evolved into being centered around Kara. She slowly started relaxing as she learned the limits of the things around her, the limits of what I could handle and how she needed to accommodate for the simple human things in the house. By the time the first day of school came around, we'd settled into a pattern, more or less. She barely broke anything anymore, and the lessons my parents had instilled in her on how to appear human were being taken to heart as well as could be expected.
So it was a surprise to me that such a bright and shining girl was ruthlessly mocked by our schoolmates. It took me a couple days to realize it and I hated that I'd missed it. She didn't deserve the blatant insults and mockery. I had been walking during my free period, taking my time in my trek to the library when I heard Darren's mocking tones. While I remember dimly what he said, it didn't matter. I was immediately furious, and before I could register what I'd done, he was glaring at me from the ground, clutching at his bleeding nose.
Across the hall, one of the Thompsons had been staring slack jawed at me when I glared around the hallway for any further threats. I'm not sure where the rage came from then, though I know well now. I spat out a warning to him to never come near my Kara again before grabbing her hand and dragging her with me. She came without protest, her hand clammy and limp in my own, and I dropped it once we were out of sight in the teacher's parking lot, leaning back against the wall and covering my face with my trembling hands. I knew I would get in trouble. I'd attacked a boy twice my size without provocation.
Kara's fingers had brushed over my own then, gentle and pulling them from my tear stained face. I hesitated to recognize the wonder in her eyes then, though I'm well familiar with it now. It is the look she gets when she sees a new wonder of the world, when she sees a good reminder of home.
It's the look that Kara has when I do something right.
Remarkably, I didn't experience any consequences for that encounter, though rumor began to spread through the school about Kara and me. Vicki began to look askance at me.
I was quickly recognizing that I needed to choose.
I could remain in my quiet, staid, boring life. Or I could choose Kara and all that came with her.
It's probably not a surprise that the choice wasn't much of a choice.
I don't know that I could ever have had to strength to choose anyone other than Kara.
People gave us sidelong glances a lot. A couple of the boys weren't the best about it. I had bruised knuckles more than once from an idiot suggesting a Danvers sandwich.
As though any of them could have ever been worthy of Kara.
Holding her at night became my succor, and her smile my meaning. Still, that undefinable feeling swelled in my chest and I could not figure out why the barest glimpse of her gave my heart a stutter that I was supposed to be feeling when making out with my brief boyfriends. Not that dating worked out much for me, and I gave up before Halloween of that year. It didn't really matter. I couldn't trust anyone with my secrets.
Anyone but Kara.
She taught me much of her world, slow and halting stories of gardens that her aunt had told her about, long since dead by the time of Kara's birth. Tales of the rich red light that danced around thin spires that reached for the skies beneath Rao's light. Tales even of her namesake, taught to her as a child and reinforced during her time in the Phantom Zone. She taught me so much during those first few months that it is probably little surprise that I would later do well in medical school.
I taught her as well, though nothing so advanced. I taught her about American culture, smatterings of others from around the world, whatever I could glean and introduce her to. I was learning then, too, learning how her hair would shimmer in evening light, how her eyes would sparkle as she listened to me go on passionately about a book, how she would bite her lip sometimes when looking at me.
It was our first three day weekend when she told me about Krypton's courting traditions. How being welcomed into a House bore with it certain expectations and duties, how she had been struggling with reconciling that against what she'd been taught in her pod during her time in the Phantom Zone. How, were we on Krypton, she and I would have been wed the day we met. She taught me of the differences that indicated that here, on Earth, beneath our yellow sun, she was offered the chance to choose.
That same emotion swelled in my chest, softer and more insistent than it had been. I couldn't, didn't dare, put a name to it. As long as it remained unnamed, I could continue as I had been.
She told me of how she'd had a brief, fleeting thought that when her parents had pulled her from her teachings had been to inform her of the match they had made for her, only to be told she'd be sent to Earth to watch over her baby cousin. The last survivors of Krypton.
Then she'd emerged from her pod and met me.
I listened to her with terror making my fingers twitch. Silence had hung heavily in the air between us before I laughed, a quiet yet jarring thing. She flashed me a look, hurt warring with curiosity. I cupped her cheek in my hand and confessed between my laughter that us being married might have simplified things. It might have cut down on some of those creeps at school harassing her, at least!
She watched me curiously before smiling and shaking her head at my mirth before calling me a silly human and suggesting we try and find some reruns to watch.
It's curious the moments you remember when you look back on what has happened in your life.
One of my most vivid memories of my entire high school career is of Kara walking into a classroom we shared after lunch. It was early - first bell hadn't rung yet, but the classroom was empty the period before so we would usually congregate before class started because it was a damned sight easier to get to the class when you weren't fighting fifty million other students in a six inch hallway. I don't remember who else was there. We were talking, just hanging out and bullshitting about nothing. And Kara walked in. She'd gotten a haircut that morning during her free first period and I hadn't seen it yet. She walked in, her backpack hanging precariously from one shoulder. I don't remember what she was wearing - her usual thing. In my memories, her shirt changes but her jeans are always well fitted. I don't remember who, but I remember hearing someone shouting about how Danvers was looking good, and someone gave a whistle. I didn't say any thing. I couldn't. She ducked her head, her cheeks flushing, and tucked a bit of hair behind her ear.
She looked beautiful.
When I was fifteen years old, I knew everything.
Except that I was in love.