"I have to tell you something," Gracie said. She was splay-legged on her bed, tasting her lip sweat in the shade of the curtains and admitting to me, however solemnly, whatever she'd just remembered from her childhood that had, in her mind, delivered her here to me. It was this kind of thinking that convinced Gracie that love was nothing if not a constant excavation of the soul that dove deeper than the pit of the peach.

"Absolutely," I said. "Always." I was curled up in her desk chair, my arms wrapped around my legs and hands linked together. I'd been studying a patch of sunlight to the left of the bed for the better part of an hour, deciding that it was the ideal place for a teenage girl to curl up in and admit herself to. But I stayed put, choosing instead to look over my shoulder and into my reflection in the vanity behind me. The light filtered in the room in a way that suggested tears down the length of my nose. I contorted my face into burn-victim expressions while Gracie talked.

"When I was a little girl, I used to come out the shower and look at myself with all the steam on it still. This little ambiguous girl. Or boy. Or piano teacher or ballet dancer or divorcee. I could've been anyone. And I wouldn't ever get dressed unless I stood there and took my finger and outlined the shape of myself in the mirror. Always, Ava. Without fail." She turned and leaned her head over the edge of the bed, the ends of her hair pooling on the floor. She asked what I was doing with my face, and I shrugged and turned back around. She extended her arm, and although I knew we wouldn't reach, I stuck mine out, too. In the space between our hands, I could see a kind of shipwrecked cost. I saw beached whales, homeless veterans sleeping on the street, and girls fist fighting angels above the downtown YMCA. I moved my fingers up and down rapidly, trying to see if Gracie and I were anywhere inside this tragedy. Her fingers stood still.

"Why'd you do that," I asked, still moving my fingers.

"I don't know," she said. "I really don't. I remember being disappointed each time, though, because I was always me. I always felt like glass. I hated it." I repeated the word glass as she righted herself on her stomach, resting her chin on her forearm. When I'd had enough of the word, I looked at her.

"Can I take you somewhere?"

"Always," she said. "Absolutely." I stood up and walked over to her bed, picking her up bridal style and delivering her to the patch of sunlight. I set her down, kissing her eyebrow.

"I was thinking that this patch of sunlight is the perfect place to be a teenage girl." I grabbed her hand and brought it up to my mouth, kissing each of her knuckles. Once I was finished, she did the kind of thing that would break your heart and pulled my hand down, kissing each of my knuckles. "I'm gonna fold you into it," I said. I rocked back on my heels wondering, mathematically, how to shrink a girl to the size of half a windowpane. Maybe I'd have to insult her first, ruin her confidence. Instead I chose to bend her arms behind her head, push her knees up to her chest. I even took special care to tuck all her hair in, too. When I finished, I leaned back and admired my handiwork. Gracie was never a girl who was in the dark about how or what to feel. She had a name for everything she felt. Even as a little girl post-shower, she attached the word glass to her body. But now, with her eyes closed and lips parted and neck exposed, she looked like someone who didn't always think too much.

"I love you Ava," she whispered. Without opening her eyes, she lowered her legs and rested her feet on my lap. "I love you."

"I love you too, angel. I love how yellow you are." She opened one eye and lifted her head. She smiled, humming, and removed her feet with a mindless twitch. She patted her stomach and I slid my hand under the hem of her shirt.

"I'm orange," she said. "We're orange." I nodded, convinced as usual that she was right. I asked if I could come lay next to her and she yanked me down in response. We both turned on our sides, half orange half not. She opened her mouth and hefted out a sleepy sigh, which I pulled back into my lungs and I kissed her, lazily. Whenever Gracie and I would kiss I could sense that somewhere far off, somewhere dark and dismal, a transformer exploded in the backyard of a republican. We used to kiss like we were sorry for their loss, jumping apart so as to avoid any desperate, heat-seeking shrapnel. In fact, the first time Gracie and I ever kissed it was so rushed that I remain certain I only got the edge of her mouth. She was leaving my house, where she'd come over for dinner. We did the lingering thing at the doorway that any teenager worth their salt does at some point or another, talking about Betty Lee. Gracie said that it was a girlish thing Betty'd done, and I could see that. It was girlish to put on your best dress, lay on the tracks, and delight yourself to bits once the train didn't come. However in Betty's case, the train did come. The train was a Buick.

Suddenly, we both realized we were also laying on the tracks, staring at each other's mouths. She looked over my shoulder and, seeing no family, kissed me, quickly. It was fleeting, but it was everything. We wanted to kill each other quietly. We wanted to kiss each other again.

Gracie mumbled something against my mouth and pulled away.

"What's that?" I asked.

"I said, you ever hear that story about Jesus and the blind man?"

"I like to think so."

"Yeah, well I liked to think so too. Liked to think so until my uncle, that guy who runs the Episcopal Church in Water Valley, told me the real story." She scooted closer. "Anyway, apparently, Jesus touched him twice. Which I think is one of the things the Catholics got right, you know. Nuns go to mass every day and all."

"So you and me," I said, "we've only been touched once? Still blind, is that what you're saying?"

"Well, not just us, no. Baptists. All of us, I think. Got it wrong." She had looked past me and out her window, her face suddenly subjected to the same warmth and circling sadness as any legitimate southern girl. I reached over and dragged the tips of my fingers along her cheeks until my thumb rested on her lips. She looked back at me and I was reminded, randomly and all at once, of this girl I saw once when I was five, struggling with her lighter on the boardwalk, the first person to ever really strike me as beautiful. I was not usually one for whispering things to make Gracie more attracted to me. I was abnormally soft spoken, only knowing what to say once the moment passed. I was good at grabbing Gracie's hand with urgency during certain situations: wild doe, overly curious dog. I was good at holding her and learning from her and doing the best I could with who I was. But now, because of love or pony heroics, I was a sudden vigilante on behalf of all Baptists and the space between us.

"Oh Jesus," I whispered. "Touch us again."