1. it’s like we’re magnets; attract and repulse

My mother decided who I was going to marry when I was a fetus. It’s one of those weird stories, where the mothers meet at pregnant-lady-yoga, and decide that since they get on so well, their kids should too. Creepy shit went down, and I ended up being born three minutes before my soul mate, which only further enforces my theory that he’s secretly my twin.

Wow, you’re probably thinking, this is sort of kinky. Soul mates? Possible incest?

Sweetheart, it’s gonna get better.

So, anyway, I get born and look around and come to the obvious conclusion that this is a pretty crappy place to be, and basically start screaming my head off, so then Danny had to hurry up and get born so he could tell me to shut up. He still does this. A lot.

Right, so, you have two gross babies hollering at one another, and two exhausted mothers sort of weakly threatening their husbands, (or boyfriend, in my mother’s case) and at some point Danny apparently screamed so loudly that I shut up, so then he shut up, and everyone from my grandparents to the doctors decided it was gonna be something like a fairytale.

And, well, it’s getting written, except the whole thing is sort of this enormous joke, really, and I’m concerned they might not find it quite as funny as I do.

We started going out when we were ten. You know. Just because. Everyone was sort of saying it anyways, so one day on the swings Danny just looked at me and said, “Hey Mac, you wanna be my girlfriend or something?”

And I said something like, “I thought I already was.”

Which was sort of true, so he just shrugged, and nothing really changed, because he’d always insisted on holding my hand before that, so it didn’t matter much to me. But it sure mattered to my parents—damn, they were over the moon. So were his, of course, and our siblings all made lewd comments whenever they were bright enough to think of some. Charming, let me tell ya.

This went on until we were around thirteen, which was about when something really, really important happened, and life sort of farted on us and ran off laughing, bastard.

It happened in his bedroom, while he was showing me how badly he could kick my ass at video games, and I just sort of looked at him and said, “Danny.”

Danny always gets me. He turned off the T.V. and looked at me really seriously and maybe a little nervously, and said, “What?”

Whenever I have a secret, I always tell him. It doesn’t really make sense in my head not to, I guess, because he’s just been there so long, and I don’t want anything stupid like a secret to come between us. Sometimes, I don’t even have to tell him. He usually just knows.

So I took a deep breath and held out my hand until he took it, and said very carefully, “I think I like girls. You know. As in—as in that way.”

Danny just sort of looked at me for a second, and then he smiled really big, really pretty, and said, “That’s okay. I sort of like boys.”

“Sort of?”

“Maybe seventy percent.”

I considered this, and said, “I think I’m ninety percent for girls.”

“That’s a lot.”

“I know.”

We both considered this.

“Maybe we shouldn’t tell our parents,” he said, and this, I understood. They’d probably go into mourning. This would totally destroy them, no joke or exaggeration. Everyone lives through their kids at least a little, and this was the sort of romance that was supposed to be scripted, complete with C-cups and rippling biceps. (I held up my half of the bargain better than he did.)

“Can you still take me to prom?” I asked him suddenly, insistently, because regardless of sexual preference, I wanted him to take me to prom. That’s just how it was. I didn’t want to share that with anyone else.

“Well, duh,” he said kind of slowly, like I was being incredibly slow, “I’m not dancing with a guy.”

This still doesn’t make any sense to me.