Bianca Torre Is Afraid of Everything, page 1
Dedication
To all my queer readers:
whether you have known for years
or are just meeting yourself for the first time,
whether you are afraid of nothing or everything,
thank you for being you
and for taking a chance on me.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One: Lesbian Sheep Do Exist
Two: Ornithologists Have a Thing for Boobs
Three: A Twist of Events
Four: Authority Figures Can’t Be Trusted
Five: Asking for Help
Six: There’s a Metaphor Here Somewhere
Seven: Extracurricular Crime Solving
Eight: Another Small Felony
Nine: Dead Man’s Book of Conspiracies
Ten: Queer Kids Love English Class
Eleven: Watch Your Back
Twelve: What the Puck?
Thirteen: A Rose by Any Other Gender Would Smell Just as Sweet
Fourteen: The Answer Lies in Destruction
Fifteen: Lesbian Sheep Meets Valley Quail
Sixteen: Reasons to Actually Be Afraid
Seventeen: The Weird-Ass Bird Symbol
Eighteen: Join the Flock
Nineteen: Shall I Compare Thee to a Birding Gay?
Twenty: Therefore I Lie With Her
Twenty-One: A Family Next Door
Twenty-Two: Bianca Torre Laughs in the Face of Danger
Twenty-Three: Not a Peep
Twenty-Four: Anderson Coleman Is Afraid of Some Things
Twenty-Five: Return of the Jamba
Twenty-Six: A Field Guide to North American Birds and Murders
Twenty-Seven: Kate Torre Makes a Comeback
Twenty-Eight: A Message from Mr. Conspiracy
Twenty-Nine: The Flock Follows Through
Thirty: A Completely Uneventful Birding Hike
Thirty-One: Enter the Flock
Thirty-Two: Real-Life Escape Room
Thirty-Three: Exit, Pursued by a Bird
Thirty-Four: All’s Well That Ends Well
Thirty-Five: New Beginnings
Bianca Torre’s List of Fears
Justine Pucella Winans Is Thankful to Everyone
About the Author
Books by Justine Pucella Winans
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Lesbian Sheep Do Exist
There are many things we are uncertain of on this planet, like what happens after death, the possibility of life outside our solar system, and the existence of lesbian sheep.
Maybe that last one isn’t widely regarded as one of life’s great mysteries, but it is. I read an article about homosexual male rams but found no mention of homosexual ewes. It goes back to their mating patterns. When female sheep, so I’m told, are feeling some kind of way, they go still so a male sheep can mount them. Apparently, it’s highly unlikely for any ewe to mount another sheep.
So it isn’t that there aren’t any lesbian sheep, it’s that we can’t figure out if there are. Somewhere out there, a lesbian sheep is frozen and horny, waiting for the ewe of her dreams to top her.
I really relate to lesbian sheep.
Not because I would love for a hot girl to mount me—although I most definitely would—but because no matter what I want, it’s like nature prevented me from being capable of chasing it. I was programmed to be too afraid, too uncomfortable to do anything. I’m not the kind of person that takes risks. Or makes the first move.
I’m the person who goes still and waits, even though I know nothing ever happens for sheep people like me.
There’s a lot I don’t like about myself, but sheep don’t stop being sheep because it’s unlikeable. They don’t suddenly go against nature and mount whatever they want without consequence.
It’s the way we’re wired.
Ewes don’t get to hump other ewes like they want, and I spend all my time alone in my room.
Sure, I have to go to school and mandatory dinner with my family, but even when I’m outside, the sheep personality is still prominent.
There are people who can do whatever they want, say whatever they want, and there are people like me who have a full CVS-receipt-long list of fears.
And, by the way—
Fear #24: Sheep
Those soulless eyes hide something more than just lesbianism, I’m sure of it.
I know a lot about hiding. I do it constantly. Whether it be my sexuality, my personality, or the literal hiding happening right now.
I’m standing in front of the large window, wedged between two tall bookshelves that are filled with novels I’ve never opened and birding bibles I’ve well worn out. Interacting with the world safely behind a piece of glass, I adjust the position of my telescope to dip below the sky. Point it at the weathered red brick of the building across the little alley. There’s enough of a distance to be subtle about it, but not enough to prevent me from seeing everything clearly. This telescope works great for constellations or shooting stars too far away for small wishes like mine to reach. At night, it provides a fantastic view of the open sky, filled with endless possibility, reminding me that when facing the bulk of the universe, everyone is tiny, not just the fearful ones. It’s a comforting thought.
In the daytime, however, it’s great for being a total freaking creep.
I position the telescope to Queen Elizabeth’s apartment. Obviously not the late queen. I call her that because she’s a white lady in her late seventies who wears formal dresses like she’s going to an opera. Though whatever sound spins on her record player by the window can only be heard by her and her two cats. She lives on the second floor, which is about level with my bedroom window, in the apartment farthest right. The third floor is too high for me to see anything. I may get bored, but I haven’t gotten to the point of staring at someone else’s ceiling fan.
I would at least have to exhaust the option of staring at mine first.
Queen Elizabeth doesn’t seem to be near her big-ass bay window today. I spot one of the cats, the fluffy white one with the permanently pinched face, as he licks his paw before rubbing it over his nose. He glances in my direction, almost like he knows he’s being watched.
Cats. Nothing gets past them.
“You think I’ll be like her in fifty years?” I ask Puck, my own ginger cat currently curled up on my bed.
Being as she’s a cat, she doesn’t respond. Although the fact that I asked her kind of speaks for itself.
Swallowing that thought, I slide the lens over to the next window. Mr. Conspiracy has his curtains drawn shut during the day, so it’s not like I actually watch him. Which is almost a bummer, since he’s directly across from my window and would offer the best view. I only know that he looks like a thirtysomething-year-old white man because one time, there was a manhunt nearby, and the LAPD had a helicopter circling real close. He happened to have the curtains open just enough to see if someone was hopping buildings.
It was a really lucky break. We get a decent amount of helicopters circling in this area of North Hollywood, but that was the one that took him over the edge. He didn’t have aluminum foil on his head like I expected, but he had a phone that seemed like a burner from Walmart. And what looked like an alarming amount of Post-it notes on the wall, hence the nickname.
But we have a different kind of connection. He knows I’m looking. Maybe he doesn’t care because I can’t see him anyway. Or maybe he thinks I’m only doing it for birdwatching, based on the feeders I fastened outside my window with sheer hope and loads of duct tape.
Either way, he’s taken to leaving little bird drawings for me on occasion, which is actually kind of sweet. Right now I can make out the familiar, slightly grayed white paper taped to the very top and center of his window, where he always leaves them.
I twist the focus to give the drawing some clarity.
With the rosy coloring on the neck and crown and a beautiful blend of emerald and lime on the body, it’s unmistakably a male Anna’s hummingbird.
A smile creeps up on my lips. Mr. Conspiracy may be a weird dude, but he’s a great artist. And sadly enough . . . he might just be one of my closest friends. Sure, I’ve only seen him once, but there isn’t anyone else drawing birds for me.
Romeo and Juliet live below Mr. Conspiracy. I don’t care about Shakespeare like my mom, with her classical theater obsession, but being named after a character from one of his plays is a pain I know too well. Though, as far as Shakespearean names go, I kind of got lucky with Bianca.
I tried to fight Mom when it came to naming the cat, but she won.
She always wins.
Romeo and Juliet bring it upon themselves, though. They’re all over each other 24-7 with the curtains wide open, like they get off on the idea of someone watching. I try to avoid it. Sure, they aren’t bad looking, and I’d be lying if I said Juliet wouldn’t have me freezing my sheep self any day, but even creeps have to draw the line somewhere, and mine is at the PG rating.
Romeo stands by the window, about to say something to Juliet. He smiles, pulling off his shirt to reveal a large tattoo over his brown skin that I think says Aguilar. I don’t really get the trend of tattooing a last name on your body, but some of Dad’s favorite UFC fighters ride that bandwagon hard.
I catch some welcome movement to the upper left—a window sliding open.
It’s the apartment of Anderson Coleman, the only person in the building I actually know, because he’s kinda my only real-life friend.
He leans his head out the window, making him clearly visible. He’s Black, with deep brown eyes, and he currently wears a huge smile as he looks right in my direction.
And flips me off.
I watch as he lifts his phone to his cheek, and my own phone buzzes from next to me on the shelf. I pick it up.
“You’re stalking people again, huh?” he says as I see his lips move through the telescope.
“How did you know?”
“My Spidey senses. I’m basically Miles Morales, you know this.”
I snort-laugh into the line.
“Don’t be jealous just because you have a crush on Gwen Stacy,” he adds.
For someone who only really hangs out with me outside of school, he knows me too well. I don’t know if it’s strange to still watch him through the telescope as we’re talking, but I think he learned to stop caring. And to shut his curtains more often, even though I try to respect his privacy and only look when he’s at the window.
It’s harder to spy on people you know and like. Especially when they know about your spying.
“My animated crushes have nothing to do with this.”
“It’s the shadows. You block the light when you’re standing in the window, even if I can’t really see you.” As he speaks, he adjusts the glasses he only wears at home.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I ask. Nobody else would have noticed, I hope. At the very least, maybe they’ll assume I’m chilling by my window. Or birdwatching, like I sometimes am and should be doing.
Anderson’s sigh is heavy through my cell phone. “Because friends don’t enable their friends’ creepy habits, Bianca.”
“Whatever,” I say. “We still watching the new episode of One Piece on Sunday?”
Through the telescope, he points at his Monkey D. Luffy T-shirt and gives a thumbs-up. “Of course we are. I am so ready for this next battle.”
“I can’t wait.”
“For sure, we’ll talk soon.” He makes a face at me before hanging up and closing the curtains behind him.
Anime is the reason that someone like Anderson is friends with me in the first place. We don’t really talk at school, where he’s popular and has friends in basically every social circle, and I am considerably . . . not and don’t.
But our freshman year, we were the only two students to walk home to this area, so we’d see each other a lot. One day I wore a shirt with a subtle reference to Haikyuu!!, and he practically ran up to start a conversation.
No one else knows it outside his family, but Anderson is a total weeb. Worse than me. Like his room is covered in anime figures, and not just mainstream Goku and Naruto kinds of figures. He’s got, like, super sexy Boa Hancock figures from One Piece that I have to look away from when I visit or I start blushing profusely.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a secret body pillow of his waifu (either Boa or Nami, because he can’t decide) and just refuses to admit it. But one thing is for sure: I’m probably the only girl from school who’s been in his room, and I’m a socially awkward lesbian.
“Hey, you stalking people again?”
Kate pushes my door open enough to see me. I can’t keep it fully closed because Mom assumes if our door is shut, she’s going to suddenly become one of those white moms on TV that doesn’t understand how their kid went wrong and tried to make a bomb in their closet. It’s overkill, because she’d murder me in cold blood for doing anything that’d make her look bad. As for Dad, he’d cuss us out at the mere thought of deviant behavior and ship us to our very Catholic nonna in Bologna.
But having to step into a church and not burst into flames would only be second in torment, right after my cousins constantly teasing me for only knowing a solid fifteen words of Italian, and half of those just being flavors of gelato.
Regardless of Kate and me being the hopeless Valley girls of our family, the doors always stay open. It allows Puck free rein, which she enjoys. You can’t even use the toilet with the door closed or she’ll freak out, pawing at the wood and meowing like she hasn’t eaten in years.
“Bianca, you’re in your head again,” Kate says. “And as much as I love your overthinking little self, it’s awkward when you stare off and say nothing.”
“Sorry.” Now I’m blushing. I really do get lost in my thoughts too much. “But I’m not stalking people, I’m birdwatching.” I gesture to the bookshelves on either side of my large window. Encyclopedias, field guides—nearly every text you can easily get on ornithology is in my collection. “So, if you mean stalking this lesser goldfinch, then sure, yeah. I’m stalking.”
Like Anderson, my whole family knows about my weird habit of people-watching, but I get by using the excellent cover of birding. It helps that this accidental hobby actually became a big part of my life. With the help of my birding group and Mr. Conspiracy’s drawings, birding really grew on me.
My people-watching is like my sexuality. Mom and Dad must have picked up on some clues that I’m gay, like my childhood obsession with Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent and the fact that I can’t even say hello to the hot bookseller girl at the local Barnes & Noble without tearing up and trembling. I don’t know. Since I never came out officially, we don’t talk about it. To my parents, I am a raging homosexual stalker and just an awkward straight birder at the same time.
I’m like Schrödinger’s queer. Or Schrödinger’s creep.
Maybe both.
For being so close, my family is really great at not talking about things.
“Sure, kid,” Kate says.
She raises her newly waxed eyebrows, a little red around the edges. She’s even whiter than I am, which is saying something. I can at least get a color in the sun that isn’t red. Kate’s hair is that light brown that’s basically blond. I’m more halfway between Mom and Dad: her light brown eyes, his dark and wavy hair.
“Seriously,” I say. “Birding.”
“Whatever, you can save the birding for later. Dinner’s ready, and since I got dish duty today, you’re setting the table. Lucked out.”
I tilt my telescope back up to the sky as Puck makes that weird I see a bird chatter at the sight of a feathered friend that is not even remotely close to a lesser goldfinch. At least Kate doesn’t know the difference.
“Well,” I say as I stand. “Did you ever hear of that lesbian sheep thing?”
Two
Ornithologists Have a Thing for Boobs
Even though it’s early on a Saturday morning, my entire family is already awake. Dad has to start a shift at the urgent care he works at, Mom has rehearsal for her all-female production of Hamlet, and Kate agreed to take me to my birding group hike, since I seem to be one of the five sixteen-year-olds in Los Angeles without a license.
Dad wants me to learn to drive, but I can’t even imagine myself behind the wheel. I’d have an actual heart attack if the slightest thing went wrong. Not to mention, my reaction time is so bad, I nearly cried trying to play a first-person shooter. How am I supposed to brake in time? It’s like everyone else has some sixth sense that I missed out on.
And with our giant freeways and careless drivers that actually seem to have a death wish?
Fear #50: Driving (And Inevitably Failing at It)
I’m not sure trusting my sister’s driving is much better. But Mom and Dad are busy, and I don’t think Anderson and I have reached the level of friendship for me to ask for rides or anything. Maybe if a new anime movie was out, he’d ask me to come so I could be his geeky excuse if we ran into anyone from school. But my birding club is a different beast altogether—a geekier kind of geeky—so I’m stuck with my sister.
She looks half asleep. Her light hair’s barely combed as Dad pours her a cup of espresso to match his own. I don’t know how they drink it black, especially not with the way Dad packs the ground coffee into the bottom of the silver pot.
“Why can’t we get one of those nice automatic machines?” I ask. “To make cappuccinos?”
“Waste of money,” Dad says.
It was worth a try.
I take my piece of toast after it pops up, a little too burnt for my liking, but good enough. As I spread some Nutella over it, I can’t help but glance out the window above the sink. It gives a view into the yard of our other neighbors, who have a small, weathered house and a huge American flag that kind of makes me think they’re racist.
