Things are weird now, and Karma's only 20 percent sure it's because Amy slept with Karma's boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Whatever. And Karma still doesn't quite trust her (Karma doesn't trust Liam at all). The other 80 percent is pretty sure it's because Karma keeps dreaming about kissing Amy. Or about Amy kissing other people. Like, seriously, what is that?

Screwed up. That's what that is.

The Internet's no help. Her horoscope has been shitty for days and every variation of "straight girls who like girls" that she types into every search engine leads her to some spot on the LGBT spectrum, and, like, nobody understands that Karma's not on that spectrum. She's not. She's 100 percent straight.

Well. Ninety-nine percent straight. If the one percent is Amy.

Because that's the thing, Karma doesn't like boys and girls; she likes boys and Amy. Maybe. She doesn't totally want to date Amy for real, but she for sure doesn't want her to date anyone else. Which she also feels shitty and guilty about because Amy broke up with Reagan two weeks ago and won't tell Karma why, and Karma's pretty sure it's because Amy somehow secretly knows about Karma's dreams and thoughts and feelings…

Because everything always has to be about you, right?

God, she hates herself sometimes.

The fucking cheap Internet service her parents pay for freezes on a website about what all the different letters in the LGBT alphabet stand for, and Karma is an idiot and was on the "family" computer in the kitchen instead of her own laptop, and this is going to be pretty hard to explain to her mom and dad, whom she actually had to come out as straight to. Granted, it was entirely her fault that they thought she was not straight, but still. They're her fucking parents. They should know her better than she knows herself, so she can go to them with stupid fucking questions like "Why do I have this recurring dream about making out with my best friend?"

They'd probably just cry (with joy) and tell her she's gay. Or bi. That's a thing, Karma knows now. She'd thought bisexuality was something gay people made up to prove that they aren't actually gay. But it's its own thing, she's found out, thanks to anonymous people online. No thanks to her shitty public school that cancels classes for stupid day-long "social experiments" that aren't going to mean a goddam thing when SATs and ACTs roll around, but whatever.

Karma's pretty sure she's not bisexual.

Well. Maybe. But, like, probably not. For sure not. Probably. Does bisexual count if it's all dudes and only one girl? Karma doesn't know. And she doesn't know if she's attracted to Amy. When she looks at Amy, she doesn't feel any different. Well. Except when Amy smiles. That's kind of nice. Or when she says something hilarious, which is often. Or, was often. Things are weird now. Weirder.

Karma's wearing her best friend necklace again, but it makes her uncomfortable, like she doesn't know if they can be best friends after everything. Or, like, maybe only Karma feels that way because she doesn't want to be best friends anymore, she wants to be…

Stop.

You're straight.

This is stupid, Karma decides.

She tries to shut off the computer, but an error message keeps popping up, and Karma legit thinks about spilling soda or melted butter in the hard drive and just throwing the whole goddam thing out. Nobody uses it anyway. And Karma really doesn't want to sit through another lecture about how her parents love her no matter what and "are you very, very sure, honey?" She had to listen to that for 45 minutes the night Amy confessed her 10-year-long love for her while they were all sitting in jail.

If her parents loved her, they would believe her, Karma is pretty sure.

The front door slams, and Karma yanks the power cord, hoping the computer will die in the next 15 seconds, but it's just Amy who appears in the doorway and Karma breathes.

"Hey," Amy says.

"Hey," Karma says. "What are you doing here?"

"Sorry. Do I need a reason?"

Okay, so Amy's in a pissy mood. That's fine. Karma glances at the clock on the wall. It's a Saturday, just a little after noon. Her parents are out God-knows-where selling kale or whatever-juice smoothies and will probably be gone for a while.

"No," Karma says. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Amy sits at the counter, and they both know she's lying. There is definitely something wrong. But Karma lets her sit without an interrogation and Amy says, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Homework." Amy raises her eyebrows and Karma pretends not to notice. "You want something to eat?" Karma's house is one of the few places Amy can eat without thinking about whether she's eating something that contains peanuts. Not that she thinks about it regularly anyway, but Karma's made sure since first grade that any meals here would not end in a trip to the hospital.

"What do you have?" Amy asks like she doesn't already know.

"A bunch of organic stuff, something I don't even know what it is, and some brownies."

"I'm not eating any of your parents' baked goods."

"No, these are fine," Karma says, pulling the pan out of the fridge. "I made them label everything after… Look." She points to a second pan next to the milk. "Special." She points to the pan she's holding. "Not special. There are only like six left. You want one?"

Amy nods and Karma peels the Saran wrap off. The brownies are enormous and frosted. They each take one.

"So, why'd you break up with Reagan?" Karma has asked at least once a day since it happened, and even though Amy usually yells at her, she doesn't feel bad about bringing it up now because Amy is staring at her phone with such an intensity Karma almost feels like she should leave the room.

"It doesn't matter. Something stupid."

"Who are you texting?"

"Your mom."

Karma rolls her eyes. "Oh, yeah? Is she asking for bail money?"

Amy glances up and smiles and suddenly today is a good one, Karma thinks. "It's not your mom," she says. "It's Shane."

"What's he want?"

Amy just shrugs. Karma figures she needs to make more friends.

God, these brownies were fucking delicious. Probably people who are questioning their sexualities deserve a second helping, so Karma grabs another. Not that she's questioning anything. Maybe the brownies are just that good and God or whatever blessed her with a metabolism that was that high, so she can enjoy whatever the fuck she wants, thank you.

"You can have more if you want," she says to Amy, who has finished bus is staring at the pan like she's starving. "We're not saving these for anything." Amy picks up another. There are only two left now.

"I broke up with Reagan because Mom and Bruce are fighting," Amy says, and it catches Karma all the way left, because even though she'd asked about it like five minutes earlier, she'd already forgotten and thought they'd moved on to something else.

"Do you think they're going to get a divorce?"

Amy shrugs. Then, "Yes."

"That's a dumb reason to break up with someone," Karam says, and she immediately feels bad because Amy looks away like she's knows she's being dumb, but she has her own, as-of-yet unexplained reasons for breaking up with her girlfriend, and Karma knows those unexplained reasons are that Amy's family is fucked up and Amy is fucked up when it comes to family, and neither of them have said so out loud but they both know there are things Karma will never get because her parents have never divorced anyone. Or been married five times. Four? Karma thinks. Fiv — four. Four. Bruce is four.

"Yeah, well," Amy says at the same time Karma says, "I'm sorry."

Amy sighs.

Karma says, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Amy shakes her head. She never wants to talk about it. In the short list of things their friendship can't really handle talking about too often, Amy's family occupies the second and third slots.

It used to occupy the top slot, but whatever their relationship is now has taken that honor since Karma's brilliant idea to fake being lesbians.

"These are really good brownies," Amy says. "Like, really good."

"I think my mom made them with vanilla or something," Karma says. Then she realizes something. "Are your parents fighting now? Is that why you came over?"

"They are not my parents. They are my mother and her husband," Amy says.

"Sorry."

"And yes. That's why."

Karma doesn't really know what to say to that, so she gives Amy a sad look. Or at least she hopes it's a sad look. Amy's so pretty it's hard to look sad at her. God, she's so pretty. Even as she's grabbing a third brownie, which she does.

"These aren't very filling," she says. "I'm still hungry."

"Me too," and Karma takes the last one.

They chew in silence for a while and then Amy says, apropos of nothing, "Everything's so fucked up at home."

"How so?"

"Just… Nobody knows what marriage is. It's where you find the person you like more than everybody else and you say, 'this is it,' and then you marry them and … that's it. For better or worse. Is that not a thing? That has to be a thing. I've heard it in at least three wedding vows."

"Don't worry about them. I'm your family." It's her standard response, but for some reason Karma feels weird about saying it this time. Like maybe it's not enough.

But Amy steamrolls right over it and says, "Don't call yourself that anymore. Family's just another word for people who say they love you and then leave you forever."

And yeah, Karma remembers, barely, how fucked it was when Amy's dad left, or when Amy's mom kicked him out. She's never gotten the full story. She wonders if Amy even knows the full story.

"You should just call Reagan," Karma says. "She'll understand."

"I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Because," Amy says. "I just want to feel bad."

That's pretty much the stupidest thing Karma's ever heard. "Why?"

"Because I want to!" Amy snaps and Karma figures they're done talking about this. She checks the clock on the wall. Two-thirty. How did that happen?

"Are you still hungry?" she says.

"Starving."

"Yeah." God, and now Karma's looking around, and there are so many things in their kitchen. "We have a lot of stuff," she says.

"Yeah."

"Like, how did we get all this stuff?"

"Your parents probably stole it."

"Don't say that."

"Okay."

"Don't think it, either."

Amy says nothing.

"Are you thinking it?"

"No."

"You're a jerk."

"So are you."

And something's weird, because everything starts moving a lot slower than normal, and Karma's pretty sure she's been in love before and this ain't how it feels, so it can't be that, so what…

"Oh my God," Amy says, staring at the ceiling. Karma looks up to see what she sees, but all there is is … ceiling.

"What?"

"I'm fucking hungry as shit."

It's pretty infallible logic, especially when Karma notices her stomach growl as if she didn't just eat like three pounds of brownie. For filling up, though, their cupboards are pretty sparse. If they don't want to cook anything, they'll have to go to McDonald's or something, which is what Karma tells Amy.

"I don't want to go anywhere," Amy says. Karma waits for like 10 minutes before Amy adds, "What do you have that we can cook?"

"Like, shitty organic box noodles, shitty organic frozen shit, shitty organic yogurt that's moldy or is supposed to be blotchy green, shitty organic salad shit…"

Amy comes to the cupboard. Karma doesn't even remember her moving. "What about this?" she says about a box of cake mix.

"Those are for birthdays."

"It's got to be someone's birthday today," Amy says.

"Okay," Karma says and closes the cupboard. "What else do we need?"

Amy's concentrating really hard on the back of the box. It's almost hilarious. "We definitely need an oven," she says. "And a pan. Water. Eggs. Milk is optional."

Karma grabs a pan. "Like this?" she says. It's pretty flat. Amy dumps the contents of the box cake mix on the pan. They stare at it for like an hour.

"That doesn't look right."

"No."

Amy sighs, like it's a huge fucking chore to read the back of the box again. "Water. Milk. Eggs," she says. "Those are the things we need."

Karma's already at the fridge. "How many eggs?"

"Two."

Karma breaks two eggs against the edge of the counter. Most of them get into the cake pan. Amy fills a cup of water from the sink and pours that in as well. "Do we need to mix it up?" Karma says.

"It's going to be hard in this flat pan," Amy says. "We need a big bowl."

Karma can't remember where the big bowls are, so she dumps out a roundish flower vase that Zen gave to their mother for Mother's Day two years ago. Two years. Those flowers are dead. Amy tips the pan into the vase. A lot of the batter ends up on the counter. And the floor.

"Oh," Amy says.

"Don't worry," Karma says. And she means it. Amy shouldn't worry about anything, ever. Especially not her stupid family. Karma feels bad a lot of the time because Amy's family is so fucked and hers is so perfect. Well, not perfect. Zen's kind of a dick and her parents really want her not to be straight, but, like, she knows it's better than Amy's family by like a mile.

"We forgot the milk," Amy says, staring into the vase.

"We don't need it," Karma says and she gets a big wooden spoon and tries to mix the batter. It doesn't go well. Some of it gets on Amy's face and some of it gets on Karma's shirt and a lot of it tips over the edges onto the counter and the floor and now there's not much left to bake and Amy tips the rest back into the flat-as-shit pan and Karma sets the oven to 400-whatever degrees and motions for Amy to get the pan and Amy does but then it slips out of her fingers, hits the open oven door and bounces, batter-side-up, onto the kitchen floor.

"Oh," Amy says.

Karma slides onto the floor and sits against the cabinets. Amy sits next to her, and it's like nine hours before Karma says anything and when she does, it's, "Are you still in love with me?"

Amy shakes her head.

"I won't be mad," Karma says.

Amy hesitates. Then she nods.

Karma leans in.

It's amazing. It's like her dreams, but real. And Amy's there and she's real, and they're never on the kitchen floor like they are now, covered in sugar and egg and goopy batter mix, but it's great, it's wonderful, it's fantastic and someone's calling Karma's name and she prays to God or whatever, Don't let this be a dream.

And then there are hands, prying Karma's and Amy's faces apart, and it's not a dream, and now they're staring up at Karma's parents, who are staring back with expressions Karma can't read.

"Hi," Karma says. Amy waves a little bit. They're still lying on the floor.

"Hi," Karma's mom says. "What are you two up to?"

And Karma's not entirely sure she can form coherent sentences, but luckily Amy jumps in with, "We're baking."

Which is not untrue, although their future cake is kind of spread all over the kitchen and the oven door is still wide open with nothing inside and it's not technically what they were doing right that second, but whatever. Details.

And now her parents are staring at them like they've just figured something out and Karma's mom goes to the counter and looks at the empty brownie pan. "Did you eat these?" she says.

"Yeah," Karma says.

"They weren't very filling," Amy says.

And now Karma's parents are whispering to each other and Karma's trying to listen but she's also distracted by everything else going on, so she only catches a few words and one of them is "mislabeled" and Karma suddenly sits up.

"No, it's not," she says. "I'm straight. Remember? I told you." Her parents just stare at her. Karma frowns. "You guys never believe me when I say I'm straight!"

More stares.

"I believe you," Amy says.

"Thanks, Amy," Karma says directly into her parents face. Or as directly as she can from the kitchen floor. The room starts spinning, kind of, and Karma thinks she better lie down again.

"Okay," Karma's dad says. "I think we should try to get up off the floor and move to the living room."

"Can you walk?" Karma's mom says, and she only waits like 10 seconds before saying, "Okay," and she grabs Karma's arms and pulls her to her feet. Karma's dad helps Amy stand at the same time.

"Are you guys going to make me go home?" Amy says.

Both of Karma's parents scream, "No!" and it's so unexpected that Karma snort-laughs.

Karma's dad says, "Actually, Amy, we would love it if you stayed for the next thr— four or five … or six hours. We never get to see you anymore."

"Oh," Amy says. "I have to go home for dinner, I think…"

But then they're in the living room and Karma's mom is putting Donnie Darko into the DVD player and Karma doesn't remember it as a funny movie, but every scene now, while she's holding Amy's hand on the couch and her parents clean up the kitchen, is goddam hilarious.