2009 . 11 . 01 – 3:42PM

“Alright, Luna, you’re up next.”

Krystal hip-bumped her member as they crossed paths, causing the latter to give out a small laugh at the action.  Luna headed towards the final-touches chair where they fixed her hair, outfit and make up.  Krystal searched the room quickly, looking for a spot to sit in between the different amount of clothes and accessories laid out on couches and tables for the different members for their performance later on today at the festival they were getting ready for.  She noticed a space available next to Amber, who was preoccupied on her iPod touch.

She hesitated for a second.  Ever since her conversation with Silvia the night before, she has been on edge about her feelings—knowing she still wasn’t fully ready to accept them herself.  Every time she thought about it, she felt a headache come on.  She sharply exhaled through her nose quickly and grew the guts to just walk over to the available seat and take it.

Amber felt her left side shift down slightly, feeling a weight come down.  She peeked to her left, taking off the left ear bud of her headphones.  “Hey,” she greeted contently in English.  “They finished your stuff?"

Krystal hummed out a response.  Amber nodded and put the ear bud back into her ear.  Krystal sat back into the couch they were sharing, quickly peeking at what Amber was watching on the little screen.  At first, she thought she was playing a game, but she was wrong.  She furrowed her eyebrows together noticing Caucasian people on her screen—a television show she was not too familiar with.

“What are you watching?” the curious girl asked.

Amber turned her head around to see Krystal with an interested expression.  She leaned back into the seat, letting their shoulders touch—the both of them trying their best to not notice the slight intimacy they were both experiencing at the moment.  After the conversation the both of them had had with both of their friends, Amber knew as well that it was hard to still accept, but she was getting there.  Even before the feelings, they had moments like these all the time.  She mentally reminded herself to not make it to heated—shoulders touching and knees touching while sitting on a very small couch was common between two members; Amber quickly glanced at Victoria and Sulli doing the same thing.  She couldn’t complain.

She took off her right ear bud and passed it to the girl next to her, to which the other obliged and put it on.  “The show is called ‘Skins’,” Amber said.  “It’s a British show about these groups of teenagers. Every two seasons is a new cast.”

“What season is this one?” Krystal asked as if she knew what she was talking about. 

“Third,” Amber replied.  “This is a brand new cast compared to seasons 1 and 2.  I just started watching the 3^rd season last night.”

“That’s how you spent your time off?” Krystal questioned with a laugh.

The tomboy chuckled.  “Not entirely.  I saw Jay and them yesterday.”

Eros, Krystal thought automatically.  He was there the night to witness Krystal’s first break down over the troubled matter.  “How are they?” she asked carefully.

Amber nodded, “Good.”  The scene they soon began to watch involved two female characters and judging by the scenes—Krystal blushed realizing that they were two lesbian characters.  She swallowed, crossing her feet together.  “Oh yeah,” Amber spoke out.  She laughed embarrassingly.  “I forgot to mention that there is a gay-couple-ish in here.  Sorry.”

Krystal shook her head, as she continued to watch Emily and Naomi of the show kiss in their forest campfire.  Her eyes widened slightly and she swallowed her dry saliva as the scene continued to Emily getting on top of Naomi.  “N-no it’s fine.  I told you I don’t care.”

Amber chuckled.  “Alright, if you say so.  But also know that this show is very vulgar.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s raw.  It has a lot of themes with drugs, alcohol, , relationships—a lot of cursing, too.  It’s meant to show like—I guess the real side of being a teenager.”

The real side of being a teenager.  Krystal thought about that sentence for a minute, making sure she hummed as a response letting Amber know she actually listened.  And she really did wonder—what was it like being a real and normal teenager.  If she were still in California, she would be in the 10^th grade, despite her late birthday and fifteen years old, simply attending a high school in San Francisco.  She wouldn’t be worrying about how high she had to sing a song or how hard to hit a point in a dance piece.  Or even how wrong it would be to be with a girl. 

Krystal coughed out of frustration, shutting her eyes quickly.  She had hoped that the cough feigned her troubled state, cursing herself silently at how she could even think about that recklessly.  She continued to watch the episode with Amber in silence, actually finding it amusingly interesting.

“Is it common?” she asked, glancing slightly to her right.

“Is what common?” the tomboy replied.

“Being gay.  Like, is it common in Europe?”

Amber shrugged.  “I don’t think it’s not much of a ‘is it common?’ question; more of a chance to let people know that this actually happens.  Know what I mean?”  She added another shrug.  “Teenagers go through the problem Naomi and Emily are having, you know?  Same with Freddie and Effy.  They’re a couple that’s having issues.  When we have time later, I’ll show you the season from the beginning so you could catch up with me.”

“What are their issues?”

“Freddie and Effy’s or Emily and Naomi’s?”

“Both.”

“Well,” Amber paused as she listened to Naomi and Emily converse; Emily pleading to Naomi that walking away from her right after they slept together is wrong and that it was okay to be scared.  Krystal watched the chemistry between the two actresses, flipping between their characters and their actual persons.  She wondered if the two actresses were gay, as well, but she knew that it wouldn’t have mattered, anyways—it was still acting.  She saw how Naomi was flustered—how scared she was to even be in the same space as Emily and Emily couldn’t understand why being together was so difficult.  Her thoughts raced, feeling so small yet so similar to the show within five minutes of watching it.

“Naomi and Emily have a thing together,” Amber said, interrupting Krystal’s thoughts.  “They’ve been on and off from the get-go.  They’re a bit scared to be like, open.  You know?”

Krystal hummed a response and nodded.  “As for Freddie and Effy,” she heard Amber say.  “Effy keeps messing around with Freddie’s best friend, Cook, but you can tell that Effy is scared to actually be with Freddie.  He’s a good guy.  I guess that’s why it’s scary.”

“Is that his real name?” Krystal asked with a laugh.

“Haha, Cook?” Amber questioned with a chuckle.  “Kind of.  It’s his last name.”

“Why would she be scared?” Krystal piped in.  “I mean, it’s a great thing if he’s a good guy.”

Amber nodded.  “You’re right on that one.”  She turned her head to look to her best friend.  “But think about it, if you’ve been hurt before, been lied to before, had your trust broken—would you be able to trust someone again so easily?”

Krystal and Amber held their stare for quite some time, forgetting their surroundings.  The younger girl had questioned to herself if the tomboy was asking a general statement or if she was subliminally telling her something personal.  She couldn’t tell.  Amber had her heart broken from the relationship with Vanessa, she thought to herself.  Krystal didn’t know much about the relationship before she left to Korea—she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know, anyways.  So was Amber secretly trying to put an idea in Krystal’s head or was she just speaking in general terms?

Before she could say anything, she saw Amber chuckle after the silence between the two and looked back to the screen.  “Sorry,” she said.  “I didn’t mean to confuse you.”

“Trust me, you didn’t,” Krystal reassured.  She gave out a chuckle.  “I guess I just never thought about it like that.”

Amber gave out a smile.  “It’s crazy how things can change your mind sometimes, huh?”

The latter smiled back.  “Yeah, that’s definitely true.”  She nodded towards the screen.  “How old are the characters?”

Amber perked her lips.  “I think my age—around 17, 18.”

“Oh wow,” Krystal gave out.

“Yeah, exactly.  They’re pretty young.”

“You’ve had your own share of experiences, as far as I know.”

Amber cleared , automatically thinking of what Krystal could be referring to.  “Haha, I guess.”  She shrugged.  “I mean, you’re not too far behind.  Aiden was the first boyfriend I’ve known about and you were 14 at the time.”

“You first had your girlfriend when you were 14?” Krystal asked.

“Close.  15.”

“Oh yeah,” the younger girl replied.  “Now I remember.”

“Right, haha.”

“Was that hard?” Krystal asked carefully.  “You know… I mean, it was like your first time right?”

Amber nodded.  “No one knew, so of course it was hard.”

“You never told anyone?”

“I mean, eventually I did.  It took time, though.”

“Was it hard leaving her?”

Amber gave out a half laugh.  “You’re on a roll with these questions today, you know that?”

Krystal blinked and couldn’t help but laugh it off.  “Sorry, I’m just curious.  You’re my best friend.”

Amber nodded, continuing to laugh.  “Yes.  It was hard.”  Her expression changed slowly—slowly becoming more serious.  “I have my days with her.  On one day, I’m okay that we broke up; on another day, I’m not.  How we ended wasn’t… clean, if that’s the best way to put it.”

“What happened?” Krystal asked.

She heard Amber sigh.  She saw Amber take off her head phones, to which she followed as Amber began to put away the iPod touch, considering they were done watching “Skins” at the moment.  “Like I said the last time—me moving here.  But it was more than that.”  Amber rubbed her face with her right hand.  “We fought about a lot of things the night before I left; the night we broke up.  Eventually, when I became more comfortable of being myself—coming out of the closet—she wasn’t.  It was frustrating, having to hide all the time while we were in school.  It was frustrating because we pretty much dated for a year.”  She heard Amber groan.  “And we also argued about me going to Korea and how selfish I was for just auditioning without telling her—I didn’t think I was gonna get accepted, anyways.  I just did it because I wanted to but I honestly did not have that much hope.”  Amber scoffed.  “It was just a very frustrating night; we never ended the relationship on the right note and that is always a bad thing to do.”

“Why do you think so?” Krystal asked.  “If the relationship is over, then it’s over.  End of story.”

“Right,” Amber said.  “But, if either or doesn’t have proper closure—it’ll just be heavy baggage.”

“Do you have baggage from both her and Vanessa?”

“I have less baggage with Vanessa compared to Hope.”

Krystal blinked.  “That’s her name,” she heard Amber said.  She shook her head.  “Sorry, I just realized I never told you.”

“No, it’s fine.”  Krystal furrowed her eyebrows together.  “And that’s because you and Vanessa have actually talked about it, right?”

“Yeah—well for the most part, at least.”

She saw Amber shake her head again.  “For the most part, I know I’m over Hope.  I’m just not over how horrible the relationship was in terms of—all of the sh*t we went through.”  Amber sighed.  “Granted, we were only fifteen but still.  She shouldn’t have blamed me for every negative thing about our relationship; I swear she used me going to Korea as an excuse for that.”

“Were you over her when you went out with Vanessa?”

Amber scoffed.  “A little before that even.”

Krystal nodded and looked down.  She bit her lip.  “…Are you over Vanessa now?”

Amber blushed for a second lightly.  Why would she ask that?  She swallowed the sudden lump that formed in .  She knew very well how much Krystal didn’t like Vanessa and even the relationship they had together.  And she knew that Krystal had no idea about who, what, where or how Hope acted or looked like.

“Yeah, I am,” Amber replied after some thought.  She cleared .  “Why?”

She saw Krystal shake her head and get up from her seat, the both of them hearing their staff announce that they all needed to get ready for their performance in twenty minutes.

“I was just curious.”