"I'm gay."

Oh god. That statement was not how I wanted to start my day. Well, not quite start, but close enough. It was before noon. I was banned from caffeine (and any other food or drink except for water) for yet another stupid fast that had no real meaning. I wasn't awake yet, though I'd been out of bed for six and a half hours already, thanks to a stupid dawn ritual. So it was still the beginning of the day for me, and it would be for a little over a half hour.

No, I definitely was not in the mood for one of my best friends to come up to me and make that statement. Especially not when she pronounced it in a clear, high voice, with just enough of a waver in her voice to tell me that she was quite nervous about it, and that she wanted as many people to hear her as she could possibly get, before she lost her confidence and couldn't say it anymore. Unfortunately for me, she had accomplished just that. Every person visiting the shrine at the moment had heard her, and almost all of them were staring at me, probably wondering why she had decided to confess this to the priestess.

I was reminded of a similar incident at that moment. The situations were the same. Replace doll-like best friend with far-too-handsome boyfriend and twenty-two year old college graduate me with eighteen-year-old not quite out of high school me, and make it fall instead of summer. Otherwise it was the same. I was stretching out my stiffened muscles and getting a breath of fresh air after a post-ritual meeting with my mother when I was approached by a familiar face. Then came the hurried, embarrassed confession, the exact same words both times, that drew the eyes of the various people visiting the shrine.

Of course, I just wanted to drag miss pretty and oblivious (and attracted to women, my mind added with a nervous giggle) into the shrine building and hide from the stares. It really didn't help that I had just come from a meeting with my mother, and that she could come waltzing out of the shrine's main entrance any time now. I couldn't go hide, though. I had to stay there, grin, and find some way of defusing the situation without getting us somewhere private first. Everyone was watching me, and running away like a scared little girl was not what a proper priestess did. I couldn't afford to act un-priestessly, not with the chance that my mother might come out and see it.

So all I could do to express my shock was stare at the girl standing in front of me. The pretty, blonde, waif of an eighteen year old who had attached herself to me before she was even ten (I was fourteen at the time). The barely heard whisper in my ear that was my years of training in what was proper told me that I should dismiss her with a smile. I should act cold and tell her that I had business to take care of, and that I couldn't talk at the moment. That way my mother wouldn't suspect anything if she saw it.

It made sense. In fact, I was about to form that smile and then open my mouth to tell her I couldn't talk. But before I could twitch my facial muscles just enough to turn the corners of my mouth up, I saw the desperate question in her eyes. I saw the insecurity she was feeling, the fear that I would be disgusted. I couldn't just send her away, though I still needed to get her out of there as soon as possible.

I still smiled, but it was warmer, more friendly, than the pitying "I'm going to humor you because it would be embarrassing to do anything else" smile I had been about to give her. "You might want to try "I'm a lesbian" instead of "I'm gay,"" I said lightly.

She let out her breath with an explosive puff. I hadn't realized she was holding it. Then she seemed to sag with relief. And then the unexpected (though I really should have seen it coming) move came. She stepped forward slightly and pushed herself up on her toes to kiss me, full on the lips.

I won't lie and say that I wasn't affected by the kiss. Even though that was exactly what I would have to say to my mother, I couldn't fool myself. That innocent, chaste kiss was one of the most exciting things that had happened to me in over a year. It was just a simple brush of her lips against mine, but when she drew back it left not only my lips tingling, but my whole body as well. I was left speechless and dazed for a few moments, before I heard the loud noise of a throat being cleared behind me. I turned to see who it was, and my heart fell to the bottom of my stomach with a sickening thud. My mother was crossing the lawn to get to me, a very disapproving frown filling her face.

"This really isn't a good time," I hissed after turning back around to give the girl in front of me a panicked stare. I pointed back at my mother, and a look of understanding filled her face.

"Oh," she said quietly. "I'll leave now. I just wanted you to be the first to know. 'Bye."

"See you," I whispered.

It wasn't until then that her face finally caught up with her embarrassment and flushed. Her cheeks had turned a blinding shade of neon pink just in time for her to turn and run away. I almost ran after her. I would have done it, had my mother not reached me just at that moment. Instead, she grabbed my arm and started hauling me into the shrine. Her grip was tight enough that it wrinkled my ornate ceremonial robes (which I really should have shucked as soon as I was done with the ritual). I knew I would be getting hell from her later about that, since it obviously wasn't her fault that they would be wrinkled.

After dragging me into one of the shrine's little side rooms, the same one I had just left in fact, she shoved me onto the hard wooden bench that faced the single door in the room. I hit the bench hard enough that I was fairly sure I would have a bruise on my butt in the morning. I didn't dare stand up and rub the sore spot, though. My mother was already close to foaming at the mouth. I didn't want to chance it.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't just throw you out right now," she hissed after locking the door and turning to face me, arms crossed over her chest. "You little lesbian slut."

"Nothing happened," I said. "You didn't see what actually happened I'm guessing, just the kiss. I didn't start it. I didn't even have a choice!"

"That is highly unlikely," she said, sneering. "I have suspected your perversion for years now, ever since you drove away your fiancé. Now your true colors come out."

I stared at her in shocked disbelief. Sure, she was right, but for all the wrong reasons. Yes, I liked women, though I liked men just as much as I did women. And I had never had a girlfriend. It was too dangerous for me, since I had known since before I realized that I liked women that I would be kicked out of the house in an instant should I ever be caught acting like a lesbian. My mother just would not tolerate those kind of "perversions" from the priestess of her shrine, not to mention her daughter.

But, even more ridiculous was the fact that she thought I had been at fault for Michael leaving me. She knew that he had called off the engagement because he finally came out as being gay, that he just wasn't interested in me because I had the wrong parts, but instead, she blamed it on me. She actually thought that I had driven him away because I wanted a female lover. She never actually came out and said that, but I could sense it with the psychic tingle that she had taught me to use since I was just a little girl. She didn't realize it, but she hadn't been able to hide her surface thoughts from me since she formally instated me as the shrine priestess.

"You have it all wrong, Mother," I said quickly. I needed to make her believe me as soon as I possibly could. Unfortunately, she would know if I lied to her. Just because I could sense her surface thoughts didn't mean I could hide a lie from her. "I like guys. I am not a lesbian, I swear! And I really didn't initiate that kiss. That was all Jenn. She seems to think she's in love with me." I smiled weakly at her, trying to make it seem like I was uneasy with the idea of a girl in love with me.

To be honest, I liked the idea of a girl being in love with me. Well, I liked the idea of a girl that I already liked as a friend and would be willing to have as more than a friend being in love with me. I liked it just as much as the idea of a guy being in love with me. But I was uncomfortable with my mother knowing that a girl was in love with me. And I was uncomfortable with my mother seeing the proof that aforementioned girl was in love with me. That was the discomfort that I let show in my smile; hopefully my mother would take it the way I wanted her to.

She frowned, but there was no way she could have sensed a lie in what I had just said. There weren't any lies. I may not have told her the whole truth, but I certainly didn't lie to her. I did like guys, and I wasn't a lesbian, since the proper term for my sexual orientation was bisexual. And as much as I had enjoyed the kiss, I would never have let it happen if I had been expecting it, much less initiate it.

"You tell the truth..." she said, but both her face and her voice told me that she didn't buy it. "But I still find it hard to believe you. I don't want you seeing that girl again."

"She's my friend, Mother!" I protested.

"She is a filthy, perverted, girl, and I will not have you associating with her any longer."

"Mother!" I had to stare at her in disbelief again. I had known of her acute homophobia for almost as long as I could remember, but all she had done in the past was remind me time and time again that I would be instantly disowned if I even thought of becoming one of those "filthy lesbians." She had never tried to control who I was friends with, though part of that was because I didn't tell her who I was friends with. She never got to meet my friends from school, since a good half of them weren't straight, and all of them were open-minded, the complete opposite of my mother.

She had absolutely no right to be trying to tell me who I could and could not be friends with. I was an adult, had been one for four years, and the people I surrounded myself with were none of her business. Her suggesting that she could just order me to stay away from my best friend and expect me to blindly obey pissed me off more than anything. It pushed me to the point where I was about to completely disregard all of the rules that had been drilled into my head during my training and just let out a wave of telekinetic energy at her.

I would have done it too, except I remembered that she controlled whether I got to continue as priestess at the shrine. It was her shrine, even though she usually wasn't there, and my job depended on her staying pleased with me. Though I hated the hours I had to keep as the priestess, I really did love the job. Besides, if I got replaced I would be out of a home and flat broke. Mother would disown me, and my extensive priestess training would do absolutely nothing for me after that. No other shrine in the country, possibly in the whole world, would take me on after being discharged and disowned by the head of a shrine.

So I swallowed back my rage and disbelief and schooled my face into a careful smile, the kind that, if properly done, wouldn't betray any of my continued displeasure to her. Then I pressed my hands together and bowed low to her, a formality that I rarely showed outside of a ritual, where I was forced to do such things. After I raised my head, I wiped the smile off of my face and replaced it with an utterly serious expression.

"Very well, Mother," I said in the flattest tone I could manage. "I understand. I will do as you wish and stop being friends with that girl."

I hoped that she wouldn't try to see past the flat, emotionless tone of my voice to see that I hadn't quite agreed to do what she wanted me to do. She had said stop seeing her altogether. I had said stop being friends, and that was precisely what I planned on doing. I had other plans for my relationship with a certain petite blonde ex-best friend of mine, and as long as I could keep my mother from realizing that I was fine. So I spoke without inflection, trying to make it seem like I was reluctantly agreeing to do my mother's bidding instead of carefully bending the truth to conceal my own plans of disobeying her plans for my life.

"Good," she said, and I mentally heaved a sigh of relief, though I made sure to keep it as well buried as I possibly could. There was still the possibility that I couldn't see as much of her surface thoughts as I thought I could and she suspected my dishonesty. She could always be monitoring my own surface thoughts, after all.

"Now, change out of the robes before you do any more damage to them," she said. "You should know better than to move around more than you have to while wearing them. The cost of the repairs will be taken out of this month's spending money."

"Yes, Ma'am," I said, lowering my head. Then she nodded, and I hurried to go change out of the heavily wrinkled ceremonial robes and back into something that didn't hide my figure and wouldn't kill me with heat stroke on a warm, sunny day.

As soon as I was wearing my "off-duty" jeans and tank top, I rushed out of the shrine as fast as I could. The original plan had been that I got the day off once the dawn ceremony was done, and I was going to hold my mother to that. She couldn't force me to do something else, something more befitting of a priestess and something that I should be getting paid for, but wouldn't, if I wasn't there to order around. So, I made my escape from the shrine grounds, made sure she didn't have anyone following me (she had actually done that a few times in the past), and then made a beeline for Jenn's dorm.