Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond Page A

sensitive and intelligent, they would have a softness to them, they would know how to please me physically. I didn’t think of myself as a girl who liked other girls. I loved Amanda Ruth; that was all.
    Several minutes passed. A bullfrog called from across the river, its deep, awkward croak echoing in the stillness. The moon was low and full, the trees cast their shadows onto the river. Amanda Ruth moved slightly away from me on the pier, so that our thighs no longer touched. “You didn’t answer me.”
    “I haven’t given it much thought.”
    “I’ve hardly thought of anything else.”
    “What about dating?” I said. “Don’t you think we should date in college?”
    “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
    “This is different.”
    “How?”
    I couldn’t look her in the eyes, couldn’t think of any answer that wouldn’t sound all wrong. Amanda Ruth was crying. “I get it,” she said.
    “There’s nothing to get.” I put my arm around her shoulders. She resisted, but only for a minute. “We’re best friends,” I said. “We’ve had a whole summer together. Isn’t that enough?”
    That night the rain returned, heavier now, as if the sky was emptying itself of every last drop of water. We brought fresh sheets down from the cabin and curled up on the old mattress in the boathouse. I felt the humid weight of the air bearing down on us as we lay there, holding on like sisters or cousins, listening to the deluge, awed by the lightning that flashed across the darkened sky. At some point I drifted off to sleep and dreamt that we were moving, swirling down the river in our own muddy version of the flying house in The Wizard of Oz . When I woke I realized that the little boathouse was shaking.
    “Wake up,” I whispered.
    “What is it?”
    “I think we should go up to the house.”
    I looked out the window and saw logs rushing past, big limbs ripped from trees, the white flash of a lawn chair, a mattress with its silver coils exposed.
    “We’re probably under a tornado watch,” I said, reaching for the radio, but Amanda Ruth pulled me to her. She kissed my neck, slid her hand underneath my shirt. She rolled me onto my back and lay on top of me. Her hair covered my face. Thunder pounded the roof, the power of it reverberating in the flimsy walls. I listened for the shrill whistle of a distant locomotive. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, it was the sound I feared most. I knew how a tornado could fool you, how it sounded like a train but was really a dark funnel hurtling unchecked across the land. There were stories of bizarre deaths and miraculous survivals, such as a woman who was lifted from her bed while she slept, the sheets stripped from beneath her, before the tornado returned her to the mattress, unharmed. Small fishing boats were found miles from the owners’ houses, suspended in the air after the storm, the bow driven through the trunk of a massive oak tree. A baby was discovered alive in a bed of pine straw three days after a tornado snatched him from his mother’s arms.
    Amanda Ruth shook her hair so that it tickled my face. She held my wrists down with her hands. “I’ll visit you at Christmas,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see them light the tree at Rockefeller Center.”
    “And we’ll go ice skating in Central Park, and walk down Fifth Avenue wearing big hats.”
    “And buy smelly cheese at Zabar’s?”
    “Of course. And see a Broadway show.”
    We kissed to seal the pact.

SEVEN
    By late afternoon the river is deep yellow, and the air smells of something decayed. For miles the riverbank has been deserted, just bamboo huts and groves of orange trees. The sun is already low in the sky when Nanjing flares up ahead, a city of gigantic candles, dozens of refinery towers breathing flames into the dusky light. It smells as if the whole city is burning. The voice on the loudspeaker announces our arrival: “We are approaching beautiful Nanjing. Please find your leader for exciting