Last Night at the Telegraph Club

your dream?” Shirley asked.

“Well, step one is to go to college, maybe major in aeronautics or engineering. Step two—”

“I didn’t think you were college material,” Shirley said.

Lily stared at her friend in shock. She had no idea what had gotten into her, but Kathleen didn’t seem entirely surprised. She merely smiled slightly before she responded.

“Cal takes anyone in the top fifteen percent of their graduating class,” Kathleen said. “I’m not going to have a problem. Neither will Lily. But I don’t think we’ll see you there.”

And yet she couldn’t say the word the book had used to describe those kinds of girls: lesbian. The word felt dangerous, and also powerful

And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

and there was such an unexpected feeling of openness between them—a flying kind of feeling, as if they had lifted off from the ground right then and there.

“There’s an ice cream shop in Chinatown, Fong Fong’s. They have ginger ice cream. That’s my favorite.”
“Ginger! How does that taste?”
“It’s delicious. Little bits of candied ginger are mixed into the ice cream.

They hadn’t discussed this strategy, but had fallen into it so naturally that only now, with Shirley pressing her about Will, did Lily notice how strange it was.

She couldn’t put into words why she had gathered these photos together, but she could feel it in her bones: a hot and restless urge to look—and, by looking, to know.

“No,” Lily said quickly. “No, you don’t. I loved hearing about it. You can talk to me about it anytime.”

She lay in her bed for quite some time trying to catch that scent again, as if she might call it into existence out of the sheer force of memory.

If Lily Hu didn’t do these things, the girl in the mirror surely did.