"Can you do my hair, Karyn?" Gina's question was only natural, given her position in Karyn's lap, and the older girl acquiesced.
Things began normally enough: Karyn brushing out Gina's hair and separating it into sections to get it ready for braiding. But the more Karyn's fingers worked through Gina's hair, the more an odd feeling began to overcome the middle-schooler.
At 11 years old, Gina hadn't quite discovered boys yet. But the longer she sat in such close proximity to Karyn, the more times Karyn pulled wisps of hair away from Gina's face, the more Gina's body settled between Karyn's legs, the deeper she felt a happy little stirring within her that she'd never felt before.
Without being old enough to develop her own sexuality, Gina unwittingly began to develop Jon's. It wasn't a demanding thing, it wasn't something that caused her to be distracted from the gentle tugging at her scalp as Karyn integrated each new strand of Gina's black hair into a French braid. It was just this slowly-dawning feeling that she really liked being in close proximity with Karyn. That she wanted to stay sitting in Karyn's lap, that she wanted Karyn's fingers to keep running through her hair.
And when Karyn finished, she turned Gina around and said "Voila!" and Gina's eyes shone with a fire she'd never known before, and in a moment of youthful impulsivity, she leaned in and gave Karyn a peck on the lips that was only slightly longer than quick.
"Oh." Karyn wasn't certain how she wanted to react. "Gina, I--"
Karyn's response was cut off by the buzzing of her phone. A message from her mom calling her home for dinner.
"I have to go home," she sighed. "You're one of my favorite people, you know that Gina? But you're just not old enough for us to be more than friends."
And then Karyn gave Gina a hug that was platonic from her perspective, but not from Gina's, and she picked up her bookbag, and she let herself out the front door.
Which left Gina sitting on the sofa in her French braid struggling with an entire battalion of unfamiliar emotions.
