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The door to the equipment shed didn't lock. That was the first thing I learned about SMK Nusantara, and the only useful thing. Yoga had his hand flat against it anyway, palm sweaty against the warped plywood, like the pressure of his fingers could keep the whole world out. It couldn't. But I let him believe it.

"Erni," he whispered. Just my name. Nothing after it.

I was eighteen and stupid and wearing the wrong uniform, the one from my old school that still fit because I hadn't grown since tenth grade. The skirt was too short when I sat on the stack of gym mats. Yoga was nineteen, a year ahead of me, and he'd been my best friend since the first day I transferred here six months ago and he showed me where the canteen was without laughing at my accent.

Now his mouth was on my neck and I couldn't remember the canteen or the accent or anything before this.

The shed smelled like floor wax and old volleyballs. Dust floated in the one shaft of light coming through the high window, and I watched it while his lips moved down to my collarbone, because watching dust was easier than thinking about where we were. SMK Nusantara. Vocational school. Second period. I was supposed to be in accounting class right now, learning how to balance ledgers, and instead I was here with my back against a rolled-up wrestling mat and Yoga's breath hot on my skin.

"We shouldn't," I said.

"I know."

He didn't stop.

I didn't want him to.

His fingers found the hem of my blouse and I felt the cool air hit my stomach. The shed was hot, the kind of heat that sticks to your skin in this part of the city, but his hands were cool and I shivered anyway. He noticed. He always noticed everything about me, that was the problem.

"You're cold," he said.

"I'm not."

"You're shaking."

"That's different."

He pulled back to look at me. Yoga had this face that made teachers trust him and girls write his name in their notebooks. Sharp jaw, soft eyes, the kind of smile that said he knew a secret and you were about to be let in on it. I'd spent six months pretending I didn't notice any of that.

"Erni," he said again, and this time there was a question in it.

I answered by pulling him back down.

His weight settled over me and the mat creaked. We both froze. Footsteps outside, slow and heavy, someone crossing the courtyard. A teacher, probably. Pak Hendra did his rounds at this hour, checking for students smoking behind the workshop. We'd timed this wrong. Or right. I couldn't tell anymore.

The footsteps faded.

Yoga exhaled against my throat and I felt it everywhere.

"This is insane," I whispered.

"Completely."

"If we get caught—"

"We won't."

"You don't know that."

He lifted his head and looked at me, and his eyes were dark and serious in a way that made my chest hurt. "I don't care," he said. "Do you?"

That was the real question. Not whether we'd get caught. Whether I cared if we did. Whether any of this mattered enough to risk the scholarship that brought me here, the one my mother cried about when the letter came, the one that meant I wouldn't end up like her, working double shifts at the laundry until her hands went numb.

I should have said yes. I should have pushed him off and fixed my blouse and walked out of that shed and gone to accounting class and forgotten the way his mouth felt on my neck.

Instead I reached for the buttons on his shirt.

His skin was warm underneath, and I traced the line of his collarbone with my thumb, the same way he'd traced mine. He made a sound low in his throat that I felt in my stomach. Six months of friendship and I'd never heard that sound before. Six months of sharing lunches and copying homework and walking home together when our paths overlapped, and I'd never once let myself imagine it.

I'd imagined it.

Every night. Every time he laughed at something I said. Every time his arm brushed mine in the hallway and he didn't move away.

The shed was small and the mats were stacked unevenly and my head kept hitting the one behind me, but none of it mattered. What mattered was his hands on my waist, sliding under my blouse, finding the clasp of my bra like he'd done it a hundred times. Maybe he had. I didn't want to think about that.

"Yoga," I said.

"Yeah."

"Have you done this before?"

He paused. His fingers stilled against my back. "Does it matter?"

"I don't know."

"It was one time. Last year. Different girl."

"Okay."

"Erni—"

"I said okay."

He kissed me then, not soft, not gentle, like he was trying to prove something. I kissed him back like I was trying to prove something else. The dust kept floating in the light. Somewhere outside, a bell rang, the end of second period, and we both ignored it.

His hand moved lower, past my waist, past the waistband of my skirt. I caught his wrist.

"Not yet," I said.

He stopped immediately. That was Yoga. He always stopped when I asked. That was why I trusted him. That was why this was dangerous.

"Okay," he said.

"Just. Give me a second."

"Take all the time you need."

I laughed, and it came out shaky. "We don't have all the time. We have until someone notices we're both missing."

"Then we have twenty minutes. Maybe thirty."

"That's not enough."

"For what?"

I didn't answer. I didn't know what I meant. Enough time to do this properly, in a bed, somewhere that didn't smell like floor wax. Enough time to figure out what we were doing and why and what happened after. Enough time to decide if I was the kind of girl who did this in a school shed with her best friend, or the kind of girl who didn't.

I was starting to think I was both.

He sat up and pulled me with him, so I was straddling his lap on the gym mat, my skirt bunched around my thighs. His hands rested on my hips, not moving, just holding. Waiting.

"I've wanted this for months," he said.

"How many months?"

"Since the first week. When you corrected my English essay."

"That was terrible. Your essay."

"It was. You were right. I just wanted you to keep talking."

I remembered that day. He'd sat next to me in the library and I'd pointed out every grammatical error in his paper and he'd watched my mouth the whole time. I'd thought he was bored. I'd thought he wasn't listening.

"You should have said something," I said.

"I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Of this. Of you saying no. Of you saying yes and then everything changing."

Everything was already changing. His hands on my hips, my hands on his shoulders, the space between us shrinking until there was no space at all. I could feel him through his uniform pants, hard and obvious, and I should have been embarrassed but I wasn't. I was something else. Something I didn't have a word for.

"I'm saying yes," I said.

He kissed me again, slower this time. His tongue brushed my lower lip and I opened for him, and it was nothing like I'd imagined and exactly like I'd imagined, both at once. His hands slid up my back, under my blouse, skin on skin. I arched into him without meaning to.

The shed door rattled.

We broke apart. Yoga's hand went to the door handle, holding it shut, and I scrambled off his lap and pulled my skirt down and tried to look like someone who hadn't just been straddling her best friend on a pile of gym mats.

"Who's in there?" A voice. Male. Not a teacher. Pak Hendra had a smoker's rasp. This voice was young.

Yoga looked at me. I looked at him. The door rattled again.

"Occupied," Yoga said, and his voice was steady, calm, like he hadn't just had his hand up my shirt.

"Yoga? Is that you?"

"Go away, Dimas."

A pause. Then a laugh. "Oh. Oh, sorry, man. Didn't know you had company."

"Now you do."

"Right. Right. I'll just. Yeah."

Footsteps retreated. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

Yoga turned to me. His shirt was untucked. His hair was a mess. He looked like a different person than the boy who'd walked me home yesterday, and I wondered if I looked different too.

"We should go," I said.

"In a minute."

"Yoga—"

"In a minute, Erni. Just. Let me look at you."

So I stood there in the dusty light and let him look. My blouse was wrinkled. My bra was probably visible through the fabric. My hair had come loose from its ponytail. I was a mess. I was eighteen and I was a mess and I was standing in a school shed with a boy who'd just told me he'd wanted me for months.

"Okay," I said. "One minute."

He smiled. That smile. The one that said he knew a secret.

"One minute," he agreed.

The bell rang again. Third period. We were late. We were so late.