The air smells like a hospital, thick with cleaning alcohol and mortality.

Today is my first time visiting her at the retirement home.

Today, both my dad and my Opa have to help her get into the wheelchair.

Her room is dark. The blinds are open.

A bird feeder swings in a gentle breeze under perfectly clear skies.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to say, so I stand still next to my sister so Great Oma Flach can get a good look at us and comment on how alike we look to our mother or how different we look to each other or our hair or our skin or our weight.

I’m uncomfortable under her analysis. I wonder if she can just tell by looking at me — just tell that I’m different.

Great Oma Flach says we look so different than whenever she believes is the last time she saw us.

This retirement home is the kind of place where Great Oma Flach can run into everyone she went to high school with, if she could remember. Cowboy boots deep in the rednecks of Comfort, Texas, I glance around the building, scouting locations where one day I will be trapped.

Great Oma Flach speaks like a caricature of an old lady, with the same thick country accent that all 1,396 citizens of this community speak in.

Great Oma Flach speaks, finally. “Gee, whiz, aren’t you two the prettiest girls! The boys at school must run circles around you.”

I thank Great Oma Flach and imagine boys at school “running circles around me.” She always tells me how I’ve changed — getting prettier, taller and older than the last time I’ve seen her.

Then a realization hits me like a hearse, and I know — know instantly — she won’t be around to see me have a boyfriend.

Or to see me get married.

But it’s probably better that way.

* * * * * *

The last time we spoke?

At Christmas, when my great grandma Oma Flach gets real drunk and giggles with me about the puffy round haircuts boys have nowadays. She asks if I have any plural “boyfriends” in the way that my gossipy grandparents — and even great grandparents — do.

“Oma, I don’t even have one. Let me show you something,” I say, googling Edgar Haircut and Broccoli Haircut and Ice Cream Haircut.

She decides I’m somehow still ready to find my husband at my high school, so she gives me some advice: “Pick a rich man who can cook and is not TOO ugly.”

Great Oma Flach eats dinner with us and talks about “back in the day” when she and her father would pick out a Christmas tree, chop it down and take it home. She likes the fake ones she says, and I show her pictures of trees that rotate and can change lights.

“Oh, goodie!” She speaks so excitedly about technology. Great Oma Flach goes home early with a box of leftovers from my grandma and grandpa. She doesn’t cook anymore and doesn’t really care to socialize.

I’m sitting at the Christmas party, refreshing Instagram because the adults have moved from our yearly Christmas games to politics or Bill Gates controlling the weather or whatever — something I don’t care to talk about.

Then, a post pops up from a starred Instagram account of mine —  starred so she goes to the top of my feed.

I met her in one of my classes. We’re mostly acquaintances, but she’s nice enough to sit with me and talk with me the whole year. I’m lucky enough she passes me pretty much everyday in the hallway to wave and smile at me.

I know I’m seriously in it deep when I check my phone to make sure I’ll walk by our science hallway at the exact time she does.

Her Instagram post was published just now, and I don’t want to seem like a fan, so I put the phone down and wait a while before I comment — something slightly flirty that passes as friendly.

That’s as far as I’ll ever go, but it still makes me flush and get jittery and smiley enough to be noticeable.

A minute passes. The adults talked about how little rain we’ve been getting.

Another. Still on the weather. The creek’s dried up downstream. I guess it’s just that much of a point of interest.

Another minute. One adult says, “The cow’s watering troughs are dry.” OK, I can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take it anymore as I flip over my phone and lower my brightness to look a little too long at pictures I don’t want them seeing.

Sit there, fingers frozen, stuck between an all caps and maybe way-too-bold “FINE” or some plausible deniability in the form of a few kissy face emojis.

I stick to the emojis and get an immediate response — heart hands, silly face, kissy face. I end up going feral and comment both.

Things are looking up, at least for my imagination. I’m smiling at my phone. God, it’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed in front of no one. And I can’t even say the word “crush” to my friends. “There’s this girl, right? Right…”

“You gettin’ texts from your boyfriend?” Oma Flach asks.

“No boyfriends!” I laugh and pop my head up. No texts, either. And never any girlfriend.

I put my phone face down, so Great Oma Flach can’t see her Instagram.

* * * * * *

We wheel Great Oma Flach outside to the back porch. A surprising amount of old people are smoking cigarettes and laughing, coughing between every puff and chuckle. Before long, my mom shows her grandmother several pictures of my cousins to remind her who her family is.

“Here’s your great-granddaughter Kendall and her boyfriend, we got to meet him when we visited!” Mom says.

“She’s gorgeous/She’s grown so much/Wow don’t they look darlin’!” Great Oma Flach says.

“Here’s her sister Taylor and her new boyfriend at prom! Don’t they look cute?” Mom says.

My sister and I definitely let out a sigh of relief when Great Oma Flach doesn’t say anything racist about her Hispanic boyfriend and just says, “Oh! She looks beautiful!”

I pretend to not feel as lonely as I do, looking through my camera roll and the weather app and anything to take my mind off this topic. My stomach drops at the thought of prom night. Or homecoming dates. Or even Halloween couples costumes.

I’d never dated anyone ever — hiding my sexuality is easier when no one takes an interest in me.

Not even any boys.

I have enough ego to know I’m lovable, but the doubt can’t go away with these statistics.

Grand Oma Flach asks when we will get any rain. It’s ingrained in our DNA to be afraid of more drought.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any in the forecast for this week,” I say.

She asks if I have any boyfriends.

“No, no boyfriends. Sorry Oma Flach, maybe next time.”

And I won’t tell her there won’t be a boyfriend next time either. It’s not worth the fight to cause any upset for her, especially when I’m so sure her mind won’t change. I can’t even be positive she would remember it.

But if she remembered the feelings towards me, like a bad taste in her mouth, I couldn’t stand it.

I look out at the land, at the place I’ll work and live for the rest of my life. I’m going to own the dusty hills that have my ancestors begging for rain, begging for an end to the drought.

My chances couldn’t be lower in the redneck countryside.

I’ve been told Oma Flach is fragile now. I wonder if knowing how I feel would break her. She won’t be around to see me get married, but who among my family, friends and neighbors would still show up willingly? When I have no boyfriends or husbands, not ever.

How many of my relatives would still be there? How many of the 1,396 people in this place I’ll live with wouldn’t be like the others?

I’m not risking anything with my grandparents — ideally they won’t know until they become suspicious of me and my future “roommate” who I share a bed and children with. The truth is terribly inconvenient and I’m afraid my life isn’t worth the hassle.

Would Great Oma Flach remember if I told her how I feel?  Would she know why she would feel disgusted when she sees my face?

Or would she not be able to place my sin? Would she know the kind of person her great-granddaughter is?

We talk about my electives and my floral design class. I remember the things kids say in that class, slurs that make my ears prick up and body freeze.

A girl sitting near me speaks too loudly to her friends.

“God, I hope nobody is gay in this class.”

Grand Oma Flach is forgetful now, like my mom when she gets drunk and asks me 10 times the same question. I don’t want Great Oma Flach to die not loving me.

We sit a while longer listening to the wind chimes, watching the stray cat walk in lazy circles around my feet.

Oma asks me if I think we will get any rain.

I tell her I’m afraid not.