Response to "Leaving" by Rhamah Norris

This is a story about two girls, Beth and Kat, who grow up being best friends and then try to move their relationship in a more romantic direction. When, inevitably, one of them (Kat) wants things to take a sexual turn, Beth is uncomfortable with it. Really the story is about Beth. She goes on a journey from being heterosexual by default, to claiming that she's homosexual, to trying to be bisexual, to finding out that she's asexual. The tension created by this last revelation causes their relationship to break down.
      I think that what this story does really well is steering clear of our expectations. It does this on both a large and small scale. On a big scale, it would be easy to let this story be about Beth and Kat's struggle against homophobia and leave it at that, but that is what we'd expect. What ends up happening it that Kat--who we expect to be the open-minded lesbian--is unable to accept Beth for who she is. On a small scale, whenever the narrator (Beth) resorts to a cliched phrase, she points it out, thus silencing our objections. This does a lot for the narrative voice, and it does a lot for Beth's character.
      I have a couple of suggestions for improvements. The biggest inconsistency I noticed is time. We get the video game scene in 5th, the sleepover about a year afterwards, then a week later they kiss, but we're told it's 11th grade. If I'm missing something, then it needs to be made more prevalent in the story. Also, a smaller thing, on page 5 we get a shift to present tense with the line, "I barely keep myself from blurting 'girl.' " These are the main issues that jumped out at me.
      Overall I liked this story. Like I said, it would be easy with this subject matter to go the cliche and expected route. I don't think this story does that and I appreciate it.