When I was a little girl, it took me until I was fourteen to realize that the way I liked girls counted as that way. Looking back, it was pretty obvious; I was obsessed with the cute blonde detective on Mathnet at age six and the Egyptian princess in The Ten Commandments at seven; at nine I talked about boobs an awful lot (my name for them, at the time, was “blossoms.”)

But I had no idea that counted as anything – because of a highly attractive male opera singer I’d also noticed as a youngster. You see, I hadn’t been introduced to the concept of bisexuality at all. Somehow in a lack of bi visibility it literally never occurred to me that you could like more than one gender at once.

The reason this is bad for bi kids is that we grow up in an environment that teaches that as long as you like the “appropriate” gender, your other attractions don’t matter and shouldn’t be acknowledged, explored, celebrated, or inform your choice of eventual serious long-term partner or spouse.

CAN I GET A NO, PLEASE.

YA literature can play its own part in establishing–or refuting–the idea that clear evidence of a boy liking a girl or a girl liking a boy is inherent proof of straightness. If a bi kid is reading a book and the book acts like bisexuality doesn’t exist, it reinforces that lack of awareness. “Maybe,” says the kid while turning the pages, “what I feel doesn’t matter, and I’m straight.”

An otherwise excellent book throws out a line implying that a boy flirting with another boy automatically means he won’t be interested in women ever… and a bi kid absorbs that. (And so do the straight and gay readers!)

I love how the bi girl Brianna in Dahlia Adler’s recent summer release Under the Lights knows exactly what she is — she’s bi, and she’s in a relationship with a girl. This provides modeling for scared bi kids that they, too, can be confident that their other-gender attractions don’t negate, invalidate, or sully their same-gender ones. This also provides a much-needed reminder that bi girls can and DO choose girls.

That’s the same kind of reassurance I’m going for by frequently writing bisexual characters in same-sex relationships. If someone picks up Climbing the Date Palm, they’ll see in Aviva a reminder that bi ladies can choose ladies and that some women in f/f relationships are bi, and they’ll see in Prince Kaveh a reminder that a man’s past girlfriend doesn’t rule out the chance that he might be interested in a boyfriend in the future. I hope Yael, the bi trans woman in my upcoming The Olive Conspiracy (2016, Prizm Books), will give readers the hint that trans people, like cis people, come in all orientations.

There also needs to be representation in YA for other bisexual experiences – bi girls who have boyfriends, bi teens who have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. I’m sure these books are out there but I haven’t read every book yet; bisexual-books on Tumblr can hopefully help you out if that’s what you’re looking for. Naturally, of course, we need more of them, and beyond that – and in the meantime – we need our “girls who love girls” and “boys who love boys” books to try if possible to stay away from bisexual erasure or narratives where attraction to more than one gender ONLY appear in connection with flaky, untrustworthy, backstabbing characters.