Grrrls on the Side

by Carrie Pack

  Jackie’s jaw tenses for a split second, but then she shakes her head as if she’s shaking off Kate altogether. Under my grip, Jackie’s hand balls into a tight fist, and her pink palms turn almost as pale as mine. But she’s not preparing to fight. She’s nervous; her hands are shaking. I rub my thumb across the inside of her wrist and hope she knows what I’m saying with the gesture.

  But Jackie remains standing, using all of her five feet, two inches to show Kate she’s not giving up, but she is walking away. “Tabitha, let’s just go,” she says.

  Her eyes meet mine, and I mouth, “Okay.”

  Her body remains tense, but the left side of her mouth twitches up just enough that I can tell she’s glad I’m ready to go. When I stand up, I slip my hand into hers, the way she did to me that day on the picnic bench. It takes a moment, but she relaxes and twines her fingers between mine. She turns back to the group.

  “Tabitha and I are leaving,” she says. “See you at home, Vee.”

  Without sparing a look for Kate, I follow Jackie out of the restaurant. She doesn’t say a word until she pulls into my driveway.

  “Thanks,” she says without looking at me.

  “For what?” I should be thanking her.

  “For being there for me.”

  I shrug. “I could tell you were upset, and Kate’s not worth it. Anyway, it’s the least I could do after you stood up for me.”

  “Just because you’re quiet doesn’t mean they should walk all over you.”

  “Marty’s just got a big mouth. I’m used to it.”

  She finally turns her head to face me. “You shouldn’t have to get used to it.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “Doesn’t mean they get to treat you like shit.”

  “They don’t treat me like shit.” I turn and stare out the window. Our lawn needs mowing. “Not usually.”

  “I’m just saying it’s okay to stand up for yourself. You don’t have to take it.”

  The thick grass on our lawn blurs as tears burn my eyes. I blink to keep them at bay. “I’m working on it,” I say softly.

  Jackie reaches across the console and squeezes my hand. I turn to her and half smile. “Thanks.”

  She smiles back. “Ditto.”

  I open the car door and walk up to my house. When I look over my shoulder, Jackie waves and waits until I’m safely inside. My stomach flutters, and I try not to think about it.

  After that, my friendship with Jackie blooms quickly. Where Kate once held my attention, now Jackie occupies my thoughts. I wonder if I’m developing a crush on her like I did with Kate, but Jackie never tries to kiss me the way Kate did. So maybe she’s not interested, and I meant what I said. I’m not looking for another girlfriend or boyfriend right away. Besides, Jackie can get anyone she wants. Hell, she’s already been asked out by three different Riot Grrrls, all of whom she declined while I stood by in shock. I wish I had the kind of magnetic pull that Jackie has. But I’m just me.

  At school I’m more invisible than ever, which ordinarily would be fine. It’s easier to sneak by if you blend in. Despite the monotony of school, I’m bracing myself for impact, as if something big is coming. Heather and the rest of the Chick Clique mostly leave me alone, but I still sense their eyes on me and hear their snickers behind my back. It’s unsettling. With Kate in my rearview, and Mike out of the picture, I’m untethered, like a stray balloon floating through the sky. Jackie seems willing to pick up the slack.

  She rings my doorbell one Saturday afternoon, toting a ratty blue backpack over one shoulder. Despite the warm spring weather, Jackie wears a leather jacket that swallows her narrow shoulders and weighs down her slight frame. She looks tough in that jacket, unless she smiles. But when she does, her cheek-splitting grin is childlike and contagious. It lights up her entire face and erases even the slightest hint of a frown. It’s as though she’s two entirely different people, and I want to get to know them both.

  “Hey,” she says, beaming at me. I can’t help but smile back. “I thought maybe we could hang out.”

  I look down at my flannel pajama pants and battered Ren & Stimpy T-shirt. “I need to get dressed.”

  “Is that a yes?” She seems uncertain, almost as if she’s afraid of rejection. How is that possible?

  “Yes,” I say. It comes out a little breathy, almost like a laugh. “Come in.”

  I hold the door open and Jackie squeezes past me into our living room, tossing her backpack to the floor and herself in a chair.

  “I, uh. I’ll just be a minute.” I motion toward the stairs.

  “I’ll be here,” Jackie says. Seeming sure of herself again, she pulls a paperback from her jacket pocket and molds herself to the softness of my dad’s recliner. Mom and I never use it. It sits there mocking us with the memory of a man who no longer wanted it or us. I’m not sure why my mom hasn’t gotten rid of it, but knowing her, she hasn’t noticed. The chair has always been here and so it stays. With Jackie sitting in it, the chair seems more out of place in our home than ever. Her style seems at odds with the Middle America-ness of a faded blue recliner. She should be waiting for the subway in a sprawling city, not sitting in a living room in the middle of suburbia. She’s too cool for Dad’s chair… and for me.

  “I’m fine if you want to wear flannel, but maybe pick a shirt that doesn’t have holes in it,” Jackie says without looking up from her book. She smirks and turns a page.

  Was that flirting? With me? My stomach flips at the thought. As I back out of the room, I tug at the edge of my shirt, where the largest hole reveals a pale swath of my huge belly. I’m suddenly keenly aware of my appearance and wish, not for the first time, that I could disappear into the carpet.

  In the time it takes me to stumble upstairs and find something less embarrassing to wear, Jackie has finished whatever she’d been reading and is now browsing one of the bookshelves flanking the fireplace.

  “You were a cute kid,” she says at the sound of my footsteps.

  “Thanks,” I mutter, hoping she missed the fifth-grade snapshot of me with a hideously bad perm. “So where are we going?”

  Jackie places the photo she’s examining back on the shelf. “I didn’t have anything specific in mind. We could go for a walk?”

  In a response that would shock even Pavlov, Sparky trots into the room. His ears perk up, and he pants, looking from me to Jackie.

  “He heard the word ‘walk,’” I explain.

  At the second mention, Sparky barks and jumps, making repeated half-runs toward his leash.

  Jackie bends to scratch behind Sparky’s ears as she coos, “Good boy.” Sparky revels in the attention and slobbers all over her hand as she laughs. “We can take him with us,” she says to me. “I like dogs.”

  At least I’ll have something to distract me from the bit of midriff showing between Jackie’s jeans and her T-shirt. The jacket had covered it before, but now I can see her tiny nub of a bellybutton peeking out. I’ve never seen an outie before, maybe that’s why I can’t stop staring. Her skin is a smooth, bronze mystery that I want to solve. A familiar flutter in my belly forces me to look away and focus on finding Sparky’s leash.

  When I find it on the kitchen counter, Sparky runs at the door, yapping and panting louder than before.

  “Dumb dog,” I say, struggling to attach the leash to his collar.

  “I think he’s sweet,” Jackie says.

  “Just wait until he starts chasing squirrels. He can’t decide if he wants to catch them or if they’re trying to kill him.”

  “We had a dog that used to suck on his tail,” Jackie says. “A certified genius, that one.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Hit by a car,” Jackie says.

  “Oh, how awful.”

  “Not really. I mean, we were upset and all, but he was almost sixteen… and
barely able to walk when it happened.” She shrugs, but I can see the memory is painful. “It saved us the cost of having him put down.”

  “Were you…? I mean…” I catch myself, but I can tell from Jackie’s expression she knew what I was going to ask.

  “No, we weren’t poor,” Jackie says. “Just because I’m black doesn’t mean I’m from the projects. I grew up in a nice part of Chicago. My dad is an accountant. My mom teaches Sunday school. And, yes, they’re still married.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t, but you did assume, didn’t you?”

  I nod shamefully. I’d unfairly assumed Jackie came from a poor, inner-city neighborhood. Everything about her seems so urban and worldly. And as much as it pains me to admit, I’ve always equated black kids with cities and white kids with the suburbs. There are a few non-white kids at my high school, but not many. Jackie is the first girl I’ve been friends with who didn’t look like me and everyone else in Decker. “I’m sorry,” I say finally.

  Jackie shrugs. “I just don’t like being stereotyped.”

  “No one does.” I think of all the jabs thrown at me for my weight and how everyone assumes I eat nonstop and that I’m lazy or that I’m going to die young. None of it’s fair… or true. I’m still a person—a living, breathing person—and not a caricature.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  We walk in silence, taking a left at the end of the cul-de-sac and heading toward the park, where I can let Sparky off his leash inside the fenced area. As soon as he realizes where we’re headed, he tugs sharply on the lead, jerking me forward and off balance. I catch myself with a flapping sound of rubber soles against the sidewalk. I stumble against Jackie, and she catches me with a strong grip.

  “Easy there,” she says.

  My skin burns at her contact. It’s not an unpleasant sensation, but it catches me off guard and Sparky’s leash slips from my hand.

  “Sparky! Get back here!” I shout. But he’s gone like a dart, taking off through someone’s yard with his bright red leash following him like an extra tail.

  I take off running, but I’m winded before I manage a few dozen steps. Jackie sails past me and manages to catch up with my wayward mutt, steps on his leash and brings his freedom run to an abrupt halt. Panting, he sits, as if nothing happened.

  I clutch my side as I wheeze and sputter. It’s so freaking embarrassing how easily I get winded. I may not be lazy, but I’m definitely out of shape. I try to mask my distress as I approach Jackie and Sparky in the next driveway.

  “Thanks.” I manage to speak between labored breaths.

  “He’s fast.”

  “I told you. Idiot probably saw a butterfly or something.”

  “You okay?”

  I wipe a few beads of sweat from my forehead. I’m always sweating, even when normal people would be cold. It’s simply another lovely aspect of being me.

  I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. My lungs ache from the brief exertion, and I’m beyond mortified that I’m a gross, sweaty mess in front of Jackie. I’m so not okay, but I don’t want to go back yet.

  Thank God Jackie doesn’t seem to notice what a mess I am. She picks up Sparky’s leash and loops it around her wrist. “Well, lead on.” She holds out her hand in a sweeping bow that makes me giggle. I try to turn it into a cough but instead I choke on my own spit.

  Jackie ignores it. “I’m so ready for school to be over,” she says.

  “Tell me about it.” I still have exams to get through, and one of them has an oral portion. I’d rather die than stand up in front of my English class where Heather and Molly can mock me relentlessly.

  “Mean girls?”

  “Yeah. Former best friend and her new shadow.”

  Jackie nods knowingly. I like that I never have to explain things to her. She just gets it.

  “You a junior?”

  “Sophomore, unfortunately. I can’t wait to be done with this stupid town and that stupid school and all the mindless lemmings that inhabit it.”

  “I gotta say if I had to do another two years I might lose it,” Jackie says.

  “You’re graduating?”

  “In two weeks,” she says. “With honors in case you were wondering.” She glances sideways to gauge my reaction, but I’m not even a little shocked.

  “That’s cool. Are you going to college?”

  “Eventually. But I’m paying my own way so it’s either take out loans or work while I’m in school, and I’m not feeling either of those options.”

  I haven’t considered college yet. Nothing interests me enough to spend four years studying it. But it’s never been a question of whether I’ll go to college, just where. It’s expected. I have the grades, so college is the next step. I’ve already started getting postcards and catalogs from a handful of schools: a dozen or so identical brochures of sunny campuses with students lounging beneath sprawling trees, laughing at an unknown joke, biking across a quad, lugging books into a towering brick facade. I can’t see myself doing any of it.

  “I know what you mean,” I tell her. “It all seems so pointless.”

  “I think if I had a specific goal in mind, it wouldn’t be pointless. But I don’t see why paying tens of thousands of dollars to ‘find myself’ is such a great idea. I’d rather bounce around Europe for a while or work on a shrimp boat for a year.”

  “A shrimp boat… really?”

  Jackie kicks a rock that goes rolling across the sidewalk before landing in a flower bed. “Seems about as logical as choosing a random major at a random college and paying them while I figure my shit out. Why not just pick a random job? At least I’d get to see the ocean.”

  “Fair point.”

  At the park, she finds a stick for Sparky to chase. I sit on a bench and watch as she throws it and Sparky chases. Jackie becomes childlike in her glee. When Sparky finally lies down in the grass and chews on the end of the stick instead of returning it, Jackie sits down beside me and drapes her arm over the back of the bench.

  “You want to catch a movie?” she asks.

  Frowning, I squint into the sun. “I’m kind of broke.”

  “We could go to the dollar theater, and I could spot you.”

  I want to protest, but Jackie’s hand grazes my shoulder and my brain turns to mush.

  “Just say yes,” Jackie pleads. “Don’t make me go back to Vee’s house yet.” She sticks her lip out in a playful pout, and her eyes lock on mine. I can’t say no with her looking at me like that.

  “Okay, but I’ll bring the snacks.”

  At first I shrug it off, chalk it up to simple admiration, but then I catch myself inching closer to catch the scent of shea butter on Jackie’s skin or watching her lips as she speaks. Whenever we’re together, I try to pull smiles from her, rare smiles that are saved for her closest friends. Soon the attraction becomes harder to deny. Jackie’s dark eyes haunt me. I catch myself daydreaming about her smile during my trigonometry final.

  “Tabitha,” Mrs. Sansone whispers. “You’ve only got twenty minutes left.”

  I glance at the paper in front of me to find I’ve only answered three questions. Damn. I still have seventeen to go.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. I can’t decide if I’m apologizing to her or myself.

  “I can’t let you in my AP calculus class unless you get at least a B on this exam,” she says. The disappointment in her eyes urges me to focus.

  “Sorry,” I repeat. I glance behind me at the empty seat.

  Mrs. Sansone pats me on the shoulder. “Everything’s fine,” she whispers. “Just take a deep breath and start on the next problem.” Her smile is sympathetic, so I don’t try to tell her that it’s not the incident with Brad that’s distracting me. Brad Mason was given in-school suspension for the rest of the school year. He’s taking his exams in
the library—far from me. And thanks to Mrs. Sansone’s eye-witness report, we won’t have any more classes together as long as we’re at North Decker. It’s a small relief, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

  My responding smile must convince Mrs. Sansone that I’m all right because she walks away. When she’s seated at her desk, I read the next problem: “In a right triangle ABC, tan(A) = 3/4. Find sin(A) and cos(A).” Okay, I can do this. I bite my lip and work out the equation, moving through it and the next three problems in a couple of minutes. My pencil scratches across the page faster than I think I’ve ever written before. By the time the bell rings, I’ve answered all the questions and I’m reasonably sure I got the answers right for most of them. But without trig to occupy my mind, I’m back to thinking about Jackie.

  It’s her fault, really. She always makes me the center of attention when we’re together—asking about my day, what new music I’ve heard, wanting to hear about my childhood. No one has ever been interested in me before. Not like that.

  Meanwhile, I’d rather unravel her secrets. I want to know everything—her middle name, her hopes and dreams, her favorite food, her shoe size—everything.

  She’s quiet a lot, as if she’s spending her time observing and reflecting rather than waiting for her turn to talk. It’s tough to stare at someone when they don’t speak, and I want to memorize every inch of her. So instead of last-minute cramming, I make a list of things to ask her. It takes up two pages in my notebook, front and back.

  Because I’m distracted, things don’t go so well during my English final. It’s the one I’ve been dreading all week.

  When it’s my turn, I walk shakily to the front of the class, and Mr. Bennett reads my question aloud: “Describe the myth of the ‘Self-Made Man’ and explain how Thoreau’s Walden might have reflected those values.”

  I clear my throat and try to put my scrambled thoughts into words. I’d only read half of the book before giving up and throwing it under my bed. The sentences went on for entire paragraphs. Whole chapters were bloated asides about bugs or solitude or some other nonsense. How could anyone read that thing? I try not to look at Heather, but I can hear her whispering to Molly.