What Kind of Girl

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  In fact, when Hiram touches me, I can barely feel it. Not just because he’s never, not once, been the one to slide my sweater off my shoulders or lift my shirt to my chest—come to think of it, was he the one who kissed me first or the other way around?—but because his touch on my skin is featherlight, cool and soft. I shiver.

  “You cold?” Hiram asks. He keeps his lips so close that I can feel them move when he speaks.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  I nod, but he doesn’t go back to kissing me until I say out loud, “I’m okay.”

  I hear the bell ring in the distance. Lunch is over. I have to get to class.

  “I better go.”

  Hiram nods. “I’ll be here,” he says. He’s never offered to drive me home after school, but I’m pretty sure he’d do it if I asked. I put on my jacket, and press my hands into the worn seat below me. It’s upholstered in a gray fake-velvety material that must have been soft once, but is now spiky, as if someone spilled juice on it and never bothered to wash it properly, like I did once to one of my old stuffed animals. There’s a burn mark below my left knee, maybe a remnant of some other girl who sat here. A girl who wasn’t as careful as I am.

  I get out of the car and close the door behind me. Before it slams shut, I hear Hiram say, “I would never hurt you, you know.”

  My back is to him so I’m not sure whether Hiram can see that I’m nodding in agreement.

  Not all guys are like Mike Parker.

  I know that.

  Thursday, April 13

  Twelve

  The Bulimic

  At school today, I heard someone saying that maybe Mike’s dad beat up his mom, like that would’ve explained everything, if Mike learned from example. They said of course that wouldn’t excuse it (our student body prides itself on being sensitive and thoughtful, it’s practically in the school catalog), but at least then we’d know why Mike did it. (If he did it. No one said it, but the words still hung in the air like a thought bubble in a cartoon.)

  Then someone else chimed in, saying that in this day and age, if you don’t know that you’re not supposed to hit girls, “You’re either an idiot or an asshole,” and then the group laughed, as though being either an idiot or an asshole were a punch line.

  Mike’s not an idiot. When he took the SATs this fall, he practically announced his score at the next school assembly. He acted like he didn’t mean to let it slip, and then he blushed and was all embarrassed about it, but come on—who lets something like that slip? I wanted to tell him that my score was higher. How would it have made him feel, being beaten (no pun intended) by a girl like me?

  But I’m not the type of girl to pick a fight, to stir up drama, even when the people around me are saying idiotic things. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

  But when someone hits you, you’re not picking a fight. I know that much for sure. And if you hit back, that’s self-defense, so it’s not your fault, but it still might make things worse. Mike’s so big and tall that if hitting him back made him angrier, a girl might find herself—or a guy might find himself, I don’t want to be sexist—in even more trouble.

  I read an article that said women should take pictures of every bruise and each red mark. That way when people ask how long it’s been going on, how bad it was, how many times it happened—there’s proof to back up the claims. Unless you don’t want to get the guy in trouble, and what kind of girl doesn’t want to get the guy in trouble?

  Maybe the kind of girl who stays with a guy for three more months after the first time he hit her.

  Anyway, I kept all these thoughts to myself. Like I said, I’m not the type of girl to pick a fight.

  Now, I take out my earbuds and turn on my music as I walk through the school, so that I won’t have to hear anyone else say something stupid. I still listen to breathy, moody folk songs like the ones my dad used to play when I was little and we went for long drives, just the two of us: Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash. (Right now Joni Mitchell is longing for a river to skate away on. She’s not the only one.) I can still hear the chatter and hum from the kids around me, so I turn up the volume. I look at my feet, so no one has a chance to make eye contact.

  Maybe I won’t eat lunch today. I didn’t eat breakfast, and it’s already eleven and I’m not hungry. (The volume is loud enough now that I mostly only hear the sweet croon of Joni’s voice.) Or, I could have a small lunch—if I can keep it under five hundred calories and then I don’t eat until dinner, that’ll be a good day. I mean, even if I eat a thousand calories at dinner, I’ll throw up at least half of that, and then that’ll be under one thousand calories for the whole day so I’ll definitely lose weight.

  Not that anyone is interested in seeing me naked anymore. If they ever really were. And no matter how much weight I lose, the area around my belly stays soft. Luckily it’s cold enough today that I can layer a sweater over my T-shirt and call it fashion instead of camouflage.

  A better feminist would say screw it. She’d bare her flabby belly for the world to see because love’s not supposed to be about looks, and if a guy’s only interested in a girl for her looks, then he’s not worth her time. A better feminist would say that our bodies are meant to have soft spots, and a guy is lucky to see her naked no matter what her body looks like.

  I mean, how can I claim to be such a good feminist when it comes to some jerk beating up his girlfriend when I’m such a bad feminist when it comes to body positivity?

  I skip to another album. (One of Dad’s favorite songs now, “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young.)

  I’m sorry, but if there’s a scale of what it takes to be a good feminist, I’m pretty sure that hating a guy for beating up his girlfriend counts for a whole lot more than embracing the circle of fat around your stomach.

  No one would agree with me if I said this out loud, but: I think you could tell Mike was the kind of guy who’d hit a girl. When he talks to anyone shorter than he is—which is most people, and literally every girl in school—he always stands a little too close so that we have to crane our necks to look at his face, so it looks like we’re asking him to kiss us, even when all we’re asking for is to borrow a pencil. He’s the kind of guy who has his hands all over his girlfriend when they’re in public—sure, it looks like affection but maybe he just wants to make sure that everyone knows she belongs to him. And then there’s the way he acts after every race he wins. He pretends to be modest, but you can tell that deep down he’s thinking we should all personally thank him for deigning to be North Bay’s best shot at finally winning a championship.

  I heard some of the girls are planning a protest to call for Mike’s expulsion. Maybe I’ll go.

  He hit a girl.

  He’s dangerous.

  He shouldn’t be at school with the rest of us.

  Friday, April 14

  Thirteen

  The Popular Girl

  I did some research last night. Maybe I should have been curious about it sooner, but it didn’t occur to me until last night to Google: Why do men hit women? Most of the data I found was about husbands who beat their wives, so it’s not the same as what’s going on here, but I read that most men who batter as adults were abused as children, or at least witnessed abuse when they were young. So they learn that violence is how to deal with strong emotions, even if those emotions are love and intimacy. In fact, men who beat their wives—according to one of the articles I read—are less likely to lash out at strangers. They beat their wives because, to them, it’s part and parcel of a close relationship. They almost never admit that they’ve hit their partners, and they almost never see themselves as criminals.

  Which means that maybe it’s not Mike’s fault. Like, maybe he wasn’t doing it on purpose, and he wasn’t doing it out of hate. I mean—I sound like Junie now—of course he has control over his actions, but maybe something h
appened to him that made him that way. Maybe he didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t know how to do anything else.

  Like, maybe his dad beat his mom and his dad beat his mom and so on and so on and so on back to the very first male member of the Parker family, back when they still lived in the old country, which I think was Ireland, he told me once that his ancestors were Irish, even though Parker is technically an English last name (he told me that once too). But Mike’s dad always seemed so nice. Then again, I heard his parents arguing when I was at Mike’s house a few times, and even my parents didn’t argue when we had guests.

  Still, no matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine Mr. Parker hitting Mike. I’ve seen him hugging Mike after a well-run race, praising him when he comes home with a good grade. (Then again, Mike always seemed like the perfect boyfriend, so maybe looks are deceiving.)

  But if it’s not a pattern Mike learned from his dad, then what explanation is left? Could Mike have been born this way—a little broken, a little bent, with some missing gene that made him a little more violent than most other people? Maybe he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he just couldn’t stop himself because he didn’t know how else to express himself.

  Does that mean it wasn’t his fault?

  Can you be mad at someone for doing something awful when it isn’t their fault?

  Can you turn your back on them?

  * * *

  It’s lunchtime on Friday afternoon, five days since Mike was accused. The rumors are swirling.

  The protest’s on Sunday.

  Do you think he’s still going to Big Night tomorrow? (Big Night is a North Bay tradition, the night before the track meet against our rival school, East Prep. Even the athletes who are running go, though they always leave early to get a good night’s sleep before the races.)

  Mike’s going to be suspended.

  He’s going to be expelled.

  He’s definitely not eligible for that scholarship anymore.

  His whole life is ruined.

  Kids I’ve never spoken to come up to me in the hallways. They smile and try to look sensitive and sad, but inevitably they ask me to tell them what’s really going on. Freshmen who would’ve been too intimidated to talk to me before ask all kinds of questions. It’s hard not to think they’re more interested in gossip than in expressing their concern. I wonder if people are peppering Mike (and Anil and Kyle) with questions too, but I haven’t seen him, so I don’t know. I know his schedule by heart, so it’s easy to avoid being wherever he’s most likely to be.

  I’ve taken to listening to music in between classes to dissuade all the questions and drown out the chatter. Technically, we’re not allowed to wear earbuds or headphones in the halls, but no one on the faculty is going to scold me, given the circumstances.

  Every time anyone asks, I answer, “I’d rather not talk about it.” They look so disappointed, like they’re entitled to know what’s going on. Some of the questioners are underclassmen who always showed up to cheer for Mike at his track meets even though he didn’t know their names. I wonder if they’re still rooting for Mike.

  For what it’s worth, I’d rather not talk about it happens to be the truth.

  But I guess when you’re caught up in this kind of scandal, you become public property, somehow, like how the paparazzi ask celebrities for details about their divorces because the rest of the world feels entitled to know.

  I turn up the volume of my music a little louder.

  Anil and Kyle are a few steps ahead of me in the hallway, headed for the south exit, for our lunch table. No one stops to ask them questions.

  They don’t know I’m behind them. Or if they do, they’re ignoring me.

  I keep my gaze focused on my steps, refusing to engage with any of the kids who want to shoot me smiles and ask me questions.

  Junie comes up from behind me. I jump when she links her arm through mine. Gently, she pulls out my earbuds.

  “It’s just me,” she whispers.

  I look down at her arm against mine. Would it be easier or harder to hide a purple bruise on darker skin? I’m always pale. At best, I get a little bit freckly in the sun; at worst, bright pink.

  “Come on.” Junie tugs me toward the south exit. Our table is right on the other side of the door. Her eyes are open wide, and there’s just a thin ring of green around her pupils. “I mean, we’ve been sitting there as long as they have, right?”

  I realize that other than the one day we spent in the library together this week, I don’t know where Junie’s been eating lunch since Monday. Has she been sitting with the boys—with Mike? Mike was actually her first kiss back when we were in eighth grade, though she said it didn’t count because it was only a dare, in front of everyone, and she didn’t like him like that anyway. No one but me knew that she’d never kissed anyone before, not even Mike. Junie made me promise not to tell, so I never did.

  When we step outside, the sun’s so bright that I see spots.

  “I mean,” Junie adds, “we have just as much right to that table as the boys do, right?”

  She makes it sound like Mike’s going through a divorce, and the table is the child over which he’s fighting for joint custody.

  I disentangle my arm from hers. I don’t care if I’ve already missed lunch every day this week. I’m not going anywhere near that table.

  Fourteen

  The Girlfriend

  For the record, he never punched me. The eye—faded now, almost a week later, to a sort of yellow-gray—makes it look like he did, but this bruise is the result of a slap. A harder slap than the first one.

  And he rarely actually hit me. In fact, that only happened twice. It was more grabbing and pushing and pulling. Before that first slap, I didn’t consider those sorts of touches bad, even when they hurt. Maybe he didn’t know his own strength. Maybe it was passion. I didn’t mind when it hurt like that (did I?) because he was pulling me closer, holding me tighter, kissing me harder.

  It’s funny now (is it?) because even back then, I wouldn’t have described Mike as either passionate or careless. He’s methodical, the most meticulous person I’ve ever met. Take running track: He didn’t simply burst from his crouch into a sprint. I mean, he did during an actual race but prior to each meet, he’d practice, one step at a time.

  Settling into his crouch, the tips of his fingers pressing into the track, just behind the starting line.

  Lifting his hips into the air.

  His first step—he’d tried it both left-footed and right-footed, and even though he was a righty, he clocked in faster (I was the one timing him after school, even on the days when the team didn’t have practice scheduled) when he started with his left foot first.

  Even when he won a race, his celebrations were thoughtful—he’d throw his arms overhead but almost immediately drop them. He’d turn around and shake the hands of the runners who came in second, third, fourth. The rest of the school would be cheering for him, but he didn’t run around in circles relishing his triumph. When I’d run down from the stands to congratulate him, he wouldn’t throw his arms around me in excitement. Instead, he gave me a quick hug, a peck on the cheek. He wasn’t thinking about me. He wasn’t even thinking about his win. He was already thinking about the next race.

  Every move was intentional. Each step a decision he’d made.

  The way he asked me out, officially, rather than waiting until we were at the same party and hoping that something might happen the way most other guys would.

  The way he parked down the street from my house, so we could make out after our third date without my mother seeing it.

  Maybe even the way he slapped me that first time, not hard enough to leave a bruise.

  After that evening in January, like I said, I thought maybe it wouldn’t happen again. And it didn’t—at least, not like that—until the slap last Saturday. He went
back to the other, smaller hurts: the pushes and pulls, the grip that was just a little too tight. Those hurts were gray, instead of black and white.

  For a while, I was able to ignore (or pretend to ignore) those smaller hurts. But after Valentine’s Day, it became impossible to pretend they weren’t on purpose.

  Mike does everything on purpose.

  Of course, we spent Valentine’s Day together. It was the very first time I’d had a real date on Valentine’s Day, and I was so excited. I borrowed a red tank top from my best friend, but I had to wear a sweater over it because there were three bruises on my left upper arm, fingerprints from where Mike had grabbed me.

  I told myself it didn’t matter because it was cold outside. I would’ve worn a sweater anyway.

  Later, when Mike undressed me, I figured he’d ignore the bruises. But instead, he kissed them methodically, one at a time, pressing his lips so hard against my skin the way another boy might kiss a tattoo you’d gotten, his name etched into your flesh.

  “I love you.” He went on kissing me. He even kissed carefully, as though he’d read a manual about where girls like to be kissed: beneath their earlobes, in the hollow of their throats, their eyelids.

  “I love you too,” I answered, and it was true. I loved the way it felt when he kissed me and when he held my hand. I loved how it felt to walk down the street with him, how it looked when I got into his car. I loved the way he drove: one hand on the wheel, one hand on my knee.

  I’m supposed to hate him. I’m supposed to hate him because he hurt me. The problem is, I can hate him for hurting me and still love him for the way things were when he didn’t hurt me.