the feathered hair, the push
to get Paula off the cheerleading squad,
and the countless after-school hours spent
making high school what it is,
making sure no other Jennifer
dares to call herself Jenny again.
The Hole in the Door
I come home from Skyler’s to learn
that last night, after my sister’s curfew
had not only been broken
but smashed into a million little pieces,
my dad went into her room
and tore down all her posters
and threw her sluttiest shoes in the trash
and drilled a lock on her door,
but he was so mad it fell off
and now there’s just a hole there.
Tonight, my dad came into the living room
where I was doing everything I was supposed to do
and he said, Penny, don’t ever be like your sister
because no good can come of it.
He told me I only had one life to live
and I’d better not ruin it
the way she was ruining hers.
Then he headed out to the garage
to hit things with other things
and I went upstairs and knelt outside my sister’s door.
I looked through the little “o” my father made
and I could see Tara in there,
lying with her legs up against the wall,
scribbling in her diary
her hand speeding fast over the page,
speeding fast like the car
she drove into the ditch last fall,
scribbling down secrets
I would kill to know.
A Bunch of Stuff
As for my diary,
it’s just a bunch of stuff about
how I wish certain boys would love me,
how I wish our mom hadn’t left town
before we were old enough to know better,
and on and on, a bunch
of basic stupid wish lists
and lots of little secrets
that absolutely no one
would kill to know.
Basic Stupid Wish List #27
I wish I was this
I wish I was that
I wish I was thin
I wish I was fat
I wish I was Skyler
I wish I was Jean
I wish I was sexy
I wish I was mean
I wish I was beautiful
I wish I was tall
I wish Bobby loved me
but it’s a pipe dream, that’s all.
Hickeys
The next morning, I see what the fuss was about.
My sister’s neck is covered with
a trail of dime-sized bruises,
a scrapbook of the night spent in Bobby’s car
on a road so remote it’s not even named
and the seats were rolled back
and the windows were fogged up
and the music was cranked
and the secrets were spilling
and it was magic,
just like how it will be
when it happens to me.
“Wake Up!”
That’s what Mrs. Hillstrom says to me in front of
everyone in the middle of English. Two days ago, she
stopped me after class to tell me that even though my
grades are good, and even though she appreciates
my after-school participation in The Diary of Anne
Frank, I need to stop daydreaming about whatever I’m
daydreaming about. Don’t I know that this is my life?
she asks me. Don’t I know that I need to live in the
here and now and not in a fantasy?
After Mrs. Hillstrom turns back to the board, Elaine,
who’s trying not to laugh, throws me a note, which hits
me square in the eye.
A Note from Elaine
Penny—
Wanna hang out with me and Skyler after school today?
Xoxoxo
Elaine
P.S. Don’t invite Denise.
P.P.S. Stan and I totally made out yesterday!
P.P.P.S. I heard Randall Faber might like you. Isn’t that
awesome?
The Note I Write Back
Elaine—
I can’t hang out today cuz I have rehearsal for the play.
P.S. Why can’t I invite Denise?
P.P.S. I barely even know Randall Faber.
The Note She Writes Back to My Note
Why do you have to go to rehearsal if you’re only
doing lighting?
P.S. Denise has gotten totally weird.
P.P.S. Stan is an awesome kisser!!!
P.P.P.S. Should I tell Randall you like him?
The Note I Write Back to Her
Note She Wrote Back to My Note
NO, do NOT tell Randall I like him!!!
P.S. I have to go to practice because I’m understudy for
the lead, so Mrs. H says I have to be committed.
P.P.S. I don’t think Denise is that weird.
Busted
Just as I throw my note to Elaine, I hear Mrs. Hillstrom
say, Penny—detention. I look up to see she’s staring
right at me and Stan Bondurant goes, Ooh, busted in
this really stupid voice. He might be an Awesome Kisser
but that doesn’t stop him from being a Total Ass.
Now I feel sick to my stomach because I have never
gotten detention before, but then again, to look on
the bright side, after today I will no longer be a virgin.
Of detention, that is.
Detention
Detention is nothing like a teen movie
where all the guys have Mohawks
and the girls carve hearts into their desks
and everyone is secretly smoking weed.
In my teeny tiny town
detention is a beige classroom
and a vague smell of depression
and a clock that clonks along so everyone can hear
and a bunch of people staring out the window
waiting for something to happen—
but here’s the weird part—
something actually does.
Jenny Arnold’s Boyfriend
A bunch of high school guys just walked by the window
where I sit in detention, their lettermen’s jackets glowing
like blue diamonds pulled from the bottom of the bay.
One of them, the one everyone knows is Jenny Arnold’s
boyfriend, smiled at me. When I smiled back, he put his
hand to his mouth and before I knew it, Jenny Arnold’s
boyfriend was blowing me a kiss. I will say here and
now that it was like getting an A+ in a subject I knew
nothing about, or waking up with straight teeth after
years of crooked ones, or winning the lottery with a
ticket that just happened to be found on the ground.
Understudy
I walk out of detention dazed and in love,
rewinding and replaying over and over
my moment with Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend
on the movie screen in my head.
That’s what I’m doing when Denise
comes careening up and yells,
Glynis Peterson has bronchitis!
I have no idea what she’s talking about
and I stand there staring at her
until she says, Hello? The play?
You’re not the understudy anymore!
You’re the star!
The Diary of Penny Morrow
I.
Tonight the lead role in The Diary of Anne Frank
will be played by me, Penny Morrow. Tonight I am the
girl in the attic, writing it a
ll down. All this would be
wonderful if I could remember my lines. But that is
not the case. If I were Anne Frank, history would never
have been recorded. If I were Anne Frank, history
would have been lost for good.
II.
After everyone gets their money back, Mrs. Hillstrom
tells me she’s found a second understudy to take over
for the rest of my remaining performances. But what I
really wish is that she could find an understudy to take
over for the rest of my remaining life.
III.
I wait until after everyone else has left, and I walk to
the parking lot in my bad stage makeup to meet my
dad, who will most undoubtedly be late. Then, there,
in the rain that has just started to come down, is
Randall Faber. In his hair is a bit of sawdust, and in his
hand, a half-dozen pink carnations are glowing in their
green Safeway wrapper.
IV.
I got you these before I saw the show, Randall Faber
says, handing me the carnations. I give him a shove and
he laughs and we walk out into the rain and it’s like I’m
finally giving the performance I am supposed to give.
Okay, I tripped once, but at least the audience is
smaller.
Randall Faber’s Plan
The next day at school,
my newfound status as Screw-Up In The School Play
has been faintly dimmed thanks to
my newfound status as The Girl Randall Faber Likes.
Maggie Cartwright and Skyler Reeves
smile at me during Science
and Stan Bondurant
doesn’t pick on me at recess.
Elaine wants to eat lunch with Denise and me
as if the three of us
were suddenly best friends again.
That’s the upside of being The Girl Randall Faber Likes.
That’s the part I can handle.
The other part is happening now,
when Elaine comes up to my locker and tells me
what will happen after the sixth period bell has rung,
what will happen when I go from being someone
used to standing on the outside of a story
to someone standing smack dab in the middle of one.
The First Kiss
The First Kiss walks on two legs
just like everyone else.
He has a birthmark and a good soccer kick.
He’s first base in spring and fullback in fall,
he’s too cool for hot lunch.
Today, after the bell, in front of the bus,
he’s going to take me to a place I’ve never been.
I hear this news secondhand and third,
because, like the soldier’s wife,
I am the last to know.
I am on the blade edge of the knife all day,
all I want is to stay small and young and out of the way
but here comes Elaine with lip gloss choices:
Bubble Gum, Lemon-Lime, Tutti Fruity.
She explains that this is what I am to taste like,
that the First Kiss narrowed it down from the full set
of six.
I pick one, but all I really want
is to drop out of ninth grade and never come back.
All I want is to go somewhere where things like this
don’t happen—
kisses and the planning of them.
He holds my hand as we walk toward the bus.
From somewhere, somebody yells,
Go for it, Randall! Wooh, yeah!
and suddenly, his mouth is upon mine
and the air is reeking of Tutti Fruity,
the pineapple hitting the banana up against the cherry,
the air is smacking of fruit.
When I wake up, I’m lying on the curb.
The First Kiss has fled the scene
but the school nurse is on her way.
Elaine is patting my hand and saying,
Everything will be okay, I promise.
What she doesn’t understand is that
I have really done it now,
I have really gone
and ruined my life.
Life as an Idiot
You are such a retard,
my sister says when she hears what happened
because my sister is beautiful and perfect
and immune to humiliation.
I wonder if my mother
fainted after her first kiss.
Maybe it’s something that I inherited from her,
maybe it’s a secret only the two of us share.
My sister looks at me then smiles.
You may be an idiot,
she says before walking out of the room.
But at least you have a boyfriend now.
I do?
The Beaks and Wings of Birds
The beaks of birds
tell me what I need to know.
When my sister drives,
she tries to hit the pile of crows.
She swears they live cruel, uneven lives.
I, too, grow to hate birds
and to long for them;
their early pecking on the roof
of my house
and the puffy thump
when a sparrow hits the window.
My sister gasps,
my father barely stirs,
our dog twitches in the dull light.
I am the only one to rush outside,
because I want to see
something fallen down from flight,
I want to marvel at this
thing with wings,
I want to stand in front of
a pane of glass
and really believe
it was something I could fly through.
Going Together
I guess we are going together now,
even though technically I was never asked
to have my hand held
every single minute of the day,
I was never asked to exhaust myself
trying to make conversation
with a boy I barely know,
I was never asked to
dance with only one person
at the Friday Afternoon Dances
to songs I’m not even sure I like.
Funny how the things you ask for
you never get
and the things you don’t,
you always do.
Lost Stars
Penny has a boyfriend so you need a girlfriend,
my sister announces to my dad.
My dad stares at me and says,
What?! You have a boyfriend?!
Then my sister grins and says,
Don’t worry, Dad, she’s still a virgin—
but at this point
she’s probably getting more action than you are.
My dad looks like he might combust or implode
like one of those planets
he studies up there in the sky.
I tell my dad he has nothing to worry about
and he says he’d better not
and then goes outside
to work on his new telescope.
My sister says the sky is full of stars
and the sea is full of fish
and maybe if he found a new one
he’d stop being so cranky
all the time.
I don’t know much about stars
but maybe Tara’s right.
The sky is full of them,
so why keep staring at the ones
that have spun forever
out of reach?
Caught Fish
It looks like my sister got her wish.
Dad came home the other night
smelling like beer and first date.
He’d gone to dinner with a marine biologist
named Susan.
She counts the salmon every season,
she’s the one who decides if the population is stable.
Like my sister says, there are plenty of fish in the sea
and here is a woman who knows
exactly how many.
Meatless
My father’s new girlfriend is vegan
so that’s why tonight
we’re having squash and stir-fry for dinner.
My father used to be a man who loved meat
but now it seems he’s lost his taste for flesh.
Susan says that’s how they met.
It was at a barbecue at the Snyders’;
he asked her what a tofu dog tasted like
and she said, Here, try a bite of mine,
and he did.
My sister and I look at each other.
This does not sound like our father,
a man who doesn’t like new food
or new people or new anything,
and yet there he was,
eating some meatless wiener
out of the palm
of a strange woman’s hand.
Seven Minute Window
There’s only one more week left of junior high, but I am
treasuring each moment of it because every day
between 2:10 and 2:17 Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend walks
by my sixth period science class. Every day between
2:10 and 2:17, Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend looks at me,
or winks, or smiles, or stares, or waves at me through
the window and it feels like my body is being hijacked
by the ocean or the wind or a lightning storm and I
wonder, Can you love someone if you’ve never spoken
to them? Can someone be telling you they love you
just by looking at you? I don’t know what love is,
but if it’s anything less than this, how could it possibly
matter?
Things They Say About Love
When I break up with Randall,
everyone wants to know why
I’d do something so dumb.
What I want to know is,
haven’t they ever heard a song
or read a poem or watched a movie?
If they had, they’d know
that love is a school
The Geography of Girlhood Page 2