and her too-short skirt and her foster parents yelling at
her from the house. My mother was a person who
always wanted to leave wherever she was.
She told me once that her first kiss was with a traveling
salesman. She told me once that she left home at
sixteen. She told me once that I was just like her.
The Valley
After the first semester of tenth grade
is over, I ride my bicycle
into Anderson Valley.
I’ve never been down here before
and there’s something faraway about it,
the way it’s overgrown with cows and plum trees
and the distant cat calls of dogs and birds.
I guess the thing I never imagined about high school
is how suddenly there would be a whole landscape
of boys
and it’s not like I get to take my pick or anything,
but I can be in love with whomever I want,
I could love someone who’s two years older
or six inches taller,
I could love someone who hunts
or someone who fishes,
or someone who doesn’t believe in either.
The rain is starting now and
I pedal further into the valley,
no idea where I’m going
except knowing that when I get there
I’m going to realize
just how lost I really am.
Motorbike
I pedal home, following the smell of motorbike.
Bobby just bought one, so my sister
has spent the week with her arms
wrapped around his waist
racing through alleys and other parts unknown.
My sister is sparkly with friends and people that
love her,
my sister is a walking tiara.
She is everyone’s prize
but the only thing she seems to want
is the smell of gasoline in her hair
and the taste of something
that doesn’t taste like anything else
on her lips.
Report Cards
After a dinner of succotash stew
my stepmother does dishes
and my father looks at our report cards.
He tells Tara just because she’s in love
it doesn’t mean now she can flunk all her classes.
He tells me that just because I get A’s in English
it doesn’t mean I can get C’s in every other subject.
He tells my stepbrother Good job
because he gets straight A’s in everything.
That’s probably because he has no life,
my sister says and I laugh.
Our stepmother gives us one of her vegan glares
because her son is the model of perfection
and we are just the messes
she’s being forced to clean up.
On Fire
I think the only reason Denise started smoking is
because she likes to see things burn. I’m starting to
think she likes lit matches more than being my friend.
I guess it makes sense; she’s always lived her life like it’s
going up in flames any second. One day, she’s going to
start a fire and she’s not going to be able to stop it.
One day she’s going to start a fire and I won’t have the
water to put it out.
History Class
As for my other (so-called) friends,
Elaine and Skyler walked into history class today
with Charlotte Ames and some other girls
and they were all waving their pom-poms around
and squealing about the game tomorrow
and I wanted to throw up on their shoes
until Mr. Stearns said,
For those of us who aren’t sports fans,
can you keep it to yourselves?
I loved him for that.
And have you ever noticed what
nice hands he has?
The Bus
Charlotte Ames rides my bus
and she’s the kind of girl who’s born happy.
She is sunny and bright and pure,
she doesn’t have crazy thoughts
passed down to her by a mother
who left town before she knew how to count.
Her parents are PTA All The Way.
When it comes to crazy,
I am definitely a “have”
and she is a “have-not.”
Except this morning, Charlotte Ames
gets on the bus and she can’t stop crying
and she tries to hide it
but it’s like a thunderstorm is raging
inside her pep squad uniform.
She sits down next to me and
I pretend not to notice the typhoon of her sadness
is gaining speed and velocity.
Soon, cars and homes will be in danger.
Soon, there will be mandatory evacuations.
I know nothing about Charlotte Ames
But I know what it means to be that sad
and how sometimes sadness is the loneliest kind
of bad weather,
it’s more like lightning than rain
because it only strikes a person who least suspects it.
But I don’t say this to Charlotte Ames.
Instead I just hand her the napkin from my bag lunch
and she mops her face and
we ride the bus together to school
without speaking, the two of us floating down a river
whose banks have long since flooded.
The Big Game
Tonight is the night
of the big game
and it’s so dumb
people call it that
because it seems like
it’s the same size
as any other old game.
Quarterback
I do not want to love you
because that’s everyone else’s job.
It’s the job of Elaine and Dawn,
of Skyler and Maggie and Charlotte,
girls I’ve grown up with,
girls who line the field at night
to watch you sprint and score,
your face a never-ending flush of tiny victories.
I do not want to love you
because I fall to ruin watching you
run and sprint and lob things
into the air so high
they might never come down.
I do not want to think about you
walking towards me or
taking me to places I have never been.
I do not want to think about you
at night, when no one is thinking of me.
I do not want to love you,
so I am giving you to the other girls;
they can have you and the sun that smiles down on you,
they can have you and the sky that opens up for you,
they can have you
and they can keep you.
Geometry
In that “I hate my life” voice of hers,
Mrs. Shields is going on and on
about polygons and parallel lines
when somebody pokes me on the back.
It’s Jenny Arnold, passing me a note.
I open it, thinking it might be from Denise
but I don’t get many notes from Denise
because she barely comes to school anymore.
Instead it’s in Jenny’s famous handwriting:
Where’d you get those shoes?
They’re vintage, I write back,
which is sort of true
because technically they are secondhand,
having been stolen from my sister’s closet
just this morning.
Jenny writes back, Cool
which is practically like getting a note from God
telling you you’re getting into heaven.
If that weren’t enough, she writes back:
What kind of music do you like?
The usual stuff, I write and she writes back,
Then obviously you need my help.
She gives me a grin
and suddenly, I love quadrilaterals
and supplementary angles
and I love geometry
because Jenny Arnold
just became my friend.
Soundtrack for Smart-Asses: A Mix CD by Jenny Arnold
Rebel Girl—Bikini Kill
Violet—Hole
Fuck and Run—Liz Phair
I Know I Know I Know—Tegan and Sara
Portions for Foxes—Rilo Kiley
This Isn’t It—Lemona
Oh!—The Breeders
One More Hour—Sleater Kinney
Y Control—Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dress—PJ Harvey
Dirty Knives—The Bangs
Gigantic—Pixies
The Difference Between Love and Hell—Sahara Hotnights
Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl—Unrest
Bull in the Heather—Sonic Youth
Summer Babe—Pavement
I Am a Scientist—Guided By Voices
The Falls—French Kicks
The Tide That Never Came Back—The Veils
Maybe Not—Cat Power
Spaz
My stepbrother comes into my room
reeking of spaghetti and video games.
What are you listening to? he asks.
A mix CD. I shrug.
Who’s on it?
You wouldn’t know the bands, I say.
And he says, Maybe I should make a mix CD for
Beth Sczepanick.
I ask him who Beth Sczepanick is
and he says, all blushing and dorky, She’s this girl.
Then he blurts, She’s really good at ice-skating!
I stare at him.
Are you in love?
Instead of answering,
he runs out of the room,
tripping over a pair of shoes
and then spastically falling down in the hallway
which is further proof that he just might be
the most ridiculous person
I have ever met.
For the Ice-Skater He Loves
You’re the girl my stepbrother’s in love with
and he’s just the twelve-year-old kid
of a lady my dad married last year.
It’s not like I care about him,
in fact, he drives me crazy
with his stories about you,
the figure skater who’s skated
a perfect flower on the rink of his heart.
He won’t shut up about your double axels
and your triple-toe loops
and how once you smiled at him in the hall.
Personally, I suspect you’ve never even noticed him
and why should you?
He’s not much to look at
but he’s got shiny hair and
sometimes he smells like cinnamon
and yesterday, he went to the mall
and bought me a pair of really ugly earrings
that are kind of cute.
Which is why I’m telling you now
that if you hurt him, or carve a figure eight
into one of his soft spots,
I will fill your locker with hate notes,
I’ll carve bitch into the side of your sled.
I’m not above snagging your tutu
and tampering with your blades,
breaking bones or poisoning your cocoa,
because this good boy with a broken heart
is like you without ice to skate on.
These sound like pale threats, but trust me,
if you hurt this dumb-ass kid
I never thought I’d know,
your life will be spent
in the hot nub of a sunny day,
waiting at the edge of a lake
that just won’t freeze over.
The Last Day of Tenth Grade
It’s the last day of tenth grade
and all I have to show for it
are a bunch of B plusses
a very strange stepbrother
a very vegan stepmother
one ex-friend that’s ditched me
to become a cheerleader
another friend who’s going as crazy as her father is
a sister who hates me
a never-ending crush on her boyfriend—
but the weirdest part
is that I am leaving tenth grade
being friends with the girl
who was the whole reason
I didn’t want to show up in the first place.
If anyone tells you that life is predictable,
DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
4
Bodies of water
Permission
I’ve never asked my father to stay out late before.
Because of this, he interrogates me for an hour like
I’m one of the guys who work for him at the mill.
Where are you going and When will you be back and
Are you sure you’ll be back and it goes on and on, until
finally my stepmother says, Gerald, it’s fine. It’s summer
vacation. Let her go. Then she smiles at me and it
makes her look kind of pretty and for the first time,
I can sort of see why my father fell in love with her.
At the Drive-In
We leave twenty bucks in an envelope
and get our bottle of whatever
from a tire in Mike Neeson’s front yard
because he is legal
and we are not.
We go to the drive-in to drink it
and it tastes terrible but Jenny says that’s not the point,
it’s about the way it makes you feel.
I feel dizzy and dangerous
and temptation sits like a pat of yeast
on my tongue, rising and rising
and sour.
It’s dusk when the movie starts
to filter through the trees
and Jenny says, Come on,
lets go downtown,
and she starts the car and we drive away
heading for trouble
like we’re heroines in the making
like we’re starlets getting lit into being
by the curving screen.
The Hilltop
Jenny sneaks into the Hilltop
and smuggles me out a beer
before going back in.
A drunk guy’s outside
telling a really loud story about
a fight he got into last week
with his neighbor
and then I turn around
and there’s Mr. Stearns,
my history teacher.
He laughs and says, I’m not going to ask
what you’re doing here, Penny.
and I say, Then I guess I’ll have to ask you
what you’re doing here
and he kind of laughs
and that’s how it started.
Learning History
I want to know what it’s like
to fall against you in the heat,
you, my own history teacher,
my own Battle of Gettysburg,
my thirteen colonies.
You have hiked from here to Idaho and back,
always loving the wrong woman,
the compass biting your palm,
your sex swaying like a bean stalk.
It’s as though you’ll always
be a teenager, a scalding runt,
self-centered, effusive, your
crooked teeth like Letters of Congress,
like crates of tea in the Boston Habor.
To
night, as we stand outside the Hilltop Tavern,
my B’s and B plusses glittering behind us
and Jenny yelling Come on! from the car,
I want to know what its like.
With this liquor quick around my hips,
state capitols slurring my speech,
I want to see whole declarations of independence
float from between your lips,
and I want to believe
they are meant just for me.
Anything
Were you flirting with Mr. Stearns?!
Jenny yells when I get in the car
and we laugh and laugh and
all I know is
at this moment I feel like
I can do anything I want
and be anyone I want
and go anywhere on the globe
and still call it home.
Party at Rick Stangle’s
By the time we get to Rick Stangle’s
famous Start of Summer party
it’s almost eleven.
After everything that’s happened tonight
I’ve almost forgotten
this is the first actual “party”
I’ve ever been to.
But when I get there I realize
that parties are basically just
School With Booze.
All the same people are here
wearing all the same clothes
talking about all the same things,
except they are having fun
and people who would never normally
converse with each other
are drunk enough to actually do it
and there’s something
sort of sweet about it
even though from what I can tell,
it does seem to involve
a lot of vomiting.
Moonlight
I walk out into the moonlight
and there in Rick Stangle’s backyard
are my sister and Bobby
and I stop and stare
because when it comes to them,
I can never stop looking.
Watching them is like a disease
I can’t be cured of.
Tonight, though, instead of pulling Bobby
into her arms like she always does
my sister shoves him away
as if something has unhinged in her.
Then Jeff Eckman, who has slept with everything
that moves
calls over, Come here, Tara, and
The Geography of Girlhood Page 4