If I Was Your Girl

by Meredith Russo

  “Here she is!” Layla cried as she appeared before me, whirling through the crowd with ease. Chloe followed, hands in pockets and elbows out, the crowd parting for her.

  “Thought we’d lost you,” Anna said, her hair messy from being jostled.

  “I figured one of her admirers whisked her away,” Layla replied, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

  I noticed Parker and Grant across the room, deep in conversation, and wondered what they were talking about. I realized I didn’t want to think about it, so I held up the photo instead. “Who is this?”

  “Some kid Grant knew back in the day,” Layla replied. “They were pretty inseparable, I remember.”

  “I recognize him—they went to my church,” Anna said. Her eyes looked pained. “Him and his dad came every Sunday. The mom stayed home. He always seemed really sad, but my parents wouldn’t let me talk to him. Bad influence.”

  Layla lowered her voice. “I heard the kid was really sick. Like, terminal. That’s why they moved away.”

  Parker broke in, grabbing the photo from my hand. “You talking about Tommy? Grant’s little gay boyfriend?” Two of his enormous buddies appeared behind him. Suddenly the space felt stifling. “I heard his mom went full psycho, killed the dad and little Tom-Tom with a shotgun, then turned it on herself, and their heads were so messed up the coroner had to use their teeth to identify ’em.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. Anna looked down at her feet.

  “Park,” Grant said, joining the circle. Parker turned around. Grant’s hands were in his pockets, his jaw set in a hard line. “Don’t say shit like that, okay?”

  Parker scowled and stood up straight, squaring his shoulders so he took up as much space as possible. His gaze drifted from Layla to Chloe, who were both staring straight ahead. Finally, he turned to look at me, a snide smile in his eyes.

  “Yo, Grant,” he said. “The new girl know you’ve got a vagina?”

  I flinched as if I’d been struck. I wondered why people still made comments like that. I wondered when I’d stop caring. I took a step back and away.

  But neither of them was looking at me. Grant just shook his head. “Have another drink, bud.”

  “Five bucks says she won’t compare to your ex-boyfriend,” Parker spat. He brushed his shoulder and headed for the keg, body-checking Grant on the way. His minions followed. Grant stayed put, not saying a word.

  Someone turned the music back up, and soon the normal party sounds returned. Around me, people went back to talking and laughing and flirting and dancing. But I couldn’t be one of them anymore. I’d been crazy to think I ever could. When no one was looking, I slipped through the crowd and out the back door.

  ELEVEN YEARS AGO

  I wrote a good story at school. Mrs. Upton told me my parents needed to see this story and to take it home right now, tonight. The story was for an assignment where we were supposed to imagine what we would be like when we were grown up, which was something I had thought about a lot.

  In the story I found a car in my room like the one from The Phantom Tollbooth except purple instead of red because purple was my favorite color and also it was a time machine instead of a machine to go to magical worlds. I got in the car and turned the key and drove and I arrived in the future! And in the future I was in a science lab and there was a very tall and pretty lady there with long hair who was busy working on her computer. She was wearing a lab coat but it was also a very pretty dress in a way that was hard to explain, so I drew a picture. The lady got up and hugged me and said that she was me, grown-up! She showed me how she drank a special medicine so that when she grew up she became a woman instead of a man. She told me that the way I felt like a girl inside of me was a true thing, and was not bad or wrong. Then I got in my time machine and came home.

  I read the story again while I waited. The line for car pickups was very long, and normally I did not care because I was very patient, a real cool customer Dad said, but I wanted to show my story to my parents and that made waiting hard. I just knew Dad would be so happy when he found out he had a daughter and not a son, but maybe he would also feel silly that he and Mom made such a silly mistake? When he tried to do boy things with me he always frowned and stopped, so I did not think he wanted a son really, which was fine because I hated sports.

  The pickup lady in the orange vest called my name and pointed to our brown station wagon three lanes back. I started to run, but the lady in the orange vest told me to slow down, which was a rule for my safety. I walked slowly between the other cars, but really I was wondering what kinds of clothes Mom and Dad would get me now. Hopefully some skirts since the weather was hot and jeans were so bad, the worst! I climbed into my booster seat and buckled myself in. Dad was driving the car, and Mom was not in the car, which was normal. They did not like riding in the car together because it made them full of stress and then they yelled, which I did not like.

  “How was school?” Dad asked.

  “Good!” I said. Dad nodded and turned on some music. I wanted to tell him about my story right away, but it was not safe to drive and read and if I read it to him he would not see the pictures. I hummed along to the song and bobbed my head but I did not kick my feet because that noise distracted Dad, which was not a safe thing to do. Finally we pulled into the driveway.

  “Dad!” I said. “Dad, look what I did today! I wrote a whole story!” I ran around to his side of the car.

  “Did you now?” he said. He smiled a little bit and since I did not see him smile often, I thought that was a good sign. Dad liked books, so I thought he would like my story. “I bet you’ll be the next Faulkner.”

  He took the story from my hands and smiled when he read the cover. He smiled at the first page where I found the car. He smiled at the second page where I drove the car. He looked confused on the third page where I saw the beautiful lady. Then he frowned. My tummy felt sick and suddenly I wanted my story back. I was too scared to move though because he reached the page where the lady explained that she was me, and the lines were on his forehead like when he was very angry. He skipped the last three pages and read the note the teacher attached instead.

  “Why does your teacher think you were being serious?” he asked. He looked at me and I felt like I had not had a bath for days but in my insides instead of my outsides. “This is a joke, right?”

  I wanted to lie to Dad and I wanted to tell him the truth, and I did not know that a person could want two things like that at the same time. I looked at my shoes and felt myself starting to cry, which was a bad thing because Dad said crying was for girls, but I knew I was a girl but Dad thought that was a joke and he seemed angry about it and thinking about that made me cry even harder. Dad knelt and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Look at me,” he said. I shook my head. “Look at me!” he repeated, and his hands squeezed my shoulders. I wanted to close my eyes but I had already made him so angry. I did not want to be bad or in trouble. “You need to tell me this was a joke.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was what I said when an adult was angry with me and I wanted them to stop being angry. He let go of my shoulders and put his hands on his knees. I sniffled and wiped my eyes and looked back up at him, but he was looking at the sky. He took a deep breath.

  “Son,” he said, “I want you to have a good life. Boys who really think the things in your story are confused. They don’t have good lives. So you’re not one of those boys.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

  He messed up my hair and smiled again, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “I don’t want to hear anything else about this, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Come on, cheer up,” he said. I sniffled and looked at the ground. “Let’s go play catch, okay? Take your mind off it.”

  “No, thank you,” I said, adding, “sir” before I went inside.

  7

  As I walked away from the party, I took deep, calming breaths of crisp night air. The sun
had set, and the stars were out. I still wasn’t used to how crisp and clear they looked here. Smyrna wasn’t in the city proper, but Atlanta’s light pollution reached a long way, leaving the sky a blue-and-purple smear. Out here you could make out everything, even the dim band of the Milky Way. I wished I could walk up into the sky and live on some distant planet, far away from the things I was afraid of. I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light.

  “Hey.” I was halfway down the block when I heard a voice behind me. I turned to see Grant standing in the middle of the empty street. “Leaving already?”

  “I’m not feeling great…” I trailed off. I desperately wanted to finish the sentence with the truth, but what was there to say? I think I like you, but I’ll never have a normal life. I think you like me, but you’ll never understand who I am.

  Grant pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on. We both blinked at the sudden radiance.

  “Come with me?”

  He turned toward the woods, and my feet knew before my brain did that I was going to follow. I was never going to be free of my past; it was always going to be there, waiting to suck me in and crush me like a black hole. The only way to escape it was to keep moving.

  As we walked deeper into the woods, the short grass quickly gave way to grasping, thigh-high yellow blades. “That thing with Parker…” I began, thinking about how Grant had stood his ground. I wondered how many more times he would have to come to my rescue before I disappeared like Tommy. How many more friends would he have to alienate? “Will you guys still talk after this?”

  Grant shrugged as the flashlight’s beam illuminated a path for me to follow. “It would all blow over if we just had it out real quick after school,” he replied evenly. “But he’s huge, and mean, and so this stupid thing’s probably gonna go on for months.”

  He paused as we approached a waist-high thicket of poison ivy. “Think you can jump it?”

  “Not really,” I said, still a little dizzy from the beer.

  “Mind if I lift you?”

  “I think so,” I said, my throat going dry. I touched my fingers to my neck. “I think it’s okay, I mean.”

  He laughed and grabbed my hips, easily carrying me over the ivy. I felt warm where his hands had touched me.

  We kept walking, Grant still leading the way. The path opened onto a lake glimmering with faint white slivers. A chorus of frogs joined the cicadas’ call, singing in their own asynchronous rhythm.

  “I think boys aren’t taught that smart’s the same as scared sometimes,” I said.

  “You may be right.” He pointed the flashlight up. “We’re here.” A tilted wooden platform nestled atop three thick tree branches. Clumsy, mismatched boards nailed into the trunk below served as a ladder.

  “Where is here?” I asked. He looked sheepish.

  “You’ll see.” He climbed up onto the platform and shone the flashlight down. I blinked. “Do you trust me?” He reached down and offered me his hand.

  “Did you just quote Aladdin?” I took his hand and he easily hoisted me up.

  I crawled over to the edge of the platform. From above, the lake reflected the moon clearly, a perfect white circle against its shimmering surface. I took a deep breath and turned to find Grant sitting with his back against the tree trunk.

  “Thanks for coming out here with me,” he said.

  “Thanks for bringing me.” I breathed in the cool lake air and sighed. “Do you live near here or something?”

  “No,” Grant said, looking suddenly cagey. “I, uh, used to. This was Tommy’s old hideaway.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Yeah. We used to come out here, when his folks fought or somebody screwed with him at school.”

  “What really happened to him?”

  Grant rubbed his thumb over his fingertips. “He died.”

  I nodded silently. “Did he do it himself, or did somebody do it to him?”

  “If people drive you to something,” Grant whispered, his voice quaking slightly, “then it’s their responsibility.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to let him know how much it meant to have found someone out here, in this place, who would stand up for someone like Tommy, who would stand up for someone like the boy I used to be. I leaned forward, searching with my fingertips, and slid my hand into his.

  “You were a good friend,” I said.

  He squeezed my hand and for a long moment we listened to the wind on the lake and the frantic buzz of cicadas as life prepared for its long, cold sleep.

  “Thanks,” he said after a while. He put the flashlight down and lay on his belly, his upper body disappearing over the edge. “You know how to swim, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. Swimming had been the only exercise I liked after puberty turned my body against me. Floating and darting through the water, I escaped the horrible tethers of my physical body. “I don’t have a suit, though.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, scampering down and out of sight. There was a momentary rustling and then his white undershirt soared over the tree house and landed at my feet. I stripped to my underwear quickly and pulled his shirt over my head—Grant wasn’t that much taller than me, but boy clothes were so loose and baggy that the shirt came down low enough to cover everything.

  “Don’t lose that dress,” I said as Grant climbed back up. “It’s my favorite.”

  “It looks good on you,” he replied. I fell silent as he hoisted himself back onto the platform and stood to his full, lean, shirtless height. He caught me staring and blushed. The tension broke as he exploded into motion, leaping off the edge. He hung suspended for a moment, arms spinning wildly, before straightening out and piercing the water’s surface with a whisper.

  I held my breath for a few tense seconds before he surfaced, laughing.

  “You could’ve broken your neck!” I cried, putting my hands on my hips. “Do you know how many people get spinal injuries from bad dives every year?”

  He wiped his eyes and slicked his hair back, treading water gracefully. “No,” he said, catching his breath. “How many?”

  “Well,” I said as I stood, “I don’t know either. But I bet it’s a lot.”

  He laughed as I walked back toward the tree.

  “I’m going to jump,” I announced.

  “I don’t think—” he began, but I started running before he could finish. I reached the edge and took off. For one joyous moment, I felt weightless and free. And then came the burning slap as I hit the lake flat on my back.

  “Ow,” I croaked, floating to the surface.

  “I tried to warn you,” Grant said, swimming over.

  “It’s fine,” I said, closing my eyes and feeling the pain radiate through my body. I didn’t mind it; pain reminded me I was alive. For years I had been so numb, desperate to feel anything at all.

  I opened my eyes and stared up, watching the stars turn overhead. A firefly buzzed urgently above my forehead, pulsing brightly to attract a mate. I sighed and gently paddled my feet, all my fear from earlier melting away.

  Finally, after what could have been minutes or hours, Grant paddled toward the shore. He strode smoothly out of the water, not showing any sign of fatigue, and stared at me as I emerged.

  “What?” I asked, looking down and panicking when I saw the thin white T-shirt sticking to my black bra. I crossed my arms over my chest and felt my face color.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  I blinked in surprise. No boy had ever told me that before.

  He grabbed my hand and we began the walk to my apartment. Reeds gave way to cut grass, and soon we were on a sidewalk. Streetlamps glowed through the trees.

  “You know what I’m gonna ask you, right?” Grant said. “Because I’d like to kiss you right now.”

  My heart caught in my chest. “Really?”

  “We don’t have to,” he said quickly. “I kno
w what you said before, about not being able to date.…”

  “No,” I said. I leaned over and placed my hand on his. “I mean stop worrying. Yes. I mean yes.”

  He started to say something else but I closed my eyes and leaned toward him. He touched my face and met me halfway. Our lips were beaded with lake water. The kiss only lasted for a moment, but my mouth was numb and warm all at once.

  He took my hand again and we finished the walk to my apartment in a pleasant, comfortable silence, my whole body singing with joy.

  Except, a voice in my head whispered, he would never have done this if he knew the truth.

  “Is something wrong?” he said, giving me a concerned look. I realized I’d been lost in thought.

  “Oh,” I said. “No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  “It was a bad kiss, wasn’t it?” He groaned.

  “No, it was great. It’s something else.” I hadn’t expected this, hadn’t planned for it, wasn’t ready yet. But my lips were still warm from the kiss, and I felt more alive than I ever had. Happier than any medication had ever made me. Maybe I would never be ready; maybe I had to leap off the dock even if it meant falling flat moments later. Maybe I had to just let go. “I just … I like you.” It felt like a relief to finally say something true.

  “I like you too,” he said. We stopped by my stairwell and laughed like happy idiots, our fingers laced together.

  “I have to go, okay?” He sneaked another quick kiss and then we pressed our foreheads together, our faces only inches apart. Finally, he let me go.

  “I’d like to call you tomorrow,” he said, getting out his phone.

  “I’d like that,” I said. “My phone’s still at the tree house. Bring it here and we’ll trade numbers.”