The backyard was her favorite place. She had found a four-foot-long stick that was sharpened to a point at one end. Girl practiced throwing it from every position she could think of: standing, of course, but also kneeling, sitting, and even lying on her stomach in the grass. When she tired of throwing her spear, she’d climb the old, metal clothesline post that hadn’t been used for hanging out wash since her family had moved in, maybe longer. She’d perch on the crossbar and practice looking at things. She wanted to earn the name “Eagle Eye,” the name she called herself when Brother wasn’t around to mock her for it. She tried to count the flowers in the garden at the other end of the yard, she scanned the grass for any interesting toy Brother might have forgotten about, and with the height of the pole she could see over the white picket fence into the Witch’s yard next door. The Witch was a mean, old, nasty lady with grown-up kids and an above-ground pool in the back that she never, not even once, asked Girl if she wanted to swim in. The Witch wrapped her rose bushes in burlap every fall and her yard was filled with English ivy so she didn’t have to mow. Girl’s whole family called her the Witch, ever since she had come over to the fence and asked Stepmother, “Do you mind moving your weed garden to another spot in your yard? Your weed seeds are blowing into my yard.” Stepmother had been so mad her face turned red but she didn’t say anything back. Stepmother believed in respecting your elders, which was also why Girl had to say, “Thank you Stepmother, you’re a good cook,” after every meal, even though she never meant it, not the good cook part for sure but not the thank you either, because it was Girl’s opinion that feeding the family was the role of the parents, and Girl knew Stepmother could be doing a better job. Food wasn’t love or art or something to take pride in in her house. Dinner was hamburger on a piece of whole wheat bread. It was a can of Veg-All, and Girl swore that she would never eat a square vegetable when she grew up. It was spaghetti with Ragu, and Girl never actually tasted a meatball until she was in high school and had a boyfriend with more money than her family had. Dinner at Girl’s house was bland and cheap and fast in a cold room on a Formica table, and she wasn’t allowed to wear her winter coat at the table.
She heard her mother calling her for dinner, but she pretended not to. Stepmother was making “campfire stew,” which was the grossest of all the things she made. Fried hamburger meat mixed in with rounded hunks of canned stewed tomatoes that looked like what Girl imagined a fertilized chicken egg would look like, if you cracked the wrong one open. Like a bloody egg sac. This was mixed in with Veg-All, like everything else. Sometimes Stepmother would give Girl a piece of whole wheat bread spread with margarine to dip into the stew, and that was better at least. But if they were low on bread, it was just the stew in her blue plastic bowl, the chunks of meat and vegetables sitting in a puddle of reddish-brown water. Mother called her again, and Girl could hear the edge to her voice, so she knew she’d pushed it as long as she was able. She wiped her dirty hands on the sides of her jeans and went inside.
“Stop making that noise with your spoon,” Stepmother said.
“What noise?” Girl asked. She already knew not to chew with her mouth open, and to keep a napkin on her lap, although it always slid off onto the linoleum floor and she mostly just wiped the grease from her fingers on her pant leg. She wasn’t yet old enough to be embarrassed about the permanent stains on the thighs of her jeans.
“You’re clinking your teeth with the spoon!” she said. Girl tried to open her mouth wider. “Stop it! I told you once …”
“I can’t eat without hitting my teeth with the spoon,” Girl argued. The spoon was big and it hit her back teeth every time. She wasn’t trying to do anything.
“Try harder,” Stepmother said. “I can do it, and so can you.” Girl’s mother didn’t say anything. Mother never said anything when Stepmother got in one of her moods, which was practically every night now. Girl tried as hard as she could to eat quietly, and kicked Brother under the table, but not hard. She didn’t want to hurt him, she just wanted him to pay attention to what an asshole Stepmother was being again. He just smiled evilly at her, though, because he was glad it was Girl getting yelled at this time instead of him.
Stepmother blew her nose into her napkin and looked at it, then threw the napkin in her empty bowl. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger back and forth on her eyebrows and looked at her watch. It had a pale gold face and a brown leather band. She never liked anything girly. She was just counting the hours she had to hold herself together until the kids went to bed. Only an hour and a half left to go.
Girl didn’t hate Stepmother, not then. But she knew something was different lately. When Stepmother laughed it had a franticness at the edge, but she didn’t laugh much anymore. She used to play the piano, and Girl and Brother would try to act out whatever form their stepmother called out: hot air balloons, a seed turning to a flower, a lion, a mouse. Stepmother used to box with the children. She wrapped a towel around her forearm and let the children punch her arm as hard as they wanted to. She used to smile like she meant it. Now, though, she rarely smiled and everything enraged her. Girl tried her hardest to turn invisible, blend into the wall, and shrink inside her winter coat until her face was no longer visible.
At night, she often woke in the middle of the night in cold, urine-soaked sheets. “Such a baby,” she thought to herself. Mother always bragged how Girl toilet-trained herself at eighteen months, because it was hot outside and Girl wanted to run around naked. “You have to wear a diaper until you pee on the potty,” Mother had said, and Girl had promptly peed on the potty and spent the rest of the day running around without clothes. How had she gone from being advanced at bladder control to suddenly having accidents in fourth grade? She couldn’t trust her body when it was asleep. Too mortified to tell Mother, Girl crept down the dark hall to the linen closet in search of a dry towel. She laid the towel over the wet spot and went back to sleep.
liz
It was the first day of sixth grade, and Girl was in Mr. Malley’s homeroom. She was wearing her favorite skirt: a long, purple granny skirt printed with little flowers that had an eyelet ruffle at the bottom. Juli had taken her shopping last year, and Father had bought everything Juli had picked out. The skirt no longer reached her mid-calf, like it used to, but Girl figured that it worked as a knee-length one. By the time she got to school, though, she realized that she was wrong. She could hear the whispered comments and see the eye-rolls. Girl was a skinny-legged stork, and yes, they were right, it did look a little bit like her legs turned in, now that she looked closely. Her knees were indeed too big. Her outfit was, yes, just like they said, stupid and horribly out of style. It was the not-knowing, the foolish pride she felt, that most made her want to cry. She pushed up her big, golden-brown plastic glasses and tried to ignore the other girls, like Stepmother always told her to do. “Just don’t respond and they’ll get bored,” Stepmother admonished any time she complained, but Stepmother underestimated the tenacity of sixth graders. Girl just stopped talking about it at home. It was pointless.
She had Mr. Malley for first period math, too, which was her least favorite subject. When he called roll he paused at her name.
“Lillibridge? Didn’t I have your brother last year?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Girl said. She hated following in Brother’s footsteps at school, because all of his uncoolness rubbed off on her.
“Why don’t I save us all a lot of time and just send you down to basic math now?” he asked. Everyone laughed. Girl was too busy not-crying to explain that she had never gotten less than a B in anything besides handwriting, and even that C made her so sad she wanted to close her eyes and never wake up. She was left-handed and she couldn’t make her hand work the way they wanted it to. But she’d always gotten As and Bs in math, even though she hated it.
She looked around the room and noticed a new girl. Her school had had pretty much the same kids since fourth grade; new kids were practically unheard of. New Girl asked the teacher a lot of
stupid questions about what supplies were acceptable, like could a Trapper Keeper work as a three-ring binder, for instance; things everyone else knew already from last year. The new girl wore glasses, like Girl. Unlike Girl, she was overweight. She was bigger than Michelle and nearly as big as Laura, who had so far been the biggest girls in school. The new girl’s name was Liz.
Girl had always been a one-best-friend person. Sure, she had enough acquaintances to be able to find someone to sit next to at lunch or to fill up a birthday party, but since first grade it had been Girl and Gretchen. Velcro sisters. That was until last year, when they got into a fight and never talked to each other again. But Liz’s notebook had brown horses on the front cover, and Girl was not horse-crazy.
“We’re going to get you after school,” Timmy said to Girl between classes. He was one of the popular kids, and even though he was short and freckled he was tough.
The popular kids, of whom Girl most certainly was not one, had had a party with kissing or sex or something. Someone told on them, and they all had to go see the guidance counselor one at a time and everyone said that the popular kids had to take off all their clothes and talk about their bodies and sex. The student elite were filled with a murderous rage for the snitch, and for some reason, they had decided that snitch was Girl. She never would have told, even if she had known—she wanted them to like her so damn badly. She would have done just about anything to get invited to a popular kid’s party. Of course no one believed her, and she was going to get beaten up as soon as the last bell rang. It was a mile-and-a-half walk home, and Brother was now in junior high, so she would be on her own. She knew that she couldn’t run that far.
Liz had overheard them, though.
“I’ll walk home with you,” she said. “No one is gonna mess with you when you are with me. If they try, I’ll sit on them.”
Girl looked at her, confused. Was she making fun of herself?
“Hey, I know what they say about me,” Liz explained. “I just turn it around on them before they get a chance.” Girl had never met someone so confident before, so accepting of who they were.
As it turned out, no bullies appeared on the walk home that day or any other, but still, Liz became Girl’s best friend. Liz and her mother lived with her grandparents. She didn’t have a father around or a regular family, either. Girl waited for Liz on her screened-in porch every morning before school—she was not invited in, and never saw Liz’s room. Liz spent the night at Girl’s house nearly every weekend, and after a few months her mother found an apartment just five blocks from Girl’s house, where Girl could spend the night as often as she liked.
Liz wasn’t boy-crazy, like Girl was. Even though her hair was way cooler than Girl’s—two-tone blond on top, brown in the back, and perfectly straight—without weird cowlicks like Girl’s—Liz wasn’t obsessed with fitting in and wearing makeup. Liz loved horses. She taught Girl to draw a pretty decent horse, and they both collected Breyer models of the different breeds. Sooner or later, Girl gave in and went to the stables. She had to—it was where her best friend was. Before she knew it, they were both spending all their free time mucking out other people’s stalls in hopes of a chance to ride.
She and Liz remained friends for years, telling each other secrets, having crushes on boys, riding horses and bikes, and swimming. They had their first kisses standing next to each other with a pair of boys they met at Seabreeze Amusement Park. They smoked their first cigarettes together. Girl had a tendency to be gossipy about her friends, but it was different with Liz. Liz was the only friend whose secrets she kept.
junior high
gilli
Liz got a horse first. She volunteered at the stable for so long that the stable manager gave her Gizmo, a sturdy, chestnut-colored Haflinger pony with a blond mane and tail. Gizmo wasn’t working out for lessons, and instead of selling him outright, the manager gave him to Liz in trade for labor. Girl was so jealous she didn’t talk to Liz for a week, but she couldn’t stay mad that long, particularly when she knew she was just being stupid. Girl knew that Liz had worked hard for years at the stable, and she also knew that Liz’s family could never afford a horse otherwise—working for one was her only option, and she knew Liz needed this horse more than anything else in the world. Seventh grade had been hard on both of them. They had started junior high and didn’t have a single class together, not even lunch. Girl went from being called “Larva” and “Looney Tunes” back in middle school to being called nothing at all—she would speak to girls and they wouldn’t even respond. It was as if her mouth moved and no sounds came out. Girl couldn’t stand the silence, so she looked for the girls that she knew would never reject her—the geeks and misfits—and sat next to them. But Liz just stopped going to school.
Girl was pissed when Liz stopped going to school, because she would have been more than happy to skip school with her. She wasn’t against being bad, she just wasn’t bold enough to be bad on her own. Girl just prayed to get hit by a car as she walked to junior high each day. She figured if they hit you hard enough, you probably wouldn’t even feel the pain.
Liz and Girl both walked paper routes and babysat kids and saved every dollar they could. Every chance they got they rode the mile and a half to the stables on their ten-speeds. Away from school and other preteens, they were happy.
Girl’s father had said that he was going to buy her and Brother gliders. He had a two-seater airplane and a head full of dreams he couldn’t deliver on. Girl had already told everyone how they were going to sail around the world in two years with Father, and when the two years never came, she had finally admitted what all her friends already knew—it was never going to happen. For some reason, though, she was sure that this time, he really was going to buy the ultra-light planes for her and Brother. Girl carefully read the article Father had sent from the Airplane Owners and Pilots Association’s magazine. The gliders were four thousand dollars each. She spent a month carefully crafting a letter to Father, breaking down all the costs of buying a horse and boarding it, researching vet expenses and local stables. She wrote a persuasive essay, like she was learning to do in English class, explaining how it would be cheaper if Father bought her a horse than a plane. She asked him for two thousand dollars: one thousand to purchase a horse and one thousand to cover the first year’s board. She had saved one thousand dollars on her own, and she figured if she kept babysitting she would be okay for the first two years. Surprisingly, her father agreed.
Aunt Kiki found Girl a free horse. Her favorite waitress at the pizza place was going to college and had a pony named Gilli that she loved too much to sell, but was willing to give away to someone who would love him and let her visit. Mother found a stable that was a little further away but cheaper than the current stable they haunted—the only hitch was that Girl had to muck out her own stall, no matter what. Liz traded Gizmo for a tall, bay Morgan horse named Bubba, and soon they both had horses at Cold Stream Stables. They rode their bikes two-and-a-half miles each way, unless Liz’s mother felt like driving them. She was a teacher and had the summer off. Girl’s parents worked full-time, but they wouldn’t even drive her on the weekends. Liz and Girl mucked out their own stalls and leveled the manure pile to reduce their boarding fees. Girl was not allowed to ride in the lower rink, so Liz didn’t either. The lower rink was set in the woods, back where no one could see them, and it had jumps. The stables had forty acres of trails, too, but Girl wasn’t allowed to go on trails so they didn’t do that either, even though there was no way Stepmother would have found out if they disobeyed. There were only a few other horses in the barn, and most days it was just Liz and Girl and brown bags of peanut butter sandwiches. If they got too hungry, they ate the horses’ molasses-covered oats, called “sweet feed.”
They were happy enough riding in circles in the sand ring, brushing and washing their horses, and talking about boys and horse shows and the obvious crush Liz’s mother had on the stable manager. They were both in love with the old sixties
band called the Monkees, who were on a twenty-year revival tour. When the Monkees came to Rochester, Liz’s mother helped Girl form a lie to her parents so she could go, too. Liz snuck a camera down her pants and although the men standing next to them offered them beer, they both declined. That summer, they both started getting noticed by boys more often. Liz’s mother had smiled and told Girl, “You think I’m happy for her that boys like her, but I’m happy because she’s going to be someone else’s responsibility soon.”
That fall Gilli got sick with an upper respiratory infection. The vet had to come every day and give him fifty-dollar shots. Girl’s savings were dwindling, and her two-dollar-an-hour babysitting job wasn’t keeping up. Winter was coming, and she didn’t know how she was going to get to the stable when there was too much snow to ride her bike. Liz’s mother, who had once been so involved, even driving Girl to the doctor when she was hit by a car on the way to the stable once, had suddenly and inexplicably become unreliable, sometimes driving, sometimes refusing. Her substitute teaching job ended and she couldn’t find another one, and she went to work at K-Mart full-time. She put Liz on a PINS (People In Need of Supervision) petition requiring Liz to go to probation. Girl couldn’t figure this out at all, because Liz was smart and nice and not violent that she had ever seen. Liz’s mother seemed to just wear out of parenting, and sent Liz to live in a group home. Girl only saw her every few weeks.
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