In the Silences

by Rachel Gold

No.

  I looked harder, but all I saw was an awesome black rapper with a white model in a pristine apartment.

  Everyone’s girlfriend is a tall, blond, white woman?

  No.

  Their place is way cleaner than my room?

  Kaz.… Yes, that T-shirt with those boots and just wear jeans.

  She didn’t text me again that night. The next few days, I couldn’t tell why she was frustrated with me. If she saw me looking, she made herself smile, but I caught the tight press of her lips a few times. Usually she told me what upset her, though it could take a few days. When she didn’t, I figured it was finals pressure.

  I squeezed through finals with mostly Bs, but I got an A+ in identifying women’s clothing that would look great on people other than me. I ended up watching Demi Lovato’s video for “Confident” about a hundred times. Both Demi and Michelle Rodriguez were amazing in it. And hot. Demi especially. I loved how she wasn’t all stick-skinny.

  I looked more like Michelle Rodriguez, including the boobs. I even had a halter top kind of like hers, but when I put it on, there was a kind of wrongness.

  The person in the mirror looked good, but she didn’t look like me.

  How do you know what you’re supposed to be? How could I have a sense of myself that I was trying to match when I couldn’t find a match anywhere around me? How could I know what I was—because I knew this wasn’t it—and yet not be able to name it?

  I knew that I liked being in groups of girls. I liked being with girls when they told me secrets and trusted me, which seemed easier if I was also a girl. But I didn’t feel like a girl, or not just like a girl. Did I even know how “like a girl” felt? How did I know I didn’t feel that?

  I tried to find outfits that Demi Lovato wore that weren’t wildly girly, and failed. Michelle Rodriguez wore tank tops, scoop necks, V-necks, slender but not skinny jeans and some wicked good combat boots, but those were for a movie. I copied some of the more doable pics to my phone and asked Mom if we could go shopping.

  Tragically, this aligned with Mom’s plans for me. Mom’s whole “young woman” campaign had started about a year ago, around the time I had to swap the training bras I never wore for an actual bra (that I hated). It itched. But I could never figure out where it itched. It wasn’t a tag or seam. It was the fact that it touched my boobs all the time and made me think about having boobs all the time.

  As part of Mom’s plan, she always asked me to go shopping with her. Used to be every week. Since I kept saying no, she’d toned it down to every other, but sometimes she pulled Mom rank and made me. Any time I told her to take Brock, she’d roll her eyes at me. Super unfair that every time she needed something I was the kid she picked. Like she couldn’t even tell I didn’t want to go. Like it was this stupid default: because I have boobs and Brock doesn’t he gets to stay home and watch TV and I have to go shopping.

  When I asked if she was going shopping the Friday before Christmas, and if I could come with her, she said some crap including, “Oh my little girl’s finally growing up. I’m so glad you’re starting to take an interest in how you look. We can stop at the makeup counter and get makeovers together. They’ll do your colors.”

  “Can we just start with clothes?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. “We’ll look so great together.”

  I profoundly doubted that.

  * * *

  Aisha and her family were spending Christmas in L.A., which gave me breathing room on the asking her out situation. When she got back, I’d ask. They flew out on Wednesday. The next two days, I spent a lot of time staring at myself in my mirror.

  I was nearly fifteen. I’d been kissed by a boy once because I’d failed to duck. And I’d dated a girl for six weeks in seventh grade as part of a roleplaying game. We were elves. All the elves were bi. She didn’t talk to me now.

  And I’d kissed one girl. The one girl I loved more than anybody. And screwed it up.

  I didn’t feel like a young woman.

  From in front of the mirror, I could see the height marks on the frame of my door. There wasn’t one for age nearly-fifteen, but I knew where it would be: more than two inches higher than twelve. Not an inch a year, either. Most of that had been since last winter. I liked everything about being almost-tall, except how it made me stand out.

  I wasn’t the tallest of the girls. I wasn’t even basketball tall. I’d just started shorter so it seemed like a big difference. I was about 5’6”, but up wasn’t the only direction I’d grown. I had really good boobs, according to everything about boobs ever. I looked the way women superheroes looked in their skin-tight uniforms, except less skinny.

  My feelings in order of frequency:

  1. These are wasted on me. They should’ve gone to someone who wanted to look like this.

  2. Oh good now I can attract…who? (Please let the answer be: Aisha.)

  3. Wow, I’d look great in a thousand things I don’t want to wear.

  4. Huh, cool, boobs.

  5. Wait…what am I supposed to do with these?

  * * *

  Friday morning our expedition set out early, well-provisioned with water and protein bars. Holiday sales were Mom’s sport.

  I’d put on a girly-top thingy from the back of my closet, with a loose shirt open over it, and Mom gave me the approving smile-nod. She asked, “Why don’t you take off that overshirt?”

  “I’ll get cold.”

  She let that pass, even though I had a great winter jacket, and we got in the car.

  Chaos ruled at the mall. Mom cut through the crowds and pulled things off racks. I couldn’t focus beyond the noise and all the people rushing from one rack to another. I kept thinking how Wolvie would be freaked out by this, but she’d also be thrilled because she loved people.

  Mom pushed a bunch of clothes on hangers into my hands and steered us to a dressing room. I hated everything once it was on me.

  I could see a shirt, see that it was cute, but not on me. Like it changed from the rack to my body. Mom would hold up a shirt and I’d think, okay, maybe, but in the changing room, I ended up staring at an alien in the mirror.

  Like being a shapeshifter with no control over my powers and every time I put on girl clothes, my body changed to whatever did not match. This was not the vision of being a badass genderfluid person that I had in mind. My body changed whether or not I wanted it to.

  But this time I had a mission. I studied the photos on my phone and ignored what I saw in the mirror. I came home with two new pairs of not-quite-skinny jeans, ankle boots, two sweaters and a jacket I kind of loved. Plus I got blue streaks in my hair, the color of the superhero Beast. Having some of Beast’s color on me helped me not mind the girl-clothes.

  In this jean-sweater-jacket-blue-streak combo, I could be a girl asking another girl to date her. Sure I could!

  I put on the jeans, the best sweater and the jacket and sent a pic of the outfit to Aisha.

  She wrote back: That looks amazing!! You survived shopping with your Mom!

  Yeah, I had to pretend I was a shapeshifter being Wolvie being a superhero, but I made it. How’s Cali?

  So much warmer than MN. And there’s so much food. It’s so good!! I wish I could bring you some.

  When do you get home? I asked.

  Wednesday afternoon.

  You want to come over?

  There was a long pause, weird. Maybe her family was talking to her or she had to do something. I changed from the new sweater into a sweatshirt, figuring I’d layer up and take Wolvie for a walk in the snow.

  My phone buzzed with a text. Aisha said, I don’t know if you’re going to be mad.

  What could I be mad about? Was she going to stay in Cali longer? Had she read ahead a bunch of issues of the comics we’d agreed to read together?

  She wrote: I was going to tell you when I got back but maybe this is better.… Meta asked me out and I said yes and I’m going to see her on Wednesday when I get back. But we can hang out on Thursday
.

  I threw my phone on my bed and got Wolvie. We stomped through the snow, played fetch, lost a tennis ball, found it, lost it again, left it somewhere in the snowdrifts around the frozen marsh.

  When I got home, Aisha had left a bunch more texts for me:

  You there?

  Are you mad?

  Should I have asked you first? I don’t know where you’re at. I didn’t want to push you.

  Are you okay?

  K, just tell me you’re okay. We don’t have to talk. Don’t make me worry.

  I brushed my thumb over her words, moving them up and down the screen, always ending with her question “Should I have asked you first?” in the middle. What did she mean? Asking me if she should date Meta or asking me out?

  Probably too much to think she’d been considering asking me out when I was some kind of shapeshifting alien who’d freaked out just trying to kiss her.

  I wrote back: Yeah, I’m fine. Congrats, I guess.

  She said, You’re mad.

  I felt like we’d broken up, like I’d been dumped, when we hadn’t even been together in the first place. That made it worse.

  I wrote: This might be an asshole question, but is it because I’m white?

  What? No!! How can you think that?

  Because I’m white and she isn’t.

  Well she also asked me out, Aisha said.

  I’d…tried to. And I could see how, that having been over three months ago, Aisha might’ve gotten sick of waiting for me to get my shit together and try again.

  Because I hadn’t the first idea how to keep things from Aisha, I said, I was going to ask you when you got back. I hadn’t figured out how, with everything. But I’ve wanted to, for months.

  Oh, she typed and then nothing for long enough that I had to go down to dinner.

  In the middle of dinner my phone buzzed. Mom and Milo were deep in one of those conversations about all our relatives that’s like family ping-pong with news flying back and forth so fast I couldn’t keep up.

  I snuck my phone out of my pocket and peeked at the screen.

  Aisha had sent: I would’ve said yes.

  I typed furiously under the table: why didn’t you ask me?!?!

  Trees. Carbon atoms. I didn’t want to hurt you or scare you or push you into saying no when you hadn’t had enough time to figure things out. You kept pulling away.

  A pause and then another message from Aisha: I hadn’t figured out how to ask so you’d know it was okay if you said no…I didn’t know if I’d be okay if you said no. I can’t have you not be there every day.

  “Put your phone away,” Milo said and I had to tuck it back into my pocket, which was good since looking at it made me feel like crying.

  Later, in my bedroom, I did cry for a while and threw my new jacket into the back of the closet. Stared at my phone, read back through all the messages, still crying some.

  When did she ask you? I typed.

  Sunday.

  That was over a week after Aisha had left for Cali, which meant Meta had asked over the phone or by text.

  She long-distance asked you out? Wasn’t it weird?

  I hated that I hadn’t thought of that. Except I would’ve been weird. But if I didn’t have to be there in person, asking, I could’ve maybe sent comic book panels.

  Aisha answered: Meta said she’d been thinking about the new year and resolutions, what she wanted this year, and I was high on that list and did I want to go out. It was sweet. I’m sorry, I would’ve…you…damn.

  Yeah. You can’t really break up with her a few days after you said yes.

  K, are you even ready for that if I did?

  I don’t know. Have fun with her. I guess I’ll grow up someday.

  I threw the phone under my bed and curled up with my arms around Wolvie. I ignored the phone buzzing. Wolvie sighed, stretched out and kicked me in the crotch.

  I laughed myself into crying again. Eventually I went to find a tissue and got my phone. It must’ve buzzed a few more times after I’d tossed it under the bed because Aisha had called, twice, but not left a message. I didn’t call back.

  Chapter Nine

  Winter to Spring 2017

  Aisha got home five days before school started again. I considered not going over to see her—for fifty-seven seconds—then I went over on Thursday, trying not to wonder what she and Meta had done the evening before. Had Meta already kissed her? Had it gone a thousand times better than when I’d tried?

  I failed at not wondering, and at not asking. As soon as we were alone in her room, me sitting carefully at the foot of the bed with Mr. Pickles wriggling in my lap, I asked, “What’d you guys do last night?”

  “You’ll laugh,” she said. “We looked at some of my algebra.”

  “No.”

  “My last test scores sucked. Hey, guess what my cousin got me.” Aisha dug through her backpack and pulled out an orange and brown speckled dinosaur with a crest arching up from its head. “It’s a parasaurolophus, can you believe that?”

  “Um, no. Are they doing velociraptors next?”

  “Is that the only dinosaur name you can think of or are you mad?”

  “Both,” I said.

  She held the dinosaur out to me. “Do you want to decide where the parasaurolophus goes on the shelf?”

  I sighed and took it. “Can it be a nonbinary parasaurolophus?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is the trans dragon going to not like dating a dinosaur that doesn’t have their gender all figured out?”

  “No, she’d like that,” Aisha said and looked away fast, digging in her bag again.

  I put the parasaurolophus on the shelf by the pink dragon and went to use the bathroom—well, to use it for sitting on the closed toilet lid with my face in my hands.

  When I got back, we silently agreed to not talk about who’d been crying or for how long.

  Aisha showed me her new iPhone and re-enacted her grandmom in the Apple store asking the most regular questions over and over again. By the time her mom called us down to dinner, we’d settled into hanging out in a fairly casual way, except without the touching or most of the laughing.

  * * *

  So, just, fuck spring. Especially early spring in Minnesota, when everyone is cheerful and in shorts in March and shit if Meta didn’t look great in shorts, but not as good as Aisha.

  I walked a lot of dogs and wore girl sweaters and steadily read my way through my comics, going backwards in time because there were some of my dad’s from the 80s that I wanted to save for last.

  I got pissed off at Jon for cracking a joke about the Aisha & Meta situation and didn’t talk to him for a week. I walked more dogs. I moved around in the world, but mostly I was off-planet somewhere with Captain Marvel or Moondragon, having a long adventure where all anybody cared about was my superpowers and how good I was at using them.

  I came back to Earth when Aisha and Meta started having loud enough fights that I overheard them. The first was about Aisha canceling one of their dates so she could study, then Meta cancelled one the next week to get her back. They argued about that in Aisha’s back yard, not yelling but loud enough that I kept hearing phrases of it from the treehouse.

  When I was sure Meta had gone, I messaged Aisha: want to come over?

  She did. We didn’t talk about the fight. She sat on the lawn chair cushion next to me, not leaning into me, but close.

  I put the stack of America comics by her knees and she started again from issue #1. It was one of her go-to, feel-good series. Everybody had that, as far as I could tell: the handful of things that could make them feel better no matter what. For Aisha it was certain comics, rearranging her beanie babies, and geeking out about great medical discoveries (especially by black women). With me, in addition to comics, it was dogs, mostly Wolvie, and trees, especially walking through them. For Milo it was woodworking and reading things to Pops, and for Pops it was cooking and painting historical replicas.

  I wondered i
f Meta knew Aisha’s go-tos.

  * * *

  Their next fight happened because Aisha always wanted to do things with other people but Meta thought they should have more time alone. The fight started outside of Five Star Chinese after one of the GSA meetings, so a bunch of us heard it. Jon pulled me aside, part way down the block and said, “Look serious.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “More serious,” he insisted. “Frown like I’m telling you something really important.”

  “Are you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m listening to Meta delicately rip into Aisha about not spending enough alone time with her. Shhh.”

  “Jon, should we—”

  He put a hand on my shoulder and leaned close, but didn’t say anything. The grip of his fingers on my shoulder shut me up for a minute or two.

  Then he said, “Okay, here’s what I’ve got so far: Aisha thinks the two of them need to spend more time with Meta’s family and Meta’s pissed about it. Like her family is off-limits or something. And now Aisha’s getting pissed, like is Meta ashamed of her because… no… oh shit, she did go there. And now Meta doubled down on the alone-time thing, saying Aisha’s afraid of intimacy and is using all this schoolwork as an excuse, like a shield.”

  “That’s shit,” I said. “That stuff really matters to her.”

  “Yeah, she’s getting more mad at Meta, just said something about Meta trying to sabotage her because she’s threatened. Ooh, score, Meta’s stomping away. Go collect your girl.”

  He gave me a shove toward Aisha.

  I went down the sidewalk, not sure what to do, but my feet kept moving toward Aisha. She’d already started walking home, so I fell in next to her. “You okay?”

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  “Can I walk with you?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You walking all the way? Riq’s not coming to get you?” The day was chilly and Aisha froze quickly, as if every time she went to Cali her body’s thermostat reset itself. It was over a mile to our houses and I’d be warm when we got there, but she’d still be cold.

  “He went to the airport to get Day. He’s coming in for the weekend and half his spring break,” she said.