Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

  People quiet down—even though she deserves it for having a quiz on the first day.

  “Hey, I’m gonna need you to hook that up.” Colby hitches his chin toward Blake. “You need to work your magic. Still trying to figure out when she’s working, and we’re gonna go there. I’ll let you know.”

  “How do you know where—”

  “Penelope! Eyes at the front,” Mrs. Wexler says, startling me into looking up. “Les yeux, you get what I’m saying?”

  I don’t mean to full-on glare at her, but it’s Pen and she knows it. She’s only been my teacher for three different classes in the last two years. Now everyone turns to look at me.

  “Blake, Jackson, Kally, and Tristan,” Mrs. Wexler says. Colby and I start laughing when Tristan’s head pops up all confused. “I’m going to hand your applications to Mr. Middleton, but remember there’s a meeting at lunch next Monday for those interested.”

  Tristan nods, then he turns to us. “What the shizz, guys? What is she talking about?”

  “You’re becoming a school photographer,” Colby says.

  “No way. Come on, guys.”

  Tristan and I have known each other since grade one, and we started hanging out because neither of us was cool enough to hang out with the cool guys, but we didn’t want to hang around girls either. Colby came along, and things got a lot better for Tristan and me, but still, Tristan’s sort of a goof so he’s an easy target.

  After Colby and I are done laughing at Tristan’s face, I lean over my desk and smack Tristan’s arm. “We’re just messing around. Go tell Mrs. Wexler you changed your mind after class.”

  The quiz gets passed around, and it’s three pages long so most of us can’t help but grumble. Thirty minutes later, I’ve given up. As if I’m going to work my butt off learning French when I can barely learn enough Portuguese to make sense to anyone besides my parents.

  LATER THAT MORNING, I’M sitting on a toilet seat and it’s kind of warm, which means I’m sitting on someone else’s butt imprint. That’s what I’m thinking about when the door to the girls’ bathroom slams open and my piss stream cuts off instantly. There’s sniffling, a stall door next to me shutting, then more sniffling. A toilet paper dispenser thunders as it spins, which gives me enough noise cover to let the last of my pee escape. I flush, wash my hands, and head for the exit. Before I can open the door, there’s all this retching and gagging.

  “Uh, do you need a teacher?” I call.

  Stuff splashes into water. Wow.

  “Do you . . .” I take another step. “Do you need something?”

  “No. I’m okay.” Olivia comes out, looking all blotchy. She’s a short and pretty Asian girl. I worked my magic on her this summer for Colby, and she went for it. But, like all the others, she didn’t last long.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize it was you,” I say. “You’re sick?”

  “My breakfast just wasn’t sitting right.” She heaves a breath while wiping her lower eyelids with a thumb.

  “But you’re crying . . .”

  “I just cry when I get sick. It’s not real.”

  “Oh.” It looks real to me.

  “Can you please keep this to yourself?” she says.

  “Who would I tell? Colby?” The way she stares back, it makes me wonder. “Why would he care?”

  They had their thing for maybe a week, and then he never talked about her again. She wasn’t even his type.

  “He wouldn’t. I just . . . don’t want people to know I barfed in the bathroom.”

  I throw her a look, but before I can ask anything else, she sweeps past me.

  AT LUNCH, I WAIT for Colby by the side doors so we can go out for a smoke. He hands me one because I really only smoke when he’s around. We head for the sidewalk where we won’t get in trouble for being on school property.

  “That Mr. Marsh is full of it. He goes off about the pope declaring himself prisoner of the Vatican,” Colby says. “Like how can the dude be a prisoner in his own house? Makes no sense. So I tell Marsh that, and he says I’m being a stubborn hooligan on purpose. I wish these teachers would just teach, instead of acting like know-it-all pricks.”

  “That’s weird,” I say. “So the pope was, like, on house arrest? Did he have handcuffs and—”

  Just then Olivia steps out of the side doors, heading for a red sports car with tinted windows waiting at the curb. She glances up when Colby and I watch her. He has his tough face on, but that’s the look he defaults to most of the time.

  “Guess some dude’s picking her up,” I say.

  “Nah. That’s her mom’s car.”

  “Oh.” While the car pulls away, Colby stares at it. “She was sick earlier.”

  He turns to me. “How do you know she was sick?”

  “I just saw her in the bathroom. She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “You’re talking to her?” he says, now totally focused on me. “What did she say to you?”

  “I went to take a piss, then she came in and I heard her puke. So I asked if she was all right.” When he pulls out his phone, I watch his face. “Is she all right?”

  “How the hell should I know?” he says, putting the phone back. “Why do you even care? What did she say?”

  “I thought you guys hadn’t talked since the beginning of August.”

  “Answer the question, dude.”

  “Nothing. All she said was that her breakfast didn’t sit right or something.”

  He smokes deep and gazes at the sidewalk. “Listen, it probably won’t come to that, but let’s say she starts talking shit about me—there’s nothing I could do, because she’s a girl . . . but you could, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “You could just tell her to leave me alone, watch her mouth.”

  He’s never asked me to step in like that before. “What happened? I thought you cut her loose.”

  “I did. But she was different,” he says. Different good, different bad—I can’t tell. Not that it matters right now because he’s working his jaw the way he does when things start getting to him. “If she’s got a problem, then it’s hers to deal with.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “I’m just asking you to have my back,” he says. The slow nod I give him must not be enough. “That’s your job, isn’t it? Just like when Garrett and the others talk shit about you, I deal with it. I don’t ask questions, I tell them to suck it. And those douches at the movies last spring—I took care of it. Even when they came back to my house and keyed my dad’s car, me and Garrett went back there and dealt with it.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I’ll deal with it if it comes to that. All I was doing is asking what happened.”

  “The problem is I shouldn’t even have to give you a reason,” he says, with this tone like I should know better. “You should just trust me. That’s loyalty.”

  “I know.” He’s right. He always sticks up for me without my having to ask him to. “I have your back, okay? It’s not like I even know that girl. We only all hung out like, twice, and she barely spoke to me.”

  His shoulders relax as he sighs. “I’m just pissed off because I wish I never saw her at the mall that day. She wasn’t worth it.”

  “It’s all right, dude,” I say.

  He nods, then taps my shoulder. “Don’t get too close to her. She’s clingy as hell.”

  If there’s one thing I know about, it’s loyalty. Colby’s had mine since the day we met, when we were nine years old, and he came over to play street hockey with me and my brother the day the Jensens moved two doors away from my house. He thought I was a boy, and when he realized I wasn’t, he just kept on playing. He even bodychecked me, and told me I had good stick control. He sat with me on the bus to school, and never made a big deal about Tristan tagging along. Ever since then, it’s been him and me. What kind of douche would I be to turn my back on him over some girl?

  THREE

  THE NEXT MORNING, I PAD THROUGH THE KITCHEN to stuff something in my mo
uth while I wait for Johnny to come up. He drives me to school on his way to work sometimes. Just me, because Johnny thinks Colby acts like an entitled jerk.

  My mom’s in there, dropping a tea bag into a blue mug. She looks like a peasant lady from the islands about to go beat a rug with a stick out back, the way she’s covered in some flowered summer dress with flip-flops on her feet. People usually assume she’s my grandma, and sometimes that almost feels about right to me. It’s like there’s a hundred years between us.

  “Mãe bença,” I say, which is this respect thing younger people are supposed to do in my family, asking an older person for a blessing.

  “Deus te abençoe,” she says, which means God bless you. She turns to inspect me.

  “Why you take you irmão clothes again? All the time, you take. It’s not for you.”

  “This isn’t Johnny’s. It’s mine,” I say, except I totally stole the metal band T-shirt from him last week.

  “You wear this and you mãe buy the beautiful clothes. It’s no good.”

  I shrug. She shakes her head and moves closer to reach around me, grabbing the back of my school uniform pants by the belt and yanking them up.

  “You wear clothes like you a punk druggy, Penelope. Why? Why you do this?”

  “These aren’t punk druggy clothes.”

  Switching to Portuguese so she can talk fast and easy, she goes into an explanation of what a punk druggy is, which basically translates to this: a punk druggy is a teenage douche who smokes cigarettes, does drugs, wears ripped-up pants too low, disrespects their parents, lies and steals, and—

  “You not a boy.”

  Yeah, that. “I know. I didn’t say I was.”

  She thinks that because I look like a guy, I must be trying to not be a girl. I don’t speak enough Portuguese to be able to defend myself against that, so I shrug and sigh, and ignore what I can.

  “You no wear that to the school.”

  “I’m taking it off when I get there. My uniform shirt’s underneath.”

  She lifts a warning finger at me. “You watch out now.” She always says that when she’s warning me and Johnny not to do anything stupid.

  Mom wanders into the hallway and starts yelling Johnny’s name over and over. This is how she gets us to move fast, because it’s the only way to make the yelling stop. I head for the front hall, taking a seat on the bottom stair to wait. Soon, I can hear the rumble of Johnny rushing up from the basement. He unties his bandanna, slicks back the brown hair that goes down to his shoulders, puts the bandanna on again, stretches his massive biceps, then triceps, shifts his muscle shirt, and finishes with a feel of his chin for its smoothness.

  “João!” Mom says. That’s his official name, the Portuguese equivalent of John, but he always hated how everyone mispronounces it Jo-wow when it should be more like J’wah, so he switched to Johnny a long time ago. I think he looks way more like a Johnny than a João.

  “Relax, Ma. I’m right in front of you,” he says, slipping his morning cigarette behind an ear. “I’m not deaf.”

  “Hey!” Dad says from over the upstairs banister. “Respeito.”

  Johnny nods, but there’s a sigh escaping his lips. Doesn’t matter how old you are in my family, you always have to have respect for anyone older—especially your parents. Dad disappears back into the bedroom to finish getting ready for work. Mom fires a bunch of questions at Johnny. Stuff about how the patio stones are still leaning up against the house because he hasn’t bothered to get started on the backyard work he said he’d have done by now.

  “Whoa,” Johnny says, lifting his arms like a shield. “I told you I’m busy at work right now. My business is the priority, man.”

  They dive right into an argument, mostly in Portuguese because Johnny’s got a handle on the language. My parents’ English is pretty rough, but they understand it well enough.

  “I could do it,” I say.

  They both look over at the sound of my voice.

  “Nah, man. I gotta level the ground,” Johnny says.

  “You could show me how to do it.”

  “No, no, no,” Mom says. “You want job? I give you a job to clean with you mãe. This outside is you irmão job.”

  I’m not sure if by that she means that it’s my brother’s job since he does outdoor work for a living, or if it’s his job because he can grow a beard.

  “Ma, if Pen wants to help, what’s the problem, huh? You think she’s gonna hit her head with a shovel and cry or something?” Johnny says. She scowls, and he nods all exaggerated. “I’ll get to it, all right?”

  To me, she says, “You wanna learn the something? I teach you to do the stuff. I teach you to make the house nice. I teach you to make comida. I teach you everything I know.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “You wanna learn? I teach you.”

  “I don’t . . . uh,” I say, but finding the least wrong-sounding way to say what I want to say isn’t easy. She won’t get it, regardless. “I want to learn to do different things.”

  “Ya, ya. You talk and talk just for the . . .” She starts over in Portuguese, saying I only want to do things that I know she won’t be into, that she doesn’t know anything about, and I do it all on purpose. When I try to respond, she waves me off and huffs and puffs her way back to the living room.

  “Does she try to teach you how to do laundry and make food?” I ask Johnny.

  He sighs like, You know what she’s like. “Let’s get outta here, little sister. I got a full day. I’m gonna pick you up at three fifteen later, so be ready out front.”

  Sometimes I wish I could ditch school and go work with Johnny, instead of having to wait all day to go help him after school. I’m pretty sure I learn a whole lot more being around him, anyway.

  DURING FOURTH PERIOD, I put Mr. Middleton and his Shakespeare on hold to go take a leak. The hallway still smells like all the deep-fried stuff from the cafeteria lunch. When I walk into the bathroom, Blake is there, dropping a wad of paper towels into the garbage.

  “Hey, Pen,” she says.

  She knows my name. Of course she knows my name. There aren’t that many people who go here, and I’m pretty sure there’s only one of me at this school. I feel like walking right back out for a second. Guys don’t have to deal with this kind of bathroom awkwardness. What if she thinks I’m here to take a dump?

  “Hi.”

  “What class do you have right now?” she asks.

  “English. You?”

  “Math.”

  “Ew.”

  “Yeah. I’m not in a hurry to get back, but I’ve already been here picking at my face for seven minutes.” She points to this red thing on her cheek that looks angry. I wonder if the mirror shows her how pretty she is. I really have to pee, but it’s not going to happen when she’s within earshot.

  “We’re doing Shakespeare so I pretty much want to poke my eyes out with my pen. That dude makes me hate reading.”

  She laughs, and it’s a raspy sound that makes my lower back tingle. “Well, guess I better get back to class. See you later, Pen.”

  My name between her lips is the best thing ever.

  “Yeah. See ya.”

  When I talk to her next, it’ll probably be so I can hook her in for Colby.

  WHEN THE LAST BELL rings, I take my time at my locker. Johnny won’t be here for another twenty minutes. Outside, I wait a while, watching the city bus make its stop across the street. Soon Olivia comes rushing out of the entrance doors behind me.

  “I missed it, didn’t I,” she says.

  “The bus? Yeah, it went by a minute ago.”

  Olivia drops her bag and then lets herself fall on the pavement, coming to a cross-legged position. I look around to see if there’s anyone else here, but all the people are off by the side lot. She looks like someone whose house just went up in flames.

  I edge closer to her. “What’s going on between you two?”

  “I can’t talk to you.”

 
“All right, well—fine.”

  “You seemed nice but I’m not stupid,” she says. When I screw up my eyebrows, she goes, “You’re Colby’s buddy.”

  “So?”

  “So . . .” She widens her eyes like I should know what she’s talking about. Like I’m being dumb. “I knew what was going on. You asked me to hang out, and you knew what was going to happen. You know what he’s like.”

  My mouth is all hanging open. “Uh . . . are you blaming me for—for whatever drama you’ve got going on?”

  She shakes her head, tucks her black hair behind her ears, and drops her head into her hands. I take a deep breath, except all that does is make some of the anger from my gut rise up. “It’s not like I’m responsible for what he does. You didn’t have to follow me that day.”

  “Maybe you could’ve warned me,” she says.

  “You think it’s my job to get in my best friend’s way and mess up his game?”

  “Maybe,” she says, all weak. Then louder: “Yes, I do.”

  “Why—because I’m a girl, too?” I scoff, because she wouldn’t be saying this stuff to me if I was a guy. She wouldn’t expect me to owe her anything. “I have my own stuff to worry about. And you just admitted you knew better, but you still went for it.” I’m looking at the top of her head. “I don’t even know you. I was just trying to be nice.”

  Her head whips up. “Nice? That was you being nice?”

  “It was supposed to be.”

  No sign of Johnny yet. I sit cross-legged next to Olivia.

  “Fine. Here’s some advice,” I start. “Stay away from him.”

  “Yes, well,” she says, while rising and dusting off her butt, “it’s a little late for that. I already learned that lesson.” She stares at the street and her face goes sad. “I have to call a taxi.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  Johnny’s truck rumbles as it pulls into the lot. I watch it for a second, then go back to watching Olivia dragging her feet, her shoulders hanging low. The truck stops by me and I hop in. Johnny stares at Olivia as we drive by her, then he goes, “Who’s that?”