Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

  AT MY LOCKER, I have no choice but to pull down my hood because we get written up by teachers for not following uniform rules. I think about my mom’s reaction earlier, but then I see myself in the mirror hanging inside my locker, and I smile because it’s my real face in there. It’s pretty sweet to see what I’m supposed to look like. Even if it’s the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen, it makes my face seem more legit somehow. It’s a butt-load better now than it was Saturday. Saturday can go to hell.

  The hallway empties fast now that the first bell’s gone off. Colby and Tristan head over, because they don’t give much of a crap about being late for class either. They’re in my peripheral vision. I keep them there until I’m sure they’ve both seen the change, and I don’t have to see any weird looks they might’ve had at first glance.

  “I legit thought you were a guy just now, Pen,” Tristan says. “What the shizz happened?”

  “I got gum stuck in my hair, like way at the back against my scalp, so, you know . . . I dealt with it.”

  I picture this big wad of purple gum melted into my hair, gluing my head to the pillow. The more I see it, the more real it becomes in my mind until yeah, this could so be why I had to cut all my hair.

  I look at Colby. He’d have to be a pretty big idiot to not know what the deal is. I’d thank him for it, if I didn’t feel like punching him in the chin. “Gum, huh?” he asks.

  “Yeah, gum.”

  Garrett and a couple of other guys move past us. They don’t stop, but Garrett’s big dumb face breaks into a smile and he points at me over the rush of people between us. “Penelope got a makeover! I’m gonna call you . . . Steve from now on.”

  “He’s the biggest donkey-crotch ever,” Tristan says to me before wandering off when Trent—this tall kid with huge curly brown hair and fifties-style glasses—waves him over.

  Colby and I exchange this look and maybe it takes all I have to not look down. When he raises his eyebrow, I keep my face blank.

  “All right then, gum. Let’s go with that,” he says. “Whatever.”

  I nod, then we break eye contact.

  I figure from this point on, we’ve got an understanding: Saturday night never happened. Gum is the reason I finally cut my hair.

  I’M THE TYPE TO get stared at. Always have been. So today wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most of these people have seen me every day for the past two years and it’s not like I ever looked girly enough to not cause people to wonder about me. There might be a bit of shock at first, but then it’s gone and heads turn back to the front.

  Home is worse. It starts at dinner. My dad won’t let his eyes land on me for more than a second, like I’m some big dent in his car he can’t afford to get fixed. My mom’s in a mood, sighing and slamming cupboard doors. It’s like—I don’t know—almost like the meaning of this haircut is heavier than my long ponytail used to be.

  “Can I eat downstairs?” I ask.

  “No. You sit here,” my mom says, then she curls her lip up in disgust while her eyes drift over my forehead.

  I hear gunfire coming from Johnny’s TV. He’s probably eating fried chicken and playing War Zone 3 at the same time. I should be there, but I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs today.

  “People gonna laugh,” Mom tells me, pointing her fork at my head. “You want people laugh at me and you pai?”

  “They’d be laughing at me, not you.”

  She starts grumbling about how her children do everything they can to break her heart and make life hard. Dad shakes his head, but I’m not sure how much of it is because he agrees with Mom, or if he’s just pissed off because she’s upset. When my mom’s upset, everyone suffers.

  “What everybody gonna say? What Constance say?” Mom says.

  “What does my hair have to do with that? They all live, like, four hours away from here. They don’t have to see it,” I say.

  “What you say, huh?” Mom turns to Dad and goes off on him about how everyone’s going to say my parents have no control over their kids, that they’re not strict enough. She says there’s no way my hair will grow back in time for when everyone comes down for a visit on my dad’s birthday.

  “Ana, we eat now.” Dad tells her I’m doing okay at school, that I do what I’m told at home, and even if my hair looks stupid, it’s not the worst thing in the world. “We eat now.”

  “How you know?” Mom says to Dad. “You work work work, after you sit and watch the televisão. You don’t know nothing, Duarte. I know. I see and I know.” She turns to me. “I know what you do, Penelope. I see you.”

  She doesn’t see me.

  Right now, we’re right above Johnny’s head. With my heel, I smack down on the linoleum three times.

  “Hey,” my dad says. “Stop. You eat.”

  But it’s too late, because the TV’s quiet now, and soon, Johnny’s stomping up the stairs.

  “What’s up?” he says when he appears in the kitchen, looking over at me. He gives me a hitch of the chin, and then his eyes go wide when he realizes. He stares at me like my head is some weird painting you have to stare at for a while to truly appreciate. I curl my shoulders over my plate, looking down.

  “Why you here?” Dad asks.

  “You do this, João?” Mom asks Johnny. “You do this stupid cut the hair?”

  Dad tells Johnny to answer.

  “He didn’t even know I did it,” I say.

  “What’s the problem? So she cut her hair—what’s the big deal?” he says. “Are you the one wearing it? No.”

  “João, respeito,” Dad warns in between forkfuls of chicken.

  “You go away. No food for you today.” Mom says she’s getting tired of him stepping everywhere with his big feet when he’s not welcome. To me, she says, “You stop be like you brother. He no good.”

  “What? I’m no good?” Johnny says.

  For a second, Mom looks sorry, like maybe she screwed up her English, but then she just goes with it. She directs her rant at Dad now, going off about how Johnny’s been setting a bad example for his little sister and that now I’m trying to copy him because I don’t know any better. Dad agrees to that because as much as my mom has it out for me, Dad has it out for Johnny.

  “All right, man,” Johnny says to me, pointing to the hallway. “Let’s go for pizza.”

  “Hey! What I say?” Dad says. He tells Johnny he better watch himself, or he could find himself on the street. “You wanna get outta here, João?”

  This isn’t the first time they’ve threatened to kick my brother out—it’s, like, the fifth time just this year—but every time they do it, there’s a sinking feeling in my gut. I know for a fact they could follow through on their threat at any given time—they’ve done it before.

  Mom looks at me and says, “You see? You brother he no good. He no smart.”

  Doesn’t matter what Johnny does, he’ll always be the punk druggy who dropped out of high school to hang out with his buddies and smoke weed. Our parents don’t care about his business because to them, it’s not a real job—it’s not a safe job at Dad’s packaging company with benefits and paid vacation and all that crap.

  “This has nothing to do with Johnny, Ma. He didn’t do it,” I say. “It’s just hair.”

  “You cut you hair to be the boy. It’s no good. I tell you now, I want no more.” She says she can’t take much more and things are going to have to change. Then she asks Dad what he thinks, and he does this big shrug that doesn’t really mean one thing or the other.

  It’s not that things are going to have to change—they’re changing already.

  I bring my half-eaten dinner to the sink, then I go past Johnny and head to my room. I shouldn’t have called him because he always ends up getting blamed for everything. I should’ve known that. Why can’t I just take care of myself? I’m such a pussy.

  Upstairs, I check my phone. There’s a text from Colby: Y u gotta b such a girl about this? It’s done. Just move on.

  Me: not being weird�
�i moved on

  Him: Don’t buy it. Gum in yr hair my ass.

  Everyone wants something different from me. It’s like one second, I should be a better dude. I should stop being such a girly douche, and I should just man up. Then, it’s the opposite: I’m too much of a guy, and it’s not right. I should be a girl, because that’s what I’m supposed to be.

  The thing is, I’m not a boy, but I don’t want to be that girl either. I just want everyone to screw off and let me do my own thing for once.

  SIX

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER SCHOOL, TRISTAN AND I meet up online to play a couple co-op missions. After that I spend twenty minutes looking over my weekend English homework and decide to pack it back into my schoolbag without doing any of it. At least I tried.

  A text comes in. From Colby: Mall after dinner? As soon as I finish reading it, another text comes through, this one from Tristan: Colby says mall l8r. Can u pick me up maybe?

  I reply to Tristan first: i’ll let u know in a bit

  I text Colby next: i’ll meet u there

  Meanwhile, I head down to the basement. The bottom of the stairs is where the kitchen starts. Past that is the living room, and then Johnny’s bedroom. On one side of the bedroom is the entrance from the backyard and on the other is the bathroom. The only real light that could come in here is through the patio doors, except there’s an ugly, old quilt tacked up to cover them. The rest of the tiny windows are lined in black garbage bags, and the floor is all concrete with patches of area rugs. My parents act like Johnny’s lucky to have his own apartment, like it’s some amazing little home they gave him for free, but it’s just the place where all our old crap ends up. Still, I wish I lived down here. If my parents ever decided to kick me out, I’d just pack my stuff and head down.

  Johnny’s lifting weights with the music blaring. He spots me and nods.

  “Can you drive me and Tristan to the mall in a bit?”

  “Not like that. You gotta let me deal with that thing on your head first, man,” he says.

  “You can fix it?”

  “Can’t get any worse,” he says, grinning when he puts the forty-pound weight down next to the couch. He points to the bathroom. “Go.”

  I plant myself in front of the mirror and let the ceiling light shine on what’s left of my hair. The clipper goes on, and Johnny makes a psycho-killer face through the mirror, holding the clipper to my head like it’s a chainsaw. I grin, and then more hair starts falling off my head.

  AT THE MALL, TRISTAN, Colby, and I head for the Gamer Depot. I’m pretty sure none of us have any money to buy anything, but Colby goes in. Blake is behind the counter. I probably would’ve known this if I shopped here for my gaming stuff. But I don’t because everything in my house comes from Walmart. But there she is, shooting price tags at a stack of Xbox games with this sticker gun thing. She doesn’t see me. I flip my hood up and hustle after Colby and Tristan.

  Colby hitches his chin toward the front of the store. “Go work your magic.”

  “Right now?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “But . . .” Not Blake. “What do I ask?”

  “Since when do you need help with that? Just get her to come over.”

  “What about . . .” Bringing up Olivia would be dumb. “How come you’re all of a sudden into Blake?”

  “Because she’s hot? And I heard she’s not with that guy anymore.”

  “What guy?”

  “Some guy who would pick her up after school. I don’t know. Just some guy.”

  “Oh.”

  “All right, what’s up?” Colby says. “Because it kind of seems like you’re trying to mess up my game.”

  Tristan’s in front of the Nintendo console, playing through the demo game. Colby’s glare bores into me. What would happen if I told him I like her? If I said, Can you just back off this one, because I’m sort of into her, how would he respond?

  Really? You? Ha!

  So? I already told you she’s mine.

  Come on, Pen. That would be a waste of a hot girl. It’s not like she’ll ever be into you.

  You’re into her? Then maybe I’ll let you have a turn after I’m done.

  I sigh and head off toward the front counter.

  “Excuse me?”

  Blake looks up. “Oh, hey, you.”

  The way she says that, like I’m somebody . . . “Hi.”

  She smiles and reaches for a pack of licorice, shoving a red stick into her mouth and biting off the end. I throw a glance back at Colby, and in my head the words get all jumbled up.

  “Can I help you?” she asks after a couple seconds of weird silence.

  “Uh . . . do you know if Rusted is out on PlayStation yet?”

  “It’s an Xbox exclusive, and the release date is October twentieth. You can preorder it, though.”

  “Oh, right.” Obviously I already knew all that. I’m just nervous as hell, and now there’s nothing left to do but follow the plan. “So, my friend Colby, he’s looking for a new first-person shooter to try out.”

  She doesn’t glance around to see if he’s near. She’s looking right at me. What if I say something dumb? She’s so pretty. She’s even prettier now that she’s talking to me.

  “Well, you’ve got your classics—War Zone 3, Target, Slashko 2 and 3, but stay away from the first one, because there were some pretty severe game-design flaws with the controls, and the glitches were insane.”

  All of that was so hot, I just want it to keep going. But then I realize it’s my turn to talk, so I stop nodding and say, “Slashko 3 is awesome. I have it on Xbox.”

  “I’m an Xbox girl, too, for first-person shooters especially. Although Nintendo wins everything.”

  “Colby figures Nintendo is for little kids.”

  “He must be quite the idiot then,” she says, and it makes me grin. “No one messes with Nintendo. I’m into retro gaming, too. It’s made me appreciate solid gameplay over sharper graphics.”

  I nod. “Like eight-bit side-scrollers for the NES, right? I’m into that, too.”

  A massive smile spreads on her lips. I watch her hands while she goes through the stack of games in front of her, and I look at her mouth, where the piece of licorice dangles from the corner of it.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal. Colby thinks you’re hot and he wants me to talk you into coming over there.” I pause, looking for a reaction. She takes a bite of her licorice. “I don’t think you should do it, though.”

  “Huh,” she says. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s kind of an ass and you can so do better.”

  Her eyebrow goes up. “How come you’re telling me this?”

  “You just don’t seem like you’d be the type to, uh . . .”

  “The type to what?”

  “To waste your time with idiots.”

  She nods. Her eyes are shiny with something that looks like a smile but doesn’t show on her lips. She goes, “Want a price sticker?”

  I have no idea what she means, until she picks up the price gun and aims it at me. I extend my hand, palm out. She grins and flips my hand over. She shoots and swipes the gun against the back of my hand. I go tingly where she touched me.

  “Twenty-nine ninety-nine,” she says.

  “Cool.”

  “Want a sale sticker?”

  “Sure.”

  She peels a red circle off a roll and hands it to me. “Ten percent off.”

  “What if I decided to stick them on a full-price game?”

  “You don’t seem the type to pull off such an idiot move.”

  Her eyes do the twinkle thing again and it’s like my stomach falls into my shoes, in a good way. I press the sticker against my shirt, as if it’s a name tag.

  The store phone rings. Blake puts her gun down and runs a hand through her hair. It’s like a curtain of messy waves around her face. I watch her mouth move as she talks. The call ends and Blake says, “Tell him to get Slashko 3, and then tell him you tried but I have a boyfriend.
”

  “Okay,” I say, thinking about that guy. Some guy. Of course she must have a guy. But still, I have to ask: “So, um, do you . . . have a boyfriend?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Do I have a boyfriend?”

  “Well, girlfriend or boyfriend.”

  “No to both. But that’s not really—I mean, I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”

  “Neither am I.” Blake nods with a grin. “Righteous hair, by the way. That style wins everything on you.”

  “Uh . . . thanks.” I’m lucky Johnny’s got skills with the clippers. “So hey, do you game online? We could exchange gamertags or something.”

  “Yeah. Do I have you on Facebook?”

  “I’m not sure.” Of course we’re not Facebook friends. If we were, I’d be able to do more than stare at the thumbnail of her profile pic. I could creep all her pictures and just . . . think about stuff.

  “Add me,” she says with this little smile I’ll be thinking about for the rest of the night.

  She does a two-finger wave before going back to her stickering job.

  I walk back, pulling Tristan by the sleeve on the way.

  “What the shizz?”

  “Abort,” I tell him.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “The mission failed. Gotta regroup.”

  Back in the PlayStation section, Colby hitches his chin up at me and goes, “So? Is she coming?”

  “She can’t leave the front. She says to try Slashko 3.”

  “Slashko rocks,” Tristan says.

  “I don’t give a crap about Slashko,” Colby tells Tristan. To me, he says, “I think you’re just losing your touch.”

  “How?”

  “Look at you,” Colby says, pointing to my head. “They used to think you were one of them. Now, they think you’re trying to be one of us.”

  “I am . . . one of us.”

  “You know what I mean. Anyway, whatever. Blake isn’t really worth my time. Garrett told me she had crabs,” Colby says. “That’s why she got dumped by her boyfriend.”

  “I bet Garrett’s the one with crabs. He’s always scratching his balls.”