Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

  “Yeah. And brother-dad drama,” I say. “Thanks. You know . . .”

  “No problem, dude,” he says. “Got your back.”

  WHEN WE GET TO Colby’s, we go through the front so we can give his dad some food. Mr. Jensen is this super tall dude who looks like an older version of Colby, but with a bald head. He rubs his hands together when I hand him a plate with fish and says, “Good job, son. Don’t tell your mom. She doesn’t want me eating fried stuff.” He turns to me and says, “Give my compliments to the chef. Is your brother home? I wanted to check with him about next week’s work.”

  “He just went out,” I say.

  Mrs. Jensen comes in and narrows her eyes at Colby’s dad with a piece of fish halfway into his mouth. “I’d like to thank you for feeding your father more crap and making him fat. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Mom.”

  Mr. Jensen finishes chewing fast. “Honey, I was just having a little—”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it, Tom.” Mrs. Jensen walks out the front door, letting it slam behind her.

  Colby waves me over and we take the stairs down to his room. I sit on the couch, holding a plate of smelly fish. Colby pulls the patio door open halfway and stands there going through his pockets.

  “That fish is gonna be awesome later, when I get the munchies,” he says, pulling out a joint. He sparks it and sucks on it for a while. We’re not worried about getting caught because his mom’s out, and Mr. Jensen secretly smokes weed, too. Colby found his stash last year.

  “So what was going on at your house?” he asks.

  “Same old crap. My dad taking hits at Johnny, and my uncle egging my dad on.”

  “Your brother should move the hell out.”

  “Yeah, but rent’s really expensive. And my parents would always be calling him back over here to do all this work.”

  “Then maybe he should just stop answering his phone for a while,” Colby says. “Your cousin was checking me out again.”

  “Constance?” I roll my eyes. “Yeah, whatever. She’s, like, twelve years older than us.”

  “So? Every time I’m over there, she’s all over me.”

  “You wish.”

  He laughs. “Anyway. Thought you’d want to know that even though you almost screwed things up for me, I still managed to score with that girl from the mall.”

  “I wasn’t the one saying all kinds of dumb stuff to scare her away.”

  He glares at me from where he stands with one foot out the door so he can blow smoke outside.

  I take a breath, thinking about Olivia, about how I could just tell him I know. But my mouth stays shut.

  “You’ve kind of been a pain in my ass the last couple of weeks, Pen,” he says.

  “What if you’re the one who’s been extra pissy lately?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m no different.” He stares me down from behind a curtain of weed smoke that’s trapped inside. “It’s you that’s got something up your butt. And I think I know what it is. It’s a girl.”

  “Huh?”

  “I saw you yesterday with Blake. Not that I hadn’t already figured. You really gotta be less of a douche about this, Pen.” He knows. “I can’t blame you. You don’t have any game yet. I haven’t taught you how to be cool.”

  “Nothing’s happening. We were just talking.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says, offering me the joint, but I shake my head. “It’s not your fault. Everyone acts like an idiot when they first start getting some. But listen, when you get a girl, you can’t go all pathetic and ditch your buddies. Only jerkoffs do that. It’s a question of loyalty and respect.”

  Respeito. I know all about that. “I wouldn’t ditch my friends.”

  He chuckles, finishing with the roach. He slips it into his pack of cigarettes as he lets himself collapse on the opposite end of the couch. “You say that now, but just wait till a girl goes all whiny, guilt-tripping you into going to her place all the time to, like, watch her paint her nails. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve never let a girl get in the way of my loyalty, right?”

  “Yeah.” This Olivia stuff was happening behind my back almost the whole time. Maybe he thinks that means she hasn’t been getting in the way, because he never ditched Tristan and me, never disappeared. But that would be complete bull because he did let it get in the way—he let it screw everything up between me and him.

  “You just gotta be ready. Girls try everything to get in there and stir up some shit. If I didn’t put my foot down, these girls would’ve messed with my life so many times. I tell ’em to suck it. You gotta be tough. Even if you’re not a guy, it’ll probably work the same way. Guaranteed Blake looks at you and sees a dude—why else is she only giving you the time of day now that you look like that?” He pauses to shoot me a look like, Am I right? “So she’ll just be acting like a regular girl about it. This is why you gotta remember where your loyalty lies.”

  “So—okay, wait, let’s say I did have a girlfriend, then what?”

  “Well, first,” he says, “you don’t bring her to hang out with us. That’s just sad. No one wants to watch two people rocking their nastiness together. Plus, girls are annoying as hell when they’re near the dude they’re messing around with. Trust me, it could get ugly.”

  “You bring girls around all the time.”

  “They’re not my girlfriends—that’s the difference. They’re just girls I’m working on hooking up with, so they’re totally different. Once a girl’s got you, she turns into something else. Trust me. You remember Leslie? Bailey? Alisha? Remember what they were like before I told them to take a hike?” Colby doesn’t mention Olivia.

  “Yeah.”

  He lights up a cigarette and hands that to me. “Blake already thinks she’s hot and badass, so she’ll be way worse than the average hot girl. And because you’re technically a girl, well—just be ready for whatever bull goes with that.”

  “Like what?”

  “This is Castlehill, dude. In real life, hot girls want guys. That’s just how it is. I mean, maybe that girl Gina in grade ten could go either way, because she’s super fit, but she’s got half her head shaved and she wears those ugly boots. Otherwise, think of the decent girls at St. Peter’s—they’re all into guys. There are a few who pretend they’re into girls, but only when they’re trying to be all feminist about it, you know, like ‘I don’t need penis,’ when really they think we’re gonna feel all threatened and start doing everything they ask just to get some.” He gives me that Am I right? look again. “The ones who are for-real into girls are the fat ones, the ones who look guyish, and the angry girls, but even then, it’s usually because they’re pissed off that they’re not hot enough to get one of us to look at them. So, like, who the hell knows what Blake’s deal is.” He points a finger at me. “I’m not saying you should stay away from her, but just know it could turn around real quick. So, rock that while you can, if you can.”

  I can’t help it, I give him a full on crooked-eyebrow, you’re-full-of-it glare. But it’s not like I can say he’s wrong, because he knows way more than I do about this stuff. It all just sounds really messed up. Maybe I just don’t want him to be right.

  “Remember Jess Gallagher?” he says, then flashes me a look of challenge. “Right? How long was she a dyke for?”

  “You don’t even know her. She’s two years older than us, and she’s gone to college. How do you know what she’s doing now?”

  “Answer the question, dude.”

  “Maybe she’s bi.”

  “Temporarily dykey, attention-seeking, confused straight girl. She’s with Ike’s brother now, going on a year.”

  My answer is a roll of the eyes, then I shove the fried fish under his nose, and he digs in.

  “Are we playing something or what?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Let’s play.”

  He heads for the stack of games. His phone beeps with a text. It’s lying on the couch next to me. Olivia
’s name appears on the display, along with a couple words of the text: I swear. It’s fine now—

  I probably shouldn’t, but I take a chance. “Dude, why is Olivia texting you?”

  He shrugs, still busying himself with setting up the game. His back is to me. “Because she’s crazy. I’m about to change my number, I swear.”

  “Well, what’s going on? Why is she crazy?”

  He hands me the controller, picks up his phone, and flings it onto the bed behind us, then sits on the opposite end of the couch. “I told you. She’s, like, in love with me. This is why I’m telling you to watch yourself with Blake. You never know what kind of crap these girls can pull just to keep you hooked in.”

  “You think Olivia was going to make stuff up, just to hook you in?” I ask.

  “Uh, yeah,” he says, like I’m naïve. “You know how easy it is for girls to run their mouths and have the guy look like an ass? Nobody questions when girls say things, even if it’s total bull.”

  I wonder if Olivia’s texting because she feels bad that she jumped the gun with her late period, or because she feels bad for lying about all of it thinking it would keep him around.

  “Well, do you need me to talk to Olivia again? Do you want me to tell her to back off?”

  “Nah,” he says. “It’s fine now.”

  FOURTEEN

  JOHNNY’S BACK BY SUNDAY EVENING TO SEE THE family off, and there’s no more talk about what happened to make him storm out in the first place. We go through our good-byes, cheek kisses for everyone. Monday morning, Johnny drives me to school.

  “It kind of sucks when everyone visits,” I say.

  “Tell me about it.”

  There’s no music on, and it’s raining. Johnny’s heavy on the gas, and everyone around us is driving slow.

  “You think Constance will move out, now that she’s engaged?” I ask.

  “Maybe. Who knows.”

  “You’d think she’d want out of there, with Tio Adão for a father. I don’t even get how she’s been able to stay there this long.”

  Johnny pulls into the coffee shop for his morning caffeine, and the truck bounces over the curb. “You want something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I don’t like when he’s quiet like this, because it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking about.

  AT LUNCH, TRISTAN AND I head for the computer labs to print out our English assignments. He tells me about this idea he has for a video game.

  “So then basically, these dudes would be hopping through time and doing all this shizz they shouldn’t be allowed to do,” he says.

  “Like what?”

  “Like changing things, important events that happened in history.”

  We sit side by side and push our USB sticks into the computer. A couple people come into the lab, but they go sit way at the back.

  “That sounds pretty sweet,” I say. “But how would that be a video game? What would you do?”

  “What do you mean? It would be so legit, to, like, be able to go stop Martin Luther King Jr. from getting shot, and to warn all these people about the tsunami before it hits.”

  “Yeah, for sure. But I still don’t get how that would be a video game.”

  The printer at the end of our row starts spitting out pages. I head over to get them, handing Tristan his copy.

  “It would be a story-based game, I guess,” Tristan says.

  “Or it could be a kickass book,” I say. “You could write it.”

  “I don’t know how to write.”

  “You could learn.”

  “Yeah . . . maybe,” he says. “But I don’t really like English class.”

  “Yeah, I think English class is the reason I don’t like reading.” I sign out of my computer account. “Are we done?”

  “I gotta fix Colby’s before I print it. He messed up almost every question.”

  “I’m surprised he actually did any of it.”

  “Listen to this: ‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty! What is Lady Macbeth saying here? Explain.’ Colby wrote, ‘She’s saying she’s pissed off because she’s sexually frustrated. She wants a man to fill her.’ He can’t be serious.”

  “I didn’t really know what to answer for that either. I looked online, though, and found something about Lady Macbeth not wanting to be weak anymore,” I say. “In that book of yours, you should make it so the character goes back in time and takes Shakespeare’s feathered pen away. Then we could read something else. In actual English.”

  “Sometimes he says some pretty legit stuff, though. What Lady Macbeth is saying is that she wants to be tough and ready to fight, and to be able to do that, she thinks she needs her girliness to be stripped away by some magical force.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Well, I still don’t get it.” But maybe I kind of do.

  “Uh . . . ,” Tristan says, rolling his chair next to mine. “Why is that Olivia girl hanging out by the door? Does she think Colby’s with us? He says she’s a creepy stalker.”

  I turn to see Olivia peeking into the lab, looking right at me.

  “No idea,” I say, turning away from her. “Are we going? I’m starving.”

  “I gotta finish this.”

  “Just leave them. They’re his dumbass answers.”

  He gives me this look like, Yeah, right.

  “I’m leaving,” I say. “Come find me when you’re done.”

  I slip my binder under my arm and head for the door. Olivia waits against the wall, and I sweep right past her.

  “Pen?”

  I stop, letting the breath I’d been holding deflate. “He’s not with us. He’s already in the caf with Garrett.”

  “It’s you I want to talk to,” she says.

  “Why?”

  Her gaze darts all over the place, like she thinks she’s about to get caught doing something bad during school hours.

  “I can come meet you in the supply closet after I grab my lunch,” I say.

  She nods, then gives me a smile, but it fades when I don’t return it. I’m not trying to be a jerk, but all these secrets and lies between her and Colby—it’s like I’m caught in this thing I know nothing about, and I’ll end up paying for it.

  TWO CHEESE SANDWICHES IS what I got for lunch today, because my mom’s still mad about the weekend. I’m so hungry that the sight of them makes my mouth water. Half a sandwich is stuffed in my mouth when I get to the supply closet. Olivia sits on an overturned crate.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  She keeps watching me eat, and soon it creeps me out. She seems to notice and snaps out of it, looking at the carpeted floor instead.

  “You want half or something?” I say. “It’s just cheese and butter. Not that exciting.”

  “It doesn’t look like a regular cheese sandwich.”

  “Oh, that’s because it’s St. Jorge cheese on a bun,” I say. “It’s Portuguese cheese. It kind of tastes like feet.”

  “It looks good.”

  I uncover the second sandwich and wave half of it at her. “Just take it! For real.”

  She does, and she looks even more pumped about it than I felt a few minutes ago. She eats it by picking little chunks away with her fingers.

  “So what do you want—besides the sandwich?”

  “Would you . . . ,” she says, hesitating. “Do you like photography?”

  “Photography?”

  “Yes. Taking photos.”

  “I don’t know—I’ve only ever taken them with my phone. Why?”

  “I wondered if you’d want to take my place for the photo diary project—you know, the one for the school anniversary party in November,” she says. “I don’t want to leave Blake hanging.”

  “Oh. Would she be okay with that?”

  “You like Blake,” she says, totally ignoring what I asked. My blank face probably makes me look guilty
as hell. “Do you like her enough to be her partner for a project?”

  “Probably.” Then I snort like, Who am I kidding? “Totally.”

  Olivia’s hands are clutched together as if she would have been ready to beg me if needed, and right in front of that painting of the Virgin Mary, it looks creepy and appropriate. “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

  She looks kind of sweet and easy to be mean to. What was Colby doing with a girl like her?

  “Why are you bailing from the project all of a sudden?” I ask.

  “I’ve got too much on my plate right now,” she says. “Blake talked me into it, but I should’ve never signed up.”

  “I was there on Saturday night, when you texted Colby,” I say.

  Her face drops, and so do her hands. “I just—I don’t want him to be so mad at me anymore. I want to make it right. I wish I’d never said anything to him, but he won’t let me take it back.”

  “It just makes him madder, you know, the more you try to make it better,” I say. “It’s already all screwed up, and it probably can’t be fixed.”

  She wraps her hands around her waist, rocking back and forth. Her face changes, crumples. I think she’s going to cry for a second, but the way she swallows, the look of panic in her eyes, the way her mouth is open—oh, man.

  She pukes between her feet.

  I watch the puddle, listen to her gasp for breath.

  “You’re sick,” I say.

  “It’s fine!”

  “It’s not fine,” I say. “You lied.”

  “No! I’m fine. I’m just intolerant to . . .” She gags into her hands, and more chunks come out.

  “You really are pregnant.”

  FIFTEEN

  THERE ARE TEARS IN HER EYES, BUT I DON’T know if they’re real tears, or if they’re just from the puking. She wipes her mouth and I look away because it’s barf and it smells like feet.

  Colby knocked up a girl.

  “You’re pregnant,” I say again.

  We joked about this happening. It happens on TV, or to girls who go to other schools.

  “You can’t tell him, Pen,” she says. “Please.”

  “So it’s for sure?” I flatten my hand against the back of my head obsessively, like I’m trying to smooth the hair that’s too short to actually need to be styled. “Are you sure that it’s for sure?”