Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me.”

  “It’s fine. She doesn’t even come down here because she hates how steep the stairs are,” I say. Besides, my ears are on alert now, so the second I hear anything, I’ll smuggle Blake out and pretend I didn’t feel like sleeping in my room.

  So we get back on the mattress, and we keep our voices really low. She bites her bottom lip when she pauses between sentences. She tells me about the scar on her chin, the one I never noticed until she was lying down next to me. “After that, there were no more cartwheels in the house. That’s when my career as a gymnast died.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  She lifts her chin and I put my index finger on the little dent. My eyes blur on her neck where I’m pretty sure I can see a flutter, and if that’s her heart beating, then it’s going as fast as mine. She rolls onto her back, so I shift a bit to look at the side of her face.

  “Am I the first girl you’ve kissed?” I ask, watching her closely. If she’s kidding herself into seeing me as a boy, my question should bring her back to reality. I hope she’s into reality.

  “Yeah,” she says, with no hesitation. “What about you?”

  “I’ve kissed three girls. The first one was when I was five and we were playing house and she made me the dad. The second was a couple years ago when Colby dared this girl to kiss me. And the third was last summer, and it was this girl Colby was dating.”

  “You kissed Colby’s girlfriend?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I say. “I think she was trying to make Colby jealous, and he didn’t even really like her.”

  “So, you didn’t like her either?”

  “Yeah, I liked her. But it wasn’t about whether I liked her or not,” I say.

  “Was it Olivia?”

  “No way,” I say. “I don’t think of her that way. Never have.”

  Blake nods, still looking at the ceiling. I can’t tell what she’s thinking by the look on her face. Anytime I pay attention to a girl, people figure I must be into her, that I must have a crush on her. I don’t know how to explain the difference between liking Olivia and liking Blake, or how to explain that one couldn’t turn into the other.

  I guess this is why guys can’t really be friends with girls without all the drama.

  “I think of you that way, though. All the time,” I say, and she smirks at the ceiling.

  “Since when?”

  “Since school started,” I say, but that’s not totally right. “And maybe I used to like watching you play volleyball last year, when your hair was brown and always in a ponytail.”

  Her eyes are closed, and her hand rests against mine.

  “When did you know you wanted to kiss me?” I ask. “Kiss me for real.”

  “When you came into the bathroom that time I was killing time instead of being in class.”

  “For real? That far back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What? How?”

  She turns to look at me. “Your lips. I was watching them when you talked and then, I don’t know. I just had this feeling.”

  “What kind of feeling?”

  She shifts onto her side, running her fingers through her hair to get it away from her face. “This feeling that if you’d come up to me and kissed me, I would’ve let you.”

  Everything feels more real, more there. I push up on my elbow, and she rolls back, her face right below mine. She presses up against me, and then she closes her eyes like she’s getting sleepy. So I rock this kiss Sleeping Beauty–style. I know how to kiss her now. I know the way her lips and her tongue move.

  I think about putting my hand up her shirt.

  Well, maybe not up her shirt right away, but on her shirt and then up her shirt. I roll on top of her, and then she’s curling her hands around my collar, running her fingers through my hair, and it’s all good. It’s good enough that I lift my hand three times, thinking maybe it’ll make it over or under her shirt. But I chicken out each time. The fourth time, she takes my hand and shoves it up her top and I almost want to thank her for helping.

  We’re both lucky she’s got balls.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I HEAR FOOTSTEPS ABOVE ME THAT RIP ME OUT of my dream, which doesn’t work because above me should be the roof. And I’m rocking back and forth like someone’s jumping on the bed next to me.

  “Oh my god, Pen!” Blake whispers.

  “Oh no. Oh shit!”

  Blake goes for her phone. “No calls—yes! Thank you! It’s only eight. My parents must still be asleep.”

  “Mine aren’t.”

  “Ew!”

  “What?”

  She covers her mouth. “Morning breath.”

  “Oh—” I cover my own mouth. “Sorry. Oh, that’s nasty.”

  “Not you, me!”

  “Well, me too.”

  “Ew. Let’s stay far apart.”

  “Yeah, deal.”

  We scramble around the room because Blake lost her shirt last night, and that black bra—man, that was awesome. And I’m only in a muscle top and jeans, which isn’t something I meant to happen in the daylight, because I think my boobs are bigger than Blake’s.

  “What do we do?” she asks, a hand still covering her mouth.

  “I think there’s toothpaste left in the bathroom from before Johnny moved out.”

  “How old is this toothpaste exactly?”

  “New, don’t worry. He moved out a couple weeks ago.”

  “Oh really?” she says. “Where did he go?”

  “Somewhere. He took the damn Xbox, too.” I shrug. “Follow me, and be super quiet.”

  There’s toothpaste, deodorant, and toilet paper left in the cupboard. The hand soap is still there, along with a box of tissues. Blake and I use our fingers to brush, twice. Then I step out, figuring she probably has to pee because my own bladder is feeling a bit overinflated—although I’m used to it.

  It’s my mom up there, going from the kitchen to the laundry room. I wish today was church day, but that’s tomorrow. Both my parents are going to park their butts on the main floor all day. And there’s also the fact that I’m supposed to be getting yelled at about yesterday.

  When Blake comes out, we head for Johnny’s room again. Her face is free of the smudged black makeup. She looks like she could be in grade ten.

  “I’ll cab it home. Can I just go through the back again?”

  “Yeah, but stay close to the house and run to the side just in case my mom’s at the window—she’s always spying on the neighbors.”

  “I can do that.” She dials and asks for a cab, looking to me for the address. “Okay, ten minutes.”

  I take a deep breath, finally relaxing a little now that we’ve got a plan and our breaths aren’t rotten. “Your hair is completely messed up when you wake up.”

  “Told you. Feel it—it’s like straw.” I reach up like I’m going to feel her hair for real when she stops and her eyes widen like she just remembered something. “Tonight—I forgot to tell you about tonight. Elliott’s having people over. We’re all going after band practice. Do you think you could come?”

  “Tonight? Yeah—”

  “Penelope!” Mom sounds like she’s right on the other side of the door—she had to have snuck down here quietly. The doorknob is turning and I don’t even have one second to glance at Blake. My mom’s standing there in front of us, staring at the unmade bed.

  “WHO ARE YOU?” MOM says to Blake. “I don’t know you. Why you in my house?” Then she turns to me, and I swear her hands are working the dish towel like she wishes it was my neck. “What you do, Penelope? What wrong with you?”

  “This is my friend Blake from school. We have a project for school.”

  “You know my daughter not a boy? You mãe and pai know you kissy-kissy with my girl?”

  This is not happening.

  “You should go,” I tell Blake. “Ma, let Blake leave.”

  “I talk to the girl,” Mom sa
ys, refusing to move from the door. “You pai know you come to my house? You pai know you like the punk druggy girls? Did my daughter lie? She tell you she’s a boy? Penelope is not a boy.”

  Blake opens her mouth, but I cut her off before even a word comes out of her mouth. “Ma, move out of the way. Let her go home. Her dad doesn’t care who she hangs out with.”

  “You bring girls here to my house now?” Mom points a finger at me.

  “Oh, man. I can’t believe this,” I say to Blake. “I’m sorry. She’s just—I don’t know. I tried to tell you.”

  “You go home,” Mom says to Blake. Then to me, “You in big trouble.”

  Finally, Mom’s out of the way and heading back upstairs. Blake’s watching me, waiting. I can’t believe she just stood there and took all that crap without even making a weird face.

  “I’m sorry. My mom is just—it’s not about you.”

  “It’s okay, Pen. I guess I see what you mean now, about your parents. Hey, Charlie’s mom hates me, too. I’m used to it,” she says with a little smile that makes me feel worse. “But I guess you won’t be able to come tonight, huh?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  She nods. “I should go catch my cab.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say.

  I stay far from her, settling for a stupid two-finger wave when she walks out the back door. My mom wrecked this for me. Of all the things she’s messed up for me, this is the worst. I can’t do this anymore.

  I TIPTOE UP THE stairs, pushing the basement door open just wide enough to pass through. Mom’s waiting for me, glaring.

  “Wha’ you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No? You no do nothing?” she says. “I tell you what you do. You listen to me now.”

  Dad appears behind her, shaking his head like I did a bad, bad thing.

  Mom says, “I don’t want the girl in my house no more. You no see the girl outside. You no put clothes of the boys no more. No more. Finished.” Then she says if she has to send me to Portugal to live with my third cousins for six months and learn to behave, she will.

  I look at my dad. “Do you wanna yell at me, too? Do you wanna kick me out?”

  “Penelope!” he shouts. “You stop!” In Portuguese, he says the way I’m going about things is not going to help me get out of trouble, that I need to stop and think.

  “Think about what?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Mom says to herself, shaking her head. “This girl she’s broken. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how to fix.”

  “Ana,” Dad says, a warning for her to stop as well.

  I stare back at my mom, with nothing to say to her.

  I stalk upstairs with the same words running through my head: I’m done doing what they say. I’m done doing what they say.

  Done.

  THIRTY

  ALL DAY, I’M IN MY ROOM. THERE’S NO XBOX because it’s at Johnny’s new place. Some of my YouTubers uploaded new videos yesterday, so I start with 8Bit Destruction’s. I think about playing my Atari for a bit, but then I end up watching a couple of Let’s Play videos of The Last of Us because that game is so epic, it’s almost like a movie anyway. Plus, Ellie is one of the most badass video game characters ever. She might be the only girl character I don’t mind playing. Blake’s in my head, and I’m too much of a pussy to send her a text. So I move on to the DLC Left Behind, which is like a prequel game that tells the story of how Ellie got bitten by a zombie. I start rewinding the scene where Ellie tells Riley not to go. I don’t even have a PlayStation, but I know this game so well that it’s almost like I’ve played through it in all difficulties.

  Ellie is, like—I don’t know, fourteen maybe—and she has more balls than I do. Her best friend, Riley, is about to take off to join the revolution, and Ellie doesn’t want her to go. I watched one of the first Let’s Play videos that came out for this a year or so ago, and the whole time I was thinking, Whoa—is Ellie gonna kiss Riley? Are they gonna kiss? There was all this buildup, but I didn’t know if I was seeing things. Then Ellie kissed Riley. They kissed, and that never happens in games. It’s always a guy and a girl. It’s never two badass teenage girls in sneakers and jeans who are into each other just because.

  Then they get bit by zombies and everything goes to hell. At least Blake didn’t get bit by zombies. There are worse things than getting told off by someone’s pissy mother. Like, it could be the actual end of the world, zombie-apocalypse style. That’s what I think about when I replay that kiss scene, over and over.

  When my phone beeps with a text, I nearly flip backward on my computer chair reaching for the phone on my bed. But it’s not Blake. It’s Tristan: Yo. Wanna hang 2nite? Crypts!!!

  Me: grounded as hell 2nite dude—plus no xbox 2 play crypts

  Him: Right. That sux.

  I need to see Blake tonight. I’m going to make it happen.

  LATER, WHEN IT’S DARK out, I tiptoe downstairs and wait by the front door for the right time to open it. The TV’s on in the living room where my mom’s watching, and my dad’s passed out. I’m counting on his snoring to cover any noise I might make escaping. I pull the door open a crack and sneak out barefoot. I don’t even put on my shoes and jacket until I know no one could see me from the windows.

  Olivia picks up on the second ring.

  “Did Elliott invite you to his place tonight?”

  “Yes,” she says. “But I told him I’m sick.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Sort of,” I say. “I mean, yeah. I’m going.”

  “I can’t wait for everything to be over so I can just—you know?” She sighs. “I’m so sick of this shit.”

  “You just said shit.”

  “I know,” she says. “It felt wrong.”

  I’m almost at the bus stop, but it doesn’t come for another twenty minutes. “How come you never swear?”

  “My mom swears all the time and, I don’t know, I just always thought it made her look so trashy.”

  “Am I trashy? I swear a lot.”

  “No. You make swearing cool.”

  “Damn right, I do.” I give a wide grin to nobody.

  Olivia’s quiet, then she goes, “Elliott’s really nice.”

  She’s always telling me that. “You’re allowed to be into him, you know.”

  “I’m not into him. I don’t even know him,” she says. “He’s just . . .”

  I make my voice come out all girly. “Nice. He’s so nice. He’s, like, the nicest guy ever.”

  She laughs. “That was a little bit scary.”

  “I know, right? It’s my idiot voice.”

  I sit on the curb and hold the phone between ear and shoulder.

  TWENTY MINUTES ON THE bus and I’m at Elliott’s. He lives in the nice new development behind the community center, where the houses are super skinny, super tall, and all stuck together. There isn’t enough grass to make getting a lawn mower worth it, so Johnny says they probably just do it with scissors. There’s music trying to force its way out the door, so I walk in because no one’s going to hear a knock. I ditch my shoes but keep my jacket. There are people sprinkled throughout the upstairs and the basement. I recognize some from school, but most of them are from other schools.

  Elliott’s upstairs, surrounded by a group of guys, including Charlie. On the couch, Billy picks his electric guitar even though it’s unplugged and the music’s so loud. Elliott hitches his chin up at me. “What’s up, man?”

  “Thanks for the invite,” I say.

  “Yeah, no problem,” he says. “I invited Olivia, too, but she said she’s not feeling well.”

  “She puked in front of me the other day,” I say.

  Charlie laughs. “Yum.”

  I’m such an idiot. Why would I say that? I just didn’t want Elliott to think Olivia’s trying to ditch him.

  “You guys know where Blake is?” I ask.

  “Downstairs, showing off,” Charlie sa
ys.

  I nod at him and Elliott before heading off.

  A couple girls standing in the kitchen look my way as I slip off my jacket. One looks curious, the other smiles. My response is to hook my thumb in my pocket like some cowboy and try to smile back, but the moment’s passed, and I kind of wonder if she was just messing with me anyway.

  A couple guys at the staircase move to let me pass. One of them says, “What’s up, dude?” I ignore him because it almost sounds like he’s trying to bait me. Like if I say “Nothing, man,” he’ll be all, “Are you packing, big boy?” Or maybe he’s just being friendly. I can’t tell, so I’d rather be safe than sorry.

  There have to be at least thirty strangers in this house; it would be nice if one or two of them were queer in some way. I’d take a super-flaming gay dude even. Just someone else to stand out a little with me. And if there was another queer person here, then I could kind of assume the rest of these people aren’t jerks. But it’s just me. It’s always just me.

  Downstairs, a group of people are crowded around my girl, who is kicking some dude’s butt at Street Fighter. And I mean, kicking a butt-load of butt. She’s doing all the special moves. There’s a big cheer every time the other guy’s player wipes out. When he’s finally KO’d, some other guy steps up, saying he’ll kick Blake’s butt for sure. She looks ready to go again, until she sees me and bounces up.

  I told myself I’d know by the look in her eyes whether we’re cool, or if she’s suddenly spooked by the thought of me turning into a pissy European lady who hangs out in the kitchen making sauce and bread all day.

  Whatever’s going on in her head, her eyes are saying they want me. I should know, because she had that look all last night. Her hair’s huge, her face is all black lines and wet-looking lips. It’s not like I forgot what she looks like, but damn.

  She reaches for my hand, then full-on presses herself against me. “You win everything for coming tonight.”

  I want to win her, that’s all. That crap’s not going to come out of my mouth, though, because I play it totally cool, squaring my shoulders and slipping an arm around her waist.