Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

  “This is my friend Pen from school. She came over because I, um . . . because—”

  “She got sick in fourth period because of that pot pie thing at lunch. I told her not to eat it.” It’s all feeling like a rambling mess. “So I took the bus back with her. I think it’s a twenty-four-hour thing. Unless it’s really bad food poisoning, but I doubt it because she’s not puking anymore.”

  “Well, perhaps eating a pastry filled with god-knows-what wasn’t such a good idea,” Olivia’s mom says, looking sort of crusty and confused. “Thank you for bringing Olivia home. That’s very nice of you.”

  “No problem,” I say, even though it’s pretty obvious the woman is more suspicious than she is thankful. She stares at Olivia like she’s trying to figure out what kind of shape she’s in. Olivia’s pale and sleepy-looking, so it works. “All right, well . . . guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

  Olivia nods, keeping that pillow against her waist. “Thank you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. . . . Olivia’s mom.”

  “Same to you,” she says with a tight smile.

  I sweep by her and head up the stairs to take my shoes and escape out the side door. There’s a text from Blake when I check my phone: So . . . guess 2day wasn’t really about a tripod . . .

  Oh, man.

  I get as far as hitting Reply when I see Colby standing on the sidewalk, looking right at me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  HE FLICKS HIS SMOKE AWAY WHEN I GET TO THE sidewalk. When I lead off to the left, he follows. We’re not going to act like dumb idiots in front of Olivia’s house. Once her house can’t be seen from where we are, I stop.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I followed you. Both of you.” He waits for me to react, but all I got is my stiff face. “You left school together. You went to . . . Crestonvale.”

  “You followed us since school?”

  “I was around.”

  He’s always around in his fake way of never actually being there. It pisses me off, because everything’s already over.

  “What’s the matter with you, dude? Do you stalk her, too?”

  He’s in my face now. “You crossed a line, Pen. You crossed a shitload of lines. I can’t even believe you’d go there.”

  “There’s no line, Colby.” Around us, the little houses are decorated with Halloween stuff. The sky is already darkening now that it’s past five. “Do you even know where we were today? Do you know?”

  He’s just shaking his head over and over. “I know that if you hadn’t swooped in, then—”

  “If I hadn’t swooped in or whatever, then she’d still be screwed, okay? Because you left it all up to her.”

  “She was my girlfriend,” he says. “All she had to do—”

  “No, dude. Don’t even act like she was your girlfriend. If she had been, then it wouldn’t have played out this way,” I say. “She was just some girl.”

  “She said she made a mistake,” he says. “She said it wasn’t really happening.”

  “She said that because you didn’t really give her a choice. And don’t worry,” I say. “It’s not happening.”

  He rubs his palms against the sides of his head, and looks at the ground between us. “What the hell, Pen?”

  I could probably tell him about it. He might even listen because there’s a bit of desperation in his voice now—just a tiny bit. But he doesn’t deserve to know.

  “Leave her alone. For real. She doesn’t need your crap anymore. It’s done.” I move back a step, but then I’m right in his face again. “And you know what? You didn’t have to deal with any of it. So don’t ever tell me I’m useless or that I don’t have any loyalty.”

  “Get out of my face,” he says.

  “You get out of my face. I’m so sick of everyone’s pussy moves, just taking off and leaving everyone else hanging,” I say, and it’s almost a yell. “It’s gonna bite you in the ass again one day, except I might not be there to deal with it.”

  The look in his eyes changes. They’re icy blue, frozen. I take a couple steps back.

  “You think you’re doing me a favor?” He points a finger at me. “You think I owe you anything? All of this is because of you.” When I say nothing, he continues, “All of this is because you thought cutting your hair would . . .”

  “Would what? What did I think it would do?” I say.

  All of a sudden, I realize my bag’s not with me. Colby seems to be thinking about how to finish his sentence, while I feel my pockets to see what I have on me. Phone—that’s it. I had it when I left school, and it was with me all the way here so . . . In the truck, on the floor next to my feet—damn.

  “You know what? I don’t even care anymore,” Colby says.

  “Neither do I.”

  “No. You don’t get it,” he says. “I literally don’t give a shit what happens to you anymore. You’re on your own.”

  “Fine.”

  How many times is he going to tell me he’s done with me? He walks past me, headed to where I guess the bus stop must be. Not like I can go that way now, because then we’d end up following each other home.

  THE MCKINLEY BUILDINGS ARE this set of three high rises, and Johnny lives in the middle one. I had to suck it up and call him to ask. When he comes to the door, he says, “I still don’t get why you wouldn’t just let me come bring you your bag, man.”

  “I can handle taking the bus by myself across town to pick up my stuff.”

  He snorts and goes, “You wanna come in, or what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Johnny leaves the door open and wanders away, like he’s so sure I’m going to just come hang out. The place smells like his cologne, and also like fried onions. I take off my shoes and wander a little farther inside. The entrance area opens up to a walk-through kitchen at the left, or straight to where Johnny’s set up his computer and sound system, with his punching bag and workout bench next to that. On the opposite side is the living room. Johnny’s on the couch now, scrolling through his phone, then bringing it up to his ear like he’s checking his voice mail. There’s a sliding door that goes to a balcony. Between the workout bench and the sliding door is a short hallway. The first door is skinny, so I figure it’s a closet or something. To the right is the bathroom. There are two more doors: one’s closed, and the other is open a crack. Johnny’s bedroom stuff is arranged inside.

  Even though the couch is dented from my butt, it feels weird just sitting in my spot and acting like this is no big deal. The Xbox is set up like usual, but the TV looks bigger here.

  “You’re such a prick,” I say to Johnny’s reflection in the TV. “With your damn calendar hanging there, and your . . . white paint!”

  He looks over and pulls his cell away from his ear. “What did you say?”

  “I said you’re a prick.”

  “I’m not a prick, man. Get over yourself.”

  “I am over myself, you know?” I say, feeling myself almost bouncing in place. “I’m just saying . . . nice place.”

  He snorts and then gives this heavy sigh. “Thanks. I like it.”

  I hate that I can’t just go sit somewhere, or open a cupboard, or even take a leak in this place because it’s some strange apartment. It would be nice if my brain would think of things to yell at him that wouldn’t make me sound like a pissy little douche. I just want to call him a prick again.

  “Did you think I was gonna live at the house forever?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “Obviously. I’m not an idiot.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You’ve been acting like one.”

  “It’s a question of loyalty. And respect, too,” I say, waiting for him to show he feels like a jerk. But he’s just squinting at me like when he gets smoke in his eyes. “You made Mãe get your old clothes from my closet. I mean, who does that? A prick, that’s who. No one would argue with me on that one.”

  He gets up and goes to the kitchen, then comes back holding a bott
le of beer. “How’s your friend doing?”

  “She’s fine.”

  That’s all I say, so he nods a couple times before saying, “I’m going for a smoke.” He slips a cigarette in his mouth, then goes out on the balcony. For a moment, I just stand there wondering what I should do. Blake hasn’t texted me since earlier, at Olivia’s, and with every minute that passes and I don’t respond, it looks worse and worse. Olivia hasn’t texted me and now I’m wondering if it’s because something bad happened.

  So I slide the balcony door and step out. There are a couple of plastic chairs out here and nothing else.

  “You didn’t even finish the job out back. The little tiles are still leaning up against the house,” I say. “Mãe’s pissed.”

  “She is, huh?”

  “Yeah. Because you just abandoned everything.”

  Johnny rolls his eyes, and maybe he thought I wouldn’t be able to see that. “You’re pissed at me. I get it, Pen.”

  “Okay.” I want to know what he’s going to do about it.

  Johnny puts the beer bottle on the ground between our chairs and he focuses on his smoke. “Pai raised my rent last summer to almost what I pay for here. It would’ve been dumb to stay.”

  “You paid rent to live at home?”

  “I didn’t ask for the clothes, all right?” he says, leaning back on two wobbly plastic chair legs. “I know Ma’s been telling you stuff. That’s why you didn’t text me back or take the key.”

  “What key?”

  “The key with the note I left.” He rights the chair and turns to me with his serious face. “When I moved, I came back and left an envelope on your bed.”

  “I didn’t get a key,” I say. “There was no envelope.”

  He sighs like he should’ve known better.

  “She took them,” I say. “She came into my room and took my stuff. Why does she get to do stuff like that and get away with it? Do you know what she did? She took my Turtles and put them in a box to give them away without telling me. My Turtles, man.”

  “All right, Pen. Relax,” he says, dropping his cigarette butt into another beer bottle tucked closer to the wall on the ground. “If you go up against Mãe and Pai, you’re gonna find yourself knee-deep in shit with no one to pull you back out. Sometimes you gotta wait to make your move, you know?” It sounds like he’s talking to himself. “You can’t always be a hothead and go rushing in all pissed off, you know?”

  It reminds me of Blake’s way of gaming, about learning all you can before you go up against evil—but we’re button-mashers in my family. We get mad and we hit something. Johnny knows that.

  “Says the guy who breaks people’s faces at the bar for his friends,” I say. “Being pissed off is the only way to get anything done. It’s the only way anyone listens.”

  “You wanna know something I learned? Getting pissed off at something and doing something about it is good, but in between that, you gotta calm down and think things through. Otherwise, it’s just a shit-show.” He pulls out another smoke but only tucks it behind his ear, then stands. “Come.”

  I follow him inside. He goes to the last door down the little hallway, the one that’s closed, and pushes it open. It’s just a bedroom with a sheet-less single bed and a boring dresser.

  “Who lives here?” I ask. “Oh man, not Jenna? Please tell me you didn’t move in with her.”

  “Hey, why the hell would I move in with a girl and have her sleep in a different bedroom with a garage-sale bed?” Johnny says, then he flicks my forehead. “Whose room do you think this is, huh?”

  “I don’t know . . . Dom’s?”

  We both know half of Dom’s legs would hang off that bed. I take another look around the room. The little bed creaks when I sit on it. Johnny crosses his arms and leans against the open door.

  “Someone died in this bed, didn’t they?” I say, my lips spreading with a giddy grin. “Is the mattress bloodstained under the bottom sheet?”

  “Watching horror movies warped your brain.”

  “It’s like the mattress Julia crawled out of hell from in Hellraiser II.” I bounce on it. “Mãe would never be down with this.”

  “She’s not down with a lot of things.”

  “Why? What’s the matter with her?” I say.

  “She thinks she’s doing you a favor.” He shrugs. “Mãe and Pai are from a different world.”

  “What kind of world?”

  “The kind of world where people got one way of doing things, and that’s it. The kind of world where it’s the parents’ job to keep their kids in line. Then when stuff happens, they think they’re proven right, and they get even worse.”

  “What stuff’s proven them right?”

  Johnny stares back, and even though our gazes are aimed at one another, he’s not seeing me. He gets that way when he’s thinking.

  “Sometimes I think Pai isn’t as bad, but then he always ends up doing the same thing she does and backing her up,” I say.

  “That’s because she’s always talking in his ear,” Johnny says, making his hand flap open and shut like a mouth against his ear. Then his face goes hard. “Even if he’s better, it’s not by much.”

  “I wish they spoke better English, or that I spoke better Portuguese,” I say.

  “I’m gonna talk to them, tell them to relax.” He points a finger at me. “And you—don’t go do anything stupid just to make them mad enough to screw things up even more.”

  “Me? You’re the one who loses it!”

  He rubs the scar on his eyebrow and nods. “All right, fine, man. You watch yourself, and I’ll watch myself.”

  “Deal.”

  “You want something to eat? I was gonna make some hot dogs,” Johnny says while he heads back down the hall.

  “Yeah. I’m kind of starving, actually.”

  FORTY

  IT’S LATE WHEN JOHNNY DROPS ME OFF, AND I still haven’t texted Blake back. The moon is up, and I stare at it while the phone rings in my ear until Blake answers.

  “So . . . today wasn’t about a tripod,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you unless it was to keep someone else’s secret.” That sounds a lot worse to my ears than it did in my head for some reason. “I mean . . . oh, man.”

  “I don’t really know what to say.” Blake sounds weirded out. I wish I could just tell her what’s up. “Because I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I know.”

  “You said Olivia would be fine.”

  “She is. I just . . .” How can I make it okay with Blake without telling her everything? “I should’ve just told you something was going on instead of making up some tripod bull. I’m a douche.”

  “So Olivia’s making you keep a secret?”

  That annoys me, the way she says it. Why do I have to be stuck between two things all the time?

  “She’s not making me do anything.” I mean for it to sound serious, not harsh, but I guess it really depends on how Blake wants to hear it. “The Olivia stuff is separate. It’s not about you—and I know that sounds rude or whatever. It’s just . . . well, I got friends and I gotta have their backs. That’s all this is.”

  She’s slow to respond. “That’s really all this is?”

  “What else would it be?”

  “Sometimes it’s righteous to be the hero and rescue the princess, you know?”

  I sit on the edge of my bed, sighing.

  “Say I was a hero,” I say. “Olivia could be a princess, but she wouldn’t be my princess.”

  “Who would your princess be?”

  “I don’t think she’d be a princess, actually. She’d be a badass vigilante bounty hunter with a unique ability. And we’d be on the same team, and I’d have my own ability. So when we’d go into battle, we’d kick so much ass, it would be nuts. All the weapons and treasure would be ours.”

  “We should totally play Borderlands co-op.” Her voice has a smile in it. The fact that she knew what I was tal
king about without my having to explain it is awesome. “All of them. That would so win everything. What DLC do you have?”

  So we talk about that for a while. I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. While Blake speaks, I put the phone on speaker so my texts are accessible, hoping I’ll be quick enough so Blake won’t notice. I type How’s it going? and press Send to Olivia.

  “Pen?” Blake says. I’m sure I’m busted until she goes, “I don’t want to be jealous of Olivia.”

  “You saying that makes no sense to me—what could you possibly be jealous of? You’re Blake.”

  She lets out a little sarcastic laugh. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means you’re it. You’re at the top.”

  “The top of what?”

  “You know what I mean.” I shift onto my side. “You have to know what I mean. What are you worried about?”

  “Guys like the cute, nice girls who need to be rescued.”

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” I say. “Girls like the tough douche bags with beards.”

  We’re quiet a minute, and it’s starting to feel awkward. But then she goes, “I wish I could’ve seen you tonight.”

  “Same,” I say, picturing her face, and my lips spread into a grin.

  My phone does a beep, and I do something I haven’t done since I was, like, thirteen: I tell Blake my mom’s calling me just so I can end the call. But it’s only because Olivia’s texted back, and I have to see what’s up.

  After we get off the phone, I pull up my texting window with Blake and I type: say u wanted 2 b a nice cute grl—& say u wanted me 2 rescue u—u’d still b @ the top—k?

  Now I pull up the window for Olivia. Her text: I’m OK. Tired but can’t sleep.

  Me: u could watch a movie

  Her: Not really in the mood.

  Me: yeah—makes sense

  Her: What are you up to?

  Me: saw my bro 2nite—went 2 his place

  Her: Really? That’s great!

  So I text her about that for a while. Her replies are almost instant, and she’s typing these long messages—that tells me she’s in the mood to talk—maybe not about what happened, but at least about something.