Radical

by E. M. Kokie

  “Fine,” Karen says. “I’ll be outside, eating my yummy gummy fish.”

  The door opens and then clicks shut. Cammie’s fingers are still on my neck, and then the clippers move through the hair at the back of my neck. I shiver again, from the feel of it, from her fingers, from her breath hitting my ear.

  “Hold still.”

  “I’m trying.”

  She’s so close. I can feel her body behind me. Each pass of the clippers feels good. I can tell how she wants me to move from the pressure of her fingers on my neck. She moves my head, and then my body, so she can get to the left side. Just like when we’re in maneuvers, I know what she wants.

  She pauses. I can tell she’s thinking. “Do you want —?”

  “I don’t care,” I say. My voice sounds strange. “Do whatever you want.”

  She studies the side of my head.

  “Okay,” she finally says, and I know it will be.

  Working on the long layers, she’s so close I can smell her. She smells different from how she does in training. Maybe it’s the makeup. Or perfume. Or these clothes. She turns me again and lifts the long layer. We’re almost face-to-face, but she’s taller. I’m breathing hard. She’s not. She’s focused on my hair.

  “You’re good at this,” I say, catching a look in the mirror at the parts she’s already done.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  She works. I try to stay still. Curiosity gets the better of me. “How do you know my uncle?”

  “My pop-pop used to bring me here. I could have as much candy as I wanted if I didn’t bug him while he talked. His car was always needing something,” she says. “Granma knew he was coming down here just to shoot the shit, but she didn’t care. Broke my arm trying to jump from the picnic table to the tree branch out front when I was seven.”

  She lifts the long layer and tilts my head, bringing my nose an inch from her arm. It’s definitely her skin that smells so good.

  “Hold still,” she says. She has a pair of scissors close to my cheek.

  She cuts in sections, then uses her fingers to shake it out.

  She stares at me and then smiles before going back to cutting. Slowly. Deliberately. Everything slows down.

  “There.”

  I’m afraid to look.

  It’s me, only better. The long layer is more defined and falls to a sharp, sleek point at my cheekbone. The rest, clean and perfect. What I wanted but didn’t know how to do.

  “Thanks.” I touch the place on my neck where her fingers were.

  And then we’re just standing there in the grimy bathroom.

  “I should probably . . .”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.”

  We walk out of the bathroom, and I’m still touching my neck.

  Karen says, “Hey, let me see.” She jumps up from her perch near the door. I self-consciously rub at my neck. “Looks good! Nice job, Red.”

  “At least it no longer looks like a toddler cut it,” Cammie teases, and Karen laughs, and the door jingles.

  Lucy, standing there just inside the door, looking pissed. “Hey,” I say, trying to remember to breathe. Shit, it’s five forty-five. “Hey, I was going to text you,” I say, and immediately realize it was the absolute wrong thing to say. “I mean, because I was running late, and I didn’t want you to —”

  “I needed gas anyway, so . . .”

  She looks from Karen to Cammie to me, her eyes flashing when she gets back to me.

  “Uh, this is Cammie, and Karen,” I say. “Cammie cleaned up my hair.”

  “I can see that,” Lucy says, more twang than usual. “Looks . . . better.” She turns a sharp forty-five degrees, squares her shoulders, and shows all her teeth to Cammie. “Hi, I’m Lucy.”

  “Cammie.” Cammie squares off, too. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Karen,” Karen says, even though no one seems to care. Lucy looks at her like Karen just spit on her and barely acknowledges the greeting before turning back to Cammie. Karen’s bristling, working up to saying something. But Cammie’s staring Lucy down, both of them puffing out their chests, looking each other over. Lucy gives Cammie another big, fake, nasty smile.

  “Nice to meet you, too, Cammie,” Lucy says, like it’s the furthest thing from “nice.” Lucy turns back to me. “I needed something, for dinner, so I thought I’d swing by here on the way back from the market. Are you ready to go?” All saccharine sweet, to hide the poison. And batting her eyes, staking her claim.

  “Yeah, great, thanks,” I say, trying to cover how freaked out I am to have them all here, in the station, at the same time. I should tell Uncle Skip I’m leaving, but I’m afraid to leave them alone.

  I open the door to the service bays but don’t step through. “I’m leaving, Uncle Skip!”

  “You can leave it open,” Mike yells.

  “Okay.” I’m ready to escape this awkward uncomfortableness. Now. “I’m ready.”

  “See you tomorrow?” Cammie asks, practically pushing Karen out the door.

  “Yeah, tomorrow.” I grab my backpack from behind the counter and hoist it over my shoulder.

  “I’ll pick you up at seven forty-five,” Karen says, her look promising teasing and digging for details on the drive.

  “Ready?” I ask Lucy, trying for normal and happy and not at all freaked out.

  “Great,” Lucy says, but it’s hard to tell if it really is under all the fake happiness she’s throwing at me.

  Lucy hurls herself into the driver’s seat and barely lets me buckle in before she’s pulling out of the lot.

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I let her drive and brace for whatever comes next.

  “I guess I should have just picked you up on the side of the road, as usual,” Lucy says. She’s pissed — that much is clear. Any answer seems likely to piss her off more. “I wasn’t going to say anything about who I was or anything.”

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  “It’s just . . .” Lucy starts, and then rethinks what she was going to say. “Okay,” she says. “I’m just going to lay it out there. I don’t care who you tell or not. You want this to be your dirty little secret, fine by me. But it’s sort of humiliating to have to pick you up on the side of the road or in some deserted lot, when your other friends come by all the time.”

  “They don’t. They’ve never come by before. Cammie brought the clippers, and . . .” I stop, because none of this is making her less pissed off. “But it’s totally fine that you came by to pick me up.”

  “Really?” She glances at me at the four-way stop.

  “Really,” I say, forcing a smile. “I don’t care who knows.”

  That was what she wanted to hear, I guess, because she relaxes back into the seat.

  And maybe I don’t care anymore.

  A song Lucy loves comes on the radio, and I turn it up without her asking, just as she starts singing along, making her sing even louder. What she lacks in voice she makes up for in enthusiasm. I join in on the next song to make her laugh.

  By the time we’re at her grandparents’ house, the station is forgotten. She has ingredients and cooking stuff laid out on the counters, and a cutting board and bowls on the table.

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” she says, grabbing another cutting board and knife. “Scrub your hands, then come over here.”

  In the time it takes me to carefully slice the mushrooms, she dices an onion, cuts up the chicken, mixes flour and a bunch of stuff in a bowl, and then coats the chicken in the flour mixture.

  When she’s ready to cook, she takes the mushrooms. I hop up on the counter, where I can watch. Lucy cooking is like a different Lucy. Calmer. Quieter. Less . . . on. Relaxed, like after we’ve been kissing for a while and she stops trying to be so cool, only without the sexy feelings, or at least all of the sexy feelings.

  She moves around the kitchen from sink to cupboard to stove to oven. Focused and efficient. She’s someone else right now.<
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  “Can I ask you something?” she asks, her back to me while she cooks the chicken.

  “Sure,” I say, and even I can hear the nervousness in my voice.

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” She looks over her shoulder at me. “To cut your hair? I’d have done it for you.”

  “I didn’t really know I wanted it done.” She blinks and turns back to the stove. That wasn’t the right answer. “I mean, I knew it needed to be cut better, but . . . I guess I hadn’t gotten around to thinking about doing it.”

  “But Cammie knew?”

  I shrug but realize she can’t see me. “I think less knew, more thought it looked like crap.”

  Lucy turns the chicken, moves some pieces to a dish, and adds more to the pan to be cooked.

  “It’s not a big deal. It gets — got — in my face sometimes, at training, when I was trying to sight. I guess they noticed.”

  “Sight?”

  Crap. “The targets. My hair kept falling in my eyes.”

  “Targets. So . . . a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  I could lie. I could lie and she’d never know. “A rifle.” Not a lie, just less scary for her than listing all the different guns, especially the AR-15.

  “You’ve shot lots of guns.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you own a gun or . . . guns? Is it even legal for you to own guns?”

  “Not in my name. Can’t until I’m eighteen,” I say. “But . . . yeah, I have guns.”

  I look at my feet swinging free and then hop down from the counter in case we’re about to argue about this.

  She cooks and I stare at her back.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I say. “We like to shoot.”

  “What do you shoot?”

  “Targets, clay disks, squirrels. Whatever’s in season. But for training, mostly targets.”

  “Here,” she says, handing me the plates. “Make yourself useful.”

  We eat more than talk because we’re both starving and it’s really good, something I tell her three times before she starts mocking me, but she’s pleased. Or maybe because she’s thinking. I’ve avoided talking about training or Clearview with her, sensing it wouldn’t be her thing. I guess I was right.

  “So . . . your grandparents are gone until when?” I ask, hoping to remind her of the evening we’ve had planned.

  Lucy lets one side of her mouth creep up. “They’ll be gone until at least midnight, probably later.”

  I look at the clock, pretend to count the hours, hoping she’s still into it.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy says. “We’ll have plenty of time.” Her smile is promising. “After you do the dishes.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, snagging a piece of chicken from her plate.

  I do wash the dishes, but she dries, putting them away as we go. When we’re done, she hangs the dish towel over the edge of the sink and turns. Cool Lucy is back in form, walking toward me with all the promise of what is to come.

  We kiss in the kitchen, just a few small kisses, and then stop to take turns in the bathroom. I’m sure she brushed her teeth. I use my finger to push some toothpaste around my teeth, too. In her bedroom, she’s turning on the small lamp by the bed, and already her shoes are lying where she kicked them off by the door.

  The same quilt on the bed. Same dim lights and that smell of her. But this time we both know why we’re here. This time I kiss her and let my hands wander.

  She takes my hands, barely breaking the kiss, and pulls me toward her bed. And then she’s leaning back, like last time — different dress, but everything else the same. Except this time I don’t hesitate to take off my shoes and join her.

  It takes a few minutes of shifting and elbows and legs tangling up before we have our heads on the pillows and our feet toward the footboard, Lucy lying on her side facing me.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi,” I say back, our breaths puffing over each other’s mouths.

  By now we know how to kiss each other. Soft and deep and urgent and soft again until everything is warm and humming.

  If she were wearing a shirt, I’d slide my fingers under the hem and test the waters. But her dress is tangled between us.

  I trace my fingers over her bare leg just above her knee, just to see, and she pushes against my thigh. I tug at the hem of her dress.

  “Yeah.” She leans away and we untangle enough that I can pull it free from where it’s caught. But she doesn’t take it off.

  She kisses me again, a small kiss, soft, all lips. And again, turning my head this way and that. I touch her over the dress, over her bra.

  I’ve touched her before, even under her shirt, but never like this — when I can see her, and take my time, and not worry someone is going to catch us.

  She rubs at the sensitive short hairs at the back of my head, encouraging me. I kiss her shoulder, her chest just above her dress. I feel the weight of her breast in my hand.

  Swallowing hard, I try to be cool. But . . . being here, like this, is more than I could have imagined when I first saw her. I kiss her throat so I can hide my face, hide how big a deal this is for me.

  “Yeah,” she says, and I feel it against my lips. She rolls onto her back, pulling me with her.

  “Touch me.” She rubs my arm. “Please.” She pushes my hand under her dress.

  I’ve never done this part, not with someone else. But she’s asking, and there’s no way I’m saying no. I watch her face and go by touch — skin, and then elastic and cotton on the back of my hand, and then soft, slick hotness. She gasps and pushes against my fingers. I follow her sounds, trying to find where she wants me, but I don’t know how she wants to be touched.

  She grabs my hand, guides me until, “There,” she gasps out. “There. Just. Wait.” She gets rid of her underwear, and then grabs my hand again. Putting it where she wants it. “Yeah.” Her breath hisses away and sucks in and hisses away again. I try to focus, but I’m shaking with it, with doing this, with how good it feels — and she’s not even touching me. Yet.

  I find a rhythm; she gasps and nods, and I try to keep going steady. She grips my arm, keeping me there. She’s quiet except for the gasps and little part-words. I can’t stop looking at her face. I lose the spot and she says, “Higher,” and groans when I’m back in the right place. I concentrate, clenching my teeth, determined not to lose the rhythm again. And then she’s shaking, shoving my hand away but clinging to my arm, panting into my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she finally says, letting go of my arm so I can pull my hand free. She stretches like a cat, taking a deep breath.

  She’s smiling and absently running her fingers through her hair on the pillow, making happy little sounds, but I don’t know what to do with my hand. I hold it away from her and from me, trying not to touch our clothes. Especially mine.

  “That was good.” She rolls up onto her side and pulls me close for a kiss, trapping my hand between us. I let her kiss me but try to keep my hand away from my shirt.

  When she pushes at my shoulder, I grab her arm out of instinct. My fingers are sticky on her skin. She doesn’t seem to care.

  She kisses along my jaw, over my neck, up my ear. I can feel, inside, how I thought I’d feel, but it’s like it’s far away. She knew exactly what she wanted. I want her, I want everything, but what if I can’t get there, if I freeze up when it’s someone else touching me? I don’t think I can show her like she showed me.

  She leans up so we can see each other, her hair hanging in my face. “My turn?”

  I close my eyes behind the burn in my cheeks.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want.” Her hand rests very lightly on my ribs. “I’ve read about, like, stone butches, and about gender identity, and if you, if it would ruin this for you if I touch you there, if I . . .”

  “What?” I get the words but not the meaning, and all of a sudden it’s all too confusing and the room is stuffy and stifling. I pull out from und
er her and sit up.

  She lies back with a bed-jiggling flop. “Look, we don’t have to do anything. Ever. I mean, it was good, but you don’t have to —”

  “I liked that,” I say. She peeks out at me from under her arm. “Touching you was good.”

  “Very,” she says, nodding. “And I needed that. Been too long.”

  I try to process that. The “too long.” Not at all something new for her. Or special. But good. Good is good. Stop thinking.

  She tugs at my shirt. I lie back down on the bed, too, but keep some space between us. She stays on her back, both of us staring at the ceiling. “What do you like?” she asks. There’s no teasing there. She’s not whispering. So why am I ready to squirm away?

  I can feel her turn over, the shift of the bed, her voice closer, her breasts brush my arm. But she leaves that little bit of space between us. “Bex?” she whispers, and she leans over, kisses my shoulder, and then pulls back.

  “I haven’t . . . not with someone else.” I hold my breath.

  I can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room.

  “So I’m your Shug Avery?”

  I shake my head. “I’m no Celie. Just . . . haven’t gone that far.”

  “Do you want to?” Her mouth is so close to my ear that her breath makes me shiver.

  Yes. I didn’t think I said that out loud, but then her lips brush my jaw, her fingers trace circles on my stomach.

  “We haven’t talked about, like, how you identify. If you want to keep your shirts on, that’s okay.” I open my eyes so I can see her. “I don’t have to touch your chest. Or would even touching your coocher ruin this for you, or —?”

  “My what?”

  She blinks. Stares. Then her whole face changes. “I do not use the P word.” Her hand flails out in emphasis. “Or any other C word.”

  “But . . . coocher?”

  “What do you call it?” I shake my head. She’s wide-eyed incredulous. “You have to have a word.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? What do you mean, why? Because . . . you have to have a word. For yourself.”

  I think about it. When I was little Mom said front bottom, but . . . somewhere along the way we stopped saying anything.