The Pants Project

by Cat Clarke

  When he was finished, he sat down next to me, and I whispered, “Your dog is called Bob?”

  “Bob is an awesome name for a dog. You’re just jealous.”

  I snorted a laugh and tried (unsuccessfully) to disguise it as a cough.

  I listened as, one by one, my classmates talked about their lives. Jade said that “helping people less fortunate then herself” was very important to her. Yeah, right. Marion spoke so quietly no one could really hear her, but Mr. Eccles didn’t say anything, which was kind of cool of him.

  Maisie blushed her way through her turn. I could see the notebook shaking in her hands. She talked really fast and it was over before anyone had a chance to take in what she had actually said. She rushed back to her seat and sat down as quickly as possible.

  It was my turn next. I took my notebook with me, but I’d memorized what I wanted to say. I talked about my dog and how one of my favorite things to do is take him to the beach. I glanced over at Jacob when I said Garibaldi’s name, just to see the look on his face, and he was laughing. I accidentally looked over at Jade, who had her arms crossed and was trying her best to look bored.

  I talked about Enzo and how he’s a good brother most of the time. I talked about the deli and Dante, and about being allowed to sample the new cheeses.

  “The thing that is most important to me is actually two things. Well, two people, actually. My moms. Even though they’re really busy with the deli, and Mamma volunteers two nights a week, they always make time for Enzo and me. They always manage to make me smile when I’m feeling sad, or make me laugh when I’m feeling angry. And they didn’t ground me for life when I thought it was a good idea to paint white stripes on Garibaldi to make him look like a zebra.

  “My moms are the best parents ever, and I’m very lucky to have them. I hope they think they’re lucky to have me too.”

  There. I was done. I’d managed to remember everything I wanted to say without even having to look at my notebook once. Mr. Eccles had a huge smile on his face. “Thank you, Liv. That was wonderful.”

  That’s when it happened. That’s when I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. A voice piped up—a mean, spiteful voice. “You have two moms! Ewww.”

  A couple of people laughed as I made my way back to my seat. Mr. Eccles raised his voice and said, “Jade, get out of this classroom right this second!”

  But it was too late. The damage was done.

  Chapter 11

  I sat down next to Jacob and stared at the desk in front of me. I stared really, really hard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jade’s shoes as she walked past my desk. As she went by, she whispered, “Gross.”

  “Out!” Mr. Eccles shouted.

  I could feel people looking at me, and all I could think was: Do. Not. Cry. I don’t think I’ve ever thought anything so hard in my life.

  Mr. Eccles said that he wanted complete silence while he went out to deal with Jade. Of course, everyone started talking as soon as he left the room. I kept staring at the desk, wishing that time would speed up, or that time would stop for everyone else. If only I could hit the pause button and everyone would freeze, be stuck doing whatever they were doing (in the case of Wayne Garvey that would be picking his nose and eating it), then I could get up from my chair and slip out of the room, out of the school, and run all the way home.

  Jacob was scribbling away next to me when Mr. Eccles came back in. Mr. Eccles said that he wanted everyone to know that what Jade had said was unacceptable, and that he’d sent her to the principal’s office. He said that there are many different kinds of families, and that everyone should be grateful to me for sharing my experience with the group. I sank down lower into my chair. Why couldn’t he just shut up? Why did he have to draw attention to me again? Everyone would forget all about it if he would just shut up.

  He did stop talking eventually. People carried on, getting up and talking about themselves and what was important to them. One word seemed to pop up again and again. Dad.

  Of course, I wasn’t the only one without a dad. One girl said that her dad had died four years ago. Kyle Walters said that he’d never known his dad, but he didn’t seem particularly bothered about it. But even if they didn’t live with them, the vast majority of people had dads. Of course they did. I knew that. It had been the same in elementary school, but for some reason it hadn’t mattered then. No one had really cared, and those who had cared, like Maisie, were a little jealous. Not that their dads were terrible or anything, but there was something undeniably awesome about having double the moms.

  I risked a glance back at Maisie, just to see a friendly face, but she looked away when our eyes met.

  Just before the bell rang, Jacob pushed his notebook across the desk. It was another awesome drawing, and this one managed to make me laugh out loud, even though I was feeling terrible.

  Jacob had drawn a picture of Jade as a supervillain, complete with pointy black mask and cape. The letters “MG” were emblazoned on the front of her outfit. A speech bubble emerged from her mouth: “The world will bow down to the power of Mean Girl! No one is as mean as I am. No one! MWAHAHAHAHA!”

  “Can I keep it?” I whispered.

  “To stick on the back of your bedroom door so you can throw darts at it?” Jacob asked, tearing out the picture and handing it to me.

  When the bell rang and we were getting our things together, Jacob said, “She shouldn’t have said those things. Jade, I mean.”

  I shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal and I hadn’t been trying not to cry for the past ten minutes. “It’s fine. I don’t care what she thinks.”

  He didn’t actually have to say the words. The look on his face was enough to tell me that he wasn’t buying it.

  I packed up my bag as quickly as possible and said, “See you later.”

  I looked around for Maisie, but she was gone. My best friend was getting good at disappearing just when I needed her.

  I spent all of recess outside. I walked around the entire school three times, picturing horrible things happening to Jade. Things like her hair turning into overcooked spaghetti. Or her having to walk barefoot over Legos everywhere she went.

  I didn’t cry, though. I was proud of myself for that.

  =

  I didn’t get a chance to speak to Maisie until lunchtime. I’d managed to ignore the evil glares from Jade when she came back to class halfway through history class. I’d even managed to tune out the whispering. Even when you can’t hear what they’re saying, you can just tell when people are talking about you. It’s like a sixth sense.

  Maisie and I were in the lunch line, sliding our trays along the counter. None of the choices looked particularly appealing, but I went for lasagna in the end. (This turned out to be a bad decision. Mamma makes the best lasagna in the entire world; this one wouldn’t even have made the top 1,000.)

  “Are you OK?” Maisie asked quietly.

  Finally. I was wondering when she was going to get around to asking.

  I surprised myself with my answer: “Yeah.” I hadn’t meant to say that; the lie had just slipped out. I’d never really lied to her before about anything important. (And no, I didn’t count keeping quiet about The Secret as a lie. That wasn’t the same thing at all.)

  I expected her to ask again because it should have been obvious that I wasn’t telling the truth. But she didn’t. She just said, “Good,” and picked up a banana from the fruit bowl.

  “I wouldn’t stand too close to her if I were you, Maisie…it might be contagious.” Jade, of course.

  I turned to face her. She must have gone out of her way to walk past us because she wasn’t carrying a tray. Chelsea was hovering next to her. “What might be contagious?” I asked with a fake polite smile on my face.

  Jade didn’t have a smile on her face. She narrowed her eyes. “You know what I’m talking about.”
<
br />   “No, I really don’t.”

  Jade made this sort of disgusted “urgh” sound and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Whatever.”

  I was aware of Maisie shuffling along in the line, leaving me alone to face Jade and Chelsea.

  Jade leaned in close and hissed, “Don’t think I’ll forget about the trouble you got me in. Two detentions, all because of you.”

  I smiled a big, broad, real smile. “I’m very sorry to hear that.” Jade looked as if she wanted to hit me, which made me smile even more.

  She stuck out an elbow and flipped my tray over. The lasagna went splat on the floor. People laughed. Someone even clapped.

  “Oh dear. How clumsy of you.” Then she walked off before I could say or do anything.

  I took a deep breath. Stay cool. Do not go after her. Do not tackle her to the floor and shove her face in the mushed-up lasagna.

  The moms would kill me if I got into trouble. I’d been working so hard on my temper since The Incident. I gritted my teeth so hard that I thought they might shatter, fall out of my mouth, and land on the lasagna mush. Sort of like crumbly, extra-crunchy parmesan.

  A lunch server came over with a mop and bucket to clean up the mess. I offered to help, but she shooed me away. I stepped back in line and another lunch server handed me a fresh plate of lasagna along with a sympathetic smile. They probably saw things like this happen all the time. Middle school was brutal.

  By the time I sat down next to Maisie, most of the laughing and whispering had stopped. I chewed my way through the soggy, cheesy pasta, but it was hard to swallow. It felt as if a baby hedgehog were hibernating in my throat. I couldn’t help thinking that if this was the way Jade was going to treat me just because I had two moms, how much worse would it be if she ever found out the truth about me? Something told me that Jade wouldn’t exactly be understanding if she realized that I was trans. If she thought I was weird just because I wanted to wear pants, there’s no way she’d be able to get her head around that. She’d probably say something stupid like I’m trans because I have two moms.

  Maisie barely said a word to me during the rest of lunch. I could hardly believe that she was the same girl who’d defended me after The Incident. How could she have changed so much in just a few months?

  Chapter 12

  So. The Incident: the short version.

  It was the last day of the semester. The last day ever of elementary school, and I ruined it by punching someone in the face. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that the punched person deserved it, even though Maisie did her best to explain. She told Miss Dylan and Mrs. Trewellyn that Danny Barber had been hounding her all day, teasing her about the fact that he wanted a “good-bye kiss.” She told them that she’d done her best to avoid him and (repeatedly) told him to leave her alone, but he wouldn’t give up. He lunged for her, lips puckered, at the end of lunch period. That’s when I punched him.

  I had to. That’s what the moms didn’t seem to understand when Mrs. Trewellyn called them in to take me home. “You never have to punch someone, Liv.” That’s what Mom said. “There are always better ways of dealing with these things.”

  She meant “talking,” I guess, but talking wouldn’t have stopped Danny Barber’s big, fat, slobbering mouth from latching itself onto Maisie’s.

  Mrs. Trewellyn said that under normal circumstances, I would have been suspended for a couple of days. She said I should “count my lucky stars” that it was the last day of the semester. She told the moms that they should think about finding someone for me to talk to about my anger issues. It probably didn’t help that I shouted “I DON’T HAVE ANGER ISSUES!” when she said that.

  That night I overheard the moms talking about me. When I say “overheard,” I really mean “eavesdropped on.” They thought I was in bed, but there was no way I could sleep. I was way too angry to sleep.

  “We should talk to her,” Mom said.

  “We have talked to her, Jax,” replied Mamma.

  “Not about the fight.” I don’t know why Mom called it a fight. That wasn’t entirely accurate, was it? “She’ll be going through puberty soon.” Puberty? I grimaced. What did that have to do with anything?

  Mamma sighed loudly. “We don’t even know for sure… What if we’re wrong?” Her voice cracked a bit then, like she was trying not to cry.

  “Do you really think we’re wrong?” Mom said, her voice softer and gentler than normal.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.” That’s when Mamma really started crying. I wanted to hug her, tell her I was sorry, and that she didn’t need to worry about me. I wouldn’t punch anyone again. But I didn’t want the moms to know that I’d been eavesdropping, so I crept upstairs and got back into bed.

  It must have been about three o’clock in the morning when it hit me. I knew the reason they’d mentioned puberty. How could I have been so stupid? They know. About The Secret, or at least, they think they know. And just the thought of it—the suspicion of it—had been enough to make Mamma cry. That’s when I decided that I definitely had to keep quiet. I would do anything to not make Mamma cry.

  =

  Maisie had blamed herself for me being sent home from school, even though I told her that was crazy. On the first day of summer vacation, she brought over some cupcakes that she’d baked especially for me. She’d iced each one with a letter so that they spelled “BEST FRIENDS” when you lined them up. Mamma let Maisie come in for a cup of tea, even though I was technically grounded.

  Maisie thanked me for “rescuing” her. She giggled when she told me that Danny Barber looked really stupid with two cotton balls stuffed up his nostrils to stop the bleeding. She apologized for ruining my last day of elementary school.

  The last thing my best friend said before she went home was that she would make it up to me. She promised.

  Well, that wasn’t such a short version after all, I guess. Anyway, that’s why I didn’t do anything to Jade when she humiliated me in front of everyone in the cafeteria. Because I knew what would happen if I did do something: weekly counseling, anger management, difficult questions, and, worst of all, Mamma crying. Plus, it would have broken both of their hearts to find out that people were making fun of me for having two moms.

  Anyway, the point is that Maisie had made a promise, and she’d just had the perfect opportunity to make it up to me, to tell Jade to leave me alone. That was all she had to do. I wasn’t expecting her to punch anyone for me. Just do the right thing. But she had broken her promise. I couldn’t help wondering if our friendship might be slightly broken too.

  Chapter 13

  My plan was to keep my head down and hope that Jade would forget all about it.

  Things didn’t quite work out that way.

  Example: We were reading a book in English and Mr. Eccles asked a question about the father in the story. I put my hand up because, for once, I actually knew the answer.

  I suppose it was inevitable that Jade would whisper, “What would she know about dads? She doesn’t even have one.”

  Mr. Eccles didn’t hear what she said, but he did hear the giggling and he glared in Jade’s direction until it stopped.

  Example: Someone had scrawled some horrible graffiti on my homeroom table. I don’t even like to think about what it said. Let’s just say it was hateful and mean and leave it at that. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who’d done it, especially since she’d been there when I arrived, looking supremely pleased with herself. I chose not to react. I refused to give her the satisfaction. I just sat down and covered the word with my pencil case. I almost managed to forget about it until Jacob asked if he could borrow a ruler and reached for my pencil case before I could answer.

  He put it right back down again, careful to put it in exactly the right spot. “Who did that?” he whispered.

  “I’ll give you three guesses, but you’ll only need one,”
I whispered back.

  His jaw tightened. “You should tell Mrs. McCready.”

  “No chance. It would just make things worse.”

  He sighed, but he didn’t disagree. “Do you want me to talk to Jade?”

  “May I refer you to my previous answer?” I said with a shaky half smile. It’s the worst thing in the world when someone is nice to you when you’re trying not to cry. At that point, it would have been easier to have Jade sitting next to me than Jacob.

  “You know she’s an idiot, don’t you?” said Jacob. He turned around in his seat to glare at Jade. She didn’t notice at first, but after a few seconds, she looked up and smiled. The smile slipped straight off her face when she saw how annoyed he looked. She glanced at me and then back at Jacob, putting two and two together (which was clearly not that easy for her since Jade is even worse at math than I am). Her cheeks flushed and she quickly looked away.

  Jacob and I turned back around in our seats. I couldn’t decide whether I was annoyed with him or happy that he was annoyed on my behalf. I was worried that Jade would think I’d told him that she’d been the one to write the graffiti. But when I really thought about it, things with Jade couldn’t exactly get any worse.

  =

  It was going to be the party of the year. That’s what everyone was saying. And I was most definitely not invited. Hardly surprising when you considered whose party it was: Chelsea Farrow’s. Jade’s BFF.

  One other kid in our class definitely wasn’t on the invite list: Marion Meltzer. I bet she didn’t mind either since she hardly seemed like the partying type. People had started calling her Mousey Meltzer as soon as Jade came up with the idea. The lack of imagination it took to come up with that nickname was embarrassing, frankly.

  A few days before the party, I was sitting with Maisie in the cafeteria when Chelsea and Jade strutted over to our table and stood behind us.

  “So are you coming then?” Chelsea asked Maisie. She didn’t even bother saying “hello” or “excuse me.”