Lights from the first floor brighten the dark hallway. I don’t leave my room, but without the door between us, my parents’ shouts are clear.
“What’s happening to our daughter is serious,” my mom continues. “She’s scaring me, Wayne.”
The longer I’m on my feet, the heavier I feel. My tired shoulders slump, and sweat beads on my top lip. Heat radiates from my scalp, making my dirty hair greasier. Exhausted lungs act as if they’re jammed in too small of a space, like my ribs have shrunk all of a sudden. To keep from collapsing, I lean against the doorjamb and dig my toes into the beige carpet.
“Medication is out of the question. She’s too young,” Dad says with finality in his tone.
The sharp, cutting smell of grilled onions twists my empty stomach. Saliva pools in my mouth, thick under my tongue as my jaw aches bad enough to cause my eyes to water. Dad cuts through reheated steak, scraping his fork and knife against the blue plate I know he’s using; it’s the same one he uses every night.
“But what if it helps this time?” Mom asks. Broken glass crushes between her shoe and the linoleum, grinding into smaller pieces.
Silence rings in my ears, so I step back into my dark room and close the door with a small click of the handle. Sliding back under the blankets on my bed would give me the only thing close to ease from bitter guilt that’s eating me.
I ignore my life-givers when their argument starts again and pull apart my plum-colored curtains. With every star in the sky on fire and the moon spitting white light over Castle Rain, I’m able to see Dillon looking back at me like it’s in the light of day.
The only boy to ever hold my hand smiles easy and presses his palm against his window. Pretending his fingers are between mine, I press my hand against the cool glass and try to smile so he knows that I miss him.
But I can’t.
All I can do is cry.
“They’re not too big or too small and perfectly arched. That freckle the shape of a snowball on the left one is my favorite, and I’m so glad these don’t hang low. I’ve seen some that dangle, and it’s disgusting. Yours are definitely not awful.”
Risa and Kyle sit crisscrossed in front of each other. My sister rubs my friend’s perfect earlobes between the pads of her pointer fingers and thumbs, and he’s wide-eyed and red in the face, eating it up.
“How old are you?” Risa scoots closer to my friend; their kneecaps touch.
“I just turned fourteen,” he answers, staring directly at my sister’s purple lollipop stained lips. “I’ll be fifteen in, like, eleven months.”
The girl I share DNA with pushes a strand of blonde hair out of Kyle’s eyes before she presses the tip of her nose against his.
“We’re only five years apart,” she says. “Have you ever been kissed, boy?”
He sucks in a sharp breath and shakes his head fast.
It’s the last weekend of a summer that went by too quickly, and we stretch every second left together. When the Finnels and my parents mentioned going out to dinner earlier, Penelope and I convinced them to leave us home with Risa. Once receiving a boy, do I look stupid to you? look from Wayne, and after he teased me with a few packs of peanut M&M’s for smiles I still count¸ he actually agreed to leave us here.
Kyle rode his bike over when the Chrysler reversed out of the driveway, and now the four of us sit in a semi-circle in my sister’s stuffy, incense hot-boxed bedroom. Risa’s the only one smoking, but my head is fuzzy, and my mouth feels like it’s full of cotton balls.
Penelope has her head on my shoulder and her fingers tied so tightly with mine, I can feel her heartbeat between our knuckles. She tilts her head back, showing me drowsy eyelids over reddened eyes under circular shades.
“Have you ever been kissed?” she whispers, talking out of the side of her mouth like she always does.
“Shut up,” I say, nudging her gently with my elbow.
Risa pulls away from the boy with the perfectly curved ears and lifts the citrus-scented grass wrapped in burning paper to her lips. The end of her joint chars red-orange, and I watch as my pulse flies, and the itch to laugh scratches the roof of my mouth.
Our babysitter blows a dense stream of grayish white smoke into Kyle’s face, but Pen and I suck in the kickback. It tastes almost as good as it smells, and I catch the girl at my side lick the flavor from her lips like candy.
“Can I try?” she asks. Penelope sits up straight, slanted toward Risa.
Her long brown hair grew longer during the sunny season Pen spent mostly in bed. The ends are cut uneven and lighter in color, and curls that used to bounce when we ran between trees or through sand at the beach now fall flat and frizzy. Her hands are skinnier than they were on the Fourth of July, and when she takes off her sunglasses, lack-of-sleep purple bruises are under her eyes.
As she reaches for my sister’s habit, the bones in her elbow stick out. Thin fingers wiggle like she knows what she’s asking for, like she even knows how to hold it.
“I don’t know, Pen. Your dad will kill me,” Risa says, shifting away from Kyle to sit upright. Her spine straightens, and she hides what’s left of her joint in the cup of her hand.
“He won’t know,” curiosity pushes. Scooting on scrawny knees, Penelope kneels beside our caregiver. “I only want to know what it’s like … just once.”
Scratching above my right eyebrow, cool sweat drips down the back of my hot neck and the ceiling in this smoky bedroom suddenly drops down on me. I push my dirty hair out of my face and blow air I shouldn’t have inhaled in the first place out of my prickly, nervous-for-her lungs.
“This stays between us,” my sister says as she passes her dependency to the girl I had to force out of bed this morning.
Kyle and I trade a fast look; his eyes are red, round, and as curious as Penelope’s.
Sometime last school year, a local policeman with huge arm muscles and sunglasses that reflected like mirrors came to class and preached about the dangers of marijuana.
“It’s a gateway drug,” he said, passing out D.A.R.E bumper stickers we later stuck to the bathroom stalls. “Weed is a trailblazer for broken dreams and a life on the gritty streets.”
A life without a home is the last thing on my mind as Pen stares at what she’s gotten herself into. Spellbound by ribbons of smoke, she holds the joint up and stares at the smoldering end before the corner of her mouth curves up.
She touches her lips to the twisted end and inhales, shutting her eyes as she does.
Moving closer to craziness, I watch the way her pink lips wrap around the gateway to broken dreams and wish it were my lips she’s kissing. Penelope exhales without coughing, and I inhale everything she lets go of, slowly nudging closer so I get it all.
“Wanna try?” She licks her lips again.
My heart thuds, thrashing against every pulse place in my body. The air around us shakes, and the ceiling lifts back to where it belongs.
“Do it with me,” Pen offers, holding life on the gritty streets out for me.
She’s silly grins and come on, come on.
Trashing lessons learned from cops on a school day, I smoke what she gives me just to feel what she does but cough, because I’m nowhere as smooth as Pen naturally is. Kyle takes what’s left from my hand and hits the joint we all watched Risa roll on her SAT practice book. We’re able to pass it around our circle once more before it burns ash, and then we can’t stop laughing.
Penelope and I hold hands and blow hair out of each other’s faces. I push her sunglasses to the top of her head, refusing to look at her eyes through pink lenses anymore.
“My face is numb,” she says.
“I can feel my heartbeat in my brain,” I say.
“You have a brain?” my comedian asks.
Smoke clears out of the room through a crack in the window, and the last day of summer lowers into the last night. Lying on the bedroom floor shoulder-to-shoulder, Penelope and I look up at the collection of local band posters, autographed dollar bi
lls, and ripped liquor labels stapled to the ceiling while Risa and Kyle talk in hushed tones and whispered voices. It’s not until they go silent that we care enough to look up to find out what they’re up to.
My sister is kissing my best friend.
“What the—”
Pen’s lips press against mine.
Leaning back on my elbows, Penelope holds my face between her shaky hands and pushes her tight-lipped mouth against my relaxed one. Our noses smash together, and I’m pretty sure my teeth cut skin and I taste blood, but her kiss is mine.
She’s slow breathing and bolder than me.
Bravery’s tongue parts my lips, and I push up on my hands, but Penelope shoves me down flat. The back of my head crashes with the carpet, but our mouths don’t break apart. We open a little wider, move our tongues in small circles, and kiss for the first time with our eyes on each other, holding hands.
“She developed over the summer,” Roger Morris says, nodding toward the girl who kissed me on my sister’s bedroom floor last night.
The only course Penelope and I have together is first period biology, and because she was hard to get out of bed this morning, we were late riding to school. Now we can’t sit together because the good kids, who managed to make it to class on time, took the seats. We took what was left.
I look across the biology lab where Pen partnered with Mathilda Tipp. Hidden behind a pair of red- framed sunglasses, she and Herbert’s girlfriend compare schedules.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, wondering how much I’ll have to pay Mathilda to trade seats with me, hoping I have enough.
“Her boobs, dude. The weird girl grew boobs, and they’re kind of big.”
My mind goes blank, and I don’t think.
I act.
I elbow Roger Morris in the face. His nose cracks on impact, and he drops to the floor, knocking his stool over and pushing our table into the backs of the kids who sit in front of us. The entire class looks over their shoulders to see what the ruckus is about. Penelope stands to her feet, holding her hands over her mouth in shock.
I see them.
Boobs.
A teacher, whose name I don’t know yet, drags me out of his laboratory by the collar and walks me down to the office himself.
“There’s always one kid who tries this crap on the first day of school,” he says, pushing me into a wooden chair beside the door with the plaque that reads Principal.
The high school administration office is small, busy with students rushing in and out wanting to change their schedules, and teachers complaining about the new school year with stale-smelling coffee in paper cups and folders under their arm.
I watch the entrance like a hawk, waiting for a certain P.E. teacher to storm in, knowing I can’t stop thinking about his daughter’s chest now that I’ve noticed they’re there.
“Boy!” Wayne shouts, walking in like I knew he would, behind his daughter and her new additions.
Looking down at the floor, I’m too ashamed to face Penelope or her dad, especially when I hear Pen giggle.
“There’s nothing wrong with defending a girl’s honor,” Coach Finnel says. His gym shoes appear in my line of sight. “Tell me what happened.”
I shake my head, but lift my eyes to his. He holds out a pack of M&M’s so that only I can see the small yellow packaging.
“Penelopehasboobs,” I mumble.
“Huh? Speak clearly, boy. I can’t hear you.”
The girl I can’t wait to kiss again stands behind her father with a crooked smirk on her lips, and my eyes fall from it to her round chest.
I just say it.
“Penelope has boobs!”
“We should talk,” Dad says, folding his hands together on top of his desk. “And I have to be honest with you.”
Sitting across from him in his office, I lean my head back and look up at the ceiling fan spinning around, and around, and around; a gold control chain clinks against the light bulbs’ glass cover. Cool, spun air chills my heated face. It’s Saturday, and Penelope and I have spent all day building sand castles at the beach and sucking on blue-raspberry snow cones.
“I don’t want to take up a lot of your time, Son, but your mother got an interesting phone call while you were at the beach with the Finnel girl. After the—” he coughs “—ordeal on the first day of school, it became apparent I’ve put this lesson off for too long.”
“What?” I sit up straight and give him my attention.
Dad pushes his silver-rimmed glasses up his nose and clears his throat. “Well, someone saw you kiss Pen today and called to make sure we are aware.”
“Oh.” Sinking into my seat, I swallow my heartbeat and stare down at my feet.
“You’re going to be fourteen next week, so what you’re going through right now is normal. I went through it when I was your age, too.”
My cheeks burn sizzling red.
“I want to apologize if you feel like you’re going through this change alone, Dillon, but you’re not. Mom and I are here for you, and I’m sure Risa can answer any questions you have about your body if you’re not comfortable enough to come to us. She’s a girl, but she’s a good sister and went through puberty at an early age, actually.”
The dentist sort of dazes off, his expression becomes blank, and his eyes seem far away. He’s probably reliving the basket case my sibling became when she first had her cycle.
“Dad, it’s cool. We don’t have to talk about this,” I say, ready to run from this room.
He leans toward me, knocking over a pencil holder shaped like a lateral incisor. Yellow-orange number two pencils spill and roll over the edge of his desk. Looking at me from over his spectacles, my father beckons me closer.
“Have you grown hair in any odd places?” he whispers, as if anyone other than us will hear.
Gripping the wooden arms of the chair, I close my eyes and hope to blend in with the cracked brown leather. Heat spreads from my checks, down my neck, past my elbows, to my fingertips.
Just last week Penelope lifted her arm in front of Risa and me and pointed to her armpit, laughing as she said, “I never get enough to shave off.”
My sister tried to convince her to let the solo strand live, but Pen pulled it out and made a wish as it flew away in the breeze. I didn’t feel the need to show her where I grew hair over the last year.
“Have you had any abnormal dreams? Does your body change when you think about girls? About Penelope? Is there anything you want to tell me?”
When I don’t answer, too embarrassed to say a word, my life-giver opens the top drawer from the black filing cabinet behind his mahogany desk and pulls out a small plastic medical model of what looks like the lower half of a woman’s body.
“You’re smarter than most kids your age, Dillon, so I won’t insult your intelligence by showing the replica of the male reproductive system. As you can imagine, it has the same parts as you.”
He turns around the anatomy model he does have to show me what’s inside, and I almost scream.
“This is the female reproductive system, Son. I may only be a dentist, but technically, I am a medical doctor. During the next hour or so, I am going to explain exactly what all of this means, and most importantly, when you’re ready to have sex—”
Jumping to my feet, I trip over my untied shoelaces and stumble out of the office door. I take the stairs down two at a time, running past my sister as she comes through the front door and I run away from it.
“How was the talk?” she asks sarcastically as I sprint around the house.
A month since I busted Roger’s face, I’m still getting used to Penelope’s developments. Her reproductive system is more than I can handle. Wayne would snap my neck for even knowing what the plastic version looks like.
“Boy!” the anatomy Nazi calls out my name.
A fence doesn’t separate our backyards, so he catches me tearing through the grass toward the trees that line the end of our property. The deep-tone of his vo
ice scares me, and I get tangled in my dingy laces before I fall face first, skidding long enough to get grass stains on my white T-shirt.
“What?” I say with a mouth full of dandelions.
“How many smiles today?” Couch Finnel asks, not at all concerned with the dirt dive I just took.
Wiping blades of grass from my mouth, I sit up and say, “Lost count after fifty-seven.”
From his back door, King Kong nods and turns back into the house.
“You owe me a lot of candy, old man,” I mumble under my breath, standing to my feet. “Pay up, sucker.”
The murmur Nazi suddenly reappears and says, “Did you say something, boy?”
I shake my head and disappear between the pines to find the girl with the star-shaped glasses.
Penelope’s ankle deep in fresh mud, dancing with bright sunrays that flicker through openings in the tree branches. There’s a wildflower above her ear and dried clumps of dirt stuck to her legs. Swaying back and forth, kicking her feet up and then back, the only girl who gives me abnormal dreams waves me over with a smile that threatens to take over the world across her face.
I kick off my shoes and socks and hurdle in beside her, flinging watery mud way over our heads. Coming down like a chunky waterfall, it lands in our hair, on our faces, and across stars enough to blind her.
To the rhythm of our excitement, caked in sludge and covered in grass stains, we jump up and down, splattering soaked earth across tree trunks and mossy rocks. Pen screams, I shout, birds flee, and squirrels scatter. We step on each other’s toes and bump heads, but nothing stops us from making this puddle ours.
Shaking her head back and forth, invisibility shades soar from her dirt-freckled face and mud sails from the ends of her filthy hair. I watch her dance, covered in soil, free from whatever she hides from, and realize it’s been two weeks since I’ve had to talk her out of bed before school. Fourteen days have passed since the last time she missed a day of school, and this is the happiest I’ve seen her, ever.
True Love Way Page 7