Anyone but You

by Lara M. Zeises

  “Do it.”

  Seattle and I had been cutting and dyeing each other’s hair almost as long as we’d known each other, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal. But it was. Snipping off that first faded-blue dread made me wince. I held the fat worm of hair in my palm. It felt wrong.

  “Keep going,” Sea said firmly.

  I laid the blue lock, matted into its twisted shape, next to me on the couch cushion. The next five or so came off kind of quickly, and I dropped them on the floor next to Seattle’s left knee. I half expected her to pick one up, but she didn’t even look down, not once.

  When all the dreads had been cut, there was maybe a half inch of scraggly white-blond hair tipped in blue left on her head. She looked like a chemo patient. I didn’t know if I could finish the job.

  “You wanna take a look?” I asked her. “It’s pretty punk rock right now.”

  “No, you said bald.”

  “I know what I said. Doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

  She lifted the shaver defiantly, like she was the Statue of Liberty and it was her torch. After thirty seconds of awfulness, I snatched it from her and flipped the On switch, hoping that the batteries were dead. They weren’t.

  “Go on,” she urged. “Do it.”

  The itchiness returned; flash pops of my freaky dream kept exploding in my head. Blue hair, frowny mouth, Sarah’s half-naked bod. I shook them off and, with one smooth motion, carved a road through what was left of Seattle’s hair.

  Five minutes later, she had nothing but fuzz coating her scalp. “There,” I said. “Are you happy?”

  She pulled herself up and went into the bathroom to check out my handiwork. I couldn’t watch. I started to clean up the hair, but when a couple of minutes had passed and she hadn’t returned, I had to go see if she was okay.

  She’d left the door open and was standing in front of the small circle mirror. Her hands were on the back of her head, rubbing it slowly, like she couldn’t believe it was gone. I felt like such an asshole. How could I have made her bald? Why had I egged her into it? I was a shit, plain and simple.

  Slowly, Seattle turned around. When she did, I was surprised to see how good she looked without any hair. A grin spread across her face. “I love it,” she said. “Thank you.” She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. That would’ve been fine, if I hadn’t been quite so conscious of her double-D cleavage squeezed against my chest.

  I was more than glad when she finally pulled away.

  Dancin’ Alone

  My sister had breasts.

  She’d always had them, I supposed. I just wasn’t sure when they’d gotten quite so big. Seemed like only yesterday she was pancake flat. Then again, she usually wore really baggy shirts, and who knew what was hiding under them? The last time I’d seen her in anything remotely figure-forming was when she wore her bathing suit, but it was black and had a high neck and made her look more like a spinster than a girl with a great rack.

  My sister was not supposed to have a great rack. At least, not one that I noticed.

  Since the shower had always been my refuge, I decided to pop in and shake things off, so to speak. I started to do what I always did: turn the water on full blast, wait until it was good and steamy-hot, and then boil my skin, which I’d continue to do until the spray ran cold. This was my ritual. The first six minutes consisted of standing in front of the stream, doing nothing except taking in the heat, feeling it beat on my back. Then I’d smoosh a squirt of Pert Plus into my hair, and rinse. Soaping up my bod took all of two minutes, and then I’d spend the rest of the shower jerking off. I’d gotten the timing down so good that I usually managed to finish about fifteen seconds before the water turned to ice, the coldness a pleasant shock to my warm postorgasmic state.

  Tonight’s shower, though, was proving difficult. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it felt like, Sea’s enormous boobs making direct contact with my chest. And of course this made me wonder what they looked like, which in turn made me feel like a nasty pervert. She was practically my sister. I finally understood what Shelli must’ve gone through the time she walked in on her mom fooling around with the plumber. It was like someone had stamped an image on your brain against your will, and there wasn’t anything you could do to make it go away. I balled my hands into fists and pressed them into my eyes, trying to erase what I was seeing in my mind.

  I could feel the stirrings of a hard-on and hoped it was an automatic response to this phase of the shower, and not some sign that I was morphing into a full-on perv. Just to be certain, I conjured up some surefire fantasy material. Sarah, naked, and begging for it. I closed my eyes tight, focusing on her pressed up against me in that boat from my dream, and reached down. But I’d barely found the rhythm when Seattle’s newly bald head stuck itself on Sarah’s shoulders.

  I wanted my hand to stop but it wouldn’t. A few tugs later and it was over, Sea’s head still clouding up my mind. I felt so dirty that I soaped up all over again, even though the water had turned cold. Serves me right, I thought. What kind of sicko shoots his load when his sister’s on his mind?

  seattle

  What Goes Up Must Come Down

  The next morning I woke up around nine—early, at least for me. My body ached to skate. Screw the heat; I’d make myself immune. I put on some baggy pants and poked around Mount Saint Laundry for a semi-clean T-shirt. They all smelled like feet, so I grabbed one of Jesse’s out of his dresser. We were about the same height, but he had smaller bones, and the front of his shirt stretched so tightly across my chest that the hem of it barely covered my belly button. This was not ideal—I was used to hiding my curves, not showing them off—but I had no time for vanity. I was itching to get on my board.

  I thought I could get out the door without Critter noticing, but when I went into the kitchen to grab some breakfast, there he was, leaning on the counter, dunking a Pop-Tart into his usual mug of Coke.

  “You’re dressed,” he said.

  “I’m going skating.”

  “How are you even awake?”

  I shrugged. “How are you?”

  He crammed the last of the Pop-Tart into his mouth and swallowed. “You want me to go with you?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I kind of want to be alone.”

  It was rare that Critter and I did things on our own. But the day before had been so weird, what with him walking in on me and Scott. And since my morning agenda included finding Scott, I knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to bring Big Brother along. So I tossed him a quick “later,” and went on my way.

  First I skated to the park where I had run into Scott and Russ, but it was empty. Of course. Why would anyone be up and out at this insanely early hour? So then I skated over to Russ’s street. There was a metal bike rack on the end of it that no one ever used. It was a great surface for practicing lipslides—which also gave me a viable excuse for being near Russ’s place to begin with.

  Halfway there I realized I’d left my pads and helmet at home. It was pretty stupid to do lipslides on a high rail without any sort of protective gear, but going back to get it meant facing Critter again—not an option.

  For a skater, confidence is key. The minute I started to doubt a landing, I fell. It was as simple as that. If I flew on autopilot, never questioning the position of my wheels, I almost never bailed.

  I tried to keep this in mind as I ollied up the curb onto the sidewalk. The plan was to launch into the lipslide on the first pass, but as I popped the next ollie, I got spooked and landed it without even attempting the rail. Mistake No. 1. On the second pass, my back foot slipped, so instead of smacking the tail of my board down into the ollie, I smacked my tailbone against the hard concrete. Mistake No. 2.

  This was when I should’ve chucked it all and just gone home. But messing up the ollie—the basis for most skate tricks, so easy even six-year-olds can land them in their sleep—was a slap to my pride. Now I had to nail the lipslide.

  I picked up speed, popped
the perfect ollie, and turned my board so that when I landed on the metal rail, it was snug up against the inside of my rear trucks. The lipslide itself was flawless. And if it hadn’t been for a stray cat crawling along the spot where I planned to land, everything would’ve been beautiful. But since killing said cat would be a bad thing, I kicked my board away midair, sending it off to a soft patch of grass and me to a particularly choppy piece of asphalt.

  Mistake No. 3.

  A string of particularly loud obscenities shot out of my mouth as the pain spread to every inch of my body. There were small pebbles embedded in several sections of skin, and blood trickled from my left ankle and elbow. The only saving grace was that no one was around to witness the carnage.

  Wrong. Not ten seconds later a concerned-looking Scott came jogging across the parking lot, naked except for a pair of camo pants hacked off just below the knee. “Are you okay? Is anything broken? Can you move your arm? Your leg?”

  I wanted to respond but couldn’t make my mouth work. It was mostly from the shame of knowing he must’ve seen me wipe out, but the small chunk of glass sticking out of my bottom lip didn’t help either.

  “Jesus,” Scott said. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you?”

  Before I could stop him, he helped me up off the ground, threw my right arm around his neck, and half carried me back to Russ’s house.

  Doctor Love

  “Stop squirming.”

  Scott was pressing a cotton ball soaked in peroxide against the spot where he’d tweezed out the glass, and it burned like hell.

  “I said stop squirming.”

  I pushed his arm away. “Get that thing off me.”

  “You want an infection?”

  “I want a painkiller.”

  He laughed. “Quit your bitchin’ and let me fix you up.”

  Despite my protests, I sort of liked the feel of Scott’s fingertips on my face. Plus, he was still shirtless, so I was getting an up-close-and-personal view of the fine black hair skimming the nicely defined muscles of his chest. The only thing I didn’t like about this scene was the locale (i.e., Casa de Louten). Thankfully, His Royal Russ-ness was still bunkered down from the night, so it was almost like Scott and I had the place to ourselves.

  “It hurts,” I moaned.

  “Here,” he said, offering me his other hand. “Squeeze it.”

  I squeezed as hard as I could—at first. But the more he talked, the more I loosened my grip. Eventually there was no squeezing involved, and we were simply holding hands.

  “You know,” he said, “you were looking pretty good out there. Got a lot of air between you and the ground.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re right about that board, though. It’s definitely seen better days.”

  “I know,” I said. “But skating’s an expensive hobby. And Layla—that’s my mom—she says my grades aren’t high enough for me to spend time working when I should be studying.”

  He cocked his head. “So pull up the grades. You have to work if you want to support your habit.”

  How many times had Jesse said the exact same thing to me? And how many times had those words made me feel super defensive and more than a little pissed off? Now I just felt ashamed, like Scott thought I was some kind of stupid slacker girl.

  He tossed the soiled cotton ball into the bathroom’s wastebasket and let go of my hand. “Let me see that elbow.”

  I thrust it upward and said, “I’m not dumb, you know.”

  “No one said you were.”

  “I meant about the grades. School’s stupid. I hate the people and I’m always bored.”

  Scott smiled patiently, somehow avoiding the look of condescension that usually went with that sort of smile. “You do what you have to do, right? I mean, don’t you ever think about going to college?”

  “Not really.” My eyes narrowed into full-on squint position. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’ll be eighteen in September.”

  “And do you ever think about going to college?”

  “Already been,” he said. “Evergreen State. Just finished my first year.”

  “At seventeen?”

  “I’m a nerd,” he said, almost sheepishly. “My mom had me in kindergarten when I was four, and I tested out of my senior year in high school.”

  “Oh.”

  The brainiac finished with my elbow and tapped on my banged-up knee. “Evergreen’s a really progressive liberal arts school. Lots of hands-on stuff, less time spent talking theory. I almost never get bored.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you trying to recruit me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I totally get off on converting people to the Cult of Formal Education.” He punctuated the sentence by squeezing my non-hurt knee, so even though I wanted to be annoyed, all I could really do was smile.

  He asked me if I’d had breakfast and I told him no. “Well, pretty girl, this is your special day. We’ve got a brand-new box of Lucky Charms sitting in the pantry.”

  Automatically I reached up to tug on a dreadlock, forgetting for a second that I no longer had any hair. Pretty girl? Not me.

  “I cut my hair,” I blurted out.

  “Really? You did?” I was about two seconds from being crushed when a big grin spread across Scott’s face. “I’m kidding. I think it’s really cute.”

  “Cute?”

  “Yeah, it makes your eyes stand out. You couldn’t see how pretty they are behind all that blue hair.”

  There was that word again. Pretty. But I wasn’t a pretty girl. At least, I’d never thought of myself as one.

  My stomach did a flip-flop. Danger, Will Robinson. I had a feeling I shouldn’t get too excited about a seventeen-year-old genius boy who went to college three thousand miles away, even if he could skate.

  “You never mentioned why you’re here for the summer,” I said. “I can’t imagine your cousin’s charms are the draw.”

  He nodded. “I was waiting for you to ask that question.”

  “And?”

  “Well . . . I was supposed to spend the summer in Austin, with my girlfriend.”

  Girlfriend?

  “Ex-girlfriend,” he corrected himself. “Her uncle’s an indie filmmaker shooting his first full-length feature. We were going to work on the set, do some grunt work.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I walked in on her having sex with my roommate.”

  “Oh.” It took a minute for his words to sink in. “Oh,” I said again. Genius Skater Boy was actually Genius Skater Rebound Boy.

  “Look,” Scott said, “there’s nothing going on between Katja and me. I’m almost completely over it.”

  Katja. Now that was the name of a pretty girl. “If you’re so over it,” I said, “why did you have to come all the way to Delaware to heal your broken heart?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Sit at home and mope? I’d already bought my plane ticket to Austin. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so . . .”

  I sat there, totally silent. Scott poured another dose of Lucky Charms into his bowl and crunched along, staring into space as I tried to sort things out. I wasn’t the most experienced dater, but I had a feeling that Genius Skater Boy + recent ex-girlfriend + college three thousand miles away = disaster waiting to happen.

  So we’d be friends. It wasn’t like I had a ton of those, anyway.

  Just then a beyond-bedheaded Russ wandered in, also naked save a pair of Incredible Hulk boxers. He took one look at me, rolled his eyes, and said, “What happened to your hair? Is that the new lesbo look?”

  “Piss off,” I shot back. I pushed my bowl away and hopped off the stool. “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait,” Scott said. “Don’t listen to him.”

  Of course, Russ wasn’t the real reason I wanted to leave. He just provided the perfect excuse.

  At the door Scott asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Nothin
g.”

  “We should skate,” he said. “Go to that park Russ was telling me about.”

  “Newport?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  It was tempting. I was curious about what he could do on a board, and I wouldn’t mind an opportunity to show off my own killer moves. I wondered if Katja could nail a backside pivot fakie, or if she skated at all.

  “Say yes,” Scott said. “I promise we’ll have a lot of fun.”

  That, I thought, is exactly what I’m afraid of.

  And yet I agreed to meet him at Russ’s place around nine the next day. He responded with a thousand-watt smile, which made me feel even more confused. Scott reminded me to bring my helmet and pads, and I promised I would.

  I was almost through the door when he asked, “How much have you saved up for that new board?”

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  “Can you get at least fifty by tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know—why?”

  “ ’Cause I think it’s time we built you a new one. In the meantime, leave this one here and I’ll see if I can salvage anything from it, okay?”

  I walked home, half dazed. Now that I’d left my board with him, there was no way I could flake out on our skate plans. And then there was the money thing. I didn’t actually have any saved, and I had no idea where I was going to get that kind of cash so quickly. The only person I could possibly ask was Jesse, and he was pretty tightfisted. But how could I pass up the chance to have a custom-made, virgin board? Even if the guy who offered to make it was only interested in hanging out with me because he’d had his heart stomped on by some girl named Katja?

  The answer was, I couldn’t.

  It was just before eleven, and Jesse wouldn’t be home until four. This left me five hours to figure out how to convince him to cough up the dough. Under normal circumstances, I’d go to Critter and ask him to help me cook up a plan. But these were not normal circumstances.

  For the first time in a long, long while, I was on my own.

  critter