Not the Girls You're Looking For

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Lulu took its true meaning. They were to be great friends. “No, never quite.”

  “I never thought Ben Saad’s little sister would be one of those girls who doesn’t eat,” Matt said.

  Lulu’s jaw set. “I’m fasting. For Ramadan.”

  “Shit,” said Matt, almost looking contrite.

  “Cool,” said James. He didn’t break eye contact with Lulu or make a strange, sympathetic face. He didn’t ask for explanations. He didn’t apologize or make it weird, as he nearly had before. He just nodded, then turned to Matt. “Dude, seriously? Could you not ask before eating my fries?”

  Lulu felt indescribable relief at these words. She looked at James, but he was staring pointedly at Matt, who had a handful of fries half in his mouth. Matt’s expression was penitent, almost. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was swiftly cut off.

  Lulu held up her hand, in an attempt to prevent Matt from spewing a sea of ketchup and fries across the table. “You know, I once started a food fight in the fourth grade.” She directed her contagious smile toward James. “Never got caught, either.”

  “In that case, I’m glad you don’t have any ammunition,” said Matt.

  “If you say so.”

  “I’d love to know what you mean by that,” said James.

  Lulu knew a challenge when she heard one. “Any self-respecting girl who’s been in a food fight knows that you can’t only use your own food as ammo. How do you think I’ve been raised?” She grabbed one of James’s fries with a plotting smile. She moved as though to fling it, but dropped it before launch.

  He flinched, much to her satisfaction. “Badly, from the looks of it.”

  Their eyes locked, neither one willing to show their unease or embarrassment. Out of the corner of her eye, Lulu caught a movement from across the table. She heard the sound of crunching. James broke eye contact, and Lulu wasn’t sure if she had won or lost.

  “Matt, dammit!” said James.

  Matt had finished off all of James’s fries. Crumbs scattered everywhere as evidence of his crime. Matt looked nearly contrite. Lulu laughed heartily. James and Matt joined in. Lulu often felt quite sure moments like these were precious. A person only got so much spontaneity in one lifetime. The trio piled back into James’s tiny car, a merrier, less stifled crew than had arrived at the restaurant.

  12

  Drop Trou

  James’s house was smaller than the other ones on the street—the lone piece of midcentury ranch architecture left on the block. The home had one other distinguishing feature: a basketball hoop set up in the driveway that had perfect half-court lines painted in hot pink. There was a coziness about the house and its situation that engulfed Lulu immediately. The front lawn had an azalea bush that wasn’t much to look at this time of the year. But come spring, it would be lovely. A little winding stone path led up from the driveway to a bright red door.

  “Do you play?” Lulu pointed to the basketball hoop as she stepped across the threshold.

  Matt made an immediate beeline for the kitchen.

  “Always here for the manners, isn’t he?” Lulu laughed to fill the silence from Matt’s absence.

  “He’s made himself at home here,” James said. “And I don’t play, but my sister does.”

  “Your parents put in that whole court for your sister? That’s pretty nice,” Lulu said.

  “My mom bought the house with her in mind, after my parents broke up.” James shrugged. “She measured everything so we could paint the lines to women’s standard for her.”

  “Oh.” Lulu wasn’t sure what to say. She felt her first misstep. She hadn’t quite mastered how to talk to kids whose parents were divorced in a way that communicated that she didn’t think it was a big deal. Or that she knew it was a big deal, but she didn’t want to make a thing of it. She wanted to prove she didn’t judge, but usually she stood uncomfortably, her hands clasped behind her back, trying to figure out what to say next. “That’s still nice, you know?”

  “I do.” He responded in earnest, giving her a quick smile and nod.

  Lulu took a deep inhale, pivoting on the front of her feet. Curiosity would get the better of her. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Somewhere off in Florida still. I think.” He kept his back to her as he spoke.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, it’s all right, though. I mean, there was a time when it wasn’t all right. But now it is. Or at least he’s so many states away that it’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lulu paused in the hallway.

  James turned around. “Don’t be,” but then he didn’t finish his clause with another, more trite one like, “It’s not your fault,” or “You didn’t do anything.” Instead he continued on with, “I’d rather have my one mom than two parents I can’t stand.”

  Lulu blinked several times. “How’d you figure out how to be so calm about it?”

  “Practice, I guess. Your parents split up when you’re eleven, you either stay angry forever or you figure it out pretty quick. I don’t think my sister remembers their being married. To be honest, I’m kinda glad. Is that terrible?”

  Lulu looked around at the room, taking in the family photos, the state of the furniture, the placement of the old television. “No, I don’t think so,” she finally answered, her fingers trailing against the chipped end table beside her.

  “Hey—” he said, but then a trilling ring started. “Dammit.” James looked around the room for the house phone—first checking its cradle, then checking around the couch and under the coffee table—to little success.

  “I’m going to get that; it might be my mom, but do you want a Coke or something? Matt has probably already helped himself to all the food in the house.”

  “Sure,” said Lulu. She wasn’t going to drink it, but she needed somewhere to put her hands.

  “Okay, I’ll be back,” he said, still in a harried search for the source of the ringing.

  “I won’t go anywhere.” Lulu wandered around the room. She stopped in front of some shelves. She had picked up a framed photo when she heard a squeak at the other end of the room. Her head whipped up, and she set the frame down with a quickness that revealed her guilt.

  “Snooping already?” asked Matt, popping out of the kitchen.

  “Guilty.” Lulu shrugged. “Are you making pizza snacks?”

  “Only for the worthy,” said Matt.

  “Do I count?”

  Matt tilted his head. “Jury’s still out.”

  Lulu nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Hey, sorry about that.” James walked in with the phone in one hand, a soda in the other. He was looking between Lulu and Matt. “Matt, are you preparing for hibernation?”

  Matt shrugged. “Possibly.” He ducked back into the kitchen.

  James took that as some kind of a cue. A sly smile spread across his face. “You’re not going to drink this, are you?”

  Lulu returned his expression. James missed some cues on her fasting but managed to keep picking them up in the nick of time. “Nope.”

  He drummed his fingers against the can and set it down on a coaster on a mahogany sideboard that was already covered in dents and scratches. Like he took care of it regardless.

  “Come on, let’s go upstairs.” James gestured to a small half flight of stairs.

  Lulu did her best not to resent having to trail behind him.

  At the top of the steps was a single door on the left-hand side. She followed James through the doorway and stepped into his room. As she surveyed its contents, her eyes fell to his bed, neatly made, though the rest of the room was suspended in a state of chaos. She tried to look away before he caught her staring there.

  A question had been bouncing around in her mind since before lunch, and, unable to hold it in any longer, she blurted it out. “Do you seriously find me terrifying?”

  “Jesus, you don’t know you’re terrifying?”

  Lulu didn’t know what to say. Yes. She always had known she was terri
fying. Her father was scared of her. And his father—her jedu—had been, too.

  When Lulu first met her grandfather, he’d come to their house. She was all of three, maybe four. She walked right up to him. “Come here,” she said. He followed. “Sit,” she said. He sat. Then she crawled onto his lap and handed him a sweet. He ate it without question. From that moment on, she owned him. He would defy as many dictators as he had all over again before he crossed his granddaughter. She had command in her eyes, he knew. But she wasn’t idly grasping for power that wasn’t hers. She had simply been born in charge. She’d known it for ages. It was only when people wouldn’t stop describing their amazement at her potency that she realized there was anything strange about it. She’d simply always felt like herself, not like some rare exception. And that, she found, scared people most of all.

  Lulu’s silence reverberated through the room.

  James sucked in a breath. “I mean, I feel like when I’m around you I am always saying the stupidest things. Don’t you say stupid things when you’re scared?” James registered the expression on Lulu’s face and mistook its meaning. He scuffed his toe against the floor. “Oh, of course not. You only say brilliant things.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “When I’m afraid. I usually can’t stop talking, or when I’m nervous. I mean, in terms of sheer volume, the ratio of stupid things to not stupid is pretty high. Like about your parents earlier. Or the basketball hoop.”

  “That’s something, then. I guess you’re not a cyborg.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Though it would be kinda cool to have a bionic eye.”

  James laughed. Not a self-deprecating laugh. A real, honest laugh. Lulu loved that he didn’t withhold his appreciation of her humor. So few boys would appreciate a joke of hers so freely. They wanted to be funny. But so did she.

  She inspected his room, carefully avoiding looking at the bed again. She picked up a perfectly solved Rubik’s Cube. “You can solve one of these?”

  “Yeah.” James shrugged. “It’s pretty easy, you—”

  But Lulu already had her hands up, waving in front of his face. “No, no. Don’t tell me. I know there’s a trick. I don’t want to know.”

  “Why not?”

  Lulu put down the cube. “I like a little mystery in my life.”

  “Even for stuff that is in no way mysterious anymore?”

  Lulu turned on her brightest smile, her eyes lit with possibility. “Especially then.”

  James stood carefully still under the spotlight of such attention.

  Lulu turned away and began flipping through a stack of photos she found on his desk. “Oh my God, is that Anderson?”

  “You mean Dane?”

  “Yeah. How old are y’all here?” She held up the photo.

  James leaned over Lulu, pinching the corner of the photo to angle it toward him. “I think we’re eleven or twelve.”

  “Those are some braces you’ve got there.” Lulu turned, realizing only too late that their faces were too close. The smell of soap and lemons fluttered into her space. Lulu bit the inside of her cheek, desperate to not lean in.

  James immediately backed up. “You interested in Dane?”

  “Lord, no. I hate him,” Lulu said, as casual as she might be.

  “Hate him? Why do you hate him?” James had the look of a woodland creature again—a baby doe or a little lost lamb. What a sweet expression to catch on his face.

  Lulu decided the best answer was also the most evasive one. She spun her half truths quickly. “I used to like him, you know.”

  “Did you?” Every time he looked like he might gain his footing in the conversation, it slithered out from under him. “What happened?”

  “Freshman year happened,” she said, letting him fill in the worst sort of blanks. She wondered if Matt would come back anytime soon. She’d never known someone who could spend that long foraging for snacks. Maybe he would bring some of them back to the room. Her stomach grumbled, as she remembered she couldn’t have any snacks until sundown. She was so close to the end, too. She’d have to make it all the way through her fasting. She couldn’t come this far into the month and fail. “I sometimes forget you know him.”

  Lulu continued wandering about his room, picking up errant objects and setting them back down equally as listlessly.

  “That’s how I was at that party. When we met.” James hunched his shoulders slightly.

  “How could I forget?” Lulu whirled around to face him.

  James stared at her. She could see her half smile unsettled him. His whole posture was trapped—somehow suspended between a clear desire to bolt and a need to stand perfectly still.

  Lulu decided to state the obvious. “God, you pissed me off that night.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He let out a laugh, more breath than sound.

  Lulu watched his shoulders unhunch, and she knew, despite what he had said, he didn’t know. He had no idea. He only ever saw the effect, the after. He had no idea what he had done to her that night.

  “You saw me. Said I was different. I stay visible, but I don’t like to be seen. Not like that. Especially not by strangers. I don’t know what they’re capable of. I wanted to put my fist through your face. You were so…” She wasn’t about to use a gentle word. “Frightening.”

  James absentmindedly rolled up his sleeves, and Lulu watched the lean muscles in his forearms tense and relax. Her irritation flared as she lost the thread of her thought. He wasn’t even doing it on purpose, because that self-conscious look appeared again across his face. Her jaw went slack as all her effort was concentrated in not trailing a finger along his exposed arm.

  “And here I thought you were gonna say racist,” he offered.

  “Yeah,” she said, recovering. Lulu looked him in the eye. “That, too.”

  He had a sloping, self-deprecating smile across his face. She couldn’t help but return the expression.

  “Yeah. I get that now,” he said. “That wasn’t where I was going, but I can see it.”

  “Why did you say it?” She needed to understand the way his mind worked. She needed his answer.

  “I saw you and I thought. I saw you with Dane. It seemed like something he would say. Like a line. You’re different from other girls. Unique. Noticeable.” James looked away. “It was dumb.”

  Lulu shook her head. “Oof. Promise me never to take any more flirting advice from watching Anderson.”

  James barked a laugh. “You did say you liked him.”

  “True, but it doesn’t mean I’d recommend the example. Short-term gain, long-term loss. Wait, that’s not right. Isn’t it supposed to rhyme? I think it’s supposed to rhyme.” Lulu picked up a Magic 8 Ball off James’s desk and shook it. She didn’t ask a question, but she waited for an answer anyway. Reply hazy, try again. She set the toy down.

  “Why are you so intent on not being seen anyhow?”

  “Because it’s safer,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. She turned around and his expression was so placid.

  “I’ve never been ashamed. But I do get afraid. And when I blend, no one notices anything I don’t want them to see. Not any more than they might. Just dark hair. Or dark eyes. But I blend. I need it. I can make them look where I want them to. I’d be too scared without it. Now you see me, now you don’t. That’s why I don’t mind my uniform so much. Except in the winter.” She squirmed a bit, uncomfortable with laying so much of herself bare.

  “Why in the winter?” he asked.

  “So. Cold. I don’t know why I bother with the tights. And our ‘regulation outwear’ is about as thin as a T-shirt.” Lulu shivered at the thought. She was grateful that she lived somewhere with so few below-freezing days.

  “Can’t you wear pants?”

  “Sure, boys’ pants from the uniform store. You think I can squeeze my ass and my hips into boys’ pants, you’ve got another think coming.”

  He peered over and Lulu whacked him.

  “That wasn’t
an invitation to look, you punk.”

  “I bet you’d fit into mine.”

  Lulu huffed pointedly.

  “Seriously.” James grinned a mischievous grin. “Twenty bucks?”

  Lulu grinned right back. She loved a dare. And loved that he knew it. And from his expression he might not have realized a step in this dare that she was going to thoroughly enjoy. The anticipation shot a small thrill through her.

  “You’re on.” And then she stared. Right at him. She tapped her foot, theatrically. “I’m waiting.”

  James squirmed under the scrutiny. “For what?”

  “Your pants.” Lulu held her hand out, palm up, expectantly. She had a knowing look in her eye. “Those pants.”

  He looked down at his jeans. And then, whirling around, he saw what Lulu had already realized. There wasn’t a bathroom connected to his room. There wasn’t a bathroom on this floor that she’d noticed. The second floor was an addition to the house, an afterthought. And he’d have to sift through all his dirty clothes on the floor to find another pair of pants. James flushed from his neck to his ears.

  Lulu grinned a shit-eating grin.

  “Do you want me to turn around?” she asked.

  That was the last straw for James, clearly. He took a deep breath. “No,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t break eye contact, which made Lulu think him braver than she had realized. As unceremoniously as he could, he undid the buckle at the front of his jeans. For half a second, the smug grin on her face was wiped clean. All she could do was stare at his fingers as the buckle of his belt jangled in the near-silent room. He looked up and his eyes gleamed. His mouth turned up on one side. He dropped his pants and handed them over to Lulu. He had on red boxers with Christmas emojis all over them.

  Lulu smirked. “Joyeux Noël.”

  It seemed James thought it was his turn to smirk. “Indeed.”

  She knew what he was thinking, with that smirk. That she’d have to take off her own pants to try his on. And because he was so wrong, she smiled back, like butter couldn’t melt in her mouth. She would win this round soundly. Wearing the leggings she had slept in, Lulu wiggled into his pants. She did up the button and zipped them closed. They were plastered onto her skin across her hips and her thighs, strangely baggy around her knees, and they came well past her feet. They were at once too large and too small. She probably couldn’t walk in them, but they did, in fact, close. She arched her eyebrows. “I guess you’re right. I can get into your pants. I owe you twenty bucks.”