Rough Patch

by Nicole Markotic

  And I actually fall asleep thinking about what it would be like to undo Jayne’s ponytail and rub my face into her loose, perfectly straight hair.

  Two days later, Jayne walks me home again. We sit where we can spy Mom coming home or Sam’s bus dropping her off, perched on the hill that slopes up to the Razma’s house. Mr and Mrs and another Mr Razma—I could never figure out if he was a brother or border or poor relation. Or some other kind of other.

  For extra cash, I shovel their walk in winter and rake their leaves in fall. Maybe that’s why they’ve never chased me and Sita away when we plant our bums for hours on the small ledge in their grass, a perfect post-school gossip hillock. Bringing Jayne here feels like I’m cheating on Sita, which reminds me about what my dad said last night. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Jayne just needs a new high school friend? I have no evidence that she wants to kiss me. And I’m pretty sure I’ve iced-over how much I want to kiss her. Could Dad be right that Sita and I are only mad at each other because we were too close? But how close is too close?

  Jayne knocks on the stiff grass, and I say “Who’s there?” automatically. We both crack up and lie back laughing so hard a button pops off my shirt, which makes us laugh even harder. Jayne reaches over and puts her hand on my forearm. We’re not holding hands, but she didn’t shove my shoulder buddy-like, either. That graze of her fingers makes the Chinook return, and it whooshes into my belly.

  “Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other?” she asks. “I can sit in class and trace a mermaid and still bark atlas facts at Rumpled.”

  “Um...” Is she waiting for me to counter? “Did you know that Alan Shepard the astronaut smuggled a golf ball and club onto the spacecraft so he could play golf on the moon?” The only non-skating sport fact I know.

  Jayne’s face isn’t pretty the way Talia Sitkins is pretty, but Jayne’s face invites my whole attention. I’m frozen and on fire at the same time, my insides made up of murky ice and furious flames. Is this how bi feels? Truth be true, almost every kid I know is all a-okay with gay people—as long as it’s no one we know. Gay people are fine out there in the grownup world (Max Bledsoe has mentioned his “art-fag” cousin who studies film at UBC at least twelve times). And gay people are safely hilarious when they’re contained inside television. But my school has about 700 kids, and only seven are out, when the stats say it should be more like seventy. Gay is great, and queer is quasi-cool. Just surf the web or tune in to every single sit-com for the latest version of the gay best-friend character. S’long as you’re living on the other side of the city. If you’re sitting next to someone from my school in the lunch room, then you damn well better be straight as a geometry ruler.

  There are probably a lot of kids like Jayne (like me) who may be gay, but you can’t tell just from looking at them. Boys who dress up too nicely may get picked on, but nobody thinks the teasing is for real. And girls who don’t wear makeup or enough makeup, or who wear plain T-shirts and blue jeans, may get called “dyke,” but no one really notices them enough to care.

  Yes, I’m a superficial jerk. I should have noticed Jayne long before she appeared in my front yard: that lip-twist thing she does is adorable, she moves her arms in a flowing way that makes me long for her to wrap them around me, and her eyes look like avocadoes when she talks about anything important to her, which includes her brother, how she spells her name, her plans for three years from now (yikes, I can’t even think past Regionals!), and even how to get away with wearing jeans all the time when her father thinks a good, church-going girl should wear dresses.

  Jayne shows me her blue jean artwork. Her hands trace across her jeans like tapered wands, each fingertip dripping with myths and magic and burgundy-coloured ink. (Yes, I am smitten.) The thing about Jayne is that her jeans, like her name, are all personalized. On this pair, she’s drawn water nymphs all over the pockets, with waves spilling over the folds. On another, she tells me, she’s drawn the story of Iphis—who was born a girl but lived as a boy—inked from front to back to front, all along where the belt would loop around. Partly because the ink wouldn’t show up and partly because her brother says they look slutty, she doesn’t ever wear black jeans. But blue jeans are just homey enough for her to get away with. Jayne says she wears her shirt untucked when she leaves her house, but tucked in by the time she gets to school. Jayne is an amazing artist.

  With my pinky finger, I follow a water nymph’s hair as it wraps itself around and around her thigh. The etchings make her jeans look like the ice does after the first round of a competition. “But how do you get away with being, you know, you, without your dad taking over your life?”

  “Dishonesty,” she answers, pulling out a pen and beginning to draw a hydra along the inside seam of her jeans. “My dad and my brother love me, but they don’t really see me, not the details.” She draws miniature scales onto the skin of the tiny reptile snaking down toward her knees.

  “Lying, huh? I shoulda thought of that.” And I mean it. Instead of hiding from the world, why not just lie to it? Except, isn’t that kinda what I’ve been doing the whole time?

  “Yeah, I don’t tell my dad or Jamie who I really am. Not yet.” She stops drawing and pulls her legs under her bum. “So my brother makes jokes about how he’ll beat up my future husband if he isn’t good enough for me.” At this Jayne giggles, but it doesn’t sound like a very happy giggle. “I shouldn’t laugh, James is a great brother.” She slides down the hill a bit, so our bums are at the same level. “He’s a true believer, you know?”

  I nod, though I don’t really know. I’m not even sure what church they go to. My parents have never been religious, though I think my dad’s parents are Catholic. Tyler and Sam and I haven’t ever gone to a church, except as tourists, once.

  “In my church, homosexuality is a sin,” she explains, like I’m some sort of idjit.

  “Yeah, a lot of people think that,” I say, nodding some more. “My parents don’t go to church, but I’m pretty sure my dad thinks being a lesbian would be the ultimate felony.” I’m getting goose bumps on my belly cuz we’re sitting so close together, two normal girls, yakking away about being queer. I’ve thought about coming out to my parents, and I tried to come out to Sita, but with Jayne we just are who we are.

  “If James thought his sister was a lesbian, it would totally wreck him, you know? Destroy him. Like I’d betrayed our love.”

  If Tyler found out that I really was interested in girls, he wouldn’t just tease me about being a lesbo, he would out-and-out torture me. But not out of fear. Just another sibling defect for him to strike at.

  “Jamie and I are really close. Especially since our mom died.” She stops for a minute, and watches a cat creep daintily across the wall between yards. “It’s gonna be bad when I tell him.” Jayne nods, but like what she’s saying is not okay at all. “By then, it’ll be too late. I’ll be too far gone for him to be able to do anything to save me.”

  As she shakes her head, I remember how I fell asleep thinking about emancipating her ponytail. That will have to wait.

  “So, I’ll have to wait,” she says, as if she’s right there in my head. “To tell him,” she explains. “I’ll have to wait till it feels like it’s too late.”

  And—coward that I am—I decide to wait, too. We can have the “Keira’s not quite gay and not quite straight” conversation another time. Right now, her worry for her family sends me into a jittery mood. I close my eyes and just breathe for a bit. I smell Jayne’s apple oatmeal shampoo, and I hear her pen scratching against her jeans. We lie there for a while, just breathing.

  When I open my eyes, the cat’s gone, and Jayne has smoothed her sad smile out. I lean back and slide my bum forward, so my head rests on the slight ledge. I’m thinking this would be an excellent chance for Jayne to kiss me. On the one hand, it would be a bold, crazy move. Not only could anyone in the Razma house spot us, but this corner has loads of traffic, and at the bottom of the hill is
a stop sign where cars and kids and people walking dogs pause and look up the hill while they’re waiting to cross. On the other hand, Jayne’s lips ... on my lips. I almost pucker as I think this. And, look, I know, since I’m the one thinking make-out thoughts, I should maybe be the one leaning over and making the moves on her?

  So I just close my eyes again, shove my hands under my back to make my chest rise a bit higher (what, you think only het-boys like boobs?), and think lusty thoughts. We’ve got about twenty minutes before Sam’s bus grunts up the hill. I am going to fret for the next nineteen minutes if we don’t try something, here. I really, really want to melt those minutes away with some kissing.

  “Are you just hanging out with me because you miss your best friend?”

  “Huh?” I prop myself on my elbows.

  “Because it’s one thing if you think we’re, like, maybe becoming girlfriends, but another if you just miss Sita, and so you need a replacement friend.” Ah, now I get why she’s urging me to make up with Sita. I could pretend not to understand, but actually what she’s saying makes a lot of sense.

  “I like you because ... I like you?”

  “Hmm. You like me or you like my mouth?”

  Spooky—how’d she know? I should have a snappy reply, but I do like her mouth, so I brilliantly just beam and keep on sitting next to her.

  “Maybe we both need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” I blurt out. “But for our lying tongues, not for our bitter hearts.”

  And then we crack up all over again, playfully pushing each other around the hill, eventually rolling all the way down to the curb, just like elementary school mud rats who can’t help ourselves.

  Maybe Jayne and I are both waiting for the other to make a first move.

  HET-GIRL ALERT: THINKS IF TWO LESBIANS START DATING, ONE OF THEM HAS TO BE THE GIRL AND ONE HAS TO BE, WELL, THE LESBIAN.

  LESBO ALERT: LONGS TO BE PART OF THIS NEW GIRL-LESBIAN COUPLE SO MUCH MORE THAN SHE WANTS BACK INTO THAT SUMMER BOY-GIRL COUPLE.

  BISEXUAL ALERT: STILL, SORTA, KINDA WANTS TO BE PART OF A BOY-GIRL COUPLE. EVENTUALLY. MAYBE.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  My BIG NEWS: I kissed a girl.

  I kissed a girl, and that kiss still floats on my lips. That kiss lifts my feet when I execute a perfect Axel this morning and feeds me when I skip lunch to run over to Sammie’s school and deliver her forgotten “Make Like a Leaf” autumn project. That kiss reminds me that my body isn’t my enemy but can be my friend, and not just when I’m skating. That kiss makes me love my new school, my parents, my skating competitors. And that kiss reminds me that Sita’s my best friend, that with best friends, it doesn’t matter who said what or whether or not my apology was good, we’re good. Or we’re going to be good. After school, I’ll go to the drama room and make her make friends with me. That Jayne kiss fixes everything.

  There’s no one in my life to tell this to. I actually thought about texting Surge, but even I am not that much of an idjit to text, eye kist uh gyrl!!!!!!!

  Actually, the girl kissed me. Yes, Jayne made the first move. We rolled down the Razmas’ hill and landed in a jumble of arms and legs, and I think my wrist grazed against her boob. But we’d rolled crookedly, so we were jammed up against the hedge that borders the alley. No pedestrians, not even the cat. Every part of me wanted to stay inside that jumble, but I knew we’d have to separate soon. I started to say, “You grabbing my ass?” because I wanted to sound witty and casual, not desperate, and definitely not virginal.

  Except Jayne stroked my left cheek, her finger etching onto my face the story of Iphis falling in love and transforming into a boy so that she could marry Ianthe. She grazed her knuckles along my lips, and I felt them quiver. When Surge kissed me, I wasn’t expecting it, and I got lost in the first full-on kiss I’d ever had in my life. I didn’t know he liked me (cuz maybe it was an “end of summer, may as well kiss someone” kiss), and I didn’t even know if I liked him (cuz maybe it was a “how can I know if I like girls or boys if I haven’t kissed either?” kiss), but then we were deep inside each other’s mouths. And didn’t climb out until we boarded separate buses the next day. Or that’s how my lips seem to remember those last twelve hours of summer.

  Jayne’s lips don’t taste like candy or a fruit bowl or the back of my hand. Jayne’s lips taste like the rollercoaster at the Stampede and a thick comforter in winter. They taste like I’ll keel over onto my back if I don’t get another.

  Jayne’s lips ... still kissing mine as I say, “Wait, someone might see, better stop.” And I pull away too fast.

  She shakes out of our jumble and has her cellphone out before I can push my words back down my traitor throat.

  The problem with fixes: they can be rebroken.

  In the hallway just before Social Studies, Sita walks right past me and over to Talia Sitkins’s locker, hugs her, and skips off with her new best mate. I get that she’s making friends with other girls who aren’t me, but—Talia Sitkins? My brain does a toe-flip and falls—splat—bottom-first on the ice-hard linoleum. And, forget yesterday’s kiss, all my resolve collapses into itself, just because Sita’s talking with some other girl. Queer, eh?

  Back in September, Sita and I planned to take Sammie Trick-or-Treating around the neighbourhood this Hallowe’en, right before heading over to the dance at the school. Take Sam trick-or-treating, Sita at the Regionals to cheer me on, and me there for the opening of her play. In each scenario, Sita’s there for me to talk to.

  Except now, she isn’t here to talk to. For the first time. Ever.

  Before all this happened, back in early summer, I took the plunge and asked Sita point-blank about kissing. Just in case she was right about me meeting someone while playing junior ranger, I wanted to get some solid kissing advice.

  “What if I do meet the cutest person, and that someone actually wants to make out with me?” (Thinking back on that day, I realize I’ve been hiding my pronouns for a very long time with Sita.) “And what if my breath tastes like last night’s supper?”

  “You telling me my breath smells bad?”

  “Not you, me.” We were filling in magazine surveys. I munched through my third apple in a row, and Sita finished off a total of one grape. Totalling her scores in these quizzes (“Can You Flirt Your Way to Popularity?” or “Match the Celebrity Tattoo to the Celebrity Belly!”) is the only math Sita really gets into. Her sisters buy these magazines in bundles and pass them along down the line.

  “Um, brush your teeth in between meals?”

  “Thanks, but I’m serious!”

  “Me, too.” Sita puts the mag down, checking off her fingers. “Brush after meals, brush in the morning, pop a piece of gum or chocolate in your mouth right after lunch break or whenever you think you might run into a cute guy.” She leaves the mag on the ground, holding out her palms in front of her. “But this whole give-me-advice-on-how-to-avoid-mouth-drool is not your real question, is it?” (I hadn’t even thought about mouth-drool—gross.)

  Me: “No.”

  Sita: “Okay, so, the idea of full-on sex grosses you out? So don’t have sex. Even with a guy you’re totally into.”

  Me: “But it’s not that simple. What am I supposed to do, go kiss anyone I have a crush on, take their lips for a test-drive, then hop off until I figure out who I really like?”

  Sita: “In a nutshell? Yes. Take lips on test drives. If you don’t like kissing them, trust me, you won’t like anything else they do with their bodies.”

  Me: “But—”

  Sita: “Yeah.” The end of that conversation. And Sita and I haven’t had another one like it since. May never again.

  Maybe thinking about Sita giving me kissing advice makes me maudlin (or maybe just thinking about needing kissing advice during my kiss with Jayne makes me maudlin). Or maybe ...

  After Sita chooses Talia over me, I head home. Get there just as Tyler and his buds head out to shoot hoops.

  “Hey, it’s Stickbean!” Genius Jason says to me as they’re he
ading out the door.

  Tyler’s always practicing his sports—with the guys, by himself, with Sammie. Since skating is my only sport, the only other exercise I get is in gym class. In Backstrom High, gym is only mandatory for grade ten. Which is a relief to everyone. Kids who are good at sports, like Tyler, try out for teams. And kids who hate athletics no longer have to suffer through Dodgeball and Pom-Pom-Tag and Steal-the-Bacon.

  But I don’t mind gym. Because of skating, I don’t have the time (or, let’s face it, the talent) for any other organized sports. And in gym, we run around throwing things at each other and get to take a shower in the middle of the day. It beats another class on the history of the class system in Western Europe.

  Everyone’s least favourite team sport is field hockey. In my class, the girls whine about having to play outside, especially when it gets too cold (too cold, ha! try skating before dawn on a February morning when it’s already minus 35 degrees Celsius!). And it bugs my classmates that the sticks have a “right” side and a “wrong” side.

  “What kind of hockey is this?” Talia yells out to Ms Mukerjee. “In real hockey, in Canadian hockey, players are allowed to hit the puck with either side of the stick.”

  Yeah, like Talia has ever played ice hockey in her life. All her expertise comes from watching her current boyfriend’s hockey games. His team is so good, they get the prime arena practice time: every afternoon from four till six, Saturday afternoons from noon till four. He scores; she cheers. So apparently she’s an expert.

  The “Canadian” emphasis is because Ms Mukerjee has an accent. A British accent. But Talia thinks that anyone not from around here must somehow get the rules of hockey wrong, no matter that field hockey is not originally Canadian. If Sita were out there with us, Talia would get a blast of sarcasm to match her unwitty complaints. But Sita and I don’t share gym class. Looks like we don’t share anything any more.