“I’m supposed to get my period next week,” Rosenberg says. “What am I supposed to do then?”
“Blame it on hormones,” I say. “Just be like, ‘It came back! What do you want from me?’ ”
“Ha! That’s hilarious,” Rosenberg says.
“McGee probably won’t find it so funny,” Jensen says.
“McGee needs to get laid,” Rosenberg says.
“All right,” I say. “Who’s going first?”
“I’ll go,” Rosenberg says, “take one for the team.”
“What if she gets suspicious?” Jensen asks. “I mean, we all have our periods at the same time?”
“I think that can happen,” Rosenberg says. “Like, when a group of girls hangs out together all the time, they can sync up or something.”
“How does that happen?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Rosenberg says. “Bodies are weird.”
“That sounds like a load of crap,” Jensen says. “But I hope she buys it.”
Rosenberg leaves the locker room, and it’s just me and Jensen. We sit across from each other on two benches and stare at our shoes. Jensen finally looks up at me, and we make eye contact.
“Does it feel weird?” Jensen asks.
“What?” I ask.
“To fake your period?”
“Why does it even matter? McGee won’t know I’m faking.”
“That’s the kind of person you are now? Someone who lies when they don’t want to do something?”
“I’m not a liar.”
“Yeah, you are. That’s literally what you’re doing.”
“You don’t have your period, either, right now. So you’re a liar, too.”
“I have it, just not right at this moment.”
“That’s still a lie. And why do you care so much, anyway?”
“You’re right. I don’t. Forget it.” Jensen looks back down at the floor.
“Why did you even bring it up?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“It smells like cat piss in here,” Jensen says as she gets up and walks out. I guess I’m going last to tell McGee about why I can’t swim this week.
A few minutes later, McGee comes into the locker room and asks if I’m not out by the edge of the pool because I have my period, too. I just nod, and she signals me to take my stuff and sit with Rosenberg and Jensen. They do their math homework, and I look over my spring break assignment. Mr. Michaelson wrote Be careful, but nice job underneath a big A. I write on a blank page of my English notebook, I will get my period, I will get my period, I will get my period, over and over again. The rest of the kids are swimming, and it actually doesn’t look so bad. At least they’re doing something, while I just sit here bored. It’s weird that, even though the boys are shirtless, the girls still have to wear one-pieces or tankinis. No one seems concerned with that, though; they’re just swimming. I write until the bell rings. I get splashed when everyone gets out of the pool, and my skirt is wet for the rest of the day.
* * *
—
The first week after break, I go to school every day anxious and excited at the possibility of running into Stephen—of starting the next stage of our love story. But fate does me no favors, and I don’t see him. I start to wonder if he’s ignoring me, that wonder evolving into fear that maybe he’s doing it on purpose.
Over IM, he and I try to make plans, but it never seems to work out. He has to take care of his brothers, he’s busy with friends, he’s working on his car; it’s always something. Eventually, one night on the phone, he tells me his family actually moved to Wellington Green over spring break. Wellington is only thirty minutes from Boca, but he changed schools, too. He’s started attending a Christian school, because his parents felt like he was getting into trouble after he got his license. He confesses that he doesn’t think long distance will work; it’ll be too hard, even though he says he really likes me.
I start crying when he says this, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I tell him I have to go and hang up the phone.
I wait for him to call back, or even to instant message with an apology, an explanation. But he doesn’t reach out again. I tried, but I never fully understood why he lied to me. I guess that sometimes that’s just something that people do.
• EIGHTEEN •
One day in early April, Mom calls the school to say she’ll be late for pickup. I learn this information in the form of a note during my last period of the day, 3-D art. I wonder if something happened, but the note doesn’t say. My mom is usually first in line. I’ve always wanted her to come later, so I could stay with Brittany Gottlieb and Leigh, whose moms both work, to experience the in-between dimension of time when no parents or teachers are around.
Bus riders wait in the cafeteria until they can board their respective buses. They buy candy from the vending machine or churros from the snack stand, but it’s not cool to be a bus kid. I rode the bus in elementary school with Jensen, but now I wouldn’t be caught dead on it. The car-pool kids have to go outside when the bell rings and all the teachers leave. The big, heavy doors of the classrooms shut, and they make everyone head out and wait for their rides, but people find ways to sneak back inside. Brittany Gottlieb said that before she started dating Aaron, Tyler Gentz let her touch his boner one time by his locker. Leigh got fingered for the first time after school when band practice was canceled and the room was empty. I imagine the brass instruments keeping her company while some boy stuck his fingers in her pants, tried to do something to her without being precisely sure what. She said it didn’t feel good, but I didn’t believe her. That kind of stuff can be good if the guy knows what he’s doing. Didn’t she at least want to enjoy it? What’s the point if you don’t? If you don’t want it again and again? And what’s the point if you can’t be the type of girl who knows how to make someone else feel good, too?
I’m really crazy about this kid, Jared Richman. Jared isn’t popular, but he’s not unpopular, either. If anything, he has a sort of troublemaker reputation. I’ve seen him carving his initials into lockers with the pointed end of a math compass. He’s not afraid of getting a conditional or being sent to the dean, something that terrifies me so greatly I don’t even like to think about it. We don’t have any classes together—like Jensen, he’s not in honors. But at lunch I always give him my Rice Krispies Treat, even though I want it.
I want to know what goes on inside after school, and today’s apparently my chance, so I devise a plan to go to my locker and pretend I forgot something. I leave my backpack at the base of a small cabbage-palm tree and head inside. I immediately see Jared Marshall coming down the hall with Jeremy Weisberg and Jason Walker, his posse. He’s wearing a navy-blue uniform polo and matching navy shorts. I don’t like when people match the colors of our uniform, but I like the way the dark blue brings out his brown eyes and jet-black hair. He smells like cologne and hair gel. I’m really into that. When I see him coming, I take my hair out of the ponytail that I had from art because we were doing a sculpture project. I can feel a crease from the elastic band. I hope he doesn’t notice. I tell Jared my mom is late picking me up, and he smiles.
He takes my hand and leads me to a classroom doorway down the hall like he knows where to go, like this is where he takes all the girls after school. No other kids are around. He pushes me against a wall and puts his hand on my chest and grabs. I push him away and say, “What are you doing?” even though I know. Jared asks, “Are you a prude?” I don’t want it to be true, so I let him do it again. He does it for a few seconds and says, “I’m so hard,” before he puts my hand on his pants. It feels hard in my hand. He stands there with his mouth agape, and there’s a pause. I know he wants me to get down on my knees and give him a blow job, but I just can’t. I want something like that to happen in the privacy of a bedroom, not in a hallway. I wond
er if I should ask Jared if he’d want to hang out outside school or if we could at least maybe go to the band-practice room, but then he says, “Great, now I’m going to have blue balls,” and runs away. I can hear the other boys laughing down the hall. Their sneakers squeak against the floor until the double doors burst open at the other end.
I walk back to the tree to get my bag and wait for my mom. A sixth grader I have art with is sitting under the tree with her headphones in. She’s reading a book and ignoring a group of boys playing cards, some game with levels and attacks. I can’t remember what it was like not to care what boys thought. I want to be able to sit and read or write or just do nothing. I want to wait for my mom and not get into trouble or be talked about the next day or wonder what everyone else is thinking when they think about me. I sidle by the girl and retrieve my bag, give her a nod for inadvertently watching it for me. She smiles and continues bopping her head to her music. I try not to cry. I stand on the curb with my face toward the sun.
When my mom pulls up, she says we have to meet Dad at a furniture store. She apologizes for being late but says we’re in the middle of bargaining for a dining-room set—we don’t currently have one, even though we moved to Florida six years ago. I’m quiet as she drives.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I’m just in a bad mood.”
She laughs and makes a snorting sound.
“What?” I ask, getting mad.
“If I ask you about your day, you’re mad, and if I don’t ask you, you’re mad, too. It’s just impossible.”
“You don’t get it” is all I manage to say. She has no idea that I have just been felt up against my will and am trying to deal with it, that I am thinking about Jared, about whether he likes me or just wants to use me for play. She doesn’t even know who he is and wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain.
“Is this about Stephen?” she asks, and I want to kill her. “It sounds like you’re playing this cat-and-mouse game with him, and, to be honest, I don’t think it’s fair to him. He obviously likes you, but you play so hard to get and are only interested when he’s not—”
“I didn’t do that!” I yell. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!” My heart is racing, and I start feeling overheated. I turn up the air conditioning in the car, and we continue the rest of the drive in silence. When we arrive at the store, my mom motions to the trunk, where there is a bag of clothes for me. She walks in ahead of me. It looks like it might rain all of a sudden.
I go into the bathroom at the furniture store to change into the shorts my mom packed so I wouldn’t have to stay in my uniform skirt. I look in the mirror and lift up my polo shirt. My black cotton bra has two little cups and some padding inside them. My boobs are small, but I have them now; I have something. There’s the possibility, whether I want it or not, whether I understand what it means. What the boys will do next is always a mystery. I reach under my shirt and grab my own chest. I feel cotton and sweat.
* * *
—
I’m asleep when I finally get my period. I don’t notice it until the next morning, when I’m getting ready for school. My underwear is covered in dark red blood, and I throw them in my trash, wrapped in a wad of toilet paper. They were the ones that said Tuesday, and I wonder if my mom will notice a missing day of the week when she does the laundry. I go under the sink and get one of the pads my mom bought for when the time came. But I don’t tell her at first. A part of me thinks that maybe I don’t really have my period, like it’s just a mistake, not the real thing yet. But I can’t wait to tell the girls.
It’s finally warm enough to have lunch outside again. The girls set up camp on the picnic tables outside the cafeteria.
Kenzie’s started drinking water with lemon, so when I approach our group she’s showing everyone the sliced-up lemons inside her water bottle.
“It helps you lose weight,” Kenzie says, passing it around.
“I heard it’s good for your skin, too,” Tomassi adds, nodding.
“Guess what?” I say, interrupting but not caring. The girls turn their heads toward me. Kenzie looks annoyed. Jensen continues to eat her ham sandwich. “I got my period!”
“Mazel tov!” Rosenberg screams, then gets up to hug me.
“Now you can lose your virginity,” Gottlieb says with a smile.
“I couldn’t lose it before?” I ask.
“No,” Gottlieb says. “It’s, like, not possible if you don’t have your period. You’re not ready, or something.”
“That’s so not true,” Leigh says. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Well, I heard that somewhere,” Gottlieb says.
“I’m so happy for you!” Tomassi says, grabbing my arm. “I got mine when I was in Barbados, but I didn’t want you to feel alone.”
“Yes!” Leigh says. “Congrats!”
“Why are you all congratulating her?” Jensen asks. “For bleeding out of her vagina? That’s not an accomplishment. You guys are so dumb.”
My heart drops when she says this. Jensen isn’t excited for me or even happy that I’m a woman now. She knows how bad I’ve felt about being almost the only one without my period, and now I have it and she doesn’t even care.
“First of all, we’re girls, not guys,” Rosenberg says. “And we’re not dumb. It’s exciting. We’re excited for our friend.”
“Yeah,” Kenzie says. “Don’t be rude about it.”
“I’m not being rude!” Jensen says. “It just doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe not for you,” Rosenberg says. “But just because you haven’t hooked up with anyone since my bat mitzvah doesn’t mean nothing good can happen for any of us. You’re just bitter.”
“My goal in life isn’t to hook up with guys,” Jensen says.
“We’re not saying that,” Tomassi chimes in. “But you can be happy for your friend.”
“Are you guys this stupid?” Jensen says.
“Stop saying that!” Gottlieb says. “None of us are stupid. You’re actually the only one not in any honors classes, so…”
“Yeah, but I also play more sports than any of you put together, so…”
“Which only makes us question if you even like boys at all?” Rosenberg says. “I mean, you never talk about guys…ever. What are we supposed to think?”
“If you are…you know,” Leigh says, “it’s totally okay!”
“Yeah!” Tomassi says. “My aunt is a lesbian.”
“Oh my God!” Jensen raises her voice. “I’m not a lesbian! And I don’t even care if you think I’m gay, anyway. We aren’t friends anymore. Me, her, all of us. Can’t you tell I’ve been spending less and less time with you all?”
“Then leave!” Kenzie says, and everyone else nods. I’m standing opposite Jensen as she pushes away from the table. Jensen stares at me for a moment. She looks at me like it was all my fault—not only the fighting, but all of it: the way we seem to crave guys’ attention, how we hide the truth from our parents, the fact that we’re growing up and she doesn’t want to. She turns her head and walks away.
I try to remember the girl who saved me in fourth grade, the girl who wanted to be my friend. That time seems so far away now, as if that moment happened on a distant planet. I start to cry. I miss her so much, the old Jensen, who would do everything with me, no matter how dumb or silly. I don’t understand why she’s being like this. And I feel bad that everyone’s turned against her now. I also wonder if I’m just emotional from my period. I feel a sharp pain in my stomach and bend over the picnic table.
“Aw,” Kenzie says. “Cramps?”
“Is that what this is?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Rosenberg says. “But they usually don’t make you cry.”
I stand up and go to the bathroom. I’m annoyed with everyone all of a sudden.
“Do you want company?” Tomassi asks, following me.
“No,” I say, and continue walking.
Tomassi follows me to the bathroom anyway.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“I don’t really want to talk.”
“Well, I think you need to. Usually when I’m like this, my mom says that’s when I need to talk the most. Get it out. Don’t keep it inside.”
“I don’t know why this is happening,” I say.
“Which part?” Tomassi asks, boosting herself up onto the bathroom counter. I put my backpack on the floor and slink down next to it.
“The whole thing. My ovaries feel like they’re at war, my friends are at war—I just don’t know when things got so complicated.”
“No offense, but all your friends are assholes.”
“But you’re friends with everyone, and you’re my friend, right?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be sitting in this smelly bathroom with you if I wasn’t your friend. But you have to know that this group of girls is a bunch of bitches.”
“Then why are you in it?”
“Why are you in it?” Tomassi takes a deep breath and sighs. “This is the price you pay, having a group of girlfriends like this. We’re all going to fight, make up, be best friends again. Trust me, it was way worse with the girls in New York.”
“When will we make up? Because it seems like never right now.”
The Brittanys Page 18