My Eyes Are Up Here

by Laura Zimmermann

  “There’s one other thing that Emma said. About you.” Jessa brings me back to real life.

  “What?”

  Kate says, “She said they were talking about all the new girls and the thing that everyone said about you was that you might be good, but it’s like you just aren’t comfortable or something. Like you’re distracted.”

  “I’m not distracted.” Of course I’m distracted. It’s like I’m juggling two extra volleyballs out there. “Maybe I’m a little nervous.”

  Kate shrugs. “I’m just saying what Emma told me. And I know for a fact that Reinhold is big on attitude.”

  “Attitude? Who said anything about attitude? I’ve got an AWESOME attitude.” I am sure my attitude does not sound awesome.

  “Not attitude, exactly. Focus,” corrects Jessa. It occurs to me that it was Jessa, not the coach, who wanted me to try out. It matters to her that I do well. “Just make sure you seem more focused today.”

  Are they kidding me right now? I’ve been thinking of nothing but volleyball—well, volleyball and Jackson—well, volleyball and Jackson and whether my ribcage might actually shatter if my breasts get any heavier—for the last week.

  “I am focused. I’ve got awesome focus. I’m like a laser.” I make the pew-pew sound, even though I know perfectly well that real lasers do not make pew-pew sounds or any other sound for that matter. They’re light waves. The minute bell rings and I am so laser-focused that I barely even notice as Jackson ushers the flirty Fräulein into class. “A LASER!”

  CHAPTER 22

  I am not focused. How can I focus?

  I used to be able to focus. I didn’t think about my body; it just came along for the ride. I didn’t think about what I was going to wear, as long as it wasn’t scratchy, itchy, too hot, or too cold. I let Mom do most of the shopping, and Mom has good taste. It worked for me. It worked for both of us.

  Now Maude and Mavis take up anywhere between 25 and 100 percent of my thinking most of the time (how they feel, how they look, whether anybody can tell how enormous they are, whether they are going to knock into a shelf of wineglasses at Macy’s). School, volleyball, the ever-evolving state of the universe and everyone I know or care about in it, and Jackson have to share the rest. Not exactly focused.

  In sixth grade, when everybody else started wearing skinny-strapped bras or camisoles under their tops, I did, too, even though there was no physical reason for it. Mom brought them home, and I put them on. Other girls got slightly thinner, then slightly thicker, but I stayed flat as a pancake.

  Flatter. A crepe.

  It didn’t bother me, because everything fit fine and felt fine. I still felt more like a kid than an almost adult.

  Everything changed in one day during the summer between eighth and ninth grade. I put on a bathing suit and came downstairs to wait for a ride to the pool. Mom took one look at me and said, “Is that the only bathing suit you have?

  Two B-size breasts had appeared overnight. B+ even.

  Not really, because breast tissue does not instantly inflate like a life raft on a whale boat. But I hadn’t noticed that they’d gotten so big until my mom pointed out that they were nipping out of the swim top that had fit perfectly when we’d visited my grandparents in Florida the winter before. That is, I didn’t notice them until someone else pointed them out to me.

  I suddenly had something new to think about.

  And I didn’t hate that. Not at first.

  A few weeks later, though, they were Cs (you can ask Prince Bakersdozen at the Ninth Avenue Bagelry), and by Halloween they’d hit D. And then they kept on going. It was like Little Shop of Horrors, except in the middle of my own body. I should have called them Audrey, like the maniac plant, but there were two of them, and besides, I knew a kid named Audrey and Audrey was fine and petite and delicate. This was not an Audrey situation. This is a Maude and Mavis situation.

  Maude and Mavis are big, gruff names for big, gruff body parts. Flabby and pale and hangy names. Old lady names.

  Ugly names.

  My best guess now is that they might be H cups. H. AAAAYTCH. 32H. I’m not 100 percent sure, because even if you watch a dozen videos on how to measure, it’s much harder to do on yourself, especially if your breasts tend to hang low. Then the measurement is misleading. Have I considered having my mom or a friend or a stranger in Victoria’s Secret measure me, as every perky-boobed, bra-curious woman on the internet does? NO FUCKING WAY, but thank you for the suggestion.

  The exact size doesn’t matter that much anyway because once you get past a couple of Ds, bras are expensive, hideous, or hard to find. Or they pretend to be the right size but don’t actually hold anything up, in, or still.

  Here’s what you don’t see on the internet: Me, smashing Maude and Mavis into the four-hooked holster, size 34DDD, I included in the Zappos cart when Mom told me to order some “dressy sandals” for a client’s kid’s bar mitzvah. Props to Zappos, which makes it easy to leave your rejects on the front step for the UPS driver, but since I could hook the thing and my boobs didn’t fall out of it, and I didn’t want to talk to my mom about why I kept getting and sending Zappos boxes instead of walking into any store and grabbing something off the rack like she does, I tossed out the return label and called it good enough. (The shoes didn’t fit right either. At least the bra didn’t give me a blister.) Plus if you consider the size in algebraic terms, it’s 34d3, which sounds about right.

  I have two main bras, identical except that one’s white, one’s beige. (It actually said “nude” on the tag. I wonder if Fabergé, maker of fine undergarments for women, knows that not all of their customers are ecru?) They didn’t fit right when I ordered them last year and they really don’t fit right now. The style says “minimizer,” but the only thing minimized is my lung capacity. My breasts squeeze out in every direction, the band feels like I borrowed a belt from an American Girl doll and cinched it around my ribs, and from the waist up I look like a combination of a postnuclear mutation and the spell Harry Potter used to blow up Aunt Marge.

  So that’s what I think about when I’m supposed to be thinking about a serve. Or a block. Or world hunger. Or a boy.

  All the cute tops Mom bought for me over the last couple of years are packed into a tub, and I spend most of my time tucked under a big gray hoodie.

  Mom and I don’t talk about it. I don’t blame her. It’s me. Sometimes she’ll say something like “You never wear that orangey boho top I got you.”

  “I don’t really like it,” I’ll say back. Either she doesn’t notice or pretends not to notice that there’s no way I’m going to fit into any of my old things anymore. Or maybe she has noticed, because she only asks about the biggest and flowiest things. But that orangey boho top would hang off my chest like a tablecloth at an autumn wedding. It’s packed in the bin with everything else.

  Once in a while Mom will look at what I’m wearing, usually something I’ve been wearing the whole weekend. Big, plain, loose, dark, unnoticeable. That’s what I’m going for. She’ll say, “Want to go shopping for some new things?”

  “I’m good,” I’ll say. I’m not good, though. I’m not good at all.

  CHAPTER 23

  Each period is supposed to be fifty-five minutes, but seventh period lasts at least an hour and a half. Once, Kurtis and Omar explained a theory about how there are forces acting on Earth’s rotation: Instead of a consistent 1,040 mph, the speed is constantly changing; we don’t notice it because our very existence is bound by the relationship of time and space. They said even our thoughts can change speed, based on the actions of these forces. The thing you are thinking right now could be only a blip or you could have been reasoning it out slowly over hours, but you’d never know.

  That whole conversation was probably the longest Kurtis and Omar ever had with a girl, even if it was only me. It might have gone fast for them, but it was very slow for me. The forc
e plays tricks on people.

  I think of their theory of time when AP US History drags on. I used to think it felt slow because it was the last period of the day or because Mr. Feiler reads the textbook out loud to us at a rate of a page an hour. But the idea of a malevolent time force screwing with me at the end of the school day makes more sense.

  The good thing is that Maggie’s in this class, and if time stops altogether, at least I’ll have a friend with me until it starts up again. (Kurtis and Omar would go bananas if they heard me say that. “That’s not how it works!” they’d say, and then I would have to gently explain that I don’t really care and I don’t want to hurt Kurtis’s and Omar’s feelings.)

  The point is, the clock is barely moving. I am anxious to get down to the locker room to put on the Stabilizer and make all the adjustments before the last day of tryouts. I need to be focused, apparently, and the best way to do that is to ensure that Maude and Mavis are battened down and there’s plenty of Glide for all my rubby parts.

  After five hours of Feiler, even the universe gets bored of toying with me. The bell rings.

  “Break a leg,” Maggie says. “Not literally.”

  “You too,” I say. “Literally.” Maggie is on her way to musical practice, and a broken leg might be her only ticket out of it.

  She tried out, got a good part, and then threatened to quit because the plot of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is “sexist, demeaning, and heterocentric.” The basic idea is that the brothers are a bunch of bachelors living in the backwoods of Oregon in the 1850s. One day they go into town, meet some women they like, and more or less carry them back to their shack in the middle of nowhere. Even though they are essentially hostages, the women teach the brothers not to be slobs and everybody falls in love. You would think the school might find us better musical role models, like Sweeney Todd, who kills people and sends their bodies to the cannibal baker downstairs.

  Maggie’s parents wouldn’t let her quit, though. “You need more extracurriculars for college applications,” said her dad. “Then be the change,” said her mom. So now there is one grumpy bride in the cast who argues about pretty much everything. You’d think they’d kick her out, but she has an amazing voice, and there aren’t many strong altos.

  “If you’re still here at the end of play practice, Max and I can give you a ride home.”

  “Thanks. We’ll see how late she keeps us. Maybe she’ll boot me right away.”

  “Then come join the cast of Seven Types of Male Tyranny and Operatic Misogyny!”

  She must have been working on that line for a while. The truth is, even if I was the greatest performer in the world, the costume crew could never get me into one of those corsets. And speaking of corsets, I’m off to the locker room to strap on the Stabilizer.

  CHAPTER 24

  If it was hard to do in my room, with plenty of space, a mirror, no one around, and all the time in the world, getting this thing on in a bathroom stall in the middle of the noise, steam, and anxiety of a high school locker room is almost impossible. I feel like Houdini’s drunk cousin trying to escape one of the master’s tricks without touching a toilet seat.

  It’s all fine except for one strap, which I now see I should have hooked first. If I pull the fabric around with my right hand and twist all the way with my left shoulder, I can almost get the hooks to reach, but not quite. It feels like a blood pressure cuff inflating around my lungs.

  Voices are fading. The locker room is clearing out. The last one to the gym floor has to take an extra lap. If Coach R already thinks I’m not focused, I can’t show up late with one boob on the loose. That will seal the deal. But I don’t even have the old sports bra with me.

  “I got ’em at Master’s. They’re, like, twenty-five bucks.” It’s Jessa’s voice, leaving the locker room, telling somebody about either inexpensive shoes or expensive socks.

  I step up on the toilet seat so I can see over the stall door. Not shoes or socks. Kneepads. She’s showing someone her new kneepads, bright white, like part of a stormtrooper’s uniform.

  There are only a few stragglers left lacing shoes or locking lockers. Jessa and her kneepads will soon be out the door. I will be alone, and no closer to latching my safety belt. I would like to shrink down and die, but I say, barely louder than a whisper, “Jessa?”

  Jessa Timms has eagle ears. She whips around, looking for the source. “Jessa!” I say again.

  It’s got to be odd having a teammate beckon you from a bathroom stall, but Jessa tromps up like this kind of thing happens all the time.

  “Hey, Walsh.”

  “I’m sorry. I feel really stupid. Could you help me with something?”

  “You need a tampon?”

  “No.” I hop off the seat and crack open the door. “I can’t get this strap hooked.”

  Jessa wedges into the stall and hoists the strap into place. “Middle hooks?”

  “I guess.” She neatly hooks the row. I had only been able to reach the far hooks last time, but it’s even snugger now. It’s such an improvement that I decide it’s worth a little more embarrassment. “Could you move the other side up, too?”

  Jessa adjusts the hooks on the other side and I twist from side to side. It feels good. She takes a step back and says, “I’ve never seen one like that.”

  “I just got it,” I say, feeling self-conscious. I pull the Zoo Run tee over my head. “It’s made for people with—it’s supposed to be better support.”

  “It looks like it.” She leans around me to check out all the angles. There is no part of Jessa that is embarrassed by this conversation, and it makes me a little less embarrassed, too. “Mine’s just one of those pullover ones but it smashes ’em both into one big one.”

  “That’s what my old one was like. Uniboob.”

  She laughs like she’s never heard anyone call it that before.

  We are the last ones into the gym. Just by accident, I am a step ahead of Jessa. Coach Reinhold says, “Take a lap, Timms!”

  Before I can object, Jessa is off running, like she was planning on enjoying a trip around the perimeter anyway. From ten yards off, she turns, points to her chest, and yells back at me, “Hey, Walsh! Watch out for the Uniboober!” She laughs at herself the whole rest of the way around.

  CHAPTER 25

  The tryout is better than I could have possibly imagined. I play better than I ever have. I just feel good. I’m comfortable and smooth, and when I play hard it doesn’t feel like any part of me is about to tear off.

  Because I’m not messing with my shirt between every play or limiting my moves to keep my boobs in place, I start to notice things I hadn’t noticed before. How the ball spins differently when Kate serves than when Nasrah serves. How Sylvie Suprenant and Khloe Vang-Ellis do a fingers-only handshake every time one of them hits the ball. How Kaia Beaumont apologizes all the time. How if you watch the way other people move, you can start to anticipate what comes next.

  It’s like I’ve been looking either at the ball or at myself the whole time, and when I finally look up, there’s a whole different game going on.

  I’m still in the middle of the group, but maybe the high middle. When Coach Reinhold yells at me, she’s not yelling, “Where were you? You shoulda had that!” or “Come on! FOCUS!” or “Stand the hell up, Walsh!”

  Instead she’s saying stuff like “BIG hands on those. Thumbs should be UP” or “Left-right-left-jump, Walsh” or once in a while, “Yes! That’s it!”

  Coach will post rosters before school Monday, but there is a lot of guessing and assuming as soon as she heads back to her office. Girls are taking turns saying things like, “Are you serious? You did great.” “You’ll definitely make the team.” “I was terrible. Did you see me block that shot with my FACE?”

  “Walsh!”

  I turn to Jessa, who gives me a hard high five and a fierce nod that is Jessa sign
for “Nailed it!” I’m weirdly proud to have made Jessa Timms proud.

  I grab my stuff without changing and head to the auditorium to see if I can still catch a ride with the Cleaves. It will save me trying to untie myself from the Stabilizer in front of anybody. I’m pretty sweaty, but it’s a short ride, and since I’m completely invisible to Max Cleave, he won’t even know where the smell is coming from.

  Mr. Coles is at the piano in the auditorium. He retired before we started at Kennedy, but he comes back to help with the musical every year. He looks happy behind the piano, like high school students singing show tunes is the sweetest sound in the world. They aren’t working on choreography yet, just singing. A half dozen students are in this number, trading back and forth between solos and choruses.

  They sound good, even if it’s not my kind of music. Maggie is in the middle of the girls, scowling. I’d be afraid of that face, but they keep singing, and when her parts come up, she puts on a moony musical-theater smile like the rest of them. Maybe as long as she is singing, she’s not thinking, and if she’s not thinking, she can enjoy this crap.

  Then Aidan Neal takes his solo, which includes a line about pursing lips, taking aim, and “bagging the sweetest kind of game.”

  No one else is watching Maggie’s face like I am, so when she slams her palm on the piano and says, “Oh my god! Is no one else hearing this?” they all jump. The kids who know her well roll their eyes; the kids who don’t look at her like they are genuinely confused; and Mr. Coles beams because all drama is good drama. “How are we still doing this play?” Maggie yells.

  “Tell us what you object to, Ms. Cleave,” says Mr. Coles.

  “Yeah, what NOW?” snarls the senior who is playing Milly, the lead girl.