“Mom will kill you if you wear those at dinner.”
“They’re mine!” he hisses.
“I know. I helped Mom pick them out?”
“No, I mean, she stole them.”
“What? Who?” I pull Ty the rest of the way into the bathroom and close the door. Now I’m whispering, too.
“The girl! Quincy or whatever.”
“Quinlan?”
“When we got here, I left them in my shoe—”
“Gross.”
“—by the front door. And you know how she was acting all weird when she came into the kitchen? When we went up to her room, I saw her sneak something into her drawer—”
“You went through her drawers?!”
“I just wanted to see what she was hiding.”
“Ty, they’re probably hers. She probably has the same ones. Did you even go check your shoe?”
“No, but I know these are mine.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I found this in there, too.”
He unfolds his left hand. There in his palm is my dwarf. I pick up Grumps by the glass hat and turn him around slowly. He looks okay. She hasn’t hurt him. She hasn’t smacked him in the forehead with a can opener. I stare into his shiny face. I imagine he smiles a grateful little smile before fixing his face in a frown again. I can only imagine the things that dwarf has seen.
I realize I wasn’t ever 100 percent sure Quin had him; part of me was hoping that Ty had used his pointy hat to scrape something out of his ears and forgotten to return him. But now I know Quinlan Oates is a shoplifter-in-training.
I wonder if I have some moral obligation to rat out Quinlan to her family, but I’m not going to say anything before we eat. It smells unbelievable and I haven’t had anything except a Lärabar since practice. Maybe I can eat Ty’s, too.
There’s a plastic Amazing World of Gumball cup with orange soda at my place when I get to the table, and Quinlan bouncing on the balls of her feet waiting for me.
“It wasn’t blackberry. It was clementine,” Quin says. She’s chosen the spot right next to mine—almost on top of me. “Do you like that kind, too?” She looks like she wants me to say I like clementine Izzes even more than she wants all the toys and clothes and pillows and junk in her room.
And I decide that I won’t tell anybody about Grumpy or Mario or Luigi. She looks so little and lonely leaning into my lap, trying to fold herself into an angle that fits, and Grumpy is safe now with me—no harm. She’s got all the stuff in the world, but it can’t be easy to be Quinlan Oates. She’s in her third elementary school in her third state. Jackson slips in and out of schools and teams and friends like he’s trying on shirts, but Quinlan is a weird kid. She’s smart and intense, and what my dad would call an “acquired taste.” I sip the clementine Izze that she has saved for me and give her a thumbs-up. She beams.
I end up sitting between Quinlan and my dad, so I don’t get to talk too much more to Jackson. He raises his eyebrows at me when his dad tries to sound younger than he is, and I cringe at him when my mom says something braggy. The two of them—Mom and Ben—dominate most of the conversation. There’s been some kind of treaty that means they take turns being the charming know-it-all. Mom does American versus Scandinavian education, resurgence of independent bookstores, bar and bat mitzvahs (even though Dad is the Jewish one), and tamales. Mr. Oates takes on Thai fish markets, Division I college sports funding, mileage rewards programs, and advances in hernia surgeries. They both sound like they read a lot of New Yorkers. Everybody else chimes in occasionally, except for Quin, who plays on Mrs. Oates’s phone, except when she’s whispering occasional unrelated facts to me. “Only two kids in my class have been to France, and I’ve been there twice.” “My teacher loves how I write Qs, but everyone else thinks they look like twos.” She’s funny, though, and the food is fantastic (and since I’m next to Dad, the two of us nearly polish off the pot of butter chicken without Mom noticing). The lassi has dried without looking like a bull’s-eye around my nipple. And nobody does anything more horrifying than usual.
The night is not perfect, but it’s pretty good. It’s like going to dinner at a neighbor you don’t mind (if there was one neighbor in particular you wished would have come to dinner without a shirt on). Plus Tyler accomplished the rescue mission!
As we’re leaving, I pull Quin aside and show her the dwarf.
Her snowy cheeks turn pink. She is about to cry.
“Tyler saw you take his earbuds, and he found this, too. Don’t take our stuff, okay? Ask if you want to see something.” She nods and brushes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I mean, don’t take anybody’s stuff. People don’t like it when you do that.”
She looks up at me, sad and grateful. For a second it looks like she wants me to hug her, to wrap her up like you’d wrap up a much younger kid, and it occurs to me that she must be awfully lonely.
Jackson is watching us curiously, but for once, he’s not who I’m worried about.
I put my finger to my lips to let her know I’m not going to rat her out. Which means, unfortunately, I don’t get to rat out Tyler either, but it’s only a matter of time before he does something else stupid.
Like immediately. “Tyler Owen Walsh!” Mom says, yanking Luigi out of his ear. “Get those earbuds out of your ears. That is so rude to our hosts!”
If only he’d burp right now, this night would be a total victory.
CHAPTER 35
At the next game I scan the bleachers for Jackson, even though I already know he’s going somewhere with Max. I have a couple of fans, though: Mom and Tyler.
I wave to them as we begin warmups. Mom smiles and waves back, then dips her head back to her laptop. Tyler is gaping at Nasrah.
In the five-minute break before the game starts, I run over to them. Mom says, “Nervous?”
“Nah. Just adrenaline.”
She looks at me and frowns. “Is your uniform top different from the others?”
I look down self-consciously. “A little. Ms. Kershaw-Bend altered it so it would fit better.”
“Oh,” she says with an “oh” that could mean something good or bad. “Well, it’s nice. You look”—there’s a long pause where I swear she’s staring at my chest—“thinner.”
I feel my cheeks getting red. I don’t know if “thinner” is what she means. I’m glad Ty isn’t paying attention. “I’m not. I’m exactly the same as before.” I’ve actually been eating like a horse, but I’ve also been running around a gym for two hours after school every day, so it evens out weight-wise.
She shrugs. “I guess I haven’t seen you in anything so fitted in a while. It’s good,” she adds.
I get it. I look “thinner” because she’s used to seeing me in giant shirts, and hasn’t realized how much of those shirts my breasts take up. Mom assumed I had bulked up in general. I slouch about two inches shorter.
Back on the court, Jessa walks up and down the line high-fiving people. Is everyone else thinking about how much “thinner” I suddenly am? I realize I’m being paranoid and try to shake it off.
The game starts and I’m up front. Kate gets under the serve and passes it perfectly to Sylvie, who sets it up for Nasrah’s hit. The ball grounds into the other court. In the next play, there is a rally back and forth, then they hit it hard to us and Khloe’s pass sends the ball flying out of the court. While someone runs to retrieve it, I notice a couple of kids in the bleachers from the other school look at me and say something behind their hands. When they see me looking at them, they look away and laugh.
The ball is back in play and now 50 percent of me is in the game and 50 percent is watching the kids who were watching me. One of them holds out his hands like he might be describing something that is big and heavy, and I promptly get hit in the shoulder with a ball I didn’t see coming.
“Walsh! That was yours!” yells Jessa.
I snap back to attention, and the next few plays go fine. I keep my eye on the ball and don’t mess anything up, but now that I’m forcing myself to focus so hard on the ball, I don’t notice Nasrah and end up smacking into her. Coach doesn’t say anything but rotates me out before I get to serve.
From the bench I can watch the bleachers.
The boys are sharing a phone back and forth, laughing at something onscreen. I look over at the girls on the other team, wondering who they might be here to see. Then a girl with short blond hair comes off the bench and one kid jabs the other kid. “Yeah, Cally!”
So maybe they were never looking at me at all, and I got myself taken out for being self-conscious and paranoid. When I sub back in, it’s only for a couple of rotations.
On our side of the bleachers, Mom watches with her fists clenched, jabbing with her right hand when something goes well for us. I hope she saw the parts where I made good plays, and not the parts where I ran into Nasrah or the ball ran into me. It’s best of three sets and we lose the first two, so the whole thing is over fast.
Coach gives us a quick not-so-peppy pep talk in which she declares that no one played their best today. The intent is probably to make everyone feel equally bad, but some of us feel worse.
I stop by the bleachers to tell Mom I’ll be up from the locker room in a minute. She says a generic, “Good effort, sweetie,” and Tyler says, “Did you guys win?”
I’m on my way to the locker room when I run into the two boys from the other team. They look like they’re trying to keep straight faces. The one who yelled for Cally says, “My friend likes your jersey.” He busts out laughing, and the friend smacks him and goes, “Oh my god, Christian!” and starts laughing, too.
I’m caught completely off guard. They don’t even know how perfect their timing is because they didn’t see the way my mom looked at me before the game. I walk as fast as I can to the locker room, my shoulders rounding forward as I go. I must be down to three feet tall at this point.
People aren’t chatty like they were after our last match, when we won. It’s mostly quiet as players change out of their uniforms. I blow by them, slam open my locker, and jerk my bag out. I rip through it to find my sweatshirt, even though I’m sweating like crazy. I pull it over my head and I am safe inside fleece again.
I’m so mad I could chew through my kneepads. I’m mad at those stupid kids, but I’m more mad at myself for letting them get to me—and for the fact that they’re long gone on their way to Dairy Queen and they are still getting to me. Not this. Don’t take this from me. I just need to get up to Mom and Ty and we can go home.
“Walsh? You okay?” Jessa stops me before I get to the door.
“What? Yeah, I’m fine. My mom’s waiting.”
“It’s just a game. Win some, lose some or whatever, right?”
“I know. I’m fine.” I am obviously not fine, or Jessa wouldn’t be standing in front of me trying to reassure me. There is a poster about bullying behind her head, and I can see a sliver of my reflection in the silver frame around it. My cheeks are the same color as my jersey. I am so fucking hot and tired.
“Coach is just trying to get everybody court time early in the season.”
“I know, Jessa. It wasn’t a great game, but it’s not that big a deal.”
“Okay, good then, ’cuz you’re really looking good out there.”
“Thanks.” She’s trying hard, and even though I definitely do not want to talk, I love her for it. “It’s not the game. Some kid just said something to me and it kind of rattled me. But it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“What’d they say?”
“Something about my uniform.” She looks at me blankly, like she is trying to imagine what someone might say about a person’s uniform that would be upsetting. “He said he liked my uniform.”
“They are really cool this year.” She slides her hands over her silky sleeves with approval.
“That’s not what he meant.”
Jessa cracks a smile. “You think he likes you?”
“No.” Do I really have to explain this? “No. I think he was making a comment about the way my uniform fit. Like about my chest.”
Jessa’s smile fades. “Like a mean comment?”
“Well, I don’t think he was trying to flatter me. I think he just wanted to embarrass me.” Jessa frowns. “It worked.”
Jessa’s eyebrows come together, and her shoulders rise a bit. It’s the same thing that happens if we’re down when she’s serving, or she hears someone on Varsity badmouthing a JV player. “Do you think they’re still up there? I could go up and say something to him. Or I could go with you if you want?”
“I’m sure they’re gone. It’s fine.” It would not feel any better to slouch behind Jessa while she tells the other team’s boyfriends to leave the girl with the boobs alone, but it’s just like her to offer. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, but you don’t worry about it, either, okay? Those guys are assholes.”
I think maybe it really is that easy for Jessa. Like if she was me, she’d decide not to worry about the assholes, and then go play a killer game of volleyball. She wouldn’t shrink into herself. She wouldn’t crawl inside a giant sweatshirt. She would feel the way I would feel if a teacher handed out a pop quiz, or asked us to write five pages over the weekend about how the Bill of Rights both mirrored British law and expanded protections, or accidentally included problems in the homework that shouldn’t be covered till Calc II. “What an asshole.” Then I’d nail it anyway.
The confidence I have in my brain is the confidence Jessa has in her body, and in what her body can do.
I don’t understand her at all.
CHAPTER 36
I found Kelsey Tambor and Peevish Pru after I was walking from the ice cream place to Tahlia’s and someone yelled “I like your tits” out his car window. Maggie went on a diatribe about the way young males act out against women when the patriarchy is threatened. Tahlia yelled, “I bet you do, dickface.” I went home and searched for “clothes that conceal breasts” and “tops for big boobs” and “make boobs look smaller.”
My search yielded a lot of useless things, a few semi-useful things (turtlenecks are bad; dark colors are good), and two YouTubers who seemed like they knew what I was talking about.
Peevish Pru is a Brit, and probably smart not to use her real name because she pisses a lot of people off. She posts a rant once a week about things that bother her, and she’ll probably go on forever because that includes a lot of things: German tourists, climate change, Americans trying to do British accents, fake hellos, long goodbyes, Crocs, men who expect her to shave, women who expect her to shave, genetic engineering, reading glasses as a fashion accessory, grammar mistakes (especially apostrophes), and her own bulbous baps.
She reminds me a little of Maggie, because she gets annoyed about so many things; and a little of me, because two of those things are her breasts.
But she’s different from Maggie because she’s rather a snob, which I don’t think Maggie is. And she’s different from me because she doesn’t sound angry at her body—she sounds angry on behalf of her body. She’s not mad that her boobs are so big. She’s mad at the store that sells slinky camisoles for not making one that would fit her. And the constant questions on Twitter about whether they are “real.” And the massage therapist who didn’t have any way of positioning her when she said she couldn’t lie on her stomach. (“I’ve got this gift card from me mum because she knows how stressed I’ve been, but I cahnt even use it because I cahnt lie down on that on that stupid table. And then the massage therapist suggests we try the special cushion she has for ladies who are pregnant, where there’s a hole for their bump? No, thank you. I’m not preggers, thank you very much. I left that massage more stressed than before.”)
The unfairness
of the world toward her breasts is one of her favorite topics to rant about. She has definitely never helped anyone find a shirt that camouflages curves or suggested hacks to make boobs look smaller, and I bet if someone asked about it, she’d rant about the question itself. In the comments on a post about being squashed by a safety bar at Disney Paris, someone asked whether she’d ever have breast reduction surgery, and she replied, “Why should I want my boobs to be smaller? Why shouldn’t I want the world to be bigger?”
After that, there were a whole series of comments, a lot supportive and a lot completely vile (Peevish Pru takes down the threatening ones but leaves up the merely offensive so she can rant about them). There were lots of mentions of other bloggers who had addressed this issue, including Kelsey Tambor, who made a four-part series about the breast reduction surgery she got the day after her eighteenth birthday, before she went back to posting incredibly complicated makeup tutorials.
I know for a fact that Kelsey Tambor got some of the description of the procedure wrong, because that stuff is easy to find on clinic and medformation sites. What was more interesting, though, was that she talked about why she did it (back pain, breast pain, appearance, self-consciousness); what it felt like (woozy, nauseous, like someone stomped on her chest with cleats, then just bruisy, then just achy, then just a little touchy, then eventually pretty weirdly like herself); and finally what it looked like (some graphic clips of bruising, draining, and healing; and a couple months later, a photo series of herself in strapless sundresses and bathing suits). Kelsey moderates all the comments on her page, so there are only ever inspired fans telling her how amazing she is.
Those breast-reduction posts have hundreds of thousands of views—way more than her other posts. A lot of them are probably weirdos and perverts, but I wonder how many are girls like me.
I don’t watch the rest of Kelsey’s stuff because it’s usually about fun new shades that will make your eyes pop! but I have an alert set just in case she posts any longer-term follow-ups about the surgery. I watch Pru, though, even when she’s not talking about her breasts. I watch because she’s funny and thinks the world should be better than it is, rather than thinking she should be better than she is.
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