grl2grl (2 page)

She doesn’t laugh. She never laughs. I wonder what her laugh sounds like.

“You want to try them on?”

She reels back like I’ve threatened to infect her with AIDS. “The gangrenous toe rot hasn’t flared up in months,” I tell her.

Is that a smile? Did I amuse her?

My insides are a snarl of worms.

I unbuckle my left shoe and pass it to her. She takes a whiff. Please. I give her the right shoe. She regards them for
an extended period of time before reaching down to slip off her clunkers. “They’re ugly,” she says.

“Like yours are glam.”

She’s wearing argyle socks. Thick and bulky. As she yanks them up, the heel rises halfway to her calf. Men’s socks. Her feet
swim in them. Her feet are tiny, I note. Out of proportion with her body. Of course, I can’t really tell how big or small
her body is in those baggy clothes. I wonder about her body.

My heart pounds.

She steps into the left shoe, then right, and pushes to stand upright. “Whoa.” She wobbles. She has to latch on to a shelving
unit behind her to steady herself. She shakes her head and sits again.

“Walk around,” I tell her. “They’re cushy.”

“They’re obscene.” She removes them slowly, almost lovingly, and presents them to me atop her fleshy palms as if on a royal
pillow. “I love them.”

What is it with you? I want to ask. What are you? Who are you? You’re this powerful, enigmatic creature I don’t understand.

She props her elbows on the shelf unit and leans back. It’s a competition: Which of us will reveal first? And how much?

“It’s definitely heated in here,” I say, fanning my face. It must be a hundred and fifty degrees. Fans drone overhead. They’re
not moving any cool air around, though. Just making noise. Can she feel the heat?

“What did you want to talk about?” she says flatly. “Tam.” Every time she opens her mouth it’s a surprise. Those lips. Plus,
she has a high, lilting voice. I always expect it to be low and masculine. But it’s… airy.

“Can you believe that guy on our train who rolls around on the skateboard?” I say. “He’s, like, cut in half? I mean, he can’t
help it that he doesn’t have legs, but his hair is so gross and filthy it drags on the ground and his fingernails are cracked
and they click on the floor. He’s missing his thumbs. Did you notice that? God, he creeps me out. Do you even own a coat?
I mean, you eat outside every day and I’ve only ever seen you wear a shirt and vest. On the train too. Did anyone tell you
it was winter? The temperature drops. It snows. I guess the socks are warm they look warm.”

Shut up, Tam, I think. You’re revealing. “I’m sorry,” I say, spreading open my hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s a sickness.”

She laughs. She actually lowers her head and chuckles.

Now I’m wondering, Is she laughing at me?

Then she says, “That guy is my uncle Ralph.”

I gasp a little.

She raises her head and her eyes gleam.

Kill her. How do I know when she’s joking?

A smile sits on her lips. I want to ask about the lipstick so bad. Not yet.

“What do people call you?” I ask again. “I know your name’s Andrea. But does anyone call you that?”

“All my multitudes of friends,” she says. “My armies and legions of fans.” She doesn’t take her eyes off me.

I don’t let her go there. “What do you want me to call you? If you can lower your standards to let me in your army.”

She exhales, like this conversation takes effort. “Whatever you want to call me. Tam.”

We let that moment pass.

It’s so damn hot. Sweat trickles down my hairline to my chin. I swipe it away with the back of my thumb.

“You could take something off,” she suggests, a lewd grin creeping across her lips. “If you’re hot.”

“Good idea.” I stand and pull my sweatshirt over my head. I start to unbutton my shirt, but she holds up a hand.

“Please. I just ate lunch.”

I knew she’d be sarcastic. I just knew it.

“You’re different in person,” she says out of nowhere.

What’d she mean “in person”? She sees me every day.

I knew what she meant. I wasn’t “in character.” Wasn’t doing my act, playing my role. Being “Tamlyn.” I was beginning to despise
Tamlyn, Tam, the good girl, the predictable girl. The girl who knew the rules and margins. She never strayed outside the boundaries
of accepted behavior. She never stretched the limits.

I hate my own limits. I hate that I judge people, label people. I hate that I’m no better than anyone else. I want to be better.

Even more, I want to be free. Of restrictions and confines
and suffocating expectations. There’s more to me than meets the eye. I want her to know that. I
need
her to know.

“Yeah, well,” I say to her. “You’re different too. Andrea.”

Her eyes fall. I think I’ve insulted her.

“I mean you’re easy to talk to.”

Her head flops to the side.

“Serious. You should talk to people more. Let them in.” Puncture the skin, I think. Peel back the layers. I should talk. “You
don’t make it easy.”

She snipes, “Yeah? Well, neither do you.”

I feel like I’ve been punched.

She says more quietly, “Talk to who? Who wants in?”

“I do.” A beat passes. I take a breath and look at her. “I’ve been dying to get in.”

She arches her eyebrows, like, Whoa. Too much information. I don’t take it back because it’s the truth. It’s time.

“You’ll be sorry.”

I frown and hold her gaze. “Why?”

She swallows. After a pause she replies, “You’ll be disappointed with what you find. Or what you’re expecting to find.”

That softens me. “You don’t know that.” She opens her mouth to say something else, but I add, “Anyway, I get to decide.”

She shakes her head at the floor. What? The conversation stalls. I don’t want it to end here. “Can I tell you something about
myself? Something personal? Promise you won’t laugh.”

She doesn’t answer.

“My greatest fear is that I’ll die alone. Not that I’ll die, but that I’ll be alone at the end. Unloved.” Okay, that was a
revelation, even to me.

I think I see her head nod. “My greatest fear?” She glances up at me sideways. “Is that I’ll
live
alone. My whole life. That it’s always going to be this way.”

Do her eyes well? She gets up suddenly and grabs her pack. I reach out to snag her, but she’s headed for the door.

“You won’t,” I say at her back. “It doesn’t have to be.” Reach out, I think. You have to reach out.

The bell rings, reverberating off the walls and heater vents and fans. We both cover our ears until the echo dies down. She
turns slightly and our eyes meet. I see just beyond the outline of her, to the aura of her. It’s blue.

Blue is my favorite color.

“We should go,” she says. “We don’t want to get locked in here overnight.”

I shoulder my pack.

“Can you imagine us having a conversation that long?”

I answer, “As a matter of fact, I can. It’d be interesting.”

She smiles at that. She opens the door and a whoosh of cold air blows in from the hallway. We both suck it up. She holds the
door and I start out ahead of her. “Hey.” I turn back. “Can I ask you a question?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any stopping you,” she says.

I curl a lip at her. Then seriously, “Why the lipstick?”

She just looks at me.

“Really. It just seems so…”

“Out of character?” Wide grin. Knowing grin.

Yeah, okay. I get it. She wants people to wonder. She wants someone, anyone, to ask.

Since I did, does she see there’s more to me?

We walk down the hall a ways. “Andi,” she says out of nowhere. “With an
i
.”

“What?” I stop to let a clique of people pass. My group. Becca, who starts talking to me.

I don’t hear a word. I run after
her
.

She must hear my clunky shoes. “Andi.” She twists her head over her shoulder. “Call me Andi.”

“Okay.” I come astride her. “Andi.”

“Tam.” She nods once and smiles. “I’m glad to know you.”

We stand close for an instant, a blitz of time. Life goes on around us. The late bell rings and we have to separate. Andi
heads off in one direction, me in another. I pivot and call back to her, “Andi.”

She spins around.

“Save me a seat on the train.”

I
stalled around at my locker waiting for the halls to clear. Footsteps sounded behind me and I tensed. A body blurred past.
No one I knew. My heart drummed as I walked toward the arts wing.

Keep moving, Mariah. Keep going.

I pulled the crinkled newspaper from my pack. Checked the time, like it’d changed.

Every week when
The Bugle
came out, I’d snatch one from the bin and slip it into my spiral. At night I’d read and reread it. Not the whole thing; it
was boring. The notice on back:
GSA MEETINGS, THURSDAY
3:00,
BAND ROOM
2.

GSA. Gay/Straight Alliance. Just seeing the word on the page made me cold.

There it was. Band Room 2. The door was closed. I passed it, shivering, and impaled myself on the wall at the far end of
the corridor. My chest hurt. I checked my watch. 3:10. It was too late. I’d make a scene with my entrance.

I didn’t have to do this. You don’t have to, Mariah, I told myself. There’s always next Thursday. Next week, next year to
hide, to lie, to hate yourself.

Someone was coming. In a panic, I charged into the girls’ restroom. Blocked the door until they passed. Slamming my pack to
the floor, I curled into a ball beside the sink and hugged my knees. I buried my head. Damn. Dammit! The floor was filthy;
the pipes reeked of mold. I reeked of cowardice.

A toilet flushed overhead and the gurgle of water in the drain next to my ear registered as E flat, G sharp… . I raised my
head. Stupid.

This was so weak. I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Calmer. Okay. I wasn’t going. I was safe. For another week.

Band Room 2. What a weird place to hold a meeting. Especially this kind of meeting. I’d spent most of my life in band rooms.
I’d been in band since elementary school. Not too many people stayed with band — not as long as I did. A lot of the girls
dropped out our freshman year because they didn’t want to be known as “band geeks.” Band geeks don’t get guys, they said.
Whatever.

I played clarinet. Not great, just good enough. In middle school I picked up sax and trumpet. This year, for marching band,
I was trying tuba. I’d been in enough band rooms I
could walk into one blindfolded and identify the smells: rosin, oil, spit, sweat.

At the moment all I smelled was the stench of my own yellow belly.

It was October already. Five Thursdays, come and gone. Five GSAs. I promised myself this year, my sophomore year, I’d do it.
I’d push past the fear. My skull thunked against the drainpipe. Lower C. I squeezed my eyes closed.

If anyone saw this — how I spent every Thursday after school — they’d lock me up. They’d call me chickenshit. That was better
than what I’d be called if I got caught at a Gay/Straight Alliance meeting.

Pervert. Queer. Dyke.

My throat tightened. I clunked my head over and over. What was wrong with me? I was wrong.
It
was wrong.

I don’t know when it started. Three p.m. Not the meeting. The feelings. Sixth grade? Seventh? They wouldn’t stop. Hard as
I tried, the feelings wouldn’t go away. I’d see girls in class or in the hall and my eyes would latch on to them and my heart
would flutter. I’d imagine us alone, at my house, or hers, at the movies, in the dark. Kissing. Touching.

Banish the thought.

All my friends were dating, but I had no interest in guys. How could that be? Why me?

I knew there were others like me. Right down the hall in Band Room 2.

The restroom door flew open and I scrambled to my feet. This girl stopped and did a double take. Her eyes flitted around the
stalls, then back to me. “Are you okay?”

I swallowed hard and choked out, “Yeah.”

“Sure?”

No! I screamed inside. I’m dying. Can’t you see? Can’t everybody see what I am? Snatching up my backpack, I raced out the
door.

End of the world. That’s what it felt like. I couldn’t be gay. It was against everything I knew, everything I believed.

Every day it built up. Day after day after day. The feelings, the confusion. The loneliness. I’d be talking to my friends
and they’d say something like, “That is so gay.” Or, “She’s such a dyke.” Or, “Can you imagine kissing a girl?” Can I imagine
it? I dreamt about it.

In my dreams I was happy, whole. I was me. No one cared that I liked girls. I didn’t have to keep up this charade or squelch
this giant secret that was killing me inside.

I didn’t have to. You don’t, Mariah. You’re not gay.

If I didn’t acknowledge the feelings, I wouldn’t have to face the fact.

The fact that I was gay.

I tried not to think about it so much. But it was like this
constant buzz in my ear, this sour note rising in pitch and volume, making me want to scream.