Girl Mans Up (11 page)

NO ONE COMES UPSTAIRS. NO ONE TRIES TO TALK
to me. Not even with a text. There's nothing to do, and I'm so damn ready to blow. So I take a shower, and I throw on some clothes. There's a basket of folded laundry on my bed. I knock it over. Just because.

My phone starts playing the
Ninja Turtles
theme, but it's not Johnny. Good—last person I want to talk to is him.

“Hey, you,” Blake says. Those two words and the breath rushes out of me. “I was doing some vocal exercises, but I keep thinking I feel a little tickle at the back of my throat. So, I decided to relax and play some
Zelda
, which made me think of you. You're coming later, right?”

“Um . . . I'm not sure yet,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes my mom says yes to stuff, then she changes her mind.”

There's silence for a moment, then a sigh. “Well, that's sort of not cool. You live like that? With someone saying you can do something then turning around and taking it away?” she asks, and her voice takes on this edge.

“I can't really control what my parents do,” I say.

“Well, do you tell them they're not being fair?” she says.

That makes me laugh. “Yeah, you don't really know my parents. You don't
tell
them anything. They decide. It's their house. Respect and all that.”

“That sounds like some crazy stuff right out of the fifties or something.”

I snort. “It's not crazy. It's how a lot of parents are. Especially in European families.”

There's more silence, and it feels weird. I don't want to be annoyed with her, because it's Blake. But I sort of wish I hadn't answered the call.

“Well,” she starts, letting another sigh go, “I get it if you
can't show up. Just make sure you warn Olivia.”

Olivia—crap.

“I'm going to try to make it, Blake,” I say.

This awkwardness is the worst.

“Just in case, I'm going to assume you're not coming, so that way I won't look for you.”

“But I want you to look for me.”

There's just the sound of her breath on the other end, and it makes me wish I'd just said I was coming. Because I think seeing her would make things better.

“I should go,” she says.

“Oh.”

This isn't better at all.

OLIVIA LOOKS NICE, I
guess, but a little too nice for this kind of thing. She's got this shiny purple top on and her hair's pulled back in a loose bun. We stand side by side at the terminal, waiting for the bus that'll take us to the community center. I've got my white Portugal soccer sweat jacket over a white tee, jeans, and white sneakers. I was pretty sure I looked all right when I left home, but now that I see myself reflected in the terminal windows, I don't know. I think I might be trying too hard to channel Cristiano Ronaldo or something.

“This is a little weird,” Olivia says.

I don't even know why she still wanted to come to this.

“Yeah. I guess it is,” I say. My texts probably weren't enough to make things better. “Look, I'm sorry I was a jerk. I was in the middle of family drama.” So maybe the family drama hadn't
happened yet, but I'm not going to tell her I was having Colby drama.

“What kind of family drama? Is everything okay?”

“Someone's gone. It's all right.”

She touches my arm. “Oh my god, Pen. Like . . . passed away?”

“He's not dead,” I say. “He just took off. It needed to happen.”

“Your dad?”

“I wish.” He could take my mom with him, too.

Olivia makes a face like she's tired of not understanding when I talk.

“It's just my brother. He's old enough to get a life, so it's not a big deal.”

There are other kids our age and younger walking in front of the terminal where Olivia and I are standing. Some of them—maybe most of them—probably think we're on a date or something. Any girl who stands near me has to deal with that. I take a couple steps away, leaning my butt against the frame of a bike rack.

“Plus, Blake's pissed at me,” I say. “I probably shouldn't even go to this, but I didn't want to bail on you.”

“Why is she mad?”

“She doesn't want me wasting her time.”

Olivia's head tips to the side. “She said that?”

So I give her a two-line summary of that phone call. “I don't know why she even invited me to this thing.”

“She's disappointed that you might not have shown up,” Olivia says, her eyebrows up like she's waiting for me to clue
in. “She probably had butterflies thinking about seeing you today, and then you said you might not even be coming.”

“Butterflies?” I say, and Olivia nods.

After that, I scroll through my phone for a while, wishing Blake would text, but feeling like too much of an idiot to text her.

“So, is Blake's band good?” Olivia asks.

“I don't really know, actually.”

“What's the band called?”

“Uh . . . I have no idea.”

Olivia lets out a little laugh and zips up her jacket. I stare ahead, at the random Saturday Castlehill people waiting around for the same bus we are. The sky's kind of gray, like the sun's not even going to try to pretend to stay up until dinnertime.

“I'm actually looking forward to this. I've never seen a real band play,” Olivia says.

“You've never been to a concert?”

She shakes her head. “You?”

“Yeah. I've seen a few.” I stop myself from naming the ones Johnny took me to because I don't want to think about him.

“Should I take notes? I brought a notepad in case.”

That makes me laugh. “I think just listening and then telling them if it rocked or not will be enough.”

On the bus, we sit together on one of the back benches. A few people our age get on, three guys and two girls. They're loud and that makes me shrink down toward the window. As they head to the back, they notice me right away.

They fall onto a couple benches, and keep throwing glances my way. Their grins are definitely not the friendly kind. I pull out my phone to scroll.

“When people can see you're doing something wrong, they're really mean,” Olivia says.

“Huh?”

“If they knew my secret—if they could see it—they'd be awful to me. Right now they can't tell, so I'm safe,” she says, shifting in her seat a little to look over at me. She said the word “if.” But she's talking again before I can ask her about it. “You're not safe ever, are you? People can always tell with you.”

Up ahead, those guys are making jokes and the girls laugh. I can't tell if they're about me, but they probably are. “Yeah.”

“Did you look like a boy when you were little?” she asks.

“Pretty much.”

“You're not a boy, though, right?”

It's now that I can kind of see why Colby might've called her to talk. There's something about her really soft voice, and her tone, like she just wants to tell the truth and isn't going to judge anything. Like she's not even able to be mean if she tries.

“Nope,” I say. “Sometimes I think things would probably be easier if I was.”

“How do you know you're not a boy?” she asks, and when I make a face, she goes, “Because my friend Lily's cousin from Minnesota is transgender. He always knew he wasn't a girl, but he says he just never said anything about it and let everyone think he was.”

It's hard to come up with an answer to her question. When
I think about that stuff in my own head, I don't usually end up anywhere because I don't ever think it through to the end. Everything's always made me wonder if I was supposed to be a boy. When I was really little, I even thought maybe I was born one and then some weird circumcision disaster happened and my parents decided to take home a little girl instead. But the older I got, the less that made sense to me. Because—

“I don't feel wrong inside myself. I don't feel like I'm someone I shouldn't be. Only other people make me feel like there's something wrong with me.”

Her staring at me is making my face feel hot. “I don't really understand why you're friends with someone like Colby.”

“Well, I don't really understand why you're . . . whatever you were with Colby. So I guess we're even,” I say.

She nods like,
Fair enough
. Then she pulls out a little bag full of Halloween candy and chocolate.

“I like that you're such an honest person,” she says.

I've never thought of myself as being honest. It feels like I'm full of it most of the time.

“Thanks,” I say. “I like that about you, too.”

She opens the little bag and holds it under my nose. I don't need to be asked twice to eat chocolate.

THE COMMUNITY CENTER HALL IS LIKE A DARK,
dingy church basement. It's this building that's attached to the bigger rec center where the pool and skating rinks are. This is not the kind of place where people get married. It's more of a retirement or anniversary party kind of place. There are round tables sprinkled around the room, and the windows are covered by heavy drapes. At the far end of the room is a corner with sound equipment. It's not a stage exactly; I guess more of a platform. Blake's band is set up there. At the tables, there are some other people our age or a little older. I don't know most of the faces except these two other girls from our grade. There are a lot of guys who look like they're in grade twelve or maybe even in college.

We walk in together and pause to scan the room. What if Blake throws me a dirty look and won't talk to me? It helps to know that however messed up and nervous I feel, Olivia's got to be feeling way more out of place.

“Are you really up to being here?” I ask her. She looks confused, so I add, “You're not gonna puke or anything, are you?”

She pulls open her purse and there's another bag of
chocolate, plus lots of packages of soda crackers. “If I snack all the time, I don't feel as sick.”

Should we even be talking about the secret? Should I be pretending it's not really happening? When I look at her, it just doesn't seem real that she could actually be pregnant.

“This place is a little,” Olivia says, chewing on the inside of her mouth like she's looking for the right word, “run-down.”

“Totally.”

A couple people are looking over at us, but all I see is Blake up there. She looks hot in these black cargo pants that are all tight and bunched at the ankle, while her feet are in these black heels. She's setting up her mic, looking like she's trying to find the best spot for the cord not to trip her. The guy with the bass is a super tall black dude with thin dreads that fall into his eyes, and he's plucking a couple notes that don't go with the chords the guitar player's messing around with. The guitar player's a fat white guy with reddish hair; his face is all pierced and he's playing a riff that sounds pretty sweet. The last guy must be Charlie. He checks the amps, moves Blake's mic stand forward, and then motions for the guitar player to go more to the right. Then he grabs his drumsticks and settles behind the kit.

Why would I even step out of the shadows? There's no competition between me and him.

“Can we sit near the front, but to the side? I like being able to see well,” Olivia says, and we go.

“Guys!” Charlie shouts. Instruments quiet. “It's four o'clock. I want to start. We only have two hours.”

Olivia makes her way to the tables off to the right of the fake stage, and a few people notice us. Olivia and I take a seat.

Blake looks over and smiles.

“Hey!” Blake says, coming to sit with us. She leans into me and it's enough to make me almost fall over, but instead, I square my shoulders and decide not to pay attention to anyone else right now. Her words are in my ears. “I'm . . . sorry,” she whispers. “I get cranky when I'm nervous.”

“It's okay,” I say, staring at my hand resting on the table.

“I really wanted you to come over tonight,” she says to the side of my face, still so close to me.

“You did, huh?” I pull away to look at her. She nods. “That would be pretty awesome.”

“Sorry, audience. Our singer's holding everything up,” Charlie says, super loud, into his portable mic.

Blake gives him the finger by pretending to scratch her cheek with it.

“Good luck,” I whisper in her ear. “You're gonna rock this.”

For a second I think she's going to kiss me, the way she looks at my mouth. But she just grins and tiptoes up to take her spot with the band.

“Okay, guys, well, thanks for coming out. We are Drowning in Shadows,” Charlie says from behind his drums, and we give a little clap. “Yeah, so, uh, just let us know how it sounds. Whatever.”

“That's a very depressing band name,” Olivia whispers in my ear. It makes me laugh.

Now Blake is standing in front of her mic. The spotlight
above shines on the four of them. She looks nervous, just standing there, tapping the fingers of her left hand against her thigh and staring at the ground. Charlie raises his sticks above his head and counts to three. Then the band starts and it sounds good—like real music. These guys are sort of awesome. I relax in my seat a little. Blake nods along with the beat and her eyes close. She looks so good, with this silver top, and her arms left bare.

“They're good, aren't they? They must practice a lot,” Olivia says, leaning over. “I was so scared they were going to be awful and I'd have to lie.”

“Same.”

Blake sings now, and I can't move anymore. The rasp in her voice disappears when she's singing higher notes, unless she strains. Then, when she goes low, it's smooth. She's loud and totally hard about it.

Her eyes are closed most of the time, but that's okay because I'm staring at her mouth. By the time the song's over, I don't care about anything except kissing her.

THE BAND DOES SIX
songs, and Blake sings all of them. When the show's over, people gather around to talk to the band. Even though I'm dying to talk to Blake, I stay put at the table with Olivia.

“I wish I could've been in a band,” Olivia says.

“Why can't you?”

“I don't sing very well. And my fingers are too short. I'd need a child's guitar,” she says, fanning her hands open to
show me her small fingers. “I think composing the score for films would be fun. Sometimes I watch these films and the music totally changes the tone. Do you know what I mean? Like, if they'd scored it differently, the movie would've been darker, or funny, or sad.”

“I never thought about that. I wonder if it works the same for video games.”

“Definitely. It's all about writing a piece of music that will add to the story. Create atmosphere,” she says. “You and Colby are really into video games.”

“Apparently he's not cool with girls knowing that about him. But yeah, we are.”

“He thinks you're the best gamer he knows,” she says. When I give her this look like,
Are you for real?
she nods a bunch of times, like a little kid who thinks the faster they nod, the more they'll be believed.

“Well, I am. But I'm surprised he said that,” I say. “What else has he said about me?”

Now she's shaking her head. She pretends to zip her lips. “See that girl over there?” Olivia points to one of the girls from our school. I nod. “She wears her uniform skirt really short at school so everybody can see her underwear—have you noticed that?”

“Yeah, that's kind of Morgan's thing.” The guys and I have all seen her underwear, on many occasions.

“Last Thursday, I could've sworn she was wearing the same polka-dotted ones she wore the day before.”

“Ha!” I cover my mouth. “Maybe she has two of the same?”

“Maybe, but then she should space them out.”

I'm laughing my butt off. “I think it's funny as hell that you look at her crotch every day.”

“Accounting is just so boring,” she says with a small shrug. “Blake looked really good up there, didn't she.”

“Really, really good.”

Soon Blake click-clacks her way over, thumbs hooked into her front pockets. She slips into the same spot she was in before going up, and our knees touch.

“Okay, lay it on me,” she says.

I open my mouth but Olivia beats me to it. “I think your mic needs to be turned up a little. You shouldn't be afraid to get closer to it, even when you do your louder parts, because the instruments can drown you out. But overall, this was stellar. Do you guys have a CD yet? I would buy it. Your lyrics are pretty sophisticated. Who writes them?”

“Wow—thank you,” Blake says, her face lighting up. “Charlie's the word guy.”

“Really? I was hoping it was the bass player,” Olivia says, looking down. “He just seems . . . I don't know.”

“That would be Elliott. He's bass, but he actually composes most of the melodies,” Blake says. “He plays guitar too, so he comes up with these chord progressions, and then Billy takes over to rip the hell out of them. Eventually we're hoping to add another member to play rhythm so Billy can really focus on lead.”

Olivia gives a smile. “That's impressive.”

“We're packing up. Can you guys stick around?” Blake says to me.

“We can help,” Olivia says.

“Uh, I can help with the heavy stuff,” I say, throwing Olivia a glance. Our eyes lock and the light in hers dims a little.

“I can sort out the cords and microphones or something?” Olivia says.

I think we both know people who are pregnant aren't supposed to lift heavy things.

AN HOUR LATER, EVERYTHING
is taken apart and packed away in Elliott's dad's work van.

“When did you start writing music?” Olivia asks Elliott, while we're all standing around waiting for the community center guy to come get the key.

“I started taking guitar lessons when I was ten, and playing other people's songs was fun for a while, but I was always hearing my own tunes in my head, you know?” Elliott says.

“They're really great songs,” she says, and he smiles.

“The lyrics are mine,” Charlie says.

“Are you a poet?” she asks.

Charlie puffs up, palming his scruffy chin. “I just like to let the words flow.”

“Liar!” Blake says, throwing a weak punch to his arm. “He drives himself crazy over each word and then changes his mind a hundred times.
I'm a wordsmith, babe. You can't rush me
.”

Babe
. I know they used to date, but still, it doesn't feel good to hear that. I'd been wondering about calling her babe, and now it feels like the word is taken.

Next Olivia's asking Billy how long he's been playing guitar.

“Since I was three or four. My stepdad's in a band,” Billy says, lighting up a cigarette.

“You're very good,” Olivia says.

“Thanks,” he says.

The
Ninja Turtles
theme breaks out from my pocket and for a moment, it makes me feel like the little kid in a group of cool kids. Elliott laughs and says, “I so approve of that ringtone.”

I smile and nod knowingly, and then I'm backing away from the group and answering the call because it's my house.

“Where are you?” My mom sounds annoyed or suspicious about something, but that's the way she always sounds.

“I went out with my friends.”

“You no tell me,” she says.

“It's daytime and it's the weekend, Ma.”

She tells me she thought I was hiding in my room this whole time, and she expected me home today, that my bathroom needs a good cleaning.

“I'll do it tomorrow.” I can feel her rolling her eyes because when my mom's decided something needs doing, it has to get done right away. She tells me to be home for dinner. That's in less than an hour. “I'm grabbing pizza. We're going to the movies later.”

“No, no,” she says.

“Why?”

She tells me she doesn't have to explain herself to me.

“Ma, come on. It's Saturday,” I say, looking over at everyone standing around. My eyes linger on Blake, watching her mouth move while she says something that makes Olivia crack up and Charlie shake his head and grin like she just took another shot at him. I'm not going home. “I'll be home tonight, okay?”

“Penelope Oliveira!”

“Am I in trouble?”

“In trouble,” she mutters. She says it has nothing to do with being in trouble, that it has to do with kids doing as they're told.

Blake glances at me just then, head tilted and a side grin on her lips. I can't believe I'm standing here arguing with my mommy because she wants me to come home.

“Fine,” I say.

When I get back to the group, Elliott's asking Olivia something and their conversation gets quieter. Olivia's doing this shy smile for him so I look away. Blake shivers next to me. Time's going by too fast. I wish I could put my arm around her. I wish I could at least open my mouth and ask a decent question or something.

“I'm glad you came,” Blake says, when Billy and Charlie dive into some conversation about having a pickup installed into one of their acoustic guitars and how much that'll cost. “And I'm really glad you're coming over.”

“Me too.” With that, I reach into my pocket and turn my
phone right off. When I get in trouble for this later, it'll totally be worth it. “You kicked ass. You guys could totally record an album.”

“Yeah?”

“For sure. Your voice is just . . . well, I don't really know how to explain it, but it's got a lot more going on than just being able to hold a note.”

One of her fingers hooks around mine. Icy skin against icy skin, but it's the warmest thing I've ever felt.

Charlie looks over at us then. I wish I could know what he sees when he looks at me. Does he see a girl pretending to be something she's not? Because nothing I'm doing, nothing that I am is about pretending.