Girl Mans Up (14 page)

People laugh at me now, because sometimes I get confused and pronounce words in my parents' Portuguese accent. A lot of French words are almost the same as Portuguese words. Beside me, Colby doesn't laugh at all.

AFTER SCHOOL, BLAKE COMES TO MY LOCKER.
My mind is so full of Colby and Olivia, I have to split in two so I can be normal with Blake. Sometimes I wonder if Blake and I could ever end up being like a real couple, where I could tell her stuff and she'd be on my side.

“I think Olivia ditched us!” Blake says, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. “She's nowhere.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, that sucks.”

“It's not really a big deal, because she just wanted to talk to Mr. Middleton about you guys having switched places, and she said she had some notes, but we can get those later,” Blake says, while I fling things to the bottom of my locker. “I doubt she has much. Every time we tried to pick a time to get together to work, she had to cancel because she was sick.”

“Oh, really?”

“She came over to my house one time, for not even an hour.” Blake leans closer to me. “During that hour, she was sick and started crying.”

“Maybe she can't eat gluten and it gives her bad heartburn,” I say. “My aunt Joana gets that.”

“Well, my dad has antacids, if that's all it was. She wouldn't
tell me. Just cried, and then left.” Blake waits while I zip up my bag and slam my locker door. “You're friends with her, right?”

“No. Who said that?”

She gives me a funny look. “No one said it. You guys hang out together, so I just assumed you were friends.”

“I mean . . . we know each other. She dated Colby in the summer.”

“Oh.” She fakes a gag. “That's a little . . .
not
righteous.”

I drop my bag at my feet and face her. “You know you're, like, the only girl who doesn't like Colby?”

“I doubt that.” She gives this little laugh, but then when she realizes I'm serious, her face freezes into this suspicious expression. “You're serious right now?”

“I guess I just don't get it.”

“Get what?”

“Get why.”

“Why what?” she asks, and she touches my arm when I reach up to palm my chin.

“Nothing,” I say, staring at her fingers. “I'll call her and see what's up.”

“Okay,” she says. “We're meeting in room thirty-two.”

While we walk, I text Olivia:
need 2 talk 2 u

MR. MIDDLETON LOOKS GLAD
to see me, saying it's about time I explore my interests. He probably figures I'm into photography. My interests are pretty much the hot blonde next to me, but photography might be okay, too. He goes over the project, and it starts making me crap my pants a little.

“In front of the whole school?” I say.

“Not just the whole school. The anniversary celebration is a cocktail party and our alumni, as well as many members of our community, are invited to attend,” he explains.

“Oh, man . . .” I look at Blake. “I won't have to, like, talk in front of a mic, will I?”

Mr. Middleton shakes his head. “No. Each team will be set up around the auditorium, and you'll man your stations. We'll invite attendees to have a look at your diaries. And each project will be displayed for the audience throughout the evening.”

“That sounds pretty important,” I say. “And we have . . . six weeks left?”

“Just about,” he says.

“That's loads of time,” Blake says. “It'll be righteous. I'm not even worried about it at all.”

After that, Mr. Middleton hands me a form to fill out, which basically gives me permission to use any of the A/V equipment I need—and I didn't even know this school had any A/V equipment. Then it's official. Blake and I are Team 3.

When Mr. Middleton leaves, Blake hangs back, letting the door close behind him. The classroom we're in is empty, and the windows face the deserted field out back. It makes me think dirty things. Blake grins at me like she can tell. Or like she was thinking the same.

“You want to go out Friday?” she says.

“Sure.”

“I mean . . . like a date.”

“In public?”

She nods like,
Now you're catching on
. “Yeah, in public.”

She's asking me out. It should've been me who did it. It's okay, though. It's still good.

“Yeah,” I say. “I definitely wanna go on a date with you.”

“You better.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Then Blake's right in front of me, leaning in. Her lips barely touch mine before they're gone, before I have to ask her to stop, in case someone was to catch us. I've been thinking about kissing her again ever since our last kiss, in the chapel room, two days ago. Now I wish we could do it some more, but she's already heading out into the hall.

I GET OFF THE
bus in the old section of town, where the one-story houses are small but there are big trees everywhere. The streets look the same, and they're all named after trees, which I guess is appropriate. Olivia's house is on Poplar. The driveway is empty. It's a little brick house. The lawn is pretty healthy-looking, and the flower beds and bushes are ready for winter. It makes me wonder if Johnny does work here.

Before I knock, I call my house. Mom answers on the second ring. When I tell her I'm at the library working on a project, she makes this sound, like she doesn't buy it. So I tell her I have this big essay to write with Tristan.

“Ya, you do what you want,” she says. “Like all the time.”

I don't bother saying bye because she already hung up on me.

Olivia comes to the door, and on her feet are bunny slippers.

“Did you leave school because of this morning?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I didn't feel well.”

She moves back to invite me inside. When we texted earlier, she didn't want to meet me at the coffee shop. I figured it was because she was pissed at me, but then she invited me over. The house is super clean. Hardwood floors, dark tiles, and stainless steel. Olivia goes through the kitchen. I slip my sneakers off and follow her. We head down a set of stairs, to what looks like a second family room in the basement. Olivia takes a seat in the armchair and grabs the mug with a tea bag string dangling from it. I take the loveseat.

“I'm sorry I said that to Colby,” I say. “It was dumb.”

“What did he do after I left?”

“Tore into me,” I say. “I'm getting used to it by now.”

“No, you're not,” she says. “No one gets used to people being mean to them.”

“He wasn't
mean
. He was just being an ass.”

“What's the difference?”

“Colby's always been like that,” I say, but then something catches my eye in the shelving unit that holds the old box TV. It's a mess, things piled one on top of the other. But I see the console clearly, sticking out from between other things. I've seen some of my gaming YouTubers review games for it, but I've never seen one for real. “Is that an Atari?”

Olivia looks to where I'm pointing. “Oh, probably.”

“An Atari 2600,” I say. “Wow. Whose console is that?”

“My uncle's. He left a lot of things here before he moved out. He used to crash here when he was between places.”

“Does it work? Can we play?”

Olivia goes to the TV and starts pulling out things she thinks belong to the console. She opens a cupboard door and there's a stack of cartridges in there, along with a stack of CDs and a couple of board games. I find the AC adapter and a joystick controller. Olivia hands me an HDMI cable, and it makes me laugh.

“What?” she asks.

“That's about—I don't know, thirty-something years into the future for that thing,” I say. She stuffs the cable back into the mess of things, then watches me hook it all up. Oh man,
Pitfall!
,
Pac-Man
—I've watched videos about all these games. “This TV is perfect. It's old, so the graphics will look better.”

When I power the console, and
Pitfall!
starts, Olivia goes, “And that's supposed to be
good
? It looks like a four-year-old made it.”

“It's from the seventies,” I say.

So we sit on the carpet in front of the TV, and even though there's only one button and a joystick, I suck so bad.

“That doesn't look like fun,” Olivia says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “It's retro gaming. It's a piece of history.”

She watches me try to make the character jump over things that roll at him, swing on ropes to avoid big holes in the ground.

“There. I just had to get the jumping down,” I say.

I play for a while, and the further I get into this game, the more it makes me want to start collecting retro stuff. The
emulator isn't the same as this—holding the real joystick in my hand.

“Pen?” Olivia asks. “Why did you come here?”

“I felt bad. I wanted to make sure you're all right.”

My little dude falls into a hole. I put the controller down, flipping through the other games.
Combat
looks good—well, as good as these old games get.

“Pen, what is this?” she asks.

I push the game into the console. “
Combat
.”

“Not the game. This,” she says, pointing at herself and then me. “Are you . . . trying to get back at Colby for something?”

“Why? Why are you asking that?”

“Because. I don't understand. You being nice to me—it's just getting you in trouble with Colby,” she says. “Is it that you feel sorry for me because I said it was your fault that you didn't warn me about him before? Or is it that you're using this to get back at him?”

“What would I want to get back at him for?” I stare at the startup screen, not pressing any button. “He hasn't done anything to me.”

“No?”

“What are you talking about right now? What's he saying about me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I say, shifting my weight so I can look at her. “Because whatever he says is lies. He twists things to make himself look a certain way.”

“I know that,” she says.

“He's a douche, okay?”

“I know, Pen,” she says.

“So why do you keep hanging around, hoping he'll change for you?”

“Because when he's nice, it's like I forget how mean he is the rest of the time,” she says. “You know what I'm talking about.”

“No, I don't,” I say. “It's not the same thing.”

“How?”

“Because . . . I'm not just some girl, okay?”

Silence, and I stare at the TV screen.

“Neither am I,” she finally says.

“Yeah, you are, okay? You're not his friend. You don't have history with him, and loyalty. You're some girl he hooked up with, and the minute it got too complicated, he turned into a jerk and bailed.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she says, and before she's reached the stairs, I can hear her bawling.

I did that. I acted like a jerk, and made her cry. What the hell is my problem?

UPSTAIRS, I FIGURE OUT THE BATHROOM IS THE
one door that's closed. It's right past the room I'm assuming is Olivia's, because of the purple-everything inside. A couple knocks on the bathroom door, and she opens it. Seeing her with tears in her eyes is starting to feel regular. I wonder what she was like, before Colby.

“Can we just not talk about him from now on?” I ask. “He turns me into a jerk, and I'm not like that. I don't want to be like that.”

“How can we not talk about him? He's the one thing we have in common. The only reason we're even hanging out right now,” she says. “You feel sorry for me.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. Because all this sucks,” I say, pointing to her stomach, and it's like I'm suddenly hit in the face with reality: right now, this very second, there's a baby inside Olivia's stomach. There's no forgetting about Colby for her, because he's always there. “Are you going to have the baby?”

She shakes her head, but I'm sure a yes is going to come out of her mouth. “No. I'm not.”

She stands there in the doorway of the bathroom, staring
back at me. Her eyes are dry now, and when I look down at her stomach, I still can't see anything there. Did she lie? Was it a lie this entire time?

“Then what's going on?” I ask.

“I've been thinking about something for the last couple weeks,” she says after a deep breath. “But now I have to stop thinking about it and actually do it.”

“Do what?”

She walks past me, heading for the purple bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed, and I stand just past the doorway, watching her. My heart won't stop freaking out and knocking against my ribs.

I have to ask. “Did you lie? Did you make it up just to try to keep him around?”

Her face tells me what I need to know. It's not a lie.

“I wish you were my friend, Pen,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because then I could ask you to come with me, and you'd probably say yes,” she says.

There's a little white chair tucked under this desk to my left. There's a sweater or something folded over the back of it. I pull the chair out and sit, careful not to knock the sweater off. Olivia's eyes are almost screaming at me to help her. No one's ever needed my help. Not for real.

“You're getting an abortion?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Because of Colby?”

She shakes her head no.

“But—I mean, that's a big deal. What about, like, adoption? Or having it?”

“I thought about all that.” She closes her eyes like she's giving herself a little refresher. “I just need someone to come with me to Crestonvale, wait for me, and ride home with me.”

It sounds easy. Not a big deal at all. Except it's an abortion. There's no pressing Pause and going back to the last checkpoint once you realized you messed up.

“Did you, you know, talk to someone about it all?”

“I talked to a counselor at the clinic twice. She got me to read all this stuff. I did my homework for this.” She looks lost for a minute. “I made an appointment. But I chickened out because I was by myself, and they said I need someone to take me home. I don't know what's going to happen, but what if it's bad and I can't even take the bus by myself? My mom will figure it out.”

I'm just listening.

“It's already been almost eight weeks, and it has to be figured out before I get to twelve,” she says. “I don't want to puke anymore.”

“How's it been two months already? It just happened last week or something.”

“I found out a couple weeks ago, but that means it had happened a little while before that.”

I pull out my phone to scroll through the calendar app. It still doesn't make sense to me. Time's going too fast.

“Do you think it's even possible for me to know what's right and what's wrong?” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“What if I think I'm making the right decision, but it turns out to be a horrible mistake, and I realize I should've known better? My mom's always telling me people my age think they know everything, and then when they get older, they realize how stupid they were,” she says. “What if I'm doing something stupid and I don't even know it?”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, I think people always think those who are younger than them are dumb. My uncle thinks he's smarter than my dad, and my dad thinks he's smarter than my brother—who's to say who's right? And sure, our older selves are always going to look back and think our younger selves were idiots—but it doesn't mean anything.” I think I'm freaking her out with my rambling. “Say your older self ended up regretting the decision you make today, well, what does it matter? She's not here right now. You are,” I say. “I think maybe you shouldn't think about doing what's right, and maybe you should just do what feels
less
wrong.”

“I just want it to be over, Pen. I want it to be done.”

“Okay.”

“I just don't want to go by myself,” she says. “I'm always by myself. There's never anybody here.”

“Don't cry, Olivia. I'll go with you. Don't worry.”

AFTER THAT, OLIVIA MAKES
us dinner. She pulls out a box of Kraft Dinner, and I could eat KD at every meal and be happy, so I give her a thumbs-up.

“You can have that Atari system, if you want,” she says later,
as she places a bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of me.

“What? Are you crazy? Won't your uncle be pissed?”

“He came back last month to pick up the rest of his stuff. He left that there, so I figure he doesn't want it.”

“Shouldn't you ask him?”

“I want you to have it,” she says, taking a seat across from me at the round kitchen table. “You seem to really love it. It's just shoved into our piles of junk. Take it.”

“The games, too?”

“All of it.”

“Wow. Johnny would . . .” But I don't finish the thought, because Johnny's gone. “That's awesome. It feels like a bribe, but I'll take it. Thanks.”

When I grin, she lets a little grin of her own pull the corner of her mouth up. We eat our KD, and every once in a while, I look up to watch the way she eats. It makes me feel like a slob, so I try putting only a few pieces of pasta on my fork and chewing eighteen times before swallowing. It's exhausting as hell, so I go back to shoveling forkfuls in my mouth.

“We met with Mr. Middleton earlier,” I say. “We have barely over a month to come up with a concept and shoot everything. I'm kind of freaking.”

“I'm sorry I bailed on you guys,” Olivia says, putting her fork down. “If you really get stuck, you can go with my idea. I told Blake about it before I quit.”

“Really?” I say. “What was it?”

“The project is supposed to be about capturing what it's like to be a student at St. Peter's, right? Well, I'd been
thinking about asking people for quotes about what it's like to go to this school,” she says. “Combining their words with their pictures.”

I let that sit for a moment, picturing what it would look like. I'd gotten as far as deciding black and white would probably make the pictures look artsy. Words might be good.

“That sounds pretty cool,” I say. “But . . . who would actually want the truth plastered over their picture? They'd get laughed at.”

“Well . . . ,” Olivia says, then we both go quiet. “Maybe some people aren't ashamed of the truth.”

“Doubt it.” I point to her bowl. “Are you not gonna eat that?”

She shakes her head and pushes the bowl over my way. “Orange things have been grossing me out lately.”

“Orange? Just . . . anything orange?”

“Juice, cheese, mangoes,” she says. “Ugh, carrots are the worst.”

“That's messed up,” I say. “Orange is an important food color. Jalapeño Cheetos are orange. Me and Colby eat, like, two bags of those a week.”

At the mention of his name, we both stop and look at each other. There's no way to
not
talk about him; he's everywhere.

“Pen?” she says. “How come you're friends with Colby?”

“I can't really remember right now,” I say.

“Can I tell you something?” she asks. When I nod, she adds, “Because I don't think I was just some girl.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe not.”

“The third time we hung out, he told me he loved me,” she says.

“Colby said that?” It's like she'd need to point him out of a lineup for me to believe we're talking about the same dude. “Love?”

“He'd text me in the morning when he'd wake up to say good morning. For a month he was like that. Then the summer ended and school started. Things changed. I don't know how.”

“That just sounds . . . like you're talking about some other dude.”

“When I was worried about being late, I called him. He came to meet me and it was horrible. It was stupid, but I thought . . .” Olivia looks over and her face breaks. I never want to be the reason a girl's face breaks like that.

“You thought he'd step it up, stop being a douche, and man up,” I say. That's what she thought—it's on her face. “So that's why you backtracked and told him you made a mistake.”

“There was nobody but him around,” she says. “I'm always by myself. But telling him was a bad idea. It just turned him into the biggest jerk.”

“You're not the one who made him like that. He came out that way,” I tell her. “And don't worry. I got your back. I mean it.”

The thing is, girls can man up, too.