Girl Mans Up (3 page)

LATER ON THAT WEEK, ON SATURDAY NIGHT, I
slide the basement door open and step into Colby's room. I can tell something's off. For one, he's smoking weed right in his house, and the door's only slid open by a crack. There's music blaring, and there's a mess of papers and clothes all over the floor like he got into some kind of fight with random stuff. Although it's not like he has a pissy mom nagging him to clean his room all the time. His mom doesn't even come down here, so what does it matter that his big basement room's a mess.

He spots me finally, rolls off his bed and goes for the stereo, turning down the volume.

“Your parents are out?” I ask.

“Yeah. They had some concert in Toronto tonight, so they got a hotel room downtown,” he says. “Tristan's on his way. Let's go sit outside.”

“Are you all right, dude?”

“Yeah.”

“You seem pissed or something.”

“I'm fine. Just drop it, Pen.”

He sweeps by me and goes out the way I came. I take another glance at his messy room, just in case I'll find some clue for why he's on edge, but there's nothing. So I head out, too.

If my parents had a balcony off the kitchen and they were standing on it, they could probably just see my head from Colby's backyard. But we don't have a balcony, and my parents are both asleep. My mom thinks I'm crashing downstairs with Johnny but I don't even think he's home yet. I haven't heard his truck. He's not answering my texts, so he must be with Jenna, this girl he's sort of dating when they're both in the mood.

Tristan shows up with his bag clanging like there's a Portuguese wedding reception dinner going on in there. He sets it down on the patio table where Colby and I are seated.

“What'd you bring?” Colby asks.

“Check it out.” Tristan wags his eyebrows, digs into his backpack, and yells, “Whiskey!”

“Nice.”

Tristan pulls out another skinnier bottle. It's got some stuff that looks pink.

Colby plucks the bottle from his hand. “What is that?”

“My mom likes it. It's some fruity wine.” Colby shoots Tristan a look. “What? Alcohol is alcohol. Pen can drink it.”

“Why me?”

“Because it's pink,” Tristan says.

“Yeah, good one,” I say. Since Garrett started hanging out with us, it's like Tristan doesn't think twice about throwing me under the bus.

“If anyone's gonna drink that stuff, it's you.” Colby opens
the bottle, takes a whiff, then places it on the table in front of Tristan. “Go. Drink.”

“I don't like wine.”

“Drink.”

“Why?”

“Because Pen is a loyal friend,” Colby says, and I figure he must be talking about Olivia. “And you—well you got us a D on our science paper.”

“I messed up the experiment. It's a legit mistake. It's not like you helped,” Tristan says. He reaches for the whiskey bottle, but Colby gets to it first.

“Nope. The fruity stuff is yours.” Colby laughs and puts the whiskey bottle between us. Tristan gets this pathetic look on his face. Colby waits and lights another smoke. I pick up the whiskey, watching the dark brown liquid sloshing against the glass.

“Seriously, take a chug,” Colby tells Tristan.

It gets silent. Tristan puts his hand around the bottle and reads the label. I don't get why he doesn't just take a drink so we can move on to something else. He always makes it worse for himself.

“Okay, fine.” Colby puts a finger on the spot where the top of the label starts. “Drink down to here. That's all you gotta do.”

Tristan looks over at me, but I pretend I don't notice. I'm glad it's not me who has to drink the pink booze. It reminds me of when we were young, how whenever people did stuff to Tristan, he'd go all stiff and pretend none of it was happening. And the whole time, I was sort of glad he was the one getting picked on, because then it wasn't me getting asked
why I was a boy with braided hair.

“Pass it over,” I tell Tristan. “I'll drink the pink stuff.”

“No,” Colby says. “I told
him
to drink it.”

“So? I said I'll drink it.”

The bottle's on the table between the three of us. I go to reach for it, while Tristan stares all wide-eyed and quiet. Then Colby sticks his big hand out. “I said no!” He goes to grab the bottle before I do and ends up knocking it over. It shatters on the tiled ground between us, glass and fizzy liquid spraying our legs.

“Oops,” Colby says with a grin. “You got lucky, Tristan.”

Colby puts the wrong end of a new cigarette in his mouth and plunges its filter into the flame of his lighter. He inhales and makes a face. “These cigarettes taste like ass.” He reaches for the whiskey and hands it to Tristan.

IT'S LATE AS HELL
after Tristan takes off, and I figure I'll crash on Colby's couch and sneak home in the morning, before my parents wake up.

“Dude, it's so hot in here,” I say. “Can we open the door and the windows all the way?”

He goes for the game controllers. “Yeah, do what you want.”

So I walk around the room, opening what I can. It's mid-September, but the weather's all over the place these days.

“I've had it with girls, Pen. I'm done.”

“What's going on?” I ask, pretty sure I know this is about one girl in particular.

No answer. He collapses on the couch and turns on the
TV. I sit on the other end. There's no talking while we pick our
Street Fighter
characters, and he decides which stage we'll fight in. I don't know why he picked that game, because I'll just end up kicking his ass and he'll get even more annoyed.

The fight starts and I knock his health bar down by half.

“Smoke,” he says, handing me the joint he just lit. “You have an unfair advantage. I'm stoned
and
drunk right now.”

I take a few tokes, and it's so harsh it makes me cough. I don't like the feeling of being stoned. It makes me all paranoid, feeling like my mom's about to sneak up on me, ready to drag me away by the ear.

I still manage to knock him out three times. He jams the buttons like that'll somehow give him skills.

“Of course a girl kicks my ass at
Street Fighter
,” he mutters, and I get the urge to smack his arm for sounding like Garrett. “Because today wasn't bad enough already.”

“What happened?”

“Girls can suck it,” he says, chucking the controller aside. It hits me in the thigh. I take it and turn the game into a fight between me and an AI opponent instead. “I'm telling you right now, Pen, I'm not letting any girl mess with me from now on. I've had it. Getting in their pants isn't worth it.”

Colby's words come out pretty clear, considering what he drank earlier and what he's smoking now.

“Are you talking about Olivia right now?” I ask.

“No one is talking to Olivia from now on,” he says. When I don't reply, he goes, “You got it? She doesn't exist anymore.”

I nod. Olivia should've listened to me when I told her to
stay away. She must not have, and obviously it just made things worse, but that's her problem.

Another joint sparks, and there's smoke everywhere. Even if I wasn't having the occasional toke, I'd still be buzzed off the fumes. It's so hot in here, and there's sweat collecting on my neck, under my hair. I pull off my hoodie, and now I'm a sweaty bastard in a muscle top. When I go to tighten my ponytail, the rubber band snaps, and the pieces get stuck in my hair.

“Can I borrow a shirt?” I ask.

“Yeah, whatever.” He sighs before resuming his rant. “I just wanna have fun and get laid. That's all anyone should be into, right?”

“Well, that's cool, I guess. As long as you don't make the girl think you'd be into doing the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. You gotta find a girl who's into what you're into, I guess. A girl who won't get clingy, and just wants to mess around.”

He nods like I spoke the truest truth, but then his face drops. “Wait—you think I led her on?”

“Olivia?”

“Any of them.”

“I'm not there when you guys are alone, dude. I don't know.”

“They lead
themselves
on, then they think they can trap me,” he says. He reaches over the side of the couch and comes back with a bag of chips, handing it to me. “You think one might be different, then it's like, nope, same old. I swear, Pen, there are times I'd punch a girl if I was allowed.”

“Uh . . .”

“Not, like, really hit a girl, or whatever. I wouldn't do that.
But sometimes it's like, if that girl was a guy right now, we'd settle this a different way, you know?” he says, waiting for me to nod along. “It's a good thing you're not like that, Pen, because then we definitely wouldn't be buddies.”

“Yeah, true.”

He nudges me with his elbow. “You sure you're ready for that crap? Girls are evil, dude. They try to change you, turn you into a pussy.”

I shrug, tossing Cheetos into my mouth. I'm so ready for that crap, although it's not like finding a girl is as easy for me as it is for him. Finding a girl to take on a real date, to kiss, to talk with—that just sounds impossible sometimes. Colby's always known I was into girls, I never had to tell him, but he really doesn't get what it's like for me. Girls—no, not just girls—
people
don't even know how to talk to me, how to be around me.

Colby's looking at me funny through the smoke coming from the joint in his mouth. “What?”

“Dude, you look like such a girl under your hoodie,” he says.

“I told you I need a shirt. Shut up.”

I head for the dresser, picking through until I find a T-shirt that might work. At one point, Colby and I were almost the same size. But a couple years ago, he got more muscle and I got a layer of pudge and a chest. I throw on a black shirt, pulling my hair out from my neck.

Colby hitches his chin at the TV and says, “
Slashko
, co-op.”

He swaps out the disks, then we sit on the couch and set up our offline campaign. I hate gaming online because of all the bull these dudes throw at me—like saying nasty sex stuff
over headsets, or talking crap about my gameplay, or just booting me out when they find out I'm a girl. I stick to gaming by myself, or with people I know, which is better anyway.

Colby gets us killed three times during a covert mission. We're supposed to infiltrate this alien camp in the sewers, then pick off the enemies without getting caught, but his aim is all over the place, so the alarms go off every time he shoots.

“Man, screw this game!” he says, flinging the controller.

“Chill. Just let me do it. I'll even get you the achievement. Don't shoot your damn gun until I tell you to.”

One guy left to take out, and he's standing next to the alarm switch, surrounded by five German shepherds. I could use the plasma cannon, but for the achievement, it's pistol only. If I don't get him right between the eyes and quickly throw a bomb to take care of the dogs, he'll hit the switch, and the dogs will charge at me. It kind of bugs me that I have to blow up dogs—even if they're fake game dogs—but they're trying to eat me, so whatever.

I take out my pistol with silencer.

My gun's aimed.

The guy finishes talking on his walkie-talkie.

I take a breath. Time to pull the trigger—

But instead, Colby's touching me—raking his fingers through my hair, where it hits my back.

I miss the shot, and the dogs are on me.

What?

I'm not even sure it's happening at first, but then he does it again. I get goose bumps and jerk away. Because the only time
Colby ever touches me is to smack my shoulder or punch my upper arm. What the hell is going on?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask. “You're creeping me out.”

“It's like you're a girl, but you're not.”

“So?”

“So . . . it might be kind of perfect, right?”

I feel funny. Guys don't look at me like this, just like guys don't look at each other like that, unless they're gay. Is this gay? I don't even know what to think because my brain's fried. There must be something else laced in that weed.

Colby's handing me the joint, so I take it.

All of a sudden, he's in front of me. His face is right there.

“Dude,” I say. It's all that will come out.

“I'm just trying something,” he says, too close to my face. “Just messing around.”

And then a dude is kissing me. I'm kissing Colby.

IT JUST FIGURES THAT THINGS WOULD GET ALL
messed up and blurry. This is my life, confusing people, and I'm sick of it. Every time I think things are regular, something happens to remind me that no, things are not regular.
I'm
not
regular. I'm some kind of glitch.

Johnny's basement sliding door has a lock and I have a key, so I can let myself in whenever I want without having to walk in through the front door upstairs. It's almost four in the morning. I head for the little bathroom, ripping off Colby's shirt and throwing it in the trash can by the sink.

In the mirror right now, it's my hair I'm staring at, pissed off because it's just hanging there over my shoulders when it's supposed to be tied back, out of sight. My thick, wavy black hair that goes all the way past the middle of my back—the one thing I've been too much of a pussy to do anything about. I hate it. At Christmas, I have to leave it loose or my mom gets mad. When family comes over, I can't wear a hat because it'll offend the guests if I look like a punk druggy.

Sometimes, something really messed up has to happen to make you realize you need to man up.

I go for the cupboard under the sink, pulling out Johnny's kit. Johnny has an undercut, and he gels or ties back the long upper half under his bandanna. Once a month, he takes out the clippers and cleans up the bottom half. Now that I'm standing here with the clippers in my hand, I have no idea where to start. There's just so much hair.

I make a ponytail with one hand, then grab the shears from the kit, and I cut. The longer it takes, the more I force the blades closed around the thick rope of hair, and the metal of the shears digs into my skin, strangling my fingers almost. It takes, like, twenty snips to make it through, and by the end I'm
just pulling the last strands away from my head—I don't even feel it. It's in my hand now, all that stupid hair.

The thing looks like it came off the back of a horse, it's so long. I drop it into the trash can, on top of Colby's shirt.

I grab the shears again, and I start snipping, letting it all fall to the floor.

MY MOM'S ALL OVER
me with the dirty looks on Monday morning, circling me with her hands wrapped around her belly. She's probably extra suspicious because I stayed in my room all of yesterday. I pad through the kitchen, my feet stepping on the hem of my school uniform pants. My head is safe under my hoodie. My mom's long graying braid is coiled and pinned to the back of her head, and the sight of it makes me feel guilty about what I've done, so I don't look directly at her.

“You know the wedding gonna happen,” Mom says. “
Tia
Joana call me.”

There's been rumors about my cousin Constance and her boyfriend getting married soon because she's gotten a little fat. Most of my family lives in Ottawa, but my mom's always in the loop because the aunts call the house every week and they gossip with my mom about everything.

“That's nice. Good for her,” I say, because Constance is a little older than Johnny so it's not like it's a big surprise she'd be getting married. Everyone in my family gets married and has babies. Except for me and Johnny, I guess.

“You like the dress for the wedding? You like white dress?”

“Huh?”

“You like? The dress. It's nice. Like a
princesa
.”

I bend into the fridge so I won't have to deal with this. My mom's always saying weird things like this, starting weird conversations I don't really want to be involved in.

“You know I make you dress when you old. I make nice white dress for you. I teach you, too.”

“Okay, Ma.”

“
Princesa
have the dress. They don't have the punk druggy clothes.”

I put an apple between my teeth and hurry my butt out of the kitchen. “I'm not a princess,” I say when she's behind me.

And then something happens. My hood. It's gone.

She yanked it off my head.

Right off my damn head!

Mom's hand is hanging in the air behind me when I turn, like it froze there from the shock of what it revealed. Her whole face scrunches up under the weight of her eyebrows and I know that if I don't move right now, I'll be getting a swat on the back of the head. So I back up until I'm against the wall.

She shakes her head and her lips go all tight. She puts a hand against her heart and for a second, I wish I hadn't done it.

“What you do? What you do, stupid girl?” she says. “Why you do that? You no like me. You no like you
mãe
. You break my heart. So many times, you break heart. No
respeito.
”

I don't like when my mom cries. I like it even less when it's me who made it happen.

She shuffles toward the living room, her face in her hands,
rambling on about me.

She expects me to go after her, to tell her I'm sorry and maybe let her complain some more, but I escape to the front hall. My cell vibrates against my butt, and I already know who it is. I delete Colby's text without reading it. When he calls five minutes later, I press Ignore. Then I kill ten minutes eating my apple in the garage until I'm sure I missed our usual bus.

AT MY LOCKER, I
have no choice but to pull down my hood because we get written up by teachers for not following uniform rules. I think about my mom's reaction earlier, but then I see myself in the mirror hanging inside my locker, and I smile because it's my real face in there. It's pretty sweet to see what I'm supposed to look like. Even if it's the ugliest haircut I've ever seen, it makes my face seem more legit somehow. It's a butt-load better now than it was Saturday. Saturday can go to hell.

The hallway empties fast now that the first bell's gone off. Colby and Tristan head over, because they don't give much of a crap about being late for class either. They're in my peripheral vision. I keep them there until I'm sure they've both seen the change, and I don't have to see any weird looks they might've had at first glance.

“I legit thought you were a guy just now, Pen,” Tristan says. “What the shizz happened?”

“I got gum stuck in my hair, like way at the back against my scalp, so, you know . . . I dealt with it.”

I picture this big wad of purple gum melted into my hair, gluing my head to the pillow. The more I see it, the more real it
becomes in my mind until yeah, this could so be why I had to cut all my hair.

I look at Colby. He'd have to be a pretty big idiot to not know what the deal is. I'd thank him for it, if I didn't feel like punching him in the chin. “Gum, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah, gum.”

Garrett and a couple of other guys move past us. They don't stop, but Garrett's big dumb face breaks into a smile and he points at me over the rush of people between us. “Penelope got a makeover! I'm gonna call you . . . Steve from now on.”

“He's the biggest donkey-crotch ever,” Tristan says to me before wandering off when Trent—this tall kid with huge curly brown hair and fifties-style glasses—waves him over.

Colby and I exchange this look and maybe it takes all I have to not look down. When he raises his eyebrow, I keep my face blank.

“All right then, gum. Let's go with that,” he says. “Whatever.”

I nod, then we break eye contact.

I figure from this point on, we've got an understanding: Saturday night never happened. Gum is the reason I finally cut my hair.

I'M THE TYPE TO
get stared at. Always have been. So today wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Most of these people have seen me every day for the past two years and it's not like I ever looked girly enough to
not
cause people to wonder about me. There might be a bit of shock at first, but then it's gone and
heads turn back to the front.

Home is worse. It starts at dinner. My dad won't let his eyes land on me for more than a second, like I'm some big dent in his car he can't afford to get fixed. My mom's in a mood, sighing and slamming cupboard doors. It's like—I don't know—almost like the meaning of this haircut is heavier than my long ponytail used to be.

“Can I eat downstairs?” I ask.

“No. You sit here,” my mom says, then she curls her lip up in disgust while her eyes drift over my forehead.

I hear gunfire coming from Johnny's TV. He's probably eating fried chicken and playing
War Zone 3
at the same time. I should be there, but I wasn't allowed to go downstairs today.

“People gonna laugh,” Mom tells me, pointing her fork at my head. “You want people laugh at me and you
pai
?”

“They'd be laughing at me, not you.”

She starts grumbling about how her children do everything they can to break her heart and make life hard. Dad shakes his head, but I'm not sure how much of it is because he agrees with Mom, or if he's just pissed off because she's upset. When my mom's upset, everyone suffers.

“What everybody gonna say? What Constance say?” Mom says.

“What does my hair have to do with that? They all live, like, four hours away from here. They don't have to see it,” I say.

“What you say, huh?” Mom turns to Dad and goes off on him about how everyone's going to say my parents have no control over their kids, that they're not strict enough. She says
there's no way my hair will grow back in time for when everyone comes down for a visit on my dad's birthday.

“Ana, we eat now.” Dad tells her I'm doing okay at school, that I do what I'm told at home, and even if my hair looks stupid, it's not the worst thing in the world. “We eat now.”

“How you know?” Mom says to Dad. “You work work work, after you sit and watch the
televisão
. You don't know nothing, Duarte. I know. I see and I know.” She turns to me. “I know what you do, Penelope. I see you.”

She doesn't see me.

Right now, we're right above Johnny's head. With my heel, I smack down on the linoleum three times.

“Hey,” my dad says. “Stop. You eat.”

But it's too late, because the TV's quiet now, and soon, Johnny's stomping up the stairs.

“What's up?” he says when he appears in the kitchen, looking over at me. He gives me a hitch of the chin, and then his eyes go wide when he realizes. He stares at me like my head is some weird painting you have to stare at for a while to truly appreciate. I curl my shoulders over my plate, looking down.

“Why you here?” Dad asks.

“You do this, João?” Mom asks Johnny. “You do this stupid cut the hair?”

Dad tells Johnny to answer.

“He didn't even know I did it,” I say.

“What's the problem? So she cut her hair—what's the big deal?” he says. “Are you the one wearing it? No.”

“João,
respeito
,” Dad warns in between forkfuls of chicken.

“You go away. No food for you today.” Mom says she's getting tired of him stepping everywhere with his big feet when he's not welcome. To me, she says, “You stop be like you brother. He no good.”

“What? I'm no good?” Johnny says.

For a second, Mom looks sorry, like maybe she screwed up her English, but then she just goes with it. She directs her rant at Dad now, going off about how Johnny's been setting a bad example for his little sister and that now I'm trying to copy him because I don't know any better. Dad agrees to that because as much as my mom has it out for me, Dad has it out for Johnny.

“All right, man,” Johnny says to me, pointing to the hallway. “Let's go for pizza.”

“Hey! What I say?” Dad says. He tells Johnny he better watch himself, or he could find himself on the street. “You wanna get outta here, João?”

This isn't the first time they've threatened to kick my brother out—it's, like, the fifth time just this year—but every time they do it, there's a sinking feeling in my gut. I know for a fact they could follow through on their threat at any given time—they've done it before.

Mom looks at me and says, “You see? You brother he no good. He no smart.”

Doesn't matter what Johnny does, he'll always be the punk druggy who dropped out of high school to hang out with his buddies and smoke weed. Our parents don't care about his business because to them, it's not a real job—it's not a safe job
at Dad's packaging company with benefits and paid vacation and all that crap.

“This has nothing to do with Johnny, Ma. He didn't do it,” I say. “It's just hair.”

“You cut you hair to be the boy. It's no good. I tell you now, I want no more.” She says she can't take much more and things are going to have to change. Then she asks Dad what he thinks, and he does this big shrug that doesn't really mean one thing or the other.

It's not that things are going to have to change—they're changing already.

I bring my half-eaten dinner to the sink, then I go past Johnny and head to my room. I shouldn't have called him because he always ends up getting blamed for everything. I should've known that. Why can't I just take care of myself? I'm such a pussy.

Upstairs, I check my phone. There's a text from Colby:
Y u gotta b such a girl about this? It's done. Just move on.

Me:
not being weird—i moved on

Him:
Don't buy it. Gum in yr hair my ass.

Everyone wants something different from me. It's like one second, I should be a better dude. I should stop being such a girly douche, and I should just man up. Then, it's the opposite: I'm too much of a guy, and it's not right. I should be a girl, because that's what I'm supposed to be.

The thing is, I'm not a boy, but I don't want to be
that
girl either. I just want everyone to screw off and let me do my own thing for once.