Jumpstart the World (7 page)

Shane and The Bobs had no idea what they were talking about. They were just wrong. And when people are wrong, they ought to keep their damn mouths shut. If you don’t know what you’re saying, I think you should just stop talking.

I figured it would be best if I didn’t hang out with any of those guys again. They weren’t all the friends I had, anyway. I would still have Frank.

“You’re my best friend,” I said. Out loud.

He opened his eyes. But he didn’t say anything. Or at least, not in the first couple of seconds, and then I had to plunge right in again.

“I know it sounds weird to say that.”

“Why? Why is it weird?”

“Just because I haven’t known you very long, I guess.” Silence. Then I said, “I’m sorry if that was a dumb thing to say.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Just so long as I’m not your
only
friend. I think you might want to give those other kids a chance. They seemed nice to me.”

“You won’t be my only friend,” I said.

“Good. Diversify. You owe it to yourself.”

“Okay. Deal.”

Notice I didn’t specify who the others would be.

Maybe I could count my cat.

When I got back to my apartment, I found a very large, flat wrapped package leaning against my door. Probably as tall as my waist. Almost as wide as it was tall. Only a few inches thick. It
was gift-wrapped in the world’s largest piece of solid dark-green wrapping paper. It had a card stuck on with a white premade ribbon bow.

I carried it inside.

I opened the card first.

I knew in my gut it was from some or all of the people I had ejected from my place the day before. I was not particularly surprised when it turned out to be from The Bobs.

The card said:

Elle,

We are so sorry if we offended you by anything we said about your friend. We liked him a lot and did not mean the comments in any negative way. We want you to have this for your birthday. Bobby/I did it him/myself.

Happy Birthday,
Bob and Bobby

I started to try to cut the tape with my fingernail. I don’t know why I do that. I feel like I should be polite to the wrapping paper while I’m opening presents. But then I just throw it away anyway.

“I guess I should just rip it, huh?” I said out loud to a perfectly empty room.

I tore off the wrapping paper to find the most beautiful painting of irises. Only three of them. Just a simple painting of three very long-stemmed flowers. I guess there’s no way I can really describe it so it won’t sound dumb. A painting of flowers. But they were graceful and peaceful in a way I can’t really explain. And the light was hitting them in a nicely complex way.

I just stared at it for a long time.

It didn’t look like a painting by somebody you knew. It looked like something you’d see hanging in a gallery. Something you couldn’t afford, by an artist you didn’t know and whose talent you couldn’t understand.

It had a wire picture hanger on the back, with a little right-sized nail in a plastic bag taped to the wire.

After a while, I borrowed a hammer from Molly to hang it up over my couch. Unfortunately, Frank was asleep by then.

I sat on my one comfortable chair and looked at the painting. Wishing it were from somebody I wasn’t mad at and hadn’t just put out of my life forever. But I liked the painting so much it almost didn’t matter. Well, it mattered some. But now that I’d seen the way it looked hanging over my couch, there was no going back again.

It made the place look almost like somebody’s home.

Unfortunately, Frank was still asleep when I returned the hammer.

The next morning—Monday morning—I ran into Wilbur on the way to my second class.

I was glad I was wearing the leather bracelet he’d given me. I saw him glance down at it. Quickly. Then he looked me in the eye. Which I’m pretty sure he’d never done before.

“Shane’s been looking for you everywhere.”

“Oh,” I said.

I think it was clear by the way I said it that I was not anxious to rush right off and be found.

“I think she wants to know if you guys are still friends.”

“Oh.”

I probably knew other words. I always had before. But none of them were coming to mind.

“If you don’t want to see her, that’s okay. But if you want, you could tell me where you’re going to be next period. And I’ll call her up and let her know.”

He lightly touched the cell phone sticking up from the front pocket of his very tight jeans. A moment of silence, during which I noticed that, in addition to the usual heavy eyeliner, he was wearing green eye shadow.

It occurred to me that I was going to see her sooner or later. Maybe this was better than seeing her by surprise.

“Science,” I said. “Ms. Lembecki.”

He smiled a little bit. Sadly. Just with one corner of his mouth. Like he knew exactly how everything felt to me. Like he found it touching when someone else’s day seemed as sad as his.

Shane was standing in front of Ms. Lembecki’s room by the time I got there.

She didn’t waste any time getting down to business.

“I know why you got so upset about what we said.”

“I’d rather not talk about that.”

“I just want you to know that a trans man is a man. I mean, in all the ways that count. Like a man who was born with this really bad birth defect. But, anyway, all I’m trying to say is that if you’re attracted to him, it’s the man stuff you’re attracted to. It doesn’t mean anything about
you
.”

“He is not a trans man!” I said.

Actually, I shouted it. I really hadn’t meant to shout it. The whole thing just sort of got away from me.

Every single kid within earshot—and I’m guessing there
were at least twenty of them—turned around to look. And from the looks on their faces, they all knew exactly what a trans man was.

I guess the only person to ever have not known that was me.

I only saw Annabel once. Rounding the corner in my direction as I was headed to the cafeteria for lunch. She took one look at me and stopped dead. Like she had just seen a ghost, or a glimpse of her own death or something. Then she turned and rounded the corner again, right back the way she had come.

I sat by myself in the cafeteria.

I guess I should admit the whole cafeteria thing hadn’t been a well-thought-out plan. I should have gotten something at the deli and eaten by myself. As I’d headed to school that morning, I hadn’t been thinking how much this would change having lunch. I hadn’t thought out all the various ways in which things would be different now.

I sat alone at a corner table and watched the melee of moving bodies and listened to the racket of voices.

And watched the “Us” folks at the usual table.

And marveled at the way everybody left us alone.

Not like they accepted us exactly. More like, now that they’d labeled us, we didn’t need to exist in their world. If we didn’t do anything special to jump up onto their radar screens, I guess they really didn’t think about us at all.

I saw Bobby glance over his shoulder at me about three times.

Finally, he got up and came in my direction. Just Little Bobby. Nobody else.

I jumped to my feet and dumped the rest of my lunch in the trash bin and tried to hurry out before he could get to me. But we
just ended up meeting at the door and walking out into the hall together.

“I hope you got my present,” he said.

“Yeah, I did.” But it seemed really cruel to just leave it at that. I mean, since it was original artwork and all. “I like it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I like it a lot. I hung it over my sofa. It really adds a lot to the place.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“No. I really mean it. You’re talented.”

He looked down at the floor and away to deflect the compliment. “Bob thinks so. But, you know. I think he’s prejudiced.”

“Maybe. But he could also be right.”

Long silence. We were still walking together. But I had no idea where we were going. I’m pretty sure he didn’t, either. Lunch wasn’t anywhere near over. We had no place we needed to be.

“So,” he said. “Are we okay, then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Sure.”

It was both the least true and the least convincing thing I’d ever heard myself say.

When I got home from school that day, I walked into my apartment and found somebody there. Sitting at my kitchen table. I think I might have literally jumped, and I let out an embarrassing involuntary scream.

The murderous intruder jumped up and spun around.

It was only my mother.

Then she screamed, too.

“What?” I said. “It’s me. Who were you expecting?” I mean, who was supposed to be surprised and invaded, anyway?

I watched her face gradually change. It started out afraid of me, as if I were some total stranger. But instead of the relief of recognition, her new expression was hurt and ruined, as if she were about to burst into tears.

Oh. Right. The hair.

“I thought you were getting back tomorrow,” I said.

“No. Yesterday.”

“I thought it was tomorrow.”

“No. It was always yesterday.”

I saw a stack of the usual boxes and bags on the table. Typical birthday stuff. Don’t ask how I could know it was typical without opening it. But they mostly had that high-end-department-store-clothing-box look. Which was typical. She always bought me presents intended to turn me into the girl she thought I should be. Or to turn me into her. Or maybe I just said the same thing two different ways.

Before she could even assault me about the hair issue, I said, “How did you get in? Did you keep a key?”

“Of course I did. What if you were hurt or in trouble?”

“Funny. You keep saying that. But I think that whole ‘hurt or in trouble’ thing is the reason why most parents keep their teenagers around the house.”

“Why did you do that to your hair?”

“I think you owed me the respect of telling me if you were going to keep a copy of my key.”

“Was there an actual reason? Like something got stuck in it, or it got burned or something?”

“I also think you should call if you’re going to come by. After all, this is my place now. You would be furious if somebody came by unannounced.”

“Or were you just being willfully destructive?”

Just so you know, this was not at all unusual. This two-simultaneous-conversations thing. My mother and I did this on many an occasion.

“The latter,” I said. Just to shut things down once and for all. “Next time, please call before you come. You scared me half to death.”

“I just wanted to tell you all about my cruise. And plan your big birthday party. Although this changes things somewhat. I’m not sure how we’ll … Oh wait, I know. I have a lovely cloche hat that would look like heaven on you.”

“I frankly don’t want to hear about the cruise. And I’m not wearing your hat. And I don’t want a birthday party. Especially not now that I know that it was never really for me. It was always for my hair.”

“Please don’t be like that, darling. Of course we’ll have a party.”

“I already had one,” I said.

“What?”

“I think you heard. I had a birthday party already. With my friends. And they gave me nice presents, too. A stuffed cat and this nice leather bracelet and that painting of the irises that’s hanging over the couch. So, that’s it. Birthday’s over. You missed it. You can’t just change the date of a thing like that, you know. You either care enough to be there for it or you don’t.”

“I think I’ll just give you a little time to think this over.”

“Good plan,” I said.

That way she would go away. And next time she called or e-mailed, I could just tell her my feeling hadn’t changed.

“Are you sure you don’t—”

“What happened to my time to think this over?”

She sighed.

She touched my cheek once as she was leaving.

In her eyes I saw something potentially a little bit new. Like I might’ve really hurt her. Like maybe all of this was hurting her, maybe more than I knew. And like maybe I was making this bad thing worse for her instead of better.

Except I really don’t think it’s my job to make it easier for her to abandon me.

Then she looked back at my hair and the moment was lost.

After she left, I opened my presents.

I took a hard look at all the crap my mother had given me for my birthday. Shoes. A dress. A fur jacket. All stuff to wear. All stuff she would wear and I wouldn’t. All stuff that would make me look just the way she wanted me to look.

Just like I expected.

Mother always wrapped the receipts with the packages, in case the size was wrong or something. And maybe, underneath that, so I’d know how much she spent. But usually I didn’t exchange it. Usually I just let it rot in a drawer.

I took out all the receipts and looked at them. Totaled them up. Hundreds of dollars. And all from the same department store.

I took it all back.

I turned it all in for store credit, and then I bought a 35 mm camera, with two extra lenses—a close-up and a wide-angle—and a flash, and a tripod, and a light meter, and a book about photography.

And I carried it all home.

SIX
How to Freeze the World in One Easy Lesson

N
ext time I played Scrabble with Frank, I did a little better. I only lost that game by about 150 points.

“I want to hear you guys sing,” I said as we were gathering up the tiles again. I think I was trying to move on to some area of life that wasn’t Scrabble. I was definitely outclassed in Scrabble.

“No you don’t,” Frank said.

“You really don’t,” Molly said.

“No, I really do. After seeing how well Molly takes pictures and how well Frank plays Scrabble, now I want to see you guys do something you suck at.”

“Well,” Frank said. “You asked for it.”

They sang, “Happy belated birthday to you.” They were pretty bad. Not the worst I’ve ever heard, but bad enough.

“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much makes up for the Scrabble.”