The Geography of Girlhood (5 page)

everyone is having the time of their goddamn lives

and all I can think about is my funeral.

I’m on my way into second period gym

and that’s when I see Jenny Arnold

standing in the locker room,

wearing nothing but her underwear and a rose tattoo
on her hip—

a thorny invitation to sniff

and get pricked.

Jenny Arnold doesn’t care who sees her and why
should she?

She’s a rock star in a room full of doofs,

she’s done things the rest of us have never even
read about.

She walks towards me, topless and queenly and

I realize I’ve been dreaming about getting hit by
Jenny Arnold

all summer long, the way some girls dream about
getting kissed.

Suddenly, I can’t wait for the punch;

at least I’m going to die at the hand

of someone who’s beautiful and cool.

I close my eyes and wait

to get smacked, but instead

Jenny Arnold smiles and says,

Welcome to high school

and then she walks away,

heading toward the showers

like a flower blooming towards the rain

and for no reason at all,

I go from feeling cursed to blessed,

because like any goddess on high,

Jenny Arnold has the gift of taking life

and she has the gift of giving it back.

Why I have to have a locker right next to Randall Faber,

I will never know.

Every day I see him and we pretend like it’s normal

like we’re “just friends”

except inside I feel kind of sick,

knowing that no matter how old I get,

Randall Faber will always be my first kiss,

my first beginning, my first end.

I guess the upside is that

now I’m a woman with a past,

I’m not all present and future like I used to be

and maybe that’s a good thing

if it weren’t so absolutely awful.

Some people are only happy if they are making your life

miserable and Mr. Horter is one of them. He enjoys the

torture of frogs and freshmen. His life is sure to be

awful, because his head is pointy and he is cruel and

his pants are weird. He is destined to a life with a wife

who (I’ve seen her) is as mean as he is. I imagine them

kissing each other at the door when he comes home.

Then I try to imagine him getting her pregnant (which

she is) and all I can imagine is two people bumping up

against each other in a pitch-black room. I don’t know

what my life holds, but if it’s anything like Mr. Horter’s,

I don’t want it. What I’d like to know is, shouldn’t they

have teachers that inspire you to grow up, instead of

people whose lives seem to say,
Stop now because it’s

never going to get any better?

Denise and Elaine don’t talk at all anymore.

They are like that cliff in town,

the one that’s sliding into the sea.

Geologists say the erosion was inevitable.

Nothing could stop it,

not with the rain and the wind the way it is.

Whether it’s soil or best friends,

things can’t help but slip away and disappear.

I guess nothing on the map ever stays fixed.

All you can do is make sure you’re not standing on it

when it goes.

I don’t know much about my mother, just that she had

wanderlust all her life, even at fifteen, with her lipstick

and her too-short skirt and her foster parents yelling at

her from the house. My mother was a person who

always wanted to leave wherever she was.

She told me once that her first kiss was with a traveling

salesman. She told me once that she left home at

sixteen. She told me once that I was just like her.

After the first semester of tenth grade

is over, I ride my bicycle

into Anderson Valley.

I’ve never been down here before

and there’s something faraway about it,

the way it’s overgrown with cows and plum trees

and the distant cat calls of dogs and birds.

I guess the thing I never imagined about high school

is how suddenly there would be a whole landscape
of boys

and it’s not like I get to take my pick or anything,

but I can be in love with whomever I want,

I could love someone who’s two years older

or six inches taller,

I could love someone who hunts

or someone who fishes,

or someone who doesn’t believe in either.

The rain is starting now and

I pedal further into the valley,

no idea where I’m going

except knowing that when I get there

I’m going to realize

just how lost I really am.

I pedal home, following the smell of motorbike.

Bobby just bought one, so my sister

has spent the week with her arms

wrapped around his waist

racing through alleys and other parts unknown.

My sister is sparkly with friends and people that
love her,

my sister is a walking tiara.

She is everyone’s prize

but the only thing she seems to want

is the smell of gasoline in her hair

and the taste of something

that doesn’t taste like anything else

on her lips.

After a dinner of succotash stew

my stepmother does dishes

and my father looks at our report cards.

He tells Tara just because she’s in love

it doesn’t mean now she can flunk all her classes.

He tells me that just because I get A’s in English

it doesn’t mean I can get C’s in every other subject.

He tells my stepbrother
Good job

because he gets straight A’s in everything.

That’s probably because he has no life
,

my sister says and I laugh.

Our stepmother gives us one of her vegan glares

because her son is the model of perfection

and we are just the messes

she’s being forced to clean up.

I think the only reason Denise started smoking is

because she likes to see things burn. I’m starting to

think she likes lit matches more than being my friend.

I guess it makes sense; she’s always lived her life like it’s

going up in flames any second. One day, she’s going to

start a fire and she’s not going to be able to stop it.

One day she’s going to start a fire and I won’t have the

water to put it out.

As for my other (so-called) friends,

Elaine and Skyler walked into history class today

with Charlotte Ames and some other girls

and they were all waving their pom-poms around

and squealing about the game tomorrow

and I wanted to throw up on their shoes

until Mr. Stearns said,

For those of us who aren’t sports fans,

can you keep it to yourselves?

I loved him for that.

And have you ever noticed what

nice hands he has?

Charlotte Ames rides my bus

and she’s the kind of girl who’s born happy.

She is sunny and bright and pure,

she doesn’t have crazy thoughts

passed down to her by a mother

who left town before she knew how to count.

Her parents are PTA All The Way.

When it comes to crazy,

I am definitely a “have”

and she is a “have-not.”

Except this morning, Charlotte Ames

gets on the bus and she can’t stop crying

and she tries to hide it

but it’s like a thunderstorm is raging

inside her pep squad uniform.

She sits down next to me and

I pretend not to notice the typhoon of her sadness

is gaining speed and velocity.

Soon, cars and homes will be in danger.

Soon, there will be mandatory evacuations.

I know nothing about Charlotte Ames

But I know what it means to be that sad

and how sometimes sadness is the loneliest kind
of bad weather,

it’s more like lightning than rain

because it only strikes a person who least suspects it.

But I don’t say this to Charlotte Ames.

Instead I just hand her the napkin from my bag lunch

and she mops her face and

we ride the bus together to school

without speaking, the two of us floating down a river

whose banks have long since flooded.

Tonight is the night

of the big game

and it’s so dumb

people call it that

because it seems like

it’s the same size

as any other old game.

I do not want to love you

because that’s everyone else’s job.

It’s the job of Elaine and Dawn,

of Skyler and Maggie and Charlotte,

girls I’ve grown up with,

girls who line the field at night

to watch you sprint and score,

your face a never-ending flush of tiny victories.

I do not want to love you

because I fall to ruin watching you

run and sprint and lob things

into the air so high

they might never come down.

I do not want to think about you

walking towards me or

taking me to places I have never been.

I do not want to think about you

at night, when no one is thinking of me.

I do not want to love you,

so I am giving you to the other girls;

they can have you and the sun that smiles down on you,

they can have you and the sky that opens up for you,

they can have you

and they can keep you.

In that “I hate my life” voice of hers,

Mrs. Shields is going on and on

about polygons and parallel lines

when somebody pokes me on the back.

It’s Jenny Arnold, passing me a note.

I open it, thinking it might be from Denise

but I don’t get many notes from Denise

because she barely comes to school anymore.

Instead it’s in Jenny’s famous handwriting:

Where’d you get those shoes?

They’re vintage
, I write back,

which is sort of true

because technically they are secondhand,

having been stolen from my sister’s closet

just this morning.

Jenny writes back,
Cool

which is practically like getting a note from God

telling you you’re getting into heaven.

If that weren’t enough, she writes back:

What kind of music do you like?

The usual stuff
, I write and she writes back,

Then obviously you need my help.

She gives me a grin

and suddenly, I love quadrilaterals

and supplementary angles

and I love geometry

because Jenny Arnold

just became my friend.

1. Rebel Girl—Bikini Kill
   
2. Violet—Hole
   
3. Fuck and Run—Liz Phair
   
4. I Know I Know I Know—Tegan and Sara
   
5. Portions for Foxes—Rilo Kiley
   
6. This Isn’t It—Lemona
   
7. Oh!—The Breeders
   
8. One More Hour—Sleater Kinney
   
9. Y Control—Yeah Yeah Yeahs
   
10. Dress—PJ Harvey
    
11. Dirty Knives—The Bangs
    
12. Gigantic—Pixies
    
13. The Difference Between Love and Hell—Sahara Hotnights
    
14. Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl—Unrest
    
15. Bull in the Heather—Sonic Youth
    
16. Summer Babe—Pavement
    
17. I Am a Scientist—Guided By Voices
    
18. The Falls—French Kicks
    
19. The Tide That Never Came Back—The Veils
    
20. Maybe Not—Cat Power
    

My stepbrother comes into my room

reeking of spaghetti and video games.

What are you listening to?
he asks.

A mix CD.
I shrug.

Who’s on it?

You wouldn’t know the bands
, I say.

And he says,
Maybe I should make a mix CD for
Beth Sczepanick.

I ask him who Beth Sczepanick is

and he says, all blushing and dorky,
She’s this girl.

Then he blurts,
She’s really good at ice-skating!

I stare at him.

Are you in love?

Instead of answering,

he runs out of the room,

tripping over a pair of shoes

and then spastically falling down in the hallway

which is further proof that he just might be

the most ridiculous person

I have ever met.

You’re the girl my stepbrother’s in love with

and he’s just the twelve-year-old kid

of a lady my dad married last year.

It’s not like I care about him,

in fact, he drives me crazy

with his stories about you,

the figure skater who’s skated

a perfect flower on the rink of his heart.

He won’t shut up about your double axels

and your triple-toe loops

and how once you smiled at him in the hall.

Personally, I suspect you’ve never even noticed him

and why should you?

He’s not much to look at

but he’s got shiny hair and

sometimes he smells like cinnamon

and yesterday, he went to the mall

and bought me a pair of really ugly earrings

that are kind of cute.

Which is why I’m telling you now