If I Was Your Girl (18 page)

The back door opened, casting a warped rhombus of light across the pavement. I clutched the envelope tighter.

“Night, Greg,” Grant said, and I could see the sweat stains on his back. I thought of how he'd looked that first night with his shirt off, and of how he always smelled when he got sweaty, like dirt and salt and things I couldn't name.

“Hi,” I said. He took in one sharp breath and stopped, his eyes glinting in the reflected light of a passing car. I opened Dad's car door so the interior light revealed me and waved. I crossed into the darkness to meet him, feeling gangly and awkward, and gently pressed the envelope to his chest.

“You've shared some things with me, and now, I want to share some things with you,” I told him softly.

“Thank you,” Grant said. I saw the outline of his head lean down and then back up. “What is this?”

“It's everything,” I said, my mouth and throat dry. We were both silent for a moment. “Just, ahead of time, I wanted to let you know—if you're upset with me for letting things progress like they did, for being with you … I'm sorry for that too, and I understand.”

He stood there for a long time, unreadable in the darkness. My heart started racing again and my stomach flipped back and forth, so I focused on the pavement beneath us, tracing its infinite cracks. When I looked up again Grant was gone. My heart hammered for one horrible moment before he came back outside, carrying the unopened envelope and a metal bucket.

The small flame of a butane lighter flickered to life. The orange glow flared brightly as Grant held the lighter to the envelope and it caught fire. I gasped and started to ask what he was doing, but he dropped the envelope into the bucket, where its warmth and light bathed both of us. I felt myself starting to cry until I looked at his face and noticed he was smiling.

“I'll never regret being with you,” he said, reaching out for my hand. “And I could never, ever hate you, no matter what.”

“But—” I said.

“I never needed to know,” he said, shaking his head. “I just needed to feel like you'd given me a chance.”

He pulled me around the fire, wrapped me in the tightest embrace I could remember, and kissed me like the fire burning brightly beside us.

 

SIX MONTHS AGO

I took a dose of hydrocodone when I was done dilating. Everything between my thighs and my hips felt like it had been run through a wood chipper, the dilation ritual was a degrading chore, the painkillers reminded me of the time I tried to kill myself—and I still couldn't have been happier. I was finally a girl on the outside too; there was nothing separating me from my body anymore. As the painkillers kicked in I swung my feet off the bed, winced, and shuffled slowly into the hall. I stopped halfway to the bathroom when I heard the soft sound of crying from down the hall. I made my way to the den and found Mom huddled up on the floor beside a single dim lamp, photo albums spread open around her.

“Mom?” I said. She jumped and cried out, then put a hand over her heart and closed her eyes when she realized it was me. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head and wiping her nose. “Just reorganizing our photos before I go to bed. Now scoot, you need your rest.”

“No,” I said. I winced again as I slowly knelt. She looked like she wanted to snap all the albums closed, but she left them where they were. One was open to pictures of me, Mom, and Dad at the beach when I was three or four. I was running happily through flocks of seagulls, squealing in delight as I ran away from waves that seemed so large at the time. Another was open to me in preschool, with my shaggy little ringlets and my smile missing its teeth. The rest were open to my pages as well: a photo of me winning a spelling bee; graduating from elementary school; looking distracted at Rock City and Ruby Falls in Chattanooga the day we left Dad, up to the last pictures where I still looked like a boy.

“I miss him,” Mom whispered, her eyes cast to the side.

“Dad?” I said.

“No,” Mom said, and I heard her throat clenching. A tear streaked down her cheek, but it wasn't followed by any others. “No, I miss my son.”

“Oh!” I said, dropping the page I was holding. “Oh.”

“I'm sorry,” Mom said, shaking her head and swallowing. “I'm sorry, really. I thought you were asleep.”

“I'm still me,” I said, trying to catch her eye again.

“It ain't that simple,” Mom said, opening her watery eyes and returning them to me. “I know I'm supposed to say it is, but it ain't. You look different, you act different, you sound different, your hands feel different when I touch 'em. Hell, you even
smell
different. Do you know how important smell can be, how the way your baby smells when you hold him gets locked in your head?”

I clenched my fingers. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“You tried to kill yourself,” she said, rolling her eyes up to heaven and biting her knuckle. “Andrew Hardy was gonna die one way or the other, and one of the choices gave me a daughter in exchange while the other left me with no one.”

“I never thought of it that way,” I said. “I never thought about—”

“It ain't your responsibility to comfort your parents,” she said, shaking her head. “'Least, not until I start needin'
my
diapers changed.” She started closing the albums again. “And anyway this ain't the first time I mourned my baby.” She took a shuddering breath.

“What do you mean?” I tried to help her stack the albums back up and put them away, but she slapped my hands and quickly did it herself.

“No strenuous activity!” she said, and then she lowered herself into an overstuffed chair by the bookshelf and closed her eyes again. “When you were a year old I looked at your baby pictures and cried. When you were three I looked at the pictures from when you were one and cried. When you went to kindergarten I looked back and cried. Kids constantly grow and change, and every time you blink they turn into something different and the kid you thought you had is just a memory.” She rubbed her face and sighed. “Five years from now you'll be a grown woman graduatin' college and I'll look at photos of you now and grieve my teenage daughter.”

“So I shouldn't feel guilty?”

“'Course you should!” she said with a broad smile. “You got any idea what you've done to me? Between the labor pain and the stretch marks and the loans I had to take out for this surgery, you've bled me dry!”

“I'll make it up to you one day,” I said resolutely as I braced myself against the bookshelf and stood again.

“When you're rich and famous?” Mom said, smiling now.

“Yup,” I said as I turned and headed back to the bathroom. I looked over my shoulder as I entered the hallway. “Rich, anyway. Famous is for chumps.” I got to the bathroom and yelled, “I love you, by the way!”

“Are you in the bathroom?” she called in response. I didn't answer, but Mom quickly said, “Gross, Amanda,” anyway.

 

22

“Where are Layla and Anna?” I asked as I took my seat at our regular lunch table. I was lucky enough to have the same lunch period as all three girls on most days, and they always saved me a seat. For the first time in my life I actually looked forward to walking into the cafeteria.

“Homecoming committee,” Chloe replied through a mouthful of tater tots. She swallowed and gave me a bashful look. “Sorry. Manners.”

“It's cool,” I said, pulling out my Tupperware. “I mean you
were
raised in a barn.”

“Whatever!” she said, lobbing a tater tot at me. It bounced off my collarbone before tumbling into the front of my shirt. “Deserved it,” she said. I fished the tater tot out of my bra and laughed.

Chloe rolled her rectangular piece of cafeteria pizza up and took a bite as if it were a burrito. This time she waited until after swallowing to talk. “Grant asked you to homecoming yet?”

“No!” I said, stabbing at my salad. The posters had been up at school for weeks now, and every time I passed one, I felt tiny pinpricks all over my skin. Grant cared about me, I knew he did, so I didn't understand why he hadn't asked me. All my old fears were stirring just below the surface, threatening to rise. “I'm starting to think he doesn't want to go with me.”

“Better man up soon,” Chloe said, but there was a strange pitch to her voice.

I started to respond, but then she shot up and called out, “Here she is!” I turned just in time to see six guys in football pads and black-and-white paper Stormtrooper masks rushing toward me. Years of bullying made me panic as they lifted me from the ground.

“Easy,” one of the guys whispered. I recognized Grant's friend Rodney's voice. “Easy. We ain't gonna hurt you.”

Chloe swept into view with her camera held out, recording. I forced myself to relax—she was clearly in on whatever was happening. The guys hoisted me onto their shoulders and hustled me out of the cafeteria to a din of confused laughter.

My captors kicked in the double doors to the gymnasium to reveal Grant in a white long-sleeve shirt and black pants with white stripes up the side. On one side of him stood a guy in a paper Darth Vader mask with a cheap-looking black cape, and on the other, someone wore the Boba Fett costume I had given to Grant after Halloween.

“Leia!” Grant said. He rushed forward, pretending to be restrained when Vader and Fett grabbed his arms.

“Han!” I said, laughing as the football-players-turned-Stormtroopers set me down before him.

“What if he dies?” Boba Fett said, his voice raspy and his delivery stiff.

“The Empire will compensate you if he dies,” a goofily deep voice said. I thought I recognized it as Parker's, but I wasn't sure. “Any last words, Solo?”

“Leia!” Grant said, really hamming it up in his attempt to break free. “Will you come to homecoming with me?”

“Of course!” I cried, stepping forward and clasping my hands over my heart. I started to say “I love you!” since that was the next line, but paused. We hadn't said those words yet, although I couldn't help thinking it all the time lately. Instead I declared, “I … like you! A lot!”

“I know,” Grant said, donning a perfect Han Solo smirk all the same. I wondered what was going to come next, since a carbonite freezing chamber seemed out of the question, and then the Stormtroopers pulled out aerosol cans, shook them, and sprayed both of us with Silly String.

*   *   *

Darth Vader was waiting for me outside the bathroom when I finally got the silly string off my hands and face.

“Lord Vader,” I said. “I should have known. Only you could be so bold.”

“Uh,” Vader said. He pulled the mask down to reveal Parker's confused face. “I don't know the next line. Sorry.”

“It's fine,” I said, forcing a smile. Parker was often at parties with us, or on the outskirts of smaller groups, but hadn't said much to me since my early days in Lambertville. “Thanks for helping with that whole … thing.”

“Promposal?” Parker said, scrunching up one side of his face. “I think that's what we're calling it now.”

“‘Homecomingposal' doesn't really roll off the tongue,” I noted. He chuckled and shook his head.

“That it don't,” he said. He frowned at his feet and rubbed the back of his neck, then made eye contact with me again with what looked like effort. “I've been meanin' to tell you I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“Bein' a dick at that party, like a million years ago,” he said, looking away again. “I was feelin' … shit, it don't matter how I felt. I'm just sorry.”

“Oh,” I said, cocking my head, surprised. “Thank you.”

“It ain't … you're welcome.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. I wondered what could possibly be on his mind. “Can I walk you to class?”

“Sure,” I said, and we fell into step beside each other. He walked beside me in silence for a while, the struggle to say something clear on his features.

“I got a question,” he said eventually.

“Shoot.”

“What's wrong with me?” Parker said, his voice strangely soft.

“I don't understand,” I said.

“What's Grant got that I don't?”

“Ohhhhh.” I chewed my lip and looked down at my feet. “I'm not sure I know how to answer that, Parker.”

“Was it just 'cause he was the first one to talk to you?” Parker asked earnestly. I shrugged and gave him as tender a look as I could. “How come girls don't like me? How come
you
don't like me?”

“Me and Grant just clicked,” I said, “and me and you just … didn't. I don't know how else to explain it.” We reached my classroom, and I leaned on the wall to face him. He was still staring straight ahead, and I could see a muscle working in his jaw. “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“This is me,” I said, pointing to the chemistry lab I was officially late to now. Parker put his hands in his pockets and started to walk away. “Parker?” I said. He turned, both eyebrows raised. “I'm glad we talked.”

He gave me a small smile and nodded before turning away.

 

23

It was time to find a dress.

I had never bought a dress for homecoming before, of course, and when I suggested we just buy something from Walmart, the very idea nearly drove Layla to hysterics. She insisted that we order our dresses from some website based out of New York she used for all of hers, but it was way too expensive. As a compromise, we drove half an hour southeast to the nearest mall and ventured into JCPenney.

Layla wore a pea coat and opaque Jackie-O glasses, as if afraid someone might see her and undermine her fashionista cred. The rest of us, anticipating a lot of time spent in dressing rooms, had stuck to zip-up hoodies and jeans.