The Difference Between You and Me (22 page)

Most kids don’t come to Open House Night—it’s not a student event—but I was there volunteering as a student council representative, and Jesse was there for some other random reason, maybe representing some LGBTQ student group that doesn’t exist anymore? To be honest, I don’t know why she was there, but she was. And during the fake lunch period when all the parents gather in the cafeteria to have school-made snacks while Mr. Greil gives them a talk about the importance of parental involvement, Jesse and I both ended up in the girls’ room in the sophomore hall.

We were the only ones in there. We were standing side by side at the sinks. It was so weird to be in the sophomore hall girls’ room at night. It’s usually so bright and sunny in there, because of the high windows, but the little fluorescent strips that are over the mirrors barely do a thing to light the room when it’s dark, it turns out. We could hardly even see our reflections in the dimness.

We were both looking at ourselves in the mirror, and then we were looking at each other in the mirror.

I had seen her around. I was curious about her. But I never expected her to
say
anything to me. I don’t know what made her feel like she could talk to me that night. Maybe she didn’t expect me to say anything back.

We were kind of looking at each other, but we hadn’t
even said hi, and all of a sudden she was like, “I like your hair.”

Okay. Lots of girls have said nice things to me about my hair or my outfits or whatever over the years. Thousands of girls, probably. Millions. But when Jesse said it, it didn’t sound like anything that any other girl had said to me before. It had a different meaning. It made my stomach flutter. It was like Jesse had seen something inside me that no one else had ever seen, and complimenting my hair was her way of telling me she’d seen it. It was like a secret code I’d never heard before, but somehow automatically understood.

If you asked me what I said back to her then, or what she said back to me after that, or what the next couple of things were that happened that night, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that I made the first move. I led her into one of the stalls in the girls’ room and that’s where we kissed for the first time.

I remember it smelled like damp, rotten paper towels. I remember that my insides tumbled over and over the instant she touched me. I remember thinking,
This is incredible.
And also,
This can never happen again.

That boldness that sometimes takes you over before your brain tells you to stop, it can change your life in incredible ways. It can make you stand up for yourself when you need to most, and take big risks, and really put yourself out there. But it can also screw everything up for you.

I’m not saying I don’t miss her. I totally miss her. I sort of feel like my life has gone gray all over since I told her we should take a break. Last Tuesday at work I felt so sick to my stomach shelving in the third-floor stacks that I ended up asking Carol if I could leave an hour early. I couldn’t wait to be out of that library. I couldn’t stand being up on the third floor, knowing that she wasn’t there, too.

But sometimes you have to weigh the pros and cons of a situation and make a really hard decision. Sometimes the kind of brave you have to be isn’t split-second, change-your-life brave, it’s big-picture, think-about-your-future brave. Sometimes you have to sacrifice something you love, if you don’t want to lose everything you have.

“We could try to get people to boycott?” Esther suggests. “All the people who signed our petition, we could send them emails telling them to, like, boycott something.”

She’s sitting on Jesse’s unmade bed after school on Thursday, brainstorming possible actions for the night of the Starry Starry Night Dance, working through the plate of Fig Newtons that Fran insisted they take upstairs (“Strategizing fuel!” she said just now in the kitchen, as she foisted the plate on Esther). Jesse is standing across the room from Esther in front of the bureau, examining herself critically in the mirror.

Jesse expected Esther to be annoyed at having left so many unreturned messages, but when she called her to make a plan for Esther to come over and work on the anti-StarMart campaign, Esther was totally cheerful about it. They picked up right where they left off: same enthusiasm, no tension.

“But what should they boycott? Boycotts don’t do much unless someone’s already been paying for something, right?” Jesse thinks out loud. She runs her hands through her hair experimentally, making it stick up from her forehead and fall back down in different shapes.

“What about… what about…” Esther chews on a Newton. “What about a picket line?”

“I feel like that’s uncool,” Jesse says vaguely.

“Yeah, I guess, me too. I was just trying to think of what we could do that would distract people from the dance and teach them the truth about StarMart at the same time. Hey, how about a teach-in? Phyllis from the vigil runs a really fantastic teach-in.”

Jesse has been to at least a dozen teach-ins in her life, group-run lecture sessions on topics ranging from natural gas exploration to the death penalty to nuclear waste storage. They tend to be pretty grim affairs: a bunch of already-angry people in a room trying to convince each other to be even angrier. Sometimes they have snacks: apple juice and generic sandwich cookies. They do not, as a rule, compete with a dance for fun and entertainment value.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Teach-ins are kind of boring. We need something exciting that will make people pay attention to us on the same night they were planning to just dance and make out.”

Esther looks up from the plate of Newtons, eyes wide. “I’ve got it. We can have our own dance!”

“I don’t know….”

“No, a counterdance! A dance to end StarMart! This is the perfect idea! We can have it in the parking lot! Or in Huckle’s backyard! Or both! And we can have music and snacks, and people can give a dollar to get in, and we can gather all the money and donate it to someone, like to Arlo and Charlie for their new organization.”

“Arlo and Charlie don’t have an organization.”

“Not yet, but what if we raised a bunch of money for them? And they could use it to fight StarMart? This is an awesome idea, Jesse. Admit it: a counterdance is an awesome idea.”

“I hate dances,” Jesse says. “They’re totally gender-oppressive and awful.”

“Yeah, but ours wouldn’t be. Ours would be tolerant and open. We could invite everybody, not just the school. We’ll send an Evite to every single name on the petition! We can even put it in the paper and invite the whole community. Oh my God, I’m so excited, this is perfect. This is perfect!”

Esther has taken a little notebook out of her book bag and is writing something across the top of one page in big letters.

“To do!” she crows.

“It sounds like a lot of hard work,” Jesse says listlessly.

“Yes, I love hard work.” Esther is scribbling furiously in her notebook now, bearing down with her pen so hard
that the paper tears a little as she writes. “Okay, so first category on the list: supplies. One, tent. Giant tent. No idea where we can get a giant tent. We’ll find out. Two, folding chairs. I have a couple, and I know where we can get some more. Three—hey, excuse me, what are you
doing
?”

Jesse is holding a fistful of shaggy blonde hair up off the top of her head with her left hand and beginning to saw away at it with the Swiss Army Knife in her right. “Haircut?” she explains.

“You can’t do it like that!” Esther puts her pen and notebook down on the bed beside her and jumps to her feet, appalled.

“This is how I do it,” Jesse says. “I cut my own hair all the time.”

But Esther says, “Give me that.” She crosses the room swiftly, takes the Swiss Army Knife from Jesse, snaps it shut, and puts it down on Jesse’s cluttered desk.

“You can’t cut your hair with a blunt instrument, it damages it. My mom would have passed out if she saw you doing that.”

“Your mom was into hair?”

“She was a cosmetologist. When I was little she used to see ladies privately at our house, for cuts and wash-and-sets and stuff. She used to let me take out their curlers when they were done sitting under the dryer. Their curls were all dry and hot and crispy before she combed them out.”

“Ew,” says Jesse.

“Yeah,” Esther agrees. “My mom always said that you can make someone a better person by giving them the right hairdo. She thought that a lot of people were depressed just because they didn’t know how to do their hair right.”

“It’s sort of true, though. The second my hair gets too long I feel kind of embarrassed by it or something. I feel grossed out. That’s why I started cutting it myself. I couldn’t wait around for my mom to take me to Styles by Felice every time I needed a trim.”

“Let me cut it for you.” Esther reaches out and runs her fingers through Jesse’s scruff-head, teasing it up and smoothing it down. It’s a surprising gesture. Jesse almost pulls away, but stops herself.

“You?”

“Relax, I know what I’m doing. You need to wet your whole head. And find me a pair of real scissors. No jackknifes.”

When Jesse comes back from the bathroom, head dripping, towel around her neck, and scissors in her hand, Esther sits her down in the desk chair and stands behind her. She towels Jesse’s head off roughly, making it flop around on her neck like a scarecrow’s. Then she says, “Don’t worry. This will only hurt a bit.”

“Short,” Jesse warns her. “Really short.”

“I know, I know. Really short.”

Esther moves around Jesse, tugging at her hair so hard
that her head jerks back and forth in the directions Esther pulls it in. It doesn’t hurt, even though it’s rough, and Esther’s hands on her head are warm and strong. After a bit Jesse surrenders to the yanking and pushing. Her head gets heavy on her neck, and she starts to slip down a little in her chair.

“Tip your chin down,” Esther commands. Jesse does. “The last time I was touching somebody’s hair, I was shaving my mom’s head for her. That was a while ago.”

Jesse’s face is tipped down and to one side. She stares at her own chest. “Oh.”

“Did your mom shave her head when she got sick?”

“First she dyed her hair bright purple. Then she shaved her head.”

“Cool. I can tell she’s the kind of person who would do something like that. She’s not scared of being open about things. That must have made it easier on you to have her sick.”

Easier?
Jesse thinks. “Maybe. She wasn’t exactly easy. But she did love being bald. She really got off on being the crazy bald-headed lady with no eyelashes at, like, the Barnes and Noble. My dad was always trying to get her to wear a hat so she wouldn’t get cold, but she liked being bald in public. She liked making a statement. The hat she wore at home.”

“Brave,” Esther murmurs.

“Yeah. Or just, like, a giant pain in the ass.”

Esther giggles. “My mom went wig shopping the day after she was diagnosed. She was such a modest person but she was vain about her hair. She used to say, ‘It’s my best asset.’ Losing her hair was the worst thing for her about cancer. In the beginning, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Esther snips away at the base of Jesse’s neck, tidying her hairline there. The scissors nip at Jesse’s skin, and make quiet little slicing noises every time they close.

“I miss her a lot.”

“I bet.”

“Look up.”

Jesse lifts her chin, and Esther moves around to stand in front of Jesse. She bends down and stares into Jesse’s face abstractly, scanning it for shape and symmetry, not looking into her eyes.

“It’s weird the times I miss her most. You’d think it would be at night right before I fall asleep or something, but it’s all different, strange other times, like when I’m waiting for a bus. I remember her a lot when I’m waiting for a bus, I think because it reminds me of when I used to wait for her to pick me up. Or like, right now, even. She would love the counterdance idea. She was really into planning parties. She was head of the events committee at church and she always knew where to buy the best cheap decorations and how to work all the different coffee urns. Hey,
coffee urn, we have to put that on the list.” Esther drops the scissors, wipes her wet hands on Jesse’s neck towel, and goes for her pen and notebook on the bed. She shoves them into Jesse’s hand and resumes cutting her hair without missing a beat.

“Do people usually have a coffee urn at a dance, though?” Jesse wonders.

“Maybe people don’t, usually, but we should,” Esther says confidently. “It’ll be cold out, and people will want coffee. We want them to stay, right? And have a great time? And learn about how StarMart wants to destroy our town?”

“Yeah.”

“So we have to give them coffee and snacks. My mom always got Vienna Fingers.”

Esther folds down Jesse’s right ear and snips around it delicately.

“We could get those.” Jesse drops her head farther to the side to give Esther more ear access.

“And we need excellent music. Who do you know who likes music and could play music for us? What about your friend Wallace?”

“Who?”

“With the cowboy pants?”