Love Rules

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “Move your ass if you use e-mail.”

  Nearly everyone races for a seat.

  A girl with bright red hair and about ten bead bracelets on each wrist holds her arms out for all to see and says, “Move your ass if you have a Pride bracelet.”

  I’m one of the few who doesn’t move.

  Now it’s Star who is left standing.

  “Move your ass if your parents ever kicked you out of their house.”

  A lot of people move, including Leaf and Frankie and Nora.

  “Move your ass if you have a friend who’s committed sui­cide.”

  I’m shocked this time, when seven people, including the adviser from Sojourner High, move. Toward the end of the game, as the topics get more serious—ever had an eating disorder, ever been mistaken for a gender other than your own, ever been beaten up because of your gender identity—I find myself not changing chairs, and surprised at how many people do.

  After that we gather in groups of four or five and talk about how we can strengthen or start GSA groups on our campuses. I drift away then. I don’t much care whether Hamilton High has a GSA group or not. It sounds like a lot of trouble to me, and anyway, whoever wants to go to a GSA group can go to the one here at Sojourner.

  On the way home, Kit talks about how cool everything was—the people, the games, the plans for GSA.

  “You ended up sitting through the last part of that ‘Move Your Ass’ game.”

  “I didn’t have any reason to move. Besides, I didn’t even know what they were talking about with that gender stuff. I dropped Latin because I couldn’t get genders, and I still don’t.”

  “It’s not about grammar, you airhead.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Gender, gender, you know, it’s your, like your . . .”

  Kit stops talking.

  “You know,” she says.

  “No, I don’t get it, and I don’t think you do, either!”

  “I do get it . . . I just can’t explain it.”

  When we get to my house we take sodas out on the steps, as we’ve done for years after school, or waiting for my mom to come home from work, or playing with Wilma.

  Kit brings up the gender word again.

  “Okay. I can explain it. It’s like with that Leona person. Everybody said she was a boy, because she had a boy’s body. That was her biological sex. But by gender she identified more with girls.”

  “So what am I?”

  “Female.”

  “Sex or gender?”

  “Both.”

  “What about you?”

  “Female.”

  “What about Leaf?”

  “I guess he’s physically male, but his gender is female. Do you think?” Kit says.

  “It’s confusing. I like things better when people are just male or female, and they act that way.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Laura,” Kit says.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just think about it,” Kit says. “I don’t want to argue any­more.”

  “Fine with me,” I say.

  “So, let’s talk about happy stuff.”

  “Okay. I think I’m in love. I mean, Conan, isn’t he just the best?”

  Kit smiles at me. “He is an amazingly nice guy.”

  “Handsome, too.”

  “Yeah, I guess. In a Conan kind of way.”

  “No, really, his smile, his eyes. It’s like a person’s soul could sink way deep into his eyes and be safe there.”

  Kit laughs. “I’m happy for you, but I wonder what Always is going to say when she meets him.”

  “It’ll be okay. I’m pretty sure. I think he’s more worried about having me meet his folks than I am about him meeting Mom.”

  “How about your dad?”

  “He can go years without meeting Dad.”

  Wilma comes up to us with the frisbee in her mouth. She drops it at my feet. I throw it up as high as I can and watch her jump and twist to get it.

  “Beautiful,” I tell her. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Kit doesn’t respond, and when I turn to look at her, she has a look in her eyes that I’ve not seen before. I don’t know how to describe it—soft like, and far away.

  After I’ve thrown the frisbee about twenty times, and Wilma’s caught it nineteen, I turn my attention to Kit.

  “What’s on your mind?” I ask. She just smiles.

  “Something’s on your mind. C’mon, out with it.”

  “Promise not to tell?”

  “Promise. Like I ever tell anything you say anyway.”

  “This is special . . .”

  “Okay! Just tell me!”

  “I’ve got a date with Star.”

  I throw the frisbee to Wilma another ten times.

  “Say something,” Kit begs.

  I take a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought you weren’t coming out until after high school, that’s all.”

  “I’m not exactly coming out! I’m just going to a coffee place with Star. No drama.”

  “It is drama. I can tell it’s a ton of drama, the way you were all moony eyed with her. And she couldn’t leave your side all day!”

  “So? You’re going out with Conan! You’re all moony eyed with him! Are you saying it’s okay for you to be in love, but not for me?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “But what??? You’d be all happy if I went out with Robert, but you’re unhappy that I’m going out with Star? Get over it! Are you with me, the real me, or do you want me to be some pretend Barbie doll, like my mother does?”

  Kit goes into this prissy thing, “Oh, could I borrow your high heels for tonight, please??? And your wonder bra??? I want to be so pretty and sexy for Robert. . . Is that who you want for a friend? Because if it is, it ain’t me, Babe.”

  We burst out laughing with the “it ain’t me, Babe” remark. That’s the song my mom played constantly for a whole year while she was deciding to divorce my dad, and then for about a decade after. It’s like her signature song, or something. We barely ever listened, but it was played so much, over and over, that we both knew the whole song by heart by the time Mom’s favorites returned to Otis Redding and the Beatles.

  We laugh so hard I think I can’t stop, and I hope it’s real laughter, not that phony stuff people do when there’s tension.

  When we stop laughing we sit a while longer, mellowed out.

  CHAPTER

  9

  It is crowded at the mall, but I see Conan right away, over by the carousel—not that he’s hard to find in a crowd. We check out the toy shops for a birthday gift for Sabina. He decides on a puzzle, because his sister’s so smart. Then he buys a sparkly bracelet, because she’s so cute. Finally he buys a cuddly stuffed dog, because she’s so lovable.

  “I’ve got enough money left for two smoothies. Want one?”

  At Jivin’ Juice, Conan orders a blackberry smoothie, and I get a banana pineapple combination.

  “I worked all morning helping my dad in the yard. Anything to be lifted, I’m the man, according to him.”

  I take a swallow of my drink, savoring the taste, happy with my choice, happy to be here with Conan.

  “We trimmed a tree way back, and then we sanded and put a coat of paint on the picnic table, so it’ll be ready for Sabina’s party. What about you? What’ve you been doing this morning?”

  “Well . . .”

  I don’t want to keep any secrets from Conan. But if I tell him

  about the GSA meeting, will that be like breaking a promise to Kit?

  “And . . .” he says, looking at me expectantly.

  “Well . . .”

  “Is there someone else?” he asks, almost in a whisper.

  “No, no, it’s not that at all!”

  “Well, then, what is it that you can’t tell me?”

  “I went somewhere with Kit. I don’t think she wants anyone to know. That’s all.”

  Conan laugh
s.

  “You mean that GSA thing? Were you there with Kit?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You know Susan?”

  “No, unless she’s the one that eats Rice Krispies Treats with peanut butter and jelly for dinner.”

  “Sounds like Susan,” Conan says. “She lives next door to me. She told me Kit was there, but she didn’t say anything about you.”

  “So much for confidentiality,” I say, miffed.

  “Hey, it’s no biggy.”

  “It could be, to some people,” I say.

  Conan seems distracted. I follow his gaze. Two men are sitting across from us, staring. They’re probably around my dad’s age. You know the phrase, if looks could kill? That’s what comes to my mind. If looks could kill, Conan and I would be dead by now.

  “What’s with them?” I whisper to Conan.

  “Just a couple of racists, I guess,” Conan says. “Come on. Let’s move down to the waterfall.”

  “Why should we? It’s a free country,” I say, blazing a look back at the men.

  Conan picks up our drinks and starts walking. I catch up to him.

  “Some people get all worked up when they see a black guy with a white girl. That’s been the cause of plenty of lynchings,” he says.

  “But this is the twenty-first century. Right?”

  “Right. We’re just moving away from bad energy. That’s all.”

  We sit on a bench near the waterfall, catching a light spray from the misty water. Conan takes my hand in his and rests his cheek against it.

  “See. Good energy is always better.”

  Every time I’m with Conan and things are quiet, like at the beach, or here, I feel like I belong with him. I hope I can tell him that someday.

  Another Monday morning. Another glow from another per­fect weekend with Conan.

  There’s a knock at the back door. I know it’s Kit, wanting a ride to school. Mom always lets me take the car on Mondays, when she rides to work with a friend.

  Even though I’m expecting Kit, I don’t recognize her when I first open the door. I blink, then look again.

  “Well . . . ?” Kit says. “Like my new do?”

  All that’s left of her beautiful, thick, shiny black hair is about an eighth of an inch of fuzz on top of her head. The rest is gone. She’s in jeans and a white tee shirt, not the usual preppy stuff her mother always insists that she wear. She’s wearing a heavy plaid flannel shirt. Around her neck is a woven choker thing with the colors of the rainbow repeated every quarter inch or so. On both wrists she has those Pride bracelets with brightly colored beads—purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. She is beaming.

  I try to smile.

  “What’d your parents say?”

  “Dad’s on the early shift this week, and Mom’s visiting Gramma and Grampa for a few days.”

  “She’ll have a FIT when she sees you.”

  “I know,” Kit says. “But it is my hair.”

  “Was,” I say.

  Kit laughs, but it doesn’t seem so funny to me. I back the car out of the garage and Kit climbs into the back seat.

  “Star helped me with my hair,” Kit says. “First she pulled it all together at the bottom, with rubber bands, then she took the scissors and cut it as close to my head as she could.”

  I’m watching the road, but what I’m seeing is Kit, on a stool somewhere, with Star cutting away at her hair.

  “It’s cool,” Kit says. “We wrapped it securely, from one end to the other, and then we took it to a place that makes wigs from human hair. They loved my hair!”

  “Who doesn’t? Didn’t?” I ask.

  “But listen to this. The wigs are loaned out to cancer patients. And they look really natural, because they’re real hair. The woman at the shop said they would probably get four or five very nice wigs from what we brought in.”

  I glance at Kit in the rearview mirror. It’s all I can do to keep from crying, thinking about her beautiful hair, and how she hardly even resembles her old self.

  “She said I’d made an important contribution.”

  “But that’s not why you did it,” I say.

  Pause.

  “I did it because I’m sick of having people assume I’m like ninety percent of the population.”

  I wonder how others will react when they see her and I’m getting all nervous. Kit, though, is glowing. Like I was earlier this morning, when the weekend with Conan was all that was on my mind.

  When Conan gets in the car he does one of those classic double takes you see in old cartoons.

  “Wow! Look at you!” he says with a big smile.

  I wonder what he means. My mom always says if you see a really ugly baby you can always say, “Look at this baby!” with a lot of enthusiasm. That way, you’re not lying, and you don’t hurt the proud parents’ feelings.

  Conan reaches back and rubs Kit’s fuzzy head.

  “Nice,” he says. Then, turning to me, “Don’t get any ideas, though.”

  Am I the only one who sees a problem here? It’s not like people aren’t going to notice anything or say anything at school. I don’t even want to turn into the parking lot when we get there. We could just keep going. I’m sure we could find one of those old hippie communes somewhere in Oregon—the kind that takes people in and doesn’t judge them by their appearance. Then we wouldn’t have to watch Kit being humiliated for her strange new look. Or maybe I’m overreacting. If nobody else thinks it’s a problem am I getting all whacked over nothing?

  So okay. I’m not hijacking my friends to Oregon. I follow the line of cars into the parking lot and grab the nearest space. As we walk toward the main building, I notice people noticing Kit. She walks along with us, talking and laughing as always. Conan takes my hand, which usually is enough to light up my morning, but today, in spite of Conan, and sunshine, my mood is dark.

  At first it’s like silence surrounds us when we walk together in the halls. The paused conversations, the turning of heads, the widening of eyes, are noiseless. In choir, there’s kind of a low buzz, which I’m pretty sure centers on Kit’s hair, or lack thereof, not to mention her clothes and accessories.

  It’s not until volleyball practice that anyone actually says anything to Kit about her hair.

  As we walk onto the court, Coach Terry says to Kit, “Nice cut.”

  I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or sincere.

  “Thanks,” Kit says, flashing a big smile.

  When Kit practices her serve, all eyes are on her, appraising. I don’t think it’s the serve they’re watching. As great as it is, they’ve seen her serve thousands of times.

  Kit tosses the ball upward, flawlessly placing it exactly where she wants it. As she tips her head back to watch the rising ball, right before she connects for the serve, I get an image of Kit’s long volleyball-braid, thick and black, hanging past her well-­muscled shoulders. I blink and it’s gone. Get over it, I tell myself. It’s only hair. I stare, trying to get used to the new look. There before me is the back of Kit’s head, buzzed on top, shaved up the neck and sides. Her rainbow choker stands out like a collar on some weirdly groomed poodle. God! GOSH! As soon as I think the poodle thought I’m filled with guilt. My spirit sister. My very best friend through thick and thin, and I’m comparing her to a dog. What is my problem?

  Usually, after showers, the whole team bunches up in the same area, drying off, getting dressed, talking and joking around. Today there are two bunches. Me and Kit near the center, where we all usually gather, and the rest of the team at the other end, away from us. Talking and joking is so not happening.

  Conan’s still at football practice, so it’s only me and Kit on the way home. I pull Mom’s car into the garage, and dump my backpack on the porch steps. Wilma drags her frisbee out.

  Kit and I walk through the gate, with Wilma happily following behind. We sit under the tree, taking turns throwing the frisbee for Wilma.

  After a while, Kit says “Aren’t you go
ing to ask me about my date with Star?”

  “I already know she butchered your hair. Is there more?”

  Pause.

  I breathe in the freshness of tree-filtered air. I scoop up a handful of dirt and let it slowly sift through my fingers. I remember the candles, the World Weekly News, the little fan, the pitcher of water, our vows. I ease up on my attitude.

  “Tell me about your date with Star.”

  Pause.

  “Please. I’m sorry about the butchered remark.”

  Kit nods. “It was cool.”

  “What’d you do? Besides the obvious, I mean?”

  “Well, after we took my hair to the wig shop, we went to this coffee place up in Pasadena.”

  “And . . .”

  “And it was unbelievable! As soon as I walked in, it was like I was at home. There was a band, and people were dancing. It was mostly women dancing together, but there were some gay guys, and also a few men and women dancing. It was an out and proud crowd. It was awesome.’”

  “Did you dance?” I ask, trying to picture this place in my head.

  “We danced until my feet fell off!”

  Wilma gives a short, sharp bark, looking up at me expectantly, then lifting her frisbee and dropping it.

  “I thought you didn’t like to dance,” I say to Kit.

  “I didn’t like dancing with Brian. I don’t like dancing with guys, touching their sweaty hands, having them put their hands on my butt and press me close to them, so I feel their nasty thing pushing against my pubic bone.”

  “You make it sound so repulsive!”

  “It is repulsive. To me anyway.”

  Wilma barks again. I pick up her frisbee, concentrating on throwing it just the right height and distance so she can show off one of those high, twisty catches. It’s not easy, though. The frisbee is so chewed up now, it’s totally out of balance. It acts like some kind of cross between a frisbee and a boomerang.

  “Dancing with Star was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before,” Kit says. “It’s like we each knew how the other would move, no awkward stepping on feet, or one going one way and the other going opposite. We were in unison, without thinking, or planning, we just were.”