by Alex Gino
On the next page, two girls sat laughing on a blanket, their arms around each other’s shoulders. One wore a striped bikini; the other wore a polka-dot one-piece with cutouts at the hips.
If George were there, she would fit right in, giggling and linking her arms in theirs. She would wear a bright-pink bikini, and she would have long hair that her new friends would love to braid. They would ask her name, and she would tell them, My name is Melissa. Melissa was the name she called herself in the mirror when no one was watching and she could brush her flat reddish-brown hair to the front of her head, as if she had bangs.
George flipped past flashy ads for book-bag organizers, nail polish, the latest phones, and even tampons. She skipped over an article on how to make your own bracelets and another on advice for talking to boys.
George’s magazine collection had started by accident. Two summers ago, she had noticed an old issue of Girls’ Life in the recycling bin at the library. The word girl had caught her eye instantly, and she had slipped the magazine in her jacket to look at later. Another girls’ magazine soon followed, this time rescued from a trash can down the block from her house. The very next weekend, she had found the denim bag at a yard sale for a quarter. It was just the size of a magazine, and had a zipper along the top. It was as if the universe had wanted her to be able to store her collection safely.
George settled on a two-page spread about FRAMING YOUR FACE WITH MAKEUP. George had never worn makeup, but she pored over the range of colors on the left side of the page. Her heart raced in her chest. She wondered what it would feel like to really wear lipstick. George loved to put on ChapStick. She used it all winter, whether or not her lips were really chapped, and every spring she hid the tube from Mom and wore it until it ran out.
George jumped when she heard a clatter outside. She looked out the window to the front door directly below. No one was in sight, but Scott’s bike lay in the driveway, the back wheel still spinning.
Scott’s bike! That meant Scott! Scott was George’s older brother, a high school freshman. The hair on George’s neck stood up. Soon, heavy footsteps climbed the stairs to the second floor. The locked bathroom door rattled. It was as if Scott were rattling George’s heart inside her rib cage.
Bang! Bang Bang!
“You in there, George?”
“Y-yeah.” The shiny magazines were spread across the tile floor. She gathered them into a pile and stuffed them into the denim bag. Her heart was thumping almost as loudly as Scott’s foot against the door.
“Yo, bro, I gotta go!” Scott yelled from the far side.
George zipped up the bag as quietly as she could and looked for a place to stash it. She couldn’t walk out with it. Scott would want to know what was inside. The bathroom’s one cabinet was stuffed with towels and didn’t shut all the way. No good either. Finally, she hung the bag from the showerhead and closed the curtain, desperately hoping that this wouldn’t be the moment Scott discovered personal hygiene.
Scott rushed in as soon as George opened the door, unzipping his jeans before he reached the toilet. George exited quickly, closed the door, and leaned on the wall outside to catch her breath. The bag was probably still swinging in the shower. George hoped it wouldn’t hit against the curtain or, worse, fall and land in the bathtub with a thud.
George didn’t want to be standing near the bathroom when Scott came out, so she went down to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat at the table, her skin tingling. Outside, a cloud passed overhead and the room grew darker. When the bathroom door banged open, George jumped in her seat, splashing juice on her hand. She realized she had barely been breathing.
Thump, thump, thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. Scott tromped downstairs, a DVD case in his hand. He opened the refrigerator door, pulled out the carton of orange juice, and took a long swig. He wore a thin black T-shirt and jeans with a small hole in the knee. He hadn’t gotten a haircut in months, and dark-brown curls formed a mop on his head.
“Sorry if I busted in on you while you were taking a dump.” Scott wiped the juice off his lips with his bare forearm.
“I wasn’t taking a dump,” George said.
“Then what took you so long?”
George hesitated.
“Oh … I know,” Scott said. “I’ll bet you had a magazine in there.”
George froze, her mouth half-open and her brain mid-thought. The air felt warm and her mind swirled. She put her hands on the table to make sure she was still there.
“That’s it.” Scott grinned, oblivious to George’s panic. “That’s my little bro! Growing up and looking at dirty magazines.”
“Oh,” George said out loud. She knew what dirty magazines were. She almost laughed. The girls in the magazines she was looking at wore a lot more clothes than that, even the ones at the beach. George relaxed, at least a little.
“Don’t worry, George. I won’t tell Mom. Anyway, I’m heading back out. Just had to get this.” Scott shook the black plastic box he held in his hand, and the DVD inside rattled. “Haven’t even seen it yet, but it’s supposed to be a classic. It’s German. The title means something like The Blood of Evil. When the zombies gnaw this one guy’s arm off and kill him, this other guy has to use the gnawed-off arm of his dead best friend to fight the zombies. It’s awesome.”
“It sounds gross,” George said.
“It is!” Scott nodded enthusiastically. He took another gulp of orange juice, put the carton back into the fridge, and headed for the door.
“I’ll let you get back to thinking about girls,” Scott joked on the way out.
George dashed up to the bathroom, rescued her bag, and buried it deep inside her closet, under the toys and stuffed animals. She put a pile of dirty clothes on top, just in case. Then she closed the door and collapsed face-first onto her bed, her hands crossed over her head, pressing her elbows to her ears and wishing she were someone else—anyone else.
Supreme thanks to my phenomenal editor, David Levithan, for the vision, support, and careful critique that have now brought us through three books. May there be many more to come. And matching appreciation for my stupendous agent, Jenn Laughran, whose brand of snarky sincerity has guided me through the bizarre waters of publishing like some sort of Disney talking-compass character. Much gratitude to everyone at Scholastic, especially Maeve Norton for another amazing cover, Lauren Donovan, Emily Heddleson, Maya Marlette, Lizette Serrano, Tracy van Straaten, the amazing team of sales reps, and anyone who has ever helped me navigate a Scholastic elevator.
Great appreciation for the young people at schools, libraries, and groups around the country who have let me into their spaces over the last few years to talk about being young and QUILTBAG+. Special thanks to the groups and individuals who workshopped this book with me for language and representation: Rachel Williams and the other amazing students of the GSA at Bret Harte Middle School in Oakland; Joao Santos; Avelina Santos; Cayden Lewis-McCabe; Devin Harkness and the fantastic middle school students of SAGA at ACCESS Academy in Portland, Oregon; and Sarah Goldman and the fabulous fifth-grade students of Queen Anne Elementary in Seattle. Thanks also to grown-up librarian, author, and friend, Kyle Lukoff, for his spot-on critique.
Deepest thanks to my We Need Diverse Books mentees, Kaija Langley (2018) and medina (2019), for helping me learn more about my writing by exploring yours with you, and for the future pleasure of your books in the world. I’m excited to be peers with you.
And then, of course, there are the people in my life who make it special. My days and life have been and continue to be enriched by the friendship, love, and company of people like Jay Williams, Jean Marie Stine, Timnah Steinman, tee Silverstein, Beth Kelly, Alanna Kelly, Mike Jung, Frankie Hill, Jen Herrington, Robin Bowen, Amy Benson, and Blake C. Aarens. Massive love for my dear Miss Holly and my outstanding roommate, Rebecca Cobre. And endless love and appreciation for my parents, Steve and Cindy Gino; my sister, Robin Gridgeman; and her kids, Kadyn and Brinley.
&nbs
p; No list can properly encompass the scope of the process from an author’s brain nugget to a reader reaching the acknowledgments page, and yet, here I am, trying again to turn a dynamic process into a static list. My apologies if I haven’t included you here. I do love you.
ALEX GINO loves glitter, ice cream, gardening, awe-ful puns, and stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of being alive. They are the author of George and You Don’t Know Everything , Jilly P! George was a winner of the Stonewall Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Children’s Choice Book Awards, among a host of others. For more about Alex, please visit alexgino.com.
ALSO BY ALEX GINO
George
You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P!
Copyright © 2020 by Alex Gino
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, April 2020
Cover art and design by Maeve Norton
e-ISBN 978-1-338-04817-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
