by Beth Goobie
“Can’t,” I said, keeping them shut. “I’d go cross-eyed staring at you this close.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wallpaper myself to the other side of the room.”
I waited, my eyes squeezed shut and counting heartbeats, but the only thing that moved was the tip of her hair teasing my neck. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked finally. “You’re all tense. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you didn’t get it on for guys, you—”
Joc paused, her silence speaking for her, and then the tip of her coconut-scented hair buckled and she was right onto me. “But I know you better than that, don’t I?” she whispered, her words puffing gently against my face. “No one knows you as well as I do, right Dyl?”
“No one,” I said softly, and longing flared, slow and searing, in my gut. Turning my head to escape Joc’s nearness, I felt her breathing angle up my neck.
“So, if I think it’d be good for you to get it on with Cam, it probably would be, right?” she said.
“Maybe,” I hedged.
Definitely,” said Joc, and the coconut-scented hair wisped away from my neck. Returning to the dresser, she once again took up her battle stance in front of the mirror while I lay dishrag-limp on the bed, breathing in the empty air bit by bit, its hard lonely truth. Slowly I turned my head and watched Joc through slitted eyes.
“My hair sucks,” she said bleakly, staring into the mirror. “My face looks like it’s been pickled. I give it two weeks before Dikker dumps me.”
Closing my eyes again, I shut her out.
Chapter Two
The problem wasn’t that I was a virgin. I mean, I’d had sex—with a guy. As far as I could tell, my sexual experiences to date had been pretty much the usual—some lunch-hour kissing in junior high and the odd after-school groping session. Then, midway through grade nine, I started dating Paul Loye, and over the summer we had sex four times. It was always with a condom—the first time I was so nervous, I almost made him wear two! But even with protection, and even though I liked Paul, I could never relax and get off on it. I guess the whole thing just felt sweaty and grunty and bump-bump-bump. Plus I would always be in a funk, wondering if the condom was doing its job or if I was in the middle of getting pregnant. And then, to top it all off, afterward neither of us could look the other in the eye.
To be honest, sex with Paul was one big flat-out disappointment. Which was definitely confusing, because I’d always figured sex would be the most fantastic experience of my life. At least that was the way it looked on TV. I can’t tell you how lonely I felt. And what made it even worse was that when Joc and I consulted, we seemed to be doing the same things, and she was, as she put it, “enjoying her karma.” Or so she said, so of course that was what I said too. But lying about it just made the situation worse, and the whole time I kept wondering when someone would finally see through the act I was trying to pull.
I think that was why I kept doing it with Paul. I was trying to make myself like it, prove to myself that I could like it. But all it seemed to prove was the opposite, and in the end I couldn’t fight it off anymore—the certainty, the knowing. Because I did know what was going on, had begun to sense it way back in grade six when Joc and I had started growing breasts and pubic hair, and she’d wanted to compare. No big deal—lots of kids pull that kind of stuff when their bodies are changing and they can’t get a straight answer from their parents. And our school sex ed class hadn’t explained everything we wondered about, even with its extremely straight answers to questions we hadn’t even known existed. Basically it was the little things we wanted to know about then, not the big ones. Like most eleven-year-old girls, Joc and I weren’t interested in attaching our eggs to anyone’s sperm yet. We just wanted to know if our boobs were growing too fast, or if there really was supposed to be that much hair you-know-where. And those weren’t the kind of questions you could ask your health teacher.
So we did a few spot checks on each other, took off our shirts and checked to see whose breasts were bigger, that kind of thing. Once Joc reached out and touched one of my breasts, but I jerked back at the sudden soft explosion of sensation, and she never did it again. Still, she kept wanting to compare, so I kept telling myself that my reactions were normal—I was just feeling the way I was feeling because our shirts were off, and if she was a guy, then things would really get hot.
Then came a fateful grade seven sleepover at Joc’s house, when she decided that we were going to strip head-to-toe and do a “scientific evaluation.” Actually, it was a very helpful experience as far as science went—it’s not all that easy to see between your own legs and I learned a lot about exact locations, especially with Joc’s finger right on them. I kept a pillow over my face while she was examining me and refused to touch her, though when it came my turn to play doctor, I looked—I have to admit I looked for a very long time.
After that I knew. Even though I kept telling myself that Joc was just a substitute for a guy, I knew better. And the weird thing was that she was always hanging all over me. She’s a naturally physical person, but guys took to calling the two of us lezzies. Just joking, of course—by grade eight Joc already had her rep, having officially done the deed with Larry Boissonneault, then dumped him for his best friend Terence Harty.
I think she knew too—about me, the way I was. Sometimes I would look up and catch her watching me, her eyes kind of glazed and her mouth pouty, the way it goes when you’re dead center in your hottest sex fantasy. And every time I caught her watching me like that, she would look away. But first, just for a second, there would be this electric flash that leapt between us— something you couldn’t see or hear but damn well felt—and then she would blink and turn her head. And it would be completely and utterly gone. Until the next time it happened.
The thing was, Joc hardly ever looked away. Sometimes we had stare fights that lasted five, ten minutes, and she never backed down. Never. After that sleepover in the seventh grade, we didn’t compare again. At least, not that obviously. But the summer before grade ten, when she started dating Dikker and I was going with Paul, we double-dated a couple of times. Dikker was a year older than Joc and already had a car, so after the movie, they would take the front seat and we would take the back. And the whole time, even though she seemed to be really busy with Dikker, I could have sworn Joc was listening to me and Paul—so close, it ended up feeling like a competition, each of us trying to prove who was having the hottest time. Thinking about it afterward made me feel kind of sick, so I told Paul that I would rather do things with just the two of us. When I told Joc that I didn’t want to double with her and Dikker anymore, we stopped talking for a while. No apparent reason—she didn’t get mad or anything, it just happened. Then, at the end of the summer, I broke up with Paul, and Joc and I were best friends again.
Now I was going out with Cam Zeleny. And like Joc said, I couldn’t expect him to hang around, unfulfilled, as she called it, forever. After all, Cam was prime dating material—smart, decent, good-looking and a member of the senior jock crowd. Dief girls lined up every day just to say hi to him. I mean, I was definitely not his only option for a Saturday night. And to add to the pressure, he’d put in his time with me. I was way overdue to start putting out, at least by most dating standards. What was I going to do when he finally lost patience and dumped me?
I could already feel it—that big lonely crater opening in my gut. Cam might not have been the one who secretly turned me on, but he was a worthwhile conversation and a damn good kisser. If I kept my eyes closed, he could get me pretty sweaty. The problem was that I couldn’t take it any farther. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I would have given almost anything to have been able to respond to what Cam wanted to give me. But every time we tried, I turned off. I didn’t think no, didn’t protest or push him away. Some inner switch simply clicked off, and I turned into cold putty in his hands. He always stopped then—Cam wasn’t the kind of guy who just wanted to get off. A few times he’d tried to g
et me to talk about it, but what was I supposed to say? I couldn’t even think the truth inside my own head. How was I supposed to tell him?
And if I was going to be absolutely honest, I would have to admit that behind the fear of losing Cam was the complete and utter terror of what other kids would think if we split up. Ultimately there were only two reasons for a girl to reject Cam—she was religious, or deep inside herself she was skewed, she was wrong. Okay, maybe I’m being a little paranoid here. Couples break up for lots of reasons, but if Cam and I split, that would be why—I was skewed. And with all the talk about gays and lesbians these days, someone would eventually figure it out. Once they did, it would get around. Then everyone would know. Everyone would know that deep inside, in the deepest core place, Dylan Kowolski was wrong.
So there it was inside me, that wrongness, the way I felt about Joc. It lived, shoved down deep, a kind of spell or threat, like that song by Alanis Morissette—”Fear of Bliss.” Though I knew they were there, I never let my mind open onto the deepest feelings I had for Joc. I could feel them sometimes, moving around my gut, but if they ever came into my mind—if I ever, even for a moment, daydreamed about kissing or touching her—I would shove those thoughts back down and slam the door on them. That kind of thinking was forbidden. If we were going to be friends—best friends, the best of best friends, I couldn’t let myself even think about the secret flame she hadn’t seen that night in grade seven, burning between my legs.
It was the week following the river soap spill, and I was halfway through my Tuesday lunch-hour shift at the Dief library checkout desk. Leaned against the other side of the counter and wrapped in each other’s arms were Joc and Dikker, pretending to keep me company while they engaged in their favorite pastime. This meant, of course, that the last five minutes of the library’s supposed domain of silence had been punctuated by some rather unusual sound effects, but what the hell—I was only a volunteer and not about to pull any authority trips.
It wasn’t like me to volunteer for things, but the Dief library was different. To be specific, Ms. Fowler, the librarian, was different. The majority of teachers in my school were only interested in students with cubbyhole minds, the kind of kids who could take facts coming at them from any angle and shove them into the appropriate mental-storage unit. Ms. Fowler wasn’t like that. She was more of a watcher than a coder. At first when I caught her looking at me, I would tense up, not sure what she was seeing. Because she really observed. Behind that mousy expression and erratic graying hair lurked more information about what went on at the Dief than in the front office computer database.
But no snaky forked-tongued comments ever came out of her—no criticisms, suggestions for improvement, or off-with-your-head statements. Maybe it was because I was a volunteer and she had to take what she could get. Or maybe it was because her career had been spent dealing with other people’s thoughts. One day last year, while I was shelving books in the fiction section, I stopped for a moment and stood, just looking at the shelf in front of me. The weirdest sensation came over me then—almost as if each book had a voice and they were all calling to me. I mean, extremely bizarro, I know, but it happened. And as I was standing there, listening to that shelf of books call out to me, Ms. Fowler walked over and asked what I was doing.
“One shelf of books has so many completely different ideas sitting right next to each other,” I said slowly. I wouldn’t normally say something like that to a Dief teacher, but talking to Ms. Fowler was sort of like talking inside your own head. “It’s like looking at a row of minds,” I continued, just letting the thoughts come out. “A story from Moose Jaw could be sitting next to one from Johannesburg. Every shelf in this library is like that. It’s fantastic.”
Beside me, Ms. Fowler stood silently, her eyes roaming the shelves. “Yes,” she said finally, a tiny smile crouching in one corner of her mouth. “It is fantastic.” Then, without looking at me, she patted my arm and returned to her office. We hadn’t mentioned it since, but from that point on, whenever she saw me come into the library her eyes would flick toward the shelves and she would get that tiny smile in the corner of her mouth. And it made me feel, I dunno—located—to think that there was an adult in this school who actually remembered something I’d said.
Yes, in this library, with its shelves of minds waiting to be opened and Ms. Fowler’s tiny crouching smile, I felt located.
“Dikker!” said Joc, letting out a small shriek. Pressed against the check-out desk, she giggled breathlessly. All over the library, kids were turning to watch, some grinning, others glaring. From behind the desk, I gave them a shrug and went back to emptying the book return bin. Some days Joc’s brain simply stopped functioning. As far as I could tell, it was usually connected to the presence of Dikker Preddy.
“Hey, Dyl,” said a familiar voice. A wave of Brut washed over me, and I looked up to see Cam drop his gym bag and lean across the counter. Quirking an eyebrow at Joc and Dikker, who gave no hint of having noticed his arrival, he grinned and asked, “So, what’s the major sign-out trend for today?”
Quirking an eyebrow in reply, I said, “Ancient architecture. No one looks too happy about it either.”
“C’mon,” he said, taking hold of one of my fingers. “One of these days you’re going to tell me it’s a bunch of guys fighting over The Joy of Sex.”
“Not today,” I quipped back, hiding a flicker of nervousness. “I’ve already got that one signed out.”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes zeroing in. They were blue, very blue— the color of soft faded denim. “And what class might that be for?” he asked.
“Ancient history,” I grinned. “I decided not to do the assigned essay topic.”
Cam grinned back. “That essay will be read aloud in the staff room,” he predicted.
Next to him, Joc and Dikker’s ecstatic make-out session was continuing nonstop. Then, in one especially ecstatic moment, Dikker pressed Joc against the check-out desk, and her shoulder toppled a stack of books I’d taken out of the return bin. I mean, the guy practically had her laid out across the counter. Suddenly all the frustration I’d been trying to hide reared up in me. Picking up a hardcover thesaurus, I swatted Dikker on the head with it.
Hardcover thesauruses are ideal for this sort of thing. Immediately Dikker’s mouth detached itself from Joc’s and he straightened, rubbing the top of his head. “Jeeeeeeezus, Dyl,” he moaned. “What was that for?”
“There are people researching ancient architecture in this library,” I said, giving him a melodramatic glare and hoping against hope that he and Joc would take it as a joke. “You are distracting them. Besides, my boss, Ms. Fowler—remember her?—is due back any minute.”
“Oh, Ms. Fowler,” sniffed Joc. Patting the top of Dikker’s head, she slitted her eyes at me. “What’s she going to do, revoke our library privileges?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No more making out in the library.”
“Big deal,” said Dikker. “Thought we’d save you from another boring virgin library shift, but we can always use my car. C’mon, Joc.”
Turning, he tried to walk through the turnstile, but the alarm went off.
“That book,” I said, pointing to a paperback he was carrying. “Did you sign it out?”
“Nah,” he grunted, tossing it onto the counter. “I was looking for pictures, but there aren’t any.”
I picked it up and looked at it. By Truman Capote, the book was called In Cold Blood.
“Figures,” I muttered, as my extremely pissed-off best friend and her numbskull boyfriend headed out into the hall. Well, maybe not extremely pissed-off. Through the glass panes in the library doors, I could see Joc taking a tube of lipstick out of her purse and slathering it all over Dikker’s mouth. Then she did her own. A second later they leaned in together and gave the upper pane in the left door a simultaneous hearty smooch.
Kiss off, I thought. Okay, the message could have been worse.
Snorting softly at their artwork, Cam
picked up his gym bag. “Coming to the game tomorrow?” he asked. “It’s our first one.”
“You gonna win?” I demanded, jamming In Cold Blood onto a filing cart.
“If I know you’re watching, beady little eyes fixed on my working butt,” Cam grinned.
“Mmmm, yes,” I said lightly. “It is a gorgeous butt. For your butt, I just might show.”
Immediately Cam’s face lit up, and I felt like the usual shit for keeping him in that ever-hoping, never-fulfilled position. “Okay, Dyllie,” he said, slinging his gym bag over a shoulder. “I’ll call you tonight.”
With another grin he backed through the library doors, barely missing Ms. Fowler who was standing in the hall, observing the two lipsticked smooches. As usual she had on her watcher’s expression, which was pretty much the same as no expression at all. Waiting until the doors had closed behind Cam, she took out her own tube of lipstick and wrote something underneath the smooches. Then she came into the library and headed for her office. After processing the end-of-lunch-hour check-out rush, I stopped by her office to let her know that I was leaving. As I entered, she looked up from her desk work, her head framed by a large globe that sat on the counter behind her.
“That globe,” I said, unsure as ever as to the best way to break into her silence. “I’ve never seen one that large.”
“That’s why I bought it,” she said quietly. “It’s bigger than my head. Isn’t that symbolic?”
Tiny corner grins crept into both our mouths.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it’s symbolic, Ms. Fowler.”
“Thanks for helping out today, Dylan,” she said and went back to her work.
Outside the library doors, a small crowd had gathered. Joining them, I stood scanning the comments Ms. Fowler had written in dull burgundy lipstick beneath Joc and Dikker’s scarlet smooches: READING CAN IMPROVE YOUR EXPERTISE IN ALL SORTS OF SUBJECTS! GET LITERATE!
