Amber Eyes

by Mariana Reuter

  I rolled my eyes. “Long story. You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Stop talking crap!” He spat at my feet and I jumped back. “I’m tired of you, dude. I’m gonna beat your ass up!”

  He pushed me again and raised a fist in front of my face. His nostrils flared and his veins throbbed on his forehead.

  I backed off several more steps. I could slap his face again but it would be useless. I knew I was no match for him. I raised my hands between us with my palms toward him. “Take it easy, Daniel. We’ve already had a discussion this morning. Edward and Jorge would freak out if they know we’re fighting again.”

  I backed off even more behind a fire hydrant on the sidewalk. Daniel’s nostrils flared again when he pointed a finger at me. “Are you such a sissy coward that you’re afraid to fight me, dude?”

  I shook my head. Of course I was not gonna fight him. Even less so because he’d gone mad as a hatter. He sneered. “You’re a stupid little fag! I’ll tell everybody you refused to fight me, dude. Everybody at school will know you’re a girl!”

  If only he knew the truth, he would realize what a dumb threat that was. “Be my guest, Daniel.”

  For some seconds, he stood speechless. His face turned almost violet. “You dumbass!” He made a lunge. I tilted my body backwards as fast as I could but not fast enough. He grabbed my sunglasses, tearing them away off my face.

  “Aha!” He raised the sunglasses in his fist only to fling them down to the sidewalk. He spat on them and then crushed them under his foot. “How do you feel now without your precious—”

  Our eyes met and locked. He froze, mesmerized like everybody else who stared into my eyes, which was good because maybe my eyes would do their thing and make him forget all about fighting me. His body tilted forward a bit and he squinted, like he was trying to focus. “There’s a movie in your eyes.”

  I knew people saw weird things in my eyes, but I had no clue what he was talking about. “Don’t be silly.”

  He was blinking little. “You’re in the movie, in a bathroom. Wait a sec. Isn’t that the bathroom in the mansion where we found shit in the toilet? Weird, it looks brand new.” He narrowed his eyes even more. “Why are you taking your clothes off? Gosh, you’re a girl, dude!”

  # # #

  “Of course, I’m a girl!” I cried. Now I was the one whose nostrils flared. I was fed up with Daniel. Even though I now understood what drove his animosity against me—jealousy—it didn’t mean that I approved of it. I couldn’t help Edward had rejected him for me. I hadn’t even flirted with Edward as he’d suggested before. This was the right time to clear things up. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Daniel’s eyes were still locked with mine. It was as if his soul had left his body and wandered in outer space. Were my eyes doing that to him?

  “Who’s Jennifer, dude?” Daniel asked me out of the blue. He had stopped blinking. His cheeks were somehow rosy, and he talked like a robot. All the previous anger was gone as if by magic.

  “Jennifer?” I tilted backwards but didn’t break out eye contact. “She’s my girlfriend. How do you know about her?”

  “The movie… the movie in your eyes. You keep moaning her name,” Daniel whispered, still sounding robotic. He tipped his head a bit sideways and smiled. “You were having big time fun playing with yourself, weren’t you, dude?”

  “What the—”

  “You’re good at it!”

  I panicked. Had he spied on me that night? If so, why hadn’t he told everybody I was a girl. I gasped, “How do you know about that?”

  Daniel’s gaze was totally lost and blurry. “So you have a girlfriend. Have you told your family and friends you’re gay, dude? I haven’t. Everybody at school hates gay guys, and Edward just said it isn’t cool. It’s so difficult. Sometimes, I can’t sleep because of it and I just cry all night long.”

  “How do you know about what I did in the mansion’s bathroom?” I yelled.

  “Told you, it’s all in the movie in your eyes.”

  The movie in my eyes? What the hell did he mean? Heck, was it some sort of billboard telling everyone everything about me? For one second, I considered running away in the opposite direction so whatever my eyes were disclosing would stop.

  I didn’t escape, though. Daniel looked so worried I felt bad for him. He was no longer sarcastic or showing off, but himself. I could see it. Suddenly, he’d turned from yet another bully into a person I could sympathize with. My reputation at school was so wrecked it didn’t matter much if people like Clara Benson kept saying I was a freak or a lesbo—they said it even before I discovered my feelings for Jenny and furnished them with actual grounds for their claim. I wondered what it would be like for Daniel if he was discovered. It was hard for me, but I bet it was harder for a guy. I knew guys hated gays—I’d even heard of gays beaten nearly to death by school bullies. Daniel not only seemed terrified but lonely, just like I’d been before I met Jenny. He deserved to find someone who’d understand and love him.

  Daniel sighed. “I wish I could tell somebody how I feel.”

  I had to say something to encourage him. “I dunno if I’m gay, or if being gay is cool or not. I still need to understand what it means to be Jenny’s girlfriend. If you have feelings for somebody, it’s okay. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

  Daniel didn’t talk. He remained silent, still frozen with his mouth half open and his eyes all glassy. I wondered if he’d heard me. He tilted his body a li’l bit toward me and squinted.

  “Daniel, are you okay?” I asked him. I couldn’t break our eye contact. The movie-in-my-eyes thing was so weird that I wouldn’t leave until I got to the bottom of it.

  “That man… I saw him earlier today at the parade,” he whispered.

  “What man?” I almost shouted. When he said ‘that man’, Yago’s picture came immediately to my mind. “What are you talking about?”

  “The man in the movie in your eyes,” Daniel murmured—the damned You Tube post in my eyes. He raised again a finger and pointed at my eyes as if I could see whatever he was seeing in them. “That blond, large man. I saw him today in the park. He has these stitches all over his face. Tons of them, like Frankenstein. I thought he’d been run over by a car. Gosh, it wasn’t a car! Why did you hit him with a TV, dude?”

  My stomach sank. The situation had turned officially creepy. I felt a desperate urge to break our eye contact, but it wasn’t needed because Daniel sorta woke up with a start.

  “You’re a girl!” he cried again—he’d already said that. “Crap! Edward’s not gay, he’s straight. He kissed a girl.” He took a pair of shaky hands to his head and pulled his hair. His anger and despair were back. “What am I gonna do? Everybody will know! I’m fu–”

  However weird, Daniel had seen Yago in my eyes and had confirmed he spotted him at Lincoln Park earlier today. “Daniel, talk to me about the blonde man, the one you saw in the park and in the movie in my eyes. Tell me about the guy like Frankenstein.”

  “Which blonde man, dude? I don’t care about any blonde Frankenstein! I don’t care about you either, dude… girl.” Daniel’s eyes were red, very red. He tore at his hair as he talked. “You’re Edward’s girlfriend, aren’t you? What’s your real name? He invited you to our camp because you guys wanted to have sex away from your folks, didn’t you? The camping was the perfect cover, wasn’t it? Oh my god. What am I gonna do? I need to convince Edward I was joking.”

  Daniel dragged his nails down his cheeks and then started to pace the sidewalk in front of the hydrant between us. “A joke, yes, I’ll tell him it was all a joke. I’m always sorta cynical, so he’ll believe me… No. That won’t hold water. I was talking way too seriously to be joking… Crap! Why can’t he be gay?”

  I pitied Daniel, but because of his previous comment about Yago—which was freakin’ me out—I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t find the right words to make him feel better now that he seemed fully conscious. I could only say, “Edward’s not gay.”


  Daniel’s face flushed. “Of course he’s not, dude! But I just told him I love him because I thought he was. I saw you guys making out and got it all wrong!”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I refrained. To be honest, I was clueless. I couldn’t figure out what to say besides asking him again about Yago.

  Daniel paced the sidewalk once more. “I told him about the tight clothes, about swaying my hips, and I showed him my hands.” Both of them flew to his face. “God! What am I gonna do? Everybody at school will know. They’ll bully me. They’ll call me names and the seniors will beat me up in the restrooms like they did with Hernandez.”

  Apparently, my junior high was not the only place were kids got bullied in the restrooms. My heart felt his pain, his anguish. I wished I could help him. I ventured, “Edward won’t tell anybody.”

  “It’s none of your business, girl! I hate you. I hate Edward and everybody else.” Daniel sprinted away from me down the street. “I’ll kill myself!”

  “Daniel, wait!”

  I totally needed to know where he’d seen Yago so I ran after him. Unfortunately, he ran faster. I lost him after two blocks. I stopped. My heart beat like crazy and I was panting. I then realized I’d just done something stupid. Yago was in this town and I’d exposed myself in the middle of Abbeville’s streets without checking who was about. I collapsed on the sidewalk by a parked car, leaning on one of its front tires until I caught my breath. Then I got to my feet and, careful not to be seen, I retraced my steps until I arrived at my grandma’s house. There was a police line preventing access to the house—this yellow tape they place at crime scenes with “Do not cross ” written on it. No cop watched the house though so I crossed the line—some stupid tape wasn’t gonna stop me. I strode past the flower garden to the back of the house, then I discovered that the kitchen’s back door was missing. Yes, missing, vanished, poofed. The full door. I wondered if Yago had blasted it off.

  Inside, the house was a hell of a mess. All the furniture was knocked over and drawers and cabinets had been emptied on the floor. Yago had trashed the place. I rushed right to my grandma’s bedroom and searched for her hair extension. I found it under the bed. The box with the clothes for the street children had also been emptied, but all the clothes were in a single pile on the bed. This time, rather than baggy, boy’s clothes, I frantically looked for tight, girly stuff. I tried on every tee one or two sizes smaller than mine, ending up with a black Lycra shirt that made my boobs appear larger than they actually were—much larger. Okay, they still looked tiny, but at least it was evident I had boobs.

  I also found a black skirt that fit low around my waist—it exposed my bellybutton. It looked sorta sexy, so I kept it. The shoes were a problem. I only had the tight sneakers I’d been wearing since three days ago, which I discarded because they weren’t ‘girly enough’. So, I tried on every pair of shoes I found in Grandma’s closet—she owned over 20 pairs of them. All of them fitted tight, but after three days inside sixth-grader-size sneakers, fitted heels were no biggie at all.

  Note to self: Walking on heels requires practice. Don’t try it without adult supervision.

  Finally, the lip gloss and the mascara. Applying them is quite a complicated operation when you do it for the first time ever, but after some trial and error, and a full bottle of L’Oréal makeup remover, I finally managed to accomplish it without looking clownish. The funny thing is that I actually enjoyed it. Laura had a lot of makeup, way too much, and she used to apply layer over layer of stuff on her face, but I never asked her to teach me. Now, while I tried to figure out how to keep the lip-gloss within my lips and the mascara on my eyelashes only, I got euphoric. I was wearing makeup for the first time ever. Make up like any other girl. Suddenly, dressing tomboyish seemed sooo lame, and I wondered why I’d preferred to hide behind an androgynous facade. Not because it kept me safe—it actually attracted bullies in every school I’d attended.

  When I was done, I looked into a powder compact little mirror.

  “Mirror, mirror in my hand, who—”

  Nah! So childish. I cast the mirror on the bed. Two nights before, I’d discovered how wonderful it felt to be a woman so it was time to start acting like one. It didn’t matter if Laura was a los—

  My train of thoughts abruptly halted and I pondered my last consideration.

  Of course. Laura was the loser, not me.

  I hadn’t been the one who had accidentally killed her husband. I hadn’t been the one having an affair with a local cop while still married. I hadn’t been the one bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend in search of ‘a good man who’d take care of me.’ I shouldn’t be afraid of being a girl just because Laura failed at being one. Moreover, I shouldn’t be afraid of looking like a girl, believing that a boyish look would protect me from Laura’s fate.

  A full length mirror hung from one of Grandma’s bedroom walls. I approached it but stopped short, not willing to see my reflection. Fear crawled inside me because I was not sure what the looking glass would show me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used a skirt, and I never, ever, had worn clothes fitted enough to reveal my boobs, especially tight Lycra tees. It was only matter of walking two more steps to admire how hot I looked… or how ridiculous. I started to open and clench fists because my hands were feeling numb. Sweat droplets streaked down my back. My heart pounded fast.

  “Do it, Alexandra,” I said aloud.

  I walked in front of the mirror and stood breathless. The girl in the mirror was somebody I’d never seen before. Slim, but graceful. Little developed—small boobs and buttocks—but rounded enough to look nice. Not very tall, but with long legs—which was actually something hot. Or so I’d heard. The hair extension looked like a natural ponytail. She was me, but she wasn’t me. She was an entity separate from me—one I could never imagine being me.

  I put a hand on my hips and pouted like I wanted to kiss somebody or take a selfie. I resembled naughty high-school cheerleader—well, kinda. I looked at my face. Not a stunning beauty, not a prom queen, but something about me looked alluring. My amber eyes stared back at me, desperately beckoning. I moved closer to the mirror, but then they beamed a sort of warning, advising me to back off. I couldn’t though so I moved even closer until I stood only one inch away from the mirror’s glass, still holding the eye contact. I placed my open palms on the glass and so did the girl in the mirror.

  Our hands touched and our fingers intertwined. Her trembling lips stood so close to mine—red, perfectly drawn, a bit pouty—that I could have kissed her. I felt her breath on my upper lip. Her body shivered, as excited as mine. Then I saw it. I saw gazillions of stars in her eyes, galaxies orbiting around each other, and suns crashing into one another. An endless symphony that both destroyed and created life all at once. The image mesmerized me. I simply couldn’t stop watching. Over a background sprinkled with glowing stardust, I saw myself. I looked like a little tomboyish figure who liked to deny herself. A midget frightened of her own shadow, waiting for her mother do something about it. An insignificant person who expected her mother to find ‘a good man’ who’d take care of both of them and solve her problems all at once.

  The movie in the girl’s eyes continued and then I saw Jenny stepping in place of that ‘good man’, saving me from the bullies and the world.

  I whispered, “It’s not the same. Laura was looking for a good man who’d take care of her. It’s not that I am looking for a ‘good girl who’d good take care of—”

  “You are,” the other girl stated back in a whisper. Her fingers tightened around mine. “Just don’t love Jenny or Edward because they protect you, but because of who they are.”

  I pouted. “My feelings are a mess. I feel I’m in love with both of them. Am I gay, or bisexual?”

  “Neither of them, just a bit confused, but it doesn’t matter at all. What’s important is that you’re a girl and you’ve always been one. Don’t ever again be afraid of being yourself.”

  Her voice so
unded a bit husky, like that of those sexy girls in movies. In her eyes, I could see fire igniting her soul, a fire so powerful, it could torch the entire world, thus the back-off warning. Such a fire conveyed passion and even lust, but also love and tenderness. I couldn’t help whispering, “You’re so hot. I wanna kiss you.”

  The girl giggled. “Don’t be silly. I told you, you’re not gay so don’t think about kissing other girls. Besides, I’m only your own image in the mirror, but it’s good you finally started to like yourself.”

  July 4, 9:38 pm

  I resembled a teen idol, and not even my Mom would have recognized me. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit, but I was sure Jenny would have been thrilled. I only needed a belly-button piercing to be taken for a Disney teen star.

  This was my plan: I was gonna return to Lincoln Park, look for Edward, and spill the beans. Afterwards, I’d walk all the way back to Magnolia Hall where I’d stay hidden in some bedroom until it was time to return to town and take the Greyhound. I’d be back in Somerset the same time as Jenny, and would explain everything to her, and we would figure out together how to solve my problems. Together. She wouldn’t solve them for me. I would with her help. Piece of cake. In the meantime, I needed to be careful and not to bump into Yago. However, if I did, chances were he wouldn’t recognize me. Really, I looked that much different.

  I strode through Abbeville’s empty streets as fast as I could without killing myself because of the heels until I reached Lincoln Park. It seemed nobody had left the party. The music was super loud, lots and lots of people still crowded the place, kids played around and everybody waited for the fireworks.

  I stood frozen on the middle of Main Street and gulped. My new girl look was about to face its hardest test. Up to now, everybody in this town had taken me for a boy. Would they see me now as the girl I really was? Or would they see yesterday’s boy trying to pass for a girl?

  Don’t be afraid of being yourself.