Fierce as the Wind

by Tara Wilson Redd

  She’s definitely not asking about me. Not really. I’m not stupid: she wants the analogy to work. But I can’t lie either.

  “Our thing is different. Like, he’s super hot. I totally love him. But that’s not our thing. But if our thing changed, I wouldn’t be mad or anything. It would just be a different…thing.”

  She stares at me. I totally blew that.

  “You know what I mean,” I say.

  “Do I? Is it something about a ‘thing’? I’m a little unclear.”

  “All I’m saying is, just because someone is your best friend doesn’t mean they don’t want to date you. But it also doesn’t mean that being best friends isn’t great also.”

  “Yeah,” she says, looking downcast.

  “Is it your parents?” I ask.

  “Not exactly. My parents aren’t like X’s. They won’t care. Not like that. But they’ll want to make a big thing of it, like announce it to their friends and do a whole ‘divorced parents united front we hate each other but we still love you’ song and dance. They’d definitely want your coming-out party. So I want to be way the hell gone before I tell them. Just, like, show up at Thanksgiving with a girl or something. If I decide I’m gay and all.”

  “Your mom seemed so proud of you when she stopped by.”

  Lani smiled. “She’s just my mom, but having her do something like that? Actually show up when I needed her? I don’t know. It matters.”

  “Yeah,” I say, because I get what she’s saying. It’s like, your parents can say they love you all the time, but there’s something about when they pick you up when you need them the most that reminds you they matter in a way no one else ever will.

  “I still wish she believed in me enough to let me do this for real. She thinks it’s just a hobby. Like I’m playing chef and it’s an elaborate lemonade stand.”

  I shake my head. “Not today she didn’t. No one thought that today.”

  Lani looks over her shoulder into her truck, and for a second she just stares.

  “I know,” she says at last. “Not even me.”

  chapter thirteen

  It takes two hours of bus and bike to get to Ala Moana, even with Lani dropping me off on her way home. When I finally get there, I head toward the enormous food court, bobbing and weaving through the crowds. Everyone has sharp-edged paper bags with string handles and fancy brand names on the front. No plastic bags here. Some girls have whole garlands of them hanging off their arms. They swipe my bare legs as I walk by.

  I make it through the basic bitch obstacle course and to the food court. I slide into a plastic chair and take a breath. I am so tired. I don’t know why I’m tired. I didn’t even do my workout.

  I want to put my head down, but I don’t want to get picked up by a guard for loitering. Instead, I buy a cheeseburger and make myself eat it while I wait.

  Ala Moana is a ginormous mall. For me it might as well be an open-air museum of stuff I’ll never have. I’ve got today’s tips in my pocket, and it almost feels like I could afford to shop here.

  I come here with Rei a lot. Rei loves to try on clothes. She doesn’t even buy that much stuff, she just likes seeing herself in different outfits. She doesn’t mind if I tell her a dress makes her legs look short. She knows how to fix that with heels or a hem.

  I don’t know how to fix anything. I care about how I look, sure. But I care in the sense that I have a jean jacket I sewed a bunch of patches on that I love. I care in that all my T-shirts are for bands and books I could not function without. I like to like my clothes. I never like them on me.

  “Miho!”

  I look up. It’s Rei’s mom, waving from across the food court. I wave back; then she gives Rei a kiss and walks away. Rei walks toward me, a brown bag hanging from the crook of her arm. Post-brunch shopping with her mom.

  I watch Rei sashay across the food court. I watch eyes follow her. I look down and brush the crumbs off my shirt.

  “Was that your ride?” I ask.

  “We took two cars,” she explains as she slides into the seat across from me. “We can put your bike in the back on the way home.”

  She looks me over.

  “Did you bike here?” she asks.

  “Part of the way.”

  “This outfit,” Rei says. I look down at my extra-baggy shirt and pants so roomy they pull right off my hips.

  “Easy to get on and off,” I explain, polishing off my burger and crumpling up the wrapper. “I still don’t see what’s wrong with wearing sweatpants to work out.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. They’re just wrong for what you’re doing.”

  “I bike all the time in sweatpants.”

  “Mi-kins. Trust me. You should look as good as you feel.”

  “That sounds like a sex thing.”

  “Is Trinity rubbing off on you? It’s not a sex thing.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “You’re trying to annoy me out of shopping for you. But it won’t work. You said we could buy you some real workout clothes, and you’re not backing out. We’re gonna put racing stripes up and down those lightning legs.”

  “You mean thunder thighs.”

  “I mean light-up-the-road, shock-the-competition lightning legs. And we’re going matchy-matchy.”

  “No.”

  “Oh yes. Full tracksuit. You’re going to be adorable.”

  “No.”

  “If you think matchy-matchy is as bad as triathlon fashion gets, I have got some bad news for you.”

  “You can put my cold, dead corpse in a matching tracksuit.”

  “Anything is possible.”

  * * *

  Soon I’m standing behind one of those slatted doors in a store I did not know existed before today, staring down a garment that has five holes and one zipper.

  “Put it on,” Rei says.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “It’s just like a romper.”

  “What is a romper?”

  “It’s like a jumpsuit.”

  “But is this the front or the back?”

  “I’m coming in.”

  “No! I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

  I wrangle myself into the thing while listening to Rei sing the same four bars of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” over and over, perfecting some tiny note or tremor that mere mortals can’t even hear.

  I want to ask her about her play. I want to ask her about Wyatt. That’s how this usually goes. She talks, I listen. She dresses, I critique. She’s behind the door, and I’m out there waiting. That’s the way I like it.

  I open the door.

  “I would rather die,” I say as the song leaves her lips and she spins around, her eyes lighting up.

  “And I will shove your adorable corpse into it.”

  “Why do they wear these things?” I ask, looking at myself in the mirror. It has sleeves, kind of, and shorts, kind of, and it’s all one piece with the world’s biggest pad sewn right into the crotch. But the shorts are too tight, and the sleeves are too loose, and none of it looks right.

  “It’s all for speed. It’s called a trisuit question mark?” Rei says. She looks me over again, shaking her head. “This doesn’t fit, but you’re going to look like a superhero when we find you one that does. Although we’re going to have to discuss the, uh, matter of unmentionables.”

  “If it’s unmentionable, why are you mentioning it?” I ask. My stomach is tied in knots.

  “Mi-kins, look at your butt in the mirror,” Rei says.

  I turn around. There’s a clear outline of my Hanes granny panties.

  “Internet says: no underwear, yes bra,” Rei informs me.

  “I say no to all of it,” I say, covering my face in my hands.

  Rei sighs with the full force of the Stanislavski met
hod.

  She takes me by the shoulders and turns me to the mirror. “Listen, Queen. You’re right. The very, very first one we looked at doesn’t look great. But so what? That’s the joy of shopping. It’s never right the first time. Remember how many stores we scoured to find my sweet sixteen dress? We’re treasure hunting.”

  I say nothing. I bet Rei would look great in this trisuit. I’m not thinking of Rei, though. I’m thinking of her, with her perfect flat stomach, wearing a pink version of this on Instagram, two fingers in a V.

  “So what do you like about it?” Rei asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Miho,” she growls.

  I want to take this off and pretend none of this ever happened. But I look at Rei. She points to the mirror.

  I think: maybe I need Rei now, like Lani needed me this morning. Maybe Rei is my fashion #supportcrew.

  I try to look only at the clothes in the mirror, and not at myself, the way you can take apart anything you draw into lines and colors.

  “What about the design? Do you like these squiggles?” Rei prompts. I can tell even she doesn’t like the squiggles, but she doesn’t want to color my judgment.

  “No,” I decide. “I’m firmly anti-squiggle. But…” I think about it. “Well, I do wish it had more decorations on it.”

  “What kind of decorations?” Rei has her phone out, googling.

  “Like maybe a bird or something? Or sunflowers?”

  “You and your sunflowers.”

  “Or maybe if it wasn’t just plain black,” I say. I lift my arms up and down. I try to imagine what this would feel like, riding on my bike. Fine, I guess, on the bike. But for swimming? “And I wish it didn’t have sleeves.”

  “What do you like about it?”

  I spin around in the mirror. I discover something at the exact location of a tramp stamp. I zip it open, then closed again.

  “So the butt pocket’s a winner,” Rei says.

  “I don’t need to work out in this, though?” I ask, halfway between pleading and a question.

  “No, of course not. I mean, you can. People do. But you don’t have to. You don’t even have to have a one-piece one if you don’t like it.”

  I look in the mirror again. She wears one, whispers something in the back of my mind.

  “Maybe.” I try not to think about it. “If we found the right one, it wouldn’t be too bad.”

  * * *

  We move on to workout clothes. When we finally find a matching leggings and top with racing stripes on the legs that Rei likes, and I agree would look nice on someone else, we go to the register and I pull out my handful of cash.

  “I’ve got this,” Rei says as she hands over her Amex. “It’s an early birthday present.”

  I put my money away. Money is always a little weird with Rei.

  “Don’t worry, you’re going to need to buy plenty of stuff,” Rei says as we leave the store. “But this is special. This is your power costume.”

  “Power costume?”

  “Every girl should have a power costume,” Rei says. “Mine is this sparkly Adidas tennis set. I wear it for like half of hell week.”

  Rei says things like this sometimes, these things I think she reads in Teen Vogue or whatever magazine tells her how to make her hair board-straight. “Every girl should” or “All girls must.” Sometimes it’s like she’s reading out of the secret girl rule book that all girls have but me. And sometimes it’s like she’s trying way too hard.

  I loop my very own paper bag over my arm. We stroll until we get to the big spotty pumpkin sculpture that sits in a fountain. It’s a Yayoi Kusama. I imagine Mrs. Miller’s brain exploding: What does it mean when a sculpture is a pumpkin?

  We take a seat. I peer into the bag while Rei texts…probably Wyatt, judging by the smile on her face.

  “Okay, what’s next?” Rei asks as she slides away her phone. “Run stuff? Swimsuit?”

  I shift. “I think I should probably just, you know, stick with what I have. Like, my gym clothes are fine.”

  “Serious question, Miho. Do you own any running clothes?”

  “I have sweatpants.”

  “Do you have a sports bra?”

  “Maybe? Is this one a sports bra?”

  I pull my shirt forward and she looks down my collar.

  “No, Miho, that’s a bralette. Or maybe a trainer bra. Where did you even get that?”

  “It was in the three-pack my dad bought me when I turned thirteen.”

  “Please tell me you haven’t been wearing that since you were thirteen.”

  “Okay, I’m not telling you that I’ve been wearing it since I was thirteen.”

  Rei sighs.

  “And a bathing suit?” she asks.

  “You’ve seen all my swimsuits.”

  “You can’t do a triathlon in a tankini with the elastic half melted,” she says. “If you have to buy all new stuff anyway, why not buy clothes that make you feel fancy and fast?”

  “Because it will look ridiculous on me,” I say, looking into the bag. “I mean, this will be fun to wear, but it’ll be like a costume.”

  “All clothes are costumes,” Rei says. She grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “That. Is. The. Point. You get to choose the costume.”

  I consider that. “Okay.”

  “Plus, you’re turning eighteen this year. You’re allowed to reinvent yourself. It’s in the official adulthood blood covenant the devil makes you sign when he comes through your window at midnight on your birthday.”

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “It’s totally a thing. Although I’ll probably be getting a visit from Satan tonight since it’s explicitly forbidden to tell anyone who isn’t eighteen yet.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “Seriously. Keep your window open on your birthday. Do not make Satan knock.”

  I laugh, and try to make it sound happy.

  “What is it?” Rei asks.

  I shrug.

  “Come on.”

  “My birthday is kind of ruined,” I say.

  “How is it ruined? It’s in July.”

  “Yeah, but it was a special thing. Between me and…Scumbucket.”

  My face gets red.

  “Oh! I totally forgot. I gave you that silly lingerie from Cabaret so you could wear it for him.”

  Rei had worn the set for two different shows—Cabaret and West Side Story. If we’d been less close, I would have been grossed out by the idea of putting fabric that had directly covered her nether orifices all up in my own. But we’re close enough that I would wear Rei’s underwear secondhand without too much squeamishness; I’ve done so on several impromptu sleepovers.

  The lingerie was two pieces that kind of looped together with buttons. Lavender, in a weird satiny fabric with lace and bows. And unlike normal sexy-ish bras that turn your boobs into molded Barbie-lumps, it left everything kind of hanging out under a thin band of lace. It had straps and stuff, but it was more decorative than technical. The bottom half was designed for someone like Rei, with a bit more in the butt department. On me, I thought it looked kind of like satin gym shorts, even though Rei said it looked better on me than on her. I felt ridiculous. Until he told me I looked beautiful. Until he looked at me, and I could see he really believed it.

  Then I felt exactly the way you’re supposed to feel when you wear that kind of thing. I felt, for once, like I was worth everything that any man has to give.

  “But why is your birthday ruined?” Rei asks, snapping me back to the present.

  “We had this plan. It seems stupid now.”

  “Tell me.”

  I sigh. “Last year, we spent the night out on the beach, right? And he said that this year, since I’d be turning eighteen, we’d run away and go to Amsterdam togethe
r for a week and go to the Van Gogh Museum. His grandfather promised him a bunch of money for a graduation trip, and he was going to take me. He said he couldn’t ‘find himself’ without me. He kept talking about it like it would really happen, all through last fall, all through the winter. He would send me little things we were adding to ‘The Itinerary.’ He gave me his Lonely Planet, and I’d send him things I wanted to make sure we did. Down to, like, specific rooms at the Rijksmuseum, which is truly massive. Down to which of our favorite movies we’d watch on the flights. He picked the hotel. He penciled in the best rijsttafel restaurant he’d ever been to. I could taste this trip, I swear. And he had it all written out in his Moleskine, this hour-by-hour plan starting at midnight on my birthday.”

  “Wow. I know he’s a bucket of scum, but…”

  “Yeah, it was the cutest thing ever.”

  “Except for the Scumbucket part.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, we were adding things to ‘The Itinerary’ right up until he broke up with me. And now, when it’s my birthday, it’s going to be like those hours are ticking by, and I’ll know exactly what should have been happening in each of them.”

  “You could still go.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just…not the kind of person who does those kind of things.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know literally everything about that ear-chopping weirdo.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Maybe your dad would help? Graduation gift?”

  I pause. I don’t even want to think about what Rei is getting for a graduation gift. She got a brand-new Prius for her sixteenth birthday.

  It’s like this never quite computes for Rei. She abstractly understands that I’m poor. She sees it in my house, my clothes, but she still doesn’t get it. And she says these things without thinking about them. Like how when I told her I was sick of using the computers at the public library, she told me I should just “ask for a laptop.” Or today, how she didn’t even see how incredible it is that her family has three cars, so she and her mom could take two of them for a shopping trip without having to shuffle everyone around. It took me two hours to get to this mall. It took her thirty minutes, tops.