Dress Codes for Small Towns
Page 9
Dad is always up my ass about wearing jeans and muscle shirts. And it’s not because he’s worried about skin cancer on my arms. “Billie, people think where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
If Davey went openly gay, I can predict the consequences the way I predicted the state of this room when I arrived. My dad would reread his youth ministry textbooks on Generation Z and Sexuality and Raising Conservative Teens in a Liberal World. People would wear oven mitts to handle him. They’d say, “I should have known. Did you see his eyeliner?” Girls my age would say, “It’s a shame” or “I wonder if he’s bi.” Who knows how his parents would feel, but they would certainly have opinions.
Elizabeth Rawlings is a safe choice, but Davey’s never struck me as someone dedicated to safety.
“Doesn’t Elizabeth Rawlings draw pentagrams on all her notebooks?” Fifty asks.
“Why aren’t we doing something fun?” I ask in return. “This is lame.”
Davey pulls a pillow into his lap and goes back to his drumming. “We’re not allowed. Woods decided we have to lose our man-cards by charting out the dance.”
His expression says: We should be in your garage.
Mine says: Let’s blow this pop stand.
Against better judgment, we both stay put.
“So let me get this straight. You five are trying to figure out how to get dates?”
Five noses scrunch. Five semi-nods. My disapproval is so visible, Fifty lands the lowest of blows.
“You look like your dad.”
“Oooooohhhh,” Woods and Janie Lee say together. Each watches my response.
“Good thing I’m against murder on the Sabbath,” I tell Fifty.
“I’m terrified,” he says.
Fifty and I are two Betta fish in the same tank. Eventually, I’m going to eat him. But for now, it’s easier to join the chaos. There’s history between us. Dance history. Sadie Hawkins is held outdoors in the middle of town if it isn’t raining, in Vilmer’s Barn if it is. Eighth grade, Fifty and I did some very G-rated experimenting and missed the whole dang Corn Dolly presentation and half the dance. That was the year Mash’s mama, Jeanelle, won. 2013. Fifty and I never told a soul we missed it. We certainly wouldn’t tell them why. For an asshat, he’s got the softest lips.
“All right, deal me in,” I say.
Davey says, very matter-of-factly, “Just remember this Hexagon of Love all started with Woods.”
“It started with wood all right,” I joke.
This is not the first time anyone has made a Woods’s wood joke. We land on familiar ground. Everyone cackles except Woods, who isn’t laughing because he’s too busy lunging at me. He’s twice my weight, so when he drags me into the middle of the floor and draws dry-erase lines down my nose and across my cheeks, I am forced to jab his ribs incessantly like a child. “If you break my sunglasses—” I threaten.
He’s squirming and nearly defeated when Mash says, “Better not let Mary Dancy see you mounting Billie like that.”
From beneath the attack, I say, “Mary Dancy?” very differently from the other three boys chanting, “Mary Dancy, Mary Dancy, Mary Dancy.”
In a quick, painful, show-stopping moment, I get my first look at the top of Einstein—a line attaches Woods Carrington to Mary Dancy. Janie Lee throws an UGG at Woods’s head—the first good use of those boots.
Breathless, I cock my head to the side. Reread. Mary Dancy? She’s the only female in the history of Otters Holt who has ever kicked for the football team. She has rock-hard quads and a stack of tiaras from the county fair and a zillion other beauty contests.
It all started with Woods, Davey had said.
“What do you two think?” Woods directs his question at Janie Lee and me.
I think my eyes might explode and take Janie Lee’s heart along in the explosion.
I say, “I’m forming an opinion.”
“Me too,” Janie Lee chirps.
Sadie fucking Hawkins.
Everyone hee-haws at something Fifty says and none of them, except Davey, hears me ask, “Am I on the board?”
Davey tightens the laces on his high tops, throws me sympathy from the corner of his eye. Woods moves aside. I read the whole board.
HEXAGON OF LOVE
* * *
GUYS
GIRLS
WOODS
____________________
MARY DANCY
MASH
FIFTY
____________________
CARLEY DAVIS
DAVEY
_________________
ELIZABETH RAWLINGS
?
JANIE LEE
BILLIE
?
12
I read the board again. Guys = Mash, Woods, Fifty, Davey, and Billie.
I am not waffling on my tombstone inscription. Elizabeth McCaffrey, born 1999—d. ? IN LOVING MEMORY: She had balls.
This is not conjecture, because when I say, “WTF?” to the whole lot of them, Fifty says, “You got the biggest balls in the room, B,” and Woods adds, “Yours dropped before Mash’s,” and then Mash salutes my nonexistent balls.
Which leaves me grasping at Janie Lee, who was, I might add, sharing a twin bed with me on the night I got my period in seventh grade. Among the Hexagon, she is the one person who should be saying, Hold up a minute.
Here’s the problem: Janie Lee’s not a boat rocker. If Woods Carrington wrote FIVE WAYS TO KILL PUPPIES on Einstein, she’d endure and cry like a fountain when she got home. Her tongue is currently lodged in her yellow-bellied gut, and mine is fixed to the roof of my mouth.
Davey appears nine kinds of torn. Part of him wants to punch Woods and Fifty in the face. Part of him wants to text Audi Thomas to escape this meeting. Instead, he drums, his nails galloping against the table like horses running on asphalt. Over and over, he drums.
Behind me, Mash chokes on a peanut and throws up on the other side of the couch.
“Seriously, dude,” Woods says, as if he is surprised.
Mash has throw-up tears rolling down his cheeks. “Sorry, guys.”
Like clockwork, Mrs. C appears in the doorway—the sound of Mash’s hurling is a very specific thing—and sets a towel and some carpet cleaner on the closest table. She pats the items as if they are friends and tells her son, “Don’t let it sit. I’m off to the grocery.”
Woods and Mash cleaning up puke gives me two minutes to think.
Here are the facts:
I’m no stranger to dyke comments.
I’m a thorn, not a petal.
If Playboy did a spread on flat-chested women, I’d be a cover model.
And not a single one of those things mattered, ever, not even when I was quizzed on sexuality by my own pastor father, until put into a different context by the Hexagon. Does Woods, master of the marker, think I’m gay? Or is he like, “Billie’s my brother?” or “Billie wishes she were Bill.” Or maybe being gay is synonymous with being a tomboy to them? I am baffled.
Woods is returning from the bathroom; he’s offering Mash a glass of water, all while I’m making up my mind about tackling this situation. There’s only one thing to do right now that does not involve me crying and screaming: go with it.
“If you leave me there, you’ll have to retool Einstein to say WAYS FOR BILLIE TO FIND A NEW HOME. Brother Scott would flip,” I say.
Davey’s galloping fingers stop. He gives me the briefest headshake as Fifty and Mash clap and catcall. He realizes I’ve chosen to soldier on. Two people in this room usually read my mind, and both of them missed my sexuality or gender or both by a mile.
It’s a lot to process and hide. Even for me.
Mash has a thought. “I’m not sure it’s wise to blow up a microwave and date a girl in the same month. But if anyone can do it, you can.”
One vote for gay.
Woods sashays over and scrubs the top of my head. “Billie doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. Not even Brother Scott. Right, B?”
Meanwhile, Janie Lee stops rubbing Mash’s arm—I assume she decides he has the peanut problem under control—and slides onto the floor next to me. She leans her head on my shoulder. It’s awkward for me, but I pat her hair—the way I would a puppy. Her hot cheek presses against my shoulder, her pain presses against my anger. I suppose she’s having a crisis too. Janie Lee loves Woods, who likes Mary dang Dancy. And I like him, and I’ve thought about liking her, and they’ve thought about me having a dick.
In an epic gesture, Woods sweeps his hand in front of both columns on the board and asks me, “Well, what think ye, Billie McCaffrey?”
Now, I’ve been known to hate on my father, but I silently worship at the altar of his teachings. Billie, don’t ever let them see you tremble. The church eats the trembling man. I go toe-to-toe. “I think Clyde Lacken will kick your overly presumptuous ass if you make a move on Mary. And I want to know why Mash is holding out.”
Mash musses Janie Lee’s hair. “J-Mill is all mum and shit too. Pick on her.”
Fifty says, “Mash, go on and admit to us what you’ve been admitting in your shower for years: you’re in love with yourself.”
Woods will stomach the occasional sex joke, but he’s old-fashioned enough that he’d rather avoid a full-blown masturbation conversation when his mother could still be in hearing distance. “You don’t have to pick anyone,” he tells Mash. “But you”—he stares at Janie Lee with great persuasion in his chocolate eyes—“must.”
Janie Lee turns her gaze on me and says ten boat-rocking words. “What if I wanted to choose someone in this room?”
This is how really bad becomes terrible. I teleport into her brain and scream: Don’t do it, Miller.
She hears me, ignores every word.
The whole room tilts as if we’re on a ride at the county fair. That doesn’t keep Woods from stating, “By ordinance of the Great Christmas Dance Debacle of 2012, I feel obligated to remind you that we have a code.”
He’s referring to the finger cutting and blood-oath swearing we did following the Great Christmas Dance Debacle of 2012: I, Billie McCaffrey am platonically in love with the following: Woods Carrington, Kevin “Mash” Vilmer, Robert “Fifty” Tilghman, and Janie Lee Miller. I swear to honor group above self unless I am in love with one of the aforementioned, in which case, I may pursue my individual desires. (Woods had spent the previous summer reading the complete works of Jane Austen and John Grisham.) As a pack of sexually innocent puppies, we’ve obeyed every ordinance. Until now.
Everyone except me wants to know who Janie Lee is considering. There’s not a person in the room who wouldn’t date her.
She makes a fist, presses it into her quad. “Oh, screw the code.”
Fifty sinks his teeth into the bone. “Now you have to tell us, Miller.”
She speaks, voice rattling like coffee beans in a can. “Maybe I’m not even breaking the code. Maybe . . . well, maybe I’m saying I’m . . . in love with one of you.”
I find her hand in mine when it wasn’t there before. The four boys stare. To hell with them. I squeeze her fingers between mine and beg her not to go this route. Don’t tell them about Woods. Don’t tell them about Woods. There’s no going back from that.
Woods drops his marker and it rolls across the carpet toward me.
“Billie? Janie Lee? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I answer Woods. “Nothing at all.”
“We’ve talked about this,” Janie Lee says to me.
She’s asking permission, which is ridiculous, and we’ve got so much lesbian ambience going on right now the boys are currently having a fantasy about the two of us in my twin bed. Fifty whistles to that effect.
Davey throws advice at Woods. “Drop it, why don’t you?”
Woods Carrington never dropped a thing in his life. “Janie Lee?” he asks.
She stalls momentarily. “Well, the dance. All I’m asking is, what if I wanted to go with one of you?” Her eyes scan the room, landing on four other pairs of eyes; her thumb moves absentmindedly back and forth over the pulse in my wrist. “Could we amend the code slightly?” She asks this question of Woods.
“Depends on which one of us it is,” Fifty answers straightaway.
“Shut up, Fifty,” Woods says.
Woods touches Einstein, as if connection with the board will settle him. Losing control of the peanut gallery wasn’t on his agenda when he led this discussion toward the Harvest Festival. Rather than answer, he says to me, “I need to see you in the next room.”
I release myself from Janie Lee’s clutches and follow him into the bathroom off the hall. We hear Fifty say, “Mom and Dad are fighting.”
The toilet seat is up. I’m tempted to tell Woods, Hang on a minute while I unzip my fly and take a piss. It’s a good thing I don’t, because he wraps his arms around me so tightly I lose my breath. Our hearts race against each other.
“You going to save this one, Einstein?” I whisper into the crease lines of his T-shirt.
He collapses onto the edge of the tub. “Tell me what’s going on,” he says from behind a mask of his hands.
I put on my guessing cap. He thinks Janie Lee is in love with me, and I’m in love with her, and no one told him. He wants an apology. We are best friends. I lean against the vanity. “I think you’re probably experiencing what we mortals call jealousy.”
“Maybe I am,” he says.
I did not expect to be right. I said it to say something.
He makes himself ask the question he doesn’t want to ask. “Are you two . . . together?”
It is neither wise nor prudent to let the guy I love believe I’m in love with the girl who is actually, maybe, in love with him, but the words that come from my mouth are these: “I’m not sure what we are.”
I find . . . I am not lying.
Feelings don’t sort like laundry.
Woods needs all his people in neat little boxes with neat little labels. He needs me to be his best friend. He needs for Janie Lee, Mash, Fifty, and Davey to be the Hexagon. He needs assurances. In the church, even if people are one thing, they are often another. Brother Scott taught me that even if people are boxes, they are boxes on a Rubik’s Cube that shift. One turn, one conversation, one thought—all shift the cube.
I’ve loved Woods for so long, but Janie Lee . . . maybe it’s time to stop and define my feelings. I was always too busy insisting and explaining that Janie Lee and I weren’t together and it was no one’s business and “please stop making assumptions,” that I never stopped to consider that we are in a unique relationship. I suddenly feel as if I’ve owned a castle for years and explored only one room. Janie Lee’s good people. No, she’s best people. It’s ridiculous not to consider her . . . and the board, oddly enough, gave me the anger to understand I have more choices than I realized.
Woods says, “Jesus, Billie.”
“Oh, I don’t think Jesus is involved in this one yet.”
Woods forces himself to say each word thoughtfully, carefully, without judgment. “You two have always had a thing, a connection that’s different than with the rest of us, but I didn’t realize it was . . . something. I thought it was because you’re both girls.”
It takes everything in my power to respond with, “It’s not like that,” instead of Oh, am I a girl now?
I’m not sure he believes me. He lifts his head. “Regardless, how do we proceed from here?”
I love him so dearly for that we.
“We go back in there and you erase the board and write WAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD or ODD USES FOR PEANUT BUTTER or FIVE THINGS MASH WILL CHOKE ON BY MAY, and act like you’re Woods effing Carrington.”
“I’m a little off my game,” he admits.
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I have his dry-erase marker in my pocket. I turn his palm up. I write President on one hand and Commander on the other, and say, “Walk into that game room and act like the Hexagon of Love never happened. And let people work out Sadie Hawkins on their own.”
He head-bobs. He stands. We’re due another crushing hug, but instead he grabs my head like a basketball and tilts my forehead toward his mouth. His lips are above my right eyebrow. They are silk.
“Forgive me.” His mouth tickles my forehead.
Woods only likes change he creates, but he owns his mistakes.
“We’ll talk it through,” I promise. And add, “After you fix that mess in there. Go be Dad.”
He chews the side of his thumbnail, lingers long enough to say, “Meet me on the roof tonight for Beggar.” Without waiting for my answer, he returns to the game room. His voice calls out in its usual commanding way, “Gather round, my children. New plan.”
I don’t have to peek around the door to know Einstein now says something ostentatious in Woods’s impeccable handwriting. Or to know that everyone in that room follows him to a new topic the way they’d follow him through the gates of hell.
13
Action heroes have at least three ways of being shot. Hero One: takes a single bullet to the wrong location and goes down fast with no last words. Hero Two: takes an uncountable amount of lead to vital organs, stays upright long enough to save someone, falls bravely. Hero Three: takes an entire .45 clip to the brain, stumbles off camera, and everyone knows she’ll be back.
I am Hero Three.
And Hero Three is currently sitting on the freezer in her garage pulling lead out of her brain and figuring out how to build a better couch. The Daily Sit is uncooperative, which is in keeping with its ornery personality. Despite this, I love the Daily Sit fiercely. I need the distraction.
Last night Janie Lee and I walked to the Fork and Spoon after the failed Hexagon meeting. She cried into her milk shake (and then mine), and I made her go home and play her violin to me over the phone until she calmed down. She felt terrible about the whole not-standing-up-for-my-vagina thing, and I felt terrible for suggesting she silence her desires for Woods.