by LJ Evans
I have to hand it to you. You played it all off really well. You somehow ended up the cool older brother who did anything to help the neighbor kid and his little sister. All the girls were oohing and ahhing over how sweet you were. Ugh. I mean, you were sweet, but if Marina had been trying to lower your ego, it had seriously backfired.
After we’d done the block, shed our costume, and were going through the loot that you couldn’t really eat, Kayla came up to me. She made sure you were busy with Mia so that you wouldn’t hear us.
“Listen, freak. Jake won’t say it because he’s too nice, but you need to buzz out of the big kids’ playroom. He doesn’t want you there every day. So go join the circus or something, will you?”
Of course, I didn’t believe her. Maybe it was true, but I didn’t think so. And I’ll have you know, you would have been proud of me because I didn’t even punch her in the face. I really wanted to. But I didn’t. She may have accidentally ended up sitting on a squished chocolate bar though, I won’t confess to it, but it could have happened.
♫ ♫ ♫
Even after Kayla had told me to take a flying leap, I continued to tag along with you. I’d always been stubborn as a catfish on a hook. Kayla just didn’t know that about me. She saw me as a pest to be rid of like a horse flicks at the flies. But when football ended, and you started waiting for me to finish practice before you walked home, I knew she’d been lying. You could have easily used that as an excuse to go home without me. To be rid of the fly buzzing about.
I think the fact that you wanted to wait for me irritated her to the ends of the earth, but she knew she couldn’t say anything. So, she just tried to make out what a good “big brother” you were. Always minimizing me to the little kid status I was fighting so hard against.
The entire school year went by this way. I was really hoping you would get tired of her. Sometimes I thought you were finally done because your eyes flashed with irritation when she talked smack about people. But when she kissed you, you’d get that goofy look on your face like Santa had just given you an early Christmas present.
I did my best to put up with it. I really did. Wynn helped a lot, but near the end of the school year, on one of the days when Wynn was at ballet, I finally reached my breaking point.
You and Kayla were all kissy-kissy, and while the noise was obnoxious, what really got me was that I could see your hand inching up her top, and I really didn’t want to see Kayla’s boobs any closer than I’d already seen them in her see-through bikini a few years ago. I got up, threw your football at you, and stormed out, smashing the door against the wall on my way.
Your mama looked up in surprise as I reached the back door stomping and slamming things along the way like a bear caught in a car. “Everything okay?”
I looked at her with my heart on my sleeve. I couldn’t help it. I think it was the first time your mama realized just exactly what I was feeling for you and just what I was going through. In response, I yelled, loud enough for you to hear, “I just couldn’t stand the tonsil hockey anymore!”
And I continued my tantrum by slamming my way out the back door. I saw your mama get off the barstool so fast that I’m surprised it didn’t leave skid marks on the floor. But it didn’t make me feel any better knowing that she was going up to chew you out and shoo Kayla home. It would be just another mark against me in Kayla’s book, and you’d be pissed too.
I climbed up to our tree house and waited. I knew you’d come eventually. Maybe not for a while, but you’d come because you’d know I was waiting there.
Dinner came and went. My mama didn’t even call out. She assumed I was at your house. You climbed up once the air had turned chilly, and I was shivering. The first thing I saw was the sweatshirt you tossed at me. I grabbed it and pulled it on, deeply inhaling the scent of you as I pulled it over my face. Chocolate chip cookies, grass, and boy.
You sat down across from me. You seemed awkward, and I hoped to God that your mama hadn’t said anything. But Marina would never give me away. I could trust her just like I could trust my mama. It was just that I liked that my mama was clueless about my feelings for you. I’d never admit them to her. Maybe because I wasn’t so sure she’d be letting me spend so much time in your bedroom if she knew I didn’t think of you as a brother. Little did she know, you’d never been a brother to me.
“So?” you said, finally breaking the silence.
“Sew buttons,” I said half-heartedly using a saying from when I was five and you were eight. I picked at some invisible lint on your sweatshirt sleeve with my knees pulled up tight against the bumps that were still my breasts, trying not to draw a comparison to them and Kayla’s mounds.
“What gives?” you asked.
“You really want me around for your make-out session? Never thought of you as a sick voyeur.”
You laughed out loud and gave me that big ol’ dazzling smile that stopped a million girls’ hearts every day. Including mine.
“Where do you get these words?”
“From studying vocabulary with you!”
Your grin turned bigger, and I looked away just as my eyes welled up with tears. I swear. Tears! I wasn’t a sissy, and it killed me. But you’d still noticed.
“Geez, Cam. What’s up?”
“I can’t do it anymore,” I could barely say it because my lungs were so tight, and my heart felt like a windup toy that had been wound too far.
“I didn’t know we were grossing you out. I didn’t even really think about it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not… I mean…” I couldn’t finish.
You wouldn’t take your eyes off me, I could feel them boring into me, but I refused to look at you with stupid tears in my eyes. Finally, you turned my face toward yours, but I still refused to look. I just closed my eyes. And the tears fell. You wiped them with a gentle thumb.
“You never cry. Not even when you broke your toe at the lake and rode your bike all the way home. Not even when you bruised your hand on Brian’s face. So, what gives?”
I pulled your hands off my face and pushed you away a little. I kept my eyes closed because I was afraid that, if I opened them, I wouldn’t have the courage to say what was trying to burst out of me.
“You’re breaking my heart.” It was a whisper. But it was said. And I couldn’t take it back.
There was no noise. Nothing from you. You hadn’t moved. Hadn’t screamed in disgust. Hadn’t run away. Finally, I couldn’t stand it, and I risked looking at you. You were looking out at the stars. Our favorite pastime when we had too much on our minds.
After a long time, you breathed out, “I’m not trying to break your heart. I’m just a fifteen-year-old guy trying to get to third base.”
You said it with a lot of sarcasm. And I couldn’t tell what that meant. All I knew was that right then, you didn’t see me as a girl. You just saw me as the kid next door who was a good friend, and it broke my heart a little more. I mean, I know I didn’t dress like a girl, or act like a girl, or even have boobs like most girls, but somehow I’d always thought that you still knew I was a girl. This proved you didn’t.
I scrambled away from you to the door. I was halfway down the ladder when you called out to me.
“Cami.”
I halted. Like I would forever halt when you used the longer version of my name. You knew I’d stopped, because there was silence instead of the pounding of your boots on the tree house floor following me. You knew I’d stopped because I always did when you said my name like that, but you didn’t say anything else. It was like that was all you could offer me at that time or like you didn’t know what else to say.
I waited for a minute or so. It seemed like forever. I was still hoping you’d come sweep me up into your arms, but you didn’t. I finished by jumping the rest of the way down the ladder and took off to my house. I let myself in, being careful to avoid the family room, and just hollered goodnight to my parents. I ran to my room where I promptly des
troyed several more pillows while taking out my pent-up anger at Kayla, and you with Kayla, and at me for being so stupid as to cry over it all in a decidedly un-Cam-like way.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next day I prepared myself to do the only thing I could do after the fit I’d thrown, which was to go home on my own to my own room. There was no way I could go back into that room with you and Kayla playing tonsil hockey. But when I left practice and found you leaning on the brick wall outside the girls’ locker room, Kayla and Wynn weren’t there. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I wasn’t sure I could even face you. But you ruffled my hair, and it felt a little bit like normal. As we started off home, I said, “Where’s your feathered friend?”
And even though you hated me calling the girls who followed you your gaggle of geese, you didn’t react. Instead, you shrugged. “Not sure.”
I was happy as a clam, as the saying goes. Although, how do you really know that a clam is happy? In this case, my heart was happily doing somersaults. Maybe that’s what a clam is like, jigging it up on the inside, but all shell on the outside. That was me. I was thrilled to have you all to myself again even if it was only for one day. Because I was so happy, I didn’t notice at first how quiet you were. You weren’t depressed quiet, just thoughtful quiet.
I suggested that, after homework, we go out and play football with Paul, Wade, and Blake. You always came to life playing football. That’s how we ended up on the street with you still treating me like the non-girl that I’d always been to you and the boys. But I didn’t care. Kayla wasn’t there, you were smiling again, and that was all that mattered for that day.
When Kayla didn’t come with us the next day either, I knew you’d broken up. I was ready to truly celebrate. When I asked Wynn about it, she said that the two of you had a huge fight over me. Yippee me. Well, mostly. I did feel a brief flash of guilt. Maybe I would have felt guiltier if our families had been more religious, but I didn’t. And the truth was, you really didn’t seem so upset after that first day without Kayla.
It took another few weeks, when school was out and summer had started, before I grasped the fact that you weren’t upset because you knew there was a long line of girls waiting to take her place. For me, I was determined that that summer would be the time that you would see me as a girl instead of just a kid that beat you at swimming. Stupid though it was, I know, I was finally hoping that you’d want to play tonsil hockey with me. After all, I had been the first girl in your line all along.
Better Than Revenge
“The story starts when it was hot and it was summer and...
I underestimated just who I was dealing with.”
- Taylor Swift
I may have been the first in your long line, but the one that came next caught me off guard. That’s what makes me think of Taylor’s song, “Better Than Revenge.” It wasn’t that I didn’t suspect it. It was just that I wasn’t prepared for how quickly she swooped in on her feathered wings and snapped you up. I wanted revenge. Big RED revenge. But it would be a long time before I got it. And in the meantime, I had to put up with the sneaky actress who was just another person who thought I was a freak.
For a brief moment, the summer started like H-E-A-V-E-N. And I was delusional enough to think it would stay that way. I was still a little naïve you see. I hadn’t really learned what the long line of geese and lionesses meant.
Wade and Blake were going to be seniors, and they were spending the first part of the summer doing the college circuit to find out which ones they wanted to apply to in the fall. Paul was off at his grandparents in D.C., and Craig had decided he liked computers way better than losing to me in a race. So, for the first few weeks of summer, it was just the two of us at the lake. We’d never taken Mia. Poor Mia. Although, to tell you the truth, Mia was never really an outdoor girl. She was pretty much my opposite in that regard.
After we’d been out of school a week or so, I made Wynn take me bathing suit shopping, and I bought a cute bikini, hoping that this would make you see me like a girl. But that same day, I wore it to dive class and lost the top on impact with the water. Coach was real nice about it. Although, I think he turned a couple shades of white that I didn’t know existed.
Anyway, I realized the bikini wouldn’t stand up to the rigors of the competitions and wrestling at the lake either, so Wynn and I went back to the drawing board. We resorted to a tankini. Not a grown-up ugly thing meant to hide your cellulite, but a cute lime-green polka-dotted one that let my belly button peek out and had tantalizing strings holding the bottoms together.
My mama smiled when she saw it. It was a step in the girl direction she and my grandma had been dreaming about. My daddy not so much. He frowned so hard that I thought they’d have to unglue his eyebrows at the hospital. They had this whispered conversation where I could hear words like “appropriate” and “girl” and “get used to it.”
Mama won. It was the first time in forever I’d wanted my mama to win a battle with my daddy over me. Normally I was hoping Daddy won like you hope for the lottery. You know there’s a chance, but it’s pretty much a long shot. But I did put my cover-up on, trying to help, but I could see Daddy’s furrow bury itself deeper in his forehead. It was a cute little white cover-up that was kind of like a dress although I never, ever wore dresses. Never. It was a sin to my earlier self. But I was trying to be a girl, and Wynn promised me it made me look very girly. It must have. That was why Daddy hated it so much.
The first day I wore the new suit to the lake, I loaded up my pink backpack, now really a grungy tan, with all the things I normally loaded mostly for you, and joined you out between our two porches where you were carrying your own backpack. I waited for you to notice the cover-up with my tankini polk a dots showing through, but you hardly glanced at me. We got on our bikes and took off toward the lake.
I knew that you had other things on your mind. Like getting your driving permit and trying to convince your parents to let you buy the ’67 Camaro that Wade’s brother was selling. But I couldn’t help being a little put out that you hadn’t noticed the girly gear I was wearing. Especially since I’d done it just for you. I tried to make myself feel better by thinking that once the cover-up was off, you’d really notice.
Instead, you dove right into the water, and yelled at me when I took my time actually putting on sunscreen, which I never did, but was doing in a lame effort to get you to notice me. I didn’t know how to play the game as well as the gaggle of geese or the lionesses. You swam out to the makeshift wooden dock that a whole group of us had anchored to the middle of the lake last year and hollered at me again.
I sighed. Eventually. That’s all I could think. Eventually, you’d have to really look at me. You were just used to not looking at me. I was always around, so it was just like your arm. You didn’t always notice it, but it was still there. Little did you know that I was always looking at you. I could tell the moment my eyes were on you whether you’d gotten a new haircut or you’d shaved or you had on a new outfit because your mom had convinced you to go shopping. That wasn’t as hard as it used to be, convincing you to shop, because you liked to look good for the ladies.
Anyway, I swam out to the platform, and we spent the morning splashing, jumping off of it, and racing each other across the lake and back. It was a lazy day. Warm. Not yet too muggy to be uncomfortable, but just enough to make everything feel sluggish and a bit dreamlike. The kind of dream that you don’t want to wake up from because you knew you’d never get back to that happy place, but somehow you knew you couldn’t stay in because alertness was tugging you into reality.
Near lunchtime, you took off for the shore to test your sugar level and fuel up. I lay out for a while more drinking in the heat of the wood beneath me and the sunshine above me like maple syrup into a hotcake. I lay there thinking of some way that I could get you to take notice of my little curves (helped out a lot by the padding of my tankini top).
You bellowed at me to com
e get some food. I’d been out on the platform for a while when I waded through the water back to shore. I’d pretty much given up on you, so I wasn’t prepared for your reaction when I walked up.
You blanched. Face white like when you had your reactions to the insulin, and that’s what I thought at first, but your mouth almost hit your chest in this look of shock, and I about burst with happiness thinking that you’d finally noticed my new suit, until you finally spoke.
“Shit. Cami. You’re bleeding. All over,” your voice was hoarse and shaken.
I looked down and realized I’d started my period. And it was running down my leg. Not a ton, but enough to be noticeable. Probably because I’d lain on the platform so long and not been in the water. Probably because the water was washing the blood out of my bottoms. Didn’t matter. There it was.
I hadn’t started my period before that. Many of my friends had, but not me, I felt like I was a late bloomer in every way, even though I know now I really wasn’t that old. My mama said I might be even later because I was so athletic, but I had thought it was God’s way of making sure you would never see me as a girl.
And now, here I was, registering my girlhood in the most personal way to you. There was no way in hell I was going to tell you that though. Instead, I played it off as if it was nothing even though my heart was pounding like it might take off of its own accord.
I laughed, grabbed my towel, and wrapped it around me. By this time, you’d noticed my belly button, too, and were having difficulty looking at me at all. Nothing could keep the little smile off of my face.
“Crap. We’ll have to ride to the Quick Stop,” I said, trying very hard to sound nonchalant, as if bleeding down my leg was something I’d experienced a million times.
“Are you all right?” You were worried and white, and I was cheering for myself inside. That little clam doing its jig again. I continued to play it off as well as I could.
