Love, Heather

by Laurie Petrou

  I nod. She leads, which is what she does now, and I follow, which feels so much better than doing nothing.

  We walk behind the Tim Hortons, where there is a path that leads to the Bruce Trail beside the creek. The water moves around a whole bunch of crap in the bed of the creek, like a grocery cart lying sideways, and Tim Hortons cups that look like they’re trying to swim upstream. The path leads to a small bridge, and we stand in the middle looking down at the water, which is rushing like crazy. We don’t say anything for a while, and I start thinking about why no matter what I do, I fuck things up, and the only thing that makes me feel better is pushing back.

  Dee is looking at her phone. She chuckles and holds it up for me to see: a new Twitter account called @WE_ARE_ALL_HEATHER claims to be POSTING ON THE PAYBACKS AT WHS. There are a ton of posts already, blurry pics of fights after pranks happened, of lockers that were defaced, of some of the early LOVE, HEATHER pranks and some I didn’t know about until now.

  “The power of the people,” Dee muses. She links arms with me, and her strength pulses through me. Then I let go of her and bend down and pick up a rock that’s wedged between the metal rungs that make up the bridge. And I heave it into the water, throwing it as far and as hard as I can. It makes a tiny, impotent splash.

  “We can’t stop, Dee.”

  22

  Episode 72 00:00

  Hello, film nerds. Today we are going deep. Payback. Vengeance. Revenge. Those films that make you put your fist in the air and yell at the top of your lungs, “Yes! Take that!” Those movies that take us on a journey of justice, that give a voice to the voiceless and show how they can raise their weapons and take what’s theirs.

  A few days later, I lie in bed listening to music. An album Lottie turned me onto. Lottie. She’s still part of me, part of the inside-out of me. Half of me would love to get even for the way she tripped the wire that brought the school down on me, for the way she abandoned me; the other half just wants to lie around listening to records and make up. Last year, we gave each other necklaces, each with half a broken heart, that say BEST FRIENDS when you put them together and make a whole. My half, the part that says ST and ENDS, is in a tangle of knots at the bottom of my jewelry box along with all the things I know about her: that she used to be so scared of the dark that she slept with all the lights on, that when she first got her period she didn’t know how to use a tampon so I had to teach her, that she has back acne, that she took forever to learn to ride a bike, that she is smart and solitary, that she is secretive and quiet. Dee says Lottie started it all, that none of it would have happened and none of them would have turned on me if she hadn’t, and maybe she’s right. She says that Lottie has more than she deserves.

  She has a loving home, a family, even if it’s changing. I miss that. I miss playing checkers with my dad, years ago, or watching an entire movie with my mom.

  I don’t have a comfy home anymore, not like Lottie, not like stupid Paige and Breanne. I wish I could move in with Pete, move to his new house, help him decorate his place, become his daughter. I think of all the other people doing the jobs or pranks or whatever; I wonder what they are trying to protect and stand up for. About how many of us lie in bed and feel absolutely, desperately, alone.

  A movie is playing on my TV on mute. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Kids. It’s so disturbing and true and tough that tonight I’m watching it, while listening to something else or I may feel so much I’ll explode. Everything is so close to the surface now, every emotion and experience just under the ice.

  Today, someone broke into a girl’s locker and put red paint all over the crotch of her gym shorts. Yesterday, someone wrote RAPIST in red on the lockers of every guy on the basketball team. The day before, someone shoved a boy’s head in the toilet between classes. I saw him, blotchy and wet, coming out of the bathroom. I don’t know now: was he the bully or the victim? But part of me doesn’t care. I think of Aidan grabbing me and my face reddens, even in the privacy of my room, in the quiet of my thoughts. So many people go unchecked. Do what they want to anyone, and they are getting a taste of it now—some of them, anyway. If there are some unintended consequences, I chock that up to collateral damage, but something creeps into my mind, knowing that the revenge game can go both ways.

  I reach for my phone and text Dee. My life preserver, my buoy in the storm.

  Hey girl what’s up? she says.

  Nothing. Just hanging out

  You ok?

  Yeah, I’m good. Question

  Shoot

  Do you worry that someone will come for us? Like, do something big?

  …

  I wait, biting my lip.

  No.

  No?

  No one’s coming for you. I gotchu.

  And she does, I know. She eases the pain, whenever it comes. Lots of kiss and hug emojis coming my way, my phone buzzing with love. I lie back and close my eyes, letting the echo of those little cartoons of love float behind my eyes.

  23

  On Monday and Tuesday, we sat awkwardly in Health class, because apparently this tiny school, in this itty-bitty old town, is going to be the place where progressive sex ed takes a wobbly first step. They decided to keep us all together, they said, for now. I think they were afraid of the students who are enlightened enough to claim that splitting us up is adhering to a gender binary, and that some people may not be comfortable being told or being pressured to choose a group. The Safe Spaces group was likely consulted, which probably made them feel extra important.

  Mr. Cavalier, our Phys Ed teacher, doubled as our Health teacher. He was mortified but made up for it with volume, as though he was trying to communicate his lack of knowledge through sheer force of will. I wished he wouldn’t keep rambling, stomping over terms like a water buffalo, leaving words like orientation and identity and binary rubbing their heads woozily while he waved his arms about, correcting his own blunders, blushing. He showed a lot of videos and TED Talks because otherwise someone would have had to tell him that the word is transgender, not transgendered, and he would massage his chin and nod yes, yes, that’s right.

  Not everyone was awkward, I guess, at least about the topic of sex. The kids who are in the Safe Spaces club have been waiting all year to watch a teacher try to fumble through the terms that are the feature of hundreds of Tumblr accounts, AMAs on Reddit, even shows on Netflix, YouTube, articles and reviews. Some people are very well versed in everything to do with sex and health and gender identity and like talking about it all the time. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re experienced in the fine art of actual sex.

  But, I mean, a lot of people are having it.

  A lot of people are getting whatever they can: blow jobs, hand jobs, full-on sex, too. I don’t think girls are getting many jobs done for them, to be honest, but they’re participating, they’re the worker bees, from what I can hear. It’s happening all over: in bathrooms and parties, in bathrooms at parties, under the stairs, behind the bleachers, in cars. In this way, we are no different than teenagers of the past hundred years. The Industrial Revolution probably just inspired more places for teenagers to have sex.

  Some people here also show no interest in sex, and in the new age of everyone having an identity, some of these kids self-identify as “asexual.” Others are so into “healthy sex lives” that they make it their mission to embarrass everyone with their extreme comfort with their sexuality. And some kids get totally turned on by something else altogether: social justice. The social justice warriors, who naturally hate being called that, learn every term, every way in which privilege reveals its ugliness, and will be the first people to tell you to check yourself. Woke AF.

  I am a late bloomer, I guess. I’ve never had a boyfriend, but that doesn’t make me a nun. I mean, I have danced close enough to feel someone’s dick. Guys used to like me, but I usually dodged and deflected. The next thing I knew I was the school slut, so go figure.

  Look, I’m no hero; I know I fall right in here w
ith the insufferably smug and self-righteous. I know all about checking privilege even when my self-pity seeps out of my pores like grease. I read articles online about cultural appropriation and transphobia and I consider myself pretty woke. The only thing that educating yourself doesn’t inoculate you against, though, is becoming a know-it-all, and as thick in the trees as I am, I know I am that. And yet. STFD, Mr. Cavalier, is what we’re saying with our rolling eyes.

  At the doorway, there is a basket of condoms. On the way in, and on the way out, the Aidans and Lukes of the class stock up because God knows they are getting just a shit-ton of action.

  On Monday, Aidan held one up for me. “Stevie, it’s important that you don’t procreate, so make sure you pay attention,” he muttered, just loud enough for his cronies to hear, and Paige, whose ass he’d grabbed as she leaned up against him and smiled at me. She let out a little yelp and swatted him. My eyes prickled and I squeezed them shut furiously. When I opened them, I saw Dee staring after him, her face a mask of rage.

  On Monday and Tuesday, we were taught the terms. We learned, some of us, the idea that gender is a construct. That biology, genitalia—the things that open wide or hang and pulse and quicken—are separate, sometimes, from how we identify. From who we crush on. From who we are. We learned that gender is a performance. And this made me perk up a bit. It was a throwaway mumble from the teacher, who was reading off something, but it snaked its way toward me and looped under my arms and threw me into the air.

  A performance. I looked down at myself and remembered Pete asking me where I got the shirt I was wearing. And then all I could think about was that goddamn handkerchief, and man, if that didn’t blow my mind. All the performances around me ran through my head, including Reg-who-looks-like-James-Franko (without the melted face), with his belts and scarves and god-awful V-neck T-shirts. And this idea propelled me from Monday right through to Wednesday, where I am now, alert and listening, while Mr. Cavalier sweats and stutters and is performing brilliantly as Teacher Who Wished He Was Anywhere Else. But something is different. There is someone else here today. Today, Mr. Cavalier gets a lucky break.

  He tells us, “Today, we have a special guest. Pablo Estavez, of the White Ribbon Campaign, is here to talk to you all about consent.”

  Consent. I feel nervous, like everyone can see my face going red. I don’t risk a look at Aidan, who I’m sure isn’t giving a thought to me or to what he did in the stairwell.

  Dee is leaning back in her chair with a look of amused curiosity on her face, which quite frankly is the badge of those of us Who Know More Than You.

  And that’s when a young, super-sexy man with rolled-up sleeves and arms covered in sleeve tattoos enters our classroom, rocking back and forth on his heels, biting his lower lip and smiling. It’s like he’s trying to seduce the entire class, and it’s working. Dee’s chair falls forward with a thump. There is applause.

  Pablo Estavez waves and steps forward, with a loud and hearty, “Hi, there!” while Mr. Cavalier grins all the way to the front row seat that he takes with visible gratitude. No one in the history of the world has ever been so grateful not to have to talk sex with a grade nine class. He is nodding enthusiastically like Pablo is telling his favorite story.

  “I’m here to talk to you folks about when someone really, really, really”—here he bends his knees and groans a little—“wants to hook up with you.”

  Everyone giggles. Man, he’s got them wrapped around his finger.

  “But”—he puts up a hand—“I’m also here to talk to you about when they don’t. Or when they change their mind, even in the last, last minute. And how it’s your job to make sure they are A-okay at all times. And I’m here to talk about how it is okay for you also to say, in any way you’re comfortable with, at any point, that you don’t want to hook up, or that you don’t want to touch, or that you don’t like how someone is touching you, or that nope, you’re done, even if you already said yes. Even if you said yes, yes, yes, yes—you can then say no. We’re talking about touching, and rubbing, and hooking up, but more importantly, consent.”

  I am listening. Watching. The conversation is very one-sided for the first while. And then, slowly, people start scoffing to themselves. Mostly the dude-bros who sit with their legs spread wide apart. Those guys. But Pablo is waiting for this, and he cocks his head and says, What are you thinking? Like a gentle challenge. And the jocks with the spread legs start saying, Well, sometimes it’s really clear that they want it and you don’t need to ask. And then some of the class loses it and rolls their eyes and throws their arms in the air and groans, and others cheer and clap. And Pablo grins. Sure, sure, I get it. But you can find some hot way of checking in. Can’t you?

  Man, say the jocks, I don’t know.

  “I do know. I know you gotta. Check in often, and be sure you have enthusiastic consent. That is your goal.”

  That is not their goal. I look over at Dee. Her face is rapt with attention. Some of the girls are quiet.

  “Sorry, man,” says Aidan, and heads turn his way. He is slouched way down in his seat, like the act of sitting up is boring and exhausting. He shakes his head and says, “But how do you know that’s what girls want?”

  Pablo smiles. He says, “No one wants to be assaulted. No one wants to be attacked. No one likes to do something they’re not comfortable doing. It’s universal. Our bodies are our own. End of story.”

  My body is still, blood pumping loudly in my ears. His hand was so strong and he so easily hurt me. In that squeeze he told me that he could take anything, that he could do worse. He leapt up the stairs and back to class like it was nothing.

  Pablo continues, “But also—and with permission, Mr. Cavalier, I’m gonna go off script here for a minute, but it feels right.” Everyone sits up. And Pablo says, “I used to be a woman. And while that doesn’t mean I know what ‘girls want’ as you say, I do have the unique experience of being in both gendered worlds. I do have experience with being touched without my consent, and also experience with the entitlement—and, I’ll grant you, sometimes pressure—guys feel to ignore consent. My experiences have informed how I live my life, and what I do.” He opens his arms and stands with his feet wide, completely comfortable in his skin.

  I see Breanne cover her mouth to keep a laugh inside, and I hate her.

  “So—that’s the short story: I’m trans. I hear you folks learned what that means already.”

  I can see Mr. Cavalier’s brain fizzling into a fine dust while the murmurs in the class rumble around like rocks going downhill. I think about Lottie, who is not in this class, and about Pete, who is probably teaching right now. Some students are snapping their fingers appreciatively and grinning; others are looking at each other like they’ve been the victims of a major heist. Pablo keeps talking, regaining control, and discussing safety and consent and our basic rights to enjoy sex. He takes questions, his voice wafts over me.

  Safety.

  I watch Aidan laughing and can almost feel his hand on my body, on my crotch, the unprovable, shameful shock of it. Maybe I’m making too big a deal of it. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. I feel my face getting hot like it does before I cry. I clench my teeth and hold it in, polishing it, turning it into anger. I let that burn more deeply. I like the anger. I want to start fresh, to get a new chance. I want to burn everything to the ground and emerge brand new: a strong, happy, funny, confident Phoenix.

  Chairs are pushed back and the class is over.

  24

  I’m going to a party. I don’t go to a lot of parties, but (a) I will take any opportunity to get out of the house that I can, and (b) I was invited, and since am not usually invited, I am game.

  The party is at Sienna Martin’s house, tomorrow, Thursday night. It’s some end-of-the-year thing since we’re headed into summer vacation. I hardly know Sienna Martin, but I mean, she seems pretty nice. We went to elementary school together. She used to chew her braids. Now she’s kind of a pothead, her eyes always sleepy, her
hair in a tangled bun on top of her head. Lately I’ve been looking at people like Sienna and thinking, “Is everything okay at home?” like Pete said to me. Is everything okay at this person’s home? Or that person’s? It looks like it, but who the hell knows. No one knows at all. But we will pack ourselves into Sienna’s home and ignore all our own personal realities, our own home lives. People will drink and gossip and laugh so hard that they’re sick.

  There is a buzz in school. About the party, about the end of the year, but also about HEATHER, and how anyone could be next. Every day now, the talk is about whether anything new has happened, and what it was. The teachers seem on extra-high alert, carefully entering classrooms, opening desk drawers, making sure their cars are locked. The students are acting like it’s Christmas every day. They are always waiting for the next incident but really hoping it’s not about them. It’s like waiting to see if you get coal in your stocking, except that the coal might be a ten-foot banner in the gym that says you’ve got a small dick. That happened to Josh, who is rumored to have been slut-shaming his girlfriend. Since then, the gym has been locked outside of classes.

  At lunch, Dee and I see Ava and the others at a different table. I push away the thought that they’re distancing themselves, trying to get away from us, and join them anyway.

  Marta looks surprised as we clatter our trays down. Almost afraid. Ava and Jesse exchange looks, then scoot over to make room.

  “Did you see that banner in the gym?” I ask.

  “How did they even get that thing up there?” Marta whispers.

  “No idea, but you should have seen Josh’s face,” says Dee, shaking her head. She sips her drink, then: “Are you guys going to Sienna’s party?”

  “I dunno, probably,” Marta says, tracing her cafeteria tray with a finger and exchanging a look with Ava. “You guys?”

  Ava looks at Antar. “Yeah, we’re going.” Antar is largely ignoring us, his earbuds in, music on while he eats.