“You look like shit,” she said, shouldering her bag and leaning against the railing next to me.
“I feel worse,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Just got out of gym.”
“Ah,” Bee said, her face screwing up like she just ate something sour. “They got me in first block. Had to shift some other classes around, but they really don’t want us hoodlums together on school grounds.”
“I’m a hoodlum now?” I said. She laughed and patted me on the shoulder in a “welcome to the club” sort of way. “How was gym for you?”
“I cut class,” she said, squaring her shoulders and looking suddenly distant. I started to lecture her but she cut in before I could. “I know. I’m already on thin ice.” She pursed her lips and took a deep breath. “It’s just, the last thing I need is to run around in short-shorts while the Neanderthals make comments and the teacher pretends not to hear.” I gave her a questioning look, surprised to hear Bee admitting that what people said bothered her, and she stiffened even more. “I gotta go, actually. You need a ride?”
“My dad’s coming,” I said.
“’Kay. See ya,” she said, waving and hustling away. I stared after her, wondering how Bee had become the person she was, lost in thought until Dad’s car pulled up.
“Thanks for picking me up,” I said. I melted into the passenger seat and heaved a heavy sigh of exhaustion.
“Happy to,” he said, arching an eyebrow at my show of pain. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, leaning back and sighing at how comfortable the seat was. Every part of me ached. “Actually, could we swing by Walmart on the way home?”
“What for?”
“Nothing,” I said, too embarrassed to tell him what I needed to buy. To my surprise, he smiled.
“She used to do that,” he said, shaking his head. “Your mom, I mean. I think y’all are confused about what that word means, like maybe you got it mixed up with ‘everything’?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at Dad even though it felt a little strange to think about acting like either of my parents. “I guess you’re right. Sorry for being weird.” I took a deep breath. “I need a new bra.” I thought of Grant seeing me in the ratty old thing currently stuffed in my backpack and corrected myself. “Bras. I need new bras.”
“I see,” he said, instantly stiffening. His hands squeezed the wheel. “Look, we need to talk about the other night.”
“Yeah?” I said, stiffening in return.
“You need to be more careful,” he said. “Especially with boys.”
“I thought I was,” I replied, though I knew that was far from the truth. I had promised him I was coming here to study and graduate, to be safe. I wasn’t sure what I was doing with Grant, but it certainly didn’t fit into that plan.
“Christ,” Dad said. I turned to see him squeezing the bridge of his nose. “I thought you took this seriously. I really did.”
“How am I not taking things seriously?” I said, my anger from the other night rushing back.
“You were always such a timid kid,” he said, shaking his head. “Always hovering around your mother’s legs with that serious expression. You used to hate doing anything even a little dangerous.”
“I still do,” I said.
“Then why are you going to church with fundamentalists?” he snapped, turning a hard glare on me. I flinched. “Why are you having boys alone—and not just boys, mind you, but athletes by the look of that Grant character—” He took a deep breath and lowered his volume, but the edge was still there. “I trusted you to keep your head down.”
I felt hot tears coming but I blinked them away. I watched my reflection in the car window, beyond it trees and dusty road passing in a blur. “I just want to have a normal life.”
“And I just want you to live past your senior year,” Dad said, his jaw clenched. He let out a long breath. “People like you get killed by people like him.”
“Grant’s not like that,” I said, my voice sounding tinny and distant.
“He’s a teenage boy,” Dad said, raising his voice again. “They’re all like that! You don’t understand this at all, do you? God, I still remember that letter you sent when you started your hormone pills, where you told me you’d been a girl all along. I hadn’t understood it then but now I think I do, because you’re acting like a girl now. You’re acting like a little girl who’s so lovestruck she’s lost her mind.”
I closed my eyes and took deep, even breaths. “I’ll be more careful,” I said, my voice low.
“You’d better,” he said, glaring out the windshield. “One wrong move and I’m sending you back to your mother.”
He pulled into the Walmart parking lot and the car came to a stop. I slammed my door and didn’t look back as I strode across the asphalt. I wasn’t sure who I was angrier with—him for trying to control me, or myself for arguing, when a part of me still suspected he was right.
15
Friday night came as slow as torture, but it finally came. All week I had been thinking about what Dad had said in the car, that I shouldn’t be with Grant, that I was being foolish. But when Grant told me he wanted to take me somewhere on Friday night, I couldn’t help myself. I said yes.