“You know what I heard, Philippa?” Kenzi said.
“What?” I said, watching the lifeguards clean the pool beyond the fence. For the last time that summer, we were waiting to get into the city pool and, as usual, had come too early.
“Mitchell was watching you the whole time we were here yesterday.”
I gripped the chain link. “Were you jealous?”
“No, not really,” Kenzi said.
We watched one of the lifeguards dive into the deep end. It wasn’t the best dive—the slap of flesh on water echoed off the concrete. Kenzi and I both winced at the sound.
“I’m not sure if I like him or not,” I admitted. I had liked Gil, a guy in my math class, but didn’t feel that way much anymore. And I had felt something more than friendship for Kenzi for a while. But I knew for sure Kenzi wasn’t the only girl I had liked in that way. “Honestly, I don’t know what I am.”
“Well,” Kenzi said, nudging me with her elbow, “your secret’s safe with me.”
“What if I am a dyke?” I spat.
Mom had said the word with foul breath and a smirk over Thursday dinners in between stories of her and Dad’s sex life. No luck on the baby front. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a baby in the house again? Those sickening dykes. Perverse and unnatural, that smirk said. Hot toddies and vaginas.
Two days ago, Kenzi had worn her favorite floral dress—a black A-line adorned with bright magenta roses—to the Back-to-School dance. I had unbuttoned it for her afterward, trailing my lips along where Kenzi’s tan met the skin usually covered by her swimsuit. Just last night, Kenzi had shown me how to wear a tampon.
Those sickening dykes.
Dad always nodded along when Mom said things like that. No questions, no disagreements. He didn’t use to agree with her on things, not before finding God. I wanted him to shake his head, to scream and rage like before. The screaming was a thousand times more real than this agreeable silence. Now, he just nods and when he does speak, it’s about being saved.
“Don’t say that word,” Kenzi said. She shifted beside me, but I didn’t want to look her in the face. “I don’t care what your mom said. Boys, girls, both—whichever gender they identify as. There is nothing wrong with you for liking who you like.”
“But—” I started but couldn’t get the words out.
“No, Phil, I mean it: God doesn’t just screw people over.” Kenzi spoke softly but firmly. “I believe He meant you to be exactly who you are. Besides, Peggy says that sexuality is fluid. She reads a lot of feminist books. You should talk to her.”
Peggy, Kenzi’s older sister, did understand. She’d known. She’d slipped me Annie On My Mind, even, when she had come to visit back earlier that summer. I had reread it so many times I was worried the pages would start falling out. I also had to hide it from Mom. I knew she’d get angry if she saw it.
I kicked the bottom edge of the fence. Mom believed in God but didn’t go to church. I didn’t know what I believed.
“Do you think Mitchell’s cute?” I said finally.
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Are you just saying that because you think you have to, or because you really feel that way?”
I rested my forehead on the chain link. The metal beneath my flesh was already hot to the touch. Mitchell sat in front of me in band. He played the clarinet, and I played the trumpet. On Thursday in school, he’d asked me for a breath mint.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
“And that’s okay,” Kenzi said, turning back to watch the lifeguards, who were now putting away the cleaning nets.
We joined the line waiting to get in as the lifeguards finally, mercifully, opened the front gate. We showed our pool passes to the lifeguards at the front desk and I bought some candy. Kenzi and I then made our way along the passage that led through the women’s bathroom and into the sunlight beyond.
“Thank you,” I said, once I’d put my bag and Tweety towel down in the shade near the baby pool. Kenzi was shaking out her own tattered Wisconsin Dells towel.
Kenzi smiled. She had a missing tooth on the left side thanks to a sledding accident from last winter. “You’re welcome. I love you, you know. I know you’ll meet someone who’ll become that lifelong romance for you. Whether it is Mitchell. Or Michelle,” she added in a whisper, giggling.
“Are we not doing this anymore?” I asked quietly.
Kenzi’s smile fell. “I thought we didn’t need to.” She lowered her voice. “And I don’t know where I fit, either.”
I nodded. My throat was dry because I hadn’t had any water all day. The words left me feeling dull and achy, but I didn’t know what to say. I grabbed the sunblock from my bag and held it up. “Want help with your back?”
“Sure,” she said, but it was stilted and as we gently applied sunblock for one another, neither of us spoke.
Kenzi started off at the board while I doggy-paddled across the deepest part of the shallow end, stopping every once in a while to do a handstand underwater. The open air felt nice against my shins and ankles. It was the last weekend of the pool season. School had been in session for a week and a half already. I hadn’t done any drawing all weekend nor done the homework for Monday. I’d been rereading Annie On My Mind instead. The night before, during my sleepover with Kenzi, I’d dozed off right after to the part where Liza and Annie were caught making love at the teacher’s house. Kenzi had already fallen asleep by then. This morning after breakfast, as Kenzi tried to teach herself to crochet, I’d been thinking about what the new character for my comic would look like if she were half human, half alien without it looking too much like Marvin the Martian (which was all my hand seemed to want to draw lately).
I watched other swimmers float by as I moved about the shallow end, their outlines fuzzy and marked with aquatic shadows like cerulean tattoos in the midday sun. I kept my eyes open so long they stung when I came back up for air. I tried not to watch Kenzi practice her diving across the pool.
Megan and Carly, two friends from school, joined Kenzi and me an hour later, right at the beginning of adult swim. I was in band with the two of them. They both played flute and I was used to watching them pass notes to each other from my third chair seat in the trumpet section. Megan and Carly didn’t swim; instead, they liked to lay in the sun to tan when they came to the pool. Kenzi said they did this so they could better fit into the sexist and misogynistic beauty standards set by society.
“Phil,” Carly said, setting her bag down next to my towel, “I saw Mitchell by the front desk. I think he’s looking for you.”
Yesterday, Mitchell had worn neon green swim trunks that had clung to his thighs. He’d winked at me as I passed him on my way to the bathroom.
I tore open a bag of peanut butter M&Ms I’d bought at the front desk. The wrapper was slick with condensation in the heat. “Maybe.”
“He’s so tan,” Megan said.
“He looks like Mark McGrath. With the bleach in his hair and the muscles, you know? You guys will be together by homecoming,” Carly said, rubbing tanning oil up along her shoulders and down her boney legs. She had a lean build but was one of the best runners on the cross-country team.
“My parents won’t let me listen to Sugar Ray,” Kenzi said. “But Peggy lets me listen to them whenever I go visit.” She wore a tankini splattered in orange flowers that matched her nails. I imagined her in a long ballgown, proffering a hand to me like Aladdin does for Jasmine asking for her trust. Her eyes would be trusting, trustworthy.
The M&Ms tasted slightly of chlorine. “I wish your parents weren’t so strict,” I said to Kenzi. Peggy was the only person in Kenzi’s family worthy to love her. Kenzi’s mom always made jabs at Kenzi’s weight and would berate her for not going to youth group. I hated hearing her get on Kenzi’s case so much—a whole different kind of evil from that which my mother spread, but both still horrible. Someone, somewhere had to have a good mother.
“Did you hear that Nicole Caldwell got caught stealing her parents’ whiskey?” Megan said, stretching her legs out in front of her. Her toenails were painted neon green. “Got grounded til Christmas, I heard.”
Kenzi’s eyes grew large. “Geeze. She’s got that older brother who can get her anything she wants. Why risk it?”
“Her mom’s crazy, you know,” Carly said. “Yells at Nicole and the rest of her family over silly things. I saw her at it last week in housewares at Wal-Mart.”
I knocked another M&M into my hand and watched it slowly melt in the heat. It left a blue trail as I poked it across my palm, the color seeping into the shallow ridges of my lifeline. “We shouldn’t talk about things like that,” I said. “It’s gossip.”
“It’s not like it’s a lie. Everyone knows Nicole’s mom is bonkers. She yelled at Nicole once in Daylight Donuts for accidentally dropping a bag of donut holes,” Megan said.
Kenzi watched Carly and Megan, then looked at me. A chorus of whistles sounded to signal the end of adult swim. I licked my palm free of blue smears and dried it on the corner of my towel.
“Do you guys want some?” I offered the bag of M&Ms to the others.
Carly shook her head. Kenzi pulled her wet hair over her shoulder.
“Philippa, I heard through the grapevine that your parents are trying to get pregnant,” Megan said.
“Ew, your parents still do it?” Carly said. She wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Did I tell you I’m adding a new character to my comic?”
Kenzi nodded. “Yeah, we should talk about something else,” she said. “Phil’s been working on the character all summer—”
“No one cares, Elmer Fudd,” Megan said.
“That wasn’t very nice, Meg,” Kenzi said.
“God, that’s so weird,” Carly continued. “They’re so old!”
Mom was always talking about prenatal vitamins and yelling at Dad for spending money on condoms. She yelled at me for not living up to her perfect expectations. The hypothetical baby my parents yearned for might not ever understand what it means to be such a disappointment. Only I could serve that role, according to my mother.
The main character in my comic would be the only child with kind, supportive parents. And aliens in my universe could only procreate once.
I dumped the remainder of the M&Ms into my mouth, but I’d misjudged how many were left.
Carly laughed. “Can’t hold a mouthful, can you?”
I chewed slowly and hugged my knees to my chest. I could hardly move my jaw.
“The gag reflex should kick in any time now,” Megan said.
“Stop it. It’s not okay to say things like that,” Kenzi said. Bless my best friend. Peggy really had been such a good influence on her.
“Whatever. Do you think she’ll spit or swallow?” Carly wondered.
“Two dollars says she’ll swallow,” Megan said.
The pressure of chocolate in my mouth was too much; I jumped up and lunged towards the trashcan by the fence to spit it all out. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to stare at the gooey mass ooze down over Laffy Taffy wrappers and crushed Pepsi cans.
“Haha, you lose!” Carly said.
“Stop it, guys,” Kenzi said.
“Kenzi, have you done the algebra homework yet?” Carly said.
Kenzi shook her head. “Nah. I did start it on Friday, though. I have a few questions left.”
“I don’t think Ms. Michaels likes me very much,” Megan said.
“I don’t think she likes anyone,” Kenzi said.
I settled back on my towel, embarrassment twisting my gut.
“Hey Phil,” Megan said. “How long have your parents been trying to have another kid?”
When he and Mom were on a break, Dad went to England to visit a buddy from college. I received a postcard from him every week for three months. The postcards came from Scotland and Ireland, from some place called Windsor, from London. I did not meet this real live princess, one adorned with a picture of Princess Diana said in his tilted scrawl, but I feel her presence in every corner of London. His last postcard was one of some bare stone chapel at the Tower of London. I know now what I need to do. God does not want me to abandon my family and fail in my duties as father and husband. Be good—and I’ll see you soon, it said. Four days later, he came in the front door, cleanly shaven, calling out for Mom. It took him five minutes to notice I was in the room too.
“A year and a half,” I said.
Megan leaned in so close I could smell her freesia body spray. “Do you hear them and everything?”
I tugged on a loose string in Tweety’s cheek. I thought about how, in the last week, Mom had started talking nursery colors. She was set on lavender and peach. Dad wanted to wait until they knew the gender of the baby. I wanted to point out to them that the baby wasn’t even a thing yet; Mom was still having her period. I saw the tampons in the bathroom trashcan every month, right on schedule.
“Do you think your mom watches gay porn?” Megan continued.
Carly smacked Megan on the arm. “Ew, Meg, that’s disgusting.”
“Phil, your mom’s from Kansas City, right?” Megan said. “That’s the biggest city we have, you know. She might be cosmopolitan and into shit like that.”
I stood up. “I’m going to the diving board. Coming, Kenzi?”
Kenzi stood too, giving me an apologetic look. “Sure. See you in a few,” she said, waving at the other two.
The dry, hot concrete seared the soles of my feet so I hopped over to the damp concrete along edge of the deep end. It was only marginally cooler there. My gut continued to twist.
Kenzi followed. “Carly and Megan never know what they’re talking about.”
I glanced at Kenzi, meeting her eyes, finally. “Yeah, full of shit,” I agreed.
Neither of us had been sure what we were doing after I’d removed her dress and she mine. I still hadn’t shaken the heat of her bare skin on my own, nor the way we just whispered to one another, afraid to shatter whatever it was, this thing we’d found together.
We joined the line for the north diving board. The sound rattled inside my skull as swimmers took their turns diving or cannonballing.
“I wish Peggy lived closer,” I said.
“Me too,” Kenzi said. “Do you think your mom is going to get pregnant after all?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Last week, Mom had found some drawings of Killian the Destroyer that I’d been working on and had thrown them out because she said the beaklike, cogged face looked ugly. Killian was my villain: a cyborg with the ability to alter the chemical makeup of plants, rendering valuable crops useless and causing widespread famine. Most definitely nefarious.
I didn’t want to think about how Mom would hang crayon drawings done by tiny, chubby hands up on the fridge someday. I’d have to stare at them every time I went to get a glass of milk.
Kenzi held up a hand for a high-five, her habitual reaction to not knowing what to say. I returned it, not really knowing, either.
When it was my turn to jump, I focused on my dive. It was rusty but had gotten better in the last two weeks. My problem was that there was too much of a splash when I hit the water. Right before I propelled myself off the end, I almost stopped, my stomach reverberating around in my throat. Momentum kept me moving and as soon as I hit the water, the feeling dissipated.
The rumble of the board above the surface sounded thick underwater. I swam straight ahead toward the rope that divided the deep from shallow ends. Once I’d crossed into the shallows, I popped up for air and turned to watch Kenzi.
“Phil! I’m coming for you!” she called from the board. She ran forward and sent herself into the air, landing with a flailing crash into the water, arms and legs splayed wide. I giggled, watching her break the surface to get air. She paddled her way toward me, pulling the rope up without putting her head underwater again.
“That was beautiful. I think I heard you make the Goofy call on your way down,” I said, bouncing on the balls of my feet.
“What? No way. The Goofy call?” she laughed.
“Oh yeah.” I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sky. “YEEEAAAAH HOO HOO HOY. Like that.”
“Shut up,” Kenzi punched the water, sending a splash in my direction. She readjusted her swim goggles. “Underwater tea party?”
“Yes! Count of three!” I said. “One, two, three!” I took a deep breath and pulled myself under, tucking my legs beneath me as I headed to the bottom of the pool.
Kenzi’s hair fanned out around her and her cheeks bulged out. She held up an invisible cup and saucer, tipping the cup in my direction. I returned the formality, a watery clink of imaginary porcelain.
I set my invisible teacup on the floor of the pool. I reached out to an invisible cake stand and mimed taking a dainty bite. Kenzi made to set down her own teacup but then dropped all pretense and pointed at my crotch.
I looked down: red billowed out slowly from between my legs. Beyond Kenzi, I could see the shadow of a red cloud, just hazy enough to be seen through the shadows cast by the other swimmers. Tracing my path from there to here. I launched myself toward the surface.
Kenzi gasped as she reached the surface too and grabbed me by the arm. “Don’t panic. I have tampons in my bag. I’ll meet you in the bathroom in a jiffy.”
I nodded and shot toward the nearest ladder. I glanced back to the other side of the pool. Kenzi was already shuffling back to our bags. Megan was laying on her back. Carly was on her stomach. Below me, there was a silky red trail marking my path from the middle of the pool to the ladder, patchy in places. I turned and headed toward the pool building, feeling the heat seep into the soles of my bare feet.
Behind me, I heard screams, then one of the lifeguard whistles. I passed Mitchell and some girl who always followed him around, on a bench, laughing over something I wasn’t privy to. The girl’s eyes went down to my thighs as I ran by, and I sped up.
The concrete walkway from the pool to the bathroom was not as crowded as the main pool arena. I ran down the concrete stretch. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known my period was coming. God, I was stupid.
The walls of the girls’ bathroom were bright turquoise with canary yellow accents. The floor was damp and the slap of my bare feet on the painted concrete echoed around as I rushed to one of the toilet stalls. I latched the door shut, tore my one-piece down to my ankles, and sat down on the toilet.
“‘Strawberry wiiiiiiiiiine,’” someone sang from the shower stalls on the other side of the room. Someone else giggled.
“Phil?” Kenzi’s voice echoed around the bathroom.
“Oooooh, Phiiiiil,” came the voices from the showers in unison.
“I’m here!” I called. I crossed my arms and clutched my shoulders. All I could see was the painted ceiling and the fluorescent lights above.
Kenzi’s voice came from just outside of the stall door. “I have your stuff, Phil, but you don’t have a change of clothes. I mean, you have your shorts and shirt but no bra or extra underwear.”
“I know.”
“Is your suit ruined? I can rinse it out for you if you’d like.”
I looked down to where my swimsuit now sat at my ankles, cradled by my bare feet. The red had seeped from front to back of the suit. Lines of red trailed and crisscrossed down my left thigh. “Um, maybe.”
“Are you wearing a tampon?” she asked, her voice low.
I yanked off a wad of toilet paper from the dispenser and started to wipe the lines of red away.
“Phil? I have a tampon here if you need one. And you probably do.”
The heat crept into my throat and cheeks. “Yeah,” I choked out. What chaos there must be outside.
“Do you remember what to do?” Kenzi’s hand appeared in the gap underneath the door to offer me the little, yellow-packaged tube. I stuffed the toilet paper wad into the toilet bowl and took the tampon.
“I don’t know,” I said. I tore the plastic packaging off the cardboard applicator and stared at it.
“Do you want me to do it? I don’t mind.”
It was something about the dampness and humidity and the fear—what little kid would see the red cloud in the water? They would think that someone had died.
Vaginas and hot toddies. When I get home, I decided, I am going to bury every English postcard in the bottom of my sock drawer.
“I don’t think they’re going to let me swim anymore,” I said. “Everyone will have to go home.”
“Okay. Let me rinse out your suit. I’ll go home with you.”
“Okay.” I reached down to unhook the suit from my ankles. Kenzi’s hand reappeared under the door. I handed her the suit, setting the non-bloodied fabric in the palm of her hand. “Be careful not to get it on yourself.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just clean yourself up, put in that tampon, and we’ll leave, okay? Just stay right there, I’ll be right back.”
Not that I could go anywhere at the moment. I grabbed another handful of toilet paper and resumed cleaning, the tampon still in one hand. I heard the sink next to the stall turn on and the smack of water on wet fabric. Kenzi started singing a Duran Duran song we’d listened to on loop the night before.
I couldn’t call my mother. This was worse than that time that I’d accidentally dumped chili down my dress at the Methodist soup supper last fall. Mom had yelled so much that night. Ladies don’t drop anything. If I could just keep myself in check, I wouldn’t be such a disappointment.
I looked down at the tampon. Up at an angle, hold on to the string. You shouldn’t be able to feel it.
“Philippa,” Kenzi said, “you doing okay?”
I stared at my blurred and distorted reflection in the dented stall door ahead of me. A ghost in the mirror. “Is it because of the other night? Why we can’t do this anymore, I mean?”
The water stopped. “Of course not, why would you say that?”
“What else could it be?” I said.
One last sound of water hitting the sink. Then Kenzi’s feet appeared on the other side of the stall door. “Let me in for a second. You haven’t put the tampon in yet, have you?”
I shook my head even though I knew she couldn’t see me. I clutched a hand to my bare chest, leaned forward, and unlatched the door. Kenzi squeezed in with my suit in hand, latched the door behind her, kissed me on the lips, and then crouched in front of me.
“I don’t know anything anymore. It’s not about the other night. I just…don’t know,” Kenzi said. She rested a hand on my thigh, and I placed my own hand on top of hers.
“I need water,” I said.
Kenzi nodded. “We’ll get some on our way out. Now, let me have the tampon,” she whispered.
